Bitter Gold Hearts

______XXXIX______

"WHAT'S UP, MORLEY?" "Chodo wants to see you. Right away."

"Now I'm not happy. What brought this on?"

Morley shrugged. "I'm just relaying a message Crask left with me. I'll say this. He didn't look like he thought his boss was going to feed you to the fishes."

"That's very reassuring, Morley."

"Chodo is an honorable man, in his own way. He wouldn't chop somebody down without warning."

"Like Gorgeous?"

"Gorgeous had plenty of warnings. Anyway, he put himself on the bull's-eye. Then he stood there with his tongue out. He begged for it, Garrett."

"What do you think? Should I go?"

"Only if you don't want the kingpin pissed at you. A time might come when you'd want him to give you a little leeway."

"You're right. Let's go. Lock it up, Dean."

Dean grumbled, I told him it wouldn't last much longer. Chodo had set himself up in a manor house in the suburbs. The place beggared the Stormwarden's in size and ostentation, a commentary on the wages of sin if you're slick. Sadler was waiting at the gate, a commentary on the confidence Chodo had in the terror of his name, I suppose. He said nothing, just let us follow him across the professionally barbered grounds. Having that kind of eye, I couldn't help but study the security arrangements.

"Don't step off the path," Morley cautioned. "You're only safe inside the enchantment."

I then noticed that in addition to the expected and obvious armed guards and killer dogs, there were thunder-lizards lazing in the bushes. They were not the tenement- tall monsters we think of, but little guys four or five feet tall, bipedal, all tail, teeth, and hind legs built for running. They were the reason for the enchantment on the path. Unlike the dogs, those things were too stupid to train. All they understood was eating and mating.

"Nice pets," I told Sadler. He didn't respond. Wonderful company, the kingpin's boys.

But the grimness ended at the front door.

Chodo knew how to do it up royal. I've been inside several places on the Hill. None could match Chodo's.

"Don't gawk, Garrett. It's impolite."

A platoon of nearly naked cuties were playing in and around a heated bath pool three times bigger than the ground area of my whole place. We passed through. I muttered, "Business must be good."

"Looks like." The man who had cautioned me not to gawk was looking back, the gleam in his eyes a conflagration. "Never saw them before." He walked into a pillar.

The part of the house where we met the kingpin was less luxurious. It was, in fact, your basic filthy, miserable dungeon—except it was located on the ground level. The kingpin himself was a pallid, doughy fat man in a wheel-chair who didn't look like he could whip potatoes until you met his eyes. I had seen eyes like those only a few times, on some very old and hungry vampires. They were the eyes of Death.

"Mr. Garrett?"

The voice went with the eyes, deep and dank and cold, with hints of awful things crawling around its underside.

"Yes."

"I believe I owe you a considerable debt."

"Not at all. I—"

"In your fumbling and poking after whatever it is you're seeking, you presented me with an opportunity to rid myself of a vicious pest. I seized the chance, trampling your interests in my rush, a presumption you'll have found close to intolerable. But you've been gracious about it. You participated in the operation which delivered me despite having little hope you would get what you were after. So I believe I am in your debt."

Were it not for his voice from beyond the grave, I might have been amused by his pedantic manner. When I didn't respond, he continued, "Mr. Dotes didn't make much sense when he tried to explain what you're doing.

If you can satisfy me that your interests don't conflict with mine, I'll do what I can to help you."

I wanted to demur, quietly, still preferring to avoid any chance of becoming identified with him. But Morley gouged me gently, and the fact was, he had two of the people I most wanted to question. I explained as concisely as I could, carefully sliding around the matter of two hundred thousand marks gold floating free.

Sadler continued, "One of Gorgeous's enterprises was the fencing of goods stolen from the warehouses along the waterfront, sir."

"Yes. Continue, Mr. Garrett."

"Basically, I need to question Gorgeous and Skredli so I can define their sector of the web of intrigue." Does that top you, you villainous slug? "I need to ask them who told them to kill Amiranda Crest and the younger Karl daPena."

"I knew Molahlu Crest when I was a young man. You might say I was one of his protégés." He crooked a finger. Sadler went to him, bent down. They whispered. After Sadler backed off, Chodo asked, "The questions you want answered are the ones Raver Styx will ask with a great deal less delicacy?"

"No doubt."

"Then not only must I pay my debt to you, I must move to avert the attention of the mighty. But I have erred, and today I demonstrated my fallibility to myself in no uncertain fashion. I'm able to give you only the lesser part of what you want. I overestimated Mr. Staley's endurance and he's no longer with us. He couldn't take it."

I sighed. I should have expected the grave to slam another door in my face. "He wasn't in very good shape the last time I saw him."

"Perhaps his injuries were more extensive than they appeared. Whatever, I learned very little of value. But the other, the ogre breed, has survived and is amenable. The trouble is, he doesn't seem to know much."

"He wouldn't."

Morley gouged me. "Donni Pell, Garrett."

"What?"

Chodo raised a plump, almost white caterpillar of an eyebrow. He was as good at it as I was.

"You said the hooker was the key, Garrett. And you don't even know where to start looking."

"Who is Donni Pell?" Chodo asked.

"The she-spider in this web." I gave Morley a dirty look. "She used to work for Lettie Faren, but ran out on her the day Junior was snatched. She could be related to Lettie. Human, but supposedly with a thing for ogres." I ran through the whole thing, how every way I turned the name Donni Pell popped up. I finished, "She could be masquerading as a boy but using the same name."

Chodo grunted. He stared at the nails on one plump pink hand. "Mr. Sadler."

"Yes sir?"

"Find the whore. Deliver her to Mr. Garrett's residence."

"Yes sir." Sadler left us.

"If she's in the city, she'll be found, Mr. Garrett," Chodo told me. "Mr. Sadler and Mr. Crask are nothing if not efficient."

"I've noticed."

"I suppose it's time I took you to my ogrish houseguest. Come." He spun his wheelchair and rolled. Morley and I followed.