Faded Steel Heat

63

Time to tap an old resource.

Time to drop in on the Cranky Old Men.

I didn't look forward to it. It wouldn't be pleasant. But with my aches and pains and premature cynicism I'd fit right in.

They say there's more than one way to skin a cat. Undoubtedly true, but why would you want to? Whoever the first they was. Somebody with strange habits. Who needs to flay felines? I hear they keep right on shedding after they're tanned.

Maybe the saying was started by the guy who knocks out ogres with his bare hands.

The Cranky Old Men are an ongoing crew of antiques who pooled resources to purchase, maintain, and staff an abandoned abbey where they await the Reaper, many because they're so unpleasant their relatives don't want them around home. Somebody in a black humor named the place Heaven's Gate.

In its prime the abbey housed fifty monks in luxurious little apartments. More than two hundred Cranky Old Men live in the same space, three to the apartment and who's got any use for even one chapel let alone the three of the original setup?

The place is cramped and smelly and almost as depressing as the Bledsoe and makes me hope that in my declining years some twenty-year-old lovely with an obsession for chubby old bald guys who smell bad takes me in so I don't have to buy into anything like Heaven's Gate. Of course, with my luck and the way things have gone lately I shouldn't worry about getting old.

The abbey was constructed in a square around an inner court, two stories high, filling a larger than normal city block. Not an uncommon layout in TunFaire. Tinnie's clan resides in a similar though larger compound, which includes their tanning and manufacturing facilities. In a display of misplaced faith in their fellow-man the monks had included ground-floor windows around the street faces. The Cranky Old Men had adapted to modern times by installing wrought-iron bars. Most people just brick them up.

There are two entrances, front and rear. Each is just wide enough to permit passage of a donkey cart. Both are blocked by double sets of iron gates. The place looks more like a prison than the Al-Khar does.

Somebody's grandson was on some scaffolding, installing bars on a second-floor window. The deeper poverty arriving with the immigrants might make the place attractive after all.

I eased around the scaffolding to the gate. It was comfortable in the shadows there.

"Eh! You! Move along!" a creaky voice insisted. "No loitering." A sharp stick jabbed between the bars too slowly to hurt anyone.

Everyone got this treatment, including favorite sons.

"I came to see Medford Shale." Not strictly true, but you do need to offer a name and I knew that one. The hard way.

"Ain't no Medford Shale here. Go away."

"That's him back there under the olive tree. On the cot." Which was true. And handy. So maybe my luck wasn't all bad.

The sharp stick jabbed again. I didn't go away. The old man on the other end came out of the shadows. I said, "Hello, Herrick."

The old man squinted. He scowled. He tried to stand up straight. "I ain't Herrick. Herrick passed. I'm his kid brother, Victor."

"Sorry to hear about Herrick, Victor. He was good people. I need to see Shale."

Victor's eyes narrowed again. "You ain't been around lately, have you?"

"It's been a while." Medford doesn't make you want to hurry back.

"Herrick passed two years ago."

All right. It had been a big while. "I'm really sorry, Victor. I need to see Shale."

"You got a name, boy?"

"Garrett. We go way back."

Victor sneered. "Shale goes way back. You're just a pup." He started to shuffle off, thought better of it. Maybe he decided he'd given in too easily. "What you got there?"

I didn't think he'd miss the bundle. "Little something for Shale." There was more on the way. These sour old flies would need a lot of sweetening.

"Bigger than a breadbox," Victor muttered. He considered the Goddamn Parrot. "You better not be carrying no birdcage there, boy. We got no truck with useless mouths."

I patted the bundle. "It's edible." The best bribes are the wonderful things the Cranky Old Men know they shouldn't eat. Or stuff they shouldn't drink.

"Got a creme horn?"

"I do believe. If Shale will share."

Victor fumbled with the inner gate. He muttered to himself. He didn't sound optimistic about Shale sharing. He had reason to be pessimistic. Great-granduncle Medford is a cranky old man's cranky old man. Maybe he had a little ogre or Loghyr in him somewhere, way back. He hasn't aged obviously since I was a kid and my Great-grandaunt Alisa was still alive. He's one really nasty old man.

But he's got a soft spot for me.

As long as I come armed with molasses cookies.

Victor opened the outer gate.

The instant it opened wide enough so Victor couldn't stop me the Goddamn Parrot revealed his secret relationship with a lady pig.

The old boy just stood there, poleaxed, as I started toward Shale. I said, "Bird, these codgers don't get a lot of meat in their diet. Costs too much. A buzzard in the pot might put smiles on all their faces."

I could see the little monster only from the corner of my eye but, I swear, he sneered. Somewhere, somehow, he'd gotten the idea that he was invulnerable.

Probably my fault.

"Hey, you!"

I sighed, stopped, turned. "Yes, Victor?"

"Whyn't you say you was one of them ventriloquisitors? A guy with a good and raunchy routine would be a big sell around this dump."

"I'll think about that." Might be a good career change. I never saw a ventriloquist with his head bandaged or his arm in a sling. "Let's see what Shale thinks." I just can't seem to get by without people thinking I'm flooding the dodo's beak with nonsense.

How come his big silence couldn't last?

Was some petty little god still carrying a grudge?