Gilded Latten Bones

12

Waiting for Morley to get better got really, really boring really, really fast. Being Tinnie Tate's boy toy had stripped me of my knack for enduring endless do-nothing.

Tinnie was not patient. She had rubbed off.

Crush's taste in reading was unusual. The first thing she brought me was a collection of plays written by Jon Salvation, including the still running Rausta, Queen of the Demenenes, in which Tinnie had had a featured role when the play first went on in Max Weider's World Theater.

"You're a fan?"

"He tells wonderful stories."

The wildest were the ones he made up about himself. "I know him."

"He's a friend of yours?"

"No. He comes with a woman named Winger who is my friend." Sort of. When temptation doesn't get in the way.

"Wow. I'd like to meet him."

Suddenly, the girl had a new attitude. I stifled a cynical smile. "Maybe someday. Once this is done." I noted that Crush wasn't interested in Morley when her mother wasn't there. I asked, "Did you know Morley before they brought him here?"

"Not me. DeeDee did. I think."

She called her mother DeeDee.

"Is there anything to read besides plays?" I wondered who was putting those out there, and how. I'd had a scheme, once, but it had involved using hundreds of ratpeople to make copies.

Kip Prose could, probably, tell me how it was done. If he wasn't responsible.

"There are some history scrolls. Tedious stuff about the olden times. Somebody left them when he couldn't pay his tab. Mike never got around to selling them." The kid leaned closer, whispered, "She gets airs sometimes, she does. Gets above herself."

All interesting. Grist for the mill. Me soaking stuff up, getting the old ear back.

When I worked up a good case of cabin fever, I tamed it by rolling the sheet back off my friend.

Morley had suffered eight deep stab wounds. He had an additional dozen cuts. And he had a fine collection of bruises and abrasions from having been kicked, clubbed, and dragged.

I hoped that Belinda would have her ear to the ground listening for the brag of the sort of idiot who can't help telling somebody what he did.

People tell me I think too much. Most of the time things are exactly what they seem. Trying to make more out of them is a mug's game.

I say that when you stop believing in weird conspiracies that involve scores of people who never break faith, you're fully ripe for the weird to come get you.

I was thinking that kind of stuff and, alternately, trying to dismiss it or get it to make some kind of sense if I entered Morley into the equation. I couldn't get anything rational to fall together.

There was nothing to do but wait on the man himself.