Petty Pewter Gods

29

It was a night too short. Some thief of time ripped off the four best hours. Cruel wakeup arrived with a crueler sunup. Somehow, my curtains stood open. Sunbeams flailed around like whips in the hands of morons. I faced away, tried to den up like a groundhog under the covers, but there was no escape. There is no enemy so relentless as the sun.

I know I shut my door before I collapsed into bed. It stood open now, perhaps betraying the first feather-stroke of Dean's vengeance campaign. My struggle against a return to the realm of the waking suffered savage reverses at the beak of the Goddamn Parrot, who was perched atop the open door and deft enough of wing to evade a flying shoe traveling at high speed.

This was the last straw. He was gone.

I was not likely to fail to remember who was operating him, either. The very bone-lazy bonehead who had helped so little with my recent cases, the deadbeat who would not wake up if you set a fire under his chair.

To hell with him. I packed my blanket tight around my ears.

Stubbornness gained me nothing. I stayed in bed, all right, but didn't get any more sleep. I just lay there wishing. While the Goddamn Parrot preached sermons.

"Bird, your life expectancy is minutes. You don't shut up you're going to be creamed chipped squab on toast." Dean would put together a championship gourmet experiment.

The bird got the message. His inclination toward self-preservation overrode the Dead Man's low, practical joke kind of humor. For the moment. That was one stupid bird.

All right. I could tuck that triumph in my pocket. So how come I couldn't get back to sleep? How come some sadistically self-abusive part of me kept insisting it was time to get up and get at it?

"Get at what?" I muttered. I dropped my feet into the same abyss as yesterday. "There ain't nothing, but nothing, out there that can't get through the day without me."

Good morning, Garrett. Please exercise emotional caution today. The house is being observed. I believe I have your presence adequately masked. To maintain the illusion I must have you remain placid. Please refrain from these unproductive outbursts.

"Then don't provoke me," I grumbled. I staggered around and fell into some clothes I found lying around, mostly what I had shucked in the middle of the night. They were not completely ripe. They would do.

I took my life in my hands, peeked out my window. "Damn!"

Garrett! Calmly, please.

"It's bright out there." Whatever happened to all those gloomy, overcast days we'd been having? The world seemed to be getting warmer.

Stay away from the window. Someone might see the curtain move and reason that you are here after all—particularly since the movement came at your window.

It was going to be one of those days, was it? Nags punctuated by nagging? I reconsidered my bed. It had been so nice in there, so toasty warm. My dreams had been of a paradise where the motives of all the beautiful women were blatant and straightforward and the "me key, you lock" symbolism was direct and obvious. There were beer taps everywhere, and you would gain five pounds a day on the food if you ate it in the waking world.

By jingo June, as Granny used to say—I did hear her say that once—I ought to get my buddies together so we could cook us up our own religion. Most of them believed in booze and bimbos, and some enlightened religions already considered that sort of stuff important enough to rate its own underling gods and goddesses. Star was one example. Maybe we could get Star to jump the Godoroth ship by offering her a better contract.

A diffuse wave of disgust emanated from downstairs. "You don't like the way I think, quit poking around inside my head."

I was not seeking adolescent fantasization. I was trying to reexamine your experiences of yesterday.

"You were playing voyeur because you can't think that stuff up for yourself. The best you can come up with is bug parades and goofball political theories."

I cannot deny what is self-evident. I am a creature of intelligence and intellect, disinclined toward obsession with pleasures of the flesh.

"You can't deny what is self-evident, which is that you couldn't do anything about it if you wanted, so you just sit there making sour remarks about those of us who still have a little fire in our blood."

While we amused ourselves, I negotiated the stairway, an epic adventure any morning early. I trudged into the kitchen and drew a mug of tea from the pot. Dean was at the stove. He offered me a look of exasperation, like I had ruined his whole day by not staying in bed so he could experience the enjoyment of rousting me out. I tapped every reservoir of contrariness within me, put on my brightest Charlie Sunshine face, chirped, "Good morning, Dean. Did you sleep well?"

He glowered a deep black glower, sure I was putting him on. "Breakfast will be a while yet."

I poured myself a refill. "Take your time. Me and the big guy got schemes to scheme and cons to crack." I was sure that, immortal players or not, there were charades going on in this temple squabble. Overall, the Shayir probably were more straight with me, and one sex of them sure was friendly, but I was sure we didn't have the full map in front of us yet. "Dean?"

"Sir?"

"Did the wedding go well? Was the trip worth it?" I could not recall having asked before,

"It all went quite well. Your gift was received with considerable pleasure. Rebecca expressed amazement that you even remembered her, let alone thought so well of her."

"There was a time when neither one of you let me forget for a minute. That gift was a sigh of relief." Back then Dean's whole mission in life, it seemed, was to get me married to one of his numerous nieces.

A hint of a smirk pranced around the corners of the old boy's mouth. He said, "It was an interesting journey. We even fell afoul of highwaymen on the return leg, gentlemen so inept they didn't know what to do when they found out that everyone aboard the coach was stone-broke. I enjoyed myself a great deal, but it's good to be back home."

"Yeah. No place like." Especially for me. "Sounds like somebody pounding on the door."

Garrett. Please step into your office and close the door.

"Huh?"

Our visitors are Mr. Tharpe, Miss Winger, and an associate of Mr. Dotes' known as Agonistes. They will leave shortly. I should like them to depart convinced that you are not on these premises.

That sounded like a reasonable idea, but who would want to admit it to Himself?

Who was this Agonistes? I didn't know anybody by that name in Morley's crew.

"Agonistes" is what you people call a street name.

"Oh. Silly me. I really thought somebody's mother would hang a tag like that on him."

Dean passed me, headed for the front door, wiping floury hands on a dishrag. I ducked into my office, which is a large, messy closet across the hall from the Dead Man's spacious suite. I swung the door most of the way shut. I left it cracked both so I could hear what was said in the hall and so I could peek at the Dead Man's visitors. "Dean, remember to keep an eye on Winger. She'll try to kype something."

"I always do, sir. All of your friends."

He started fumbling with locks and latches and chains, taking away any chance I would have had to speak on behalf of my friends.

The man's birth name was Claude-Ned Blodgett.

I didn't know that name, either, but I could see why he would take up just about anything else. Who was going to be scared of a gangster named Claude-Ned Blodgett? Was he going to pop you with a farm implement?

Agonistes, though, had a kind of self-selected sound to it. Names picked up on the street don't usually come that dramatic. Pretty often, they really sound plain stupid. Our great wizard lords on the Hill pick their own business names, and they always choose something like Raver Styx.

Winger started barking before Dean got the door all the way open. I hoped the Dead Man just had her doing legwork. She could complicate things real bad if she got in far enough to get ideas for some scheme.