Red Iron Nights

1

When I shoved through the doorway of Morley's Joy House you'd have thought I was the old dude in black who lugs the sickle. The place went dead quiet. I stopped moving. I couldn't push uphill against the weight of all those stares. "Somebody sneak lemons into your salads?"

Quick check of the talent. It looked like somebody with an ugly stick had gone berserk. That or those guys spent a lot of time diving into walls and shaving themselves with hatchets. I saw enough scars and bent noses to open me a sideshow.

The Joy House boasts that kind of clientele.

"Aw, damn! It's Garrett." That was my pal Puddle, safe behind the bar. "Here we go again, troops." Puddle goes two-eighty, maybe more. His skin is the hue of somebody who's been dead awhile. You ask me, rigor mortis set in above the neck twenty years back.

Several dwarves, an ogre, miscellaneous elves, and a couple of guys of indeterminate ancestry chugged their sauerkraut cocktails and headed for the door. Guys I didn't even know. Guys who knew me did their damnedest to pretend they didn't. A murmur spread as the ones who didn't know me got clued in.

What a charge for the ego. Call me Typhoid Garrett.

"Hi, everybody," I chirped, going for cheerful. "Ain't it a grand night out?" It wasn't. It was raining cats and dogs and the critters were quarreling all the way to the ground. I had dents in my head from random volleys of hailstones, not being bright enough to wear a hat. On the plus side, flash floods might clear the garbage festering in the streets. Some of that was ready to get up and walk.

The city ratmen get lazier every day.

"Hey, Garrett! Come on over."

Well. A friendly face. "Saucerhead, old buddy, old pal." I steered for the shadowy corner table Tharpe shared with another guy. I hadn't spotted him because of the gloom back there. Even close up I couldn't make much of Tharpe's companion. The guy wore heavy black robes, like some species of priest, complete with cowl. He exuded gloom like a miasma. He wasn't the kind you'd have over to liven up a party.

"Drag up a chair," Tharpe said. I don't know why he's called Saucerhead. He don't like it much but ranks it higher than "Waldo," which a parent or two hung on him.

I planted my behind. Tharpe's companion observed, "Seems you're less than welcome here. Are you diseased?" He wasn't just gloomy, he was forthright, a social handicap worse than bad breath.

"Ha!" Saucerhead snorted. "Ha-ha-ha. That's good, Licks. Hell. This's Garrett. I told you about him."

"The mist begins to clear." But not around him, it didn't.

"I'm starting to feel a little hurt here," I said. "You're wrong." Louder, "You're all of you wrong. I'm not working. I'm not into anything. I just thought I'd drop in and catch up on my friends." They didn't believe me.

At least nobody cracked wise about me not having any friends.

Saucerhead said, "If you'd come around and socialize sometimes, instead of just when you're up to your crack in crocodiles, maybe folks would smile when they saw you."

Grumble grumble. Hard to argue with that. "You're looking good, Garrett. Lean and mean. Still working out?"

"Yeah." More grumbles. I don't much like work. Especially not workout-type work. I figure in any rational world a man will get all the exercise he needs catching his share of blonds, brunettes, and redheads. Got it so far? I'm Garrett, investigator and confidential agent, not animated by any overwhelming ambition, with a penchant for figures of a certain kind and a knack for stumbling into things friends and acquaintances don't find enthralling. I'm a young thirty, six-feet-two, ginger-haired and blue-eyed, and the dogs don't howl when I go by, though the hazards of my profession have left traces which give my face character. I say I'm charming. My friends disagree, say I just won't take life serious. Well, you do too much of that and you end up as dark as this friend of Saucerhead's.

Puddle arrived with a huge tankard of my favorite food, that divine elixir that makes it necessary for me to work out. He'd drawn it from his private keg, hidden behind the bar. The Joy House doesn't serve anything but rabbit food and the squeezings thereof. Morley Dotes is a rabid vegetarian.

I took a long drink of bitter beer. "You're a prince, Puddle." I fished out a silver mark.

"Yeah. I'm in line for the throne." He didn't pretend to make change. A prince indeed. You could buy a pony keg wholesale for that, the price of silver being what it is. "How come you're in here instead of gamboling through acres of redheads?" My last big case involved whole squads of that delightful subspecies. Unfortunately, only one of the bunch turned out palatable. Redheads are that way. They're either devils or angels—and the angels are no angels. I think it's because they try living up to an image from an early age.

"Gamboling, Puddle?" Where did Puddle pick up a word like "gamboling"? The man had trouble with his own name on account of it had more than one syllable. "You been going to school or something?"

Puddle just grinned.

I asked, "What is this, teak on Tommy Tucker night? With easygoing old Garrett playing Tommy?"

Puddle's grin widened into an unappealing smear of rotten and missing teeth. He was one guy who should convert and become one of Morley's born-again vegetarians.

Saucerhead said, "You make yourself a fat target."

"I must. For everybody. You hear what Dean did?"

Dean is the old boy who keeps house for me and my partner and cooks for me. He's about seventy. He'd make somebody a fine wife.

While we jawed, Tharpe's tablemate filled and tamped, filled and tamped the biggest damn pipe I ever saw. It had a bowl like a bucket. Puddle snagged a brass coal bucket off the bar. Licks used copper tongs to transfer one small coal to his pipe. He puffed clouds of weed smoke potent enough to sky us all.

"Musicians," Saucerhead muttered, as though that explained the ills of the world. "I didn't hear, Garrett. What's he done now? Found you another cat?" Dean was going through a stray-collecting spell. I'd had to get firm to keep from ending up up to my belt buckle in cat hair.

"Worse. He says he's moving in. Like I don't get a vote. And he goes on about it like he's making some kind of supreme sacrifice."

Saucerhead chuckled. "There goes your extra room. No place left to stash you a spare honey. Poor baby. Gots to make do with one at a time."

Grumble grumble. "Ain't like I'm overstocked. I been doing with none at a time since Tinnie and Winger ran into each other on my front steps." Puddle laughed. Heathen.

Tharpe asked, "What about Maya?"

"I haven't seen her in six months. I think she left town. It's me and Eleanor now." Eleanor is a painting on my office wall. I love the gal but she has her limitations. Everybody thought my situation was hilarious—except Tharpe's friend. He wasn't hearing anybody but himself anymore. He started humming. I decided he couldn't be much of a musician. He couldn't carry a tune in a handcart.

Puddle stopped snickering long enough to say, "I knew you was up to something. Not your usual, but you still looking to get bailed out."

"Damnit, I just wanted out of the house. Dean is driving me buggo and the Dead Man won't take a nap on account of he's expecting Glory Mooncalled to do something and he don't want to miss the news. I defy anybody to put up with those two for half as long as I have."

"Yeah, you do got a hard life." Saucerhead sneered. "My heart goes out. Tell you what. I'll trade you. I take your place, you take mine. I'll throw in Billie." Billie being his current flame, a little bit of a blond with temper enough for a platoon of redheads.

"Do I detect a note of disenchantment?"

"No. You detect the whole damned opera."

"Thanks anyway. Maybe next time." Saucerhead's place was a one-room walk-up without furniture enough for company. I lived in places like that before I scored big enough to buy the house I share with the Dead Man.

Saucerhead tucked his thumbs into his belt, leaned back, smirked and nodded, nodded and smirked. A smirk on his ugly face is a wonder to behold. He ever holds one too long the Crown might declare it a national park. He claims he's all human, but from his size and looks you've got to suspect he has a little troll or giant in him. "You ain't ready to deal, Garrett, I can't say I got a lot of sympathy for you."

"I could've gone to some second-rate swillhouse and drowned my sorrows in ardent spirits, pouring my woes into the ears of sympathetic strangers, but no, I had to come down here... "

"That works for me," Puddle kicked in when I hit the part about ardent spirits. "Don't let us hold you up."

I never did count him as a friend. He just came with my friend Morley—though Morley's friendship can be suspect enough. "You take the joy out of the Joy House, Puddle."

"Hey, Garrett. The place was rocking till you walked in."

Saucerhead's pal Licks wasn't even gurgling now, but he kept puffing like a volcano and grinning. I was getting the smoke secondhand but was ready to start humming myself. I lost track of what I was saying, started wondering why the place was called the Joy House, which made it sound a lot more exotic than the vegetarian hangout it is.

Licks suddenly shot up like he'd been goosed. He headed for the door, sort of floating, as though his toes barely reached the floor. I'd never seen anyone do weed so heavy. I asked Tharpe, "Where'd you find him?"

"Licks? He found me. Him and some other guys want to organize the musicians."

"Say no more." I could imagine their interest in Saucerhead. Tharpe makes his living convincing people. His technique involves bending limbs in unnatural directions.

Two or three Morleys descended the stair from the second floor, staring toward Licks as the musician hit the exit. Morley had heard about me. Puddle had warned him through the speaking tube to his office upstairs. Hard to tell through the smoke, but Dotes looked irked.

Morley is a breed, part dark-elf, part human. The elf side dominates. He's short, trim, so handsome it's a sin. And sin he does, as often as he can with anybody's wife who'll hold still. He'd grown a little pencil-stroke mustache. He had his black hair slicked back. He was dressed to kill—though his type looks good in anything. He drifted our way, showing a lot of pointy teeth.

"What's that thing living under your nose?"

Saucerhead offered a crude suggestion. Morley ignored him. "You quit working, Garrett? You haven't been around."

"Why work if I don't have to?" I tried looking smug—though my finances weren't comfortable. It costs to keep house.

"You have something going?" He occupied the chair vacated by Licks, waved at persistent weed smoke.

"Not hardly." I gave him my sad tale of woe. He laughed too.

"Imaginative, Garrett. I almost believe you. I have to admit, when you make them up they sound like things that could happen. So what is it? Something hush-hush? I haven't heard about anything shaking. This town's getting dull."

He talked that long only because I was stammering. "Damn! Not you too!"

"You never come around except when you need muscle to hoist you out of a hole you've dug yourself."

Not fair. Not true. I've even gone so far as to eat some of the cow chow his joint serves. Once I even paid for it. "You don't believe me? Then tell me this. Where's the woman?"

"What woman?" Dotes and Saucerhead and Puddle all grinned like shiteating possums. Thought they had me on the run.

"You claim I'm working. Where's the woman? I get into one of my weird cases, there's always a lovely around. Right? So you see a honey on my arm? Hell, my luck's so bad I'd almost go to work just to... Huh?"

They weren't paying attention. They were staring at something behind me.