Whispering Nickel Idols

28

There was a subtle difference about home when I got there. And it wasn’t all the loiterers from the Watch and Teacher White’s gang. Welby Dell and a sidekick. Welby’s partner was a six-foot-five albino so emaciated a little girl once called him Skelington. It stuck. They seemed unaware of the presence of the law. The law, on the other hand, was well aware of them.

There were Relway Runners all over. Mrs. Cardonlos’ place was busier than a termite mound.

I knocked. The door man obviously hadn’t come round yet. My key would be useless.

Pular Singe let me in. “Did you learn anything?”

“I’m more popular than I thought I could ever be. Fans by the legion are following me around. None getting in my way, though.”

Singe hissed. She saw something behind me. I turned, too late. “What?”

“One of those men with the obscene trousers.”

“So Relway hasn’t caught them all. What’s going on?”

“Unh?”

“Something feels funny.”

“John Stretch is in the kitchen.”

“And he wants something.”

“He wants to give you his report. Why don’t you come in so I can shut the door?”

Not a bad idea with a Green Pants goon around. He might own a sling and have a pocket full of rocs’ eggs.

On cue something whizzed past my right ear. Not a sniper’s effort, though. It was Melondie Kadare. She hovered momentarily, then headed for the kitchen, doubtless after hair of the mad dog. Where she got into it with Dean. Dean had no sympathy for her. The man has an attitude problem. He’s determined to call a hangover a self-inflicted wound.

Being a trained observer, I observed, “He’s in a foul mood.”

Singe said, “Things have not gone his way today.”

I sensed a story. She didn’t give it up.

John Stretch followed his nose from the kitchen to my office. I said, “I never noticed how long his snoot is before.”

John Stretch scowled. As much as a ratperson can.

“Just messing with Singe,” I said. I helped myself to a seat behind my desk. My lap had a cat on board almost instantly. Melondie Kadare whirred in a moment later. “He didn’t use a flyswatter on you. Puts you ahead of the game. So don’t go whining to me.”

John Stretch started telling me what his rats had seen at Whitefield Hall. I stopped him. “Hang on. I need to write stuff down.” He had much more than I’d expected. He had quotes from Belinda’s underbosses, some quite revealing of their thinking.

Before he finished I had an idea where every major player stood. I just hoped he wasn’t making stuff up because he thought I wanted to hear it.

“You’re a gold mine, John Stretch.” These nuggets would set Director Relway to singing and dancing. Plainly, Chodo’s appearance at Whitefield Hall had changed the underworld dramatically.

Unfortunately, none of it was of any use to me.

“Hang on,” I told the lord of the rats, figuring John Stretch so styled himself in his own heart. “Melondie, girl of my fantasies, I see you bubbling. You remembered something you haven’t told me already?”

Not really, it turned out.

“So, did anybody figure out how the fires started?”

No. All those eyes hadn’t seen a thing I’d missed.

“Was it some kind of sorcery?” Fire just doesn’t materialize out of nowhere. Does it?

Neither Melondie nor John Stretch had detected any obvious sorcery.

“Any speculations? The first victim was a rat. Then Buy Claxton. How did they catch fire? Nothing else in that kitchen was harmed.”

They had nothing.

It made no sense. Though it did look like Chodo Contague was the common denominator in a lot of incidents.

Damn! I wished I hadn’t sent Saucerhead to catch Penny Dreadful. He could go up north to do all the miserable but necessary legwork.

“I’d tell you if I could. If I knew!” Melondie Kadare snapped. “You’re special to me.”

I glanced over my shoulder. Eleanor seemed amused. Which convinced me immediately that things were about to get worse.

It began as I pulled the notion together.

Dean appeared with refreshments. His clock radiated the kind of smug, wicked look he gets when he knows that I’m inescapably in for a life experience involving a whole hell of a lot of work. Not because we need money but because, in his lame view, it’s good for my soul.

Somebody started pounding on the door.

Dean’s smirk deserted him.

He couldn’t avoid answering. The rest of us were busy. Plus, it’s his job.

Muttering, he headed up front. I poured tea. Singe and John Stretch hit the muffins, fattening up for the winter.

Dean returned, his sneer restored. “Mr. Tharpe is here, sir.”

Saucerhead filled the office doorway. He looked scared, an eventuality rare as rocs’ eggs. “You got a back way out, Garrett?”

“What’s up? What did you do?”

“I didn’t do nothin’ but what you told me. Which you owe me for. It’s all your fault.”

“Whoa, big guy. Put some blinders on that mule. And back the cart up to where it started.”

“You told me to go catch that Penny Dreadful kid. So I did. No sooner do I lay hands on her, though, than she starts yelping rape an’ sodomy an’ incest an’ all that shit.” Which didn’t bother him nearly as much as the fact that, “An’ people listened. You hear me talking, Garrett? People listened. An’ not only that, some a them come an’ tried to help her! An’ not only that, they chased me when I gave it up as a bad job an’ decided to go away.”

“That what the crowd noise out front is all about?”

“I don’t know. They’s probably getting all rowdy an’ shit because they want you to come out an’ teach them to dance the dublarfared. You being a famous dancer.”

I shook my head. I took a deep breath, sighed. I shook my head again. What was the world coming to? When did TunFairens start caring what happened to one of the city’s countless feral brats?

Saucerhead blubbered, “This is all your fault, Garrett! Ever since you got in this investigation racket you been doing the meek-are-gonna-inherit polka. An’ now half the burg is buying into your do-gooder crap.”

“It won’t last,” I promised, despairing of his ever grasping the do-gooder point. “Too much social inertia. Too many people too vested in the old ways. Especially up on the Hill. Just take it easy. They’ll get bored and go away. Dean. Did you get Belinda off all right?”

He admitted that he had. And that she hadn’t attracted any attention. Meaning the watchers outside figured her for one of my sleepover friends. Meaning, further, that I’d have some explaining to do once Tinnie got word.

She always does.

“Long as you’re all here and don’t have anything better to do. Listen to this.” I told the tale of my visit to Brother Bittegurn Brittigarn’s temple of Eis and Igory.

I hadn’t gotten BB pinned down about his own religious attitudes. Dean pointed that out. Smugly.

Singe wanted to see the roc’s egg.

They all did. I let them pass it around.

John Stretch said, “That priest pulled your leg, Garrett. This rock came out of a creek bed. You can get a thousand just like it at the arms bazaar.”

Singe said, “Our ancestors collected slingers’ shot for the army.”

The sling was never an official weapon in any Karentine formation, but both sides employed native auxiliaries in the Cantard, some so backward they considered the sling a technological marvel of such murderous capacity that the gods themselves would rail against its use.

There was universal agreement. My roc’s egg was a rock and BB would still be snickering.

There was a racket at the front door. Saucerhead jumped. He developed a haunted look. Scowling about the injustice, Dean headed for the bows of the Garrett barge.

He came right back to announce, “Just neighborhood rabble. Did you want to talk to them?”

“No. If you took in dogs instead of cats, we could set those on them.”

The monster in my lap stirred, but only to wriggle into a more comfortable position.

John Stretch asked, “Does it look like a long siege? I need to get back. My people have a knack for mischief.”

Dean shrugged. “I don’t know. But Mr. Garrett is right. Eventually, they’ll get bored and go away.”

Once my pals in the Watch started rumors that would make the idiots decide that home-cooked food was more interesting than hanging around shouting obscenities about a fake complaint.

Oops. Suppose Relway’s Runners snatched the girl?

“Hey, Saucerhead,” I said. “What happened to Winger and her pet?”

Tharpe sneered. “Closed chapter, buddy. Winger is all after a fisa… fiso… something collalogistical of some kind who wants to shove things up our…”

I shuddered, absent the remotest notion. If I understood him at all, Winger was right and we needed to hunt down somebody who found that stuff exciting. Whatever it was.

I said, “That’s interesting.” Like I meant it. “This has been one of the longer days of my life. Thanks to these two villains.” I pointed an indicting finger at Singe and Dean. “They started on me before the worms came out looking for the early birds. I’m so tired now that I probably won’t go over to the factory tonight.”

Singe said, “Tinnie is not finished being mad at you. You should stay away till she’s ready to accept your apology.”

“And when she hears about Belinda?” Life gets complicated if you get too engaged with it.

Dean sneered.

Saucerhead asked, “How was you figuring on getting out? On account of I still need to get out of here myself.”

“Just wait till they get bored.”

“There’s still plenty of racket out there.”

I shrugged. Tired was wearing me down. Also, that hint of the weird closing in that I’d begun to feel as soon as I came home.

Crash! Thunder shook the house. Stuff fell off my desk. Eleanor’s portrait wobbled and ended up at a steep tilt. Dean dashed off to the kitchen. My ears rang. I hadn’t heard anything fall out there but probably only because I couldn’t hear.

Singe’s eyes went wide with terror. John Stretch’s, too. The primal rat took over. They didn’t run only because there was nowhere to go.

Melondie Kadare was out cold.

“That was a close one,” I said. My voice sounded weird to me. I felt rather than heard the thunder rumble off into the distance. “That must have hit down here in the neighborhood.”

Saucerhead grunted feebly.

I’ve never been bothered by thunder and lightning. I find a good lightning show enjoyable. But I’d seldom had the hobnailed boot of a god slam down quite so close. “That ought to break up the mob out front, Saucerhead.”

He couldn’t hear me, but the idea occurred to him on its own. He got moving toward the front door.

Dean returned, half of his favorite teapot dangling from his right forefinger. There were tears in his eyes.

A second peal of thunder started way off to the east and stumbled toward us, roared overhead, hugely loud, then ambled on westward, diminuendo. Soon afterward a lightning symphony opened to a vast audience.

Then some antic vandal of a boy god knocked open the sluice gates of heaven. The rain came. Torrents hammered the house.

Kittens poked their noses out of hiding places. Well. The world was still here.

Saucerhead came back. “That broke them up. Man, you got to see the hailstones coming down.” He was more awed than frightened now.

I went to look.

Tharpe was right. It was an awesome show, the lightning flailing around, thunder’s hammers pounding the anvil of the sky, hail coming in a downpour heavier than any I’d ever seen.

People always exaggerate the size of hailstones. That’s human nature. So I’ll say only that there were tons of them, they were big, and on the ricochet they knocked over carts and wagons. Then daring, enterprising, dim-witted youths hit the street with buckets and baskets, harvesting the ice while it still hammered down.

A flash almost blinded me. Thunder’s roar came a heartbeat later, so strong I felt it right through my body. Had gangs of stormwardens decided to rumble? My ex-army pals claim they saw a lot of this sort of thing in the main war theater.

There were material as well as social advantages to being a Marine. Marines on swampy islands in the Gulf didn’t have to worry about getting caught between dueling sorcerers. Sorcerers, on both sides, didn’t mind cruel and deadly warfare, but they refused to become physically uncomfortable while they were fighting.

Saucerhead pushed past behind me. “I might freeze or drown, but I’m getting while I can get.”

I had a couple of kittens underfoot, trying to figure out what hailstones were. They weren’t impressed.

I asked, “You want a cat?”

Tharpe gave me a look colder than a bushel of hailstones.

“They’re cute.”

He left me with a one-finger salute.