Glen Cook - Dread Brass Shadows

"Maybe you won't think so." That was Crask. "Chodo wants we should ask you a question."

"How'd you find me?"

"Your man told us you went to Dwarf House." Dean would. Even with the Dead Man watching over him. He isn't that brave. "We saw you get knocked down. You got to learn to control that tongue, Garrett." I didn't remember saying anything but I probably did. Probably asked for it. "We don't want to lose you." That was Sadler talking. And what he was really saying was that he didn't want me to get myself smoked before the day came when Chodo decided the world would be better for my absence. Sadler looks forward to that day like it might be for the heavyweight championship of Karenta.

"Thanks anyway. Even if you didn't mean it." Crask helped me to my feet. My head whirled. And ached. It was going to ache for a long time. "Maybe we're even now."

Sadler shrugged. Damn, he's a big one. Two inches taller than me, fifty pounds heavier, and not an ounce wasted on flab. He was losing a little hair. I'd guess him at about forty. A real ape. A doubly scary ape because he had a brain.

Crask is the other half of a set of bookends, almost like he stepped out of some mirror where Sadler was checking his chin for zits.

Sadler shrugged because he wasn't going to put words into the kingpin's mouth. Chodo has the idea he owes me because a couple of my old cases helped him out in a big way. In fact, I saved his life once. I'd rather not have. The world would be a better place without Chodo Contague. But the alternative had been worse.

"Let's us guys walk," Crask said. He got on my left and supported me by the elbow. Sadler got on my right. They were going to ask some questions and I'd better give some answers. Or I'd be very unhappy.

There's my life in a nutshell. Cheerfully skipping from frying pans to fires.

I couldn't for the life of me think why they were interested in me now, though. "What's up?"

"It ain't what's up, Garrett, it's who's down. Chodo got kind of crabby when Squirrel turned up dead."

I stopped. "Squirrel? When did that happen?" I nearly fell on my face because they kept on going

"You tell us, Garrett. That's why we're here. Chodo sent him down to help you. A favor, because he owes you. Next thing we know a city ratman finds him in an alley with his guts hanging out. He wasn't much, but Chodo considered him family,"

Catch that? Always Chodo, never Mr. Contague? I've never figured it out. But I didn't have time to wonder or ask. It was time to talk "A woman came to the house. Called herself Winger. Not a local. She pulled a knife on me in the office. The Dead Man froze her." I awarded myself a smirk when Crask and Sadler jumped. The only thing in the world that bothers them is the Dead Man. He's a force they can't cope with because they can't kill him. "I was going to go get Morley Dotes to tag her after I pushed her out, but Squirrel turned up right then and volunteered. I told him to find out where she went and who she saw. The Dead Man said somebody named Lubbock sent her."

"You know anybody named Lubbock?"

"No. I never saw the woman before, either. She was real country."

They spread out a little. They were going to indulge me, give me the benefit of a shadow of a doubt. Maybe. Sadler asked, "This tie in with the hit on your woman?"

"Maybe. This Winger was looking for a missing book of some kind. I don't know why she thought I had it. She didn't say and the Dead Man couldn't get it out of her. Later, though, another woman showed up. Wanted to hire me to find a guy called Holme Blaine who stole a book from her boss, who wanted the book back bad. She was a redhead Tinnie's size and age and build. Maybe somebody mistook Tinnie for her."

They thought. Crask said, "It don't add, Garrett." Accusing me of holding out.

"Damned straight it don't. It might start to if I can find this Holme Blaine."

They grunted. They've spent too much time around each other. They're like those married couples that get more and more alike as time goes by. Crask asked, "Why visit the dwarves?"

"There're dwarves in the thing."

"No shit. Your pals back there. You smartmouth somebody in Dwarf Fort?"

"Different gang. From out of town."

"Figured that." They're that confident of their reputation. Sadler asked, "How do you get into these weird things, Garrett?"

"If I knew, I wouldn't get into them anymore. It just sneaks up on me. You going to show me where Squirrel bought it?"

"Yeah."

I was doing something right. We were on the street now. In view of witnesses. I was a little less nervous. Not that those two would scruple against icing me in front of the whole world at high noon if they thought the time was right. Half the unresolved killings in TunFaire can be pinned on the kingpin's boys. I don't see anybody rounding them up for it.

Chodos secret of success is he don't muscle in on our overlords' rackets. He works his own end of the social scale. He's much more at peril from his own than from the vagaries of law or state.

Equal justice for all. As long as you make it yourself.

They had me glad I'd done some running by the time we got to Squirrel. It was a hike and a half, all the way to the skirts of the Hill, where our masters have raised their fastnesses upon the heights. I knew our trek was at an end when we reached a block where a few hardcases loafed around, holding up walls, and the street was otherwise empty.

Squirrel had gone to his reward in an alley that ran downhill steeply. We entered from the high end. Sadler told me, "He got it here," about fifteen feet into the shadows. It would have been light there only briefly, around noon "You can't tell ‘cause of the light, but there's blood all over. He ended up down there about fifty feet. Probably tried to run after it was too late. Come on."

The body lay ten feet from the bottom end of the alley. Somebody with a sharp blade and strong, probably using a downward stroke, had sliced him from his right ear down the side of his throat and chest all the way to his bellybutton bone deep. "Last time I saw a wound like that was when I was in the Corps."

"Yeah," Crask said. "Two-handed dueling saber?"

Sadler demurred. "Couldn't get away with lugging one around I say. Just sharpness and strength."

Crask squatted. "Could be. But how do you get that close to hit that hard with a legal knife?"

They meandered off into a technical discussion. Crafts men of murder talking shop. I squatted to give Squirrel a closer look.

Some of us never get used to violent death. I saw plenty in the Marines and didn't get numb. I've seen more than enough since. I still don't have calluses where Crask and Sadler have them. Maybe it's hereditary. Squirrel probably earned what he'd gotten, but I mourned him all the same. I noted, "He wasn't robbed or anything."

"He was plain hit," Crask said. "Somebody wanted rid of him."

"And him such a sweetheart. It's a sacrilege."

If those guys have a weakness, it's lacking a sense of humor. Their idea of a joke is promising a guy to turn him loose if he can walk on water wearing lead boots. My crack didn't go over.

Sadler said, "Chodo doesn't like it, Squirrel getting offed. He wasn't much good but he was family. Chodo wants to know who and why."

"You guys using carrier pigeons now?" Chodo lives way the hell and gone out in the sticks, north of town. There shouldn't have been time for all the back and forth implied here.

They ignored me. They get that way about trade secrets—or anything they don't think I need to know. Crask said, "You get anything here we don't?"

I shook my head. All I could tell was that Squirrel wouldn't be doing much dancing anymore.

Sadler said, "Bet the iceman used both hands. You'd get more on it that way."

Crask told me, "We're going to keep an eye on you, Garrett. Something don't add up here. Maybe you didn't tell us everything."