Glen Cook - Sweet Silver Blues

Her grin got sassy. "You could get lucky and get a look sometime. You never know."

My kind of luck came down the stairs right then. "Tinnie! You've done your job. Get out."

We ignored Rose. I asked, "You're not Denny's sister, are you? He never mentioned you."

"Cousin. They don't talk about me. I'm the one who causes trouble."

"Oh? I thought Rose took care of that."

"Rose is just obnoxious. That doesn't bother them. I do things that embarrass them. Rose just makes people mad or disgusted. I make the neighbors whisper behind their hands."

Rose simmered and reddened. Tinnie winked at me. "See you later, Garrett."

Yeah. I wish. That little bit was enough woman to make a man sit up and howl at the moon. She had a sway as she sashayed past Rose and started up the stairs.

When you got down to it and ignored the personality of a black widow spider, Rose was not something the dogs barked at either. She was another small package with its contents all in the right places, and only prime materials had been used.

Rose could move with a sway that promised fireworks—if she wanted. But her fireworks were the kind that blow up in a man's face.

We eyed each other like a couple of tomcats about to square off. We both decided what she had in mind wouldn't work any better this time. She got flustered because she didn't know what else to do.

"Ought to have a backup plan when you jump in on something," I told her. "Like Saucerhead Tharpe."

"You're right, Garrett. Damn you, anyhow. How did you get so old being as stubborn as you are?"

"By guessing right most of the time. You wouldn't be a bad kid if there was room for anyone else in your world."

For a few seconds, there, I got the feeling she wished there was someone else in her world. Then she said, "Too bad we couldn't have met under other circumstances."

"Yeah," I said, not feeling it. She would be trouble no matter what the circumstances. That was how she was made.

"We don't have any common ground at all, do we?"

"Not very much. Not unless you had some feeling for your brother. I was fond of Denny. How about you?'

I had touched something. At last.

"It isn't fair. Him dying like that. He was about the nicest guy I ever knew. Even if he was my brother. That Cantard bitch—"

"Easy!" I snapped it, which gave me away enough to make her gawk and wonder.

"What's in this for you, Garrett? Besides a chance to line your pockets? Nobody goes to the Cantard without more reason than money."

I thought about Morley Dotes when she said that. I thought about me. I wondered about me. Garrett, tough guy. Can't reach him. No emotional handles. But I was on the brink of doing something no moron in his right mind would do.

Like old man Tate, I wanted to see this woman who could put a halter on Denny.

Rose and I traded stares. She decided I wasn't going to give her a thing. "Be careful, Garrett. Don't get yourself hurt. Look me up when this is over."

"It wouldn't work, Rose."

"It could be fun giving it a look."

She sashayed up the stairs.

She did look good from that perspective. Maybe...

Seconds after the door slammed, while common sense was fighting for its life, a copper-wreathed face peeped at me from the head of the stairs. "Don't even think about it, Garrett. I wouldn't love you anymore."

Then Tinnie vanished, too.

I gulped some air and said "Duh!" a few times, then got my dogs under me and went galumphing off on the trail.

She was gone when I got upstairs. I was alone with the dead guy. Denny's friend. There was no sign of Rose or Tinnie when I looked into the garden. I closed the door and took a quick look through the dead guy's pockets.

Some vulture had beat me to it. There wasn't a thing left.

Old Man Tate got the body out somehow. Dropped it in the river, I guess. I didn't ask, and didn't hear a thing about it. A lot of people never heard from again take that one last swim.

I got Morley and the triplets installed at Denny's place. Morley thought it was a great idea. That being the case, I spent the evening hanging around his place, nicked by dagger looks from the breeds, hoping I would catch a flash to illuminate his eagerness to join a fool's quest.

I didn't catch anything brighter than candlelight.

All I found out was that I wasn't the only guy watching.

You get a sixth sense after enough years. Mine pegged two heavyweights in the first fifteen minutes. One was human and looked like he could give Saucerhead a fight. The other was so ugly, and stayed in his shadowed corner so deep, that I couldn't tell what he was. A breed for sure, probably with some troll and kobold in him, but more than that. He was as wide as he was tall. His face had been rearranged several times, probably for the better.

The bartender knew I had something going with Morley. He stayed civil. I asked about the men I had picked out.

"Don't know them. The ugly one was in here last night. First time. Sat in that corner all night nursing a beer he brought with him. I would've thrown him out if he hadn't bought a meal."

"That would've been a show to see." I took a pint of the water that passed for beer there and tipped him to take the sting out of the crack. "Think they're the kingpin's boys?"

"Not unless they're from out of town."

That was what I thought. I didn't recognize them either, but they looked like trouble on the hoof.

Well, no skin off my nose. As long as they were not interested in me.

I gave it up at Morley's place after the pint. There were better places to put an ear to the ground. I went and hung out in some of them. I didn't find out a thing.

Curious.

I headed for my place wondering if the glazier had gotten started yet. I felt no shame at all charging the replacement window to Tate.

The new window was in place and lettered as pretty as a blonde in her birthday suit. But I strolled by without admiring it, putting a slouch in my shoulders and a shuffle in my walk.

Maybe I wouldn't go home after all.

There were problems. One was that somebody was waiting in the breezeway beside the ratman's; even without seeing the glow of his pipe I could smell the weed he was smoking. The other was that there was somebody waiting inside. Whoever that was had all the lamps burning, using up oil at a rate to curdle my liver.

I knew a heavy weed smoker. Another friend of Denny's. Another old soldier, name of Barbera, who smoked so much that most of the time he didn't know if he was in this world or the next. A pathetic case, he was always in trouble because folks could talk him into anything. He had been one of Denny's charities.

No doubt Denny's other pals thought it would be a giggle to hop him up and sic him on me.

I faded into a shadow down the block and took a seat against a wall that needed tuckpointing. The view of my place was as scenic as a garbage dump.

A lot of nothing happened for a long time. Unless you count the flares as my lurker lighted up, or the passing of drunks so far gone they were unafraid of the nighted streets. Only after we started getting some aromatic moonlight did anything interesting happen. And that was just a couple guys checking in with the weed man.

They passed me by without seeing me. But I got a look at them.

Vasco and Quinn, my old pals.

So they meant to do me dirty, eh?

I didn't move, though I thought about knocking some heads. I was beginning to wonder about that lamplight. Vasco and Quinn had made no effort to talk to whomever was inside. So maybe that whomever wasn't one of them.

Who, then?

My friend the ratman came home from his shift at the graveyard, drunk as usual. In my less charitable moments I've wished he would get lost in one of the graves he digs.