Bitter Gold Hearts

______ XXVII ______

The wooden tenements, three and four stories tall, leaned against one another like wounded soldiers after the battle. But the war never ended down here. Time was the enemy never to be conquered and there were no reserves to help stay the tide. It was night and the only light in the street fell from doors and windows open in hopes the day's heat would sneak away. That was a hope only slightly less vain than the hope that poverty would take to its heels. The street was full of serious-faced, gaunt children and the tenements were filled with quarreling adults. The corners, though, lacked their prides of narrow-eyed young men looking for a chance under the guise of cool indifference. No dares issued or taken. They were all in the Cantard, burning youth's energy in futility and fear, soldiering. The war had that one positive spin off. When you wanted to talk about your crime, you had to go find senior citizens who remembered the good old days before the war.

I still had to watch my step—for reasons evoking no romance at all. There were as many dogs in the street as kids. And at any moment the sky might open and spit out a cloudburst of refuse. There were sanitary laws, but who paid attention? There was no one to enforce them. The place I sought was one more crippled soldier in the host, three stories that had seen their youth spent before the turn of the century. I planted myself across the way and considered it. Assumption: Junior had run to his friend Donni Pell when he felt the heat. Assumption: Donni Pell had been in on and had helped stage Junior's kidnapping. The nature of the place where young Karl had died implied that there was something wrong with one or both assumptions. Having collected possibly the biggest ransom ever paid in TunFaire, why would she hole up in such a dump?

If he hadn't run to Donni, then who? No other name had come up. Junior didn't have friends.

Not even one, apparently. Death had sniffed out his hiding place in under two hours. All the excitement was over, and had been for many hours. In that part of town even the most grotesque death was a wonder only until the blood dried. I began to be an object of interest myself, standing there doing nothing but look. I moved. There are no locks or bolts on the street doors of those places. Such would only inconvenience the comings and goings of the masses packed inside. I went in, stepped over a sleeping drunk sprawled on the battered floor. The treads of the stair creaked and groaned as I went up. There was no point in sneaking. Sneakery would have been useless anyway. Getting to the right room on the third floor took me past two others that had no doors. Families fell silent, stared as I passed. The death room had a door, but not one that would close tightly. It skidded against the floor as I pushed. It was the sort of place I had pictured—one room, eight-by-twelve, no furnishings, one window with a shutter but no glass. A bunch of blankets were thrown against a wall for a bed, and odds and ends were scattered around. One corner had walls and floor spattered with patches and brown spots. It had been messy. But those things always are. There is a lot of juice in the human fruit.

They must have fastened him down somehow. You don't carve on someone without them putting up a fuss. I kicked around the place but found no ropes or straps or anything that might have bound him. I guess even ogre breeds have sense enough to pick up after themselves sometimes.

Or did they?

Mixed in with the tangle of bedding was a familiar item, from Karl's description. It was a doeskin bag with a heavy, long drawstring. Just the thing to pop over a guy's head and choke him unconscious. It was stained with dried vomit. I pictured some fastidious thug hurling it aside in disgust. You might not need to tie a guy if you strangle him before you cut. He could bleed to death before he woke up.

"It's a half-mark silver a week, as is. You want furnishings, you bring your own."

I gave the woman in the doorway my innocent look. "What about the mess?"

"You want cleanup, that's a mark right now. You want fix-up, take care of it yourself."

"Come off the rent?"

She looked at me like I was crazy. "You pay up front, every week. You show me you're reliable, after a few months I might understand if you're one or two days late. Three days and out you go. Got that?"

She was a charmer in every respect. Had she not possessed the winning personality of a lizard, a guy might have been tempted to have her hair and clothes washed. She couldn't have been much past thirty, only the inside had gone completely to seed. But the rest wouldn't be far behind.

"You're staring like you think the place comes with entertainment." She tried a cautious smile from which a few teeth were missing. "That costs you extra, too."

I had a thought. An inspiration, perhaps. What do hookers do when they get too old or too slovenly to compete? Not all can become Lettie Farens. Maybe this was someone Donni had known before she had become a landlady.

"I'm not so much interested in the room as I am in the tenant." I palmed a gold piece, let her see a flash. Her eyes popped. Then her face closed down, became all suspicious frowns framed by wild, filthy hair.

"The tenant?"

"The tenant. The person who lived in the room. Also the person who paid for it, if they weren't the same."

Still the suspicious eyes. "Who wants to know?"

I looked at the coin. "Dister Greteke." Old Dister was a dead king, of which we in TunFaire are blessed with a lot. We could use a live one—if he'd do something worthwhile.

"A double?"

"Looks like one to me."

"It was a kid named Donny Pell. I don't know where he went. He paid his own rent." She reached.

"You're kidding. Donny Pell, eh? Did you meet him while you were still in the trade?" I put the coin on the windowsill, drifted away. She licked her lips, took one step. She wasn't stupid. She saw the trap taking shape. But she couldn't shake the greed, and maybe she thought she could bluff me. She took another step. In moments she was at the window and I was at the door. "You going to tell me?"

"What do you need to know?"

"Donni Pell. But female. From Lettie Faren's place. Came here to hide out maybe a week ago. Right?"

She nodded. She had a little shame left.

"You knew her before?"

"I was there when she first came to the place. She was different than the other girls. Ambitious. But kind of decent then. If you know what I mean. Maybe she got too ambitious." The knuckles of her right hand whitened as she squeezed the coin. She'd been out of the trade awhile. It had been awhile since she'd seen that kind of money. Doubtless when it had been easy come she hadn't thought to put any aside. Her gaze strayed to the bloodstains. "She developed weird tastes in friends."

"Ogre breeds?"

That surprised her. "Yeah. How did you—"

"I know some things. Some things I don't. You know some things and you don't know what I don't know." I borrowed a trick from Morley Dotes by getting my knife out and going to work on my nails. "So why don't you just tell me everything you do know about her and the people who visited her here."

Her bluff was a feeble bolt and she knew it. But she tried. "I yell and the whole place will be in here in half a minute."

"I'll bet the fellow in the corner thought the same thing."

She looked at the bloodstain again. "Fair is fair. I was just seeing if you'd pay a little more. All right? What do you want to know?"

"I told you. Everything. Especially who else was here this morning and where she is now." To forestall the next round of delays I added, "I don't mean her any harm.

I'm looking for some of her playmates. She's gotten herself caught in the middle of a big and deadly game."

Maybe very deadly for her. If there was to be a next victim in this mess, I'd put all my money on Donni Pell. If I had any chance, I wanted to find her before the villains eliminated the next link in their chain of vulnerability.

"I don't know where she went. I didn't know she was gone till somebody found the mess. That's the gods' honest truth, mister."

She sounded like she was telling the truth. I must have had a ferocious look in my eye. She was getting nervous. But with a hooker you never know. Their whole lives are lies and some of the falsehoods run so deep they don't know the difference.

"Look, mister ..."

"Just keep talking, sweetheart. I'll let you know when I've gotten my money's worth."

"Only three people ever visited her here that I know about. The one who killed himself here this morning." If she wanted to keep up the pretense on that, it was all right by me. "That was the only time he ever came that I know of. Another one came twice. Both times he was all covered up in one of them hooded cloaks rich guys wear when they go out at night. I never saw his face. I never heard his name."

Inconvenient for me, that, but she was doing all right, considering. "How tall?"

"Shorter than you, I think. I never was very good judging how tall people are."

"How old?"

"I told you, he wore one of them cloaks."

"What about his voice?"

"I never heard him talk."

"When did he come here?" I was determined to get something.

"Last night was the first time. He stayed about two hours. I guess you can figure what they were doing. Then he came back this morning."

I was all over her then, trying to pin down the order of events. But she couldn't get straight who had come when. "I think the cloaked man was first. Maybe not. Maybe it was the one who killed himself. The other one came last, though, I'm pretty sure. Two of them was here at the same time, I think, but I don't know which two."

She wasn't very bright, this woman. Also, she had been very scared. Donni's third visitor, who, it developed, had visited almost every night, had spooked her.

She was sure, almost, that the cloaked man had been the first to leave. Maybe.

"Tell me about this third man. This regular visitor. This guy who scared you so bad. He sounds interesting."

He wasn't interesting to her. She didn't want to talk about him at all. He was bad mojo. I took that as a good sign. She knew something here. With a little sweet talk... "I'm badder mojo, lover. I'm here." A little deft work with the knife...

"All right, Bruno. All right. You don't have to get mean. He can take care of you himself. The guys he ran with him called him Gorgeous. If you ever saw him, you'd know why. He was meaner than a wolfman on weed."

"Ugly?" Part ogre, I thought. What else? There had to be an ogre in it somewhere.

"Ugly! So ugly you couldn't tell if he was a breed or not. He came with different guys different times, some of them breeds, some of them not. But always with this one breed he called Skredli."

My eyes must have lit up, and not entirely with joy. She backed away a step, threw up a hand, looked for some place to hide. "Easy, woman. Skredli? Now that's a name I've been wanting to hear. Are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure."

"You told me only three men ever came here. But now you've got this Gorgeous visiting with a crowd."

"The ones who came with him never came inside. They were like bodyguards or something. Except that Skredli guy did come inside this morning, I think, and maybe one other time. Yeah. That's right. I think he even come here one other time, too, by himself, and stayed with her a couple hours. I forgot about that. Ick." She shuddered. "Doing it with an ogre." "I want this Skredli. Where do I find him?" She shrugged. "I don't know. Ogre Town, I guess. But when you find him, you're going to find Gorgeous, too. And maybe the girl. Only she'll probably be dressed like a boy again. Using Donny Pell. Why don't you get out of here? Why don't you leave me the hell alone?"

"Do you know anything else?"

"No."

"Of course you do. Who came for the body? What were they going to do with it?"

"I guess they were his family. Or from his family. Fancy people off the Hill with their own private soldiers and no charity in them for poor people. They talked like they were going to have him cremated."

I grunted. That was the thing to do if you didn't want anybody getting too close a look at the stiff. Like, say, the woman who had given life to the flesh. Or maybe I was too suspicious. This business can do that to you. You have to remember to keep it simple. You don't need to look for the great sinuous, complicated schemes reeking of subterfuge and malice when a little stupidity followed by desperate cover-up efforts will explain everything just as well. And you have to remember to keep an eye out for who stands to gain. That alone will flag your villain eight times out of ten. That, more than any other facet of the affair, baffled me this time. Not the gold side, of course. However that worked out, the gold was its own explanation. But who could profit from the death of Amiranda Crest? How and why?

I stared at the woman. She wouldn't know. I doubted that she knew anything more worth digging out. "Step back into the corner, please. That's fine. Now sit yourself down."

She grew pale. Her hands, clasped around her knees, were bone white as she fought to keep them from shaking.

"You'll be all right," I promised. "I just want to know where you are while I go over this place again."

I found exactly what I expected to find. Zip. I took the doeskin bag and headed out.

As I passed through the doorway the woman called after me, "Mister, do you know anybody who wants to rent a room?"