Bitter Gold Hearts

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I finished a long, cold one and wiped my lips. "I feel like killing the keg, but the night has only just begun. Tell Miss daPena the Domina has gone, but if she has the least sense and regard for her life, she won't even peek out a window. We may have reached a stage where people are cleaning up loose ends, real and imagined. I'm going to see Mr. Dotes. I'll slide out the back in case somebody is watching. You lock up tight. Don't answer the door unless you look first and see that it's me."

Dean scowled, but he'd been around long enough to have seen tight times before. He got out a meat cleaver and his favorite butcher knife, both sharp enough to take your leg off without you noticing. "Go on," he said. "I'll manage."

I went out thinking that someday I'd come home and find the house littered with dismembered burglars. Dean was the sort who would handle an invasion neither calmly nor with the minimum necessary force. Bruno and Courter Slauce were lucky that he'd been surprised and unarmed.

I didn't realize that I'd collected a tail until I was three-quarters of the way to Morley's place. It wasn't that I hadn't checked for one; he was that good. He was so good, in fact, that half a minute after I'd made him he knew it and didn't walk into either of the setups I laid to get a look at him.

I might as well have had a signed confession. There are only three guys in TunFaire that good. Morley Dotes and I are two of them and Morley had no reason to skulk around behind me.

The other guy's name is Pokey Pigotta and he might even be better than we are. I've heard him accused of being half ghost.

Pokey is in the same line as me. Had Domina Dount hired him to keep an eye on her hired hand?

That seemed unlikely.

Who, then?

By then Pokey would have realized that I'd read his signature. He'd start trying to outguess me.

I resisted my impulse to play that game and call for him to join me. Silliness. Pokey Pigotta had conservative views of what constituted his obligations to a client.

To hell with it, I figured. I headed for Morley's Place.

I went in the front door and straight around the bar. The surprised night barman just gawked as I shoved through the door to the kitchen. The rutabaga butchers stopped work and stared. I strolled through like a royal prince assessing the provincials. "Very good, my man. Very good. You. Let's have a little more thought to portion control. That what-ever-it-is is sliced too thick."

I made it to the storeroom before the peasants rose and lynched me. The storeroom led me directly to the back door, which I used. I did a quick sprint down the alley and up the side lane to the corner in time to watch the front door swing shut behind Pokey.

Good.

He had decided that since I wasn't going to play games, he wasn't going to either. He'd just trudge after me, not bothering to sneak. And that might suit his client fine, since it would inhibit my more surreptitious ventures.

I watched the door close and grinned, recapturing a view of the customers as I trotted through. It couldn't have been choreographed more beautifully.

"Suckered you, Pokey," I murmured, and ran for the door. He had scanned the lay and turned to leave. He was a tall guy, without much meat on him—all bones and angles and skin so pale you'd have thought the breed half of him was vampire. He tended to make strangers very nervous.

"Sucked you in this time, Pokey." I peeked over his shoulder.

Saucerhead Tharpe was up and coming, hiding his infirmities well. I had no idea what the hell he was doing there but I was glad to see him.

Pokey shrugged. "I blew one."

"What you up to, Pokey?"

"You say something, Garrett? I been having trouble with my ears."

Saucerhead arrived. "What's up, Garrett?" Every eye in the place was on our get-together.

"Me and Pokey was just headed up to see Morley. I finally got a lead on those fellows you had the run-in with the other day. You're welcome to sit in." I gestured. Pokey surrendered to the inevitable, comfortably certain that I wanted nothing from him badly enough to make an enemy. I would have seen it the same if our roles had been reversed.

I followed Pokey. Saucerhead followed me. All eyes followed us up the stairs. Morley, of course, was expecting us.

"So what do you want to do with him?" Morley asked.

"Since he won't want to say why he's dogging me or who's paying him, I don't know whether to let him tag along or not. So, better safe than sorry. He's got to go into storage."

"How long?"

"A day, maybe."

"Pokey?"

"Sitting or following, it all pays the same."

Morley thought for half a minute, then told one of his boys, "Blood, you want to politely collect Mr. Pigotta's effects and put them on the table here?"

Pokey endured it. I knew how he felt. I'd been through it several times myself.

Morley stirred through the take, which included a lot of silver. He examined one piece. "Temple coinage."

I took one. Private mintage, all right. The same as the tenth mark I found on that farm.

"Tell you something?" Morley asked.

"Yeah. Who he isn't working for." Domina Dount never had anything but gold.

So who?

"Put him away," I told Morley. "There's things to talk about and decide and maybe do, and it's late already."

"Blood. The root cellar. Gently and politely. Consider him a guest under restraint."

"Yes, Mr. Dotes."