Cruel Zinc Melodies

1

It was a marvelous winter. My personal favorite kind of winter. An ever-lovin’ blue-eyed kind of winter that slunk in early and got bitter frigid before anybody remembered where they stashed their winter coats. Snow came down more often and heavier than even the old folks could remember, and you know how their recollections work. Everything was bigger, better, sharper, steeper, rougher, and tougher in the good old days.

When it didn’t snow there was freezing rain.

The world slowed down.

I favor slow. I like loafing around the house, hard at it doing a whole raft load of nothing. Nothing being what I do best when there are no ladies present.

Dean would maintain that they couldn’t be ladies if they were hanging around with me.

The downside of the weather was, what with snow and ice, it was hard to get a replacement keg in. It was almost as hard to get out to those temples of dissolution where the golden elixir was dispensed.

All good things must end. No good deed goes unpunished. Sooner rather than later. These natural laws underpin my life.

Same as it ever was, the idyll killer was a knock on my front door.

Dean shouted, ‘‘I can’t leave this omelet.’’

Always an excuse.

I climbed out of my chair, snaked out from behind my cluttered desk, crabbed sideways to the hallway door. Whoever built the house probably intended my office to be a walk-in closet. I glanced at Eleanor, central figure in the grim painting hanging behind my desk. She’s running away from a brooding mansion. One weak light burns in a high window. She’s beautiful and frightened. The light is in a different window each time I look.

There used to be the hint of a horrible, menacing presence in the dark background. I can’t find it anymore. But Eleanor keeps running.

I told her, ‘‘You seem gloomy today.’’

True. I couldn’t recall the last time I saw her looking so pessimistic.

Pular Singe popped out of the Dead Man’s room. The ratgirl has converted a quarter of that into her own little office. She manages the business side of our racket. Much better than I ever did.

I asked, ‘‘You expecting somebody?’’ She has a half brother who won’t stay away. Which can be hard on the nerves. He’s a local crime lord. In a time when TunFaire has been suffering from a severe outbreak of law and order.

‘‘No.’’

‘‘Maybe it’s Jerry the beer guy with the new keg.’’ I was whistling past the graveyard. Unexpected visitors never augur well.

I took a peek through the peephole. ‘‘Zippity-do!’’

‘‘What?’’ Singe asked. Instantly suspicious.

‘‘Proof that the gods love men.’’

‘‘It is the beer man, then?’’

‘‘No. Even better.’’ I popped the door open. Revealing a stoop chock-full of male fantasies. The closest was Alyx Weider, naughty blond temptress and daughter of Max Weider, dark overlord of the Weider brewing empire. Max has me on retainer.

‘‘Out of the road, Garrett,’’ Alyx ordered. ‘‘It’s freaking cold out here.’’ She didn’t wait for me to move.

I looked past the flock. They had arrived in a coach. Smoke curled from a slim sheet-metal chimney. The coachman had fled into the cabin already. The vehicle was so big it should have had oars and sails. Six matched chestnuts dragged it around. They looked like they wanted to join the coachman.

Three more honeys shoved past. I wished the weather was a little fairer. They wouldn’t be so thoroughly bundled. There was one each of the primary colors: blonde, brunette, and redhead, plus a moon-faced, raven-haired exotic with skin the hue and smoothness of honey. They put off so much heat that they should’ve been immune to the weather. Grizzled old glaciers would melt when they passed.

Whack! A hand got me across the back of the head.

Singe snickered.

Uh-oh. Tactical error. Drooling over Alyx and the honey girl with the challenging brown eyes left my back exposed to the redhead.

Singe snickered some more. Ominous, that, coming from the unique sound box of a ratperson throat.

‘‘Tinnie. Sweetheart. What are you doing with this crowd?’’

Tinnie Tate, devoutly committed redhead, is my off-and-on main woman. Very main, of late. And possessed of not even the remotest intellectual understanding of my broad appreciation of female folk who are easy on the eyes.

‘‘Making sure your fantasies don’t get past the hallucination stage.’’

Alyx Weider being one of her best friends would factor in. Alyx has been chasing me since she was old enough to get up on her own hind legs.

I asked, ‘‘Singe, is Old Bones snoozing?’’

‘‘Probably. But he does pretend quite well.’’

That he does. If he can’t sleep for a year at a time, he’d just as soon pretend. Some people are just so lazy.

We were talking about my partner. A unique sort of beast, even in TunFaire, where it’s a rare and remarkable day when we don’t see the rare and remarkable.

‘‘Let’s go in there. My office is too intimate.’’ And there wasn’t enough furniture in the small front room. Which we don’t use much. It still smells like the Goddamn Parrot.

Singe headed for the kitchen.

The two unfamiliar women made frightened squeaks when they saw my sidekick.

The Dead Man is a near quarter ton of defunct Loghyr, a species now little known and almost extinct. This one looks like a dwarf mammoth minus the hair and tusks. He went around on his hind legs when he was alive. His trunk-like snoot makes his yellowish gray, wrinkled face uglier than you can imagine. There is no twinkle in his eyes.

Loghyr don’t die like the rest of us. We croak; the part that isn’t meat and bone hustles off to whatever reward is on the schedule. Or sticks around to make life miserable for the living. Usually the same living we made miserable before we assumed room temperature. But Loghyr stick around and haunt their own corpses. For centuries, sometimes.

It’s been four and a half of those since somebody stuck a knife between my partner’s ribs.

I’m double haunted. Eleanor was a ghost when I met her, too.

I told the ladies, ‘‘He’s harmless.’’ Though a huge misogynist. I used to be able to wake him up just by bringing in a female of this caliber.

He’s getting used to me having an occasional companion of the obstinate sex. He gets along with Singe and Tinnie. Most of the time. The redhead remains strictly ‘‘Miss Tate,’’ however.

Though startled and intimidated, the new girls didn’t recognize a Loghyr when they saw one. So they weren’t scared.

‘‘Tinnie, my sweetest sweet, who might your friends be? And why do you turn up now, after weeks and weeks of sticking your tongue out and staying away?’’

Tinnie said, ‘‘Bobbi Wilt and Lindy Zhang.’’ Without indicating which was which. Because I didn’t need to know. ‘‘Guys, this here is six feet three inches of the prettiest ex-Marine you’re ever likely to find underfoot. Look at those big baby blues. Never mind the bad hair, the pockmarks, the scars, and all that stuff. That’s just normal wear and tear.’’

I’d enumerate her physical shortcomings but I haven’t found any yet. Everything is there, in all the right places, with a shine on it. Personality-wise, though, one or two sharp corners could be polished off.

‘‘Definitely a problem,’’ Alyx said. Showing me her tongue between sharp little teeth, a come-hither challenge in her eye. ‘‘You find one still in good shape, he’s too immature to waste time on. You find one like this, that’s all broken in, he’s like this. All broken down.’’

‘‘You aren’t so old I can’t turn you over my knee, Miss Alyx.’’

‘‘Promises, promises.’’

‘‘Alyx!’’ Tinnie was not amused.

I asked, ‘‘So, how come I find myself inundated by beautiful women?’’ Coats were coming off. Being an observer by trade, I was observing. And I was impressed.

I was looking at Tinnie but Alyx answered. ‘‘Because I had to see you. And I thought you might not let me in if it was just me.’’

The honey-tone honey drawled, ‘‘Her father wouldn’t let her come alone. And Tinnie was there when he decided that you’re the answer to our problems.’’ There was a twinkle in her eye. She’d be another one who enjoyed getting a dig in at the expense of her friends.

Alyx said, ‘‘Tinnie’s got you so whipped. She didn’t need to come keep an eye on me.’’

Who knows? I don’t have much backbone around temptations packaged like these. I’d still be telling me what a dumb thing it was to do but be grinning from ear to ear as I went down for the third time.

Tinnie looked grim. Probably because she didn’t like that ‘‘whipped’’ pig wriggling out of its poke. Like it was some kind of secret.

Singe returned. Lugging a tea service. She made three of my four visitors uncomfortable. Well-schooled young ladies, they owned manners potent enough to not be rude in someone else’s house.

‘‘So,’’ I said. Standing. The available chairs being filled. I didn’t go for more. Despite visions of harem girls dancing in my head.

This much glamour doesn’t descend on me without bringing bad, bad news. The kind of news that ends up with me having to go to work.

‘‘Alyx?’’

Now that she was here she didn’t want to talk about her problem.

It happens. People hire me. Then they don’t want to tell me why. Usually because they have to admit having done something incredibly stupid.

Tinnie grinned. That lit up the room. ‘‘What my friend the blond beer bimbo wants to tell you is, her daddy needs to see you. He sent her because he didn’t think you’d open the door to anybody who looked like a wannabe client.’’

Too true. I wasn’t looking for work. I have a regular income from several sources. And work is so much like . . . well, so much like work.

But prospective clients are always bimbos. Er, make that, there’s always a woman involved. As Singe might say, because half of us are female and females are more likely to find themselves in straits nature didn’t equip them to handle.

Singe sucks all the fun out sometimes, being boneheaded, literal, and logical.