Cruel Zinc Melodies

38

The Busted Dick wasn’t hard to find. Though the sign out front didn’t help. In timeworn paint it showed dice, domino tiles, and a tumble of noodles or sticks.

The tumble turned out to represent a game in which skinny sticks with writing on them are shaken in a jar, then tossed onto a tabletop. Not a game common in Karenta.

There’s a kind of fortune-telling that uses little sticks. I’d never seen that, either.

I went inside. It was your standard low-end dive. Six small tables, each attended by several rickety chairs, lined the right-hand wall. None were occupied. The bar was to the left, with ten wobbly stools. It had been something special in an earlier century. Two stools were occupied. Three empties stood between them. Neither professional drinker seemed aware of the other. Both, however, took a moment to glance at me and be impressed by my borrowed coat.

I invited myself aboard the center of the ’tween stools. It had been polished by thousands of dissolute heinies. ‘‘Beer.’’ I laid down a small silver piece. That would keep the cold barley soup coming. ‘‘Good beer.’’

They would have a special keg reserved.

A generous mug materialized. Its contents were drinkable.

My change reflected the quality of my purchase.

The Busted Dick must get a few up-class drop-ins, using it as a way station when sneaking toward or away from the Tenderloin.

I pushed a copper back to the barman. He nodded his appreciation. I doubt my companions ever tipped. I relaxed, enjoyed the barley nectar.

No local barman made anything that fine in a thirty-gallon tub in a room in back. The small guys don’t have the patience to do the water right. They don’t boil it long enough; then they don’t fine all the chunks out. They don’t have time. They can’t store and age their product. They’ve got to turn it over.

I raised my mug. ‘‘I need a refill.’’ Like a serious drinker.

My flanking competitors hadn’t raised their mugs twice between them while I drained mine.

Having delivered the new trooper, made change, and pocketed his tip, the barman failed to go back to cleaning mugs, which seems compulsory whenever they’re not separating a customer from his cash.

He leaned back and waited for my pitch.

It was obvious that I wasn’t some derelict who had wandered in looking to build a quick buzz. My coat gave me away.

I enjoyed half my second mug before I asked, ‘‘You know Horace?’’

‘‘Why do you want to know?’’

‘‘Because I need to talk to a guy named Horace who works at the Busted Dick. A name I’d like explained almost as much as I’d like to connect with Horace.’’

‘‘A busted dick is the worst possible throw of the sticks in the game of points. Like snake-eyes, shooting craps. Only worse. I take it you’re not a points player.’’

‘‘I never heard of it. From context, I’d guess it’s a gambling game.’’

‘‘You catch on quick. It came from Venageta. Prisoners of war brought it back. I’ve never figured it all out. The rules go on and on. There’re thirty-six sticks. They have symbols on all four sides and the ends are colored. None of them are the same. You shake them in a jar, then dump them out. There’s a million ways they can fall. Come in some night, there’ll be games at every table. Used to be dominoes. Them that gets into the game get into itseriously . The only reason they aren’t at it now is, we don’t let them in till nighttime. On account of, everybody’s got to get some sleep sometime.’’

‘‘Horace?’’

‘‘There a reason?’’

‘‘Yeah. He can put me in touch with my old Army buddy, Belle Chimes.’’

The barman’s eyes narrowed. He glanced past me, toward the door. He was caught in the forked stick of the underground economy. You’re there, you need customers. But you can’t know for sure who they are when they come round jingling silver. Sometimes not until it’s too late.

I could be some guy sent out from the Al-Khar to fish for people looking to cut costs and corners by hiring uncertified specialists.

Same trap is right there waiting for the consumer.

‘‘I can probably get you in touch with Horace. What would you want with this Bill?’’

‘‘Weider Brewing is building a theater a little ways from here. Some of the workmen say the site is haunted. I hear tell Belle can maybe help me find out if that’s true.’’

The barman stared over my shoulder.

I finished my beer. ‘‘I could use a refill.’’

That stirred him. He took my mug to the quarter keg filled with the good stuff. He brought it back full. So distracted that he forgot to take my money. He said, ‘‘The loo? Back there. Through that door. Take your beer with you. Unless you want it to disappear while you’re gone.’’

He did take my money then.

So much for him being rattled.

I took my beer.

The loo wasn’t. As I’d expected. For places like the Busted Dick the jakes is just the alley out back.

The barman joined me. ‘‘Be quick. Those two will drain the taps.’’ He kept a foot inside so the door wouldn’t close all the way. He could duck back in and leave me holding my own if he wanted. Or he could see his clients if an impulse toward larceny brought them back to life.

‘‘I told it. I’ve got a purported ghost problem. I need an expert without conflicting motives to check it out. To tell me if it’s true. And how to cope with it if it is. And to tell me why people think it’s true if it isn’t. I’ll pay a reasonable fee for the service.’’

I was impatient. But I knew the romance was necessary.

You don’t find independently operating sorcerers hanging out on street corners. Folks on the Hill have no qualms about getting lethal while enforcing their monopoly. But they won’t come out to back up your everyday kind of guy. Somebody like Mom Garrett’s blue-eyed baby boy. For a freelance you have to find a winner in the birth lottery who got a load of talent but no ability whatsoever to play well with others.

I exaggerate, but we all know those people. Reeking with genius. Dripping talent. And completely incapable of sustaining a personal relationship. With almost as much trouble keeping a job.

Careful, Garrett. Sounds a little autobiographical.

‘‘This ghost problem. Where would it be again?’’

‘‘Hop, skip, and a jump. The World. The theater the Weider Brewery is building.’’

‘‘It’s farther than that. But not much. Let’s go back inside. You buy another beer. I’ll ask my dad if he knows somebody who can help you.’’ He pulled on the door.

We got back to the bar in time to save one of the professional drunks from suffering a severe moral lapse. He was just fixing to slide behind the bar, empty mug dreaming of a refill. Caught, he faked a stumble, then headed on back to the jakes.

The barman filled me up. ‘‘I’ll be right back. Keep them honest.’’ He hit what looked like a skinny pantry door at the back end of the bar. An equally narrow stairway lay behind that. He had to go up with his shoulders turned slightly sideways.

The width of the stairs dated the structure. There’d been a time, a hundred fifty years back, when TunFaire’s dwarf and ogre populations were very restless. Neither species would be narrow enough to climb that stair.

I’d have real trouble myself.

If the barman ditched me by sneaking out a back way, I’d serve beer on the house.

A little old man pushed through the stairway door. He was maybe five feet tall. He’d been taller in the long ago, but the weight of time had bent him over and had shrunk him. He had what the old folks call a widow’s hump. He was a shiny chestnut color. I saw nothing to suggest any actual kinship with the barman, who came out the stairway door a moment later.

The little old man shuffled over. ‘‘Who you looking for?’’

‘‘Belle Chimes. Friend of mine says he can give me advice about D’Guni racing.’’

He frowned. ‘‘Here’s some, now. Don’t do it.’’ Hard to tell about that frown, though, looking downhill into that nest of wrinkles. ‘‘Who told you to see him about the bug races?’’

I didn’t want to give Morley up. But his name might be the password.

A freelance sorcerer might have a different name for every shill he had referring trade. ‘‘Morley Dotes. I don’t know where he got the name.’’

‘‘Who was you supposed to talk to when you got here?’’ I told him what Morley told me.

The old man took a deep breath, stuck one shaky old hand back over the bar. The barman brought a brown briar walking stick up from somewhere down below. The old man took it. ‘‘Let’s walk, boy.’’

‘‘All right.’’ I held the door for him, going out to the street.

The old man got more spry as soon as the door closed. He headed for the World. Not exactly smoking fast, but without the shuffle. ‘‘Talk to me about money, boy.’’

‘‘Some could end up coming your way.’’

‘‘No shit. I’ll retire to my own vineyard on the slopes of Mount Kramas.’’ He referenced the mythical mountain where the grapes are so perfect only the gods themselves are allowed to drink what comes of letting their juice rot.

My doubts about the man’s credentials as a sorcerer faded before we got to the World. When we arrived he was twenty years younger and four inches taller. And moved with corresponding ease and grace. And was miffed because I didn’t ooh and aah over his transformation.

I’d run into masters of illusion before. Hell, I’m halfway engaged to one particular redheaded mistress of illusion.

Tinnie got into the mix because she and Alyx Weider’s girl gang had turned up while I was off recruiting. Alyx and Heather were harassing poor Manvil Gilbey.

My new friend became ten years younger, fast, while making little purring sounds of appreciation. ‘‘There might be a perk or two here, after all.’’

‘‘Just stay away from the redhead.’’

‘‘Dangerous?’’

‘‘And taken.’’