Cruel Zinc Melodies

4

In some parts of town they’d given up trying to keep the streets clear. In others they kept after the snow with a dogged fervor. The city fathers had invoked emergency regulations to keep the more critical thoroughfares passable.

Lucky me, it wasn’t my day to help clear my block. Unlucky me, it hadn’t snowed. Today’s crew wouldn’t have much to do.

The sky was a cloudless blue. There was no wind. Light melting had begun in direct sunlight. So ice could form in all the low places once the sun went down.

It’s a couple miles to the Weider brewing complex. Not a tough walk. No hills of consequence. A few historical landmarks I never notice because they’re always there. Furniture of the world.

There were a lot of people out, enjoying.

I was in a good mood myself by the time I got where I was going. Nobody stalked me. Nobody bopped me on the noggin. Nobody even gave me a second glance.

Some days it’s the other way around. Too many days.

The big brewery stinks even in cold weather, because of the fermentation. The employees and neighbors no longer notice.

This was the mother brewery, the heart of the Weider empire. There are several dozen lesser operations around TunFaire, onetime competitors who surrendered their independence to the Dark Lord of the Hops. The lesser breweries concentrate on local and specialty products.

The queen brewery is a Gothic redbrick behemoth. It looks like a folklore hangout for vampires and werewolves. It is festooned with towers and turrets and odd little gables and dormers and lofts that have no connection with producing nature’s holy elixir.

The towers house swarms of bats. Max thinks bats are cool. He enjoys seeing them swarm out on a summer’s evening.

The whole strange place is Max’s imagination given form, weird because Max wanted it weird. And he could afford to build it that way.

A smaller version faces it from across Delor Street. The Weider family shanty.

Max originally meant that to be his brewery. When it went up it was the biggest beer-making operation in all TunFaire. Two years later it was too small to handle demand. And Max’s wife, Hannah, was pregnant for the third time. So he tossed up the monster across the way.

Max and Hannah produced five children: Tad, Tom, Ty, Kittyjo, and Alyx. Alyx was the baby by half a decade. Tragedy stalked the family, maybe punishing Max for his worldly success. Tad died fighting in the Cantard. Tom and Ty survived—with Tom gone mad and Ty condemned to a wheelchair. Kittyjo and I were an item once upon a time but she was too loony for me.

My pal Morley Dotes says the absolute first rule of life is, don’t get involved with a woman crazier than you are. A rule I haven’t always pursued with due diligence. Because of more immediate distractions.

But like I said, tragedy hounds Max Weider. Tom and Kittyjo were murdered. Hannah died that same night, destroyed by the shock.

I climbed the steps to the main brewery entrance. An old, old man sat behind a small table in a cubby just inside. He was a retiree putting in a few hours of part-time. He was almost blind. But he was aware of me because I came in with a creak of hinges and a blast of cold air.

‘‘Can I help you?’’

‘‘It’s Garrett, Gerry. Looking for the boss. He here today?’’

‘‘Garrett? You ain’t been around in a while.’’

‘‘Cold and snow, Gerry. And nothing happening to worry the boss.’’ My function is to stimulate the consciences of the brew crew. So they don’t surrender to temptation. Not too often, in too big a way. ‘‘What about the boss?’’

‘‘If he’s here, he came over underneath. And he don’t do that much no more. Less’en it’s really foul out. So, chances are, he ain’t here. Yet.’’

Max is a hands-on owner who visits the floor every day.

By ‘‘underneath’’ Gerry meant through the caverns below the brewery. Those were the reason Weider chose to build where he did. The beer is stored there till it’s shipped.

‘‘How’s business? Any cutbacks because of the weather?’’

‘‘I hear tell a ten percent drop-off on account of it’s hard to make deliveries. The local brew houses picked up most of the slack. The boss didn’t lay nobody off. He’s got the extra guys harvesting ice. It’s a good year for that.’’

‘‘So I hear.’’ They would be cutting the ice from the river. ‘‘Thanks, Gerry. I’ll head on across.’’

Would he believe I was just looking for the boss? The whole brewery would know I was on the prowl before I found Max. Any villainy would scurry into the shadows to wait the danger out.

Privilege, private law, is vibrantly alive. Max Weider is a comfortable practitioner. He cares for his troops. Most return the favor by limiting their pilferage.

It seemed colder outside. Because it’s always hot inside the brewery. From the fires used to boil water and warm the fermenting vats.

The steps up to the Weider mansion door had received only a half-hearted cleaning since the last snow. I understood. We’d all had enough of that.

I knocked.

The man who answered was new. And a disaster on the hoof. If there was a race that could mix with the human, his ancestors had mixed it up. There had to be a half dozen kinds of human in the blend, too.

He would be five feet tall on his tippy-toes on his best day. His head was huge for his height and almost perfectly round. With a couple saucers smashed onto the sides where his ears belonged. The only hair on him was a huge, drooping black mustache. Its twisted ends hung four inches below his nonexistent chin. His eyes were slits stuffed with chips of coal. His mouth was a lipless gash under a nose fit for an elfin princess. He didn’t look worried about her showing up to claim it.

His body was another globe. His stubby arms sort of stuck out at his sides. How the hell did he dress himself?

He didn’t speak, just stared at me. Filling the doorway. Immovably.

‘‘Name’s Garrett. The boss wants to see me.’’

One bald eyebrow twitched.

‘‘Alyx came by my place. Said the Old Man wanted me to come by.’’

The other naked eyebrow shivered.

‘‘Be that way. I didn’t feel like working today, anyhow.’’

I could go down to the river, see what it looked like frozen over. It wasn’t far past the brewery. I could watch the ice sledges bring the harvest home.

The living art form of ugly did nothing to help me out. He just stood there.

I turned away.

‘‘Hang on, Garrett.’’ Manvil Gilbey, Max’s sidekick, materialized behind the short and wide. ‘‘Come on in. Don’t mind Hector. It’s his job to keep the riffraff out.’’

‘‘Then I’d better start hiking. I’m about as riffy a rack of raff as you’re likely to step in.’’

‘‘Always the charmer.’’

‘‘One hundred and ten proof.’’

‘‘We didn’t expect you this soon. I would’ve told Hector to bring you straight to Max.’’

Gilbey belongs to Dean’s generation. Old as original sin. He and Max have been best friends since their Army days, in a war that began before they were born and continued till their grown children were dead. Until a year ago. Devouring Karentine youth all the while.

Hector stepped aside. I followed Gilbey through the foyer, down into the vast ballroom that takes up half the ground floor.Click-clack across the bare serpentine floor. Then up to the mezzanine on thick, custom carpeting.

I murmured, ‘‘What was that?’’

‘‘Hector?’’

‘‘Yeah.’’

‘‘Son of a man Max and I soldiered with. A hero himself, Hector was, but he was having a hard time making it. Life is tough if you don’t have pure blood.’’

‘‘Crap,’’ I said. ‘‘We’re not getting into all that human rights bullshit again, are we?’’

In Karenta, in TunFaire especially, ‘‘human rights’’ means the rights of humans to preferential status. The Other Races and artifact peoples get whatever is left.

‘‘No. Our problems are in a new arena now.’’

‘‘Alyx said something about building a theater. That seems out of character.’’

‘‘I’ll let Max explain.’’

I glanced back. Hector was standing by, ready to answer the door. Beside a rack of lethal tools, there in case his immovable object had a showdown with an irresistible force.

‘‘A true exotic. Maybe even a unique.’’ Slang terms for mixed breeds of extreme aspect.

‘‘Would you believe Hector has a wife and five kids?’’

‘‘If you say so. But I don’t want to meet the kind of woman who finds him attractive.’’

‘‘He may have hidden assets and unexpected talents.’’

‘‘He’d have to have, wouldn’t he?’’

‘‘You’ve got a bad attitude, Garrett. People could tag you for some kind of racialist.’’

‘‘I am. The kind that don’t give a shit what you are so long as you leave me alone.’’

It had been a while since I’d seen Max. But when I stepped into his den it seemed I’d been away only minutes.

It was a room twenty people could fill and all be comfortable. A fleet of overstuffed chairs jockeyed for position in front of a big fireplace. A major accessory to that was a lackey whose calling was to feed the flames. The room was sweltering hot. The fireplace end was almost intolerable. But Max was in a chair up close, roasting himself. I guess so he’d make a good-looking corpse when he was done.

Max is not a big man. He stands maybe five feet six when he stands. Which he doesn’t do much, anymore. Since Hannah’s death he spends most of his time by the fire, waiting. Once a day he ambles over to the brewery, mainly to be seen taking an interest.