Old Tin Sorrows

11

I hadn't been to Morley's place in months. It wasn't that we'd had a falling out or anything; I just hadn't had a need, nor any urge to graze on the cattle food that comes out of his kitchen. I arrived about nine. He's closed to business then. He's open from eleven to six in the morning, catering to every sentient species there is, all so warped they try to subsist on vegetables.

It takes all kinds. Some of my best friends eat there. I've done so myself. Without enthusiasm.

So. Nine o'clock. The place was locked up. I went to the backdoor and gave the secret knock, which means I hammered and howled till Morley's man Wedge brought a four-foot piece of lead pipe and offered to move my face to my belly button region.

"This's business, Wedge."

"I didn't figure you was in heat for some bean curd. You don't come around unless you want something."

"I pay for what I get."

He snorted. He didn't think it was right, me using Morley just because Morley had taken advantage of me, at deadly risk and without my consent, to get out of some heavy gambling debts.

"Cash money, Wedge. And he don't have to get off his butt. He just needs to have somebody do some legwork."

That didn't cheer him up. He's one of the guys who does Morley's legwork. But he didn't slam the door.

"Come." He eased me in and barred the door, led me through kitchens where cooks were butchering cabbages and broccoli, parked me at the serving bar, drew me a mug of apple juice, "Wait." He went upstairs.

The public room was naked and forlorn, almost painfully quiet. The way it ought to be all the time, instead of overcrowded.

Morley Dotes is a headhunter. A kneebreaker and a lifetaker. Most of the guys who work for him help. Morley is a deadly symbiote feeding on society's dark underside. He's the best at what he does, barring maybe a couple of guys who work for Chodo Contague.

Adding up the account, Morley Dotes is everything I don't like. He's the kind of guy I wanted to take down when I decided to put on my good-guy hat. But I like him.

Sometimes you can't help yourself.

Wedge came down shaking his head. "What's up?" I asked.

"He's taking this health stuff too far."

"You're telling me? He's like a born again, trying to save everybody else." The world's only vegetarian lifetaker. Wants to save the world from the perils of red meat—before he cuts its throat. I don't know. Maybe there's no conflict but it sounds like one to me. "He's added to the list?"

"Been a few months, right?"

"Last time I was here he'd sworn off gambling and was making it stick. He tried women but couldn't hold out."

"He forgot that crock. Say that for him. The thing now is early to bed, early to rise. He's up. Now. Up and dressed and fed and doing his morning workout. A year ago you wouldn't have caught him dead out of bed this time of day."

You could have if there was enough money in it. "Wonders never cease, do they?"

"He said come up. You want a refill?"

"Why not? Fruit juice is the only thing here I can handle."

He winked. He wasn't one of Morley's converts. He topped off my mug. I took it up to Morley's office, which is the barbican to his personal quarters. I'm about as close to a friend as he has, but I've never been past the office. My hair is too short and I don't wear enough makeup.

Dotes was doing sit-ups, chunking them out like a machine. My stomach hurt just watching.

"You're in pretty good shape for a guy your age," I told him. I wasn't sure what that was. It could be substantial. He's part dark-elf. Elves can last a long time.

"I take it you're working again." He said it while popping up and down. Like there was no strain to what he was doing.

I told myself I had to start doing a few exercises. At my age, when you lose it, it's hard to get back. "Why do you assume—"

"You don't come down here unless you want something."

"Not true. I used to bring Maya in all the time." That was before she and I had gone our own ways.

"You lost a gem there, Garrett." He rolled over, started doing push-ups.

His dark-elf blood doesn't scream out. He looks like a short, slim, dark-haired man in good shape. He's quick on his feet. There's an air of the dangerous about him, but not one of menace. Maybe that's why women find him irresistible.

"Maybe. I do miss her, some. She was a good kid."

"Pretty, too. So you going on with Tinnie?"

My friend Tinnie Tate, professional high-tempered redhead. Ours is an unpredictable relationship. "I see her. When she doesn't think I deserve to be punished by not seeing her."

"Only smart thing you've done since I've known you is not tell her about Maya." He completed fifty fast ones, jumped up. He wasn't sweating. I felt like kicking his behind. "What's up?"

"You heard of General Stantnor?"

"Used to be Marine Commandant?"

"The same."

"What about him?"

"A guy who works for him, my old company sergeant, called in a debt. He got me to do a job for the old boy."

"Don't you ever work just to be working? I never saw anyone like you."

"I know. I'm a dog. You never see a dog do anything when he's not hungry. If I'm not hungry, why work?"

"What about the General? I do work when I'm not hungry. And I've got plenty of that here."

"The old boy is trying to die. My old sergeant thinks somebody is trying to kill him. Slowly, so it looks like a wasting disease."

"Is somebody?"

"I don't know. He's been doing it a long time. You know a way to do that?"

"What's his color like?"

"His color?"

"Sure. There are poisons you could use in cumulative dosages. The color is the giveaway."

"He's kind of a sickly yellow. His hair is falling out in clumps. And his skin has a translucent quality."

Morley frowned. "Not blue or gray?"

"Yellow. Like pale butterscotch."

He shook his head. "Can't tell you based on that."

"He has seizures, too."

"Crazies?"

"Like heart tremors, or something."

"Doesn't sound familiar. Maybe if I saw him."

"I'd like that. I don't know if I can arrange it. They're all paranoid about strangers." I gave him a rundown on the players.

"Sounds like a bughouse."

"Could be. All of them, except Jennifer and Cook, spent at least thirty years in the Marines, mostly in the Cantard."

He grinned. "I'm not going to say it."

"Good for you. We all make the world a little holier when we resist temptation. One more thing. The old man thinks he hired me to find out who's stealing the silver and his old war trophies." I produced the list. Morley started reading. "I'll pay legwork fees for somebody to make the rounds and see if any of that is moving through the usual channels."

"Saucerhead needs work." Saucerhead Tharpe is a friend, of sorts, in a line somewhere between Morley's and mine. He has more scruples than Dotes and more ambition than me, but he's as big as a house and looks half as smart. People can't take him serious. He never gets the best jobs.

"All right. I'll pay his standard rate. Bonus if he recovers any of the articles. Bonus if he gets a description of the thief."

"On the cuff?" That was a hint.

I gave him advance money. He said, "I thank you and Saucerhead thanks you. I know you're doing an old buddy a favor but it seems damned tame. Especially if the old guy is just dying."

"There's something going on. Somebody tried to off me." I told him.

He laughed. "I wish I could have seen the guy's face when he swung that ax and you bonged like a bell. You've still got the luck."

"Maybe."

"Why are they after you?"

"I don't know. Money? That's the one angle that makes this interesting. The old boy is worth about five million marks. His son is dead. His wife died twenty years ago. His daughter Jennifer gets half the estate and the other half goes to his Marine cronies. Three years ago he had seventeen heirs. Since then two died supposedly natural deaths, one got killed by a mad bull, and four disappeared. A little basic math shows that nearly doubles the take for the survivors."

Morley sat down behind his desk, put his feet up, cleaned his pearly white teeth with a six-inch steel toothpick. I didn't interrupt his thoughts.

"There's potential for foul play in that setup, Garrett."

"Human nature being what it is."

"If I was a betting man I'd give odds that somebody is fattening his share."

"Human nature being what it is."

"Nobody walks out on that kind of money. Not you, not me, not a saint. So maybe you have something interesting after all."

"Maybe. Thing is, I don't see any way to tie it up in a package. If I find out who's stealing—which makes no sense considering the payoff down the road—I'm not likely to find out who's killing the old man. That doesn't make sense for whoever is cutting down the number of heirs. He'd want the old man to hang on."

"What happens if the daughter checks out before he does?"

"Damn!" A critical point and it hadn't occurred to me. If everything went to the boys she'd really be on the spot. "The odd thing is, none of them act like they know what's going on. They seem to get along. They don't watch each other over their shoulders. I did, and I was only there one night."

"A marvelous aspect of your species is that most of you see only what you want."

"What's that mean?"

"Maybe those guys are old buddies and only one of them realizes that throat-cutting can be profitable. Maybe nobody is suspicious because they all know their old buddies wouldn't do something like that after all they've been through together."

Could be. I'd kind of had that problem myself. I couldn't picture me turning on anybody I'd been running with that long. "And the whole thing could be what they say it is. Three dead by explainable cause and four who couldn't handle the life-style and walked because money didn't mean anything."

"And the moon could be mouse bait."

"You have a dark outlook."

"Supported every day in the street. The other night a thirty-six-year-old man knifed his mom and dad because they wouldn't give him money for a bottle of wine. That's the real world, Garrett. We're our own worst nightmares." He chuckled. "You're lucky this time. You don't have anything weird. No vampires, no werewolves, no witches, no sorcerers, no dead gods trying to come back to life. None of the stuff you usually stumble into."

I snorted. Those things aren't on every street corner, but they're part of the world. Everybody brushes against them eventually. They didn't impress me, though I was happy not to deal with them.

I said, "I could have seen a ghost."

"A what?"

"A ghost. I keep seeing a woman that nobody admits is there. That nobody else sees. Unless they're pulling my leg. Which they probably are."

"Or you're crazy. She's a gorgeous blonde, right?"

"A blonde. Not bad."

"You're daydreaming out loud in your eyes. Your wishful thinking has gotten to you."

"Maybe. I'll know before I'm done. There was something else I wanted but it escapes me now."

"Must not have been important."

"Probably not. I'd better get back out there."

"You take some equipment? Hate to think of you up to your ears in killers with nothing but your teeth and toenails."

"I've got a trick or two."

He grunted. "You always do. Don't turn your back on anybody."

"I won't."

As I started to close the door, he asked, "What's the daughter look like?"

"Early twenties. A looker but not a talker. Spoiled rotten, probably."

He looked thoughtful, then shrugged, got up, dropped down and started doing more push-ups. I shut the door. I can't stand seeing a man abuse himself.