Red Iron Nights

23

The Tenderloin is that part of town which caters to the side of people they keep hidden. Any vice can be found there, any sin committed, almost any need fulfilled. The hookers and the drug dens and gambling pits are just the surface, the glamour. At least, those aspects of those things that can be glamorous when seen from the street.

It's a glitzy street. Or streets, really. The area is bigger than Tinkery Row. And more successful. Nothing sells like sin. After the Hill it's the most prosperous, cleanest, safest, and most orderly part of the city. Some very unpleasant people make sure it stays that way.

It all belongs, directly or indirectly, to Chodo Contague's empire.

Bishoff Hullar's taxi-dance place is as tame a dive as you can find there. That's all the girls do, dance and talk to lonely fellows and try to get them to buy drinks. Maybe a few make personal arrangements, but there are no facilities on the premises. The place is as shabby as they're allowed to get down there. Frankly, I don't see how Hullar stays in business, competing with neighbors who offer so much more.

The place wasn't jumping when I arrived, but it was just after noon then. A couple of sad-looking sailors sat at a table talking to a sad-looking girl who sipped colored water and didn't pretend very hard that she gave a damn about what the sailors were saying. A doddering ratman mopped around the other tables. All those had chairs piled atop them. There was nobody on the dance floor, though a couple more girls were loafing by the bandstand, where three worn-out old musicians weren't trying very hard to stay awake. Both girls glanced at me, wondering if I was worth the effort of making so long a trek. One, who looked like she might break out in a case of puberty any day, lazily packed a pipe with weed.

The guy behind the bar had to be the world's oldest dwarf. He wore the full costume, complete with a pheasant's feather in a peaked little cap. He had a beard that should have kept the floor swept of debris. "What's it going to be, Ace?" He wiped the bar in front of me with the same rag he'd been using to polish mugs.

"Beer."

"Pint?"

"Yeah."

"Light? Dark?"

"Light."

"Lager? Pilsner?... "

"Just draw one. Surprise me. Weider's, if you got it." I figured I owed Old Man Weider a little commercial loyalty, what with him having had me on retainer so long.

"Hasty. Always hasty." He drew me a pint. "Wet enough for you out there?"

Oh, my. A talkative bartender. "Wet enough. Hullar around?"

"Who wants to know?" Suddenly he was completely alert.

"Name's Garrett. I'm supposed to be doing something for him."

"Yeah?" He wiped the bar next to me while he thought about that. After a moment he said, "I'll check." Off he trundled. I rose onto my toes, watched, wondering if he'd stumble over his beard.

"Hi. I'm Brenda." The pipe smoker had puffed up enough ambition to hike all the way over. I glanced at her, resumed studying the wasteland behind the bar. The woman was less interesting.

Up close it was obvious she wasn't a child, that that was just her hook. The gamine had gone a long time ago, probably before she was old enough to become a gamine. I said, "I'm just here to see Hullar. Business."

"Oh." Her voice had had little life before. Now it was dead.

I glanced at the musicians. "I could part with a few coppers, though, if you could explain why those band guys are here at this time of day." I didn't know Hullar's place well, but didn't think there was any music during the day.

"Somebody kicked the shit out of them last night after work. They're waiting to talk to some guy about it."

Licks? Coming in to put the arm on them?

"You're in, Ace. The man says come on back."

I dropped a half-dozen coppers into the woman's hand. She made an effort to find a smile but had trouble remembering where she'd left it. I wanted to say something to waken her spirit but couldn't think of a thing. So I just said, "Thanks," and hurried after the dwarf. If I let him get too big a head start I'd miss out when he tripped over his beard.

Bishoff Hullar was five feet tall, three feet wide, bald as an egg, in his sixties, ugly as sin itself. The width wasn't fat. I'd heard he was a strongman in his younger days and that he kept up in case there was a call for his talents. "Sit, Garrett." He indicated a rickety antediluvian chair. He had a voice like rocks tumbling around inside an iron drum. Somebody had done the lead-pipe thing on his throat in his once-upon-a-time. "You got anything for me?"

I gave him Barking Dog's report. He took it, started reading. I said, "I have some questions." I glanced around his workplace. You couldn't call it an office. He sat behind a table with some writing tools on it, but also makeup pots, which suggested the girls used the place for a dressing room. Overall, it was as tacky as the rest of the place.

"Huh?" He looked up, piggy little gray eyes narrowed.

"Basic stuff my partner never got around to asking because he thought this job would be a good joke on me."

Hullar's eyes got narrower. "Joke?"

"Barking Dog Amato. Nobody in the world is going to pay somebody to spy on a lunatic. Least of all a guy who runs a place like this down here. I can't see you even knowing Barking Dog."

"I don't. Wouldn't know him if he walked in and sank his fangs in me. What's it to you? You're getting paid."

"I'm the guy what takes his butt onto the street amongst the slings and arrows, Hullar. I kind of like to know why I'm doing that, and who for. That way I have a notion what direction to expect trouble from when it comes."

"You're not going to see no trouble."

"They all tell me that. If there wasn't trouble, though, they wouldn't come to me in the first place. I don't play blindfolded, Hullar."

He put the report down, looked at me like he was making up his mind whether to kick my butt or not. Not won the toss.

"You got a good rep, Garrett. Why I picked you. I'll take a chance."

I waited. He brooded. The dwarf bartender waited at the door, maybe to see if the boss would need help. There wasn't much tension, though. I didn't feel threatened.

"I ain't got much here, Garrett. We ain't got much. But we're like family. We take care of each other on account of we're all we've got. This here is like the last ledge before the fall into the pit."

I couldn't argue that. I kept my opinion to myself. My old mom used to suggest strongly that I just might learn something if I could manage to keep my mouth shut long enough to listen. Mom was right, but I didn't get the message for years—and I still forget it far too often.

"Somebody works for me comes to me with their trouble, usually I try to lend a hand. If I can. I do that, maybe they give me a little help when I need it. Right?"

"Makes sense." Only in the real world it doesn't work that way very often. "One of your people wants Barking Dog watched?"

He eyed me, still taking my measure. "You're a cynic. You don't believe in much. Especially not people. Maybe that's a good thing in your line, kind of folks you probably have to deal with."

"Yeah." I was proud of me. I kept a straight face.

He glanced at the dwarf, got a response I didn't catch.

"All right. Here's the way it is, Garrett. Amato's kid works for me. When he got himself tossed in the Al-Khar, she—"

"He's got a daughter?" You've heard that one about knocking a guy over with a feather? That feather would have smashed me like a bug.

"Yeah. This Amato, he's a loony. But harmless. You know that. I know that. Only he's got a habit of naming names. She's scared maybe he named the wrong one, some Hill-type asshole what don't got a sense of humor. Maybe the old man is about to get his ass in deep shit. Girl's a little light-headed herself, if you get my drift. But she's family here, and when my people worry, I try to fix it so they don't. So what I want from you is you should keep an eye on the old nut, let me know if he's about to step in it so I can yank him out of the way before he gets run over. Understand?"

Yes. And no. Barking Dog with a daughter? How did he ever manage that? "A bit hard to buy."

"Yeah? Something about it you don't like? You just say you're out. I'll get somebody else. I picked you on account of they say you're almost honest. But I can live without you."

"It's just a big chunk to swallow. You don't know Barking Dog. You did, you'd know why. I can't figure him for having a kid."

"Crunch. Tell Sas to bring us a couple of beers."

The dwarf left. We didn't talk. After a while a woman came with two beers, light for me and dark for Hullar. I'd seen her with the gamine, muttering with the musicians. I hadn't noticed then, but up close the resemblance to Amato was there. She even had those spooky eyes that looked like they were seeing things hidden from the rest of us. She pretended not to study me while I pretended not to study her.

"Thanks, Sas."

"Sure, Bish." She left.

"Sure looks like him," I admitted.

"There you go. Any problems now?"

"Not really." I wondered if she'd studied me because the dwarf had told her who I was. Probably. Maybe he'd sent her back more to give her a look than to give me one. "This supposed to be a secret?"

"Secret?"

"I'll tell my partner, of course. He won't kick it around. But is it supposed to be a secret from the rest of the world?"

"Probably wouldn't hurt. The guy maybe does have an enemy or three."

"Suppose he catches on that I'm watching? Am I allowed to tell him why?"

"I don't figure that would do Sas no good. Look, I know this ain't in your usual line. Pretty tame, you being used to mixing it up with sorcerers and gangsters and Hill folk, but it means something to us. You don't got to make a career out of it. I ain't paying that much. But we'd all appreciate it if you'd let us in on it should he get his ass into something he can't handle. Right?"

I rose. "Good enough." I believed him because I wanted to believe him. You don't much see people do nice things for people. "One of your girls said your musicians are having problems."

"You don't need to worry about that. Tooken care of." For a moment he looked like the evil thing I'd pictured him to be. "Or will be, real soon. How about you take my mug back out to Crunch?"

I took both mugs.