Red Iron Nights

32

Dean does miracles when he wants. The roast wasn't a disaster, considering. The go-alongs were excellent. I ate till I was ready to pop. Then, though it was early, I rambled into the hall and stared upstairs, awaiting a flood of ambition. It was a long climb to a cold, lonely bed.

This is where the sad strings are due—only with my luck, the orchestra would whip into an overture.

Right. It wasn't mood music I got, it was: Garrett! Come report. Not quite an overture. But close enough.

No point arguing. The sooner done, the sooner to sleep.

What sleep? When I finished telling about my visit to Hullar I got: I want you to go back there. Work the Tenderloin for the next nine evenings. Spend time with that Candy.

"Huh?"

A notion has been brooding in the back of my rear brain. Your assessment of Candy as out-of-place hatched it.

"Huh?" What repartee. "What about all the legwork? The research on olden villains?"

Take care of that days. Work the Tenderloin nights, watching for young ladies off the Hill amusing themselves by playing lower-class roles.

It clicked. Candy. Chodo's kid. High-class girls hanging out in low-class dives. For the kicks? Not unlikely. "If that's some fad—"

I will ask Captain Block to revisit the families of the dead girls. I may have interviewed the wrong people. Sisters and girlfriends might have been wiser. Parents are the last to know what their youngsters are doing.

"You may be onto something." Only a few victims had known one another, and that only casually. But if you put sisters and girlfriends and a fad for slumming into the gaps, you might find a pattern.

We might indeed.

"What do I look for?"

Girls who fit the killer's particulars. Maybe we can identify the next victim before she is taken. We have nine days before the killer must slake his need. If the pattern proves out, if the girls were playing games, we will know how and where the killer selects his victims. With Captain Block's help we can watch all potential victims and grab our man when he strikes.

"I'm way ahead of you now. Only, do we have to start tonight?"

TNT, Garrett. You have not been shortchanged on sleep recently.

True. And I was too fired up to sleep now anyway. Might as well go drink beer and ogle girls in the line of duty.

Hell. All of a sudden this mess had begun to look a little interesting.

TunFaire by night becomes a different city. Especially when there's no rain. It had stopped raining. For the moment. I carried my raincloak over one arm and strolled, checking out the nightside.

The ratman hordes were about their legitimate tasks of cleaning and illegitimate tasks of removing everything not nailed down. Kobolds and gnomes and numerous varieties of little people dashed here and there on business. Sometimes I wonder how so many peoples can live side by side with so little contact. Sometimes I think TunFaire is a whole series of cities that just happen to occupy the same geographical position.

I saw a troll family, obvious bumpkins, gaping at the sights. I got propositioned by a giantess of ill repute who was, evidently, suffering a business slump. I ran into a band of goblins riding red-eyed hounds that looked more wolfish than domesticated. I'd never seen goblins before. I walked with them a ways, swapped stories.

They were bounty hunters. They specialized in tracing runaway wives. They were a ferocious, unpleasant bunch clinging grimly to an old trail. The goblin woman they were after was, evidently, smarter than the bunch of them put together.

They had plans for when they caught up. They never doubted they could outlast a mere woman.

It would seem wives are a premium commodity amongst goblins, where five or six males are born for every female. Goblins don't go in for polyandry or equal rights or homosexuality or any of that wimp stuff. Real macho men, male goblins. One-third will die in fights over females before age twenty-three.

I watched the hunters ride off and didn't blame goblin wives for cutting out first chance they got.

I encountered several families of centaurs, refugees from the Cantard, working together, doing bearer-type jobs. What a concept. Jackasses with the brains and hands to load and unload themselves.

I have almost as little love for centaurs as I do for ratmen. The only centaur I ever knew well was a thorough villain.

There were dwarves everywhere. Day and night, TunFaire teams with dwarves. They're industrious little buggers. All they do is work. If they could figure out how, they'd do without sleep.

What you don't see much of at night, outside certain areas, is human people. You do see a human, be careful. Chances are his intentions aren't honest or honorable.

That, in fact, can usually be counted on to get you by—if you're young and strong and don't look an easy mark. Most people will stay away. Only the nastiest, craziest bad boys prey on other bad boys.

Hell. There I go giving the wrong impression. What I'm talking about is late nights, after the entertainment hours. Much later than it was then. People were out. I wasn't seeing them because I wasn't following the streets they usually chose for safety.

Sometimes I tempt fate.

At one point I joined several ratmen in a fast fade into an alley. We watched a gang of ogres tramp past, grumbling and cussing. They were headed for the north gate, on their way to hunt thunder-lizards. Night is the best time to hunt them. The beasts are sluggish then. There's good money in thunder-lizard hides. They make the toughest leather.

I don't like ogres much either, but wished this bunch luck. The southward migration of the thunder-lizards has been rough on the farmers, who have been losing both fields and livestock. More, it's always nice to see an ogre doing something honest. You don't very often.