Whispering Nickel Idols

37

It don’t matter who spends the night, snuggled up or otherwise. Pular Singe will drop in before the birds start chirping. And blame it on Dean. Or the Dead Man. Which was the case this time.

“You are needed downstairs.”

I doubted it. His Nibs could have summoned me without troubling Singe. I grumbled, growled, muttered, disparaged some folks’ ancestry. But by the time I arrived in what Old Bones had turned into an operations center, I knew all he wanted was my managing my own breathing so he could free up the secondary mind keeping me huffing and puffing.

There was a vast, ugly conspiracy afoot, designed to confine me to the house. So I wouldn’t get involved in anything strenuous, like, say, discouraging somebody who wanted to twist little bits off of me.

I sat. I watched folks come and go. I breathed. Smiley didn’t fill me in. This was how he worked. He gathered information. He looked for unexpected connections. Usually, though, I’m the main data capture device.

Dean brought food and tea. I ate. And sat some more while people came and went. I wondered who was paying them. Being a natural-born, ever-loving blue-eyed investigator, I intuited the answer. And felt the wealth sucking right out of me. My associates have no concept of money management.

I wondered who all my guests were. Some were complete strangers. Not Relway Runners, Combine players, Green Pants thugs, nor even part of the Morley Dotes menagerie.

“What are we doing?”

The Dead Man didn’t answer me. You believe Teacher White’s men took your roc’s egg?

“I had it before I turned unconscious. I didn’t have it when I woke up.”

Exactly.

“Excuse me?”

I sent Mr. Tharpe to the place where you were held, immediately after I determined where it was. His examination of the site and the corpses suggests third-party involvement.

“Huh?”

When drugged you were supposed to remain able to do Teacher White’s dirty work. The you who staggered away from there may not have been intended to wake up at all. You have contusions and abrasions unaccounted for in your memories. There are indications that someone attempted to strangle you.

“How do you figure all that?”

Circumstantial evidence. Your condition. The fact that Spider Webb was strangled with your belt. It was still around his neck when Mr. Tharpe arrived. The other man was strangled, too. There were bruises on his throat. Similar bruises are on your throat. More suggestive is the fact that the bodies and other evidence were gone when Miss Winger went up there this morning.

“Teacher is in deep gravy and don’t even know it? Who?”

That would be the question.

“A question, certainly.”

We may be able to ask Mr. White himself soon. His associate Mr. Brix has told us where to find him.

“Who’s Mr. Brix?”

The man you know as Skelington. His name is Emmaus P. Brix. With the middle initial standing for nothing. Ah. Mr. Tharpe has achieved another success.

Two minutes later Saucerhead’s associates from Whitefield Hall, Orion Comstock and June Nicolist, stumbled in, struggling with a wooden box obviously heavy for its size. Dean appeared immediately, armed with a specialized pry tool. Another product of my manufactory.

Singe paid Nicolist and Comstock, painstakingly recording the transaction. Neither seemed troubled by the Dead Man. They thought he was still hibernating. Despite the crowd, all of whom seemed part of the Dead Man’s club.

These gentlemen have not been here before. They may not come here again.

“Oh.”

Orion Comstock took the pry bar from Dean.

Nails shrieked as they came loose.

Kittens screamed all over the house. I heard them run, in confusion, upstairs, then back down into the kitchen.

Ah. As I suspected.

“What?”

To whom do you suppose they will think you are speaking?

I covered by heading for the hallway. Dean said, “I’ll go. You need to be here.” He sounded upset.

Singe, too, seemed troubled. Her exposed fur had risen. That doesn’t happen often.

There was even an undercurrent of revulsion in my connection with the Dead Man. Then I started to hear new voices. Inside my head.

I edged nearer Comstock and Nicolist.

The wooden box was lined with sheets of lead. Inside sat a matched pair of shiny metal sitting dogs, each nine inches tall.

Jackals, Old Bones opined. Almost certainly carrion eaters.

“You guys get these from the Bledsoe?”

Comstock eyed me suspiciously. “That was the contract, wasn’t it, slick? You saying-”

“Just startled. Saucerhead trusts you-I trust you. The ones I saw weren’t sitting.”

Comstock shrugged. “We seen some that was standing and some that was lying down. One was suckling pups. But Saucerhead said you wanted ones that was sealed up already. These are them.”

“That’s true. You did fine.” I started to shove my mitts into the box.

Stop! Disappointed whispers echoed afterward.

“Careful there, slick. You don’t want to touch them things with your bare skin.”

I stopped. Cold rolled off the statues.

Nicolist showed me the outside edge of his left little finger. “That was just an accidental swipe.”

A piece of skin was missing, a quarter inch wide and three quarters long. Cruel bruising surrounded the wound.

“Aches a bit,” I supposed aloud.

“A bit. We need to get out of here, Orion. Runners are bound to turn up.”

A concern that hadn’t occurred to me, though it was inherent in the situation. “I’ll let you out. And thanks, guys. You really helped out. We’ll come to you first next time we have a tough job.”

Orion and June exchanged looks, shrugs, and headshakes.

I used the peephole. I didn’t see anything remarkable. Except that my door-fixer-upping technician, Junker Mulclar, had pulled his cart up behind one that must have brought the metal dogs. I told Comstock and Nicolist, “Nobody there but the people who always are. Move out cool and nobody will notice.”

They went to the street. Mr. Mulclar hoisted his toolbox to his shoulder. He was wide, short, dark, craggy, an ugly man who counted a dwarf among his ancestors somewhere. He owned one of those faces that need shaving three times a day just to look dirty.

Junker is overly fond of cabbage, in both kraut and unpickled form. Whenever he stays in one place long that becomes overwhelmingly evident.

“Good morning, Mr. Mulclar. It seems to be the hinges this time.”

“Call me Junk, Mr. Garrett. Everybody does. What happened?” He rumbled enthusiastically at the nether end. He didn’t apologize. All part of the natural cycle.

“Same as always. These bad guys were bigger than usual, though.”

“No! That can’t be.” He punctuated with a minor poot. “That door I put in last time ought to stand up to-”

“It isn’t the door, Mr. Mulclar. It’s the hinges. And if you saw those guys, you’d preen like a peacock for ten years because your work stood up so well.”

Mulclar indulged in a rumbling chuckle, proud. Then rumbled in the opposite direction. The air was getting thick. Junk didn’t notice. “You got some spare room in your basement? Space you ain’t using? On account of I’m over here a whole lot anyway and my wife is throwing me out…” He cut a competition class ripper. “Not sure why. Maybe she found a new heartthrob. Anyways, then I’d be right here whenever it was time to service my mainest account.”

“That don’t sound like such a bad idea, Junk.” Hard to converse when you don’t want to inhale. “But I already have more people living here than I can manage. And, nothing personal, but I owe them all more than I owe you.”

“So it goes. I’ll stay with my cousin Sepp. Or my sister.” Rip! “It’ll all work out. Though I’m going to have to diversify. With all this law and order going on they ain’t so many doors getting broke down.”

Junker Mulclar is a genius with hands and tools. There aren’t enough like him in the Brave New TunFaire of postwar Karenta.

I gulped in some fresh air as a whiff breezed past. “Junk, I’m going to do you a favor. If you swear on your mother’s grave you’ll fix my doors forever.”

Rumble! “Sure, Mr. Garrett. I thought we had that deal already.”

“You know where the three-wheel manufactory is in Stepcross Pool?”

“Sure.”

“You go find the green door, tell the man there I said you should see Mr. Dale Pickle. Take your tools. They’ll give you all the work you can handle, and then some. And a place to stay, if that’s what you need.”

My business associates, all of whom possess percentages bigger than mine, agree that we should take care of our workers. Max Weider built his brewing empire by valuing and rewarding the people who made it happen for him.

Weider brewing employees are happy and ferociously loyal.

The manufactory could use a man of Mr. Mulclar’s skills. And if he lived in, he’d soon become less aromatic. They wouldn’t let him do his own cooking.

Mulclar did me an immense favor. “If you’ll move out of the way, I can get those hinges fixed. It’ll take maybe an hour.”

Good luck with that, I thought.

I noted that Comstock and Nicolist hadn’t taken their cart. If stolen carts kept turning up out front, there were bound to be questions.

I went in to warn everybody that we wouldn’t have a door for a while.