23.

Winger wouldn't take copper. She wasn't bright but she was possessed of a certain cunning. If we didn't want to let go of our silver, we must know something.

She respected the Dead Man's brains.

Saucerhead followed her lead though he wasn't sure why. He gave me a black look for trying to pay him in copper. I told him, "Don't spend it all in one place."

"It's already spent, Garrett. I owe Morley."

Imagine that. Tharpe runs a tab at Morley's place. Even now that it's The Palms. How come Morley lets him?

Winger told me, "You need to consult some kind of expert, Garrett."

"Expert?"

"About your habit of talking to birds."

"I could cure it in a minute. Faster, even. Take him home with you. He idolizes you. And he makes more sense than most people do."

Winger responded with a big raspberry. As they walked away Saucerhead tried to convince her that she'd just blown the best offer she'd had all year. n.o.body human had shown as much interest.

"You want a knuckle sandwich for supper you just keep on jacking your jaw," Winger growled.

"Where we gonna eat, anyway?"

I shut the door, pleased that we'd gotten by without Winger trying to enlist me in some harebrained scheme for replacing the Crown Jewels with paste. They say you can't pick your relatives but you can pick your friends. I must have some really strange secret urges.

Garrett. Cease dallying.

I entered the Dead Man's room, calling to the kitchen, "Dean, I need you to come bear witness." I knew the signs. I was about to be granted a nose-to-the grindstone lecture by the all-time grandmaster procrastinator and slough-off artist. Trouble was, the only witness who could really indict him would be another Loghyr. "A little chow wouldn't hurt, either." My own particular Loghyr, despite having been dead for ages, has the reputation of being one of the most ambitious of his kind ever.

Some battles you can't win. Wisdom is attained when you start to recognize those beforehand and slink onward in search of ground you do have a chance to hold.

Dean, please bring our guest when you come. And do put together a platter for Garrett, if you will be so kind. He is hungry and becoming cranky.

I was going to get crankier. His att.i.tude earlier and that message told me our guest was female and under forty. Dean has a way with women young enough to be his daughters. They like to hang out in his kitchen. Partly that's because he's safe, partly because he indulges them like they were favorite daughters, partly because he's a nice old guy.

"Is Tinnie here again?"

No. Tell me what happened out there.

"The G.o.dd.a.m.n Parrot was on top of me the whole d.a.m.ned time."

The beast is more limited than you believe. The bird is keen of ear but only in a narrow range. And his visual acuity and sense of smell leave much to be desired.

"You ought to find yourself a human tool." But not me.

Perfect idea. Unfortunately, no human has a mind sensitive enough for remote access. No intelligent creature, whatever the species, fits my particulars exactly. There would appear to be a relationship. I must examine that someday.

"Yeah," I muttered, completely confident that I was a failed experiment.

The door swung open. Dean, platter in hand, held it for someone.

Someone stepped inside.

"You?" I was surprised.

"Me," said Belinda Contague. "Your lack of enthusiasm is breaking my heart."

The woman doesn't have one. But I didn't remind her.

She likes black. She positively loves loves black. She wore a black evening cloak over a masculine-cut black suit of very supple leather. She wore black boots with raised heels. A pair of long black-silk gloves were folded over her black-leather belt. When she arrived, I was sure, Dean had taken her black hat and veil and put them in the small front room. She'd painted her nails black and had put something on her lips to darken and gloss them. Then she'd used a face powder to make her skin appear more pallid. black. She wore a black evening cloak over a masculine-cut black suit of very supple leather. She wore black boots with raised heels. A pair of long black-silk gloves were folded over her black-leather belt. When she arrived, I was sure, Dean had taken her black hat and veil and put them in the small front room. She'd painted her nails black and had put something on her lips to darken and gloss them. Then she'd used a face powder to make her skin appear more pallid.

I have seen vampires with more color.

Despite all that, or perhaps because of it, she was incredibly beautiful. More, she exuded something that made it difficult to cling to common sense and the urge to self-preservation. That bizarre look was very erotic.

"You sent a message. I was in town. I had no other demands on my time. I came here. You were out but Dean was kind. As he ever is."

I glared at the Dead Man, thought hard: You should have warned me.

He didn't respond.

d.a.m.n, the woman was bold. She knew what the Dead Man was. n.o.body with a conscience as black as hers ought to be anywhere near him.

Back in those remote times when the Outfit was in transition, pa.s.sing into Belinda's regency, we had a brief fling. I might consider myself lucky because I got out alive. Belinda is very strange. And when it comes to hardness she makes her daddy look like a pet bunny.

I gobbled, "I'm sorry. You took me off guard. You're the last person I expected."

Belinda Contague stands five feet six inches. She looks twenty-five, says she's twenty. She lived a rough life before she took over. Lived like she was trying to kill herself. She was in good shape now, as her apparel proclaimed eloquently. Nature blessed her with a shape that would have them kicking the lids off their coffins if she strolled through a mortuary. Her dark eyes fell smack into the center of that semi-mythical "windows of the soul" cla.s.s. You will discover more warmth and compa.s.sion in the stare of a cobra.

I can't imagine what she ever saw in me.

I always knew she would come back to haunt me, though.

"I'm not as bad as you think, Garrett."

Her daddy used to say the same thing. "Huh?"

"My father turned out to be a good friend, didn't he?" She sounded wistful.

I grunted. My relationship with Chodo Contague had been strange, too. I did him a big favor once, accidentally, and forever afterward he felt he owed me. He did me good turns even when I didn't ask. He covered my a.s.s. He tried hard to entangle me in the Outfit's webs so I'd become one of his soldiers. I repaid him by helping take him down.

"Crask and Sadler are back in town." That would take the play out of Belinda.

"You saw them?" She actually became more pale.

"No. I heard it from Relway. Via Captain Block. He traded the information for a favor." She understood that kind of deal.

She didn't question my source. "What favor?"

"It doesn't involve you or yours."

"Relway isn't interested in us?"

"Of course he is. He's interested in everything. But he's a realist. He knows you offer services the public wants, nor are you breaking the law, mostly. Whatever the priests and reformers say. He's really interested in people who hurt people. Or people he thinks threaten society. But he's Relway. He's a slave to his obsessions. He wants to know everything about everything."

Garrett, being able to read your mind and intentions helps but even so what you have just said makes only marginal sense.

I had no trouble understanding me.

Belinda got it, too, though her coal-chip gaze never stopped boring holes through me.

I asked, "Darling, why couldn't you be somebody else?" n.o.body grabs the unreasoning side of me like Belinda Contague.

"Sometimes I wish I was somebody else, too, Garrett. But it's too late."

"Do we have to be enemies?"

"Were we ever?"

Yes. Careful, Garrett. "No. But what we are can drive us places where we're out of choices."

"Sufficient to the day the evil thereof."

I gave her a look at my raised eyebrow. That always charms them.

"And don't try that on me, Garrett. You're in my heart. Suppose we just go on the way you did with my father?"

"Your dad thought he owed me." The final account left me way in his debt, though.

"I owe you. In a different way. You're the only guy I know who treats me like a human being. Even when I was completely weird you treated me right."

"That's just me." I glanced at the Dead Man. He was one witness too many.

"Shut up. I'm not proposing. I'm not going to steal you away from the Tate woman." She has more spies than Relway. "But I do have my small claim on you."

Control your breathing, Garrett.

When I was younger the old guys promised me I'd grow out of the heavy breathing. Maybe you have to be dead, though. There's always a Belinda or Tinnie or somebody scrambling my brain.

"If what Relway wants doesn't involve me, what's the secret?"

Good point. Perhaps. "He wants to infiltrate the rights movement. And I'm involved because some rightsist group is trying to extort money from the Weider family."

Belinda became the kingpin completely, a stone killer handicapped only marginally by her s.e.x. "I have rightsist problems, too," she said. "Those people have no respect. They believe they have the right to do whatever they want because their cause is just."

I grunted agreement. That was their thinking exactly.

"I won't let them tread on my toes."

Oh-oh. Somebody else wanted to sign me up.

I am going to take a short nap, Garrett. I expect it will last all night.

What? Now I knew why I hadn't seen Belinda's coach outside. She'd had no plans to leave and His Nibs suddenly was inclined to humor her. Which he had not been only a short while ago. What intriguing thought had he plucked from her spider's nest of a mind?

24.

I'm a devil pig, I'm told, because I like women. A lot. Go figure that kind of thinking.

The preference has gotten me into trouble occasionally. With Belinda trouble could get ugly. The spiders in her head spin strangely kinked thoughts. And she had to turn up just when Tinnie's stubbornness had begun to crack.

I heard about it over breakfast, basking in Dean's disapproval. I hated to let him waste all that bile.

"Thanks," I said, accepting the tea. "You'll need to do up the guest bedroom after Belinda gets up."

The old boy had an idea in his head. He wasn't going to let me confuse him.

"You're wasting an ulcer, Dean." Help! I appealed to the Dead Man. Tell him nothing happened.

I was asleep, Garrett. However, if a small prevarication will oil the machinery... was asleep, Garrett. However, if a small prevarication will oil the machinery...

Dean made a sound of disgust. He didn't want to believe the Dead Man, either.

Belinda came downstairs. She was in a bitter mood. She didn't like not getting her own way. She glared at Dean. He responded with the indifference of a man so old he has nothing left to fear.

Belinda shrugged. She cared for no man's opinion, which wasn't always wise. Her world was unforgiving and the penalties for failing to observe its rules often lethal. She worried too little about making enemies inside her own circle. She could have worked something out with Crask and Sadler.

Belinda was Chodo Contague's child, both his creation and his doom.

It must have been h.e.l.l to be his kid. Belinda wouldn't talk about it but there was no doubt that she was bitter.

There are suspicions that Belinda's mother went to her eternal reward early because Chodo disapproved of her infidelity.

That was common rumor before I ever met Belinda. It might have plenty to do with Chodo's condition now.

I feared Belinda's obsessions might compel the Outfit to take her down. But she was quite capable of taking it down with her.

Belinda asked, "Suppose I explain in person?"