Cruel Zinc Melodies (7 page)

And renegotiate, no doubt. After flinging around a few more big words borrowed from Singe.

Saucerhead squeaked, jumped, snarled, “Holy fucking camel snot!”

A bull rat who looked like the undisputed heavyweight champion barbarian hero of all ratkind had just dropped a gift at our feet, then collapsed from exhaustion.

The bug was some kind of tropical exotic beetle, all shimmering oily shine on a deep background of dark green, indigo, and black. A foot long. Still twitching. But it had been conquered by the hero.

Other rats began to arrive. Each brought a prize. John Stretch’s buddies tossed bugs into boxes and pushed rats into cages. Even the heavyweight hero seemed happy to be locked up safe. All his savagery had been spent.

I said, “I'll see Old Man Weider before we take any next step. Singe. John Stretch. Go back to my place. Fill the Dead Man in. If he hasn’t fallen asleep. Saucerhead. You’re on the payroll. Retainer rate for now. Play. Keep a coach handy. It may take an even bigger...”

I looked to John Stretch. “You sort of know what the critters found down there. Right?”

“Yes.”

“Is this method workable?”

“Probably. But it will be a strain. It will require many more rats. They burn out. Most of these will refuse to go down again.”

“Singe. I smell a business opportunity.”

“Again? I still have not worked out how to exploit the last one.” She meant taking advantage of ratfolks? high tolerance for boredom by using them to copy books. Most had trouble developing the necessary fine motor skills. “What is it?”

“We could get ratpeople work clearing the rats out of places. Ratters are expensive.”

She and John Stretch looked fiercely uncomfortable.

“I say something wrong?”

Singe shrugged. “John Stretch is the only one who can command the rats. And they have to be willing to listen.”

I shrugged in turn. “If it can’t be done, it can’t. You guys get going.”

I went back to where Git and Bank were managing the removal of the body. I dug a usable gunnysack out of the mess the dead man had used as bedding. Nobody found any gang sign. Nor any evidence that the derelict had suffered any violence other than the attack of the bugs.

15

Hector wasn’t excited by my return. But he did let me in. “Wait here.” He had a voice like a bucket of rocks being shaken. He went to announce my petition for an audience.

People from the back stairs popped out to get a look while I waited. Remarkable things had happened back there a while ago, with me deeply involved. These folks would have been hired since.

I suppressed my theatrical urge. I didn’t do a buck and wing.

Manvil Gilbey came. “So you’ve done your usual marvelous job and have it wrapped up already?”

“Not quite. Actually, just the opposite.”

“Ah. So. Your usual marvelous job.”

“And you’re gonna love it.”

A minute later I dumped the gunnysack in front of Max and Gilbey. I was forthright about what I’d done. I even mentioned John Stretch’s special talent without naming his name. “Also, we got a murder of a security guard, with gang sign. The way those things work, that'll be the source of your vandalism and theft. Setting you up for protection payoffs.”

Max considered the bug corpses. He considered me. He said, “They told me they were big bugs. I was thinking woods roaches. Those flying cockroaches the size of your finger. Not something the size of your mutant feet.”

“Even bigger ones down below, Boss. So I’m told.”

“This ratman can command the rodents? He could get rich calling the rats out of places like the brewery.”

“I suggested that. He wasn’t interested.”

“He’d see the problems better than we could. So what do you need?”

“I just want you to be aware. Ghosts may not be a real problem. Nobody I talked to admitted seeing any. There was some muttering about weird music. They all seemed to think somebody was faking in order to force a slowdown. Maybe as part of the coming shakedown.”

“Not a surprise. What about the murder?”

“We actually found two bodies. The guard was an old guy called Handsome. The other was a squatter. It looked like he was attacked in his sleep by bugs. Bugs chewed Handsome up pretty bad, too. Singe couldn’t get a track on the bad guys but he was definitely murdered.”

“Not good, that. Did Handsome work for me?”

“He told me his boss was Lego Bunk when I saw him yesterday.”

“Bunk works for me. He used to, anyway. He'll be looking for work after this. Find out what you can about Handsome. If he has people we'll have to do something for them. Take care of his funeral arrangements, for sure. Now that Lego Bunk is gone, what’re you going to do about taking care of the World?”

He wasn’t that interested, though. He’d delegated the work. His direct involvement ended there. Unless I screwed up and had to go the way of Lego Bunk.

“Escalate. Bring in more rats. A lot more, if my ratman is right. Do the stuff for Handsome that you said. And let the tin whistles take care of the murder. The killers really want to work protection, they'll turn up.”

“Do what you have to,” Max growled. “Don’t come back here bothering me unless you get grief from somebody who thinks they’re more important than they really are.”

Never before had he so blatantly admitted how loudly wealth talks.

When you’re the god of beer in a city the size of TunFaire, you’ve got more money than the King himself.

“Then I’m free to do whatever needs doing? And you'll back me up? I want to be clear on this.”

“I'll back you one hundred percent as long as you keep your hot ham hands off the rest of my daughters.”

I’d broken Morley’s First Commandment, about messing with crazy women, and had a fling with Kittyjo Weider. She was marginally crazy then. She’d become a howling lunatic by the time she was murdered.

“No problem.”

“I do believe in your good intentions. And I know Tinnie. But I know Alyx, too. She gets an idea in her head, she gets as damned single-minded as her old man.”

“I’ve managed so far. She’s all talk, anyway. She just wants the reaction. From you and me both.”

That should give Max a chance to relax. And it might even be true.

Maybe I ought to call her bluff.

Only, Tinnie would slice off some of my favorite limbs.

And Alyx would call
my
bluff. Guaranteed.

Then Max would hear.

“Manpower,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“If ratpower isn’t enough to solve the trouble at the World... Never mind. I have resources.” If I needed twenty swinging dicks to clear the World, I could round them up in a couple hours.

“Come back when they’re after you for killing somebody.”

Gilbey hadn’t said anything for a while. He spoke up now. “Or when you find yourself in some demonstrable fiscal difficulty.”

He was the practical one.

Max suggested, “How about you have something interesting to report next time you come around?”

I exchanged glances with Gilbey. Manvil said, “Some days Max isn’t so enthusiastic about the new challenges. Even dead bodies don’t fire him up.”

It’s nice to have the kind of friendship that lets you talk about your pal that way right in front of him.

16

Playmate’s stable was quiet when I went by. I didn’t stop in. His brother-in-law was covering for him while he was away. I’d only met the man once. That was once more than I’d needed.

Play was turning the other one like a self-flagellation machine with that villain. But he loves his baby sister.

We tolerate crap from family that we’d butcher strangers over.

I couldn’t resist taking a turn past The Palms. I didn’t drop in, though. I stayed across the street. Morley’s henchman, Sarge, came out to dump a bucket of filthy water. He scowled my way. I waved and kept going. Sarge scowled a whole lot more.

Morley didn’t run after me. Not that I expected he would. Sarge probably didn’t mention that he’d seen me.

No problem. No pain. I’d decided to continue giving Morley Dotes a rest.

Then I saw Playmate, heading home from my place. He waved but didn’t stop. His business and life were at the mercy of a brother-in-law who should’ve been drowned at birth.

The people of TunFaire were still out enjoying the weather. Several stopped me and wanted to talk, usually about something I couldn’t have found less interesting.

We all have our quirks and special passions. Mine are beer and beautiful women. Lately, beer and beautiful woman, redheaded and blessed with a surfeit of attitude.

One of whom was waiting in ambush. She overran me when I got home.

When I got a chance to come up for air, I gasped, “Hunh! Hunh! Hunh!” When my heart slowed down and the rest of me stopped shaking, I just had to check the gift horse’s teeth. “What’re you doing here?”

“I thought I made that obvious.”

“You know how my head works. If it looks too good to be true, I figure it is.”

“Should I be flattered or offended?” Tinnie asked.

“You'll decide that no matter what I say. I’m in the camp that figures you’re too good to be true.”

“Ah. You sweet talker. Too bad you have all these other people around here.”

Singe could not stay away. She turned up to ask, “What did the principal have to say?”

“He said do the job. Stop coming round getting underfoot. Come back when it’s done. Go have a beer. I’m busy here.”

“You have a room. You do not have to mate in the hallway.”

Tinnie snickered into my neck.

The woman is shameless when it suits her.

My partner amazed me by favoring discretion. I heard nothing from him.

Dean did appear to offer us an evening meal.

Singe saw the lay of the land. Sullen, she went back to one of her private projects.

“What’s her problem?” Tinnie asked. “She trying to seduce you again?”

“That was just a phase. Adolescent fantasy. She got over it. Now she thinks she’s a storyteller. She says she’s written a book about me. And now she needs some interesting stories to put in it.”

“I should get together with her. I could tell her about you before you met.”

“I’m sure you could. And I’m just as sure that she don’t need any more ideas than what she’s got.”

A faint fragrance of amusement tainted the psychic air momentarily. Old Bones no doubt conceiving a wicked notion that could find life only at my expense.

There was no one in the hallway but Tinnie and me now. And she was having no trouble with the invisible eye that’s always there when the Dead Man is awake.

It didn’t take her long to make me forget, either.

She’s got skills, that girl.

17

The brain trust had gathered. Singe. Playmate. Saucerhead. John Stretch. With Old Bones in the background, ready to kibitz. Tinnie was in the doorway. She leaned against its frame in an indifferent, sluttish pose wasted on everybody. Me included. She wasn’t happy about that.

Would you care to direct your thoughts in a less prurient direction?

I said, “We need to brainstorm the situation at the World. Our efforts yesterday may not have done much more than stir up the bugs.”

Saucerhead observed, “It’s freaking hard to get the bugs out of anywhere. Mice and rats, same thing. You wipe out the mess you got, another one moves in.”

It is notoriously difficult to remove vermin and keep them removed. This instance will be no exception. But it should prove less difficult than the sort of general debugging you would find familiar. There will be a finite number of these mutant insects. Though that could be a large number. A sustained effort should destroy them faster than they can breed.

He was giving this more thought than he pretended.

You are correct, Garrett. Though not in the way you think.

I glimpsed something I didn’t have the mental capacity to grasp. A three-dimensional mind map of the universe in the earth around and under the World. Developed, with John Stretch’s help, from the minds of rats that had gone down there and had brought back memories of sights and smells. Especially smells.

John Stretch assures me that regular rats count on their sense of smell more than dogs do. Thus the thing inside the Dead Man’s mind was a visualized translation of information collected mainly by rat snoots.

Rats are crafty. But rats aren’t much smarter than a sack of hammers. I wasn’t ready to bet my life, fortune, and sacred honor on what my sidekick could put together from their mad, crippled rodent memories.

I said, “We could handle this whole thing fast if we could dump a million gallons of water into the warrens under the World.”

Flooding the bug tunnels was an obvious move. Figuring out how to deliver the flood was not.

“How about poison gas?” Playmate asked. “Some kinds would sink down into the bug warrens the way water would.”

“Like?”

“Fumes from burning sulfur.”

John Stretch said, “I would like to try rats again. Using more of them.”

The Dead Man touched me privately.
Allow John Stretch the effort. Insisting on a much larger effort. Ten thousand rats if that is what is needed. Test the strength of this absurd conjunction.

“Huh?”

There must be sorcery involved. To explain the size of the bugs. The absurdity arises in the mix of insects that have mutated.

Someone was doing to bugs what had been done to rats in the last century?

You are unlikely to lose much money betting that way.

I announced, “Guys, this may be a worse problem than I thought.”

Engage brain before opening mouth,
the Dead Man snapped.
Think before you pop off.

“Huh?”

You are getting ahead of yourself. It is possible the problem can be solved by application of a large number of rats. If it cannot,
then
you have your worse problem.

So I said, “Never mind. John Stretch. By all means, take another crack. But go for overwhelming numbers. All the rats you can round up. If you can’t run them all at the same time, fine. Use them in shifts.”