The Five Faces (The Markhat Files) (3 page)

Finally, we sat and ate. Darla fries a mean pork chop. We had corn and green beans and a big fat potato each. Buttercup finished off the cookies and then amused herself by playing peek-a-boo with the whispering skull she carries.

“Gertriss came by earlier,” said Darla as she put down her fork.

You live with a woman long enough, you learn to recognize the subtle difference between a casual conversation and a conversation that only sounds casual but can veer off into the significant at any word.

“Let me guess.”

Darla laced her fingers together and rested her chin on them. “She said you left this morning looking for an awful man named Hurry-Up Pete and returned in the employ of a pair of street kids who’ve lost their dog.”

“I believe in maintaining a diverse range of clientele.”

“So this wasn’t some elaborate prank you played on Mama Hog?”

“Nope. A man in a wide-brimmed hat who spoke with a strange accent cut the leash a little blind girl named Saffy was holding. The man took her dog Cornbread, and Saffy’s brother is going to pay off the debt working in our yard this summer.”

Darla smiled. “And Hurry-Up Pete?”

“I’ll tell the clients what I know. Refund half their advance. They’ll either find Hurry-Up, or they won’t, but I’ll not be a part of it. Not this time. Not anymore.”

Silence, save for Buttercup’s unintelligible murmurings and her skull’s equally cryptic, whispered replies.

“That’s why I love you,” said Darla at last. She rose and came and kissed me.

Later, we ate that pie. Best damned pie I ever had.

Chapter Four

I rose before the lazy sun. Bathed and shaved and dressed in the dark, so as not to wake Darla.

When I left, the sun was just beginning to pink up the eastern sky. I hailed a cab a couple of blocks away and headed for Cambrit.

The only traffic out and about was the dead wagons. We passed three—none of them full, one empty save for a single, shrouded bundle lolling bonelessly in the wagon’s bloodstained bed.

I thought of the crowds amid the docks and decided that the halfdead were hunting there these days. Then I remembered the crowded barges and put the thought out of my mind.
 

Three-leg Cat greeted me at my office door. I raised my hand to unlock the door when it flew open and Gertriss yanked me inside.

Gertriss is my partner. She’s a tall, blonde looker, right off a pig farm in Pot Lockney, Mama’s ancestral stomping grounds, and while she’s a long way from the swine pens, she’s still got a farm girl’s grip.

“Easy, sister,” I said. “I’m a married man these days.”

She peered through our glass spy window. “Don’t flatter yourself,” she said. Then she turned and put her back to the door. “Boss, just what the hell have you gotten yourself into this time?”

Gertriss, as I said, is a looker. Pale gold hair, piercing blue eyes, alabaster skin.

But her eyes were red and puffy, her hair was a tangle, and her clothes were wrinkled and askew.

“You’ve been here all night?”

“Someone had to be,” she said. “Sorry, boss. I’m tired.”

“Sit.” I pulled back my chair. “Tell me what’s happened.”

“I got here an hour after you left,” she said, taking my chair. She still smelled of some expensive perfume. “I found Marlene Horn.”

Gertriss was working a case for the parents of a teenage daughter who believed their eldest, Marlene, had been snatched by a street gang two weeks past.

“Dead or alive?”

“Alive. She’s now Mrs. Marlene Coats. They forgot to mention the boyfriend they forbade her to marry.”

“Mr. Coats, I presume?”

She nodded. “Anyway. I met with the Horns. Broke the good news. Got paid. I was hanging around here, just resting.”

She blushed. By resting she meant waiting for Curfew to fall, hoping Evis might pop around.

Evis is halfdead. He’s my best friend, and Gertriss’s best friend too, although Gertriss and I apply the term with very different meanings.

“The Watch showed up right at Curfew,” said Gertriss. “Started banging on the door, demanding to see you.”

I frowned. “The Watch? What for? Did they say?”

“Hell no, they didn’t say. Just said they saw the lights on and they knew you were here and open the damned door or we’ll break it down.”

“I see they didn’t break in.”

“They banged on the door for hours, boss. Hours. They even tried kicking it in. Then a Watch wagon rolled up and there was a lot of shouting and the whole mob of them tore out of here like the High House was on fire. So I ask again. What the hell are you working on?”

I sat on my desk. Gertriss regarded me with a weary look of exasperation.

“Mama told you all about it, I’m sure,” I said. “I went looking for Hurry-Up Pete. Found him. Took a new case involving a stolen dog, one Cornbread, who presents no particular interest to the Watch that I know of.”

“That’s your story?”

“It’s the truth.”

She sighed and stretched, which did interesting things to the front of her blouse. I looked chastely away until she was done.

“I’m going to Mama’s to get some sleep,” she said. “But the Watch will be back. If I were you, I’d think up something else to tell them. I don’t think they’re interested in dog stories right now.”

I nodded. Then I saw Gertriss out and watched her until she was safe behind Mama Hog’s door.

Three-leg Cat was perched in my chair when I came back to the office.

“I’ll give you my hat and my gun if you’ll handle the Watch.”

He blinked at me and made for the back room. “You’re fired,” I added, but he showed me the back of his tail and slipped through the barely-open door.

I hung my hat on the rack, put my gun in a drawer, and wondered how long it would take the Watch day shift to finish breakfast and come huffing and puffing my way.

My sowing of coin at the docks bore early fruit.

The first caller of the day was a skinny, nervous man who introduced himself as Mr. Penny. Mr. Penny claimed he knew all there was to know about dogfighting on the docks.

I tossed his ass out in the street when he hinted he’d let me in on all his secrets for a pair of Old Kingdom crowns.

I’d barely gotten comfortable when he knocked at my door again. This time, he was willing to settle for a single crown, and out into the street he flew, by the scruff of his scrawny, dirty neck.

Give Mr. Penny one thing—he was persistent. By the time we settled on a single pair of newly-minted coppers, he’d been shown the cobblestones four times, and had even received a mild thrashing from old Mr. Bull’s ever-present straw broom.

“So tell me what you know,” I said. I slid one copper across my desk toward him and kept the other in my hand.

Mr. Penny glared at me and silently worked his jaw. He was new to weed. In a month, maybe two, he’d be grinding his teeth together all the time, until they were cracked and ground to black, rotting nubs.

“They fight every Friday,” he said. “Starts an hour after Curfew.”

“Where?” You have to remind weedheads to keep talking, or they just sit there and chew.

“It don’t have a name. Burned up right after the big storm. Was a warehouse. They fight in the basement. Watch don’t see any lights, that way. Give me the rest.”

“Tell me how to get there first.”

He tried to work up enough spit to swallow. It took him a while.

“Find Roy’s. Go a block west. Then a block north. There’s an alley. Bricks are painted white. In there, first right, next left. Tell the man your name is Cauld. He’ll want ten coppers. He’ll open a door. That’s it. Give me the rest.”

I slid the other coin his way.

He snatched it up and was gone, leaving my door standing open.

I got up to close it and watched him scurry away. He didn’t go alone. As Mr. Penny turned the corner, a man in a new, black hat and Watch-issue, black brogans popped out of a storefront and hurried after the weedhead.

A moment later, Watch whistles blew.

A moment after that, a pair of shiny, black Watch tallboys rounded the corner. Old Mr. Bull, still sweeping his stoop, saw them heading for me and laughed.

“You’re in trouble now,” he said. His broom never missed a beat. “One of these days you’ll find some common sense and quit all this and stay home with the missus.”

I didn’t close my door. Instead, I leaned on the wall beside it and greeted the Watch with a smile and a cheery wave.

“One of these days I just might,” I said to Mr. Bull. “Maybe I can get a job sweeping up. You hiring?”

The tallboys came to a halt. Watchmen spilled out, grim-faced. None returned my winsome smile.

The last Watchman to emerge was one I knew. Holder, Captain Holder, the bright and rising star of the Regent’s shiny, new City Watch.

“Inside, Markhat,” said the Captain. “You’ve got some talking to do.”

Mr. Bull hooted an old man’s cackling laugh, shuffled behind his door, and slammed it firmly shut.

My office is made to seat two. There’s enough room for another four or five to stand.

Captain Holder brought in six uniformed Watchmen. The Captain took my client’s chair. The Watchmen put their backs to my walls and fixed me in half a dozen steely glares.

“I only have tea service for four,” I said. “But—”

“Shut up,” said the Captain. “I don’t think you’re funny. I’m going to ask you a question. You’re going to answer it, and you’re going to answer it straight. Or we take this all downtown, and maybe I ask the question again today or maybe I get busy and I don’t ask again until next week. Is that clear?”

I nodded. “It’s clear. Ask.”

He inched closer so that he sat on the edge of my chair. His elbows were on my desk. His hands were clenched into fists. The knuckles on his right hand were bruised and crisscrossed with old scars.

“Tell me what you were doing on the docks last night,” he said. His eyes were bloodshot but hard. “Tell me who you talked to, and what they said. Don’t forget we’ve got the man who left here. And you can bet your ass he’s telling us everything he knows.”

“You aren’t going to like it,” I said. “I’m going to tell the truth. But it’s not one you want to hear.”

“You tell the truth, and we’ll not have a problem,” he said. “You try one of your song and dance routines, and all the fancy lawyers in all Avalante’s pockets won’t get you out of the Old Ruth this time.”

I laid it all out, starting with Hurry-Up Pete and ending with Mr. Penny.

Captain Holder’s face was the color of fresh-cut beef by the time I was done.

“I told you what would happen if you tried to be funny,” he said. The white scars on his knuckles stood out against his bruises when he tightened his fists. “You should have listened.”

There came a knock at my door. One of the Captain’s six silent men opened it, popped outside, and had a brief whispered conversation with someone.

The Captain waited, grinning the grin of the predator triumphant.

“In a moment, my man is about to whisper in my ear,” he said. “He’ll be telling me what your friend from this morning told him. Last chance, Markhat. You want to talk about dogs named Cornbread, or you want to talk about the faces?”

“I told you the truth, Captain. All of it.”

The Watchman came inside and leaned by Captain Holder’s ear.

It took him maybe ten seconds to tell it all, and ten seconds for a big vein in Holder’s sweaty forehead to start throbbing.

I lifted my hands and spread them.

“I went to the docks looking for a dog-fighting ring,” I said. “And a man in a wide-brimmed hat who speaks with an accent. That’s all I know. That’s all Mr. Penny the weedhead knows. I’m looking for a dog named Cornbread, because I was a dog handler during the War and my wife thinks I’m adorable. What’s this about faces, Captain? Because it’s the first time I’ve heard mention of—”

The Captain stood. He glared at me and raised his hand and for one awful moment, I was sure he was pointing me out to his men so there’d be no mistaking who to beat and then arrest.

“I don’t believe a damned word you say,” he said. His men, all of them, were a single syllable, the smallest motion, from mayhem. “If I find—when I find—you lied to me, I’ll put you down so deep they’ll lower your slop with a bucket and a winch. Stay out of my way, Markhat. Avalante be damned. Get in my way and I’ll end you.”

He stormed out.

His men turned to follow.

“Nice of you to stop by,” I said. “Always happy to assist the Watch with their enquiries.”

The last one out was kind enough to close my door.

I let out the breath I’d been holding. I paced until my nerves were settled, and then I pulled out my notepad and doodled until I heard Mama’s heavy footsteps sound outside.

“Boy?” She stuck her head in my door. “You alive in there?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “Made some new friends. How many are still out there watching?”