Dread Brass Shadows

Boy. There was a thought. Imagine waking up and looking over at that next to you. That would dampen your ardor. No wonder old Stonecipher took up with a chambermaid. "That's a vivid image. Anything else?" I could just see me going around ripping open the blouses of suspects.

She shook her head. All that copper hair flying around left me with another vivid image. But this one faded to red hair against cobblestones.

I wondered if Ti

"I have to go out, Dean. Over to Morley's."

His face pruned up with concern. "Is that wise?"

"It's necessary. Put Miss Ramada in the front guest room. She'll be safe enough there."

His look said she'd be safe only as long as I was Out of the house. I didn't argue. I seldom do. There's no way to change Dean's mind. Maybe he should've gone ahead and become a priest. You sure can't rattle him with facts.

He'd make a great little old lady, too.

Probably comes of having to live with all those nieces. I hate to wish them on anybody, but I do wish they'd find husbands and get Out of his hair.

Dean nodded. I stepped out of the room, deaf to the girl's appeals. I went upstairs and rearmed, then came down and stopped by the office to say good-bye to Eleanor. "Wish me luck, lady. Wish me better luck." I hadn't saved a soul in the case that had involved her. Unless, maybe, in a way, I'd saved me. After the hurting went, I'd found a renewed resolve to do my bit to make the world a better place.

19

You get wary when people have been pounding on you. Even when you're so tired even snazzy redheads have begun to lose their appeal. Before I'd gone a block I sensed I was being watched. I'm not sure what it was. Certainly nothing I could spot. The watcher was that good. Maybe it's a sense you develop in order to survive in this business, in this city.

I decided I'd stay out of places so tight I'd have nowhere to run, which was just common night sense anyway.

I was halfway to Morley's place, dodging low-flying morCartha, when suddenly I was no longer alone. "Shee-it! You guys got to stop doing that. My heart can't handle it." Despite my wariness, Crask and Sadler had surprised me, appearing out of nowhere. An object lesson, most likely. In case I ever became inclined to line up against them. They like to play those games.

I supposed it was their people who had tracked me from my place and sent them word I was coming.

Sadler smiled. At least I think that was supposed to be a smile. Hard to tell in the dark. "Really thought you'd appreciate some good news, Garrett. But if you ain't happy to see us..."

"I'm overjoyed. I'm thrilled right down the quicks of my toenails." Thrilled like they were double pneumonia with a raging dysentery tossed in. "Why can't you guys just walk up to me like normal people? You always got to be jumping out of alleys and stuff."

Crask said, "I like to see the look on your face." He wasn't smiling. He wasn't kidding.

Sadler said, "My, my. We're crabby tonight. Did we have a bad day?"

"You got your kicks. So tell me what's the good news?"

"We found your man Blaine."

"Huh?"

Sadler said, "Come on. You ask, we deliver."

Deliver, sure, but without any guarantees about condition. It's hard to read those two, but I did get a feeling all was not well during our stroll to see Blain. So I wasn't surprised when, after we'd passed a platoon of henchmen and climbed to a third-floor one-roomer, he turned out to be in a poor state of health.

Some unaccountably thoughtful soul had covered the body with a blanket.

I glanced around. The room's door had been busted off its hinges. And I don't mean just kicked in but torn up like it had gotten in the way of a troll in a hurry who didn't want to be bothered with latches. The room itself was ripped all to hell, like a squad of werewolves had gone berserk there. But there wasn't any blood. "You guys get a little overwrought?"

Sadler shook his head. "Somebody else. We come here when he heard about the racket."

"Who did it?"

He shook his head again. "Everybody cleared out before we got here. You know how it goes. See no evil, hear no evil, you don't got to worry about comebacks. We only caught one old guy who was too slow. He didn't know nothing but the dead guy's name. Dipshit was so thick he used his own name."

"Bright." But what did that mean? None of us knew Holme Blaine. The dead guy could be anybody and we wouldn't know the difference.

I glanced around again. Looking more closely, I could see the damage wasn't just insane destruction after all. "Somebody wanted it to look like crazies did it."

Crask smiled at me like I was a dull pupil who had seen the light at last. "Somebody was looking for something. Maybe some of them looking while some of them were asking. Then we come along unexpected, they do a quick cleanup and fade."

Ha! "So where are they?"

"Gone. Saw us coming."

Huh. I wondered why anyone would bother hiding the fact that they'd searched Blaine's place and fixed him so he couldn't talk about it. Did we have somebody looking for the book who didn't want somebody else looking for it to know they were looking, too?

That came to me off the wall but felt so right I went into a trance trying to figure out why.

Sadler said, "You want something to exercise your mind, check this out." He yanked the blanket off Blaine.

I gaped. I managed a one-syllable expletive after about fifteen seconds, and a quarter of a minute later said, "That's impossible."

"Yeah. Prime example of a mass hallucination."

Damn. Everybody was getting sarky.

Blaine was half-man, half-woman. Actually, more woman than man. Ru

"What do you think of that?" Crask asked.

I chewed some air. I made my eyes bug. "Looks like he had trouble making up his mind." I made fu

"First time I ever seen him without some wiseass remark," Crask said. I bet he'd waited a year to pick a time to drop that one.

Sadler asked, "What you know about this, Garrett?"

"I know it's weird. I never saw anything like it." Well, like part of it. That bottom had been in my small front room for a while. "It's like something out of a freak show."

"Not what I meant."

I knew that. "Zip."

"You sure? You wanted this guy."

"Because he was supposed to have the answers."

Sadler gave me the fish-eye. "Don't look like anybody's going to get to empty him out, now."

"No. I guess that's the point." I leaned against a wall, where nobody could get behind me, and gave the room another took. But there wasn't anything there to see. Except that body. Whoever did the job, they left nothing of their own. And they didn't find what they were looking for, else they wouldn't have been there still when Crask and Sadler showed. "Nobody saw nothing, eh?"

"This's TunFaire. What do you think?"

I thought they were lucky to have caught the old man they'd caught. I told him so. He grunted.

"You sure you ain't got nothing to tell us, Garrett?"

"Actually, I do. But let it ride a minute. I want you to understand something. I don't have a client. There's no percentage in me holding out." What's a little white fib amongst friends?

Crask said, "Would you look at this?" He'd gotten distracted in a big way.

"What?" Sadler.

Crask pointed at the body. We looked. I didn't get it till Sadler said, "It's changing." A little more of it was male than had been before.