The Cadaver Client

He eyed me and eyed the knife and finally his eyes fell on the crown in his palm.

“This is a lot of money,” he said.

“Enough to buy you a brand new life. Come back around before Curfew. I’ll tell you where your bank is; give you the bank chit so you can get to the rest anytime. Deal?”

Maybe, just for an instant, Stick really meant to start over. Maybe he realized what a stroke of rare good fortune had befallen him, and maybe he meant to turn his miserable life around.

He stood. He looked me in the eye. And after I stood, too, he shook my hand.

“Thanks,” he said. “I mean it.”

And then he was gone.

I did all that, by the way. I went to Crowther and Sons. I opened an account in the name of Mr. Stick. I deposited the nineteen gold crowns. I had the bankers make up a chit just for Stick, made them promise not to throw him out even if he stank, and I put Stick’s bank chit in my pocket.

Stick never returned. The chit is in my desk, waiting for him. I suspect it will wait forever.

Even rare good fortune can be too little and too late.

I spent the rest of the morning greeting other respondents to my waybills. I stopped counting Marris Sellways after the fifth one sashayed into my office. All of them, though, seemed surprised to learn they had a daughter. One couldn’t even recall where she’d lived. One was obviously a man.

Mixed in with the would-be Marris Sellways were the people who claimed to have known her. Not a one recalled her daughter’s name, or much of anything else. Reported ages ranged from teenager to gra

I shooed them all out and only had to resort to waves of my head-knocker once.

I paid the urchins, as promised, and I even flipped a pair of coppers to the man in drag because at least he showed a sense of humor about the whole wretched mess.

Skillet came back around and got the rest of his pay and his bonus. By early afternoon, the crowds had thi

I wasn’t very happy when I left Skillet behind and hit the street. The sun could beam and the birds could sing all they wanted to-I’d been lied to, either by a dead man or the old lady who claimed to speak for him. And since Gra

I stopped by Mama’s, more out of a desire to snag a cup of her tea than anything else. She was waiting, and instead of her usual tea she’d splurged and made coffee. I cleaned off a spot on her card-reading table and plopped myself down.

“I seen quite a crew file in and out of your place,” she said.

I grunted. “All a waste of time. All but one.”

Mama nodded sagely. “The stinkin’ one?”

“He ran a gang called the Bloods back before the fires, when Cawling Street was Cawling Street. He remembers the Sellway woman. Remembers her kid. He also remembers her husband getting himself killed in a bread riot a year before the War ended. That business about the spook being a soldier coming home never happened.”

“I reckon dead ’uns ain’t no more honest than the living.”

“And I reckon I’m being played, Mama. Spooks my ass. You know Gra

I half-expected Mama to shake her dried owl at me, but she just shook her head.

“Boy, I know you don’t believe. And maybe I don’t blame you much. For every Gra

“I worship the ground you drop feathers on, Mama, you know that. But Gra

“You ain’t never supposed to believe nothing but the truth, boy.” Mama cackled. “Trouble is, sometimes the truth gets buried with the dead.”

I thought about Stick. “Sometimes it’s better that way.”

“This ain’t one of them times. I done some askin’ on my own, boy. I got some answers you ain’t going to like.”

I can read Mama pretty well. When she lowers her voice and leans in toward me, I know to expect Eldritch Wisdom wrought from her dealings with things Mystical and Arcane.

“This involves portents and signs, doesn’t it?”

“There’s worse things than tellin’ lies afoot, boy. There’s killin’. And a powerful want to kill.”

“Throw in some vengeance from beyond the grave and I’m sold.”

“Ain’t about vengeance, boy. At least folks might have a reason for wantin’ that. Ain’t no reason here.”

“That part I believe.”

Mama snorted. “Boy, I’m telling you plain that Gra

“A dead man who’s so far lied about everything but the money.”

“Why do you reckon that is, boy? Why do you reckon he’s gone to all this trouble just to find that woman, if what he said about being her husband ain’t true?”

“I don’t know. Yet.” I stood and drained my cup. “I’m going to see Gra

“Take this with you.”

Mama rose and rummaged around on a shelf behind her and finally produced a little cloth bag tied at the neck with a piece of dirty yellow yarn.

“You get in a tight with that there dead man’s shade, you remember you got this.”

She put it in my hand.

“Mama.”

“And if you drop that in the gutter a block from here I’ll know it,” said Mama. She shook her owl for emphasis. “Took me all night to mix that up and hex it. Now get. The Eltis sisters are comin’, any minute.”

I put the pitiful little bag in my pocket.

“Thanks, Mama. The coffee was good.”

“The advice was better. One day you’ll appreciate that.”

“I always do, Mama.”

I heard a cab slow to a halt outside, so I hurried out.

Again, Gra

I didn’t sit on her porch this time. I started banging on doors. Having once been seen in Gra

The second gave me a “what, are you stupid?” look and suggested Gra

Some finder I am. Where else would I look for a spook doctor but the cemetery?

Ra

Families who go more than seven days late on a payment wake up to find their deceased relative dumped without ceremony on their doorstep.

No one ever accused any of Ra

I got directions to the nearest such place and headed out. It wasn’t far, and I saw Gra

There’d been a funeral there recently. The fireflowers in the gate urns hadn’t even wilted yet. The place was tiny, less than a block in any direction, and it was enclosed on all sides by buildings and a wall of scraggly hedge-bushes. The gravewards were crude affairs, some obviously homemade, all leaning in different directions. Some had fallen, and hadn’t been righted.

Here and there were open empty graves, evidence of the Church’s unflagging and doubtlessly holy efficiency in all ma

I caught up with Gra