Cold Copper Tears

It was several miles to the Wharf Street massacre site. Tey's boats had gone south from there, a goodly hike. After a while we started talking, mostly Tey making herself shine bright in the Doom. I asked her about Maya. She wouldn't tell me anything I didn't already know. From time to time a messenger came to tell her about the man being followed. He was headed the same direction we were. Tey told the messengers our anticipated route so she could be found again.

My angels were out there, too, shadowing me.

We had a parade going.

"I tried looking for Hester tonight," I said at one point. "I looked at every blonde who works Old Ship-way. None of them were her."

Tey laughed. "Old Shipway? You're precious, Garrett."

"Eh?" Precious?

"You believed that actress stuff?"

Well, yes, I'd bought it after Peridont validated it.

"Garrett, the only acting she ever did was the kind where the other actors are donkeys or guys that should have been born donkeys or ogres or trolls. You know what I mean?"

I grunted. I knew. I was disgusted, not so much because of what Jill might be doing as because of a failure of my vaunted eyesight. I'd let myself see only what I'd expected to see. I'd swallowed it whole when Peridont had fed me a whopper about the provenance of his mistress. I'd forgotten the first rule: everybody lies about sex, and the client always lies about it.

I felt pretty dumb.

Tey said, "She's back in the Tenderloin. I had a couple kids go down there. They saw her but she disappeared before they got close enough to find out anything."

I wondered if I ought to buy that. Jill had come up with the Doom. They didn't have much reason to turn her up for me.

This was an odd one, all intangibles. In a case where a pot of money is the stake, you know where the axis is. You watch the money and soon enough everything becomes clear—even when some of the players aren't motivated primarily by greed. For them the pot be­comes an excuse, a lever.

So far I hadn't caught a whiff of a pot, excepting maybe the Relics Peridont had mentioned the first time we talked, or whatever it was the boys had been so sure they could steal from Jill. That seemed to have been forgotten in the fusing and feuding since.

I'm a guy who doesn't understand intangible stakes. I know some would argue that I have a set of values I take pretty seriously, but if I can't eat it or spend it or make it go purr in the night, I don't know what to do with it. It's a weakness, a blind spot. Sometimes I forget there are guys willing to get killed over ideas. I just go bulling ahead looking for the pot of gold.

We got onto Wharf Street. The guy who had dropped by my place was still ahead of us. My angels were out there in the dark, probably cussing me for my thoughtless­ness in running them all over the city. Didn't I ever sleep?

Guys, I was cussing me, too. For the exact same reason.

"There's the place where it happened."

Wharf Street, the waterfront, the whole commercial and industrial strip down there facing the river, is a whole lot like me. It never goes to sleep. When the day people move out, the night workers come in and the economy keeps rolling along.

Forty or fifty goblins and ogres and whatnot were stand­ing around gossiping while a group of city ratmen got set to load the bodies on wagons for delivery to crematoria. Moving with its customary lightning efficiency the city was just now getting around to cleaning up.

The operation was proceeding in the usual fire-drill state of confusion.

The ratmen moved at a velocity barely perceptible. I said, "I'm going to go nose around."

"Won't they stop you?"

"Maybe. But any human who turns up this time of night looking officious they'll figure belongs."

I was right. I got some dark looks but they were the kind reserved for bosses in general, for being bosses. Nobody said a word.

I didn't expect to find much and I was right again. The scavengers and sightseers and souvenir hunters had picked the bones clean. They'd even stripped the stiffs. The rat-men were bitching because there wasn't anything left.

If they want the cream, they ought to get there in time to skim it.

I did notice one thing right off. Those sopranos had taken over the whole building and had been there long enough to turn it into a weird residential temple. One wall in every room had been replastered and painted with murals depicting creatures with eight limbs, no two the same. I saw a spider, a crab, an especially ugly octopus, and a lot of things that don't come with eight limbs, including a ringer for the thing that had visited Chodo. One double-ugly was human except that it had a skull for a face and something disgusting in every hand. Above him was the same motto as on the temple coins, "He Shall Reign Triumphant."

I said, "I don't think I'd like that."

"Ugly mother, ain't he?" a ratman remarked.

"He is. Any idea who he's supposed to be?"

"You got me, chief. Looks like something some­body dreamed up while he was doing weed to get him through a withdrawal fit."