Cold Copper Tears

I exchanged looks with Dean. Maya's eyes had glazed and she was babbling like something had taken possession of her. "Hey! Maya! Come back." I clapped my hands in front of her nose.

She jumped and looked bewildered. "Sorry. I got carried away, didn't I? But it got pretty intense when those guys got a service going and their god talked to them. Hell. It was really bad the night before last. He showed up in person."

"Yes?" Did I want to know about this? "A thing like an ape, six arms, twelve feet tall?"

"That was the shape he assumed. Uglier than a bar­rel of horned toads. How did you know?"

"I met him. Out at Chodo's. He didn't make good company. But he seemed kind of puny for a god."

"That wasn't really the god, Garrett. I'm not sure what they meant but the thing was something like what the real god dreamed. Only he had control of the dream, like you do sometimes. You know?"

The more she talked the more nervous she got. I wondered if they'd done something to her that she ei­ther wouldn't talk about or couldn't remember. "Is this upsetting you?"

"Some. Things like that don't happen to people like me."

"Maya, things like that don't happen to people like me, either. Or anybody else. I've had some weird cases but I've never gone up against a god. Nobody these days has to deal with gods who really show up."

I glanced around. Dean was troubled. Maya was troubled. Even Bess, who didn't have a notion what we were talking about, bless her vacant head, was worried. I thought back on what I'd said.

A god who really shows up.

That's nightmare stuff. Who expects the gods to take an active role these days? Not even guys like Peridont. The gods haven't busy bodied since antiquity.

What Maya had to tell was interesting, but useful only in a cautionary sense. I still had to get my hands on Jill Craight and maybe squeeze her. Something had started all this excitement bubbling.

I recalled the note Jill had left in that apartment. I had made maybe the biggest screw up of a career checkered with goofs.

I should have sat on that sucker for as long as it took. Somebody was going to come and get it—some­body who might be at the root of this whole damned business.

Maybe I hadn't needed Jill at all. If only I had waited there until he came... But then I wouldn't have got­ten Maya loose...

Maybe it wasn't too late. "I have to go out."

36

It was too late. The note was gone. I cussed my blind­ness. I tore that apartment to shreds looking for something, anything, and found exactly what I de­served to find. Nothing.

So it would be the hard way after all, hunt Jill Craight until something shook loose.

I hoped I wouldn't be hearing from the Sons of Hammon for a while. The way they'd taken it on the chin, I couldn't see them doing anything but backing off to regroup. I just hoped the bastards were as con­fused as the rest of us.

I got out of there and headed to the area where Tey Koto claimed Jill was likely to be found.

There are pimples and pockets of Hell and Purgatory all over TunFaire. People wouldn't want their daugh­ters hanging out there. The kingpin probably has a finger in all of them. The worst, the biggest, where Chodo's presence is heavier than that of a king, is the Tenderloin, sometimes called the Street of the Damned. If you want it, someone there will sell it. And the kingpin will get his cut.

It's Hell on earth for those who survive that way, used and abused and discarded the instant they lose their marketability. For those who haven't been to the underside and haven't lived with the ticks on society's underbelly, it's difficult to believe people will use each other so badly.

Believe me, there are people out there who'll de­stroy a hundred lives for pocket change and never know a moment's remorse. Who wouldn't, in fact, understand if you told them they'd done something wrong by addicting a twelve-year-old so she'd coop­erate as a thirty-a-day flat-backer.

They understand "against the laws of Man" but not "against the law of humanity." Right is whatever you make it, for as long as you can make it last.

They're out there. And they're the real bogeymen.

And through those mean streets walks a lonely man, a solitary knight-errant, the last honorable man, bent but not broken by the lowering storm...

Boy! Pile it on like that and I might have a future as a street-corner prophet—complete with all the kicks in the teeth that implies.

People don't want to be told to do right. They don't really want to do right. They want to do whatever they want—and whine that it's not fair, it's not their fault, when it comes time to pay the piper.

There are times when I don't care much for my brothers and sisters, when I'd gladly see half of them buried alive.

I don't go into my high holy mode too often, but a trip to the Tenderloin gets me every time.