"I think so." For a few seconds Belinda was the woman she could have been if she had chosen different parents and wasn't a flaming sociopath.
"You got anybody set up around here besides me?"
"Outside. You're my inside guy. You're the one I trust."
Somebody tapped on the door. I couldn't help myself. "What's the password?"
"How about 'Breakfast,' nimrod?" That sounded like DeeDee.
Belinda collected my head knocker and got ready to brain an intruder clever enough to mimic DeeDee's twang.
I cleared the bowl and pitcher off the nightstand. DeeDee parked the tray she carried. She turned on Dotes. "It worked! He looks a thousand percent better. He's coming back. He's going to be all right." She bounced and clapped her hands like a girl younger than Crush, then bolted out.
I asked, "What's the story there?"
"I don't know. It may be best that I don't."
I hadn't meant DeeDee's connection to Morley. I'd meant DeeDee and Hellbore. On reflection, though, there was no reason for Belinda to know anything about employees so far down the food chain that they dealt direct with the folks whose money fueled the Combine engine.
"She brought food enough for us and our childhood invisible friends. Let's do some damage." I hadn't eaten since I left Macunado Street.
DeeDee came back with Crush before we were done. Crush jumped all over me. "You weren't supposed to eat the cream of wheat!"
"The what?"
"The mush, nimrod! That was for him. The heavy stuff was for you."
The invisible friends must have gotten that. I hadn't seen anything I considered part of a hearty breakfast. "The nearest thing to a real breakfast. ."
Belinda squeezed my left elbow. She had some grip for a girl. "Garrett, your job is to keep your mouth shut, look pretty, and break the legs of anybody who tries to hurt Morley."
I could do two out of three blindfolded but the mouth thing has been a lifelong challenge.
"Belinda, silence is too hard." I was always chock-full of words that want to be free. Some even coagulate into rational. . somethings.
16
Good thing Crush and DeeDee were dedicated to Morley's welfare. I was still wondering if I had what it took to feed him when they finished that and got to work dealing with the consequences of giving an unconscious man food and drink.
He needed bathing. His bed needed changed. I opened the window to the max during the process.
Belinda said, "You have to get more water into him. He's hot but he isn't sweating the way he should."
What would she know about dark elf fevers and sweats? Shrug. I have made a point, lately, of not hearing anything interesting about Miss Contague.
Some would say that I'd made a point of not hearing anything interesting about anybody who lacks red hair.
I wondered how Tinnie was doing.
I said, "My gut is full. While you're all here I'm going to look around outside."
Belinda gave me a dire look.
"Fear not. I won't make a run for it." I reclaimed my stick and got out, just to stretch my legs.
Belinda's watchers were easy to find. They all recognized me. They had been with her when she collected me on Factory Slide. They had nothing to report. Two were so bored they would have talked about anything with anybody.
The last one, though, had nothing to say. He had seen something interesting. Something interesting had seen him, too. He looked like he was napping at the top of a stairwell to a cellar. He had been dead long enough to cool down.
A few years ago that would not have moved me. Back then every night produced its crop of corpses for morning harvest. But our great city is fraught, entangled in the throes of change. Casually created cadavers have become uncommon. Director Relway's winnows have been harsh.
I considered the scene with time-dulled mind and senses. This was not one of Belinda's coach crew. He had not died fighting so had not been alarmed by the approach of whoever did him in.
I crossed over to the wall beneath Morley's window.
That was redbrick. It glistened. There was dried something on the cobblestones, too. A pile of goat scat marbles lay a few feet south of the glisten. Flies were feasting.
I marveled at all the quiet. Senior management at Fire and Ice had to know the true names of some well-placed clients.
True names weren't just useful in the sorcery game, they were invaluable in politics and the blackmail game. Even the passive sort that assures localized maintenance of public works and a useful police presence. Or absence.
The streets were in perfect repair. Night lamps were in place and unbroken. There wasn't a red top in sight.
There wasn't anyone in sight. Which explained why a dead man could cool down without an uproar.
I made a second round of Belinda's watchers. Then I went back to report.
DeeDee and Crush had finished. I met them in the hallway. I found Belinda seated on the edge of Morley's bed, holding his hand. She started, pulled away, looked slightly guilty.
I ignored that. "He does look like he's coming back."
"You don't look good. What happened?"
"Somebody killed your man who was watching the window. You want to see, look to your right, far side, at the top of that cellar well about forty feet along."
Belinda looked. "Oh. I see him now. Looks like he's sleeping."
"Which is why nobody noticed till I tried to wake him up."
Belinda went from concerned to grim in a heartbeat. She nodded but just stared at the dead man. Bodies and parts thereof would begin skewing Director Relway's violent crimes statistics real soon.
"Let me guess. Those idiots never saw a thing."
"No. They did. But I had to ask twice. They only thought they hadn't seen anything. Once they heard that a friend was dead they remembered an old woman with a goat cart passing through, headed toward downtown."
"What's the kicker? I'm in no mood for guessing games."
"It took her over an hour to get from the guy in the north to the guy in the south. It should have taken five minutes. The guy who saw her first said he heard her going. The man on the south side said he never heard anything. Bam. She was there. She scared him. He says her cart smelled."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
"There wasn't a cart out there when I looked. After I hit that thing with your club."
I got up to the window. "If it was next to the wall you wouldn't have seen it."
"I'll go get writing stuff."
"Uh. ."
She was ahead of me. "I need to send a note to Pular Singe. An offer of employment."
"But. ." I didn't want my little ratgirl involved in something deadly. Not again.
Belinda set a brisk pace when she had a goal. She returned with the essentials for letter writing before I finished inventorying improvements in Morley's condition.
"I brought extra paper. I'll write a letter of my own, for Singe to pass on to John Stretch. I may have work to subcontract."
She was in the red zone. Somebody was going to get hurt.
I hoped that wouldn't be her. Or Morley. Or, especially, me.
"I should send a note to Tinnie, too."
17
I did write a letter. It seemed futile once I finished. I didn't have it delivered. Tinnie knew what was going on. Anything I said wouldn't change her mind.
My dearly beloved had become fixed in her attitudes. She didn't let facts get in the way of her making up her mind. My friends thought that was my fault. Tinnie and I had a long history. When I stood up on my hind legs she would pack the attitude in. But I did let stuff slide because it was easier to go along.
I was supposed to be guarding someone, not known to be alive, in a hideout where nobody would think to look. The engineer of the hidery hadn't been successful. Somebody had tried the window already. A guard had lost his life. Then, scarcely an hour after Belinda went away, the last person I expected to see ambled into the room.