One of my goals in life was to answer two questions. When did Murdock sleep? He had a habit of working long hours before I even rolled out of bed and yet somehow still had the ability to work past midnight. How did he manage to look freshly dressed? My clothes wrinkle if I think about wearing them. His shirt and pants always looked just pressed.
I opened the passenger door and removed a pizza box from the seat. I left it sitting prominently on a trash can in front of the hotel’s revolving door. Then I fell into the seat, and he pulled out.
He glanced at me with amusement. “You smell like money.”
“Yeah, I need a shower,” I said.
Murdock skipped the turn onto Old Northern Avenue that leads to my street. We continued down to Summer Street and hung the left over the channel. “Where are you taking me?”
“The gang unit came through with an address for Moke. Thought we could shake his crib a little,” he said.
“Could be fun. Speaking of trolls, I asked Cal to get us a line on where we can find C-Note. If I can get close to him, I can see if his essence matches anything I found at Kruge’s office,” I said.
Murdock drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “You mean Kruge’s office where Kruge was murdered, which is a case we are not working on? That Kruge’s office?” He had a lazy smile on his face when he said it.
“Yeah, that Kruge’s office,” I said. He just shook his head slowly with the same smile.
When Murdock and I were at Yggy’s last night, his essence had blazed around him unlike any human essence I had seen. In my natural, unfocused state, I’m aware of the essence around me like a type of peripheral vision. I sense stuff, but it’s just sort of hanging there unattended. We leave essence everywhere we go, and the essence of where we go even lingers on us as well. Murdock’s car, for instance, always has a residue of his essence because he spends so much time in it. Mine’s there, too. It doesn’t fade because it’s constantly reinforced. The champagne flute I left at the reception has my essence on it, but that will fade because I’ve had only brief contact with it.
I focused my senses on him. Murdock’s essence glowed next to me, not as brightly as at the bar, but more than it ever had before it changed. On our last big case together, he had taken a hit from a bolt of fey energy that almost killed him. Instead, it supercharged his body essence somehow. I can tell he doesn’t understand what that means yet. If the fight at Yggy’s was any indication, though, he’s faster and stronger than he ever was. It’s not easy for a human to knock out an elf, and he did it with one punch.
We approached the Reserve Channel, an inland water access that divided the southern edge of the Weird from South Boston. Summer Street crosses the channel and continues into Southie. In typically confusing Boston mapping, Summer Street also takes a right turn and runs along the channel. It makes giving directions interesting. Murdock took the right and pulled over.
Long, dark warehouses lined the street facing the channel. “What’s the address?” I asked as we got out the car.
“It’s more a location,” he said and started walking down the embankment to the bridge.
This end of the channel had had a small inlet in it at one time. Over the years, as the neighborhood went downhill, the inlet had become a dumping ground until it was mostly filled in. You could have walked across it now. Right to the bridge. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.
He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Hey, he’s a troll.”
We picked our way toward the bridge through sodden garbage. Out on the water, several boats in winter wrapping swayed at their moorings on a floating barge. Moke had a picturesque view as long as he didn’t look down.
In the summer, the channel can be fragrant, and not in a good way. The cold weather kept the odor down, but the air still had the raw, flinty smell of dirt and dirty water. We went under the bridge. An amazing amount of trash lay scattered around—clothing, slumped cardboard boxes, a mangled shopping cart, split plastic bags of household garbage. Against the retaining wall stood a collection of major appliance boxes, packing crates, and skids woven together into a shantytown. Here and there, the homeless huddled around small fires. Murdock ignored them and made for a large heap of green corrugated roofing panels. A thick stench hit my nose, two days past fetid. Murdock banged on one of the panels.
“Moke. You have company,” he said. The way he pushed back his coat, I knew he had unsnapped his holster. He banged again. “Moke! I don’t need a warrant to come in there.”
We could hear rummaging sounds and some actual growling. Murdock stepped back as a double-height panel shifted opened.
“Awright, awright. Keep yer hat on,” a deep voice said.
The panel swung out on a makeshift hinge. A troll shuffled out, his head bobbling on a long neck that protruded from a wide hunchback. His gray face held round black eyes, a number of yellow teeth protruding from between his lips, and one of the longest noses I’ve ever seen, misshapen and hooked downward. His hair consisted of several greasy strands that dangled straight down to his chin. He stank, of course. His patchwork suit looked so soiled that soap and water were clearly not part of the program.
He leaned forward onto his hands and squinted down at Murdock. “Hemph. Police. You tell that Ms. Beruthy I didn’t take no cats. She got so many, she don’t know if one’s gone anyway. And they taste terrible, too.”
“We’re not here about cats. We’re here about goats,” said Murdock.
He narrowed his eyes at us. “Hemph. Stupid joke. Older than you.”
“Are you Moke?” I said, just to confirm Murdock’s information. There might not be many trolls in the city, but too often people assume there are fewer than there actually are. You just don’t see them.
He nodded. I resisted the urge to hit him for destroying my blood evidence. But you don’t hit a troll unless you want to break a hand.
“Word is you run the T-Rats,” Murdock said.
His great head swayed between us. “Don’t like T-Rats. Hide from them.”
The hard part about interrogating a troll is that you can’t intimidate him with size or strength. Grabbing him by the neck and trying to shove him against the wall would make a scene that we’d both laugh at.
“What about Dennis Farnsworth? You know him?” I said.
He stared at me and didn’t speak. Trolls can stay incredibly still, so still it’s not unusual for someone to walk right past their large shadowed presence without even noticing them. Murdock and I exchanged a glance. Unfortunately, it was one of those glances that said this is what Murdock submitted my consulting fee invoices for.
I looked up at Moke and decided to try and provoke him into talking. “Rumor has it the T-Rats are underpaid and easy pickings. C-Note will pay double their current cut if they ally with the TruKnights.”
Nothing.
“So, Detective Murdock and I are spreading the word. Sounds like a good deal and would stop the fighting.”
More nothing.
“Everyone knows the T-Rats are in it for the money. Not a loyal one in the bunch. I’ll tell you this since you don’t like them, but one of them led me to some evidence in the Farnsworth murder.”
“That’s a lie. Was a flit that did,” said Moke.
Success. I smiled at him. Trolls don’t trust anyone easily, so they value loyalty more than most. Murdock would make a good troll, but he bathes too much.
“And you set the building on fire,” I said.
“’Nother lie. Was TruKnights.” Moke settled back on his haunches.
“I didn’t see any TruKnights. I saw T-Rats.”
“You was on my turf. Fire had elf-stench.” Another little trick trolls have. While druids can sense the essence of people, trolls can sense who manipulated essence. All fey manipulate essence and, unless they use their own, they pull it from their surroundings. If I found a ward stone, it would have essence running in it, but I’d have no idea who put it there unless whoever did it had been near it recently. Trolls can sense what kind of fey did it long after they’re gone. Sometimes even the exact person.