Emerald City Blues (6 page)

Fortunately, getting lost here meant my tail would have just as much trouble finding me as I would finding myself. That was part of why I had come here at all. We threaded our way between crates and around stacks of produce, navigated past a few hundred poultry, and finally entered the back door of a brick building that looked like every other brick building in Chinatown. Except that it wasn't.
A dragon dwelt here, and I felt it watching me. I might have ten years worth of rust on the skills Gerd taught me, but I would have had to be blind, deaf or stone drunk not to notice the skin-prickling hum of latent power radiating from this building.

One out of three ain't bad odds.

The back door to the building opened three inches, and my guide unleashed another torrent of unintelligible syllables. I waited. The door opened another five inches. More sounds. The young man in the doorway must have heard him just fine, though, since he gestured for me to enter and bowed off the old man. I echoed the bow, but my guide was already shuffling off by another route than the one we'd used. He didn't so much as glance backwards. Oh well.

The young Chinese man evidently straddled cultures: he wore a long black
changshan
robe and a fedora that had seen better days than mine. He led me down a hallway lined with those walls made of translucent rice paper. I followed, getting a nice view of his braided queue. At the end of the hall he knelt on a woven mat outside a door and slid it ajar with one hand before bowing his head down almost to the woven mat. What was this? An audience?

I
stepped inside. Albert King wore a black
changshan
robe and an utterly unreadable expression. He was sitting in a fairly impressive chair. I didn't know all that much about the Chinese but I knew they knelt or sat on the ground unless they were Important. Maybe he had inherited his father's title after all. The door slid shut behind me with a sound as soft as a dying man's sigh. We were alone.

"What have you brought into the Middle Kingdom?" he asked without preamble.

"Nice to see you too," I returned, trying to catch my footing.

"I have no time for polite words. My walls hold, but they are challenged. There is a tiger in my garden. I think it followed you here. Is this not so?" His tone was clipped and deceptively soft.

"It is." I would anger him more by beating around the bush than by admitting the truth straight off. I hoped. "Someone attacked me last night and framed me for the burning of that warehouse in Riverside. I think whoever did it followed me from the police station downtown. I was hoping to lose her in the Mikado once I got out of the cab." Not exactly true, but close enough.

"She has power." It was not a question. I shrugged, then grimaced and nodded. "You ask much, coming here unannounced with a tiger following your scent. I have more responsibilities to my people than when last we worked together. If you were anyone else..." He did not complete the thought. I knew exactly what he
meant. I owed him big for this.

So be it. "I'm sorry to inconvenience you
, Albert. I just didn't have anywhere else to turn at the moment. Give me a few minutes, until she leaves, and I'll get out of your hair."

"No." Albert stood gracefully. "A tiger who thinks it may enter my garden unchallenged once will do so again. It is too dangerous to be ignored. Come." He turned and led me behind another screen of rice paper and lacquered wood. I hesitated before entering the room. That sense of latent power was not so latent here. I stood on the threshold of Albert's sanctum, and that was close enough for comfort. Or for discomfort, rather; I already felt that pins-and-needles sensation of being too close to something hot.
I didn't feel like going any closer, thanks.

Albert paid no heed to my trepidation and walked to the middle of the perfectly square room. In the exact center was a square sandbox. Okay, that's probably a horrible round-eye barbarian type thing to say, but my hand to god, that's exactly what it looked like. In the middle of the sandbox was what looked like a lantern on a tripod, except the whole thing was carved from stone and looked to be older than Moses. Albert knelt, lit a bit of incense - without matches, I noticed - and adopted a meditative pose. Incense smoke spiraled silently upwards, creating a thin bluish layer about level with my eyes. Albert was statue-still. I tried not to fidget. After a few minutes he reached down and picked up a mallet with a soft round head and used it to ring a gong set beside the sandbox. The sound went on and on, reverberating much longer than it should have. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up and suggesting we depart with some urgency. I forced myself to ignore them.

Then I heard a voice, hollow and faint but very real. It was speaking Chinese, so I could not understand it; but I would never forget that voice as long as I lived. I discovered my back was pressed against the wall to the audience room.
Ah King.
Gerd had held some very strong views on the practice of necromancy. So did I, and they involved staying as far away from it as I could except on days not ending in Y. Today was not that day.

Albert intoned something questioningly in a sing-song monotone, and the voice of the
former King of Chinatown filled the room. He sounded out of sorts. I hoped it wasn't with me.

It went back and forth like that for a bit. I couldn't understand any of it, and I turned my thoughts to the case instead. You really can get used to anything. Well, almost anything. I hadn't exactly gotten used to the fact that Albert had called up his dead father for a heart to heart, but I didn't have to be. This was his thing, not mine.
The case. Think about the case.
I tried to focus, but it's hard not to be distracted when the living call up the dead in your presence and proceed to have a conversation.

And then, just like blowing out a candle, it was over.

The sense of power was gone. Albert was standing in front of me. I wasn't sure, but I think he was smiling just a bit. If so, I felt sorry for whoever was tailing me. Well, kind of.

"The way is clear for you to return to your home. The tiger has fled the dragon, and knows it is not welcome in his garden. And I have a message for you." Albert looked as if he knew I was distinctly
uncomfortable with the whole talking-to-the-dead thing and was taking a measure of amusement in watching me squirm. I was definitely squirming. Still, help was help. "Okay. Shoot."

"He says the tiger hunts, but not for you. Though it is a stranger to you, the master who holds its leash is not. A message waits for you, and a ship - but any journey you take upon it will have no return. Take the measure of your ene
my, or he will take your soul."

There it was again. That cold feeling, like icy winter rain down my back. I hated necromancy. I hated vague fortune cookie prophecies. But more than anything I hated being the last to know what was going on. "Thanks, Albert. If it's all the same, I'll be on my way now. I'm sorry to have brought trouble to your door. I'll try not to let it happen again." If there
was
an again. Ever. "Thanks for your help. And, uh, your dad's help."

Albert grinned demonically at me, teeth white against his skin. "He said you are welcome any time."

The door didn't even come close to hitting my ass on the way out.

This was serious.

I paced. It didn't help much. I did it anyway, cup of tea gone cold and forgotten on my windowsill. Outside, the rain fell in endless sheets of grey. Inside, it felt more like a summer storm was brewing.

I glanced at the letter from Gordon Buskins again, as if it might tell me something new. He was good, and he was fast. What he wasn't was cheap; his bill was attached, almost apologetically. I would have to do something about that. I would also have to come up with enough money to eat, and figure out how I was going to put off my landlord's demands for rent. Again. But those were background noise. Gordon had found a record filed with the county by the executor of Gerd's estate, a man by the name of Heinrich von Griffe. His connection to Gerd was unknown. I'd certainly never heard of him. The files stated Gerd's heir was his next of kin, a woman by the name of Florence Zimmerman, currently a resident of New Zebedee, Michigan. From the context it seemed she was Gerd's sister. Strange. I'd never heard him talk about having family.

But that wasn't the really strange part. The really strange part was the fact that I was mentioned in Gerd's will.

I re-read the end of Gordon's handwritten note.
There are references in Mr. Mueller's will to bequests placed in trust for both Thomas Cooke and for you. No mention is made of what your bequest is, where it might be, nor with whom; nor even under what circumstances it was to be delivered to you. I take it you were unaware of this? -G.B.

No, I was bloody well not aware, thank you very much. The idea there was something Gerd meant me to have ten years ago was putting me very much on edge. What could it be? I racked my brain, trying to think of things I'd spent a decade trying to forget or drown with alcohol. Part of me hoped it was something I could use against the Russian tiger-woman, but Gerd was not the type to leave items of power to a half-trained apprentice, no matter how talented. No, it couldn't be that. A personal memento from a happier time, in all likelihood. Nothing to get in a twist over.

But I was in a twist. A big one. Because a cold, ruthlessly analytical part of my brain had put a gun to the back of my head and told it that whatever the Tiger and her master were looking for, chances were it was whatever Gerd had left to me or Tommy. "Chances," by which I meant, somewhere between certain and final. And that meant Tommy's death was partially my fault. Whoever was trying to get at our bequests had killed him. But had they gotten whatever Gerd had left for him?

I had to hope not. In the mean time, I had a few new leads to chase. I dashed off a quick letter to Gerd's next-of-kin, Ms. Zimmerman, explaining a few of the less odd things about the situation and asking her to write me back should she know anything about anything. It was vague as hell, but sometimes that gets people to tell you more than asking too many specific questions straight out.

That left the ship from Albert King's inscrutable warning. No matter how much necromancy spooked me, I couldn't afford to ignore a potentially useful lead when it showed up with my name monogrammed on it in gold letters. Ah King was trying to tell me something, but what? The dead might have some strange ideas of what was important to the living, or so it seemed to me. I didn't know if I could take his fortune cookie warning at face value. All I knew was I couldn't ignore it.

My apartment seemed suddenly close and confining. It was time to get back to work. I put on a trench coat and my father's fedora against the drizzle outside and left the tea col
d and lonely on the windowsill.

+++

After posting my vague and probably useless letter to Ms. Zimmerman, I thought about catching a cab down to the waterfront. That was pleasant for exactly the three seconds it took me to remember I had almost no money left to speak of - not even enough for the trolley if I also wanted to eat tonight. Time to get a little exercise, then. I pulled down the brim of my father's fedora, turned my collar against the damp, and set off in the direction of First Avenue.

I tried to do some figuring while I kept an eye out for suspicious black A-Models tailing me. Ah King's warning had said something about how the tiger was a stranger, but the one who sent it -
her,
rather - was not. I was all right with strangers. Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind meeting the Russian girl again under the right conditions. Without a crowbar in hand, for starters.

I mulled what she had said to me, that night on the pier. I asked her why she was beating the tar out of me.
For power,
she had said. And through the icy Russian accent I had heard it in her voice: the overtones of someone whose tongue was accustomed to pronouncing the
Götterreden,
the words of power Gerd had begun to teach me so long ago. The legends said they had been passed down among mortals since the age when gods walked among men. They were a rare and sacred tradition used by only a handful of practitioners on earth. Gerd had them from his own master, and his master before him, and so on and so forth back until dirt was new. But I didn't recognize the Russian Tiger from the Circle or its extended membership. And she didn't look old enough to predate it. That meant she had to have been taught the
Götterreden
after the Great War. After Gerd and his Circle were dead on a muddy field in France. How was that possible?

Humans are predictable. They all tend to have the same needs, desires, and motivations. I'd grown pretty used to working through those patterns and coming up with the
ugly truth, so when things just won't add up right, I know there's sure to be something I'm not taking into account. I squinted my eyes against the rain and went into serious gumshoe mode. It was time to try on a few theories.

What if Gerd were somehow still alive? The idea twisted me up inside. I wanted him to be alive, but I didn't want to believe he could still be alive without having contacted me somehow. We had been close, or at least I had thought we were. Could the war have changed him? I'd met a few veterans of the Great War who worked for the SPD, and according to my father some of them were very different men than when they had left. But I still couldn't believe Gerd would train someone as cruel and as obviously p
ower-hungry as the woman who had beaten me "for power." It matched nothing of what he had taught us about how to use the power of the Art, nothing of what he had been like as a person. It just didn't add up. Gerd was the best judge of character I had ever met; often it seemed he knew what we were thinking even before we did ourselves. Even if he were somehow alive after all these years, he would never be fooled into thinking the Russian Tiger was anything but a predator.