The Sword-Edged blonde (25 page)

He picked up the water jug and held it toward me. “I know you must be thirsty.”

I shook my head.

He chuckled. “I don’t blame you.” He took a drink from the jug, then offered it to me again. I still declined.

“Suit yourself. Well, Mr. Johnson, judging from your scars, this isn’t the first time you’ve found yourself in a tough spot. I assume you know the etiquette. I ask, you answer.” He paused for effect. “You visit the Civil Security Force, you accost a total stranger at the racetrack, then you show up here. And always you’re asking for Andrew Reese. Why?”

“I’ll tell him when I see him,” I said, and sat back down on the bed. My voice sounded like two rocks scraping together.

“You won’t see him. And you won’t see anything but the inside of this room until you’re more cooperative. You’re not a young man, Mr. Johnson. You couldn’t take me on your best day, let alone now.”

I had to smile. He was probably right, but he’d also revealed the limits of his connections. His sources at Civil Security weren’t high enough to have gotten my real name. “You’re that good, huh?”

“Yes,” he said. I believed him.

The room began to spin again, and I lay down on my side. Canino didn’t move. “I just want to ask your boss a couple of questions,” I said half into the mattress. “This doesn’t have to get any more complicated than that.”

“What makes you think I have a boss?”

I rolled onto my back and draped an arm over my eyes. “Because you’re muscle, not brains. A smart guy would’ve sent someone to pretend they were Andrew Reese, and then I would’ve left without a fuss.” I gestured at the room. “
This
sort of thing happens when a legbreaker has to suddenly work from the neck up.”

“You’re trying to hurt my feelings,” he said, amused.

“I’m trying to make the room hold still.”

Someone knocked. I raised my arm to see the girl bartender who’d suckered me open the door and peek in. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yeah, please, come in,” Canino said genially.

She slipped in and kissed Canino on the cheek. “How’s it going?” she murmured.

“He’s being obtuse,” Canino said. To me he said, “Isn’t she beautiful? She was a student in a private all-girls school before I met her. She had no idea of the effect she had on men. Gretchen, show him how effective you are.”

With a smile as vicious as any carnivore, Gretchen stepped away from Canino, turned her back to me and let her dress slide languorously to the floor. A lesser man would’ve applauded or cried at the sheer beauty
she presented. Every muscle was perfect, every inch of delectable skin flawless. In the candlelight she seemed golden, and her dark hair shimmered. She had a multicolored dragonfly tattooed across the small of her back.

She looked over her shoulder at me. “I think he’s too old and fat to appreciate it,” she said.

Canino handed her the water jug. “He’s a thirsty man. Maybe you should give him a drink.”

She turned to face me. This angle was even more magnificent. She raised one bare foot and placed it on the edge of the bed in front of my face. Her toenails gleamed with dark polish. She rested the jug on her knee, then tipped it forward until water trickled down her shin. It sparkled in the candlelight as it ran off her toes and soaked into the mattress.

I met her eyes. I saw no compassion in them at all.

She straightened, poured some water into her palm and sprinkled it on her breasts. Then she handed the jug to Canino. “I think he must prefer boys,” she said mockingly. She bent to collect her dress.

As she reached down, Canino swung the half-full jug in a vicious uppercut right into her face. It shattered with a noise that made my teeth shudder. Water sprayed everywhere.

The blow knocked Gretchen upright, and she stumbled back into the door. Her hands flew to her face, and her breath came in little gasps. Blood seeped between her fingers and ran down her arms.

It took all my restraint not to jump up and do . . . something. But in my battered shape, Canino would have easily taken me apart. My heart thundered in my chest, but except for a slight start at the noise, I didn’t visibly react.

Gretchen began to whimper as her fingertips gingerly explored her face. The damage she found made her sobs grow louder and louder.

Canino’s expression remained impassive. “Think about this, Mr. Johnson. I’m actually very fond of Gretchen. You, I don’t even like.” He picked up her dress, then dragged her out into the hallway. I heard her first scream just as the door slammed shut.

I
went back to sleep. What the hell else could I do? I had vivid dreams of both Cathy and Janet berating me for my idiocy.

I had no sense of time, but I awoke at the sound of another key in the lock. This one was furtive, though, and the door only opened enough for someone to peer in. I didn’t recognize the eyes, but I knew the distinctive voice. “Hello?” Spike whispered.

“Yeah?” I answered softly.

She stepped into the room. “Canino’s on his way back down. You don’t want to be here anymore.”

I nodded. I got to my feet, shook my head to clear the last of the cobwebs, and followed her into the hall. “In here,” she said, and gestured at the open door to the next room.

She locked the door behind us. It was dark except for the hallway’s flickering lamplight around the edge. We both put our ears to the wooden surface.

Canino’s measured steps approached down the hall and he stopped just outside my cell’s open door. He stood silently for a long time, and we did likewise. I
just knew my every breath sounded like a bellowing ox and would give us away at any moment.

I did not hear a footstep, but the doorknob directly across the hall outside rattled. Then I heard a key, and the slight creak of hinges. After a moment the door closed again, and the lock slid back into place.

Again he moved so lightly I couldn’t hear it. He rattled the door beside the one he’d just checked, unlocked it, closed it. I listened so hard for his movement that I nearly yelled when the doorknob right beside me rattled.

In the dark, Spike clutched my hand.

The key slid into the lock. There was no place to hide, and nothing to be used as a weapon. I felt so weak that if he blinked hard at me, I’d fall over.

The key began to turn.

“Boss!” a muffled voice called, and rapid footsteps approached. “We’ve got a situation upstairs. That naval attaché won what he’s supposed to win, but he’s drunk and won’t stop playing.”

Canino did not respond, but the key slid from the lock and two sets of footsteps receded.

Spike sighed. She struck a match and the flame rippled in her shaky hand. She lit the room’s single candle. Its furnishings and ambiance were identical to the one I’d just left.

I grabbed the water jug in the corner. It was only about a third full, and warm, but to me it tasted like damn ambrosia. I poured the last bit on my face and rubbed it into my eyes.

“You smell pretty bad,” Spike observed.

“Yeah,” was the only comeback I could manage.

“He’ll figure out where you went. But not for a few
minutes. The only thing he likes more than pain is money. Here.”

She gestured at the bed. My boots and shirt were there, but not, I noticed with annoyance, my brand new jacket. “Why are you helping me?” I asked as I dressed.

“You saw what he did to Gretchen.”

“Friend of yours?”

She shrugged. “Not really. She’s just the latest member of the club.” She turned, having to twist her whole upper body to compensate for her immobile neck, and tapped one of the finials. “Who do you think stuck this in me, anyway? And do you know why? ‘Just to make a point,’ he said.” She snorted. “He made his point, all right.”

I laced up my boots. “I guess I owe you one, then. Do you want to get out of here?”

“Nah. Except for the neck thing, I’ve got it pretty good. Nobody bothers me, the money’s great, and I don’t have to put out unless I want to. It’s not bad.” Her eyes bore a hopelessness far beyond her years. “Canino thinks I’m his lucky charm.”

“Where are your folks?”

“Hmph. I have no idea who screwed my mom at the wrong time of the month. And she’s dead. And you can save the pity for someone who needs it. If you get the chance, kill that towheaded bastard and we’ll call it even. If not, well, messing with him is its own reward.”

I stood and tucked my shirt into my pants. I felt mostly human again. “Won’t he be pissed off when he finds out you helped me?”

She laughed. Again I was reminded of cloth ripping. “Like I care, old man. Like I care.”

Spike led me to a service entrance that opened onto the club’s private dock. It was sometime after midnight,
judging from the stars and the moon, and the pier was dark and deserted. Launches, from two big pleasure schooners anchored far out in the harbor, bobbed next to smaller vessels.

“Take that rowboat,” Spike said, pointing. “Go left and follow the waterfront until you reach the main public pier.”

I patted my empty pockets. “I’d give you a tip, but I’ve been cleaned out.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

I looked up at the apparently lifeless warehouse that hid the club. It was gray against the dark sky. “So does the Dwarf really run this place?”

“Canino runs it. The Dwarf just pays the bills.”

“So is the Dwarf here?”

“No. I’ve never seen him. But Canino goes up to one of the estates on Brillion Hill a lot.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know. I’m not one of the girls who gets invited to those sorts of parties. But he always brings back fresh flowers for the rest of us, if that helps any.”

I bent and kissed the top of her head. “What’s your real name?”

“Allison,” she said with no inflection.

“Thanks, Allison.”

I climbed into the rowboat, untied it and pulled away from the dock. The last I saw of her was a silhouette against the warehouse, moonlight reflecting like tiny stars off the golden balls at her neck.

I
STAGGERED INTO
my boarding house at dawn. Luckily the tavern on the ground floor was empty. I
slept for about three hours, cleaned up as best I could, then went down to Bernie’s office. I got there before he did, so I was asleep in his chair when he arrived and knocked my boots off his desk.

“You look like you spent the night in a barrel with a bobcat,” he said as I moved to the guest chair. “I’m surprised the desk sergeant let you in. What happened?”

“I got snarked at the Dragonfly Club.”

He paused in arranging the parchments and papers on his desk. “You didn’t tell me you were going to the Dragonfly.”

“If I’d known I was going to get snarked, I would have.”

He closed his office door. “We’ve been trying to get undercover people in there for months. If anybody connects you up with me, they’ll shut the place up tighter than a convent on May Day. Thanks.”

“They didn’t know me,” I said. “Canino dug up my alias, but not my real name.”

“Canino,” he repeated as he sat down. “Did you take him out like you did Saye’s friend?”

“I wish. No, basically I curled into a ball and whimpered.” I gave him the short version of the previous night’s events. Spike had confirmed the Dwarf’s existence, and considerably narrowed my search area. If I’d only thought to press her about Andrew Reese, I might know for sure that I was on the right track. Still, it was a lot more than I had any right to expect, and it sure beat a stint as Canino’s punching bag. “Any idea which estate on Brillion Hill might be the right one?”

Bernie walked to the big map of Cape Querna on the wall. “This is Brillion Hill. You can see how the streets
all wind around almost like it was designed to confuse people. There’s probably twenty mansions up there, and this time of year they’ve all got flowers. They even have a big garden tour to show ’em off.”

I joined him to gaze at the map. He was right, the roads resembled some sailor’s arcane knot. “It would be somewhere they could discreetly have wild parties with the girls from the Dragonfly.”

He made an inclusive gesture. “You could do that at any of ’em. These are the cream of C.Q. society. They invented decadence, and they’re able to pay to keep it quiet.”

I pondered as much as my still-fogged brain allowed. It could take weeks to check each house; there had to be a way to narrow the search. “How old are these houses?”

“Varies.”

“Any of them built in, say, the last twenty years?”

“I don’t think so. That hill had the defensive high ground over the harbor, so it was the first place settled. It has some of the oldest buildings in town. Big stone things, like castles that never grew all the way up.”

“But they’ve changed hands over the years, right? They’re not still owned by the founding families.”

“Some are. Most aren’t.”

“So if you were rich and powerful enough to buy one of these, but also, let’s say, deformed, you might have your mansion modified to suit your disability.”

He sighed. “Enough with the damn Dwarf, Eddie. Your little girlfriend might’ve been feeding you a line, you know.”

“
Somebody
yanks Canino’s chain.”