Whispering Nickel Idols (30 page)

I’d had my suspicions about Temisk but hadn’t had information enough to work it all out. Maybe if I hadn’t been sick all that time.

We would not have discovered the truth without bringing Mr. Temisk here. There is no evidence outside his mind. He has been clever about leaving no traces. Miss Winger has been on Mr. Temisk’s story for days and has yet to find anything even circumstantial. Mrs. Claxton was his sole loose end. Which he has had no opportunity to tie up. He felt he did not dare leave Mr. Contague alone with the Ymberians.

“He’s a lawyer. They’re naturally crooks.”

The Dead Man was not amused. Maybe he was a lawyer in another time and place.

“So Brother Temisk was behind the burning deaths? And he did it for his pal?”

In essence. But it is a bigger story. Mr. Temisk, despite protests to the contrary, has solid contacts inside the Contague household. Which could be true for Mr. Sculdyte as well. Mr. Temisk suspects that Mr. Rory Sculdyte knew the truth but was abiding an opportunity to make best use of the information
.

“I’m guessing Chodo’s been drugged. Systematically and continuously. I’m thinking he would’ve recovered by now otherwise.”

True. He has been drugged regularly. But he would not be in command now if he had not been fed those drugs.

I grunted. Tinnie had her back to me. She was bending over the subject of our conversation, spoon in hand. I couldn’t concentrate.

Mental sneer.
Mr. Contague’s interior is scrambled. He is mad in a deeply sinister way. Ultimately, he is more responsible for the combustion deaths.

“Can you get to your point?”

No. More amusement.

I dragged my attention away from Miss Tate long enough to pull the kitten off my plate. There were several of those in the room now, all over everybody. Including the scary people. One perched on the Ymberian deacon’s shoulder, washing a paw. The deacon knew. He was apoplectic.

The Dead Man noted my interest and was amused yet again.
That should crack the final barriers in his mind. If his heart does not explode first.

“The combustion deaths, partner?”

Mr. Temisk’s agents in the Contague household told him they thought Miss Contague might be poisoning him.

“Might?”

There is some ambiguity. Someone else might be guilty.

“Doesn’t Chodo know?”

He was drugged.

“Gah!”

Wait! There is madness there, as noted. Extreme and dark. Worsened by the drug. Mr. Temisk’s contacts identified the poison. Mr. Temisk searched for an antidote.

“Which he found. And which has something to do with people catching on fire.” I was making intuitive leaps left and right. Maybe the fever left me psychic.

Yes. Be still. Mr. Temisk’s contacts informed him that Miss Contague came to town once or twice a month, and more frequently in times of crisis. Her father accompanied her. Always. She would not trust his care to anyone at home.

“With good reason, obviously.”

Obviously. When she did come to town Miss Contague secreted her father in a tenement her family owns on the north side, on the edge of Elf Town. Mr. Temisk knew the building because he handled its acquisition and management. Mr. Contague operated his early business out of there. Once he knew Miss Contague’s routine, Mr. Temisk acted.

To conceal his role, he hired alcoholics to sneak in and medicate the man in the wheelchair with the antidote. These men received one-quarter payment beforehand and the balance afterward.

Sounded risky. The drunk would brag about his score. “But the drunk turned into a human torch. Right?”

Not the first few times. Not until Mr. Contague began to shake the influence of the poison. Once he was able to understand his situation, frustration at his helplessness drove him mad.

“Temisk turned Chodo into a mass murderer by trying to help him?”

Essentially.

“I’ll bite. How?”

The antidote is a crushed form of the stone hurled at you and Mr. Dotes’ —

“That causes fires!”

64

Harvester provided his cat’s-paws with a flaked form of the stone, which resisted powdering. He acquired it from the A-Laf cult, at an extreme price. The cult obtained a hoard of the stones when it took over the temple of A-Lat. Numerous stones went astray before being inventoried. A-Lafs sextons were not as devout as their superiors desired.

Bittegurn Brittigarn wasn’t wrong when he connected the stones with rocs. The Dead Man said they originated in rocs’ gizzards. The phoenix legend came about because roc chicks, like kids, will swallow anything. Which sometimes makes the stones ignite. That chick goes up in flame while its nest mates bail out, possibly giving a distant observer the impression that he’s watching a rebirth.

The stones were priceless because they could start fires. Anywhere, anytime, in most any material, from a distance, if you knew how to trigger them. Using sorcery. Or a mental nudge after the manner of the Dead Man.

Chodo discovered that he could spark residual fire-stone flakes on the hands and clothing of Harvester Temisk’s alkies. Not being suicidally mad, he eliminated them only after they left him.

Harvester Temisk’s crime was that he kept hiring disposable people after Chodo began killing them.

“He tried to burn Whitefield Hall down with everybody inside?”

He did. Doctoring the oil in the lamps. Mrs. Claxton was targeted specifically. She received a pin because she had seen Mr. Temisk at work. It ignited much earlier than Temisk planned. Mr. Contague was in a rage. It was chance that the doctored lamps were out of his range by then.

“So the mystery of the human combustions is solved.”

More or less. There have been incidents that cannot be traced back to Mr. Contague and Mr. Temisk. But we are not interested in those.

“I’ve got a lot of questions, Smiley. Who slung a rock at me? Why? How come it took so long for Morley’s door to catch fire? What about Rory Sculdyte? And Belinda? These damned cats and Penny Dreadful? And what do we do about Temisk and Chodo?”

I owed Chodo. I had to discharge that debt. Which clunked me right into a bubbling pot of moral quandary.

The Dead Man knocked the Ymberian deacon out so he could free up enough brainpower to show me the nightmare inhabiting Chodo’s head. A nightmare as bad as that of a claustrophobe trapped in a coffin and unable, ever, to die. It was just a glimpse. Just a little teasy peek, secondhand, of a seething black hell haunted by genius. Supreme ugliness under only the most primitive, selfish control.

The madman was imprisoned in an herbal cage. Though the cage had created the madman, the madman now belonged there.

The kittens seemed fond of him, though.

“What do I do, Old Bones? We can’t turn that loose.”

Worry about something else. Concentrate on Mr. Temisk, whose own madness is gaining momentum. His conscience is withering. He is no longer troubled about what he might be unleashing. Though he is not blind to the possibility that he might be its immediate victim.

“He’s like me, then. Obligated to good old Chodo.

Wanting to believe that this is the same old Chodo. He just can’t.” walk or talk Worry about something else.

So I watched Tinnie feed the Ymberians. Beauty and the beasts.

Singe leaned through the doorway. “Do we have a plan for dealing with the people out front?”

“Who is it?” Pounding had occurred, off and on, for hours. The Dead Man seemed uninterested. I’d taken my cue from him.

“That List person.”

“He’s still alive?”

“He must be lucky.”

“Is the door holding up?”

“Mr. Mulclar’s pride is in no danger.”

“Any idea what he wants?”

“Maybe somebody saw us bring those two in and recognized them.”

I didn’t think so. We would’ve drawn somebody more important than Captain Ramey List. “Hey! Smiley! We done with Big Bruno yet? How about I fling his ass out like I did Merry and his crew?”

The Dead Man did not respond. For one panicky instant I thought he’d fallen asleep. But he was just too busy to be bothered.

The racket up front stopped. Ramey List went away again.

I decided to indulge in another nap. I dragged my disease-ravaged carcass upstairs and dumped it into bed.

65

Tinnie was there when I woke up, but she wasn’t feeling playful. I avoided irritating questions till after breakfast. Then I asked about the weather.

“Am I supposed to know? You were there. Did I suddenly pop outside?” I sighed.

Singe cursed. Dean cursed. A drunken Melondie Kadare cursed like a platoon of Marine storm troopers. Incoherently. She’d been in the kitchen sucking it down when we’d brought Chodo and Harvester in. We needed to put her in a cage. Those cats couldn’t ignore their own nature forever.

“So the weather hasn’t gotten any better.”

Tinnie growled and grumbled like it was all my fault she couldn’t go home and get to work.

Being a rational, reasonable man, I noted, “If you can’t get to work, neither can anybody else. So there wouldn’t be any reason for you to try.”

“You are so full of crap!” And so forth.

The patient sort, I waited for the black tea to kick in.

Garrett.

I jumped and ran. Pure horror reeked off the Dead Man’s summons. “What the hell?”

Do not speak. Not one more word.

I’m a quick study. I sealed my yap. It had to be hugely important. We are on the brink of a holocaust.

I’m so good I just stood there and said a whole lot of nothing.

Being careful not to let Mr. Contague or Mr. Temisk see you, pocket those firestones and get them out of the house. I believe you can fathom why.
Several seconds later, he added
, We should have recognized that danger earlier. I should have seen it.

Somebody should have. It was right there in front of us. The end of us all. Maybe the gods do love fools, drunks, and their favorite toy. Or they’ve got something uglier planned for later.

This once I was in such a hurry I forgot to look out the peephole first. I opened up and got smacked between the eyes with the wonder of snow gone wild. I told Singe, “I was six last time I saw it like this.”

There was a fresh foot on top of the old mess. More pounded down in hunks so big each flake should’ve made the earth shake. I couldn’t see the other side of the street. Meaning a watcher over there couldn’t see me slide out.

I trudged over to Playmate’s place. That took an hour. I wasn’t in good shape when I got there. It was going to be a long time before I got my old vigor back. And I didn’t like this feeble new me, even temporarily.

I needed to get into a conditioning routine. Right after_whatever I thought up as needed doing first. I’d give procrastination a bad name — if I ever got around to it. Playmate asked, “So what’s this I hear about you trying to die on us?”

“It wasn’t quite that bad.” I gave him the full story.

“Your luck amazes me. The Dead Man was awake and Tinnie put aside her grudges.”

There was no arguing that. I explained our current best theories. And added, “I need to know what to do with these firestones.”

“You brought them with you?” That made him nervous. “They don’t blow up. They need a psychic nudge to set them off.”

“Tell me about them.” I did. It didn’t take long.

“I wish I could experiment. Since I can’t, let’s put them in a lead-lined iron casket and bury them under the stable floor. If they go off and melt through the box they’ll just sink down into the earth.”

“Ingenious.” I got the stones out. I’d also brought the little box we’d taken off the deacon. “Put this in there, too. No! Don’t open it.” I explained about the nickel idols. “They turn into pure, concentrated despair when they’re charged up. You’re close to them when they cut loose, you hear ghosts telling you to kill yourself.” Maybe you took sick, too.

What a weapon for someone into dirty politics.

Playmate considered, then asked, “You poked around inside the Bledsoe?”

“I visited the woman Temisk tried to kill. That’s all.”

“I’m wondering if there isn’t an upside to this villainy. A chance that, with evil intentions, they might be managing something good.”

Playmate might be the only guy in TunFaire able to worry about the pavements of the
roadfrom
hell. I asked, “How so, Swami?”

“If the nickel idols suck despair out of the Bledsoe, then the inmates might be getting better.”

“The statues might drive wack jobs sane?”

“Seems logical. Though despair isn’t the only reason people go mad.”

I began to see possibilities. I began to get excited. “The right arms get twisted, the Bledsoe could actually do some good.”

“You’d need the Ymberians. They know how the system works. I doubt they’re interested in curing anyone, though. But yes, think about it. Just suck the pain right out. Smash it into the idols and... uh-oh.”

“Yeah. The charged idols would be dangerous. And men who’d use them for their own purposes outnumber you and me. This’ll take some thinking. We’ve got to get it right.”

“We?”

“What?” He never shirked a chance to do a good deed.

“I do see it, Garrett. But I’m only one man. Who’d have to fly into a frenzy of ambition. Which I don’t have much of anymore.”

“I see.” I saw. “It wouldn’t be a one-man mission, Play. If it’s workable. We can worry about that later. I’ll see what Max Weider thinks. I just had to get this stuff out of the house. We’d be in deep brown if Chodo had one of his psychic spasms.”

“Is there anything else?” Playmate hadn’t offered the customary hospitality. I could’ve used a drink. He must’ve had a woman stashed. Or wanted to get back to work. Or something less flattering to my ego.

I thought I’d stop by The Palms, take a break. After half an hour of slogging through snow up to my knees, into the wind. Uphill. Barefoot. But the place was boarded up and showing no light.

66