Whispering Nickel Idols (38 page)

“You’re a good businessman,” Silverman told me, with a smile I didn’t figure out till later. “Thanks for everything.”

I said, “I think we’re done here, then. Belinda, Mr. Contague, I’ll be back in a few days.” Penny stayed behind. With her cats.

Morley was patient while I visited Buy Claxton. Who was riding her stay for all it was worth, now that her health was not endangered. Human nature, I suppose. When I came back, I decided, I’d take her upstairs and see if she couldn’t get back on with the family. While the shyster panicked.

Silverman’s attitude soon explained itself.

My deceased associate had been bitten by the entrepreneurial serpent. Possibly because he was tired of having to wake up and earn his keep a couple times a year.

He’d robbed the A-Laf cultists of everything there was to know about the nickel dogs — all right! Jackals! Then he’d rung in Silverman, who owned the skills needed to exploit that knowledge.

They partnered up to drain the pain from the Bledsoe. With Silverman somehow bleeding off the accumulations and earthing them where they would do the world no harm.

It wasn’t many months before the improvements became noticeable.

Morley played the parrot hand for all it was worth, heading back to the house. I suppose that wasn’t unjustified, after the yeoman blow delivered by Mr. Mulclar.

He did say, “The underworld should calm down for a while, just to sort itself out.”

“Good news, good news. Maybe I can talk Tinnie into going off to Imperial New City for a couple weeks. We could tour the historic breweries. What the hell is this?”

The street was blocked. Mummers, jugglers, people in period costume, guys on stilts, whatnot, were crossing in front of us.

“One of the playhouses trying to pump up attendance, probably. Like everything else does, the playhouse fad has gone into overkill.”

That’s my hometown. When one man strikes gold everyone else tries to cash in by imitating his success. Instead of panning new gold.

This looked like a sizable show. It held us up for ten minutes. I concluded, “I saw so much here. Why should I go to their playhouse?”

“Because there you get a story?”

“I don’t need a story. My whole life is a story.”

Thinking no more about it, I trudged on toward my showdown with a partner who insisted on toying with his associate. And a date with the new keg of Weider Select that Dean was supposed to get in today.

Maybe I’d go see the redhead later, see if she was interested in a brewery tour.