"And only I will do?"

She nodded.

"That"s great for the ego, but-"

"I didn"t pay for some second-rate unknown."

"Interesting. Considering Saucerhead is probably better known than I am." I looked her hard in the eye for a dozen seconds, until she shifted her attention to Dean. "I wonder what your real game is," I said softly.

She jerked her attention back to me.

"First you tried to con me. Then you gave me way too much money. If you wanted to buy a man to impress somebody, anybody who knows me will know Saucerhead. And be more intimidated by him. I"m a p.u.s.s.ycat. Finally, and dearest to my heart, not five hours after you saw me, somebody tried to kill me."

Her eyes got big. I had to remind myself she"d said she was an actress.

"It was a cold-blooded ambush, Jill. Five men, plus whoever did the watching and running messages. A major effort."

Her eyes got bigger.

"You know an albino half-breed chuko called s...o...b..ll?"

She shook her head. It was a very impressive head. She was beautiful when she was frightened.

"How about a street gang called the Vampires?"

She shook her pretty head.

I had obviously recovered from my unpleasant night, because I was starting to pant. I slapped myself down. "What do you know? Anything? How about why you want to play me for a sucker. Or has that slipped your mind, too?"

She got mad again. But she swallowed her anger. She"d decided to clam.

I got up. "Come with me." Sometimes a good surprise loosens them up.

I took her into the Dead Man"s room. Her response was cliche. "Yuk! That"s gross!" But that was it.

I fished her retainer out from under the Dead Man"s chair, which is the safest place in TunFaire. "I"ll hang onto some of this, for Saucerhead"s time and my aggravation." I took a couple coins in a gesture mainly symbolic, and handed the rest to her.

She eyed that purse like it was a snake. "What are you doing?"

"You"re unhappy. I"m giving your money back and getting out of your life."

"But..." She went into a huddle with herself. While the committee was in conference I sneered at the Dead Man. Brought one right in here with you, Chuckles.

I was trying to get two birds with one big hunk of alum.

There"s no prod more effective than bringing a woman into the house. The prettier the gal the more heated the reaction. Jill Craight could set the house afire. If he was sandbagging he wouldn"t be able to keep it up.

d.a.m.n him. He didn"t do a thing. And I"d been halfway sure he was hiding out from the rent collector.

"Mr. Garrett?"

"Yeah?"

"I"m scared. I made a promise. I can"t tell you any more till I know who I have to be afraid of. Take this back. I want you. But if you can"t do the job I"ll take what I can get."

She was scared. If she"d been five feet tall and baby-faced, my protective instincts would have been inflamed. But she was d.a.m.ned near tall enough to look me in the eye and had no knack for playing helpless. You looked at her and you wanted to get into mischief with her, but you didn"t have much inclination to take care of her. You knew she could take care of herself.

"If it wasn"t for last night I"d give in about now, Jill. But somebody tried to whack me. Finding out who and why and talking him out of trying again is going to occupy my time. So Saucerhead is what you get."

"If I must, I must."

"You must." I put her retainer back under the Dead Man. "Now that we"re done yelling at each other and we"re all friends again, why don"t you come by for dinner? Dean"s culinary skills don"t get much exercise."

She opened her mouth to turn me down, but inclination ran head-on into her instinct for self-preservation.

She didn"t have to be nice to me. That wasn"t a condition here. But I"m not so nice a guy I wouldn"t let her find that out for herself. "It would have to be late," she said. "I do have to work."

"Pick your time. Tell Dean. Give him an idea what you"d like. It"ll be better than anything you"ve had for awhile."

She smiled. "All right." I think that was the first genuine smile she"d shown me. She marched off to the kitchen.

I paused, leaned against the door frame, and sneered at the Dead Man. I had my ulterior motives for wining and dining Jill Craight-beyond those I"d been born with. She still might stir old Chuckles up. I"m also a great believer in synchronicity.

It was a lead-pipe cinch that, because I"d made a date, Tinnie would suffer a miraculous remission from the sulks. Somebody from the Tate place would come to let me know before Jill went home.

Jill came back. "Dean is a nice man."

Was the implication that I was not? "Tricky, too. You got to watch him. Especially if you"re not married. A great amba.s.sador for the inst.i.tution of marriage, Dean is."

"But he"s not married himself."

A quick vixen, friend Jill. How much had she pried out of him? "Not married and never has been. But that doesn"t slow him down. Come on. I"ll walk you home."

"You sure you can spare the time?"

"It"s on my way," I lied. I figured I could use a chat with Saucerhead.

10.

Tharpe fell in on Jill"s far side before we"d walked a hundred yards. She was startled. I chuckled. "Get used to it."

That didn"t excite her. It was one more hint that things were going on that she didn"t want known.

I still had her pegged for a working girl, if a cla.s.s model of same.

"Anything interesting going on?" I asked Saucerhead.

"Nope."

"Smith and Smith watching the place again?"

"Yeah. Pokey was right. They"re amateurs. They look like a couple of farmers. Want me to grab one and tie him in knots till he talks?"

"Not yet. Just keep an eye on them. See who they report to."

Saucerhead grunted. "There"s somebody watching your place, too. I spotted them while I was waiting."

I wasn"t surprised. "Chukos?"

He shrugged. "Could be. They was young. But they wasn"t showing colors."

"They wouldn"t be if they were Vampires." I live in Travelers" territory, just inside their frontier with the Sisters of Doom.

We walked on. As we approached Jill"s place I tried to talk us inside for a look around. She wouldn"t have it. In fact, she didn"t want to be seen with us in her own neighborhood. She probably thought we"d lower property values.

Saucerhead and I wandered around so I could get a look at Smith and Smith. They did look like farmers. They certainly didn"t look dangerous, but I didn"t spend much time worrying about them. That was Saucerhead"s job.

I jogged a block out of my way going home, stopping at a tenement so decayed derelicts shunned it. I went around the side, down to a cellar door. Standing a foot deep in trash, I knocked. The door almost collapsed.

It opened an inch. An eye looked at me from brisket level. "Garrett," I said. "I want to talk to Maya." I flashed a piece of silver. The door shut.

Now a little game, a stall just to show me who ran things here.

The door opened. A girl of thirteen wearing nothing but a potato sack-probably stolen with the potatoes still inside-and a lot of dirt stood there. The sack was so frayed one ripening rosebud peeked out. She caught my glance and sneered.

"Love your hair, kid." It might have been blonde. Who could tell? It hadn"t been washed in recent generations.

From inside I heard, "Cut the comedy, Garrett. You want to talk to me get your b.u.t.t in here."

I stepped into the citadel of the Sisters of Doom, TunFaire"s only all-human, all-female street gang.

There were five girls there, the oldest sneaking up on eighteen. Four of the five shared the urchin"s hairdresser and tailor. Maya wore real clothing and was better groomed, but not much. She was eighteen going on forty, warchief of a gang claiming two hundred "soldiers." She was so emotionally sliced up you never knew which way she would jump.

Most of the Sisters were emotional casualties. They"d all suffered severe abuse, and a murmur of defiance had driven them into the Doom"s never-never land. That hung, precariously and eternally, at right angles to reality, between childhood as it should have been and the adulthood of the untormented. They"d never recover from their wounds. Most of the girls would die of them. But the Doom gave them a fortress into which they could retreat and from which they could strike back, which left them better off than the tortured thousands who went through the h.e.l.l without support.

Maya had suffered more than most. I met her when she was nine, when her stepfather offered to share her if I"d buy him some wine. I"d declined to the crackle of his breaking bones.

She was a lot better now. She was normal most of the time. She could talk to me. Sometimes she came to the house to cadge a meal. She liked Dean. Old Dean was every girl"s ideal uncle.

"Well, Garrett? What the h.e.l.l you want?" She had an audience. "Let"s see the color of your money."

I tossed her a coin. "Faith offering," I told her. "I want to swap information."

"Come ahead. I"ll tell you to go to h.e.l.l when you get on my nerves."

If she took a fit, I could go out looking like chopped meat. Those girls could be vicious. Castration was a favorite sport.

"You know the Vampires? Run by an albino darko called s...o...b..ll and a crazy bleeder named Doc? North End."

"I"ve heard of them. They"re all crazy, not just Doc. I don"t know them. Word is, Doc and s...o...b..ll are getting ambitious, trying to rent muscle and recruit soldiers from other gangs."

"Somebody might take exception."

"I know. s...o...b..ll and Doc are too old for the street but not old enough to know they can"t trespa.s.s."

It"s a cla.s.sic cycle. And sometimes the young ones pull it off. About once a century.

Today"s kingpin was a street kid. But that organization recruited him from a gang and promoted him from within.

"The Doom have any relationship with the Vampires?" The girls prefer being called the Doom. They think it has a nicer ring than the Sisters or the Sisterhood.

"All take and no give, Garrett. I don"t like that."

"If you"re running with the Vampires I don"t have anything to give you."

She gave me the fish eye.

"s...o...b..ll and Doc tried to take me out," I said.

"What the h.e.l.l were you doing in the North End?"

"I wasn"t, sweetie. I was on Warhawks" turf. Warhawks have a treaty with the Vampires?"

"No need. No contact. Same with the Doom." She shifted. "You"re sneaking up on something, Garrett. Get to the point."

"There are a couple guys watching my house. I"d guess chukos. Probably Vampires, considering last night."

She thought about that. "A genuine hit? You"re sure?"

"I"m sure, Maya."

"Your place is on Travelers" ground."

"You"re starting to get it. Trouble is, I don"t have any friends with the Travelers since Mick and Slick got caught in the sweep."

The relationships between the races have become terribly complex, them being all mixed together but each owning its own princes and chiefs and quirky root cultures. TunFaire is a human city. Human law prevails in all civil matters. A plethora of treaties have established that entering a city voluntarily const.i.tutes acceptance of the prevailing law. In TunFaire a crime in human law remains a crime when committed by anyone else, even when the behavior is acceptable among the perpetrator"s people.

Treaties deny Karenta the power to conscript persons of nonhuman blood, nonhuman being defined as anybody of quarter blood or more who wants to revoke his human rights and privileges forever. Lately, though, the press gangs had been grabbing anybody who couldn"t produce a parent or grandparent on the spot. That"s what happened to the captains of the Travelers, though they were breeds.

Maya said, "So you want a couple of chukos off your back."

"No. I want you to know they"re there. If they bother me I"ll just knock their heads together."