She grunted. I was getting preachy and she was getting ready to respond the way kids always do. We"d been sitting there no more than ten minutes but it seemed a lot longer.

"Somebody"s coming," she said coldly.

15.

Somebody was Jill Craight looking like she"d seen a zombie and his seven brothers. She would have run past us if I hadn"t said, "Jill?"

She squeaked and jumped. Then she recognized me. "Garrett. I was coming to see you. I didn"t know where else to turn." Her voice squeaked. She looked at Maya but didn"t recognize her.

"What"s the trouble?"

Jill gulped air. "There"s...There are dead men in my apartment. Three of them. What should I do?"

I got up. "Let"s go look."

Maya bounced up and invited herself along. Jill was too rattled to care. I figured she"d be safer tagging along than wandering around alone.

Near the door to Jill"s building I spied something I"d missed when the light was poorer-blood. The women didn"t notice.

I found more spots inside, small, nothing to grab the attention if you weren"t looking. I noted that the building was in better shape than its contemporaries.

Lamps on the landings lighted the stairs. I caught sounds of life as we stole to the second-floor landing, first a woman"s laughter sudden as the shattering of a gla.s.s, then sounds of a woman either having one heck of a good time or fighting a bad bellyache.

There were four doors down the second-floor hall from which the sounds came. There had been four on the first. The apartments couldn"t be big, sound not much r.e.t.a.r.ded. How come the place wasn"t an overturned anthill if three guys had gotten killed?

Because Jill lived higher on the hog. Her floor was cla.s.s, only two larger apartments. "Who lives across the way?"

Jill pushed her door open. "n.o.body right now. It"s empty."

"Wait." I wanted to go in first just to be sure. I checked the door. The lock was designed to keep the honest folks out. Anyone with a little know-how could get past it.

So somebody with no knowledge had used a wrecking bar for a key. And n.o.body had heard that?

People do tend to mind their own business.

The room appeared untouched. It was a lot cla.s.sier than a Jill Craight could afford. I"d seen less luxury in places on the Hill.

Jill Craight had a sugar daddy. Or she had something heavy on somebody with a lot to lose, which could be an explanation for somebody watching and trying to get in. Maybe she had a piece of deadly physical evidence.

A trail of blood led to a door standing two inches ajar. It opened on a room eight-feet by eight, jammed with stuff. That"s all you could call it. Stuff. Jill was a pack rat.

Sprawled amid the plunder was a body, blond, middle twenties, still marked by that weathered look you pick up in the Cantard. He might have been handsome. Now he just looked surprised and uncomfortable. And very dead.

"Know who he was?" I asked.

Jill said, "No." Maya shook her head. I frowned. Maya let go of the silver doohickey she was about to pocket.

"I"d guess he walked in on somebody who was digging through your stuff and both of them were surprised." I stepped over the dead man to a door.

The room beyond was where Jill slept and maybe paid her rent. It had that look.

There were two more stiffs in there, and blood all over, like somebody lugged in buckets and threw it around. It looked like several men had chased the guy from the walk-in while more had headed him off at the bedroom door, which opened on a hallway. Both bodies were near the door.

Maybe if you"re a Crask, or Sadler, or even Morley Dotes, you get so the red messes don"t touch you. It took me a minute to get my brain moving, judging the splash patterns and the way things were kicked around. I went over to eyeball the dead men.

I don"t know how long it was. A while. Jill touched my arm. "Garret? Are you all right?" There wasn"t any ice in her eyes. For a moment the woman behind the masks looked out, humanly concerned.

"I"m all right." As all right as I could be looking at a guy I"d had over to supper less than thirty hours ago.

What the h.e.l.l was Pokey doing in Jill"s apartment in the first place, let alone getting himself killed there? He"d given the job to Saucerhead and Jill had fired Tharpe before he"d gotten started.

I went to the bed, picked a clean spot, and sat down. I had some thinking to do.

Pokey had been less of a close friend than a professional acquaintance I respected. And he hadn"t been working for me when he"d gotten it. I didn"t owe him. But something got me on a level where there isn"t any common sense.

I wanted whoever had done it.

Maya spoke for the first time. "Garrett," was all she said but her tone told me it was important.

She was in the walk-in, squatting by the dead man. I joined her. Jill stayed in the doorway, paying attention to Maya for the first time. She did not look happy.

"What?"

"Pull his pants down."

"Say what?"

"Just do it, Garrett."

Maya was too serious to answer with a wisecrack. I did it, turning a pretty shade of pink. "Hunh?"

He"d been surgically and thoroughly des.e.xed. He"d healed but the scar tissue was still a virulent purple. It had been done since his return from the Cantard.

I scrunched up like I had spiders stomping on my naked skin.

Jill said, "That"s sick."

I agreed. I agreed just a whole h.e.l.l of a lot. That mess of scars gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I didn"t want to, but I went and checked the other one.

He was older. His scars had lost their color long ago.

I went back to my place on the bed. After a while, I told Jill, "You can"t stay here. Somebody will come to clean up."

"You think I could stay here with this? Are you crazy?"

"You got anywhere to go?"

"No."

I sighed. It figured. "What about your friend?"

"I don"t know how to get a hold of him. He finds me."

Of course he would. n.o.body"s husband wanted his mistress turning up on his doorstep. Had he given her his real name? "Put together what you"ll need for a few days." Now I had to make a choice. I wanted to track the guys who had gotten away. They"d left a b.l.o.o.d.y trail. But somebody ought to walk Jill over to my place.

I glanced at Maya, looking bad in her colors. She said, "No way, Garrett. I"m sticking with you."

h.e.l.l, it was bad enough having the ones my own age read my mind. Now kids were going to start, too?

Jill said, "I can make it from here to your place, Garrett."

I didn"t argue. She wasn"t high on my list of favorite people. "You have a lantern around here?"

She told me where to find one.

16.

It was quiet out, but it wasn"t trouble quiet. There just wasn"t anybody around.

It was after midnight but that doesn"t make much difference most places. The day people go to bed, then the goblins and kobolds and ratmen and whatnot come out to do the night work. I guess it just wasn"t their kind of neighborhood.

I opened the lantern"s shutter and looked for blood spots. They got harder to see as they dried.

Maya asked, "How come all the lights in her place, Garrett? She must have had twenty lamps burning."

"You got me." It had been bright in there. I hadn"t paid attention, though. "Guess they wanted to see what they were doing."

"She done pretty good since she left the Doom."

"If you say so." Was she going to chatter at me all night?

"You don"t think so?"

"Is that your goal in life? To have some guy keep you in an apartment full of dead men? Those guys came with whatever is going on in her life."

She had to think about that. I finally got some quiet.

It didn"t last. "You notice she had real gla.s.s windows in that fancy sitting room?"

"Yeah." That I"d noticed. Real gla.s.s is expensive. I know. I"ve had to replace a few panes. Those had impressed me.

"The other apartment had them, too."

"Yeah. So?"

"So somebody was watching us from there when we left."

"Oh?" Interesting. "What did he look like?"

"I couldn"t even tell if it was a he. All I saw was a face. It was only there for a second. Plain luck I saw it."

I grunted, not giving her my complete attention. The trail was getting harder to follow, like maybe the guy doing the bleeding had had most of the juice squeezed out. The going was getting slower.

The trail led into an alley so narrow a horseman would lose his knees if he tried to get through. It was not an inviting place. I shone the light in but couldn"t see anything.

"You"re not gong in there, are you?"

"Sure I am." I fished out my bra.s.s knuckles. I hadn"t brought my favorite head-knocker. It hadn"t seemed appropriate dress for a dinner date.

"Is that smart?"

"No. Smart would be to throw you in first and see what eats you." Either Maya had begun to wear or I was getting crabby. "How come you"re following me around, anyway?"

"So I can learn the trade. So I can find out what kind of man you are. You put on a good show but n.o.body is that decent. There"s something weird about you. I want to find out what it is."

Maya was wearing real thin. Weird! No woman had called me that before. "Why"s that?"

"I"m thinking about marrying you."

"Hoo!" I went into that alley without throwing rocks first. There was nothing in there that scared me now.

I found the dead guy ten paces into the darkness. Somebody had set him down with his back against a building, had made him comfortable, then had gone on, presumably to get help. He"d bled to death there.

I squatted, checked him out. Maya held the lantern.

He was still dead. He didn"t have anything to tell me. I figured he was even less happy about the situation than I was. But he wasn"t complaining.

I took the lantern and moved on.

There was more blood, but not much.

Pokey had put him up a h.e.l.l of a fight.

The trail petered out in the next street. I gave it my best look but couldn"t take it any farther.