Book 02 - Bitter Gold Hearts Read Online Free PDF Page B

Morley? Do you trust
him?”
    “With my money or my life but never with my woman.
It’s getting late. I’d better get you home.”
    “I don’t think I’m going home, Garrett. Unless
you insist.”
    “All right.” I do like a woman who can make up her
mind, even though I may not understand what she is doing. The Dead
Man would have fits. But that was all right. What did he live for
but to chew me out and to march his bugs around the walls?
     
    Only one thing further about that night needs to be reported.
When we were slipping into bed, I noted the absence of a gewgaw
worn by every woman who doesn’t want to hear little voices
piping, “Mommy!”
    “Where’s your amulet?”
    “You’re a gentleman in your heart, aren’t you,
Garrett? Most men would have pretended not to notice.”
    I don’t often get caught without something to say. This
was one of those rare times. I kept my mouth shut. She slipped in
beside me, warm and bare, and whispered, “You don’t
have to worry. I can’t make you a father.”
    And of that night nothing more need be said. She was gone when I
awoke the next morning. I never saw her again.
----

VIII
    Morley himself stopped by to let me know what
he’d learned. Old Dean let him in and brought him to the
overconfident closet I call an office. I didn’t rise and I
didn’t offer the usual banter. Dean went off to the kitchen
to get Morley some of the apple juice we keep in the cold well
against those millennial moments when I don’t feel like
having beer.
    “You look glum, Garrett.”
    “It happens. The strain of being Mr. Smiles catches
up.”
    “Well, you may have good reason. Even though you
don’t know it yet.”
    I showed him my eyebrow trick. He wasn’t impressed.
Everyone knows what familiarity breeds.
    “I put out feelers that touched everybody in the snatch
racket. Nobody has gone underground. Nobody is scoping out a job on
the Hill. I got the personal guarantee of some of the best and the
worst that there’s nobody in this burg crazy enough to go for
the Stormwarden’s kid. Not for a million in gold. Gold
don’t do you any good when you’re getting your toes
roasted in the sorceress’s basement.”
    “That’s what’s supposed to give me a sour
puss?”
    “No. You get that when I tell you about the guy who was
tailing you last night. Or your lady, actually. You should have
told me she was Amiranda Crest, Garrett. I wouldn’t have made
remarks about her father.”
    “She’s used to it. What about the tail?”
    “He trotted right down here after you, not even thinking
somebody might be following him too. Fool. He hung around watching
the place for a couple of hours. About the time even a moron would
have figured out that she was spending the night he took off and
headed—”
    Dean stuck his head in through the doorway. “Excuse me,
Mr. Garrett. There’s a Mr. Slauce here to see you,
representing somebody he calls the Domina Dount. Will you see
him?”
    “I can wait,” Morley told me.
    “Out that door.” I indicated the closet’s
second exit, which opened on a hallway leading past the Dead
Man’s room. “Bring Mr. Slauce in, Dean.”
    Slauce was a blustery, potbellied, red-faced little man who was
way out of his element. I think he had me pegged for a professional
killer. He worked hard at being polite. It was obvious he
wasn’t accustomed to that.
    “Mr. Garrett?”
    I confessed that I was that very devil. “Domina Dount
would like to see you again. She said to tell you she’s
received another letter from her correspondent and would like
further professional advice. I assume you understand what she
means. She didn’t explain to me.”
    “I know what she meant.”
    “She authorized me to offer you ten marks gold for your
time.”
    I wondered what she really wanted. She was throwing one hell of
a lot of money around. A laborer, if he got paid in a lump for the
time, wouldn’t draw ten marks gold for three months of his
life. And right now gold