Book 04 - Old Tin Sorrows Read Online Free PDF

sawdust mush, they wouldn’t know it.”
    Maybe not. But I’d had old Dean cooking for me for a while and I knew good food when I bit it. “How many do you have to take care of?”
    “Eighteen. Counting myself. Bloody army. What do you care, Mr. Nineteen and straw that broke the camel’s back?”
    “That many? The place is like a haunted house. I’ve seen the General, Dellwood, and you, and some old boy who was stoking the fireplace in the General’s study.”
    “Kaid.”
    “And two women. Where are the rest? On maneuvers?”
    “Wise ass, eh? Where did you see two women? That ass Harcourt sneaking one of his floozies in here again? Hell. I hope he is. I just hope he is. I’ll have the old man put him on KP for a year. Get this cesspool cleaned out. What the hell you doing here, anyway? We ain’t had nobody new here for two years. No honest-to-goodness guests in a year and a half, just in and outs from uptown, their noses in the air like they don’t squat to shit like everybody else.”
    Whew! “To tell the truth, Miss . . . ?” She didn’t take the hook. “To tell the truth, I’m not quite sure. The General sent for me. Said he wanted to hire me. But he had some kind of attack before . . . ”
    She melted. The vinegar drained out in two seconds. “How bad is it? Maybe I’d better go see.”
    “Dellwood’s taken care of it. Says he just needs to rest. He got himself overwrought. This fellow Harcourt. He has a habit of bringing girlfriends home?”
    “Not since a couple years back. What the hell you asking all the questions for? Ain’t none of your damned business what we do or who we do it with.”
    She had a thought. She stopped dead still, stepped away from the sink, turned, laid a first-class glower on me. “Or is it your business?”
    I didn’t say. I tried to slide around it by offering her my empty plate. “Wouldn’t be a little more of that, would there? Just to fill a couple empty spots?”
    “It is your business. The old man has another fantasy. Thinks somebody’s out to get him. Or somebody’s robbing him.” She shook her head. “You’re wasting your time. Or maybe not. Long as he’s paying you, it don’t matter if you find something, does it? Hell. Probably better if you don’t. You can rob him yourself, taking money for nothing. Till the fantasy wears off.”
    I was confused, but covered it. “Somebody’s been robbing the General?”
    “Nobody’s robbing him. The old boy ain’t got a pot to pee in, not counting this damned stone barn. And it’s too damned big to carry off. Anyway, if somebody
was
robbing him I wouldn’t tell you word one. Not no outsider. I don’t never say nothing to no outsiders. They’re all a bunch of con artists.”
    “Commendable attitude.” I wiggled my plate suggestively.
    “I got my hands in dishwater up to my elbows and you don’t look like you got no broken legs. Get it yourself.”
    “Be happy to if I knew where.”
    She made an exasperated noise, made allowance for the fact that I was new. “On the damned stove. Rice in the steel pot, stew in the iron kettle. I worry about the old boy. These fancies . . . More and more all the time. Must be the sickness. Touching him. Though he always did think somebody was trying to do him out of something.”
    Wouldn’t say a word to an outsider. I was proud of her. “It isn’t possible somebody might actually
be
robbing him? Like they say, even paranoids get persecuted.”
    “Who? You tell me that, Mr. Smartass Snooper. Ain’t nobody in this whole damned place wouldn’t wrestle thunder-lizards for him. Half of them would take the disease for him if they could.”
    I didn’t make the point, but people work kinky deals with their consciences. I had no trouble imagining a man willing to die for the General being equally willing to steal from him. The very willingness to serve could set off a chain of justifications making theft sound completely reasonable.
    She’d figured me out in fifteen minutes. How long would it be before word spread? “You ever have a