Dread Brass Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page B

wouldn’t have it, would you?”
    Sure I wouldn’t. “I wish I did.” Rut her tone said she wasn’t going to believe that. She wasn’t going to get confused by facts.
    Her knife pricked my throat. Her hand was steady. She was a pro. Not even a little nervous Me neither. Not much. “I don’t have it. How come you think I do?”
    She didn’t tell me. “I’m going to look. I’m going to take this place apart. You want to stay healthy, stay out of my way. You want your house to stay healthy, give me the book now.”
    I gave her a look at my fluttering-eyebrow trick. I tossed in a big smile. “Have fun.”
    She smiled back. “Think you can take me? Don’t even think about trying.”
    “Little old me? Perish the thought. Hey, Chuckles. Time to do your stuff.”
    Winger glanced around. Her knife hand remained steady. She couldn’t figure out who the hell I was talking to. “Who the hell you talking to?”
    “My partner.”
    She opened her mouth. That was as far as she got. The Dead Man turned her into a living statue. In the last instant her expression turned to horror. I edged away from her knife, got out of my chair. “You got nerve,” I said. She could hear and understand. “But nerve isn’t everything.” Nobody who’d studied me would try to take me in my own house. The Dead Man doesn’t get out much, but that hasn’t kept him from acquiring a reputation.
    I patted Winger’s considerable shoulder. It was rock hard. “Live and learn, sweetheart.” I finished my mug, strolled across the hall. “What’s the story, Smiley?”
    No story, Garrett. She has told you everything. She is looking for a book. This is her first job in TunFaire. She was hired by a man named Lubbock. He paid her thirty marks to shake you down. He will give her forty more if she finds the book.
    “Interesting coincidence. What’s she know about that gang yesterday?”
    Nothing. Obviously she was selected for that reason. She can tell no one anything because she knows nothing.
    “I guess friend Lubbock did his research.”
    Perhaps.
    “She has an accent.” She was Karentine but from way out there somewhere.
    Hender. West Midlands.
    “Never heard of it.”
    Not surprising. Population less than a hundred. A farming village. A suggestion. Assuming your curiosity has been piqued, as mine has, have her watched. Her contacts might prove interesting. It seems likely that Lubbock is not her employer’s real name. She believes it to be a pseudonym herself.
    Sounded good to me. Something was going on. And I don’t like sitting around waiting for things to happen. “Right. Can’t use Saucerhead, though. She knows his face. I could dash over to Morley’s.”
    Quickly?
    Sarky old clown can put a lot into a single word. He’d recovered from his earlier consideration for my feelings, was back to letting me know what he thought of my ways.
    “I’m gone.”
    I got back faster than either of us expected. I had some luck.
    Saucerhead was still loafing on the stoop. He hadn’t finished the pitcher Dean had provided for my run. He had company again, a local blackheart called Squirrel. I don’t know Squirrel’s real name. I never heard him called anything else. He was a skinny little gink with atrocious posture, a pointy face and buckteeth, and huge ears that stuck straight out from the side of his head. He’d have trouble making any headway walking into a light breeze.
    They didn’t call him Squirrel because of his looks.
    Somebody left something out when they gave him his brains. He was a first-class goofball.
    And a second-class thug.
    He worked for Chodo Contague. He was more than a gofer but not one of the heavyweights, like Sadler and Crask. I didn’t know Squirrel well but did know he wasn’t somebody who was going to elevate the standards of the neighborhood.
    I looked at him. He gave me a grin full of teeth. Friendly as hell. That was Squirrel. Always trying to be your pal—till it came time to put a knife in your back.