Bitter Gold Hearts

"He's Amber's bodyguard. DaPena youngsters have been dropping like flies. The reason she ran away was she was afraid she might be next. To get her to come back I had to fix her up with a bodyguard so mean and ugly and stubborn he'd take on the gods themselves. Also one who has a lot of friends willing to get revenge if anything happens to him."

"I don't like your tone, Garrett. You sound like you're accusing me."

"I'm accusing no one. Not yet. But somebody had Amiranda and Junior murdered. I'm just letting people know it's going to get gruesome if it's tried on Amber."

"Karl took his own life, Mr. Garrett."

"He was murdered, Domina. By a man named Gor­geous. I think at the instigation of a third party. I'm going to be talking to friend Gorgeous later. One of the questions I'm going to ask is who put him up to it. Thanks for this. Enjoy your day."

I left her looking flustered and maybe—hopefully— frightened.

The name of the game was Garrett opens his bag of little horrors and lets out some of what he knows, hoping that knowledge looks like a thick and deadly wall against which the onrushing Stormwarden might crush the guilty. Maybe somebody would panic. As I moved away, looking around to see if any of Morley's boys were lurking, I heard footsteps behind me. I looked back.

Courter Slauce was hurrying my way, an odd expres­sion on his fat face. All the color was gone. "Mr. Gar­rett. Wait up."

Had my bolts pinked something in the bushes already? He obviously had something on his mind.

"Courter! Where are you? Come here! Immediately!"

Domina Dount sounded like a fishwife. I couldn't see her, so I assumed she couldn't see me. Slauce threw up his hands in despair and trotted back home.

What had he wanted to tell me?

Morley was waiting at the house when I got there. He hadn't been waiting long.

______XXXIX______

WHAT'S UP, MORLEY?" "Chodo wants to see you. Right away."

"Now I'm not happy. What brought this on?"

Morley shrugged. "I'm just relaying a message Crask left with me. I'll say this. He didn't look like he thought his boss was going to feed you to the fishes."

"That's very reassuring, Morley."

"Chodo is an honorable man, in his own way. He wouldn't chop somebody down without warning."

"Like Gorgeous?"

"Gorgeous had plenty of warnings. Anyway, he put himself on the bull's-eye. Then he stood there with his tongue out. He begged for it, Garrett."

"What do you think? Should I go?"

"Only if you don't want the kingpin pissed at you. A time might come when you'd want him to give you a little leeway."

"You're right. Let's go. Lock it up, Dean."

Dean grumbled, I told him it wouldn't last much longer. Chodo had set himself up in a manor house in the suburbs. The place beggared the Stormwarden's in size and ostentation, a commentary on the wages of sin if you're slick. Sadler was waiting at the gate, a commentary on the confidence Chodo had in the terror of his name, I sup­pose. He said nothing, just let us follow him across the professionally barbered grounds. Having that kind of eye, I couldn't help but study the security arrangements.

"Don't step off the path," Morley cautioned. "You're only safe inside the enchantment."

I then noticed that in addition to the expected and obvious armed guards and killer dogs, there were thunder-lizards lazing in the bushes. They were not the tenement- tall monsters we think of, but little guys four or five feet tall, bipedal, all tail, teeth, and hind legs built for run­ning. They were the reason for the enchantment on the path. Unlike the dogs, those things were too stupid to train. All they understood was eating and mating.

"Nice pets," I told Sadler. He didn't respond. Won­derful company, the kingpin's boys.

But the grimness ended at the front door.

Chodo knew how to do it up royal. I've been inside several places on the Hill. None could match Chodo's.

"Don't gawk, Garrett. It's impolite."

A platoon of nearly naked cuties were playing in and around a heated bath pool three times bigger than the ground area of my whole place. We passed through. I muttered, "Business must be good."

"Looks like." The man who had cautioned me not to gawk was looking back, the gleam in his eyes a conflagra­tion. "Never saw them before." He walked into a pillar.

The part of the house where we met the kingpin was less luxurious. It was, in fact, your basic filthy, miserable dungeon—except it was located on the ground level. The kingpin himself was a pallid, doughy fat man in a wheel-chair who didn't look like he could whip potatoes until you met his eyes. I had seen eyes like those only a few times, on some very old and hungry vampires. They were the eyes of Death.

"Mr. Garrett?"

The voice went with the eyes, deep and dank and cold, with hints of awful things crawling around its underside.

"Yes."

"I believe I owe you a considerable debt."

"Not at all. I—"