Free Book 03 - Cold Copper Tears by Glen Cook Page A

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 hell of a fight.
    The trail petered out in the next street. I gave it my best look
but couldn’t take it any farther.
    Maya asked, “What’re you going to do now?”
    “Hire a specialist.” I started walking. She caught
up. I asked, “Doesn’t any of this bother you?”
She’d stayed cooler than Jill Craight.
    “I’ve been on the street five years, Garrett. Only
things that bother me are the ones people try to do to
me.”
    She wasn’t that tough, but she was getting there. And that
was a shame.
     
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17
    Sometimes it seems Morley’s place never closes. It does,
but only during those hours of the dawn and morning when only the
most twisted are up and about. Noon to first light the place serves
its strange clientele.
    It had thinned out, but forty pairs of eyes watched us from the
entrance to the serving counter, eyes more puzzled than
hostile.
    Wedge was behind the counter. Of all Morley’s henchmen
he’s the most courteous. “Evening, Garrett.” He
nodded to Maya. “Miss.” Just as though she didn’t
look like death on a stick and smell like it, too.
    “Morley still up?”
    “He’s got company.” The way he said it told me
the company wasn’t business.
    “That resolution didn’t last long.”
    Wedge flashed me a smile. “Were you in the
pool?”
    “No.” They would, that bunch.
    Wedge went to the speaking tube, talked and listened, talked and
listened, then came back. “He’ll be a while. Said have
dinner while you wait. On the house.”
    Ugh.
    Maya said, “That sounds great,” before I could turn
him down. “I could eat a horse.”
    I grumbled, “You won’t eat one here. Horseweed,
horse fennel, horseradish, horse clover, yeah,
but . . . ”
    Wedge yelled into the back for two specials, then leaned on the
counter. “What you need, Garrett? Maybe I can save you some
time.”
    I glanced at Maya. She smiled. She knew damned well Wedge was
being nice because I had a woman along.
    How do they get that way so young?
    “I need a stalker, Wedge. A good one. I’m trying to
track a guy.”
    “Cold trail?”
    “Not very. And he was bleeding. But it’s getting
colder.”
    “Back in a few. I know what you need.” He went into
the kitchen. Another human-elf breed took his place. He was
younger. He plunked a couple of platters on the counter, tossed up
some utensils, looked at Maya like he wondered if it was catching,
and went to the end of the counter to take somebody’s
order.
    “That one’s no prince,” Maya told me.
“But the old guy was all right.” She eyed her
platter.
    The special looked like fried grass on a bed of blanched
maggots, covered in a slime sauce filled with toadstool chunks and
tiny bits of black fur. I muttered, “No wonder vegetarians
are so nasty.”
    Maya assaulted her meal. When she stopped to catch her breath
she said, “This ain’t bad, Garrett.”
    I’d begun nibbling the mushrooms out of mine. She was
right. But I wasn’t going to admit it out loud, in front of
witnesses. I muttered, “Wedge is no prince, either. He takes
people out on the river, ties rocks to their feet, dumps them in,
and tells them he’ll race them back to shore. Tells them
he’ll turn them loose if they beat him. I hear some of them
paddle like hell all the way to the bottom.”
    She checked to see if I was joking. She saw I wasn’t.
Well, maybe I’d exaggerated a little, but