Free Cold Copper Tears by Glen Cook Page A

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.
    Poke 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.
     
     

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 Wedge wasn’t nice people. Morley Dotes didn’t have nice people working for him.
    She was