5

There are those, old Dean among them, whose major personality flaw is a compulsion to spring up with the first bird chirp. That's a dandy habit—if you've got to get to the worms first. Me, I swore off exotic chow when I parted ways with the Corps. I won't get into that situation again.

Dean suffers from the delusion that sleeping till noon is a sin. I've tried and tried to show him the light, but his brain hardened along with his arteries. He flat won't admit the truth of my theories. No fool like an old fool.

I made the error of observing that aloud.

Hell, it was barely sunup. You expect me to think at that time of night?

I got me a drizzle of ice water down my spine.

I screamed. I cussed. I said stuff to set dear old mom spinning in her grave.

I got up, to no avail. The old boy had him a head start.

I sat on the edge of my bed, put my elbows on my knees and my forehead in my hands. I asked the gods, which I believe in once a week, what I'd done to deserve Dean. Hadn't I always been one of the good guys? Come on, fellows. Let's all play a prank on the universe and let true justice reign for a day. Get that old sucker.

I blinked. Between the heels of my hands I glimpsed Dean peeking around the doorframe. "Time to get up, Mr. Garrett. You have to be outside the Al-Khar in two hours. I've started breakfast."

My suggestion about breakfast reversed the traditional alimentary process. He wasn't impressed.

He clumped downstairs. I groaned vigorously and stumbled to a window. There was barely enough light to see. The city ratmen were banging and clanging their trash carts while they pretended to do something useful. A herd of dwarves hustled past, carrying bundles bigger than they were. They were a sullen, surly, silent gang. See what getting up early does?

Except for dwarves and street sweepers, the thoroughfare was barren. Sane folk were still in bed.

Only impending poverty kept me from easing back into mine.

What the hell? I could turn old Barking Dog into a career. Anybody dumb enough to have him tailed deserved to have his purse looted. Sure be safer than most jobs that come my way.

I prettied myself up and moseyed downstairs. I paused outside the kitchen to put on a heavyweight scowl—though at that time of night, if my rest is disturbed, scowling comes naturally.

Which did me no good. I stepped into the smells of spicy sausages, stewed apples, fresh hot tea, biscuits just out of the oven. I didn't have a chance.

He won't cook like that when I'm not working. I'm just hanging around, it's maybe a bowl of cold porridge developing a crust. If I want fresh tea, I've got to put the pot on myself.

What do you do with these work-ethic fanatics? I mean, I don't mind if he busts his butt working for me—which I've never noticed him doing. My problem is, he's one of those characters who want to redesign the rest of us. His ambition is to see me collapse from overwork, rich, before my thirty-first birthday. I'm going to fool him. That won't never come. I'm going to stay thirty forever.

I ate. Too much. Dean hummed as he cleaned his pots. He was happy. I was employed. I felt abused, trivialized. Such a vast array of talents and skills wasted trailing a nut case. It was like using a rosewood four-by-four to swat flies.

Dean was of such good cheer about my employment that he forgot to kvetch till I was halfway through my second helping of apples. "You go past the Tate compound to get to the Al-Khar don't you, Mr. Garrett?"

Oh-oh. When he Misters me he knows I won't like what he's got to say. This time he was pretty transparent. "Not today." He was going to nudge me to make up with Tinnie. Which I wasn't going to do on account of I'd decided I was done apologizing to women for things I didn't do. "Tinnie wants to make up, she knows where to find me."

"But... "

I got up. "Something you need to think about, Dean. Maybe while you're finding a home for that cat. And that's what you'll do if I suddenly find me a wife to manage the house." That would hold him.

I headed for the front door. I didn't get there. The Dead Man's voice rang in my head. You are leaving without taking adequate precautions, Garrett.

He meant I was leaving the house unarmed. I said, "I'm just going to follow a crazy man. I won't get into trouble." Without bothering to go into his room. He doesn't hear physically.

You never plan to get into trouble. Yet each time you assume that attitude and go out unprepared, you end up wishing you had had the foresight to carry something. Is that not so?

That was uncomfortably close to the truth. I wished it wasn't. I wished we lived in a more civilized age. But wishing never makes anything so.

I went upstairs, to my closet of unpleasantries, where I keep the tools I use when the tools I prefer, my wits, fail me. I grumbled all the while. And wondered why I resisted good advice. I guess I resented the fact that I hadn't thought of it myself.

Lessons you don't want to learn come hard.

TunFaire is not a nice city.

I hit the street in a black humor. I wasn't going to make the city any nicer.

6

Like most public buildings in this town, the Al-Khar is generations overdue for renovation. It looks like the prisoners could walk through the walls if they wanted.

The Al-Khar was a bad idea from the beginning, a pork-barrel project making somebody rich through cost overruns and corner cutting. The builder used a pale yellow-green stone that absorbed grunge from the air, reacted with it, streaked, turned uglier by the hour, and did not stand up, being too soft. It chipped and flaked, dropping talus all around the prison, leaving the walls with a poxy appearance. In places there'd been mortar decay enough that stones were loose. Since the city hardly ever jailed anybody, there seemed to be no financial provision for prison maintenance.

It was raining still, though now the fall was just a drizzle. Just enough to be a misery. I posted myself under a forlorn lime tree as down-and-out as any alley-dwelling ratman. It didn't know the season. But its sad branches offered the only shelter around. I recalled my Marine Corps training and faded into my surroundings. Garrett the chameleon. Right.

I was early, not something that happens often. But since I started my exercises I move a little faster, with more energy. Maybe I should go for a mental workout too. Develop some energy and enthusiasm in that direction.

The trouble with me is my work. Investigating exposes you to the slimy underbelly of the world. Being a weak character, I try to make things better, to strike the occasional spark in the darkness. I have a notion my reluctance to work springs from the knowledge that if I do I'll see more of the world's dark side, that I'll butt heads with the Truth, which is that people are cruel and selfish and thoughtless and even the best will sell their mothers at the right time.

The big difference between good guys and bad is the good guys haven't yet had a fat chance for profiting from going bad.

A bleak world view, unfortunately reinforced by events almost daily.

A bleak view that's scary because it keeps on telling me my turn is coming.

A bleak street, that dirty cobbled lane past the Al-Khar. Very little traffic. That was true even in good weather. I've felt less lonely, less touched by despair, alone in the woods.

The street was a problem professionally as well as emotionally. I didn't blend in. People would start wondering and maybe remembering—though they wouldn't come outside. People in this town avoid trouble.

Barking Dog came stomping out of prison, thumbs tucked into his belt. He paused, surveyed the world with a prisoner's eye.