She didn't question my source. "What favor?"

"It doesn't involve you or yours."

"Relway isn't interested in us?"

"Of course he is. He's interested in everything. But he's a realist. He knows you offer services the public wants, nor are you breaking the law, mostly. Whatever the priests and reformers say. He's really interested in people who hurt people. Or people he thinks threaten society. But he's Relway. He's a slave to his obsessions. He wants to know everything about everything."

Garrett, being able to read your mind and intentions helps but even so what you have just said makes only marginal sense.

I had no trouble understanding me.

Belinda got it, too, though her coal-chip gaze never stopped boring holes through me.

I asked, "Darling, why couldn't you be somebody else?" Nobody grabs the unreasoning side of me like Belinda Contague.

"Sometimes I wish I was somebody else, too, Garrett. But it's too late."

"Do we have to be enemies?"

"Were we ever?"

Yes. Careful, Garrett. "No. But what we are can drive us places where we're out of choices."

"Sufficient to the day the evil thereof."

I gave her a look at my raised eyebrow. That always charms them.

"And don't try that on me, Garrett. You're in my heart. Suppose we just go on the way you did with my father?"

"Your dad thought he owed me." The final account left me way in his debt, though.

"I owe you. In a different way. You're the only guy I know who treats me like a human being. Even when I was completely weird you treated me right."

"That's just me." I glanced at the Dead Man. He was one witness too many.

"Shut up. I'm not proposing. I'm not going to steal you away from the Tate woman." She has more spies than Relway. "But I do have my small claim on you."

Control your breathing, Garrett.

When I was younger the old guys promised me I'd grow out of the heavy breathing. Maybe you have to be dead, though. There's always a Belinda or Tinnie or somebody scrambling my brain.

"If what Relway wants doesn't involve me, what's the secret?"

Good point. Perhaps. "He wants to infiltrate the rights movement. And I'm involved because some rightsist group is trying to extort money from the Weider family."

Belinda became the kingpin completely, a stone killer handicapped only marginally by her sex. "I have rightsist problems, too," she said. "Those people have no respect. They believe they have the right to do whatever they want because their cause is just."

I grunted agreement. That was their thinking exactly.

"I won't let them tread on my toes."

Oh-oh. Somebody else wanted to sign me up.

I am going to take a short nap, Garrett. I expect it will last all night.

What? Now I knew why I hadn't seen Belinda's coach outside. She'd had no plans to leave and His Nibs suddenly was inclined to humor her. Which he had not been only a short while ago. What intriguing thought had he plucked from her spider's nest of a mind?

24

I'm a devil pig, I'm told, because I like women. A lot. Go figure that kind of thinking.

The preference has gotten me into trouble occasionally. With Belinda trouble could get ugly. The spiders in her head spin strangely kinked thoughts. And she had to turn up just when Tinnie's stubbornness had begun to crack.

I heard about it over breakfast, basking in Dean's disapproval. I hated to let him waste all that bile.

"Thanks," I said, accepting the tea. "You'll need to do up the guest bedroom after Belinda gets up."

The old boy had an idea in his head. He wasn't going to let me confuse him.

"You're wasting an ulcer, Dean." Help! I appealed to the Dead Man. Tell him nothing happened.

I was asleep, Garrett. However, if a small prevarication will oil the machinery...

Dean made a sound of disgust. He didn't want to believe the Dead Man, either.

Belinda came downstairs. She was in a bitter mood. She didn't like not getting her own way. She glared at Dean. He responded with the indifference of a man so old he has nothing left to fear.

Belinda shrugged. She cared for no man's opinion, which wasn't always wise. Her world was unforgiving and the penalties for failing to observe its rules often lethal. She worried too little about making enemies inside her own circle. She could have worked something out with Crask and Sadler.

Belinda was Chodo Contague's child, both his creation and his doom.

It must have been hell to be his kid. Belinda wouldn't talk about it but there was no doubt that she was bitter.

There are suspicions that Belinda's mother went to her eternal reward early because Chodo disapproved of her infidelity.

That was common rumor before I ever met Belinda. It might have plenty to do with Chodo's condition now.

I feared Belinda's obsessions might compel the Outfit to take her down. But she was quite capable of taking it down with her.

Belinda asked, "Suppose I explain in person?"

"That might get exciting."

"Is the woman irrational, Garrett?"

"Is any woman reasonable after she makes up her mind? Tinnie's not. I can't figure her out. I hardly try anymore. What're you trying to do to me?"

"Nothing anymore, Garrett. It's just business now."

Did I need to concern myself with the hell hath no fury syndrome?

"Don't worry, lover. These crackpots are bad for business. They'll be dealt with. But—"

"Hey! Could that be why Crask and Sadler are back? Because somebody wants their knowledge about you?"

Belinda smiled like a cat contemplating a cornered mouse. "Possibly. I have an idea. Why don't I be your companion tonight? I can see people I'd never run into otherwise."

"I'm dead."

She has put forth an outstanding idea, Garrett. Consider it.

I had a good notion where she came up with it, too. "You consider it, Chuckles. You don't have to get along with Tinnie Tate."

As Miss Contague has suggested, Miss Tate cannot be entirely irrational.

"Then you know a different Miss Tate." He did see more of Tinnie than I did, though. Maybe he knew something. Maybe the leopardess had changed her spots. Maybe she'd traded them in for saber-tooth tiger stripes.

I told Belinda, "Me and the junior partner need to butt heads. He agrees with you."

"Tell him I take back all the wicked things I ever said about him."

"I won't. I'm going to invent new words so I can say more."

25

"What is this?" I demanded as I blew into the Dead Man's room. "Are you determined to get me lynched?"

I reiterate. Miss Tate is not irrational. Enough of that. There are larger issues at hand.

"Larger to who, Old Bones?"

Thousands. Even tens of thousands. Name for me, if you will, just five nonhumans murdered today who considered Miss Tate's potential ill will an eventuality more dire than the catastrophe which actually afflicted them.

"Unfair. Unfair." He was deft at carving holes in the thickest smoke when the mood took him. "None of them knew Tinnie like I—"

Garrett.

"All right. How is taking Belinda along going to be useful?"

We want to situate you so that you become a recognized intermediary between as many interests as possible. So you can dip into the information flows. This will position you to take advantage of anyone wishing to communicate with the Syndicate. Particularly as regards those with little sympathy for The Call and its ilk.