Lt. Medley pinched the bridge of his nose, looking pained.
“Didn’t I specifically ask you to be careful if you visited the Gilded Lily?” he asked.
“I was.” I scowled. “I wasn’t even expecting to talk to her!”
“Well, a very influential woman has been killed by what looks like a sentinel attack, less than an hour after talking to a Watch sentinel about an active investigation.”
“I wasn’t flashing any identification, and the killer woulda had to work damn fast to arrange a hit in the same night.”
“Your report says Miss Liselle recognized you.”
I gave an uneasy shrug. “Not that many people around with red and yellow hair.”
“You’re off the case, Lorencz,” Medley said with a sigh. “The nix, the slavers, Lily — all of it.”
“What the hell? I’ve been working on it for two months!”
“Nothing personal.” Medley slid a piece of paper from the file and turned it around for me. The scarlet seal and scrawl of the Ministry of Justice’s Director Ban Jaspin were clear as blood on snow. I’d been yanked.
“This ain’t right,” I protested.
“You blew it, that’s all.” Medley put the file back into order. “Take the day off. Come back tomorrow night for regular patrol duty.”
I stood in the street, lighting up the first cigar of the day. The day was still cold and an icy rime covered the street and the rickety buildings. The air was crisp; the kind of crisp that cuts your lungs if you breathe too deeply. Good thing I had my smokes to keep them warm.
Why would the Ministry of Justice pull me off the case? Did Ban Jaspin know Lily personally? I supposed it was possible; with his scarred mug and limp, maybe he needed to pay for company.
I took a long draw on the cigar, watching as a group of kids ran by. They weren’t wearing enough clothes for the cold. They didn’t seem to notice, even though their breath hung in the air. A night-dirt wagon rattled past. I stepped out of its way and started walking down the street.
Nothing pisses me off more than having some higher-up brush me off like I’m a halfwit child. So, Lily’s murder was in the hands of the big boys. I flicked ash on the rutted dirt road. Well, they damn well wouldn’t be working it alone. I hadn’t expected to like the lady, but she’d been an upright dame, and if Medley was right and I’d caused her death, then I owed her one.
I finished the smoke and tossed the butt into an alley. The pale morning light filtered behind me, highlighting a small huddled shape surrounded by chalk marks.
I stepped inside for a better look. The cat was dead, neck broken, but the blood around its mouth was still wet. It laid in the top square of the hopscotch board, neatly arranged. My shadow hung over it like an ill omen.
“No injuries other than those consistent with a razorbite attack,” the medical examiner confirmed. He was working on a new corpse, so I stood far back so I wouldn’t see anything that might keep me up nights. Finding ’em’s bad enough; looking inside of ’em isn’t part of my job description. “She was in perfect health, otherwise.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I started to leave when he held up a blood-covered hand.
“Just a minute, Captain. We need to talk about this Axton fellow who’s been writing all these preliminary reports.”
“Yeah? What about him?”
“I don’t appreciate having an excommunicate jailbird doing my job. I spent a lot of years and a lot of money to earn my position. Axton is a dabbler at best and a ghoul with a taste for fondling corpses at the worst. The Watch shouldn’t encourage him.”
“He seems to know what he’s doing. And I hear he works nights.”
“I have assistants who work nights.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever, Doc,” I said, escaping out the door. Guess I wasn’t the only one feeling pissy about others muscling in on their job.
The Northside city morgue was in the bottom of the Ministry of Justice. My next stop was at the top. I began the long climb upstairs, stopping on every landing to catch my breath.
Jaspin’s office was on the top floor, corner. I collapsed on a wooden chair in the lobby, breathing hard, and perversely patted my coat for another coffin nail.
“Can I help you?” the clerk asked, eyeing me. I gave up looking for a cigar and tapped the brass and silver on my lapel, instead.
“Captain Arcady Lorencz to see Director Jaspin,” I wheezed.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Nope.”
The clerk made a face and vanished into the office. I took the time to catch my breath. He reappeared a few minutes later, brushing back his thinning hair.
“He’ll see you, Captain.”
I climbed to my feet and went through the open door.
Ban Jaspin sat at a desk that wasn’t quite large enough to barricade a street if it got caught in a riot. It was probably a nice desk, but I couldn’t see much of it beneath the piles of paper that covered every square inch. More paper was stacked in piles around him. Books covered the shelves lining the office walls. Two long, narrow windows could have let in some light, but they were covered with oilpaper that diffused the autumn sun into a dim yellow glow supplemented by the lamp on Jaspin’s desk. I looked around for an empty chair, but they were all covered with books and files, so I stood and gazed at the guy sitting behind the desk, instead.
He was already studying me through his one good eye.
I’d guess that Jaspin and Droit were about an age, Jaspin maybe a few years older, although it was hard to be sure. The explosion that had caught him seven years ago had left his right side covered in scars. A black patch covered the hole where his right eye had been, a black glove covered his mangled right hand, and a black cane leaning against the desk supplemented his twisted right leg. The scars on the right side of his face suggested that the rest of the skin on that side, under his clothes, wouldn’t be a pretty sight.
A lesser man would have retired after a bad break like that. Jaspin kept plugging along, his movements a little slower but his mind as swift as ever.
“Nice haircut, Captain,” he said, his inspection over. “Move that pile of books and sit down.”
I shifted the books and sat down. My aching legs thanked me. I don’t understand why any building needs more than two floors.
“I pulled you off Lily Liselle’s case because I want to handle it myself, not because I consider you incompetent,” he continued, answering the question I hadn’t asked. “Frankly, I don’t care that you’ve been written up for unnecessary violence. In Dockside, a reputation like that can be useful. You demonstrated last night that you can keep your cool in polite society. However, Northgate is a long way out of your jurisdiction.”
“Swell, but I was there — I helped kill the razorbite that murdered her. Don’t that give me an in? Besides, you didn’t just lift my murder, you stole my nix case, too.”
“You know as well as I do that Lily’s death is probably connected to your questioning her about the drug. It takes a sentinel to make nix, and it takes a sentinel to call a transient.”
“So, which sentinel’s working with you?”
He shook his head, and the scars on his face shifted. He knew what was coming.
“Then requisition me,” I said. “You need a whistling op to look into the adjuration parts of this case, and you won’t have to get me up to speed.”
“Your file says you don’t work well with others.”
“I hear you don’t, either. Sounds like a good match, to me.”
He gazed at me a long time. I let him look, keeping my face blank.
“The hair stays trimmed and the clothes respectable as long as you’re working with the Ministry,” he said at last. “No burning down any more buildings. We have a reputation to maintain; you undermine it, and you’re out.”
“Deal,” I agreed. “And you write Lieutenant Medley and tell him I’m relieved of regular duty while I’m working with you.”
He stood and held out his left hand. “Agreed.”
We shook on it wrong-handed, and he called in his clerk to make sure the paperwork was filled out.
“Your report says you were with Tegeus Droit when you heard the hostess scream,” Ban said after the clerk left. “Does he have a solid alibi?”
“Yeah, for Lily. If a couple of smooth-fingered gamblers and their pretty-boy shill get backed over the next few days, I’d slip him the peery eye. They were cutting a sham and he was the dupe.”
Jaspin nodded without interest and moved on through the file.
“I’ve contacted the main beneficiaries of Miss Liselle’s will. Nothing suspicious there, and none of them are sentinels, although I have agents researching their past. They couldn’t name anyone who might have reasonably expected to be in the will but been left out.”
“What about gambling debts?” I asked, remembering Heath’s comment.
“As it happens, quite a few people were in debt to Miss Liselle.” Jaspin picked up a sheet of paper on which he’d written a list of names and addresses, creased it, and tore it in half. He gave me the top. “Behave yourself when you interview them. I’ll meet you here tomorrow morning to compare notes.”