60

The Casey raid was a disaster for the secret police. Almost everything had been removed from the place except for an extensive array of booby traps, most of them so cunning there was no way to detect them before they did their evil work.

“There were two corpses in the place when we got there,” Relway told us. “According to people in the building both were tenants who sprang traps while they were looting the place. They’d been there a while. They were getting ripe. The same people told us the elf came back this morning, beat-up and dirty. He did whatever he did in his apartment, then went through the building reclaiming his stolen stuff, which he loaded into a waiting wagon. He did leave a few things behind because he didn’t have time to recover everything. He was still there, at it, just ten minutes before we arrived. But, somehow, he knew we were coming. At ten minutes he dropped everything and took off.”

I offered a suggestion. “Look for a livery stable in the neighborhood. A place that has donkeys stabled. Possibly for rent. And don’t count on being able to recognize this guy if you run into him. He loves disguises. And he has sorceries that help him look like other people. And some of the other elves have demonstrated the ability to make themselves invisible.”

“What was that about a donkey?”

I rehashed my first encounter with Casey, disguised as Bic Gonlit. And then explained that the real Bic Gonlit seemed to be making his living working for ratman crime bosses these days. And that I suspected that the raid on Playmate’s stable had been incited by the false Bic.

Block wanted to explore the whole Bic Gonlit question more closely. There seemed to be one long coincidence right in the middle of things, that being that both Bic Gonlits would cross my path on unrelated matters.

“It probably wasn’t total coincidence,” I mused. “But I’m confident that there’s no grand plot. In order to pretend to be Bic Gonlit, Casey would’ve had to get close to the real Bic to study him. So Bic’s probably had an unexpected friend during recent months. You might see what he has to say about that.”

Colonel Block gave me a hard look. I’d just set poor Bic up for some difficult times. But Block said, “Suppose there isn’t a coincidence? Is it possible that this Casey wanted to pull you in? Maybe so he’d have somebody who really knows TunFaire looking for the two elves he wants to find?”

I considered the almost compulsive need I had, at times, for finding Lastyr and Noodiss. “It could be. I think it could be.” So did that make it the grand plot that I was confident didn’t exist?

I don’t think so. I have a feeling there was a lot of opportunism and seizing the day going on around me, particularly by Casey and Bic Gonlit.

None by me, of course. I’m too damned dumb. And then some.

“It’s been another long day, Colonel,” I said. “And I don’t see how I can possibly be any more help, no matter how much I might want to be. Other than to get those people up front out of your hair.” I was curious about that. I didn’t know anybody in the legal profession. Not well, anyway. Lawyerdom is a small community with very little official standing outside the realm of commercial relations. “And you do know where to find me if you need me.”

Block seemed distracted as he said, “All right. You’re right. You might as well go home.”

As I rose, I said, “Here’s an idea. Everything that used to belong to the elves. Whatever you’ve managed to gather up. Isolate it somewhere. Try not to talk out loud around it. And if you try to figure out how something’s magic works, make sure you don’t give away any of your own. I really believe they can spy on us through those little gray blocks, somehow.”

Colonel Block got up and walked me out himself. Once we were well away from that meeting room and the heart of his little empire, he asked, “You do know who those people were, don’t you?”

“Not specifically who. I know what.”

“All right. Listen to this. You’ve crossed paths with two of those three before. As I understand it. One of them doesn’t like you even a little bit. I don’t know what you did to inconvenience him, when or where, but he’s definitely not big on forgive and forget. If we convene one of these brainstorming sessions again, consider the remote possibility that you might do yourself the most good by not volunteering any information. Or suggestions. They don’t trust anything they don’t have to work to get. They’re cynical at a level that makes your cynicism look like playacting.”

I didn’t argue. I didn’t see any point. I wasn’t quite sure I got the point he was trying to make, either. He was sort of doing that sidewise friend thing where he thought he didn’t dare be direct. I guess he was telling me to watch my back where spooky people off the Hill were involved.

To me that didn’t seem like a lesson that needed to be taught to anyone over the age of seven.