The Five Faces (The Markhat Files) Read Online Free

tired.”
    “Sit.” I pulled back my chair. “Tell me what’s happened.”
    “I got here an hour after you left,” she said, taking my chair. She still smelled of some expensive perfume. “I found Marlene Horn.”
    Gertriss was working a case for the parents of a teenage daughter who believed their eldest, Marlene, had been snatched by a street gang two weeks past.
    “Dead or alive?”
    “Alive. She’s now Mrs. Marlene Coats. They forgot to mention the boyfriend they forbade her to marry.”
    “Mr. Coats, I presume?”
    She nodded. “Anyway. I met with the Horns. Broke the good news. Got paid. I was hanging around here, just resting.”
    She blushed. By resting she meant waiting for Curfew to fall, hoping Evis might pop around.
    Evis is halfdead. He’s my best friend, and Gertriss’s best friend too, although Gertriss and I apply the term with very different meanings.
    “The Watch showed up right at Curfew,” said Gertriss. “Started banging on the door, demanding to see you.”
    I frowned. “The Watch? What for? Did they say?”
    “Hell no, they didn’t say. Just said they saw the lights on and they knew you were here and open the damned door or we’ll break it down.”
    “I see they didn’t break in.”
    “They banged on the door for hours, boss. Hours. They even tried kicking it in. Then a Watch wagon rolled up and there was a lot of shouting and the whole mob of them tore out of here like the High House was on fire. So I ask again. What the hell are you working on?”
    I sat on my desk. Gertriss regarded me with a weary look of exasperation.
    “Mama told you all about it, I’m sure,” I said. “I went looking for Hurry-Up Pete. Found him. Took a new case involving a stolen dog, one Cornbread, who presents no particular interest to the Watch that I know of.”
    “That’s your story?”
    “It’s the truth.”
    She sighed and stretched, which did interesting things to the front of her blouse. I looked chastely away until she was done.
    “I’m going to Mama’s to get some sleep,” she said. “But the Watch will be back. If I were you, I’d think up something else to tell them. I don’t think they’re interested in dog stories right now.”
    I nodded. Then I saw Gertriss out and watched her until she was safe behind Mama Hog’s door.
    Three-leg Cat was perched in my chair when I came back to the office.
    “I’ll give you my hat and my gun if you’ll handle the Watch.”
    He blinked at me and made for the back room. “You’re fired,” I added, but he showed me the back of his tail and slipped through the barely-open door.
    I hung my hat on the rack, put my gun in a drawer, and wondered how long it would take the Watch day shift to finish breakfast and come huffing and puffing my way.
     
     
    My sowing of coin at the docks bore early fruit.
    The first caller of the day was a skinny, nervous man who introduced himself as Mr. Penny. Mr. Penny claimed he knew all there was to know about dogfighting on the docks.
    I tossed his ass out in the street when he hinted he’d let me in on all his secrets for a pair of Old Kingdom crowns.
    I’d barely gotten comfortable when he knocked at my door again. This time, he was willing to settle for a single crown, and out into the street he flew, by the scruff of his scrawny, dirty neck.
    Give Mr. Penny one thing—he was persistent. By the time we settled on a single pair of newly-minted coppers, he’d been shown the cobblestones four times, and had even received a mild thrashing from old Mr. Bull’s ever-present straw broom.
    “So tell me what you know,” I said. I slid one copper across my desk toward him and kept the other in my hand.
    Mr. Penny glared at me and silently worked his jaw. He was new to weed. In a month, maybe two, he’d be grinding his teeth together all the time, until they were cracked and ground to black, rotting nubs.
    “They fight every Friday,” he said. “Starts an hour after Curfew.”
    “Where?” You have to