The line moved, and within a few more minutes Book was stepping up to one of the service windows. A pasty-faced man wearing metal-framed glasses was seated behind the barred opening. The clerk wore a white shirt, garters on the sleeves, and a plasma visor across which the docks’ arrivals and departures scrolled.
“How may I help you, sir?” the man asked.
Book glanced down at his plastic name tag. “Hello, Mr. Smotrich,” he said. “I’m looking for a man named Covington. Hunter Covington. A gentleman I just met at the docks suggested I look for him here.”
Smotrich blinked, then his eyes narrowed. “Mr. Covington has not been in of late,” he replied.
Book noted the sudden redness in his cheeks. Either Smotrich was lying or the subject of Hunter Covington was upsetting in some way. It might well be both. He pressed the clerk further. “Do you happen to know where else I might begin to look for him?”
“No,” Smotrich snapped back. He looked down at some papers and began shuffling them.
“I see.” Book held up the WANTED poster. “Well, perhaps you could help me with another matter. I presume the lady in this poster is no longer at large.”
“You know her?” the clerk said in a tone that bordered on accusatory. “Or are you chasing that reward? Didn’t think Shepherds cared much about earning coin.”
The question had clearly hit a nerve. Book knew he had to proceed carefully.
“As a Shepherd, I’m naturally concerned for her welfare,” Book told him. “I’ll pray for her safe recovery if she has not been found.”
“Well, sir, can’t say she has,” he said. “Or leastwise, I haven’t heard if she has. I don’t know anything more about that.” He nervously examined his paperwork for a second, then croaked out, “Sorry, sir, I have to close this window. It’s past the end of my shift.”
“Oh, of course. Thank you for your—”
Time, Book had planned to say, but Smotrich yanked down a hunter-green shade, effectively ending their conversation.
Book considered engaging another clerk with the same questions, but they were all occupied with customers and he would have had to start over at the back of the line. The stocky woman was demanding to speak to the quartermaster himself. Someone else was complaining that the utilities weren’t functioning at their docking site. Business as usual—the clamor and struggle of everyday life, which Book had eschewed for the peace of the abbey. Sometimes he wondered why the still, small voice inside him had urged him to emerge from that place of serenity and board a ship of that name.
He turned and left the building. “Peace be with you,” he said to the two guards outside. One of them nodded in acknowledgement; the other scowled.
From the quartermaster’s office, Book plunged headlong into the seamier depths of the city, which bordered the space dock. Threading his way through the crowds in the street, he graciously declined the offers from the sidewalk hawkers of food, drink, jewelry, housewares, mood-altering substances, and temporary companionship.
The exterior of the Sea Wolf Tavern was as he had remembered it. A pseudo-antique mermaid masthead overhung the entrance, arms flung wide as if to take to her ample bosom all those seeking a certain kind of shelter. When he entered the crowded bar, he could barely hear himself think over the din of voices and music. The Sea Wolf fancied itself one of Eavesdown’s classier joints, but there was still plenty of Alliance Day rambunctiousness in evidence, from boozy singalongs to raucous toasts where the clinking together of glasses was more like a contact sport.
He took an empty seat at a table near the bar. A Zulian spider monkey squatted on the bartender’s bare shoulder. The furry little creature appeared to be drunk, eyes half closed, mouth hanging slack, nearly falling off its perch again and again, catching itself at the last possible instant by coiling its long tail around its master’s neck, then promptly letting go as the bartender swatted at it.
Book’s religious order forbade the drinking of alcohol so he asked a harried server for some water. Unfortunately, it tasted even rustier than what he made do with on Serenity. He had offered to do Kaylee’s share of the dishwashing for a month if she could upgrade the filtration system, but even that had not helped. He thought wistfully of the fresh artesian spring at Southdown Abbey. He was slipping into nostalgia, probably because the abbey lay close by and civilization, such as it was, demanded different things from him than did a life of contemplation.
He sipped gingerly, getting the lay of the tavern as he sat alone at a dirty, rickety table. Orange lamps glared all around, catching dust motes and revealing long strands of cobwebs among the fishing floats and nets that adorned the low ceiling. He scanned around the room, on the off-chance Covington was here. He hadn’t seen Covington’s wave to Serenity but he had seen the screen-cap picture, so he had a fair idea of who he was looking for. No luck.
“Can I get you another drink, preacher?” a passing waitress asked. She was wearing as much makeup as a singer in the Chinese Opera and a highly abbreviated pirate costume including a low-cut, frill-edged blouse. Her figure was the right amount of voluptuous.
“Sorry for the mess,” she said. “This should have been cleaned before you sat down. We’re short-handed.”
“Thanks, I’m still working on this drink. But I wonder if I might ask you a question. Is Hunter Covington in here tonight?”
Straightening and folding her dish rag, the waitress looked wary. “Not as I know of.”
“Do you think he might be in later?”
She shrugged and gave Book a forced smile. “You never know with Mr. Covington. He comes and goes.”
“Thank you. I’m wondering if you know where else I might look for him. I’ve tried the quartermaster’s, and here.”
“Taggart’s,” she said without hesitation.
That was the same thing Dunwoody had told him. It was also where Covington had arranged to meet with Mal. Probably it was going to have to be Book’s next port of call. And if he struck out there, then—and only then—would he try Mika Wong.
“That’s his home base,” the waitress explained.
“Thank you,” Book said again. Then he reached into his pocket, took out the folded paper, opened it, and showed it to her. “And by any chance, do you know anything about this woman, Elmira Atadema?”
The waitress drew back slightly, then shook her head and clicked her teeth. “Be careful, preacher,” she said. “The wrong person overhears you asking them kind of questions and you could get yourself dispatched to meet your Maker afore your time, that there fancy dog collar notwithstanding.”
Book raised an eyebrow, and the waitress glanced from side to side so as to make sure no one was listening. She leaned over the table again. He leaned to meet her halfway.
“I will tell you this,” the waitress said. “People around here are saying that woman got herself mixed up in something way over her head. Not that she wasn’t already mixed up with criminals, professionally speaking, being a bondswoman and all. But this time she got her own hands bloody. Her bondholder—Hunter Covington, no less, but you know that from the poster—dragged her into it. People are saying Mr. Covington might even have gotten her murdered.”
Book cocked his head. “Murdered. Good heavens above. Why?” This situation was getting murkier by the second.
The waitress ran her fingertips along her white sash, not provocatively, but as a way to collect her thoughts. “I don’t know why. Maybe because the others involved were afraid she was going to give them up?”
“What was the nature of this supposed crime?”
She lowered her voice. “Something they were planning. Kidnap with violence, that’s what I’ve heard.”
He kept his face neutral. “Whom were they supposed to be kidnapping?” Was it Mal? Almost certainly it was.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “It was an organized thing, that’s all as I know.”
“A gang of criminals, you mean?”
She nodded.
“Who
are they?”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I work three jobs and I still can’t get all the bills paid. I don’t have the energy to keep track of all the idle gossip that’s swirling around, know what I’m saying?”
He decided to take a chance at revealing that he might know something himself. “Have you heard anything about people taking the law into their own hands because of things that happened during the war? People whose violent endeavors might be directed against—” he lowered his voice practically to a whisper “—Browncoats?”
“Some folks aren’t willing to forget about the war,” the waitress said. “They say wrongs were done, and they want to right them.”
It sounded as if she might agree with that notion. “And can you provide me with any information on these folks?” Book said. “Or the nature of the wrongs they want to right?”
“I might be able to.” She shrugged and toyed with the sash again.
Book pulled out a heavy coin and waved it at her. She took it from him, and after depositing it safely into her cleavage, she nodded. “Yeah, there’s a group of guys around here who seem like they want to stir up trouble. Rake up the past. Can’t tell you their names or where they hang out. Don’t know. They keep themselves to themselves. But they’re definitely active.”
“Is that all you have on them?” He was exaggerating his disappointment, but not by much.
“I’d name names if I could, Shepherd, I swear to you, but I can’t. Now can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
She raised one penciled brow. “Why is a man of the cloth so interested in Elmira Atadema? And in Hunter Covington for that matter.”
“I’m asking about Elmira because one of the brethren is a relation of hers,” he lied smoothly. “I promised him I’d look into her disappearance. So, I suppose you could say I’m interested for his sake.”
She smirked. “Well, doesn’t that just take the gorramn cake. Imagine two grown men both connected to Elmira, both asking me where she is on the same day.”
Book was an expert on maintaining an empathetic but otherwise neutral expression, a requirement for someone whose life’s calling entailed listening to the often-grisly confessions of others. But it was also a skill he had honed from his earlier, less honorable life. Though it was anything but the case, he appeared only moderately interested.
“May I ask what the other man looked like? Maybe you caught his name?”
All at once she looked stricken. “Oh,” she said. “No. I, uh, I made a mistake.” She was spooked, just like Smotrich. Clearly she had said more than she felt she ought to.
He said, “I won’t tell anyone that you told me.” When the silence dragged on with no end in sight, it became clear the pump required more priming. He fished out another coin and she, after a moment’s hesitation, took it.
“Guess if you can’t trust a man of the cloth…” she said. “He’s retired Alliance. He comes in now and then, goes in the back room with the manager, comes out smug. I think…” She lowered her voice. “I think we’re paying him protection money.” She swallowed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, it’s all right. It will go no further. I promise.” Book waited a beat and then he asked again, “Can you tell me his name?”
She squeezed the coin in her fist, deliberating. “His name,” she said eventually, “is Mika Wong.”
Book managed to mask his astonishment, just about. Wong? Protection money?
“Do you know where I might find Mr. Wong?” He readied another coin. It was like feeding money into a slot machine. You pulled the lever, the reels turned, but you never knew what combo was going to result.
The waitress hesitated, and then she shook her head. “No, I can’t shake you down for that,” she said. “I really don’t know where he is. But he was in here not two hours ago.”
The facts were starting to dovetail and the trail was heating up. Book wondered if Mika Wong was somehow mixed up in Mal’s disappearance. Might a ransom demand come in shortly?
“Thank you. You have been an invaluable help,” he said.
Silently, she nodded. It was clear that she regretted confiding in him.
He gently pushed the water away and rose. “I should be going.” He gave her the last coin, even though she had failed to fully earn it, and she deposited it with the rest. Her cleavage was nothing if not capacious.
“Bless you,” he said, and the waitress nodded without looking at him. He patted her shoulder and took his leave.
He saw himself out, and once in the street, he scanned the sidewalks. His eye fell on the man Dunwoody, who was standing at the mouth of a narrow passageway to his left. The crippled fellow was holding himself up with one hand on the passageway wall and waving weakly at Book with the other. His mouth was bloodied and he looked dazed.
“Dear Lord,” Book said, dashing over to him. He put his arm around Dunwoody’s shoulder, peeling him away from the support of the rough brickwork. “What happened?”
“Oh, Shepherd Book,” he moaned, “hide me. Hide me quick.” He tugged at Book’s arm, urging him back into the passageway, which was barely wide enough to walk down two abreast. “This man, he saw my money—like a fool I was counting it in plain sight—and he came at me.”
“Robbed you?” Book asked, and Dunwoody nodded.
“Yes, but only after he sucker-punched me a good one. Then I got mad and I gave ’im a piece of my mind, and he’s gone back to get some others, and he said they’re going to beat the living tar out of me and make me lame in both legs.”
“No, they won’t,” Book said. “There’s two of us now, my friend.”
Dunwoody grabbed onto Book’s jacket and with a surprising turn of strength pulled him deeper into the shadows inside the mouth of the passageway. At their feet, a rat squeaked and darted away.
“Please, Shepherd, don’t let them see us,” he begged. “They’ll beat me black and blue.”
“They won’t,” Book promised. “I’ll protect you.”
Dunwoody glanced round into the street. Suddenly he jolted, his eyes widened, and he stuffed his fist in his mouth.
“They’re coming, oh, they’re coming,” he whispered around his hand. “Oh, dear God, they’re going to hurt me bad.”
Book turned, hand digging into his bag for his weapon. As his fingers closed on it, something hard slammed down on his shoulder from behind and pain shot down his arm and back. He staggered in a half circle.
Dunwoody stood with his crutch aloft. He had just hit him with the implement.
Book raised a hand to defend himself, but not in time. The crutch came down again, hard. He managed to twist sideways, so that the blow was a glancing one. Nonetheless it caught him on the side of the head, staggering him. Sudden pain cast a veil over his vision. His ears rang.
Now there were three more men, rushing up along the passageway to join Dunwoody. Accomplices. This was all an artfully staged con. The blood on Dunwoody’s mouth, his dazed look, his panic—all designed to get Book to lower his guard. And Book, like a perfect idiot, had allowed himself to fall for it.
“I’m sorry about this, Shepherd,” Dunwoody said to the still dazed Book. “Truly I am. But I got me this bum leg, and Southdown Abbey is just too far a walk. I wish you hadn’t flashed your coin so freely. It caused a mighty temptation in my heart, I’m sure you understand.” He wiped his gory mouth with his hand, then licked at his fingers. “Yum,” he said. “Plum sauce.”
Then he turned to hail the three new arrivals.
“Coin bag’s in his pants pocket,” he said. “Plenty there.”
“Let’s soften him up a little first,” said one of the others. He was carrying a baseball bat.
“Yeah,” said another, this one armed with a cudgel. “I went to one of them schools run by priests. The strict kind. Don’t got me no love for religious types.”
Nor for grammar, Book thought. Your education was clearly wasted on you.
As
one, the four men set about belaboring Book. They got in several good licks, until the apparently cowed Book surprised them by giving the cudgel wielder a solid punch to the gut. The man doubled over, winded, gasping for breath. Book managed to wrest the cudgel out of his hand and brandished it at the man with the baseball bat.
The man stepped back, out of Book’s range, and whirled the bat. Whether by accident or by design, he clouted the cudgel out of Book’s grasp, leaving him weaponless again.
“Put the guy out of action, somebody!” Dunwoody declared. “Come on, there’s only one of him, and he’s just a preacher.”
Yet the ferocity with which Book fought back was anything but cleric-like, and in the close confines of the passageway there wasn’t room for more than two of his assailants to attack him at once, which evened the odds somewhat. Grunting furiously, he dove at Dunwoody, head down like a linebacker. Dunwoody slammed into the passageway wall, his grip on his crutch loosening. Book snatched the walking aid from him and drove it ferrule-first into Dunwoody’s groin like a lance. Crutch met crotch, and Dunwoody let out an agonized whoof of air, sinking to his knees with his hands clasped around his private parts. He looked about fit to vomit.
Then the baseball bat slammed into the backs of Book’s legs, and all at once Book, too, was on the ground. From the thighs down he had lost all feeling and his legs were as supportive as two rubber bands.
The bat whirled at him a second time, on a collision course with his head. Book blocked the attack with the crutch but not as solidly as he would have liked. The bat transferred much of its momentum to the crutch, which then crashed into his temple with brain-jarring force. For a second time Book’s vision became unfocused and his ears sang like a tabernacle choir.
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