An Easy Death

by Charlaine Harris

  “Truly?” Eli said, smiling at me as if I’d said something amusing. He wanted us to act like we’d noticed nothing. That was a good idea.

  “Truly,” I said, smiling back and ignoring his little moment of surprise. “He can’t see us right now because of the awning, so he’s not going to shoot. I don’t know if Mil Flores keeps a guard up there all the time, or if this is more of the same incident. Josip the Tatar. The ambush on the road. Adds up.”

  “Can you kill him, and we’ll jump in the car and go?” Paulina couldn’t bring herself to smile, but at least she didn’t look completely grim. “Are you good enough with the pistol?”

  “Of course I am. But I’ll have to leave my rifles if we do that,” I said. They were up in the room. “Don’t want to.”

  “Got the car key?” Paulina asked Eli.

  “Sure.” The friendly smile was still on his face.

  But their bodies were getting all tense. I could tell which way the grigoris were going to jump. “Listen to me,” I said, gripping Eli by the elbow. “What if they’ve disabled the car? If we jump in it and don’t go anywhere, that’s as good as a signed confession that we’re guilty of something. And we’d get shot real easy cooped up in the car.”

  “Tires look okay,” Eli said after a sideways glance.

  “Isn’t there something dripping underneath?”

  The car was parked in front of the hotel’s porch like an obedient horse. A horse that had peed. There was a dark puddle of something under it.

  “Damn!” Eli exclaimed in a normal voice.

  “My goodness!” The plain woman passed us again on her way into the hotel. She was everywhere. She stood in the street, looking at us huddled under the awning. “What happened to your car?”

  “Don’t know yet,” I said tersely, and she nodded. When we didn’t move, the plain woman said, “Aren’t you going to go see?”

  Yeah, that would be the next step. We couldn’t stand under this awning forever.

  “We’re trying to decide if we want a piece of pie,” Paulina said, nodding at the restaurant door.

  “Oh! Well, it’s not as good as Jim’s.” The plain woman gave us a doubtful look and went across the street and into the hotel.

  My right hand was on my gun, in what I hoped was a casual gesture. My skin itched, reacting to magic somewhere, maybe just the two grigoris shedding power because they were anxious.

  “We need to get across the street,” I said, not able to stand this dawdling any longer. I drew both guns. Something was about to happen, my kind of something.

  Eli and Paulina looked at me. They were actually waiting for me to tell them what to do. I didn’t want this to come to a shoot-out. I wanted us to get out of here in the morning without being killed. Without killing anybody.

  My guns held down by my side, I stepped out from under the awning, keeping my head turned toward the car. But my eyes were looking up.

  The man was still on the roof of the house directly across the street. Now he stood up.

  But he would wait for the grigoris to venture into the open street. I turned my head slightly so he could see I was talking to my companions. “Come on!” I said cheerfully and loudly. “Let’s see about dessert.” They hesitated, then stepped into the open.

  He snapped his rifle to his shoulder. I could just make out his brown face under the brim of his hat, focused, intense. But I’d dropped to a crouch, my pistols came up faster, and I shot him square in the chest. He fell (with a lot of drama) over the low parapet surrounding the roof, after which he slithered down the tin awning in an awful, limp way. Finally, his body landed in the street with a thud, and his rifle bounced beside it.

  Once heard, never forgotten, that sound.

  For just a moment, after he’d sprawled in the dust, everything was silent. Paulina and Eli stared at the body while I turned in a quick circle, scanning the rooftops, guns up. There was no one else.

  After those seconds people came boiling out of the buildings like fire ants from a mound. Where had they all been earlier?

  His trigger finger had pressed down when I’d hit him. I looked at my two charges; they looked fine, just startled. At least the shot hadn’t hit either of them. I wondered where it had gone. A quick look didn’t find anyone else who was bleeding.

  There was a lot of shouting, but I was too busy watching all the hands to pay any attention. Seemed sure we’d have to move fast.

  I had my doubts that the car would start, not with that puddle of fluid underneath. As I’d told the grigoris, abandoning our bags would be a heavy blow. I was going to need all the firepower I could muster. And who knew what the grigoris had in their bags, besides clean underwear?

  The hotel proprietor had rushed out onto the porch. Jim Comstock bellowed, “Shut the hell up!” And pretty quick everyone did. If they had a mayor here, Jim was it.

  “Are you all okay?” Jim asked.

  I had to assume he was asking us. I didn’t look at Paulina and Eli. I’d seen they weren’t bleeding. I was too busy being sure no one else was aiming at them.

  “I’m real nervous,” I said, to point out how quick I’d be to use the guns again, “but I’m not shot.”

  “You two?” he asked Paulina and Eli.

  “I’m missing some hair,” Eli said, his voice calm. “That bullet passed close. But I have plenty to go on with.” He even sounded a little amused.

  I could feel the heat coming off Paulina after she heard how close the stray bullet had passed. Yep, her hands were twitching. She was ready to exercise her own talent.

  I didn’t stop scanning the crowd. The tension was getting to me, though, and I knew I couldn’t keep my alert much longer. If they swarmed us . . .

  “Who is it?” Jim called to the people who’d formed a cluster around the body. If he already knew, he was a good actor.

  “It’s a stranger, Jim,” said Manda, all bright eyed and bushy tailed. She was loving the drama. She was bent over the body. Strong stomach. “I never seen him before.”

  There was a murmur then, passing through the crowd: surprise.

  “He’s got some tattoos, not as many as the lady,” Manda called.

  You could hear the breaths drawn in. This was better than a movie.

  Paulina said, “Let me see.” She didn’t have to say it twice. Every person between Paulina and the dead man stepped aside to form an aisle.

  The dust underneath the body was soaking up the blood. He’d landed on his back, so the wound was bleeding out through the exit hole. Paulina squatted and looked at him hard.

  “Gunnie,” Paulina said, like I was her hunting dog and she was calling me to heel. I felt like biting or growling, sure enough. I went to stand by the body. Paulina’s white, bony fingers were unbuttoning the top two buttons of the dead grigori’s shirt. She glanced up at me, like she was saying, What are you waiting for?

  I was supposed to help her undress the body.

  I was less than dust in Paulina’s view, I understood that. Also, she was paying me more than I’d ever been paid for a job. But her attitude that I had to jump to any task (besides shooting) when she said jump was beginning to poke me like a sharp stick. Two things held me back from telling her that. It wouldn’t be good policy to start a snarling contest in public. And I had a respect for her abilities. Also, it was smart to keep on the good side of Paulina. If she had one.

  So I knelt on the other side of the dead man, and I eased the shirt apart so she could see his tats. The symbols covered as much of his chest as I could see, which was not a lot. But I knew a few things about him after I’d looked at them.

  The crowd did a lot of oohing and aahing. Good background talk.

  Paulina looked up at Eli, who had come to stand by us. You could tell that for her he was the only other person there. Then they both looked down at the man’s skin. “He’s not a wizard,” she told Eli, as if there weren’t thirty or forty people listening who should not know our business. “Almost all of these are unskilled tat
toos. But one of them is a protection symbol, that’s from a guild.”

  “Then it’s lucky I shot him,” I said.

  She looked at me thoughtfully. Once again I misliked the feeling that I’d gotten her notice. “Yes,” she said. “Lucky.”

  I leaned over close to her ear. “Maybe we should save this conversation for later, after we look at the body in private.”

  Paulina gave me a good hard stare. She nodded.

  “Do you know him?” Jim Comstock asked from behind me.

  “No,” said Eli. “I’ve never seen him before.” Paulina and I shook our heads.

  There was more rumble among the townsfolk.

  “Well, he didn’t take a shot at you for nothing,” Manda said. Lots of sense, that girl.

  Paulina brushed her hands against her pants as if she could remove the dead-man cooties. She stood in one swift move, like an animal. Eli reached down a hand to help me. I had more sense than to take it, with Paulina standing right there. I stood, too, but I couldn’t match her ease. It was like she’d oiled her joints.

  “Is there a sheriff?” she asked our host.

  There was a kind of ripple of chuckling, and it made its way through the little crowd. “No,” Jim said. “We got enough troubles without a sheriff.”

  “Then it doesn’t make any difference what we do with the body,” I said to Jim. “You got no beef with me killing him, I take it.”

  “He wasn’t shooting at none of us,” Jim said, and there was a lot of wise head nodding. This had been our problem to solve, the people of Mil Flores agreed. How I’d solved it was my business.

  “Where can we take the body?” Paulina was looking around like a funeral parlor would pop up in front of her. “I need to look at him more closely.”

  This plan did not make a good impression on the people of Mil Flores. Of course, Paulina didn’t care, if she noticed at all.

  The plain woman had drawn near. She’d picked up the shooter’s rifle and was holding it at a distance from her body, as if it were a dead animal. Her flower-patterned dress came to the middle of her calves, and she’d thrown on a broad-brimmed straw hat with a white ribbon for decoration. Other than the ribbon, and the rose and pink of the dress, she was as blank a woman as I’d ever seen. Medium everything: looks, build, coloring, age. “I’ve got a wagon out back,” she said. “You just want a gander at this fella, you can use it to get him off the ground and out of the view of these good people.”

  “Thank you,” Eli said. “I’m Eli Savarov, my companion is Paulina Coopersmith, and the gunnie is Lizbeth Rose.”

  “Belinda Trotter,” the woman said, but her voice got drowned by a few exclamations of surprise.

  “You’re Gunnie Rose?” Manda said, her voice rising with every word. My traveling companions stared at her. Then at me.

  I nodded, hoping it would stop there. But of course it didn’t.

  “I’ve heard of you,” Jim Comstock said slowly.

  “Is it true that—” Manda was dragging me to disaster.

  “I don’t care to talk about my living,” I said, turning to look directly into her eyes, to share my dislike on the way this talk was going.

  To give her credit, she stopped dead. “Of course not,” she said. “Your business.”

  “Where’s that wagon, Miss Trotter?” I wanted to get the conversation going in another direction.

  “Through the alley and turn right,” Miss Trotter said. “Horses are in the stable, but the wagon is standing empty.”

  Eli stepped into position to pick up the dead man’s feet, so Paulina made a move toward the head, but a man (surely the blacksmith, from his arms and shoulders) leaped to the task to spare her. Paulina tried to seem pleased and grateful, but she looked more like she’d sucked on a salted lemon.

  Paulina liked to carry her own bodies, I figured.

  I trailed behind the little parade, keeping an eye out, which is what I do best. I’d checked my ammo, of course. The rooftops were clear. The sidewalks were clear. Even Manda had left, after a last longing look at me.

  The alley lay between the hotel and the whorehouse. The prostitutes were at their windows, woken by the sound of the gunplay. It was still a bit early for their working day to be beginning. This late in the spring, the sun would go down around seven thirty. They had the time and inclination to have a good look-see. There were three women and one young man, two more than I would’ve guessed for a place the size of Mil Flores. I could feel their eyes on us as Eli and the blacksmith made their way to the back of the hotel, where an open yard contained a couple of wooden chairs and a table and Miss Trotter’s empty wagon.

  The two men swung the body up onto the flat bed of the wagon. The dead man’s head was at the rear. His shirt was spread wider now. It’s always something to recognize, how still the dead are. Ten minutes ago he’d moved and breathed and thought and wanted, and he’d done his best to kill us. Now all that didn’t matter to him. I spared another look around, checking the crowd for intent and weapons, in case anyone else wanted to get that way. But the people of Mil Flores had had enough of the drama, and they were melting away.

  Unless the whores were hostile, and they sure didn’t seem to be, or the blacksmith went crazy, we were secure this moment. I scanned the back windows of the hotel and saw only the man who’d been sharing the dining room earlier. He scowled when he saw me mark him, and he turned away right quick. I made a note in my head to find out who he was.

  Paulina appeared to expect Miss Trotter would leave once she’d escorted us to the wagon, but that didn’t happen. Donating her wagon had been the price of admission, apparently. The woman stood waiting for whatever would happen next, and her silly, flowery dress made her look even more out of place, especially since she was still carrying Marcial’s rifle. Which was mine now.

  “Need me anymore?” the blacksmith asked Eli. Eli thanked him and slipped the man some coins. The smith made his way back to whatever he’d been doing before, glad to leave us with the dead man.

  Paulina looked at Miss Trotter, and I could see Paulina hoped Miss Trotter would profit from the smith’s example. Not going to happen. Miss Trotter met Paulina’s gaze with a bland look.

  The wagon bed was high for me, so I used a mounting block to finish unbuttoning the body’s shirt before Paulina could tell me to. I unbuckled his belt, too, and slid it out of the loops. It was a good piece of leather, and undamaged. I rolled it up and put it aside, catching Eli’s look of surprise from the corner of my eye.

  Paulina pulled the corpse’s boots off, which didn’t surprise me. I climbed down from the block to take them from her, and I set them aside to examine later, along with the belt. When Paulina grabbed a leg of his pants, I waited to see if Miss Curious Trotter would take the other—she was standing right there—but she just waited with the same bright-eyed curiosity.

  So I obliged with that, too.

  I’d never taken the pants off a dead man. Wasn’t pleasant.

  Then Paulina did something I actually enjoyed. She reached into one of her vest pockets and withdrew some dried herbs. She tossed them over the corpse and said something in a tongue I couldn’t make out, and the smell vanished. That was a very useful spell. I wondered if I could learn that one. But most likely, I wasn’t qualified.

  While I was appreciating the nicer air, I went through the dead man’s pant pockets. “His name was Marcial Montes,” I told whoever wanted to listen.

  The grigoris shook their heads at the same time. Not a name they knew. Miss Trotter didn’t blink.

  Paulina leaned over the wagon on one side to study Montes’s tattoos in more detail. Eli stationed himself at the other side. They muttered to each other (in Russian, I guess) and pointed to this or that. The whores, crammed in two windows, were fascinated. The young man came out onto the porch and beckoned to me when no one else was looking. After a glance around I went over to him. He was maybe seventeen, slim and blond, and cute enough I was surprised he wasn’t somewhere busier.<
br />
  “Andy,” he said after he’d had a good look at the healing furrow on my scalp.

  “Lizbeth Rose.”

  “The Lizbeth Rose? The one who shot her—”

  “Big ears here,” I cautioned him.

  “Ohhhhhhkay. So, what are the grigoris doing?”

  I shrugged. “The dead man tried to kill us. They’re looking at his ink. Means nothing to them. As you can tell if you look at Paulina’s face.”

  “She’s a tall drink of vinegar,” Andy said after he’d had a look at Paulina. I guessed he had to be a good judge of character in his profession.

  “You ever seen the dead man before?” I asked. “Montes, his name is.”

  Andy shook his head. “The woman who owns the wagon, she’s been in Mil Flores two days,” he said. “She didn’t bring anything in on it. No one knows what she’s planning on taking out. Had to bring it along with her for some reason. Why?”

  This was good information. “I appreciate your taking the time to tell me,” I said politely. “Please let me give you something for your trouble.” I handed Andy a couple of the Holy Russian coins Eli had given me for expenses, and the boy slipped them into his pocket with a happy smile.

  Paulina glanced over our way once and looked back at the body with no change of expression.

  “She’ll be over tonight,” Andy said.

  “No!” I said, truly surprised. “For you or for the ladies?”

  “Me,” he said with the same certainty. “She’ll act like she’s in charge, but she’ll be glad when I let her know I am.”

  Well, he’d be the expert. But before I went back to join my little corpse-stripping party, I said, “Andy, you watch out for her. She’s a killer, and she can do some gruesome shit.”

  Andy looked at me and smiled. “Well,” he said, “you oughtta know. I’d be happy to see you later, if you want to come over.”

  I was real popular in Mil Flores. Maybe I should move here, after this was over. I laughed and bid him good-bye.

  Now that the two grigoris had backed off, I had a look at the dead man myself. I wanted to be sure what I’d noticed earlier was true. Montes did have tattoos, and one of them looked similar to the wizards’, but the ones on his chest had not been made by the same hand. They were colorful, and they consisted of animal figures. The blue one, the one that looked grigori-like, was a symbol, and Paulina had already identified that one.