The Dragons of Babel

by Michael Swanwick

  Now, there was a lull and only they three in the room, so Will said, "Three card Monte is getting old, Nat. It's gotten so that it's a job like any other."

  "You've got a point there, son." Nat leaned over and peered under the table, where Esme was reading through her collection of comic books for the umpteenth time. "How's it going down there, little grandmother?"

  "'Kay," Esme said abstractedly.

  "So when do we — " Will began.

  A haint walked through the wall.

  He was portly in the manner of the affluent, and wore a three-piece suit with a brocade vest embroidered with suns, moons, and zodiacal signs. Gold watch chains looped from every pocket. His skin was purple as a plum. "Tom Nobody, you old rascal!" He flung out his arms. "I heard you were back in town."

  "It's Nat Whilk these days, Salem." Nat stood and they hugged each other with theatrical gusto. Then he said, "Will, this is the honorable Salem Toussaint, alderman."

  The politician had a good handshake and a way of not quite winking as he shook that said, We're all rogues here and so we should stick together, Will liked him instantly. But he did not trust him. "I saw you earlier today," Will remarked.

  "I know you did," Toussaint turned back to Nat. "Reason I'm here is, I need a white boy to run errands Uptown, where my usual runners might be a smidge conspicuous. Somebody with his eyes open. Discreet. Able to think on his feet."

  "Somebody not terribly honest, you mean," Nat said.

  Salem Toussaint smiled broadly, revealing two gold teeth with devil-runes cut into them. "How well you know me!"

  "My boy and I are working on something, but it'll take a few months for me to lay the groundwork. You can have him until then."

  Will was by now too much the professional to say anything aloud. Nevertheless, he turned and stared. Nat laid a hand on his shoulder. "You've got edge, son," he said. "Now pick up a little polish."

  Chiefly, Will's job was to run errands in a good suit-and-haircut while looking conspicuously solid. He retched tax forms for Toussaint's constituents, delivered stacks of documents to trollish functionaries, fixed L&I violations, presented boxes of candied John the Conqueror root to retiring secretaries, absentmindedly dropped slim envelopes containing twenty dollar bills on desks. When somebody important died, he brought a white goat to the back door of the Fane of Darkness to be sacrificed to the Nameless Ones. When somebody else's son was drafted or went to prison, he hammered a nail in the nkisi nkonde that Toussaint kept out in the hall, to ensure his safe rerun. He canvassed voters in haint neighborhoods like Ginny Gall, Beluthahatchie, and Diddy-Wah-Diddy, where the bars were smoky, the music was good, and it was dangerous to smile at the whores. He negotiated the labyrinthine bureaucracies of City Hall. Not everything he did was strictly legal, but none of it was actually criminal. Salem Toussaint didn't trust him enough for that.

  One evening, Will was stuffing envelopes with Ghostface while Jimi Begood went over a list of ward-heelers with the alderman, checking those who could be trusted to turn out the troops in the upcoming election and crossing out those who had a history of pocketing the walking-around money and standing idle on election day or, worse, steering the vote the wrong way because they were double-dipping the opposition. The door between Toussaint's office and the anteroom was open a crack and Will could eavesdrop on their conversation.

  "Grandfather Domovoy was turned to stone last August," Jimi Begood said, "so we're going to have to find somebody new to bring out the Slovaks. There's a vila named—"

  Ghostface snapped a rubber band around a bundle of envelopes and lofted them into the mail cart on the far side of the room. "Three points!" he said. Then, "You want to know what burns my ass?"

  "No," Will said.

  "What burns my ass is how you and me are doing the exact same job, but you're headed straight for the top while I'm going to be stuck here licking envelopes forever, and you know why? Because you're solid."

  "That's just racist bullshit," Will said. "Toussaint is never going to promote me any higher than I am now. Haints like seeing a fey truckle to the Big Guy, but they'd never accept me as one of his advisers .You know that as well as I do."

  "Yeah, but you're not going to be here forever, are you? In a couple years, you'll be holding down an office in the Mayoralty. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if you made it all the way to the Palace of Leaves."

  "Either you're just busting my chops, or else you're a fool. Because if you meant it, you'd be a fool to be ragging on me about it. If Toussaint were in your position, he'd make sure I was his friend, and wherever I wound up he'd have an ally. You could learn from his example."

  Ghostface lowered his voice to a near-whisper. "Toussaint is old school. I've got nothing to learn from a glad-handing, pompous, shucking-and-jiving—"

  The office door slammed open. They both looked up.

  Salem Toussaint stood in the doorway, eyes rolled up in his head so far that only the whites showed. He held up a hand and in a hollow voice said, "One of my constituents is in trouble."

  The alderman was spooky in that way. He had trodden the streets of Babel for so many decades that its molecules had insinuated themselves into his body through a million feather-light touches on its bricks and railings, its bars and brothel doors, its accountant's offices and parking garages, and his own molecules had been in turn absorbed by the city, so that there was no longer am absolute distinction between the two. He could read Babel's moods and thoughts and sometimes — as now — it spoke to him directly.

  Toussaint grabbed his homburg and threw his greatcoat over his arm. Jimi, stay here and arrange for a lawyer. We can finish that list later. Ghostface, Will — you boys come with me."

  The alderman plunged through the door. Ghostface followed.

  Will hurried after them, opening the door and closing it behind him, then running to make up for lost time.

  Ghostface doubled as Toussaint's chauffeur. In the Cadillac he said, "Where to, boss?"

  "Koboldtown. A haint's being arrested for murder."

  "You think he was framed?" Will asked.

  "What the fuck difference does it make? He's a voter."

  Koboldtown was a transitional neighborhood with all the attendant tensions. There were lots of haints on the streets, but the apartment building the police cars were clustered about had sprigs of fennel over the doorway to keep them out. Salem Toussaint's limousine pulled up just in time for them to sec a defiant haint being hauled away in rowan-wood handcuffs. The beads at the ends of his duppy braids clicked angrily as he swung his head around. "I ain't done nothin'!" he shouted. "This is all bullshit, motherfucker! I'mna come back an' kill you all!" His eyes glowed hellishly and an eerie blue nimbus surrounded his head; clear indicators that he'd been shooting up crystal goon. Will was surprised he was even able to stand.

  The limo came to a stop and Will hopped out to open Salem Toussaint's door. Toussaint climbed ponderously out and stopped the guards with an imperious gesture. Then he spoke briefly with their captive. "Go quietly, son, I'll see you get a good lawyer, the best money can buy." Will flipped open his cell, punched a number, and began speaking into it in an earnest murmur. It was all theater — he'd dialed the weather and Jimi Begood had doubtless already lined up a public defender — but combined with Toussaint's presence it calmed the haint down. He listened carefully as the alderman concluded, "Just don't attack any cops and get yourself killed, that's the important thing. Understand?"

  The haint nodded.

  In the lobby, two officers were talking with the doorman. All three stiffened at the sight of haints walking in the door, relaxed when they saw Will restoring the twigs of fennel, and smiled with relief as they recognized Toussaint. It all happened in a flicker, but Will saw it. And if he noticed, how could his companions not? Nevertheless, the alderman glided in, shaking hands and passing out cigars, which the police acknowledged gratefully and stowed away in the inside pockets of their coats. "What's the crime?" he asked.

  "
Murder," said one of the cops.

  Toussaint whistled once, low and long, as if he hadn't already known. "Which floor?"

  "Second"

  They waited for the elevator, though the stairs were handy and it

  would have been faster to walk. Salem Toussaint would no more have climbed those stairs than he would have driven his own car. He made sure you understood what a big mahoff he was before he slapped you on the back and gave your nice horse a sugar cube. As the doors opened, Toussaint turned to Ghostface and commented, "You're looking mighty grim. Something the matter?"

  Ghostface shook his head stiffly. He stared, unblinking, straight ahead of himself all the way to their destination.

  There were two detectives in the frigid apartment, both Tylwyth Teg, golden-skinned and leaf-eared, in trench coats that looked like they had been sent out to be professionally rumpled. They turned annoyed, when the cop standing guard at the door let the three of them in, then looked resigned as they recognized the alderman.

  "Shulpae! Xisuthros!" Toussaint slapped backs and shook hands as if he were working the room at a campaign fund-raiser. "You're looking good, the both of you."

  "Welcome to our humble crime scene, Salem," Detective Xisuthros said. He swept a hand to take in the room: One window, half open, with cold winter air still flowing in through it. Its sill and the wall beneath, black with blood. The burglar bars looked intact. A single dresser, a bed, a chair that had been smashed to flinders. A dribble of blood that led from the window to a tiny bathroom with the door thrown wide. "I should have known you'd show up."

  A boggart sprawled lifeless on the bathroom floor. His chest had been ripped open. There was a gaping hole where the heart should have been.

  "Who's the stiff?" Toussaint asked.

  "Name's Bobby Buggane. Just another lowlife."

  "I see you hauled off an innocent haint."

  'Now, Salem, don't be like that. It's an open and shut case. The door was locked and bolted from the inside. Burglar bars on the window and a sprig of fennel over it. The only one who could have gotten in was the spook. He works as a janitor here. We found him sleeping it off on a cot in the basement."

  "Haint." Salem Toussaint's eyes were hard. "Please."

  After the briefest of pauses, the detective said. "Haint." "Give me the story."

  "About an hour ago, there was a fight. Bodies slamming against the wall, furniture smashing. Everybody on the hall complained. By the time the concierge got here, it was all over. She called us. We broke in."

  "Why didn't the concierge have a key?"

  "She did. Buggane put in a dead bolt. You can imagine what the old bat had to say about that."

  "Why wasn't there a haint-ward on the door?"

  "Didn't need one. Doorman in the lobby. Only one haint in the building."

  Will squinted at the wall above the door. "There's a kind of pale patch up there, like there used to be a ward and somebody took it down."

  Detective Shulpae, the quiet one, turned to stare at him. "So?"

  "So what kind of guy installs a dead bolt but takes down the ward? That doesn't make sense."

  "The kind who likes to invite his haint buddy over for a shooting party every now and then." Detective Xisuthros pointed toward the dresser with his chin. A set of used works lay atop it. "The concierge says they were so thick that some of the neighbors thought they were fags." He turned back to Toussaint. "Alderman, if you want to question our work here, fine, go ahead. I'm just saying. There's not a lot of hope for the boy."

  "Will's right!" Ghostface said. He went to the window. "And another thing. Look at all the blood on the sill. This is where it happened. So how the hell did he get all the way into the bathroom? Somebody ripped his heart out, so he decided to wash his hands?"

  Now both detectives were staring at him, hard. "You don't know much about boggarts," Xisuthros said. "They're tough. They can live for five minutes with their heads ripped off. A heart's nothing. And, yeah, that's exactly what he did — wash his hands. Old habits go last. One of the first things we did was turn off the water. Otherwise, I thought the concierge was going to have a seizure."

  Ghostface looked around wildly. "What happened to the heart? Why isn't it here? I suppose you think the haint ate it, huh? I suppose you think we're all cannibals."

  In a disgusted tone, Detective Xisuthros said, "Get Sherlock Holmes Junior the fuck out of here."

  Salem Toussaint took Ghostface by the elbow, led him to the door. "Why don't you wait outside?"

  Ghostface turned gray. But he stamped angrily out of the room and down the hall. Will followed. He didn't have to be told that this was part of his job.

  Outside, Ghostface went straight to the alley below Buggane's window. There were no chalk marks or crime scene tape, so the police obviously hadn't found any evidence there. Nor was there a heart lying on the pavement. A dog or a night-gaunt could have run off with it, of course. But there was no blood, either, except for a stain under the window and maybe a stray drop or two that couldn't be seen in the dark.

  "So what happened to the heart?" Ghostface paced back and forth, unable to keep still. "It didn't just fly away." "I don't know," Will said.

  "You be Buggane." Ghostface slapped a hand against the brick wall." Here's the window. You stand here looking out it. Now, I come up behind you. How do I rip your heart our in a way that leaves all that blood on the windowsill? From behind you, I can't get at your heart. If you turn around to face me, the blood doesn't splash on the sill. Now, those ignorant peckerwood detectives probably think 1 could shove my hands through Buggane's back and push his heart out. But it doesn't work like that. Two things can't occupy the same space at the same time. If I make my hands solid while I'm inside your chest, I'm going to fuck them up seriously. So I didn't come at you from behind."

  "Okay."

  "But if you turn around so I can come at you from the front, the blood's not going to spray over the sill, is it? So I've got to be between you and the window. I don't know if you noticed, but Ice didn't have any blood on him. None. Zip. Nada. Maybe you think I could rip somebody's heart out and then make myself insubstantial fast enough that the blood would spray through me. I don't think so. But even if I could, the blood's going to spatter all over the floor, too. Which it didn't. So you tell me — how could I rip your heart out and leave the blood all over the sill like that?"

  "You couldn't." "Thank you. Thank you. That's right. You couldn't."

  "So?" Will said.

  "So there's something fishy going on, that's all. Something suspicious. Something wrong." "Like what?"

  "I don't know" Abruptly, Ghostface's hands fell to his sides. Just like that, all the life went out of him. He slumped despondently "I just don't know."

  "Ghostface," Will said, "why does all this matter? You called this guy Ice. What's he to you?"

  The haint's face was as pale as ash, as stiff as bone. In a stricken voice, he said, "He's my brother."

  They went to a diner across the street and ordered coffee. Ghostface stared down into his cup without drinking. "Ice always was a hard case. He liked the streets too much, he liked the drugs, he liked the thug life.

  That's why he never made anything of himself." He picked up a spoon,

  looked at it, set it down. "I dunno. Maybe he did it. Maybe he did." "You know he didn't. You proved he couldn't have." "Yeah, but that's not going to convince a judge, now is it?" Will had to admit it would not. "You guys keep in touch?" "Not really. I saw him a few months ago. He was all hopped up and talking trash about how he'd finally made a big score. He was going to be smoking hundred-dollar cigars and bedding thousand-dollar whores. Maybe he stole something I told him to get the hell out. I didn't want to know anything about his criminal activities. My own brother. The last time i saw him, I told him to go to hell."

  They were silent for a bit. "Nobody said anything about finding anything valuable," Will observed.

  "Sometimes the cops will pocket that kind of stuff." "T
hat's true." Will dipped a finger in his coffee and drew the Sigil of Inspiration on the linoleum counter. Nothing came to him. He sighed. "What would the Big Guy do in this situation?"

  "Him?" Ghostface said bitterly. "Probably hand out cigars."

  "Hey." Will sat up straight. "That's not a half bad idea. It's pretty cold out there." He counted cops through the window. Then he called the waitress over. "Give me four large coffees, cream and sugar on the side."

  Leaving Ghostface hunched over the counter, Will carried the cardboard tray out to where the police stood stamping their feet to keep warm. They accepted the gift with small nods. All four had dark skin, short horns, and the kind of attitude that came from knowing they'd never, ever make detective. The oldest of the lot said, "Working for the spook, are you?"

  "Oh, Salem's okay."

  The cop grinned on one side of his oak-brown face. "You're what the micks would call his Hound of Hoolan. You know what that is?" "No, sir."

  "It means that if he says he wants to drive, you bend over and bark."

  The cops all laughed. Then three of them wandered away, leaving only the rookie. Will took out a pack of Marlboros, offered one, took one for himself, then lit both. They smoked them down to the end without saying much. Will flicked his butt away. The rookie pinched the coal off of his and ate it.

  Finally Will said, "This Buggane guy — you know him?"

  "Everybody knew him. A real bad character. In jail as often as not. His girlfriend's cute, though. Used to come to the station to bail him out. Skinny little thing, no tits to speak of. The big lugs always seem to like 'em petite, you ever noticed?"

  "Some of the neighbors thought he was queer."

  "They sure wouldn't of said that to his face. Buggane was a bruiser. Used to fight some under the name of Dullahan the Deathless."