Easy Money

by Rik Hunik

  "You're welcome." I wrote down her name and address, Lucina Graccus, on Barber Street, and reassured her I would drop by sometime in the afternoon. I didn't remember ever meeting her before, but her last name and the address seemed familiar somehow. I stood up. "I was about to leave when you showed up, so I'm in a bit of a hurry now."

  "Yes, of course."

  I showed her to the door and went out with her. She thanked me three more times while I locked up. She set off uphill so I headed downhill, then across one block before I turned uphill, paralleling her course. It meant a bit of extra walking but I didn't want her effusive energy disrupting my aura and maybe interfering with my ability to work.

  Chapter 3

  Carina's home was about a mile inland, in a far ritzier part of town than I can afford, just past the outer edge of the Northeast Quadrant of the city, where trees covered more ground than the buildings and all the roads were paved, where increasing numbers of country villas were replacing the old farms, driving the farmers further out.

  Crowded and disorganized as it is, I like the dynamics of Old City, which makes up most of the Northwest Quadrant, an unequal quadrangle that extends north from Old Harbor to Old City Wall Street, and includes everything crammed in between the Bay of Lions and Rome Street, the north-south, tree-lined and arcaded boulevard that splits the city of Agrippina from top to bottom.

  Despite my efforts to make myself look respectable I still felt as out of place in Carina's neighborhood as her coach had looked in mine. Almost nobody else was on foot here, but I ignored the suspicious looks I attracted and just kept walking as though I belonged here, which I did, because of my business with Carina. Carina's estate was a full acre or more, surrounded by a stone wall containing lots of trees.

  I showed Carina's note and a gatekeeper let me through and directed me to the front door of the house, a spacious, three-story structure twenty yards away, in the middle of an artificial landscape full of trees, shrubs, rocks and flowers.

  My knock was answered immediately by a thin, black-clad man with sparse, gray hair. "Yes?"

  Under a layer of polite inquisitiveness he packed that single syllable with a mountain of disdain for everything I had ever done or could possible hope to do, but I had survived drill sergeants in the army, and this guy didn't have the backing of the Roman Army behind him, so his effort had as much effect on me as rain on the ocean, and just to show him how devastated his opinion left me, I grinned broadly at him and said in an overloud voice, "I'm here to investigate the disappearance of Aldwin Nahasa. I understand this was his residence?"

  The man stiffened and his chin lifted defiantly, which elevated his nose to a dangerous degree. "I've already told you everything I have to say."

  I shook my head and corrected him. "You've told me nothing yet. I am not from the police." I pulled Carina's note out of my pocket and smiled as I extended it to him. "This letter from your mistress instructs you and all the other servants to cooperate fully with me."

  The butler scowled at me as he took the letter, and his scowl deepened while he read it, then he let out a loud sigh, handed the letter back and said, with stiff formality, "What do you want to know?"

  I chuckled, which did nothing to make him like me more, which added to my amusement, but I got down to business. "Obviously I want to know where Aldwin Nahasa is, but for now I will settle for anything you can tell me that will help me find him."

  The butler shrugged. "There's not much I can tell you. He was fine when he left here, so whatever happened to him happened at the Hot Springs." Of that he sounded very certain.

  I nodded, as if I agreed with his conclusion. "That seems pretty clear, doesn't it?" I couldn't help it, I let a little smile slip out when I said, "Now I need to examine Mr. Nahasa's bedroom."

  "I'm sure the mistress would object," he said, standing up past his full height to make her objection clear.

  I was sure she would too, if she was here, but I really did need to visit his bedroom and I wouldn't give in to her either, though it was probably a good thing she wasn't here because she would be harder to convince. I said, "This letter instructs you to let me do what I need to do. I need to see his bedroom."

  I could tell he didn't want to let me, but he was duty-bound. He closed the door behind me, turned his back to me and said, "Follow me."

  I followed him down a broad, carpeted corridor, lined on both sides with large portraits. The first was a modern rendering of President Germanicus, who, over a thousand years ago, had stepped down as Emperor of Rome to be elected as the first president of the New Roman Republic.

  On the opposite wall I recognized a younger Carina, and the next painting in line showed a middle-aged man striking a regal pose beside a large window that opened onto a sunlit garden. Clad in rich garments, with his thick, dark hair just starting to gray, he could have been called handsome except for a long, rather prominent nose.

  The butler waiting impatiently by a varnished wooden door a short distance ahead, said "Yes, that is the master, as he was painted more than twenty years ago."

  I gave him a nod, then studied the features in the painting, fixing them in my mind. Knowing what Aldwin looked like would help quite a bit.

  When I approached the butler he pushed the door open and stepped aside. I entered a lavishly appointed but fairly typical sleeping chamber, with thick, red velvet curtains on the windows, a canopied bed, closets and wardrobes with elaborately carved doors, a dressing table, a couple of other small tables and some chairs. This room contained more furniture than I had in my whole apartment and office combined.

  I don't really know how my talent works, and the professors at R.I.M. couldn't fathom it either. It's not consistent, but I do know that it works most of the time. Once I establish some kind of connection with the missing object I sometimes just know where it is, or I get an image of the location, or, at the very least, a hint as to the direction it's in.

  This was my first missing person case, but I didn't see how it could be much different than looking for an object, so first I had to establish a connection with the old man.

  I went to the dressing table and, just as I'd hoped, a few gray hairs clung to a comb. Hair and other tissue maintains a connection to the person it comes from, so if I was lucky these hairs would lead me right to Aldwin but when I picked them I felt nothing. For all that I perceived from the hairs they might as well have been pieces of string.

  So much for easy money. I sighed, but I wasn't stumped, I just had more work to do, and I found myself looking forward to the challenge. The next part could even be a bit of fun.

  I went to the bed and stretched out on top of the covers. From his post just inside the door the butler managed to radiate severe disapproval without saying a word. I turned my head and managed to keep my little smile confined to the side of my mouth away from him.

  A lot of my studies at the Roman Institute of Magic had been history, philosophy, ethics, and science, but there had been plenty of practical lessons teaching me to focus my natural talents to get the most from them. Emptying my mind of extraneous thoughts, I slowed my breathing for a minute or so while I focused my mind through the proper channels and reached out with mental fingers, feeling for any malignancies that might be lurking to take advantage of my increased vulnerability.

  The room felt clean so I opened myself, going into a light trance, automatically tuning out the meaningless hum of the normal psychic residue present anywhere people lived. Some professors called the trance a state of higher consciousness, but when I was younger my father used to call it going into a daze. It's the same talent I had used on Aldwin's letter but with more concentration, better focus. I called it getting an impression.

  Every person or object leaves an impression in time whenever or wherever it is. The more massive or prominent it is, or the longer it stays in one place, the deeper the impression gets. The deeper the impression, the easier it is to sense. It is one of my strongest talents and I had studied and practice
d the technique in school until I was better at it than most magicians and some wizards.

  Aldwin's impression throughout the room was pervasive but unfocused. It was strongest on the bed, where he spent several hours nearly every night, but he slept alone in this bed, which I had already gathered from the lack of feminine paraphernalia in the room, and he was a lot older than Carina had led me to expect. Or maybe she was older than she looked.

  After a few minutes of absorbing and digesting impressions, and a couple morejust to test how long the butler could hold his stern expression, I got up and wandered around the room. I looked out the window, shifted some items around on the tables, and poked through drawers and behind doors, not because I hoped to discover anything more, but just to annoy the butler, whose expression had grown even sterner, and his posture stiffer, as he fought not to fidget.

  Following a vague impulse, which is sometimes all I have to go on, I crossed the corridor, trailed by the butler, and opened the door. Judging by the shelves of books and the two desks it was a library or study. I went to the larger desk and brushed my fingertips along the top. It was, or had been, Aldwin's.

  At the other desk I pulled some folded sheets of paper from a slotted shelf, the letters from Aldwin which Carina had told me about. The dates were as she had said but the impression I got was that these letters, including the last one, had all been written by Aldwin on the same night, at his own desk, before his departure. Apparently the police were right when they said he wanted to be missing.

  I replaced the letters, just a bit askew to annoy the butler, then strolled through the house, out the back door to the stable and coach house, where I found a coach similar to the one Carina had been riding in. I walked up to it and touched it, getting the impression it had not moved for weeks. I turned to the butler, who was hovering ten feet away, absorbing my every move while trying unsuccessfully to appear not at all curious, and asked, "When was Mr. Nahasa's coach brought here?"

  "It was returned the day after Mr. Nahasa arrived at the Hot Springs. He was to send for it when he was ready to come home."

  "Who drove it?"

  "Mr. Nahasa's regular driver was sick that day, so a temporary replacement took him. I do not recall the man's name."

  "Who else went?"

  "Just Peet, his personal servant. He did not come back."

  "What did the police have to say about that?"

  "They assume he is still with Mr. Nahasa."

  I scrutinized the old guy but his face revealed nothing, which meant he could be hiding anything. "What do you think?"

  "They could be wrong."

  I had to chuckle over that one. "That's a reasonable assumption when the police are involved." He didn't laugh, but his nose came down a degree or two. I opened the door of the coach and climbed in, shifting around on the seats until I found the spot where Aldwin usually sat, getting the impression that Aldwin had ridden here regularly over a long period of time, but that wasn't news to me.

  I slowed my breathing, focused my mind and put myself into a light trance, checked for lurking malignities, then reached out with mental fingers and delicately but thoroughly probed the entire coach to get a deep impression.

  Foremost was Aldwin's impression, by far the strongest because he had been the most frequent passenger, but the last person to sit in this spot had been another man who looked very much like Aldwin, but felt different. What could that mean?

  There was also a fainter impression of a beautiful young woman with flowing blonde hair, who seemed familiar to me, or maybe it was just her blue dress. Her impression, though faint, was definite, as though she had frequently ridden with Aldwin some time before his disappearance.

  I began breathing normally again and came out of my trance. That mysterious blonde woman seemed to be my best lead so far, and this coach was my best lead to her. Empowered by Carina's letter, I had the coach prepared for a trip to retrace Aldwin's route to the Hot Springs, with myself as passenger. It looked like Carina would be paying for this entire day and my mother would have to wait for her necklace.

  The butler left me in the care of the coach driver, who still lived in the servant's quarters with his wife, who was a maid. I said to him, "I understand you were sick the day Mr. Nahasa traveled to the Hot Springs."

  He wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his sleeve. "Yes, that's right, first time in over a year. Funny thing too. I woke up feeling fine, but after breakfast my stomach was all queasy and I started sweating and I got so dizzy I couldn't stand up, so I went back to bed. I threw up in a bucket and fell asleep for a couple of hours. When I woke up I was my old self again but the coach was long gone."

  I thought there was a chance that sickness might have been a coincidence.

  The driver inhaled, ready to start on the next chapter of that story but I nudged him in the proper direction. "Do you know who took your place that day?"

  "Oh sure I do. That would be Lysander, a little Greek fellow. He doesn't have a regular job because he likes his wine just a little too much. I like to drink too but I can't keep up to him."

  "Oh, you drink with him, do you?"

  "On occasion. Like I said, he drinks a lot more than me. I remember this one time when. . ."

  "Did he ever mention anything odd about that trip to the Hot Springs?"

  The driver ran his thick fingers through his thinning brown hair and his face contorted with the effort of remembering. "Yeah, there was one thing. He said they stopped at Gray's Roadhouse, even though it was off their route and it wasn't nearly lunch time yet, but Mr. Nahasa insisted."

  I interrupted before he could ramble on. "That's interesting. Take me there." I knew the place, a popular inn with excellent food and clean rooms, only a few miles of the east of the city.

  The coach was pleasant to ride in, with soft seats and good suspension. I ignored the view outside and concentrated on getting a better impression of Aldwin and the overlying stranger. A moving object leaves a weak impression at best, but a living being is easier to detect, so even though weeks had gone by I was hoping that by retracing the route taken that day I could tune in better, but the connection was tenuous at best and I didn't get anything more from it.

  What I did next would be determined by what I learned at Gray's Roadhouse.

  Chapter 4

  I sat back, enjoying the ride, watching the intense green of the fields in spring roll past my window while the clean, fresh, country air rolled in the window. My nostrils flared as I breathed it in. I don't get out of the city very often and I'd forgotten how much the city air stank of animals, people, food, sewage, smoke, and the ocean. A lot of people swear they love the salt air and the aroma of the sea, but to me it just stinks like rotting fish, even during high tide, just not as bad. Or maybe it's just me.

  "Gray's Road House," read the sign on a two-story building of sturdy wood construction, all solid, square beams and thick planks in the northern style, its whitewash brilliant in the spring sunshine. I left the driver with the coach and entered the public dining room.

  Most of the tables were empty because it was far too early for lunch, but the savory smells of countless meals lingered. A couple of well endowed serving girls smiled brightly at me but I approached the proprietor, a short, dark-haired man wiping his hands on a white apron, managing to look busy even while standing still. "Welcome sir. What can I get for you?"

  "Some answers, if you don't mind. I'd like to ask you a few questions."

  The man's courtesy evaporated like water droplets on a hot stove. "Why would I want to answer your questions?"

  "I can think of twenty reasons." I slipped a hand into my pocket and it came out with a twenty talent bank note.

  In a flash the bank note vanished and the smile turned back on, but this one was just a veneer. "Please, come this way." He led me to a back corner, away from the light from the windows.

  I asked, "Do you know Aldwin Nahasa?"

  He nodded. "He is a regular customer."

>   I noticed his unconscious use of the present tense. "When did you last see him?"

  The proprietor's eyes rolled up to the right as he gazed into his memory. Several moments later he said, "It's been a month or two now. I didn't realize it had been so long." He reached out and touched my forearm and his voice was tinged with concern. "Has something happened to him?"

  "That's what his wife has hired me to find out. Maybe you can help, and you can start by telling me what you remember about the last time he was here, especially anything unusual."

  The short man rubbed his chin. "Well, yes, there was something. Usually he had only one companion." He stopped abruptly, as if he felt he'd said too much.

  Since I had just mentioned Aldwin's wife I understood his discomfort. "The young blonde woman," I said, to let him know I already knew about her, so he could relax and get on with the story.

  "Yes." He let out a long breath and continued. "She wasn't there that day, but he had three or four other guests in his room with him."

  "In his room?"

  "Yes. He usually reserved a private room in the back."

  "The same one all the time?"

  "Yes."

  "May I see it, please?"

  "I'm not sure that's possible."

  I slipped him another twenty and it followed the route of the first one. It was the fastest way I knew to win such arguments and Carina could afford the expense.

  "Right this way," he said.

  The room was rather cozy, with a single rectangular table capable of seating six or eight people. When I opened myself to get an impression the stream of people who had been in and out of this room in the past two months blurred together, but while riding in Aldwin's coach I had become finely attuned to his impression so I walked around the table, found Aldwin's place and sat in it, which helped to cut through the chaotic haze of irrelevant images, but all I could tell was that Aldwin had eaten here many times.

  I put myself into a light trance and sat in each of the other chairs around the table, trying to zero in on Aldwin's last visit. I saw the blonde again but, even though this had been a frequent meeting place for her and Aldwin, the proprietor had already told me she hadn't been here on that day so I, somewhat reluctantly, ignored her for now.