Game of Cages

But that wasn’t what made me catch my breath. He had tattoos just like mine on his hands, neck, and even his face. I could see that they went up his sleeve, down his collar, and under his hairline. He didn’t look like part of— what had Well-Spoken called him?—Yin’s crew of pin-striped gunmen. But who was he with? Was he the German voice, working for the “extremely unpleasant old man”? Kripke’s bodyguard turned traitor to his boss? Or was he one of the Fellows? I hoped he was part of the Twenty Palace Society. Or even—what had Catherine said?—an ally. I didn’t like the look of him and didn’t want him as an enemy.

He stared at the pantry door, his expression alert and calm. I knew he wouldn’t be able to see me—the room was too dark and the gap too small—but then it occurred to me that I was assuming he had everyday human eyes. If one of those marks gave him X-ray vision or something, I was in for a fight.

Someone’s cell began playing Mozart. I heard Well-Spoken answer it in a language I didn’t recognize. Some kind of Chinese, maybe? Horace had said Mr. Yin spoke Cantonese, so maybe that was it. After a delay, she said: “My employer wants me to speak with our hostess. If you’ll excuse me.”

I heard her walk away. The tattooed man walked away too. I waited, listening to the silence. Tattoo hadn’t acted as though he’d seen me, but maybe he had a great poker face. Maybe he was going to another room to get a shotgun.

Catherine came toward me, her eyes widened as if to ask Are they gone?

“I guess so,” I said. No one heard me. No one shouted Hey again. I opened the pantry door on the empty kitchen.

Catherine slapped my shoulder. It wasn’t a playful tap, but it wasn’t meant to hurt, either. “Dumbass,” she said. She kept her voice low. “You nearly got us killed for that old woman.”

“Maybe so.”

“Definitely so. I understand the impulse, boy, but bigger things are at stake here.”

I didn’t like being called boy, and I didn’t need to be reminded of the stakes, but there was no edge to be gained squabbling over it.

Catherine wanted me to eavesdrop on Well-Spoken Woman’s conversation with the host while she got into position to take photos of the bidders as they left. We agreed to meet in an hour at her car. If one of us didn’t make the meeting, we would meet at nine A.M. in the parking lot of the post office in the town below. My flannel jacket didn’t go with the white servant’s coat, so Catherine promised to bring it to the car.

“Don’t get killed” was the last thing she said before she left.

CHAPTER THREE

I had no idea where Well-Spoken was going, but I knew how to follow voices. I picked up the silver tray and left the kitchen.

The halls had dark paneling and were hung with landscapes of sunny places thousands of miles away. The floor was hardwood with a strip of burgundy carpet down the center. The carpet had been plush once but had been worn thin down the middle and dotted with faint brown stains.

I walked quietly but not sneakily. I still had the too-small servant’s jacket on. It would probably fool anyone who didn’t actually live or work here, and I hoped that was good enough. I held the tray in front of me to hide my shirttails.

Well-Spoken Woman and the Russian had talked about attracting the wrong kind of attention, and I knew they were talking about me. They wanted a predator; the Twenty Palace Society kills people who have predators.

And while I’d killed people, I’d always known who I was killing and why they deserved it. I tried to picture myself kicking open the pantry door and shotgunning those strangers, but I couldn’t. That wasn’t me.

The corridor ended at a T intersection, and as I approached, a small group of people walked by. The man in front was the tall man with the stork neck who’d carried the nurse by the legs. Behind him was a blond woman of about fifty with salon hair and makeup. Two more men walked at the rear. Both were balding, one short and skinny, the other short and fat. Both had big square glasses and porn-star mustaches.

The men were dressed like Horace—they had ugly winter coats and cheap boots. Stork Neck was wearing rubber galoshes, and between the three of them, their haircuts couldn’t have cost more than fifteen bucks.

The woman was different. She wore a stylish brown leather coat that reached to mid-thigh. Her boots were also leather and trimmed with fur. In the seconds I had to look at her, she gave the impression of being very carefully put together, very exacting and self-aware. She drew my attention the way the men with her did not.

Was this Well-Spoken Woman? The three men were obviously Fellows, but—

The woman and the two mustache guys glanced at me. They saw my servant’s jacket and looked away. I was invisible. I was help.

When I reached the intersection, I had the choice of turning right and following them or turning left toward the direction they’d come from. To the left was a pair of heavy doors, both shut tight. I didn’t know what was behind them. I turned right.

Ahead of me, Stork Neck’s party turned left. I hustled after them and peeked around the corner just in time to see them file into a room.

I walked to the door. The woman was speaking, and her voice was deeper than the one I’d eavesdropped on from behind the pantry door. She wasn’t Well-Spoken Woman after all. “It’s a surprisingly small library,” she said. She had an accent like a Kennedy.

A man’s thin, nasal voice answered: “But the quality is excellent, if you are interested in road building, Bigfoot, or Ayn Rand. Otherwise—”

“Now,” the woman said.

I heard the rustle of clothing and peeked around the edge of the door. The woman stepped backward, allowing the Mustaches to pull sawed-off double-barreled shotguns from under their puffy coats. They pointed them at two men seated in the corner. One was a pudgy young guy with Larry Fine hair, and the other was a huge-bellied biker in riding leathers.

The biker looked startled, then let his hand creep toward the waistband of his pants. Something he saw in the