"Asleep. Been weeks since he bugged me. I'm in heaven."

Winger sneered, flipped blond hair out of her face. "Likely to wake up?"

"Maybe if the house catches on fire. Got something to hide?" The Dead Man's big trick is mind reading.

"No more than usual. I was just thinking, it's been a dry spell. Way I hear, weather ain't been so hot for you, neither."

That was my pal Winger, so shy and demure. Somehow, with her, the romance and adventure were absent. "Thought you had desperate business."

"Desperate?"

"You like to tore the door down. You woke up the Goddamn Parrot with your whooping and hollering." That about-to-become-roasted squab was holding forth up front. "I figured you had killer elves slavering on your trail."

"I just wish. I told you how my luck's been. I was just trying to get your attention." She refilled her mug, did mine, headed for my office. "All right, Garrett. Business first."

She paused, listened. T.G. Parrot was on a roll. She shrugged, slipped into my office. I followed quickly. Sometimes things fall into Winger's pockets if you're not there to keep an eye on them.

I wriggled into my chair, safe behind my desk. Eleanor guarded my back. Winger scowled at the painting, then eyed my book. "Espinosa? Ain't that a little heavy for you?"

"It's a real thriller." Espinosa was beyond me, mostly. He tended to make a big deal out of questions that wouldn't have occurred to anybody who worked for a living.

I'd gone to visit a lady friend at the Royal Library. The book was all I got.

"Philosophy is thrilling? Like a hemorrhoid. The man should've got a hobby."

"He did. Philosophy. Since when can you read?"

"You don't need to act so surprised. I been learning. Got to do something with my ill-gotten gains, don't I? I thought maybe some learning might come in handy someday. But mostly what I've learned is studying don't make you no smarter about people."

I started to agree. I know some pretty dim academics, people who live in another world. Winger cut me off. "Enough chit-chat. Here's the gig. This old broad name of Maggie Jenn is maybe gonna come see you. I don't know what's up, but my boss is willing to pay a shitload of money to find out. This Jenn crone knows me so I can't get close to her. What I figured was, why don't I get you to let her hire you, then you let me know what she's up to and I can take that to my boss."

Vintage Winger.

"Maggie Jenn?"

"That's the name."

"Seems like it ought to ring a bell. Who is she?"

"You got me. Just some old broad off the Hill."

"The Hill?" I leaned back, just a harried man of affairs taking a moment out to relax with an old friend. "I have a case."

"What is it this time? A stray lizard?" She laughed. Her laughter sounded like geese headed north for the winter. "Meow, meow."

A few days earlier, I'd gotten stung by an old biddy who'd hired me to look for her beloved missing Moggie. Never mind the details. It's embarrassing enough just me knowing. "That's on the street?"

Winger swung her feet onto my desk. "All over it."

Dean was in it deep. I hadn't told a soul.

"Best Garrett story I heard in a while, too. Thousand marks for a cat? Come on."

"You know how some old ladies are about their cats." The cat hadn't been the problem, really. The problems started when I found a real animal that was a ringer for the imaginary, red herring beast. "Who would suspect a sweet old lady of wanting to set him up for a fall guy in a scam?"

Honk honk, har har. "I would've got suspicious when she wouldn't come to my house."

What saved me was finding that cat. I caught on when I tried to take him home. "Yeah."

The Dead Man might have saved me all the embarrassment. Had he been awake.

Part of the discomfort of the mess was knowing he'd never stop reminding me about it. "Never mind that.

Since we're talking about old ladies, tell me what this Maggie Jenn is going to want."

"I figure she's gonna ask you to kill somebody."

"Say what?" That wasn't what I expected. "Hey! You know—"

Somebody else was trying out my front door. This somebody had a fist of stone bigger than a ham. "I have a bad feeling about this," I muttered. "Whenever platoons of people start thumping the door... "

Winger stowed her leer. "I'll disappear."

"Don't wake the Dead Man."

"You kidding?" She pointed toward the ceiling. "I'll be up there. Find me when you're done."

I was afraid of that.

Having a no-strings, no-complications friendship can have its own complications.

The small front room had grown quiet. I paused to eavesdrop. Not one obscenity marred the precious silence. T.G. Parrot was asleep again.

I thought about making it that jungle pigeon's last nap, the beginning of the big sleep, the longest voyage, the...

Boom boom boom.

I peeked through the peephole. By-the-numbers Garrett, that's me. Fixing to live a thousand years.

All I saw was a smallish redhead facing three-quarters away, staring at something. That little bit did all that pounding? She was stronger than she looked. I opened the door. She continued staring up the street. I leaned forward cautiously.

The neighborhood pixie teens were chucking rotten fruits off the cornices and gutters of an ugly old three-story half a block up Macunado. A band of gnomes below dodged and cursed and shook their walking sticks. They were all old, clad in the usual drab gray, with whiskers. Not beards, whiskers, like you see in paintings of old-time generals and princes and merchant captains. All gnomes seem to be old and out of fashion. I've never seen a young one or a female one.

One spry little codger, chanting a colorful warsong about discount rates and yam futures, pegged a broken cobblestone hard enough to actually hit a pixie. It did a somersault off a gargoyle's head. The gnomes pranced around and waved their sticks in glee and sent up an ave to the Great Arbitrager. Then the pixie brat opened his wings and soared. His laughter was a mocking squeak.

I told the redhead, "An exercise in futility. All sound and fury. Been going on all month. Nobody's gotten hurt yet. Probably all die of shame if anybody did." Gnomes are that way. Gladly make fortunes financing wars but don't want to watch the bloodshed.

I spied a sedan chair at streetside down toward Macunado's intersection with Wizard's Reach. Beside it stood something half man and half gorilla with hands that fit the prescription for whatever it was that had tried to demolish my door. "That thing tame?"

"Mugwump? He's a sweetheart. And as human as you are." The redhead's tone suggested she might be, unwittingly, insulting friend Mugwump.

"Can I help you?" Boy, would I like to help her. Mugwump was old news.

I make a point of being nice to redheads, at least till they're not nice to me. Redhead was always my favorite color, barely edging blonde and brunette.

The woman turned to me. "Mr. Garrett?" Her voice was low, husky, sexy.

I didn't owe any money. "Guilty." Surprise, surprise. She was a good decade older than my first guess. But time had stolen nothing. She was proof on the hoof that aging produces fine wines. Second-guessing, I put her over thirty-five but under forty. Me, I'm a tender, innocent thirty and don't usually look for them quite so ripe.

"You're staring, Mr. Garrett. I thought that was impolite."

"Huh? Oh. Yeah. Excuse me."

The Goddamn Parrot started muttering in his sleep. Something about interspecies necrophilia. That got me back to the real world. "What can I do for you, madam?" Other than the obvious, if you're looking for volunteers. Hoo.

I was amazed. Yeah, female of the species is my soft spot, my blind side, but the mature type didn't usually get me. Whatever, something about this one totally distracted me. And she knew it.