The owner was a certain dwarf called Barnet Riddles who ruled the roost with a certain wheedling panache that made him a likeable host in a sleazy sort of way. And if wheedling panache was not enough to calm a troublemaker down, then Barnet would follow it with a tap from a stolen LEP buzz baton.
The Sozzled Parrot was a dwarf hangout, and the club motto was: If you are not welcome there, then you are welcome here, which meant that every exiled criminal or slumming fairy in North America sooner or later turned up at The Sozzled Parrot. Barnet Riddles made the perfect host, as, by some freak of nature, he was one of only a tiny percentage of fairies who were over four feet tall. And so, as long as he wore a bandanna to cover his ears, Barnet was the ideal go-between with the humans, who supplied him with liquor, slightly turned beef for his quesadillas, and as much firepower as he could shift out of the back room.
The early hours of this morning in The Sozzled Parrot were pretty much the same as any other. Dwarfs sat hunched over tankards of ale in one of the booths. A couple of sprites were playing video crunchball on their handhelds, and half a dozen elfin soldiers of fortune were trading war stories by the pool table.
Barnet Riddles was deep in conversation with a dwarf at the bar.
“Come on, Tombstone,” he wheedled in a charming way. “Buy a couple of guns. A grenade at least. All you do is sit there and drink creek water. Isn’t there someone you’d like to shoot a couple of times?”
The dwarf grinned, baring his trademark tombstone teeth. “It’s getting that way, Riddles.”
Barnet was not discouraged—then again this particular dwarf was a born optimist. Who else would set up a bar for photosensitive dwarfs in sunny Miami?
It’s the last place the Leppers will look for us fugitives from justice, he often explained. They’re up freezing their LEP tails off in Russia, meanwhile we’re sinking beers here in luxurious air-conditioned surroundings.
Luxurious was a stretch. Even clean would have been a stretch. But The Sozzled Parrot was somewhere for fairy soldiers of fortune to meet and exchange war stories day or night, and so they were prepared to put up with Barnet’s exorbitant prices and his constant sales pitches.
“How about a computer implant?” persisted the innkeeper. “Everybody has implants these days. How do you keep tabs on the LEP?”
Tombstone pulled down the brim of his felt hat so that it covered his eyes. “Believe it or not, Riddles, I’m not on the hot list anymore. What you are looking at now is a one hundred percent legit citizen. Heck, I’ve even got a visa to be aboveground.”
“Groomchunks,” said Barnet doubtfully.
Tombstone slid a plastic square across the bar. “Read it and weep.”
Barnet squinted at the Gnommish writing and checked the official hologram.
“Looks pretty real,” he admitted.
“That is because it is real, my beer-watering friend.”
Barnet shook his head. “I don’t get it. If you can be anywhere, why are you here?”
Tombstone tossed a handful of beezel nuts into his cavernous mouth, and Barnet swore that after each crunch there was an echo.
“I am here,” said Tombstone eventually, “because of the clientele.”
Barnet was even more befuddled. “What? Thieves, mercenaries, extortionists, and forgers?”
Tombstone’s grin was wide and bright. “Yep. My kind of people.”
Barnet checked on a pitcher of toad sludge that he was fermenting for the pixies.
“You are a riot, Tombstone. Do you know that?”
Before Tombstone could answer, a plastic parrot on the bar opened its beak and squawked.
“New post,” squawked its animatronic mouth. “New post on the message board.”
“Excuuuuuse me,” said Barnet Riddles, with exaggerated politeness, “while I check this extremely handy implant I have in my head.”
“Handy, until you pass a microwave and lose ten years of memory,” commented Tombstone. “Then again, you spend so much time in here that you probably wouldn’t miss the odd decade.”
Barnet was not listening. His eyes fogged over as he checked the illegal implant that had been hotwired directly into his cortex by a disbarred doctor. After a couple of “hmmms” and one “really,” he returned to the here and now.
“How are the brain cells?” enquired Tombstone mildly. “I hope the message was worth it.”
“Don’t you worry about it, Mr. Hundred Percent Legit,” said Barnet briskly. “This one is for us criminals.”
He pounded the bar with his buzz baton, sending sparks rippling across the length of the brass rail.
“Cruik,” he called across the room. “You have a ship? Right?”
One of the dwarfs at the end booth raised a grizzled head. Beer foam fell in blobs from his beard. “Yeah. I got a gyro. A bit of a crock, but she runs okay.”
Barnet clapped his hands, already counting his commission. “Good. A job came in on the board. Two humans, kill ’em dead.”
Cruik shook his head slowly. “No killing dead. We may be criminals but we’re not humans.”
“The client will accept a full wipe. Can you stomach that?”
“Full wipe?” interrupted Tombstone. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
Barnet sniggered. “Not if you keep your fingers away from the electrodes. Two humans, brother and sister by the name of Butler.”
Tombstone twitched. “Butler? Brother and sister?”
Barnet closed one eye, consulting his implant. “Yeah. I’m shooting the details across to your gyro, Cruik. This is a rush job. Top dollar, as the Mud Men would say.”
The dwarf called Cruik checked the charge in an old-fashioned blunderbuss Neutrino.
“These Mud Men won’t be saying much of anything by the time I’m finished with them.” He pounded the table to summon his warriors. “Let’s go, my fine fellows. We have brains to suck.”
Tombstone stood quickly. “Do you guys have room for one more?”
“I knew it,” chuckled Barnet Riddles. “One hundred percent legit, I don’t think so. As soon as I laid eyes on you, ‘This guy has history,’ I said.”
Cruik was buckling on a belt loaded with spikes, shells, and dangerous-looking implements with fuses and capacitors.
“Why should I take you, stranger?”
“You should take me because if your pilot gets killed to death by these Butler humans, then I can take his place.”
An uncharacteristically skinny dwarf looked up from the romance novel he was reading. “Killed to death?” he said, lip trembling slightly. “I say, Cruik, is that likely?”
“I’ve had experience with the Butlers,” said Tombstone. “They always go for the pilot first.”
Cruik sized up Tombstone, taking in his powerful jaws and muscled legs.
“Okay stranger. You take the copilot’s chair. You get a junior share and no quibbling.”
Tombstone grinned. “Why quibble now when we can quibble later?”
Cruik thought about this statement for a moment until his brain ached.
“Okay. Whatever. Everybody take a sober pill and mount up. We have some humans to wipe.”
Tombstone followed his new captain across the bar floor. “How good is your mind-wiping equipment?”
Cruik shrugged. “Who cares?” he said simply.
“I like your attitude,” said Tombstone.
Cancún, Mexico; Now
The Butlers in question were of course the very same Butlers who had escaped the mesmerized wrestling fans, and who were now, thirty minutes after Cruik took on his new copilot, taking a moment to catch their breath in the morning sunshine on the shore of Cancún’s lagoon. These two were being pursued by Turnball Root more for his own entertainment than the possibility that they could actually interfere with his plans. Though it was possible that opponents as formidable as the Butlers had proved themselves to be troublesome. And Turnball’s plans were delicate enough without adding troublesome humans to the mix. Better to wipe them
, at least. Also, they had escaped the first time, so Turnball was irked, which he did not like.
Juliet squatted just above the waterline, listening to the sounds of party laughter and the tinkling of champagne flutes stream across the water from a passing yacht. “I have an idea, brother,” she said. “Why don’t we ask Artemis for a million dollars and just retire? Well, I could retire. You could be my butler.”