Dinadan Noir X: Word on the Street

Vinnie Twofingers liked to style himself a booking agent. That was how I’d met him, years earlier. Turned out he booked mostly private parties. Very private. One performer and—most of the time—an audience of one. I wasn’t interested in that kind of business, but Vinnie was an amiable sort for a walking corpse, and he’d managed to hook me up with one or two legit, non-horizontal gigs. I’d swing by every once in a while to see if any of the girls he represented were interested in becoming proper bards. It got Vinnie a finder’s fee, it got the guild promising members, and it got me the warm fuzzies of a quiet good deed. Vinnie also made it a point to know as much as he could about every shady deal that happened on Crypt. His girls kept him well-informed, and he made a tidy profit as an information broker when it suited him. I was happy to find him in his office. There were too many gaps in Damini’s story. She’d told me what she knew, but she was still just a cobbler with good ears and more-than-healthy ambition.

“Vinnie! How’s it going?”

“Dinadan Whistler. What an unexpected pleasure.” It was always a little disconcerting to hear his whiskey-soaked baritone coming out of an empty skull, but that was Crypt for you. “Is it time for you to steal away my girls again?”

I shook my head. “Come on, Vinnie, you’ve got better sources than that.”

“Humor me. I want to hear you say it, mostly so I can charge you like a real client.”

“Alright, alright. Vinnie, I need some information.”

He spun his chair and kicked his feet onto the desk. “Nice shoes, yeah? Pretty cobbler girl over on Biotite made ‘em for me. That’s real Soselian crocodile. Shame, though…that shop got closed down. Little bit of a scuffle. I even heard—and you won’t believe this—that some handsome devil of a satyr bravo was involved.”

I grinned. “The way I hear it, he was there, but the mess happened without him starting it.”

I had to imagine his grin. Skulls aren’t the most expressive things. “Do tell.”

“The way I hear it, Aagren had a hole in his chest when the satyr got there, and it was Whale Oil McKay and some local cousins who tore the place up.”

The skeleton made a satisfied noise. “And pieces fall into place. This satyr bravo, he wouldn’t happen to have been looking for Aagren in regards to an off-world murder, would he?”

“He might have been. I hear he’s a bit of a fool for a good cause.”

“You heard right, Dinadan. Damn fool’s got a Gifted One’s luck, good and bad.”

“So what am I in for this time, Vinnie? Aagren was up to something, that much I know.”

“More than something, and more than you know. What’s in it for me to fill you in?”

“I double your finder’s fee next time I swing by for the usual, and I put in a good word for you with the local greencoats.”

“You really think you’ve got that sort of sway?”

I nodded. “Where there are words, there’s a way. I can make good on it. It’ll keep them from checking out the gigs you book too close.”

“There’s a war coming, Din. Borales looks vulnerable and Gero’s feeling itchy. Most of the low-level folks are going mum, so I can’t give you much for specifics, but I know where things are headed. Coin’s flowing to every over-muscled teamster willing to crack heads. There’s a lot of traffic through Ferral’s. He’s even gone and taken on an extra apprentice to keep up with demand. Borales is looking awfully defensive. Lots of loyalty money floating around, but the uncles there seem to be looking at each other rather than this way. If Gero orders a move, Borales is going to crumble. Makes me think it might be a ‘when,’ not an ‘if.’ But I am not in the business of speculating.”

“Where’s Aagren fit?”

“Now that, my friend,” Vinnie said, “is the million gold question. Nobody’s quite sure, and knowing that you didn’t snuff him, that doesn’t exactly clear things up. Word on the street is that you did for him, and the locals showed up too late to stop it. But if McKay was there, well…that makes it clear as mud, ‘ey?”

“McKay works for Upal Toth, yeah?”

Vinnie nodded. “More or less. They’re both uncles, mind you. But McKay’s the muscle. He don’t have to take orders from Toth, but he does. Him and his bully boys, they do most of the protection work. But that don’t explain why he was in Igneous looking for everybody’s favorite dead squidface.”

“Or why anybody’d go after his mistress. Isn’t that usually off limits?”

“Sort of. Bad form, but Family manners get frayed when things get tense like this. Snuffing a mistress is a quick way to send a message.”

“So who wanted to send Aagren a message, and what was it?”

Vinnie’s suit made his skeletal shrug look almost human. “Can’t say, Din-din.”

“Whoever did for her was just muscle. I saw it right after it happened. Real mess. But Aagren was serious work. Serious magic…telemancy at the least. I don’t know how you put a hole that big in somebody’s chest, and I don’t know how you make blood into words.”

“Wait a minute. The blood did stuff?” He was interested now. “What’d it say?”

I smirked. “What’s it worth to you?”

He was caught. “By itself, not much, but it’d help me answer your questions. Might make me forget you said you’d double your finder’s fee.”

“It said ‘think twice.’”

“All scripty and flowy?”

I nodded.

“Oh, Dinadan, that is one hell of a tidbit. One hell of a tidbit. Been a long time since anybody’s seen that. Likely you weren’t the audience he expected.” Vinnie chuckled softly. “No, not at all.”

“The audience -who- expected?”

“Gero. Gero did for Aagren. Personally. When he was on his way up, his enemies ended up dead like that all the time. He liked doing things with their blood. Pretty clever bit of magic, that, and intimidating as hell to make statements literally from the blood of them what stand in your way.”
I wondered just how long Vinnie had been around. “Aagren must’ve gotten the bloodsucker pretty riled.”

“Yeah, yeah. He must have. Dunno how, though. You find that out, you maybe solve your puzzle.”

“Somebody wanted it hid. When I went back, the blood was cleaned up. Sort of. Enough that there was no way to find any words in it.”

“Yeah. Probably wanted to make it look like you could’ve done it. None of the Igneous crew would’ve touched that. So an independent or your friend McKay. Wanted the murk to stay murky…that’d be my guess.”

“You got anything else you can tell me?”

“Not much. Stay out of Borales if you can, reckless goat. I give it a week before it boils over and bodies start turning up. Gero, he might wait, let the uncles there whittle each other down. But if his ire’s up enough to take a personal hand in things…well, I’m glad I’m me an’ not you.”
I flipped him a platinum coin for form’s sake. He caught it with a muted clink in the two fingers of his left hand, easily, and made it disappear. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks, Vinnie.”

“Any time. Goodbye, Dinadan.”