“Yeah, that’s what I hear,” I said casually. “Wouldn’t know myself, Greyboar and me only bumped into her the once or—”
“Word is,” interrupted Leuwen, “she had some help in that little business. Real serious help. Serious muscle-type help, in fact.”
I sighed. It’s just as the wise man says: “Wisdom drops dead. Stupid shit’ll haunt you forever.”
There was no point dancing around it. Leuwen looked like a walrus, but nobody had ever accused him of having anything between his big ears but brains.
“All right,” I growled. “What’ve you heard?”
Leuwen grinned and started wiping his hands on the rag he always kept tucked into his belt. I watched the project carefully. The experienced Trough-man could gauge Leuwen’s exact mood and manner by the precise way in which he wiped his hands on that rag. Don’t ask me to explain the subtleties. Can’t be done. You either knew how to read them or you didn’t.
The hand-wiping looked ominous. I could read avid interest combined with rabid curiosity combined with—this was bad—shrewd deductions combined with—this was worse—experienced surmises combined with—oh, woe!—detailed half-knowledge of way, way, way too many facts.
“Well, let’s see,” he mused. “First off, I heard the proper witch managed to get into the Ozarine embassy and wreck the gala affair being held there to celebrate the recent wedding between Prygg’s very own Princess Snuffy and the Honorable Anthwerp Freckenrizzle III, scion of Ozar’s third richest multi-zillionaire. Trashed the social event of the season, she did. Or so people say.”
I frowned. Bad, but I could live with it.
“But,” continued Leuwen, as I feared he would, “the word is that Magrit’s little comet strike on high society wasn’t nothing but a cover. A diversion, people say, so that other parties could sneak into the top-secret super-security part of the Ozarine embassy and steal one of Ozar’s three Rap Sheets.”
I tried to control the wince, but I couldn’t. Leuwen didn’t miss it, of course, and the hand-wiping went into high gear.
“Yeah, no kidding, that’s what people say. Can you imagine that? Stole a Rap Sheet! One of the real Joe relics!” He pursed his lips, frowned, pretended to be thinking idle thoughts. “What are there—five Rap Sheets, total, in the whole world? Maybe six?” He shook his head mournfully. Wipe, wipe. “But that’s what people say.” Wipe, wipe, wipe. “Among other things.”
“What else?” I grumbled.
Leuwen wasn’t even trying to keep his grin under control anymore.
“Well, people’re saying that whoever snuck into the embassy and took the Rap Sheet must’ve had some real bruiser along with ’em. On account of what happened to all those elite-type embassy guards. Broken necks, snapped spines, crushed windpipes—even say one of ’em had his spine tore out and that same spine used to garrote another. Can you imagine that?”
I was glaring into my mug.
Wipewipewipewipewipewipe.
“Now, who could do such terrible things?”
By rights, the ale should have started boiling by now, just from my glare alone. It was one of the many problems with having the world’s greatest professional strangler as my client. He couldn’t stop showing off.
One glance at Leuwen’s wicked smile told me there was no point in trying to act dumb. Leuwen knew what it said on Greyboar’s business card as well as I did:
GREYBOAR—Strangleure Extraordinaire
“Have Thumbs, Will Travel”
Customized Asphyxiations
No Gullet Too Big, No Weasand Too Small
My Motto: Satisfaction Garroteed, or
The Choke’s on Me!
Leuwen was now in full steam:
“Yeah, that’s what people say. Whoever stole the Rap Sheet—and thereby pissed off the world’s most powerful empire so bad they up and invaded not only Prygg but three other sovereign nations of Grotum—also managed to get away with it—and thereby also pissed off the Church and sent the whole Inquisition into a frenzy—and even seem to have dropped out of sight entirely and are wandering around loose with one of the real Joe relics—thereby plunking themselves right smack in the middle of all that Joe business, which is the worst business anybody can possibly get mixed up in, on account of sooner or later God Himself is bound to come down on them like a ton of bricks.”
Wipewipewipewipewipe. Wipewipe. Wipe, wipe. Wipe.
“Who knows?” I asked glumly.
Leuwen shrugged. “Nobody actually knows, Ignace. Cheer up. It’s not all that bad, really. The authorities are too stupid to figure it out, and the lowlifes what aren’t too stupid to figure it out won’t really believe it on account of”—here his face grew solemn and serious—“no lowlife in his right mind is going to believe for one minute that Greyboar would have been stupid enough to get himself mixed up in such a mess. Much less you.”