The Translated Man and Other Stories - Chris Braak [64]
The sharpsies in Mudside had likewise built their homes out of whatever they could find, in whatever place or order they could, completely unmindful of preserving streets or public squares. The neighborhood was a warren of blackened wood, where thin wisps of smoke rose from peat and dung fires, and unemployed, shiftless sharpsies sat curled up against the wooden walls of their homes. They sat with their knees pulled in, and their long faces resting against their chests, giving the impression that they were staring at their stomachs.
Beckett realized his mistake almost immediately. Upon sight of the trolljrman, even the most apathetic sharpsie snapped its head up, eyes glittering warily, and then slunk off into the shadows. Beckett and his translator traveled well into the neighborhood, but with every step more sharpsies deserted the public places, and it became a ghost-town. More troublesome was a suspicion that snuck around in the back of Beckett’s mind: that the disappearing sharpsies weren’t running away, but were regrouping somewhere.
After ten minutes in the eerily empty, snow-covered and filth-smelling Mudside, a brazen-looking sharpsie youth appeared and blocked Beckett’s path. He was not taller than the coroner, but was leanly muscular, and his great, sharp teeth arranged in a nasty-looking grin certainly suggested formidability.
The sharpsie coughed and growled for a few moments, and the trolljrman translated. “He say we not belong. We should go.”
Beckett shook his head. “No,” he told the sharpsie, “Not until I find out what I want.” He pulled out his gun and his shield, and showed them to the youth. “Listen to me…” The sharpsie coughed something again, but Beckett kept going. “Listen. I know that, three days ago, at least one of your people was hired to mutilate the bodies of three people in North Ferry.”
The sharpsie growled and spat indignantly. The trolljrman spoke, “He say he don’t know about it.”
“I don’t care,” Beckett said. “Someone knows. I am not interested in arresting a sharpsie. At all. I know that the man in North Ferry was not killed by sharpsies. Whoever did it was set up. Your people were set up. Do you know what that means?”
The sharpsie eyed him, but said nothing.
“The gendarmes, the pressmen are about to fall on you,” Beckett insisted, his voice low and steady, his manner serious. “They are going to tear you apart, because they think you murdered this man. I can stop them, but only if you help me find the truth.”
The youthful sharpsie cocked its head to one side, in a gesture that Beckett couldn’t positively translate, but was nonetheless put in mind of a man, weighing his options and leery of deception. For a moment as the sharpsie did nothing, Beckett’s frustration nearly boiled over into frustration, and he came close to knocking those great sharp teeth out with the butt of his pistol.
Abruptly, the sharpsie nodded.
“Good. I need to find the sharpsie that was responsible, because I need to find the man that hired him. I need to know who hired him, and I need to be able to prove it, so that I can hang him. You understand?”
The sharpsie grunted, and then said a few more words in its native language.
“He wants to take us to his….” The trolljrman paused. “I do not know this word. It is ‘head man.’ It is like, a brood-father?”
“Like a priest?”
The trolljrman scoffed. “Sharpsies not have priests. They worship bones and sticks. He probably take you to his pet shark.”
The sharpsie growled and coughed at the trolljrman, and the intent behind the sounds was unmistakable. The trolljrman thrummed something back in its own bone-rattling voice, and it flattened its crest against its