"Yeah. I came out of the Buskin. A tough kid who got lucky and got on with the Custodians. My dad wasn't lucky. Tried to buck a protection gang. He paid, and they didn't protect him from another gang in the same racket. He said he wasn't going to put out good money for something he wasn't getting. They cut his throat. I was one of the Custodians who picked him up. They stood around laughing and cracking jokes. The ones responsible." "Ever settle them up?" I asked, certain of the answer. "Yeah. Brought them into the Catacombs, too." He glanced at the black castle, half obscured by mists drifting across the far slope. "If I'd heard the rumors about that place, maybe I'd have. . . . No, I wouldn't."

I didn't think so myself. Bullock was a fanatic of sorts. He'd never break the rules of the profession that had brought him out of the Buskin, unless he could advance its cause by so doing.

"Think we'll start right at the waterfront," he told me. "Work our way up the hill. Tavern to tavern, whorehouse to whorehouse. Maybe hint that there's a reward floating around." He ground one fist into another, a man restraining anger.

There was a lot of that bottled up inside him. Someday he would blow up good. We'd gotten an early start. I saw more taverns, cathouses, and reeking dives than I'd passed through in a dozen years. And in every one Bullock's advent engendered a sudden, frightened hush and a promise of dutiful cooperation.

But promises were all we got. We could find no trace of any old money, except a few coins that had been around too long to be the booty we sought. Bullock was not discouraged. "Something will turn up," he said. "Times are tough. Just take a little patience." He looked thoughtful. "Might just put some of your boys down here. They aren't known, and they look tough enough to make it."

"They are." I smiled, mentally assembling a team including Elmo, Goblin, Pawnbroker, Kingpin, and a few others. Be great if Raven were still with the Company and could go in with them. They would be running the Buskin inside six months. Which gave me an idea to take up with Whisper. If we wanted to know what was happening, we should take charge of the Buskin. We could bring in One-Eye. The little wizard was a gangster born. Stand out some, though. I hadn't seen another black face since we'd crossed the Sea of Torments.

"Had an idea?" Bullock asked, about to enter a place called the Iron Lily. "You look like your brain is smoking."

"Maybe. On something down the line. If it gets tougher than we expect."

The Iron Lily looked like every other place we'd been, only more so. The guy who ran it cringed. He didn't know nothing, hadn't heard nothing, and promised to scream for Bullock if anybody so much as spent a single gersh struck before the accession of the present Duke. Every word bullshit. I was glad to get out of there. I was afraid the place would collapse on me before he finished kissing Bullock's ass. "Got an idea," Bullock said. "Moneylenders."