Nightside 06 - Sharper Than a Serpents Tooth

half-empty, and she had a cigarette in one corner of her mouth. Smoke curled up slowly past her sealed-shut eye.
    "I'll find you a spell," I said. "To repair your face."
    "I'm thinking of keeping it," Suzie said calmly. "It'll help my image as a desperate character and ruthless killer."
    "Your image doesn't need any help."
    "You always know the right things to say, Taylor. But I've never cared about being pretty. At least now my outside matches my inside."
    "Suzie… I won't have you hurt, because of me."
    She looked at me coldly. "You start getting protective, Taylor, and I will drop you like a hot elephant turd."
    "Speaking of really big shits," said Alex, "Walker was in here a few hours ago, John. Looking for you."
    I didn't like the sound of that. Walker, that perfect city gent in his smart city suit and bowler hat, represented the Authorities. His word was law in the Nightside, and peopled lived and died and worse at his whim. They say he once made a corpse sit up and answer his questions. He doesn't approve of me, but he's thrown some work my way from time to time, when he's needed a deniable and completely expendable agent. He was mad at me at the moment, but he'd get over it. Or he wouldn't, in which case one of us would almost certainly end up killing the other.
    "He brought his people in here and had them search the place from top to bottom," said Alex, sounding distinctly aggrieved. "Hence my need for a thorough and very expensive cleanup crew, just before you dropped in."
    "You let them search your bar?" I said.
    Alex must have heard the surprise in my voice, because he had the grace to look a little ashamed. "Hey, he brought a lot of people with him, all right? Serious people with serious weaponry. Some of whom are still missing, presumed eaten. I warned them not to go down into the cellars."
    I shook my head. Walker must be getting really desperate to lay hands on me if he was prepared to raid a bar protected by Merlin Satanspawn. Merlin had been buried in the cellars under the bar, after the fall of Camelot; but being dead doesn't necessarily keep you from being a major player in the Nightside. I wouldn't go down into those cellars with a gun at my back.
    "I have to go take a piss," I announced. "I've been holding it in for over two thousand years, and my back teeth are floating."
    "Thank you for sharing that with us," said Alex. "Try and keep some of it off the floor this time."
    I headed for the toilets at the back of the bar. Without making a big thing of it, people moved slowly but deliberately out of my way. Partly because of my carefully maintained reputation, but mostly because bad things had a habit of happening to and around me, and wise people kept a safe distance. I pushed open the door with the stylised male genitals painted on it, and headed for the row of stalls. I've never been one for urinals. Far too easy to be ambushed. I took a quick glance around me, breathing through my mouth to avoid the worst of the smell, but it seemed I had the place to myself. The small, dimly lit stone chamber looked as disgusting as ever. I don't think Alex ever cleans the place; he just fumigates it now and again with a flamethrower. The bare stone walls dripped with condensation, and the floor was wet with a whole bunch of liquids that had nothing to do with condensation. The graffiti hadn't improved either. Someone had daubed the Yellow Sign on one wall, and beside it someone had painted Gods do it in mysterious ways. Next to the row of stalls, someone else had written For a good time, knock on any door.
    I entered the first stall, and locked the door securely behind me. I then unzipped and attended to business, letting out a long sigh of relief. First rule of the private eye—always go when you can, because you never know when you might have to stand stakeout. On the wall above the toilet, someone had written What are you looking up here for? Ashamed? I smiled, shook off the last few drops and put it away, then stood very still. I hadn't heard or seen anything, but somehow I knew I wasn't alone in the stall any more. In the Nightside, you either develop survival instincts fast, or you don't develop past childhood. I started to reach for one of the little surprises I keep in my coat pockets for occasions like this, then stopped as something small and hard pressed into my back, directly above the kidney.
    "There's something small and hard pressing into my back," I said. "And I'm really hoping it's a