CHAPTER
12
A Man Named Mudt
Bero’s face healed crooked, and when he looked in the mirror, he mused that he was ugly now. Also, he limped a little when he ran. These things did not matter so much to him, but when he noticed them, which was often, he remembered the disaster of the night at the Twice Lucky. He remembered the Maik brothers’ heavy fists, the Horn’s casual disdain, and the Pillar’s look of undisguised pity, as if Bero were a three-legged dog, not even worth killing.
But most of all, Bero remembered jade. What it had been like to have it, and what it had been like to lose it.
Sampa, that Abukei pussy, had gone straight as a rod. With the fear of anything green beaten into him, he’d taken a job as a bike courier. Bero saw him huffing and puffing down the streets of their poor dockworkers neighborhood at the edge of the Forge, his doughy body straining on the pedals as he hauled boxes and bundles on a squeaking, rusted bike trailer.
When Bero called out to him, Sampa ignored him. In retaliation, Bero slashed Sampa’s tires and the boy missed his deliveries one day and lost his job.
Bero’s aunt worked twelve hours a day as a seamstress in a garment factory, and Bero slept on the floor of her apartment when she was not there.
The aunt’s boyfriend worked in a warehouse at the docks and knew how to skim a little for himself. Not enough to get caught and fired but enough to sustain his drinking habit. Though the bastard never did Bero any favors, it was through him that Bero caught wind of a man named Mudt, who fenced
stolen merchandise out of the back of a discount goods store in Junko.
That in itself was not so interesting to Bero, but the other rumors he heard were. He found the man in the back room of his store, counting boxes. Mudt was a tawny-looking man with crinkly hair and small eyes; he might have had a bit of Abukei blood in him. “What do you want?” asked Mudt.
Bero said, “I heard you’ve got work, for people who want it.”
“Maybe.” The man coughed into his elbow and turned toward Bero with watery, pinprick bright eyes. Even in the muggy heat, he wore a gray shirt with sleeves down to his wrists; the armpits and collar were dark with sweat.
“It’s not work for pussies, though. Can you drive? Can you handle a gun?”
“I can do both.” Bero studied the man. “Is it true? That you’re green?”
Mudt smirked. Then he stuck out his tongue, showing off the jade stud pierced through the center of it. “Oh, it’s real,” he assured Bero. “I don’t mind telling you because I know you’re cut, keke. You’re hungry.” He tapped the center of his own forehead with an index finger and grinned with crooked teeth. “Perception, you see.”
If it was true that Mudt had jade, then the rest of what Bero had heard was probably true as well: that Mudt had false papers and a reliable source of shine, that as a small business owner in No Peak territory, he paid nominal tribute to the clan, but made his real wealth as an informer for the Mountain.
Mudt was a self-made man. Proof that you didn’t need to be born into the right family or go to the right school to have what the Green Bones had, to
take power when it wasn’t given to you.
“I want to work for you,” said Bero.