by Ari Marmell
And that mighta been the end of the whole thing, or at least my part in it, if it hadn’t been for my next visitor. They musta passed each other in the hall, because I’d barely had time to pop the cap off a bottle, take a quick gulp, and move around the desk toward the door when someone else appeared in it. The amount of bushy white fuzz on his head was unbelievable; on top, on his cheeks and chin, over his blinkers, even coming out of his ears. He was basically a walking dandelion—or a magician who’d gotten his trick wrong, and tried to hide the rabbit in his head.
“Hey, Mr. Soucek!”
“Hello, Mr. Oberon. I tell you before, you call me ‘Jozka,’ please.”
“Soon as you call me ‘Mick,’ Mr. Soucek.”
It was sort of a running joke between us, but today, Jozka didn’t look to be that into it. Of about a zillion Czech immigrants in the Pilsen neighborhood, my landlord was one of the few who’d made good. He’d actually bordered on being rich for a while there—until Black Tuesday. He’d seemed harried all the time, ever since, but I’d rarely seen him looking this blue. Not since our very first meeting…
“Everything okay?” I asked him.
“I can come in, maybe, Mr. Oberon?”
“Sure, sure. Take a seat.” I shut the door behind him. “Get you some milk?”
“I thank you, no,” he said. His hands were actually clenched together in his lap, and I felt a faint tingle run up my spine. Lead in my guts, I sat across from him.
“Um, Mr. Oberon…” His voice cracked. I said nothing more, just waited. “I try calling you before,” he said, “on the pay-telephone.”
Ah. “I heard. I was with a client.”
“This client, he makes you good offer, I hope?”
That’s never a good question. “I’m afraid we couldn’t come to terms.”
“Oh.” His whole face fell; he looked like a sagging cloud. “This is unfortunate. Mr. Oberon, you need to start to look for new place.”
I swallowed once, and felt my jaw and fists clench. “Mr. Soucek…”
Seems he heard something nasty in my voice. “Oh, no, Mr. Oberon! I owe you so much, ever since you find out what happen to my darling Kalene, God rest her soul. I say you can stay always for free in my building, and I keep my promise. But… is not up to me anymore. Not enough tenants to pay, so—I am losing building.”
It wasn’t as if I could doubt him on that. I knew how much of the joint was sitting empty, and how long it’d been that way. If I’d ever bothered to think about it, I shoulda been surprised this hadn’t happened a long time ago.
The timing, on the other hand, was more’n a little hinky.
“They did this, didn’t they?” I demanded. I think I might actually have growled a little.
“They?”
“The fellas you owe, Jozka. They’re pressuring you to pressure me, right?”
He offered me a sad little smile that made the hair on his face twitch like a whole swarm of caterpillars. “No, Mr. Oberon. All money I owe, is owed to bank. And they are ‘pressuring me,’ as you say, for weeks already.”
All right, then. Not arm-twisting by Archie and his boss; just rotten timing. That’s Fae luck for you. How did ol’ Willy put it? “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.”
Damn it, I liked that office! It ain’t easy for me to find a place in this town—in this world—where I can get comfortable, but I’d finally settled in here, been here long enough for my own aura to start drowning out the spiritual noise from outside. (Also it was underground, which is a bonus for me.) Plus, Mr. Soucek didn’t charge me rent, and he was grateful enough to me to put up with some of my, ah, eccentricities without complaint.
Damn it. Did I say that already?
“Okay. How much?”
“I’m sorry?”
“How much do you need?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Oberon. Even if you had so much, it would just happen again unless I get more tenants. I could never—”
“How much?”
He sighed. “Already I have put them off for a long time, so there is much interest, yes? Three hundred dollars I need, by end of month.”
Ouch!
“All right, Jozka. You worry about finding some new bodies to fill the rooms. I’ll get you the scratch to keep the building. Trust me, you’d rather owe me than the bank; I’m a lot easier to get along with.”
He left a few minutes later, after a whole heap of thanks and apologies that were so tumbled together and mixed up that I think, at one point, I was thanking him for agreeing to accept the handout I’d offered. But anyway, he was gone, and I was left with my keister in the chair and my head in my hands.
I’ve never actually needed much money, you know? Enough for milk, clothes, a little theater or opera now and then. Most of my jobs, unless something’s come up, I don’t charge cash except to cover expenses. I barter. I ask for—well, for whatever urge takes me, like Baskin’s parcel. Sometimes the stuff I ask for sits in my cabinet collecting dust. A couple of times, somebody’s payment has helped me solve another case, or even saved my life.
Your whims can do that, when you’re aes sidhe.
But the point is, I never had much cash flowing in, because it never seemed necessary. Which is all well and good, until you run into an emergency that costs a whole hell of a lot more than the cush you’ve saved up.
The brown paper crinkled loudly as I tore it open, sliding the twine aside, to reveal a large metal bracket. It didn’t look anything special; you’d pass it by as a hunk of trash without looking twice, unless you already knew what it was.
And what it was was an old switch, long replaced, to the electric chair at Cook County Jail. It didn’t hold any power itself, but symbolically it was connected to every man who ever fried in that particular hotsquat. And symbols are the language of magic itself.
I’d probably never use it for anything, but you never know. Like I said, the whim took me, so I asked.
I went to the filing cabinet and stuck it in a drawer with my other “special” payments: a cracked and yellowed copy of the Roman Rite, the reel from an old fishing rod, a perfume bottle of a blind girl’s tears, Herman Mudgett’s shaving razor, signed copies of Frankenstein and A Princess of Mars, and a bunch of other stuff that more or less resembled the leavings of a rummage sale. Then, slamming the door shut, I whirled toward my chair, snatched up my coat, and was out the door.
I needed dough? Fine. But I’d be damned if I’d go running back to Archie and the Outfit, not when I had friends I could call on first.
CHAPTER THREE
“Whaddaya mean, nothing?”
Pete Staten looked up at me from the wooden file drawer he’d been rifling through, tugged his officer’s blue jacket with one hand, and used the other to smooth out a thin, not-quite-black mustache about the same shade as his receding hairline.
“C’mon, Mick.” Even though I was just two steps away, he came close to shouting so I could hear him over the ruckus from the rest of the station. “What’d you expect? Sure, there’s a few missing persons or property thefts in our caseload we could toss you, but they only pay a couple of sawbucks at most. Nothing that’d cover the scratch you say you need. And even if there was a job that important, you think the department has the budget to pay for it these days?”
Probably best that my response to that was lost beneath the nine-dozen other voices that were screaming and vying for attention around the desk sergeant’s and receptionist’s counters.
But if Pete told me that’s all there was, I could take that to the bank (or more accurately, in this case, I couldn’t take it to the bank). I’ve got lotsa acquaintances, not so many actual pals, but Pete was up there with the best of ’em. Unfortunately, knowing that he’d genuinely tried didn’t help me much.
“What do you need it for?” he asked, sounding sympathetic. Genuine sympathetic, not “professional copper” sympathetic.
“Worst case of bad timing you can picture, Pete. You sure?”
I asked, even though I knew he was. “Nothing at all, not even in the, uh, special file?”
He knew what I meant immediately. There’s a tiny handful of cops and politicos throughout Chicago who believe all day in the weird stuff that most of you Joes only believe in at three in the morning (none of them as well as Pete himself, of course). And a few of those knew enough to toss me the occasional investigation that they couldn’t handle, though I’m pretty sure none of ’em knew why I was so well suited.
Pete frowned, took a quick gander around us, and then steered me through the nearest door. He didn’t have an office of his own, being a simple beat cop, but Keenan wouldn’t mind us using his for a spell.
Especially since he was out, and wouldn’t know about it.
The shade in the door’s window flapped, waving us hello, and the racket from the main room settled down into—well, a slightly less obnoxious racket. It wasn’t much of an office: barely the size of a large closet, musty and sour, with revolting bluish-greyish paint peeling off the walls in chunks to reveal older revolting bluish-greyish paint.
But the paint and the stink weren’t any better anywhere else in the station, so it was the privacy that made the difference.
“I guess maybe,” he said, perching on the corner of Keenan’s desk. “Had a few stiffs pop up down in Packingtown with some neck lacerations and not a whole lotta the red stuff. The brass is just calling it a crime spree, but you think maybe we could be looking at a vampire?”
I snorted. “You better hope not. You’re thinking of Bela Whosis in that movie last year, and I promise, that ain’t the half of it. But honestly, I doubt it. The genuine article ain’t exactly as neat and tidy as ‘some neck lacerations.’ Still… How’s the lettuce look if I do stick my nose in?”
Pete shrugged. “Depends on who makes the decision and what they believe. Square, though, Mick, you won’t be earning what you’re asking for. Maybe a C-note, if you’re very lucky—and probably a lot less.”
Damn. Yeah, a century was great payday for a farm-out from the PD, but not even close to what I needed.
I got a lot of former clients who were happy with my work, but only a couple are anything approaching rich. I’d already been to see them before I called on Pete; nobody had any sort of job for me, not with halfway enough pay, and I don’t like to borrow from anyone—especially on someone else’s behalf.
Which left me with three lousy options: I could let Mr. Soucek down, watch as he lost the building, and have to find myself new digs.
I could step Sideways, see if any of the debts and boons I held were still good, and try to get the scratch I needed off someone in the Seelie Court. I liked that idea even less than I did borrowing from a mortal; Fae debts ain’t something you cash in, or get yourself into, lightly. Or at all, if you can help it.
Or I could suck it up, break my policy of not working for the Mob, and hope that it didn’t get me mixed up with anyone worse than human thugs and made men.
Yeah. It’s basically the lady or the tiger, if the lady’s Typhoid Mary.
“Okay, Pete,” I said, “I understand. Can I bum another favor off you, then?”
“Sure, if I can. Whatcha need?”
I offered him a clear view of my pearly whites. “Help finding a wiseguy.”
Way his face fell, you’da thought I’d just kicked his dog. Off a roof. “C’mon, Mick, you’re not working with those guys.”
I shrugged. “I need the dough, Pete. I give you my word, if it’s anything dirty they need from me, I’ll walk.”
Well, I’d walk if it was anything too dirty, anyway…
I could see him wrestling with himself, actually taste his indecision in the air, but he knew how much I needed this. Shoulders slumping, he went and opened the door. “Hey, Shaunny! Drag your butt over here a minute!”
“Go climb your thumb!” The response drifted from somewhere in the midst of the chaos beyond the office. “I’m fuckin’ busy!”
Pete winced as a number of eyes and mouths widened among the people waiting for their chance to see whoever they were here to see. “So come be busy in here, goddamn it!” He turned back to me. “Our precinct’s expert on trouble boys. Anyone can help you find your wiseguy, it’s him.”
A few minutes later, someone shoved his way through the crowd and stomped into the doorway. You coulda peeled carrots in his hair and never known the difference, and I wasn’t sure there was a face behind all those freckles. He wore green suspenders, his shirtsleeves rolled up, and a scowl that was certainly perpetual. If they ever wanted to put the “Irish cop” stereotype to bed, someone would have to shoot this fella first.
“Mick,” Pete said, “this is Detective Driscoll Shaugnessy.”
Of course he was.
“Shaun, Mick Oberon, PI. You’ve probably seen him around?”
“Yeah, what of it? I’m workin’, here.”
I couldn’t help but grin a little; I’ve known that attitude for ages. “I need your expertise, detective. To find a man.”
“Yeah? Ain’t that usually your job?” He sighed before I could answer. “Okay, fine. Mick, is it? You’re a brave man, walkin’ around with a name like that.”
“And you, with hair like that.”
He laughed as though he really didn’t want to. “So who you looking for?”
“Name’s Archie. Might be a made guy; certainly works for one.”
“’Kay, what else?”
Unfortunately, I didn’t actually have a lot of else. I hadn’t planned on ever talking to the gink again, y’know?
When I was done, which took about as long as a schoolboy in a brothel, Pete and Shaugnessy were both looking shivs at me.
“That’s what you got?” the detective asked me. “His name’s Archie, and he might be a dago?” I winced at that a little, but nodded. “You know how many Archies there are in this town?”
I shrugged. He rolled his eyes at Pete. “I thought you said he was a private dick?”
“Well… Maybe you could have him look through some mug shots?” Pete offered.
“Right, ’cause I don’t have a fucking thing better to do all day than to shuffle pictures in front of some cut-rate shamus. Don’t you have anything else, Mick?”
Actually… “He did have an obnoxious habit of repeating most of what I—”
Shaugnessy was already nodding. “Oh, yeah, I know him. Archie Caristo, a.k.a. ‘Archie Echoes.’ I don’t imagine I need to tell you why.”
“I think I can puzzle it out,” I said.
“He’s a torpedo and bodyguard for Fino ‘the Shark’ Ottati, a capo who runs a crew for the Outfit. Word on the street is that he’s got a pipeline straight to Tony Volpe, and actually has dinner with Frank Nitti now and again. Not a big fish, but he swims with them, and he’s a good earner. Not the best guy to mess with, Mick.”
A-hah! I knew “Echoes” felt like one of Capone’s old organization!
“I don’t plan on messing with him, detective. Just chatting some with his errand boy. Any idea where Archie hangs his hat?”
We jawed for a while—mostly Shaugnessy throwing information at me, me trying to squeeze the occasional question in edgewise, Pete adding a detail or two—and that was that. The detective left, with what might even have been a genuine warning to be careful, and I bent to collect my coat.
“Thanks for the help, Pete. I appreciate it.”
“I’m not happy about this,” he admitted. “I’m holding you to your promise.”
I nodded, and headed for the door.
“See you Monday,” he said.
I halted, tilted my head as I tried to envision the calendar. “Wow. Full moon already?”
He nodded. “Seems like the last one was just a month ago, doesn’t it?”
“Cute.” Actually, I couldn’t help but smile, glad to see that Pete was adapting well enough that he could crack wise about it. “Yeah, swing by, bring the usual, you know the score.”
I squeezed around, between, and in
one case over the various desks, chairs, and people swarming the station like bees in a hive. It’d been a little chilly outside when I walked up, the last puffs of a dying winter, but in here everyone was so crammed in together, tighter’n butts in a pack, that I was covered in sweat by the time I approached the door (and remember, none of it coulda been mine). I’d almost made my sneak, actually reaching for the door, when I heard a voice call my name.
I was not in the mood for any more interruptions, but at least this one wasn’t too unpleasant. A smiling, coffee-skinned woman in matching sea-foam blouse, skirt, and a floppy hat (tilted down toward one ear, of course), rose from a hardwood bench and practically lunged at me. I let her hug me—I’m not super comfortable with gratitude, frankly, even though I’ve earned my share of it—and even plant a kiss on my cheek. The tips of her bobbed hair tickled my nose a little, but I didn’t think it’d be too friendly to sneeze in her ear.
“How’ve you been, Martha?” I frowned, suddenly wondering what she was doing here. “Somebody hasn’t stolen the painting again, have they? Nothing’s happened to your boys?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Oberon, nothing like that. I just witnessed poor Mr. Lawson down my block get beat something terrible, and the police asked me to come in and give a statement. I just saw you on your way out and wanted to thank you again for helping us.”
“What I get paid for, Martha. They haven’t kept you waiting out here too long, have they? I could say something, if you want.” I know how things work; she’d probably been here longer than a lot of the whites who’d already done their business and gone.
“That’s awfully kind of you, Mr. Oberon, but no, thank you. Wouldn’t be worth the hassle they’d give me later on.”
She was probably right, at that.
We exchanged a few more nonsense pleasantries—most of hers, like Mr. Soucek earlier, being variations on “thank you” that I really didn’t need or want—and then I was, finally, on my way.