by Butcher, Jim
“Magicians do stage magic. Wizards do real magic.”
He sighed. “I don’t need an entertainer, Mister Dresden. Just an investigator.”
“And I don’t need you to believe me, padre. Just to pay me. We’ll get along fine.”
He gave me an uncertain look and said, “Ah.”
We reached my car, a battered old Volkswagen Bug named the Blue Beetle. It has what some people would call “character” and what I would call lots of mismatched replacement parts. The original car may have been blue, but now it had pieces of green, white, and red VWs grafted onto it in place of the originals as they got damaged in one way or another. The hood had to be held down with a piece of hanger wire to keep it from flipping up when the car jounced, and the front bumper was still smashed out of shape from last summer’s attempt at vehicular monsterslaughter. Maybe if Vincent’s job paid well, I’d be able to get it fixed.
Father Vincent blinked at the Beetle and asked, “What happened?”
“I hit trees.”
“You drove your car into a tree?”
“No. Trees, plural. And then a Dumpster.” I glanced at him self-consciously and added, “They were little trees.”
His uncertain look deepened to actual worry. “Ah.”
I unlocked my door. Not that I was worried about anyone stealing my car. I once had a car thief offer to get me something better for a sweetheart rate. “I guess you want to give me the details somewhere a little more private?”
Father Vincent nodded. “Yes, of course. If you could take me to my hotel, I have some photographs and—”
I heard the scuff of shoes on concrete in time for me to catch the gunman in my peripheral vision as he rose from between a pair of parked cars one row over. Dim lights gleamed on the gun, and I threw myself across the hood of the Beetle, away from him. I crashed into Father Vincent, who let out a squeak of startled surprise, and the pair of us tumbled to the ground as the man started shooting.
The gun didn’t split the air with thunder when it fired. Typically, guns do that. They’re a hell of a lot louder than anything most folks run into on a day-today basis. This gun didn’t roar, or bark, or even bang. It made a kind of loud noise. Maybe as loud as someone slamming an unabridged dictionary down on a table. The gunman was using a silencer.
One shot hit my car and caromed off the curve of the hood. Another went by my head as I struggled with Father Vincent, and a third shattered the safety glass of a ritzy sports car parked beside me.
“What’s happening?” Father Vincent stammered.
“Shut up,” I snarled. The gunman was moving, his feet scuffing on the concrete as he skirted around my car. I reached around the Beetle’s headlight and fumbled at the wire holding the hood down while the man came closer. It gave way and the hood wobbled up as I reached into the storage compartment.
I looked up in time to see a man, medium height and build, mid thirties, dark pants and jacket, lift a small-caliber pistol, its end heavy with a manufactured silencer. He fired, but he hadn’t taken time to aim at me. He wasn’t twenty feet away, but he missed.
I drew the shotgun out of the car’s trunk and flicked off the safety as I chambered a round. The gunman’s eyes widened and he turned to run. He shot at me again on the way, shattering one of the Beetle’s headlights, and he kept shooting toward me as he skittered back the way he came.
I jerked back behind the car and kept my head down, trying to count his shots. He got to eleven or twelve and the gun went silent. I stood up, the shotgun already at my shoulder, and sighted down the barrel. The gunman ducked behind a concrete column and kept running.
“Dammit,” I hissed. “Get in the car.”
“But—” Father Vincent stammered.
“Get in the car!” I shouted. I got up, twisted the hanger wire on the hood back into place, and got in. Vincent got in the passenger side and I shoved the shotgun at him. “Hold this.”
He fumbled with it, his eyes wide, as I brought the Beetle to life with a roar. Well. Not really a roar. A Volkswagen Bug doesn’t roar. But it sort of growled, and I mashed it into gear before the priest had managed to completely shut the door.
I headed for the parking garage’s exit, whipping around the ramps and turns.
“What are you doing?” Father Vincent demanded.
“He’s an outfit hitter,” I spat. “They’ll have the exit covered.”
We screeched around the final corner and toward the parking garage’s exit. I heard someone yelling in a breathless voice, and a couple of large and unfriendly-looking men in a car parked across the street were just getting out. One of them held a shotgun, and the other had a heavy-duty semiautomatic, maybe a Desert Eagle.
I didn’t recognize the thug with the shotgun, but Thug Number Three was an enormous man with reddish hair, no neck, and a cheap suit—Cujo Hendricks, right hand enforcer to the crime lord of Chicago, Gentleman Johnny Marcone.
I had to bounce the Beetle up onto the sidewalk at the parking-garage exit to get around the security bar, and I mowed down some landscaped bushes on the way. I jounced over the curb and into the street, hauling the wheel to the right, and mashed the accelerator to the floor.
I glanced back and saw the original gunman standing at a fire-exit door, pointing the silenced pistol at us. He snapped off several more shots, though I only heard the last few, as the silencer started to give out. He didn’t have a prayer of a clean shot, but he got lucky and my back window shattered inward. I gulped and took the first corner against the light, nearly colliding with a U-Haul moving truck, and kept accelerating away.
A couple of blocks later, my heart slowed down enough that I could think. I slowed the car down to something approaching the speed limit, thanked my lucky stars the suppression spell had fallen apart in the studio and not in the car, and rolled down my window. I stuck my head out for a second to see if Hendricks and his goons were following us, but I didn’t see anyone coming along behind us, and took it on faith.
I pulled my head in and found the barrel of the shotgun pointed at my chin, while Father Vincent, his face pale, muttered to himself under his breath in Italian.
“Hey!” I said, and pushed the gun’s barrel away. “Careful with that thing. You wanna kill me?” I reached down and flicked the safety on. “Put it down. A patrolman sees that and we’re in trouble.”
Father Vincent gulped, and tried to lower the gun below the level of the dash. “This weapon is illegal?”
“Illegal is such a strong word,” I muttered.
“Oh, my,” Father Vincent said with a gulp. “Those men,” he said. “They tried to kill you.”
“That’s what hitters for the outfit do,” I agreed.
“How do you know who they are?”
“First guy had a silenced weapon. A good silencer, metal and glass, not a cheapo plastic bottle.” I checked out the window again. “He was using a small-caliber weapon, too, and he was trying to get real close before he started shooting.”
“Why does that matter?”
It looked clear. My hands trembled and felt a little weak. “Because it means he was using light ammunition. Subsonic. If the bullet breaks the sound barrier, it sort of defeats the point of a silenced weapon. When he saw I was armed, he ran. Covered himself doing it, and went for help. He’s a pro.”
“Oh, my,” Father Vincent said again. He looked a little pale.
“Plus I recognized one of the men waiting at the exit.”
“Someone was at the exit?” Father Vincent said.
“Yeah. Some of Marcone’s rent-a-thugs.” I glanced back at the shattered window and sighed. “Dammit. So where are we going?”
Father Vincent gave me directions in a numb voice, and I concentrated on driving, trying to ignore the quivering in my stomach and the continued trembling of my hands. Getting shot at is not something I handle very well.
Hendricks. Why the hell was Marcone sending goons after me? Marcone was the lord of the mean streets of Second City, but
generally he didn’t like to use that kind of violence. He thought it was bad for business. I had believed Marcone and I had an understanding—or at least an agreement to stay out of each other’s way. So why would he make a move like this?
Maybe I had already stepped over a line somewhere, that I didn’t know existed.
I glanced at the shaken Father Vincent.
He hadn’t told me yet what he wanted, but whatever it was, it was important enough to covertly drag one of the Vatican’s staff all the way to Chicago. Maybe it was important enough to kill a nosy wizard over, too.
Hoo-boy.
It was turning into one hell of a day.
Chapter Three
Father Vincent directed me to a motel a little ways north of O’Hare. It was a national chain, cheap but clean, with rows of doors facing the parking lot. I drove around to the back of the motel, away from the street, frowning. It didn’t look like the kind of place someone like Vincent would stay in. The priest left my car almost before I’d set the parking break, hurried to the nearest door, and ducked inside as quickly as he could open the lock.
I followed him. Vincent shut the door behind us, locked it, and then fiddled with the blinds until they closed. He nodded at the room’s little table and said, “Please, sit down.”
I did, and stretched out my legs. Father Vincent pulled open a drawer on the plain dresser, and drew out a file folder, held closed with a wide rubber band. He sat down across from me, took off the rubber band, and said, “The Church is interested in recovering some stolen property.”
I shrugged and said, “Sounds like a job for the police.”
“An investigation is under way and I am giving your police department my full cooperation. But…How to phrase this politely.” He frowned. “History is an able teacher.”
“You don’t trust the police,” I said. “Gotcha.”
He grimaced. “It is only that there have been a number of associations between Chicago police and various underworld figures in the past.”
“That’s mostly movies now, padre. You may not have heard, but the whole Al Capone thing has been over for a while.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps not. I simply seek to do everything within my power to recover the stolen article. That includes involving an independent and discreet investigator.”
Aha. So he didn’t trust the police and wanted me to work for him on the sly. That’s why we were meeting at a cheap motel rather than wherever he was really staying. “What do you want me to find for you?”
“A relic,” he said.
“A what?”
“An artifact, Mister Dresden. An antique possessed by the Church for several centuries.”
“Oh, that,” I said.
“Yes. The article is fragile and of great age, and we believe that it is not being adequately preserved. It is imperative that we recover it as quickly as possible.”
“What happened to it?”
“It was stolen three days ago.”
“From?”
“The Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in northern Italy.”
“Long ways off.”
“We believe that the artifact was brought here, to Chicago, to be sold.”
“Why?”
He took an eight-by-ten glossy black and white from the folder and passed it to me. It featured a fairly messy corpse lying on cobblestones. Blood had run into the spaces between the stones, as well as pooling a little on the ground around the body. I think it had been a man, but it was hard to tell for certain. Whoever it was had been slashed to almost literal ribbons across the face and neck—sharp, neat, straight cuts. Professional knife work. Yuck.
“This man is Gaston LaRouche. He is the ringleader of a group of organized thieves who call themselves the Churchmice. They specialize in robbing sanctuaries and cathedrals. He was found dead the morning after the robbery near a small airfield. His briefcase contained several falsified pieces of American identification and plane tickets that would carry him here.”
“But no whatsit.”
“Ah. Exactly.” Father Vincent removed another pair of photos. These were also black-and-white, but they looked rougher, as if they had been magnified several times. Both were of women of average height and build, dark hair, dark sunglasses.
“Surveillance photos?” I asked.
He nodded. “Interpol. Anna Valmont and Francisca Garcia. We believe they helped LaRouche with the theft, then murdered him and left the country. Interpol received a tip that Valmont had been seen at the airport here.”
“Do you know who the buyer is?”
Vincent shook his head. “No. But this is the case. I want you to find the remaining Churchmice and recover the artifact.”
I frowned, looking at the photos. “Yeah. That’s what they want you to do too.”
Vincent blinked at me. “What do you mean?”
I shook my head impatiently. “Someone. Look at this photo. LaRouche wasn’t murdered there.”
Vincent frowned. “Why would you say that?”
“Not enough blood. I’ve seen men who were torn up and bled out. There’s a hell of a lot more blood.” I paused and then said, “Pardon my French.”
Father Vincent crossed himself. “Why would his body be found there?”
I shrugged. “A professional did him. Look at the cuts. They’re methodical. He was probably unconscious or drugged, because you can’t hold a man still very easily when you’re taking a knife to his face.”
Father Vincent pressed one hand to his stomach. “Oh.”
“So you’ve got a corpse found out in the middle of a street somewhere, basically wearing a sign around his neck that says, ‘The goods are in Chicago.’ Either someone was incredibly stupid, or someone was trying to lead you here. It’s a professional killing. Someone meant his corpse to be a clue.”
“But who would do such a thing?”
I shrugged. “Probably a good thing to find out. Do you have any better pictures of these two women?”
He shook his head. “No. And they’ve never been arrested. No criminal record.”
“They’re good at what they do then.” I took the photos. There were little dossiers paper-clipped to the back of the pictures, listing known aliases, locations, but nothing terribly useful. “This one isn’t going to be quick.”
“Worthwhile goals rarely are. What do you need from me, Mister Dresden?”
“A retainer,” I said. “A thousand will do. And I need a description of this artifact, the more detailed the better.”
Father Vincent gave me a matter-of-fact nod, and drew a plain steel money clip from his pocket. He counted off ten portraits of Ben Franklin, and passed them to me. “The artifact is an oblong length of linen cloth, fourteen feet, three inches long by three feet, seven inches wide made of a handwoven three-to-one herringbone twill. There are a number of patches and stains on the cloth, and—”
I held up my hand, frowning. “Wait a minute. Where did you say this thing was stolen from?”
“The Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist,” Father Vincent said.
“In northern Italy,” I said.
He nodded.
“In Turin, to be exact,” I said.
He nodded again, his expression reserved.
“Someone stole the freaking Shroud of Turin?” I demanded.
“Yes.”
I settled back into the chair, looking down at the photos again. This changed things. This changed things a lot.
The Shroud. Supposedly the burial cloth used by Joseph of Aramithea to wrap the body of Christ after the Crucifixion. Capital Cs. The cloth supposedly wrapped around Christ when he was resurrected, with his image, his blood, imprinted upon it.
“Wow,” I said.
“What do you know about the Shroud, Mister Dresden?”
“Not much. Christ’s burial cloth. They did a bunch of tests in the seventies, and no one was able to conclusively disprove it. It almost got burned a few years back when the cathedral caught
fire. There are stories that it has healing powers, or that a couple of angels still attend it. A bunch of others I can’t remember right now.”
Father Vincent rested his hands on the table and leaned toward me. “Mister Dresden. The Shroud is perhaps the single most vital artifact of the Church. It is a powerful symbol of the faith, and one in which many people believe. It is also politically significant. It is absolutely vital to Rome that it be restored to the Church’s custody as expediently as possible.”
I stared at him for a second, and tried to pick out my words carefully. “Are you going to be insulted if I suggest that it’s very possible that the Shroud is, uh…significant, magically speaking?”
Vincent pressed his lips together. “I have no illusions about it, Mister Dresden. It is a piece of cloth, not a magic carpet. Its value derives solely from its historical and symbolic significance.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. Hell’s bells, that’s where plenty of magical power came from. The Shroud was old, and regarded as special, and people believed in it. That could be enough to give it a kind of power, all by itself.
“Some people might believe otherwise,” I said.
“Of course,” he agreed. “That is why your knowledge of the local occult may prove invaluable.”
I nodded, thinking. This could be something completely mundane. Someone could have stolen a moldy old piece of cloth to sell it to a crackpot who believed it was a magic bedsheet. It could be that the Shroud was nothing more than a symbol, an antique, a historical Pop-Tart—nifty, but ultimately not very significant.
Of course, there was also the possibility that the Shroud was genuine. That it actually had been in contact with the Son of God when he had been brought back from the dead. I pushed that thought aside.
Regardless of why or how, if the Shroud was something special, magically speaking, then it could mean a whole new—and nastier—ball game. Of all the various weird, dark, or wicked powers who might abscond with the Shroud, I couldn’t think of any who would do anything cheerful with it. All sorts of supernatural interests might be at play.
Even discounting that possibility, mortal pursuit of the Shroud seemed to be deadly enough. John Marcone might already be involved, as well as the Chicago police—probably Interpol and the FBI, too. Even sans supernatural powers, when it came to finding people the cops were damned good at what they did. Odds were good that they’d locate the thieves and haul in the Shroud within a few days.