by Butcher, Jim
Murphy had better acceleration than I did. She caught up to Caine in time for him to swing one paw at her in a looping punch.
I almost felt sorry for the slob.
Murphy ducked the punch, then came up with all of her weight and the muscle of her legs and body behind her response. She struck the tip of his chin with the heel of her hand, snapping his face straight up.
Caine was brawny, big, and tough. He came back from the blow with a dazed snarl and swatted at Murphy again. Murph caught his arm, tugged him a little one way, a little the other, and using his own arm as a fulcrum, sent him flipping forward and down hard onto the floor. He landed hard enough to make the floorboards shake, and Murphy promptly shifted her grip, twisting one hand into a painful angle, holding his arm out straight, using her leg to pin it into position.
“That would be assault,” Murphy said in a sweet voice. “And on a police officer in the course of an investigation, no less.”
“Bitch,” Caine said. “I’m gonna break your—”
We didn’t get to find out what he was going to break, because Murphy shifted her body weight maybe a couple of inches, and he screamed instead.
“Whaddayou want?” Caine demanded. “Lemme go! I didn’t do nothin’!”
“Sure you did,” I said cheerfully. “You assaulted Sergeant Murphy, here. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“You’re a two-time loser, Caine,” Murphy said. “This will make it number three. By the time you get out, the first thing you’ll need to buy will be a new set of teeth.”
Caine said a lot of impolite words.
“Wow,” I said, coming to stand over him. “That sucks. If only there were some way he could be of help to the community. You know, prove how he isn’t a waste of space some other person could be using.”
“Screw you,” Caine said. “I ain’t helping you with nothing.”
Murphy leaned into his arm a little again to shut him up. “What happened to the beer at McAnally’s?” she asked in a polite tone.
Caine said even more impolite words.
“I’m pretty sure that wasn’t it,” Murphy said. “I’m pretty sure you can do better.”
“Bite me, cop bitch,” Caine muttered.
“Sergeant Bitch,” Murphy said. “Have it your way, bonehead. Bet you’ve got all kinds of fans back at Stateville.” But she was frowning when she said it. Thugs like Caine rolled over when they were facing hard time. They didn’t risk losing the rest of their adult lives out of simple contrariness—unless they were terrified of the alternative.
Someone or, dare I say it, something had Caine scared.
Well, that table could seat more than one player.
The thug had a little blood coming from the corner of his mouth. He must have bitten his tongue when Murphy hit him.
I pulled a white handkerchief out of my pocket and, in a single swooping motion, stooped down and smeared some blood from Caine’s mouth onto it.
“What the hell?” he said, or something close to it. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t worry about it, Caine,” I told him. “It isn’t going to be a long-term problem for you.”
I took the cloth and walked a few feet away. Then I hunkered down and used a piece of chalk from another pocket to draw a circle around me on the floor.
Caine struggled feebly against Murphy, but she put him down again. “Sit still,” she snapped. “I’ll pull your shoulder right out of its socket.”
“Feel free,” I told Murphy. “He isn’t going to be around long enough to worry about it.” I squinted up at Caine and said, “Beefy, little bit of a gut. Bet you eat a lot of greasy food, huh, Caine?”
“Wh-what?” he said. “What are you doing?”
“Heart attack should look pretty natural,” I said. “Murph, get ready to back off once he starts thrashing.” I closed the circle and let it sparkle a little as I did. It was a waste of energy—special effects like that almost always are—but it made an impression on Caine.
“Jesus Christ!” Caine said. “Wait!”
“Can’t wait,” I told him. “Gotta make this go before the blood dries out. Quit being such a baby, Caine. She gave you a chance.” I raised my hand over the fresh blood on the cloth. “Let’s see now—”
“I can’t talk!” Caine yelped. “If I talk, she’ll know!”
Murphy gave his arm a little twist. “Who?” she demanded.
“I can’t! Jesus, I swear! Dresden, don’t—it isn’t my fault. They needed bloodstone, and I had the only stuff in town that was pure enough! I just wanted to wipe that smile off that bastard’s face!”
I looked up at Caine with a gimlet eye, my teeth bared. “You ain’t saying anything that makes me want you to keep on breathing.”
“I can’t,” Caine wailed. “She’ll know!”
I fixed my stare on Caine and raised my hand in a slow, heavily overdramatized gesture. “Intimidatus dorkus maximus!” I intoned, making my voice intentionally hollow and harsh, and stressing the long vowels.
“Decker!” Caine screamed. “Decker, he set up the deal!”
I lowered my hand and let my head rock back. “Decker,” I said. “That twit.”
Murphy watched me and didn’t let go of Caine, though I could tell she didn’t want to keep holding him.
I shook my head at Murphy and said, “Let him scamper, Murph.”
She let him go, and Caine fled for the stairs on his hands and knees, sobbing. He staggered out, falling down the first flight, from the sound of it.
I wrinkled up my nose as the smell of urine hit me. “Ah. The aroma of truth.”
Murphy rubbed her hands on her jeans as if trying to wipe off something greasy. “Jesus, Harry.”
“What?” I said. “You didn’t want to break into his place.”
“I didn’t want you to put a gun to his head, either.” She shook her head. “You couldn’t really have …”
“Killed him?” I asked. I broke the circle and rose. “Yeah. With him right here in sight, yeah. I probably could have.”
She shivered. “Jesus Christ.”
“I wouldn’t,” I said. I went to her and put a hand on her arm. “I wouldn’t, Karrin. You know that.”
She looked up at me, her expression impossible to read. “You put on a really good act, Harry. It would have fooled a lot of people. It looked …”
“Natural on me,” I said. “Yeah.”
She touched my hand briefly with hers. “So, I guess we got something?”
I shook off dark thoughts and nodded. “We’ve got a name.”
BURT DECKER RAN what was arguably the sleaziest of the half-dozen establishments that catered to the magical crowd in Chicago. Left Hand Goods prided itself on providing props and ingredients to the black magic crowd.
Oh, that wasn’t so sinister as it sounded. Most of the trendy, self-appointed Death Eater wannabes in Chicago—or any other city, for that matter—didn’t have enough talent to strike two rocks together and make sparks, much less hurt anybody. The really dangerous black wizards don’t shop at places like Left Hand Goods. You could get everything you needed for most black magic at the freaking grocery store.
But, all the same, plenty of losers with bad intentions thought Left Hand Goods had everything you needed to create your own evil empire—and Burt Decker was happy to make them pay for their illusions.
Me and Murphy stepped in, between the display of socially maladjusted fungi on our right, a tank of newts (PLUCK YOUR OWN *#%$ING EYES, the sign said) on the left, and stepped around the big shelf of quasi-legal drug paraphernalia in front of us.
Decker was a shriveled little toad of a man. He wasn’t overweight, but his skin looked too loose from a plump youth combined with a lifetime of too many naps in tanning beds. He was immaculately groomed, and his hair was a gorgeous black streaked with a dignified silver that was like a Rolls hood ornament on a VW Rabbit. He had beady black eyes with nothing warm behind them, and when he saw me, he licked his lips nervously
.
“Hiya, Burt,” I said.
There were a few shoppers, none of whom looked terribly appealing. Murphy held up her badge so everyone could see it and said, “We have some questions.”
She might as well have shouted, “Fire!” The store emptied.
Murphy swaggered past a rack of discount porn DVDs, her coat open just enough to reveal the shoulder holster she wore. She picked one up, gave it a look, and tossed it on the floor. “Christ, I hate scum vendors like this.”
“Hey!” Burt said. “You break it, you bought it.”
“Yeah, right,” Murphy said.
I showed him my teeth as I walked up and leaned both my arms on the counter he stood behind. It crowded into his personal space. His cologne was thick enough to stop bullets.
“Burt,” I said, “make this simple, okay? Tell me everything you know about Caine.”
Decker’s eyes went flat, and his entire body became perfectly still. It was reptilian. “Caine?”
I smiled wider. “Big guy, shaggy hair, kind of a slob, with piss running down his leg. He made a deal with a woman for some bloodstone, and you helped.”
Murphy had paused at a display of what appeared to be small, smoky quartz geodes. The crystals were nearly black, with purple veins running through them, and they were priced a couple of hundred dollars too high.
“I don’t talk about my customers,” Decker said. “It isn’t good for business.”
I glanced at Murphy. “Burt. We know you’re connected.”
She stared at me for a second, and sighed. Then she knocked a geode off the shelf. It shattered on the floor.
Decker winced and started to protest, but the words died on his lips.
“You know what isn’t good for business, Decker?” I asked. “Having a big guy in a grey cloak hang out in your little Bad Juju Mart. Your customers start thinking that the Council is paying attention, how much business do you think you’ll get?”
Decker stared at me with toad eyes, nothing on his face.
“Oops,” Murphy said, and knocked another geode to the floor.
“People are in the hospital, Burt,” I said. “Mac’s one of them—and he was beaten on ground held neutral by the Unseelie Accords.”
Burt bared his teeth. It was a gesture of surprise.
“Yeah,” I said. I drew my blasting rod out of my coat and slipped enough of my will into it to make the runes and sigils carved along its length glitter with faint orange light. The smell of wood smoke curled up from it. “You don’t want the heat this is gonna bring down, Burt.”
Murphy knocked another geode down and said, “I’m the good cop.”
“All right,” Burt said. “Jesus, will you lay off? I’ll talk, but you ain’t gonna like it.”
“I don’t handle disappointment well, Burt.” I tapped the glowing ember tip of the blasting rod down on his countertop for emphasis. “I really don’t.”
Burt grimaced at the black spots it left on the countertop. “Skirt comes in asking for bloodstone. But all I got is this crap from South Asscrack. Says she wants the real deal, and she’s a bitch about it. I tell her I sold the end of my last shipment to Caine.”
“Woman pisses you off,” Murphy said, “and you send her to do business with a convicted rapist.”
Burt looked at her with toad eyes.
“How’d you know where to find Caine?” I asked.
“He’s got a discount card here. Filled out an application.”
I glanced from the porn to the drug gear. “Uh-huh. What’s he doing with bloodstone?”
“Why should I give a crap?” Burt said. “It’s just business.”
“How’d she pay?”
“What do I look like, a fucking video camera?”
“You look like an accomplice to black magic, Burt,” I said.
“Crap,” Burt said, smiling slightly. “I haven’t had my hands on anything. I haven’t done anything. You can’t prove anything.”
Murphy stared hard at Decker. Then, quite deliberately, she walked out of the store.
I gave him my sunniest smile. “That’s the upside of working with the grey cloaks now, Burt,” I said. “I don’t need proof. I just need an excuse.”
Burt stared hard at me. Then he swallowed, toadlike.
“SHE PAID WITH a Visa,” I told Murphy when I came out of the store. “Meditrina Bassarid.”
Murphy frowned up at my troubled expression. “What’s wrong?”
“You ever see me pay with a credit card?”
“No. I figured no credit company would have you.”
“Come on, Murph,” I said. “That’s just un-American. I don’t bother with the things, because that magnetic strip goes bad in a couple of hours around me.”
She frowned. “Like everything electronic does. So?”
“So if Ms. Bassarid has Caine scared out of his mind on magic …” I said.
Murphy got it. “Why is she using a credit card?”
“Because she probably isn’t human,” I said. “Nonhumans can sling power all over the place and not screw up anything if they don’t want to. It also explains why she got sent to Caine to get taught a lesson and wound up scaring him to death instead.”
Murphy said an impolite word. “But if she’s got a credit card, she’s in the system.”
“To some degree,” I said. “How long for you to find something?”
She shrugged. “We’ll see. You get a description?”
“Blue-black hair, green eyes, long legs, and great tits,” I said.
She eyed me.
“Quoting,” I said righteously.
I’m sure she was fighting off a smile. “What are you going to do?”
“Go back to Mac’s,” I said. “He loaned me his key.”
Murphy looked sideways at me. “Did he know he was doing that?”
I put my hand to my chest as if wounded. “Murphy,” I said. “He’s a friend.”
I LIT A bunch of candles with a mutter and a wave of my hand, and I stared around Mac’s place. Out in the dining area, chaos reigned. Chairs were overturned. Salt from a broken shaker had spread over the floor. None of the chairs were broken, but the framed sign that read ACCORDED NEUTRAL TERRITORY was smashed and lay on the ground near the door.
An interesting detail, that.
Behind the bar, where Mac kept his iceboxes and his wood-burning stove, everything was as tidy as a surgical theater, with the exception of the uncleaned stove and some dishes in the sink. Nothing looked like a clue.
I shook my head and went to the sink. I stared at the dishes. I turned and stared at the empty storage cabinets under the bar, where a couple of boxes of beer still waited. I opened the icebox and stared at the food, and my stomach rumbled. There were some cold cuts. I made a sandwich and stood there munching it, looking around the place and thinking.
I didn’t think of anything productive.
I washed the dishes in the sink, scowling and thinking up a veritable thunderstorm. I didn’t get much further than a light sprinkle, though, before a thought struck me.
There really wasn’t very much beer under the bar.
I finished the dishes, pondering that. Had there been a ton earlier? No. I’d picked up the half-used box and taken it home. The other two boxes were where I’d left them. But Mac usually kept a legion of beer bottles down there.
So why only two now?
I walked down to the far end of the counter, a nagging thought dancing around the back of my mind, where I couldn’t see it. Mac kept a small office in the back corner, consisting of a table for his desk, a wooden chair, and a couple of filing cabinets. His food service and liquor permits were on display on the wall above it.
I sat down at the desk and opened the filing cabinets. I started going through Mac’s records and books. Intrusive as hell, I know, but I had to figure out what was going on before matters got worse.
And that was when it hit me—matters getting worse. I could see a mortal wizard, motivated by
petty spite, greed, or some other mundane motivation, wrecking Mac’s bar. People can be amazingly petty. But nonhumans, now—that was a different story.
The fact that this Bassarid chick had a credit card meant she was methodical. I mean, you can’t just conjure one out of thin air. She’d taken the time to create an identity for herself. That kind of forethought indicated a scheme, a plan, a goal. Untidying a Chicago bar, neutral ground or not, was not by any means the kind of goal that things from the Nevernever set for themselves when they went undercover into mortal society.
Something bigger was going on, then. Mac’s place must have been a side item for Bassarid.
Or maybe a stepping-stone.
Mac was no wizard, but he was savvy. It would take more than cheap tricks to get to his beer with him here, and I was betting he had worked out more than one way to realize it if someone had intruded on his place when he was gone. So, if someone wanted to get to the beer, they’d need a distraction.
Like maybe Caine.
Caine made a deal with Bassarid, evidently—I assumed he gave her the bloodstone in exchange for being a pain to Mac. So, she ruins Mac’s day, gets the bloodstone in exchange, end of story—nice and neat.
Except that it didn’t make a lot of sense. Bloodstone isn’t exactly impossible to come by. Why would someone with serious magical juice do a favor for Caine to get some?
Because maybe Caine was a stooge, a distraction for anyone trying to follow Bassarid’s trail. What if Bassarid had picked someone who had a history with Mac, so that I could chase after him while she … did whatever she planned to do with the rest of Mac’s beer?
Wherever the hell that was.
It took me an hour and a half to find anything in Mac’s files—the first thing was a book. A really old book, bound in undyed leather. It was a journal, apparently, and written in some kind of cipher.
Also interesting, but probably not germane.
The second thing I found was a receipt, for a whole hell of a lot of money, along with an itemized list of what had been sold—beer, representing all of Mac’s various heavenly brews. Someone at Worldclass Limited had paid him an awful lot of money for his current stock.