by Ari Marmell
If Lugh wasn’t ages dead, I coulda strangled him.
* * *
We didn’t end up in the ritziest neighborhood. Not “broken bottles and boarded-up windows” bad, not like where I’d found Four-Leaf Franky and his aquatic playmates, but not the kinda place you wanted to wander alone after sunset.
Well, most people wouldn’t.
“Mick Oberon!” Ramona finally snapped, yanking her wrist outta my grip. “I am not taking one more step until you tell me what the hell we’re doing here!”
I stopped, turned. “Not one more step, no. Three more, actually. Maybe four if you stumble.”
“What? What on earth are youuuuurk!”
I’d snatched out, grabbed her arm again, and dragged her between two thick, lumpy greystones with delusions of building-hood. One of ’em had a fire escape that looked as though it actually might not fall off the wall if a toddler jumped on it.
“Stop manhandling me!”
She sounded sincere enough, though I couldn’t help but note she hadn’t jerked away from me again.
“Manhandling? You’re a woman.”
“I…”
Wasn’t the answer she’d expected, obviously. Her kisser twisted, tryin’ to find a comfortable position, and her shoulders slumped.
“You’re impossible.”
She said to the former Seelie Court prince.
“You got no idea.”
“We’re in an alley.”
“Hey, and here I thought I was the detective!”
“Do you spend a great deal of time in alleyways, Mick?”
“Nah, but I been meaning to take up a hobby.”
“It stinks.”
“Beats collecting stamps, though.”
“No, I meant…” Her sigh was more exasperation than it was actual breath. “Forget it.”
That sure sounded like a conclusion, but barely twenty seconds’d passed before, “Mick?”
“Uh?”
“What are you—what are we involved in? This is about more than money, or some other everyday case you’re working on.”
I didn’t have the slightest idea how to answer that. The truth sure wasn’t an option.
Silence for a while. Well, except for the humming wires and the passing flivvers and the shouting of the radios from a couple windows, and the distant buzz of the parts of the city that don’t sleep… So, y’know, silence-ish. Chicago silence.
Until we heard the fwop-fwop of approaching shoes.
I hadn’t needed any extra luck for this search, though I’d sucked up a bit of mojo on the way just to speed up the process. I already knew his beat, see?
“Hey, officer! I wanna report a suspicious figure lurking in an alley.”
“Jesus, Mick!”
Pete jumped so hard I thought he might change even without the full moon. Then he stared at me, stared at Ramona, glanced around like he was planning to knock over a bank, and finally stared at me some more.
When he finally opened his yap again, it was just to repeat, “Jesus, Mick…” in a brand-new tone.
“We’re friends, Pete. Just ‘Mick’ is fine.”
“You oughta know better’n to make me jump after everything you’ve told me! Besides, I ain’t even supposed to be talking about you, let alone to you! If anyone spots us—”
“In the middle of your beat? Middle of the night? Ain’t likely. Most cats still awake around here are gonna head the other way at the first glimpse of your blues. Be even less likely if you step on over here and outta the street, though.”
He headed my way, though he might as well have been trudging through mud.
“Hell, Pete. You look like Sydney Carton after a change of heart.”
“Syd… What? Who’re you…?”
“Seriously? Guillotine? A Tale of Two… Ah, forget it.” Then, when he finally had entered the damn alley, “Thanks. You know I appreciate this, right?”
“You damn well better. Who’s this?” He nodded at Ramona.
“Ah. This is my… a client of mine.” I half-glanced back at her, felt a flicker of a smile cross my mug as I did.
Ramona beamed back. I felt about seven dozen emotions, all of ’em at war with each other.
“You sure she can be trusted?”
“Manners, Pete. Since when did you get so paranoid?”
Hey, it was easier than explaining how I trusted her, but didn’t know why.
Pete’s mug scrunched up in a way that suggested I was a truly impossible variety of idiot.
“Uh, maybe since you phoned’n told me the Unseelie Court might try’n bump me off?”
Huh. Yeah, that’d probably account for it.
“Besides,” he added, “I thought someone was tailing me earlier tonight. Dunno if it was them or not, but it got me pretty antsy.”
And there I was, colder’n that snowball again.
“You get a good look?” I asked.
“Tall. Cowboy hat and sunglasses. At night. Weird, huh? Figure that’s why I noticed him at all, but he didn’t actually bother me, and he vanished soon enough. Guess I was probably imagining things.”
“Yeah.”
Damn it, Sealgaire, I fucking get it! I’m already getting enough of this shit from the Unfit, so leave my friends out of this!
“Yeah, probably.”
“So look, just tell me what you need, quick, in case I come down with a sudden case of common sense and walk away.”
“Ah, don’t worry, Pete.” Forced another smile I didn’t mean. “Pretty sure you got an immunity.”
He glared, but there was no real anger in it, and we both knew it.
“What. Do you need?”
“Guy named Abe Rosen. Maybe a fence, maybe a made guy, may or may not ever’ve served time. Need whatever you can tell me about his recent activities.”
“Oh, is that all?”
“No. Need an address, too.”
“Mick, do you see any room in this uniform for a filing cabinet?”
“Well, maybe if you dropped a few pounds—”
“Now you’re pushing it.”
“All right, look. I know the pressure you got comin’ down on you, and I know the hot water you’ll be in if this gets back to the wrong people. I been running around all evening, and what I got for it is beans—or at best confirmation of what I already knew. I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t have to. But I’m fresh outta options.”
“I hate when you do this.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
“I still ain’t carrying a filing cabinet.”
And now it was my turn to sigh. I see why you mugs do it so often.
“Call in, Pete. Secretaries ain’t gonna ask why you want ’em to look this stuff up.”
He extended a hand, palm up.
“You kidding me?” I demanded.
“I’m making this call for you, I’m making it on your nickel. Seems only fair to me.”
“Me, too,” Ramona chimed in.
In the end, of course, I made with the coin. A couple, actually, since there was some calling back for extra detail. Got me what I needed, though.
Rosen was indeed a fence, or at least a suspected one. A few charges, no convictions. Guy kept his head down. Looked to be a complete freelancer—no strong ties to any particular side of the Chicago Mob. And whaddaya know? His place was in Pilsen, albeit multiple blocks from mine. No way to suss out whether this was his flop, his office, or both, though. Not without paying a visit.
“Thanks, Pete. Really. You just saved my bacon on this one.”
“And don’t you forget it. Will there be anything else this evening, or may I bring you the check?”
“Cute. Actually, come to think of it…”
“Oh, goddamn it, Mick!”
“Nah, this’ll just take a mo.”
And it did, but I ain’t gonna go through it word by word, ’cause it’s a conversation you heard already, more’n once. Any news on unexpected bloodshed? Violence, especially non-Mob related? Everyt
hing I been wondering about, everything I asked him to look into when I was at his place.
And nope. He had more or less the exact same amount’a bupkis to give me as everyone else.
Just for giggles, and since my bump was still itchy, I asked about that trio of accidents, too. Figured I’d find out if the cops thought it was as hinky as I did, if they’d learned anything.
Well, yeah. For one, they knew of a fourth death: an old-money heiress and frequent political donor who’d taken a header down her fancy stairs.
“And sure,” Pete told me, “a few of the department dicks got to wondering. I mean, three of the four were friends of the force in one way or another. But nobody found nothing suggesting foul play, or even the thinnest string connecting ’em all. Really does just look like a run of bad luck.”
Then there was nothin’ for it but another round of appreciate this and goodnight that. He was just movin’, to resume his beat when he said, “Hey, maybe if Rosen’s building’s neat enough, you oughta consider moving your offices there.”
“Why in the name of Shakespeare would I wanna…” A sudden suspicion came over me. “Pete?”
“Yeah?”
“You know I don’t pack heat, right?”
“Uh… Yeah. But why—?”
“If this is a setup so you can tell me ‘good fences make good neighbors,’ I will find a gat to shoot you with.”
“I’ll just get back to my beat, now,” he said with a Cheshire grin.
“Yeah. Yeah, you go and do that.”
He went one way, we went the other, and for a while we were back to the city’s notion of quiet. Leave it to Pete’n his dippy jokes, though; I’ll be damned if I wasn’t smiling, just a little, while we walked.
When Ramona did talk again, it was to observe, “He must be a very good friend to you,” and that smile melted away like a runny milkshake.
I couldn’ta said why, but something about the way she said that really, really bothered me.
* * *
Now this? This damn well coulda been the work of the Unseelie.
“Is… is that Abe Rosen?”
Ramona’d had to swallow hard a couple times, force the words through clenched throat and lips, and I can’t say I blamed her any. I don’t do queasy, ’less there’s magic involved—certain wards, for instance—but even I was feelin’ a tad heavy-stomached.
“Think it is, doll. Someone sure didn’t want us to be too positive, though.”
“Then… who was that?”
I smiled, though I sure as hell wasn’t finding much funny.
“That, if I ain’t mistaken, is more of Abe Rosen.”
She slapped a hand over her lips and gagged. Actually, I gotta confess, I was impressed she could still breathe without taking the run-out or keeling over. Carnage has this real particular stink right when it’s starting to congeal… You may not take my opinion of her as unbiased, but nobody could deny she was one tough cookie.
Place was an office, and looked very much like… an office. So typical it coulda been a set and props. Interior: office; our heroes enter stage left. Yeah, it was that typical.
Almost as if the owner didn’t wanna attract attention. Imagine that.
So, yeah. Desk. Chair. Other chairs. Bookshelf. Filing cabinet. Doorway to the back rooms where he kept his merchandise and a cot for nights he couldn’t make it home. I knew all this because, well, I could see it. Notice I said “doorway,” not “door.” Was a door there, not too long ago. Now? Broken hinges and firewood.
The front room was decorated… Actually, I can’t tell you how the front room was decorated. It was sorta obscured right about then. I dunno if Rosen was the kinda guy to really put himself into his work, but somebody had.
“What the hell did they kill him with?” Ramona wheezed after another few breaths. “A mortar shell?”
That’d be about where Pete woulda said something about “finding the mortar weapon” or “first-degree mortar.” Pete woulda, but I wouldn’t, so I hadda figure he was still weighing on my mind.
“Nah,” I said. “Wasn’t any explosive. They didn’t do Rosen like they did Manetti. Even if they’d made him swallow the damn thing, any boom that shredded him this bad woulda damaged the room. You see any blast damage?”
“Who could tell?”
“Saw a guy who’d fallen through an industrial fan once…” I mused.
“Stop. Just… Stop.”
“All right.” I ran a finger over the desk, leavin’ a smear in the blood and other fluids, more double-checking my guess on how old it was than actually looking for much. “All right, chew on this for a while, then. Forget how. Why?”
I mean, if this’d been redcaps or somethin’ of that sort, they might not’ve needed a “why.” But we didn’t know it was Unseelie work. And if it was, why’d they gone all Jack the Ripper here, on Rosen, but nowhere else?
All this dashed through my noodle even before Ramona had finished answering my question.
“I assumed he knew something they didn’t want anyone else to—”
“You’re smarter’n that, sweetheart.”
“Uh, thank you?”
I wandered over to the shelves, but they had nothin’ much to show me other’n various gewgaws and doodads, and more bits of old man. Was a flap of skin stuck to the wall, kinda resembled a Picasso. I decided not to point it out.
“I don’t mean why’d someone knock him off,” I told her. “I mean why this way? Quick stab, or a bullet, or a bomb, or hell, I dunno, catapult a rabid badger through his office window.”
“Catapult a…?”
“It takes effort and some sharp, heavy blades to take a bird apart this completely. So why do it?”
Ramona steadied herself, took another hard look around.
“To encourage people not to look too closely? Distract them from whatever else is in here?”
I couldn’t help but grin.
“Not bad. Not the only possible answer, but a fine place to start.”
Her return smile lit up the room—for about three seconds, before it shattered like a porcelain golf ball.
“But that means we have to…” Her complexion had gone sorta waxy and green; she coulda almost been related to the rusalka.
“Yep. Pick a side, sweetheart.”
“What are we looking for?”
Good question. No way the spear was here, but maybe there’d be some sign it had been? Or evidence of… Well, anything else hinky? It coulda been anything, so what to tell her?
“Anything looks outta place,” I said. Then, at her expression, “Other’n the pureed body.”
We both wound up scouring the entire room, just in case, but we didn’t find anything important except more of Abe Rosen. Ramona looked even more all in by the time we were through, but she hadn’t thrown up.
Or refused to search anywhere.
Or even taken that much longer’n me.
I was starting to question how put off by the sticky mess she really was.
The filing cabinet was locked up tight, of course. But thanks to a small blade and a smaller sliver of luck, it didn’t stay that way. The prize for that particular endeavor was a whole stack of shipping invoices that told me nada about nada.
Well, huh. I mean, no real shock that the fella’d keep anything incriminating in the back, outta public view. But it kinda put the kibosh on our theory that the poor sap had been turned into bolognese to prevent people from searching the room.
So, back we went. Storage room, with various jewels and artwork and bonds and a few bottles of fine hooch, and a nice radio, and basically everything you’d expect. Bedroom was a bedroom, even more’n the office was an office. We did find a couple binders and a ledger with files that might actually not be bunk, stuck in the wardrobe on a shelf behind a handful of floggers that’d been hangin’ there long enough for the cobwebs to get dusty.
I decided to let Ramona have first crack at flipping through ’em, mostly because I was startin’ to get
really goddamn annoyed. This didn’t make sense, none of it. I hate it when clues don’t make sense. The mystery ain’t supposed to make sense. The pieces, though…
Hell, we weren’t even positive Rosen was a lead! I mean, obviously he’d ticked someone off but good—unless this was the fanciest suicide in history—but while I knew of some creatures that would do this to a man, we’d found no proof that the Fae were even…
Waaaaait a minute!
I trudged across squishy, sticky carpet and sat down in one of the chairs that wasn’t too soiled. Then I closed my eyes, concentrated for a tick, and…
Yep.
Nice little double-blind. Figure out you ain’t supposed to search the room, so you search the room, find squat, get frustrated, move on. And then, even if you got the know-how to do it, you don’t think about other ways to search.
Now that I reached out, though, I felt it. Not a lot, just a faint trickle. A lingering aura. Something with a touch of the magic had been here, not long, and not long ago. It was a weak enough echo that most people in my position—well, most Fae in my position, ’cause there wouldn’t be anyone else—woulda probably assumed it was a trinket. Some small, mildly enchanted dingus of no real significance.
Except I knew the spear was partly shrouded somehow, didn’t I? And it felt exactly the same as the sensation I’d felt when I’d bumped into Franky and the rusalka.
So, I had been onto something. Rosen was involved. I mean, that he mighta been a red herring I could believe, but that he’d been a red herring who happened to have something else magic here recently? Not on your life.
I leaned back, blinkers still shut, to think.
Okay, so it made sense the thing was harder to find if it was one of you mortals who’d been holding onto it, not Fae. You can’t access its magics, and you got none of your own for it to react to, so it wouldn’t flare up the way it would if one of us held it. But, obviously, even between that and whatever else was cloaking it, the spear’s magic was leakin’ through, or I wouldn’ta felt it twice now, and Adalina wouldn’ta somehow sensed it clear across town. So how come I’d gotten zip at the museum? I’d felt for magic then, and came up snake eyes (not counting Herne).