by Ari Marmell
There were possibilities, sure—maybe the concealing magics were breakin’ down, for instance; ain’t like this was some toy here—but none of ’em felt right. It’d only been a few days since the museum. If I was feeling something even this potent now, I shoulda felt somethin’ then!
Could I’ve just missed it at the Field? Did Herne’s mojo, not to mention fists, block it out? I mean, I hadn’t known what the dingus was yet, hadn’t been looking too hard…
Ah, nuts. Wasn’t gonna put it together sittin’ here.
I heard more squishy steps—it was as if Ramona’d sensed I was done with the whole “deep thoughts” thing.
“I think there might be something here, Mick,” she said, stepping through the bedroom doorway with her gaze on the folder she carried. “Didn’t you say that…?”
She’d stopped when she looked up. And it wasn’t ’cause she was bowled over by my baby blues.
Which could only mean one thing.
Real slow and careful, keepin’ my mitts away from my pockets, I scooted the chair around.
A tiny number, she was, even though I’d have pegged her at mid-twenties. Woulda had to stand on an upturned shot glass to reach five foot. Dark hair, dark clothes, and tanned. She sorta gave the impression she’d tried to doll herself up as a Doberman pinscher. Even as I watched, though, her skin paled. Lips quivered, like she had somethin’ to say but’d forgotten how.
Tiny as she was, though, I don’t suppose it was just contrast that made the .38 she held two-fisted—fists a lot steadier’n her kisser—look real friggin’ big.
Figured we had about two seconds before the shock wore off and she started slingin’ lead, and if she really was going into shock or hysterical, she’d probably get a few shots off before I could get any kinda angle on her thoughts. I was gonna have to try the mortal way.
“If you look careful,” I said, grabbing air over my head so she could see both hands, “you’ll see we didn’t do this.”
“You… you bastards!” I dunno how she normally sounded, but this worked up, she was shrill enough to crack sugar candy. “What’d… what’d you do…?”
“Just told you, doll, we didn’t do this.”
“You’re lying. You’re lying!”
I didn’t need my aes sidhe ears to hear the hammer clicking back on her revolver, but it sure added an extra splash of drama.
“Look at me!” I stood, quick as I thought I could pull off without catching a slug for it. “Whaddaya see?”
“Blood… So much blood…”
“Yeah. On my hands and shoes, where I been searching and walking. You see any anywhere else on me? On her?”
“N-no…”
More gently, I said, “You think anyone coulda done this without getting’ covered, doll?”
The roscoe started to drift, then firmed right up, aimed back at me.
“Who are you, then? Why are you here? Planning to rob an old… an old…”
“I’m Mick.”
Geez, it was like coaxing a feral kitten. A feral kitten with a gun.
“This is Ramona,” I continued. “We ain’t robbers. We just came to ask some questions, see? We’re after the same thing as the monsters who did this—but not the same way.”
Again the gun started to droop, and the girl swayed where she stood, but she still wasn’t totally convinced. It was Ramona, actually, who sealed the deal.
“If we’re telling the truth,” she said, “and part of you already knows that we are, then, if you shoot us, whoever did this will get away with it.”
The heater dropped to the carpet with a wet schpludd. Ramona and I both winced, but it didn’t go off. The girl sagged against the doorframe, which was probably all that held her up.
“What’s your name, doll?” I said, gently.
She didn’t even look my way.
“Leslie. Leslie Rosen.”
Hmm. Coulda been Abe’s daughter, if the old goat stayed frisky into his twilight years, but I guessed grand- was more probable. Given the situation, I think I can be excused for not noticing any family resemblance when she strolled in.
I stood, put a hand on the back of the chair. Then, when she didn’t seem to understand—or much care—what I meant, I went over, softly took her by the shoulders, and guided her back to it. She sat, I think, entirely outta habit and reflex. Once she was planted, I scooted the chair around farther, so she’d be facin’ me direct if I stood in the doorway. Meant she didn’t have to look at the bulk of the… mess.
“What’re you doin’ here at this hour, Leslie?”
Nothing. Not a word, not a blink.
Ramona smiled at her, knelt, put one hand on Leslie’s arm and whispered in her ear. Even with my hearing, I couldn’t make out a word of it, so I dunno if it was what she said, or how she said it, or somethin’ else. Whichever, Leslie jerked once as if she’d sat on a live wire. When she did look up, then, I could taste in the air and see in her aura that a swathe of grief’d been pushed aside. Not all of it, and not gone, but overwhelmed.
And to tell you square, what I got from her in its place was… inappropriate for someone sitting in the middle of a newly remodeled relative.
Well, ain’t that somethin’? Maybe Ramona just knew the right thing to say, and Leslie had what you lugs’d consider “unconventional” tastes. Or just maybe…
I realized I was getting jealous and shoved it aside. Later, Mick. Handle it later.
Ramona repeated my question from a minute before, and Leslie answered without pause.
“I work here, with… Worked with…” One quick sniff, and she went on. “Came in to help with some inventory. Grandpa was… He’d let the books slip a little recently. He… he lost a few important customers a little while ago, and it hit him hard.”
“Lost?”
“Yeah. Just… bad luck and a couple of accidents. They weren’t friends, but they were important to the business…”
I’d stopped listening.
All right, Fate. I friggin’ get it. You can quit with the jumping up’n down and flapping your arms. It all meant something: these “accidents” were important. I just needed to suss out how they fit into the rest of this wacky jigsaw.
In the meantime… “Inventory one of your regular gigs?” I asked. When she jerked me a nod, I said, “Spear come through here recently?”
“A… what?”
“Spear. Long stick for poking people. Woulda had an iron head. Or maybe just a box, tall and thin? Woulda been fairly… recent…”
Well, shit. I’d caught myself right after I’d spilled way too much. Ramona was gonna have all manner of questions now, questions I didn’t want to…
Except, her expression hadn’t so much as twitched. Hmm…
“I can check my notes,” Leslie told me, though she was already shaking her head. “But I’m fairly sure we haven’t had anything like that.”
Oh, swell. This just kept gettin’ better. If she was right, then what the hell had I been sensing when I…?
I honestly damn near threw an ing-bing right there, and a Fae temper tantrum ain’t anything anyone wants to see. Every time I thought I had a handle on exactly what was goin’ down, the rug got yanked out from under my feet—and then shoved up my backside.
Was the spear even fucking in Chicago? Could this whole thing just be some kinda sick hoax, maybe…
Nah. I dismissed that thought soon as it came to me. Why would anyone go to that trouble? Besides, I’d already seen—felt—evidence it was close.
Hadn’t I?
Ramona interrupted that particular train of thought before it reached the station.
“You can help us with more than just that,” she coaxed the other woman—almost purred. She flipped open the binder she’d been clutching since Leslie came in, and turned to a page she’d dog-eared earlier. “Mick, you said the museum break-in was the day before I first came to your office?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“There’s only one scheduled appointme
nt for the day before that.” One graceful finger thumped the page in a less-than-graceful point. “But I can’t read it. It’s some sort of code or shorthand. I was hoping you,” and here she turned her attentions back on Leslie, “could translate for us.”
The girl chuckled even as she wiped away a tear with the back of one hand.
“It’s not shorthand. It’s just that Grandpa’s handwriting is absolutely appalling.” She barely glanced at the page. “It says ‘C.C., O’Deah, 6:30.”
“And that’s not shorthand?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t know who C.C. is, but O’Deah is the name of a restaurant a few blocks down. It’s one of his favorites… Was one of…”
Whatever Ramona’d said to her wasn’t lasting. Leslie buried her face in her hands and sobbed, her whole body and even the chair shaking. I took Ramona’s wrist and quietly guided her out of the room.
“Are we just leaving her there?” she hissed at me once we stood in the hall, door carefully shut behind us.
“We’ve heard all she’s got to sing. Ain’t too long until dawn. If he was a regular, shouldn’t be too hard to find out who he was sharin’ a table with. This CC bird’s our next—”
“I meant literally! In the middle of her grandfather’s remains? She can’t handle that!”
“That’s what the cops are for.” I tried to sound gentle but unmovable, which ain’t the easiest combination to pull off. “Ramona, whaddaya wanna do? Tidy the place up for her? Sit around with her until the bulls show?”
“Well, no, but…” I waited while she worked through all the options we didn’t have. “It just doesn’t seem right.”
“No, it doesn’t. Not a lot does, these days.”
We tromped down a couple flights of stairs and echoes, each of us lost in our own heads. Dunno what she was pondering on, but me? I was startin’ to feel the tug of strings on my arms and neck. I mighta dismissed the idea that this whole thing was a flim-flam, but I was definitely being played somehow, by someone.
Maybe a whole lotta us were.
I also couldn’t help diggin’ at the array of bad luck that’d zotzed a whole handful of the Windy City’s high’n mighty recently. Had a thought budding, one I didn’t wanna let sprout. I hoped like hell Pete’d found out something more, something I could go on. Because if he hadn’t, if I hadda follow that beanstalk-thought as it grew, it meant I’d have to go somewhere—metaphorically and literally—where I really, really, really didn’t want to have to go.
Distracted by all this as I was, it wasn’t ’til Ramona shoved the stairwell door open that I sensed the trouble waitin’ for us in the hall.
I got plenty of swift, but both of ’em already had gats in their meathooks.
“Take your hand outta your coat, O’Brien. Real slow. Piece in two fingers only.”
“O’Brien?” Ramona whispered, reaching skyward.
“Happens all the time, doll.”
The two thugs—and that’s definitely what they were; if the cheap glad rags hadn’t given the game away, the pair of choppers sure did—both gawped when my hand came up holding a stick instead of a roscoe.
“This a gag?” one of ’em asked. “This here’s funny to you?”
“In order: No, and Ask me again when it’s over.”
“Mick…” Ramona warned from the corner of her lips. “You did catch the machine guns pointed at us?”
“Yeah. I’m a detective. I notice subtle little details like that.”
“You might wanna think about acting that way, then!” one of the trouble boys barked. “Unless you wanna be filled full of daylight!”
“It’s night time. And we’re inside,” I pointed out. Then, when all three gawped at me like fish at a burlesque show, “Oh, don’t blow your wigs, any of you. Ramona, they ain’t gonna shoot us.”
“No?” The guy on my right, bit taller’n the other, adjusted the brim of his hat with the barrel of the Tommy and then aimed it back my way. “How you figure that?”
“Well, first, ’cause you coulda opened up when we came through that door. And second, Scola wants us alive so we can talk.”
Hadn’t been a tough nut to crack, though I let ’em go on staring as if I’d just pulled off a magic trick. They weren’t Fae, they weren’t cops, Fino’s boys wouldn’ta started the conversation with me in their sights… While it coulda been someone else I didn’t know was wrapped up in this, odds favored ol’ Bumpy, and their expressions said, “Yep.”
“Sharp, O’Brien,” the shorter one said. “Was still a bunny move comin’ into the boss’s place like you did, though. You figure nobody there’d know who you were?”
I shrugged, which is an odd thing to do with arms sticking straight up.
“So what’s the story?” I asked.
“Story is, boss wants to finish the conversation you was havin’ in more… comfortable surroundings.”
Meaning surroundings where gunshots’n bodies wouldn’t attract attention.
“Appreciate the invite, boys, but me’n the lady got a prior engagement. Now…” I put my hands down and advanced on ’em. “If you’d care to just blow, we can forget this ever happened.”
I got a few seconds of bluster’n threats, and then a pair of triggers got pulled on a pair of Tommies.
One of ’em went clink and jammed up tight. The ammo drum fell off the other.
Yeah, did I mention the L&G don’t have to be aimed right at somethin’ if I’m slowly siphoning the luck outta it? Helps, but ain’t required; I mean, it’s just channeling my own mojo, after all. And machine guns are complex dinguses. Ain’t hard for the mechanisms to go wrong.
First guy was just standin’ there, clutching his gun and lookin’ about ready to cry. I figured I’d give him a reason.
A quick grab and twist, and we were both holding the gat—vertical, now, the stock right under his chin.
Then I drove my knee up into the barrel.
Teeth broke, bone cracked, and a rubbery something or other bounced off my right shoe, leaving a smear of blood behind. Wonder if it still counts as circumcision if it’s a tongue.
Gink toppled and stayed down. You’d almost think that’d maybe hurt a little.
His partner was also on the floor, crawling after the disobedient ammo. His fingers were just stretching out to grab it when I kicked it across the hall. Bad guy said a lot of bad words, then lunged to his feet with a switchblade snicking open in his fist, because most of these trouble boys are dumb bunnies who don’t know when to quit.
I let him take a few wild stabs, then pinned him up in a joint lock, my arms through his, and took the knife away.
I dunno what he had to complain about, though. I mean, I gave it right back.
I took Ramona’s elbow and escorted her out, leaving one cat writhing on the floor, the other using one mitt to try and gingerly remove the blood-slick knife that pinned his other hand to the wall.
What can I say? I didn’t wanna kill ’em, but I wanted to make sure they’d be crossing the street anytime they saw me comin’ for a long, long time.
Best I could tell, nobody in the building’d even bothered to call copper. Either they were real heavy sleepers, or they weren’t any of ’em real anxious to nose into anyone else’s business. In this city, who could blame ’em?
“Wasn’t that dangerous?” Ramona asked once we were outside and moving on down the sidewalk. She sounded sorta absent, distant, and she didn’t seem keen to look my way. “Is Scola the sort of guy you want angry at you?”
“You mean like he already is, after the ruckus at the club? Trust me, doll, if the other choice was goin’ along with those guys to somewhere Bumpy feels comfortable using negotiating tactics measured by caliber, tuning his goons up some was definitely the wise move.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Right. Nice talkin’ to you, too.
CHAPTER TWELVE
No, nobody else tried to jump us that night. Yeah, once we found O’Deah’s, I was able—after some asking aroun
d and a mental nudge here’n there—to find out who Rosen’d been with that night.
Our C.C.’s name was Clint Clanton. I assume his parents were drunks. Hadn’t been too hard to track Pete down again and cajole him into digging up some more info for me. Turns out Clanton was an art thief—so just the guy you might wanna give a ring if you were planning a heist in, oh, say, a museum.
And yeah, he was dead.
Car “accident” two days ago. Right. Suuuuure it was.
All that’d taken the wee morning hours, so the rising sun was right in our faces on the walk back to my place, and in all that time, I don’t think Ramona’d uttered any two words near enough together to dance. I thought about tryin’ to squeeze more out of her, figure what was eatin’ at her, but I had more’n enough of my own contemplation to do.
No big mystery how those lugs had found me, either. Scola might not know why he’d spilled Rosen’s name to me, but he knew he had. Didn’t take a genius to figure that his place’d be one of my next stops.
Nah, what bugged me was a lot bigger’n that. Namely, this whole thing was starting to smell so bad it’d give a redcap the vapors.
No magic—well, other’n Herne’s—at the museum. I hadn’t sensed a thing. On the other hand, I had sensed it downtown and in Rosen’s place. On the other other hand, not a one of us, ’cept maybe Adalina, had any sense of it elsewhere in the city. (Or at least not enough for anyone to actually find the dingus.) So where was the damn spear? Who had it now? Where had it been, and where hadn’t it? Was it shielded, or not?
The mundane clues weren’t sitting much better with me, either. Manetti to Rosen to Clanton. It was way too pat. Too neat. If Manetti’d smuggled the thing into Chicago, why the stopover at the museum? If Clanton had broken into the museum, why the obvious broken window? That hadn’t been a pro job.
And then, maybe not first but certainly, in my head, foremost, was our radiant Ms. Ramona Webb.
Had she somehow not heard what I’d asked Leslie Rosen? Had the night gotten so weird that she didn’t figure me lookin’ for an ancient pig-sticker was at all hinky? Or was there something more to it? Every time I looked her way, it all felt like a bunch of hooey; no reason to be suspicious at all. But then, I’d find myself peepin’ elsewhere, and… it was as if, for just a second, I could think.