by Jim Butcher
“No,” he said. “No, I’m not!”
“Sure you are. It fits you, doesn’t it? And here you are assaulting an officer.” I shook my head sadly. “So when the building fails inspection, maybe even makes it into the paper, you’ll be fired anyway. And on top of that, I’ll finger you in the drug deals. I’ll press charges for assault. How many strikes do you already have on you, big guy? Can you handle two more?”
“You’re bluffing,” he said.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “On the other hand . . . maybe I just give John Marcone a call and tell him how you’re helping some of his street-level guys run some deals behind his back.”
Invoking the name of Marcone to a Chicago criminal is as significant as invoking the name of a saint to a devout Catholic. He’s the biggest fish in the pond, the head of organized crime in Chicago—and damn good at it. His people fear him, and even cops take him very, very seriously. One day he’d slip up and CPD, the FBI, or maybe the IRS would nail him. Until then, he was the deadliest predator in the jungle.
Ray shuddered.
“Look up, Ray,” I said quietly.
He did, and he saw what I had seen a moment before.
Doors were open all up and down the hallway. People stood in them, men and women, children, parents, the elderly. They all stood there silently and watched a little blond woman handling big mean Ray as if he were an unruly child.
Their eyes were very hard. And there wasn’t any fear in them now.
“Look at them, Ray,” I said.
He did. He shuddered again. Then his body stopped straining, and he sagged down.
“I’ll go,” he said.
“Fucking right you will.” I shoved on his arm, and he screamed with pain—but I hadn’t dislocated it. I only did it to give myself a moment to pick up my badge and step out of grab range, just in case he was too dumb to quit.
He wasn’t. He simply lay there like a beached shark.
“I’ll be checking back here, Ray. Regularly. If I think you’ve harmed any of these people, stolen or broken their property—hell, if I hear that you gave them a dirty look, I am going to find you and shove a bundle of rusty rebar up your ass. I promise.”
I took out one of my business cards, now obsolete, I supposed, and wrote down a phone number. I took the card to Maria and held it out for her. “If you have any trouble, you call this number on the back. You ask for Lieutenant Stallings. Tell him Murphy gave you the number.”
Maria bit her lip. Then she looked at Ray and back to me.
She took the card with a hurried, nervous little motion and scampered back, closing her apartment door. Several locks clicked shut.
I didn’t say anything else. I walked out of the building. I was halfway across the lot, heading back to Will’s place, when I heard quick footsteps coming behind me. I turned with one hand close to my Sig, but relaxed when I recognized Maria.
She stopped in front of me and said, “I s-saw something.”
I nodded and waited.
“There were some odd sounds, late last night. Like . . . like thumps.
And a little while later, a car rolled in. It pulled up to the building across the lot, and a man got out and left it running, like he wasn’t worried about it being stolen.”
“Did you recognize him?” I asked.
Maria shook her head. “But he was big. Almost as big as Ray, but he . . . You know, he moved better. He was in shape. And he was wearing an expensive suit.”
“What else can you tell me about him?” I asked.
Maria shrugged. “Not . . . not anything, really. I saw him come out again, right away. Then he got into the car and drove away. I didn’t see any plates or anything. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” I said quietly. “Thank you.”
She nodded and turned to scurry back toward her building. Then she stopped and looked back at me. “I don’t know if it matters,” she said, “but the man had one of those army haircuts.”
I stiffened a little. “Do you remember what color hair?”
“Red,” she said. “Like, bright orange-red.” She swallowed. “If it matters.”
It mattered—but I didn’t want to scare her, so I nodded and smiled, then said, “Thank you, Maria. Seriously.”
She tried to smile back and did pretty well. Then she looked around her, as if uncomfortable standing in so much open space, and hurried back to her building.
A big guy in a suit with a bright red crew cut—it was almost word for word the short description in the notes of the file that CPD kept for a man named Hendricks.
Hendricks was a former college football player. He weighed upward of three hundred pounds, none of it excess. He had been under suspicion for several mysterious disappearances, mostly of criminal figures who seemed to have earned his boss’s displeasure. And his boss had, presumably, sent him to Will and Georgia’s building late last night.
But why?
To get an answer, I was going to have to talk to Hendricks’s boss.
I had to go see “Gentleman” John Marcone.
THE POLICE KNOW where Marcone can be reached. Finding him doesn’t do diddly to let us nail him. The fact that he has his fingers in so many pies means that not only do we have to work against Marcone and his shadowy empire, but we have our own superiors and politicians breathing down our necks as well. Oh, they never say anything directly, like, “Stop arresting Marcone’s most profitable pimps.” Instead, we get a long speech about racial and socioeconomic profiling. We get screams from political action committees. We get vicious editorial pieces in the newspapers and on TV.
We mostly stay quiet and keep plugging away at our jobs. Experience has taught us that hardly anyone ever cares what we think or have to say. They demand answers, but they don’t want to listen.
I’m not saying that cops are a bunch of white knights. I’m just saying that the politicians can spin things all sorts of ways if it means that they’re guaranteed stacks of cash for their campaign chests—or that Marcone’s blackmailers won’t expose some dark secret from their pasts.
I still had friends in the CPD. I called one who worked in the Organized Crime Division and asked him where I could find Marcone.
“Aw, Murph,” Malone said. He sounded weary. “This ain’t the time.”
“Since when have you been big on punctuality?” I asked. “I need this. It’s about Dresden.”
Malone grunted. Dresden had saved his uncle from some kind of possession or (and I still have trouble with the concept when I say it), an evil enchantment. The elder Malone had been suffering to a degree I had never seen elsewhere. Cops and medics and so on couldn’t do a thing for the man. Dresden had walked in, shooed everyone else out of the room, and five minutes later Malone was sane again, if worse for wear. It had made an impression on Malone’s nephew.
“Okay,” he said. “Give me a couple minutes. They got everyone with a star running around the city looking for bin Laden or Bigfoot or whoever else might have blown up that building. I ain’t slept in two days. And the FBI is coming down like a freaking cloud of angry mama birds, after what happened at their office.” He cleared his throat. “Um. I heard you might have been around there.”
I grunted. Neutrally.
“Weird stuff, huh?”
I sighed. Internal Affairs or the FBI might still have my phone tapped, and I was reluctant to say much.
On the other hand, what were they going to do? Take my career away?
“Serious weirdness. The same flavor as the kind that hit the old Velvet Room.” That was where Dresden had fought a whole bunch of vampires and wound up burning down the entire house.
Malone whistled. “Was it as bad as that guy down in the SI holding tank?”
The kid meant the loup-garou. We were stupid enough to lock Harley MacFinn in a normal cell. He transformed into this hideous Ice Age-looking thing. It was half the size of an old Buick and it could only loosely be called a wolf. Brave men had died that night, fighti
ng with weapons that were utterly useless against the loup-garou. Carmichael, my old partner, had died there, all but throwing himself into the thing’s jaws to buy me a few seconds.
I feel nauseated when I think about it.
“I don’t know, really. Things happened too fast. I rounded up some people, went down a stairway and out. SWAT went in, but by the time they did, there was nothing left but staff hiding in closets and under desks, and a lot of bodies.”
“Jesus,” he said.
“Malone, I need this,” I pressed firmly.
“Call you back in a minute,” he said.
I put my phone back into my coat pocket and looked at Will. We were both standing on the sidewalk in front of his apartment.
“This is crazy,” Will said quietly. “Vampires hitting a government building? Blowing up buildings in a major city? They don’t do that.”
“If they followed all the rules, they wouldn’t be bad guys,” I said.
“It’s just . . .” He swallowed. “I really wish Harry was around. He’d have a take on it.”
“That makes two of us.”
Will shook his head. “I’ve been too crazy to even ask. . . . Where is he?”
I glanced at him and away, keeping my face still.
The color drained out of Will’s cheeks. “No. He’s not. . . . It doesn’t work like that.”
“We don’t know where he is,” I said. “He was staying out on that ratty boat he uses until he could find somewhere else to sleep. We found blood. Bullet holes. Blood trail leading into the lake.”
Will shook his head. “But . . . if he was hurt, he wouldn’t go to a hospital. He’d call Waldo Butters.” He took his cell phone from his pocket. “He’s in my contacts. We can call—”
“I know about Butters, Will,” I interrupted gently. “I called him first thing after I saw the blood. He hasn’t heard from Harry.”
“Oh my . . . Oh my God,” Will said, his voice a whisper.
I felt like I’d just double-tapped Santa Claus.
“Maybe he isn’t dead,” I said. “Maybe it was somebody else with the same blood type who got shot. Or maybe Dresden pulled one of his tricks and just vanished, whoosh, off to . . . a wizard hospital somewhere.”
“Yeah,” Will said, nodding. “Yeah, maybe. I mean, he can do all kinds of things, right?”
“All kinds of things,” I said.
Including dying. But I didn’t say that.
DETECTIVE MALONE WAS good to his word, and five minutes later we were heading for a building on the north edge of Bucktown, another renovation project Gentleman Johnnie’s mostly legitimate business interests had secured. He had purchased, refurbished, updated, and preserved more than a dozen buildings in the city over the past several years. He’d been feted and decorated and honored at various society functions, as a man who was preserving the native beauty of Chicago architecture, saving it from being destroyed and forgotten, et cetera.
If you didn’t consider the drugs, gambling, prostitution, extortion, and other shadow franchises he ruled, I guess he was a real citizen hero.
Contractors were hard at work on the building as we came in, and a security guard in a white shirt and black pants walked over to us with a frown as I entered the building. Will was at my back. I hoped that if things went nutty, I wouldn’t have to drag him with me when I shot my way out.
I felt myself smile at that image, mostly because of its fantasy content. If blood was spilled in Marcone’s headquarters, I wouldn’t live long enough to drag anybody out.
“No trespassers,” the guard said firmly. “This is a construction site. Dangerous. You’ll have to leave.”
I eyed the man and said, “I’m here to see John Marcone.”
The guard eyed me. Then he got on his little radio and spoke into it. A moment later, a voice squawked an answer. “Mr. Marcone is not available.”
“Yes, he is,” I said. “Go tell him Karrin Murphy is here to see him.”
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “You’ll have to leave.”
He had a gun, a 9mm Glock, I noted.
I took out the little leather wallet with my police ID in it, and said, “If you make me open this, it gets official. There will be official questions, official paperwork, and lots of men in uniform trespassing all over your site.” I held the wallet out as if presenting a crucifix to a vampire, fingers poised as if to open it. “Do you want to be the one who gives your boss that kind of headache?”
His eyes moved from me to Will. He looked quickly away. Then he took a few steps back toward the interior of the building and had a low, rather emphatic conversation with his radio.
I folded my arms and tapped one foot impatiently.
“Would you really do that?” Will asked me.
“Can’t,” I said. “I’m getting fired. But they don’t know that.”
Will made a choking sound.
The guard came back and said, “Through that door. Two floors down. Then take your first left, and you’ll see it.” He coughed. “You’ll have to leave any weapons with me.”
I snorted and said, “Like hell.” Then I brushed past him, nudging him slightly aside with my shoulder as though spoiling for a fight. Martian for It is inappropriate for you to screw with me in any way.
He got the message. He didn’t try to stop us.
Will’s quiet chuckle followed me down the stairs.
MARCONE’S OFFICE WAS located in what appeared to be a dining hall. The room was huge and tiled, and several contractors—most of them brawnier and more heavily tattooed than the average laborer—sat at long tables, eating. Caterers kept several serving tables of food stocked with the same attention and care that I would have expected in a high-society gala. It was brightly lit, and a raised stage at one end of the room, which would presumably host a full orchestral band if one were present, had instead been loaded with computers and office furniture.
The portrait of a busy executive, Marcone sat at an enormous old desk, holding a phone to his ear with one shoulder, his business shirt rolled up to his elbows.
Everything about him screamed “successful patriarch.” His suit jacket, hung over the back of his chair, was worth more than some small nations. His loosened tie, a simple silver number rather than a bright “power” tie, bespoke confidence and strength that needed no such sartorial declaration. His hands were broad and looked strong. There were scars on his knuckles. His short, conservatively cut hair was dark, except for just enough silver at his temples to announce a man in his physical and mental prime. He was well built and obviously kept himself in shape, and his features were regular and appealing. He was by no means beautiful, but his face projected strength and competence.
He looked like a man others would willingly follow.
Two other people stood on the stage, slightly behind him, testimony to his ability to lead. The first was a woman, a blond amazon more than six feet tall in a grey business suit. She had the legs that had been cruelly denied me at birth, the bitch. Her name was Gard, and Dresden had believed she was an actual, literal Valkyrie.
The other was Hendricks. He wasn’t truly ugly, but he reminded me of a gargoyle, anyway, a slab-muscled being with a misshapen appearance and beady eyes, ready to leap into action on behalf of the man he watched over. His eyes tracked me as I approached. Gard’s blue eyes focused on me for a moment, then skipped past me to Will. She narrowed her eyes and murmured something toward Marcone.
Chicago’s resident lord of the underworld gave no indication that he’d heard her, and I caught the last few lines of a conversation as I approached.
“You’ll just have to do it yourself.” He paused, listening. Then he said, “I don’t have the proper resources for such a thing—and even if I did, I wouldn’t waste them by sending them there blind and unprepared. You’ll have to use your own people.” He paused again and then said, “Neither of us will ever be scratching each other’s back, mutually or otherwise. I will not send my people into danger without more
information. Should you change your mind, you may feel free to contact me. Good day.”
He hung up the phone and then turned toward me. He had eyes the color of several-days-old grass clippings. They were opaque, reptilian. He made a steeple of his fingertips and said, “Ms. Murphy.”
“News travels fast,” I said.
“To me. Yes.” His mouth turned up in a heartless smile. “Which are you here for? Work or revenge?”
“Why would I want revenge on such a pillar of the community?”
“Dresden,” he said simply. “I assume you’re here because you think me responsible.”
“What if I am?” I asked.
“Then I would advise you to leave. You wouldn’t live long enough to take your gun from your coat.”
“And besides,” I said, “you didn’t do it. Right? And you have a perfectly rational reason to explain why you didn’t even want him dead.”
He shrugged, a motion he managed to infuse with elegance. “No more than any other day, at any rate,” he said. “I had no need to assassinate Dresden. He’d been working diligently to get himself killed for several years—as I pointed out to him a few days ago.”
I kept my heart on lockdown. The cocky bastard’s tone made me want to scream and tear out his eyes. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d rattled me. “I’m here for another reason.”
“Oh?” he asked politely.
Too politely. He knew. He’d known why I was coming since before I came through the door. I stopped and played the past several hours back in my imagination, before I spotted where I’d contacted his net.
“Maria,” I said. “She was one of yours.”
Hendricks eyed Gard.
She rolled her eyes and withdrew a twenty-dollar bill from her jacket pocket. She passed it to the big man.
Hendricks pocketed it with a small, complacent smile.
Marcone took no evident note of the interaction. “Yes. The superintendent you met had been providing the means for some of my competitors to operate. Maria was observing his business partners, so that we could track them back to their source and encourage them to operate elsewhere.”