A Plain-Dealing Villain

by Craig Schaefer

  30.

  My first jaunt was to the suburbs, stopping at a hardware store at the end of a strip mall. My purchases were as random as they were ominous: two pickaxes, three shovels, five orange hard hats, and a hundred-foot coil of stout rope. I also grabbed twelve cans of WD-40 and a carton of galvanized steel nails.

  Have fun figuring out what I’m doing with all this junk, I thought, humming a happy tune as I loaded my cartload of supplies into the back of the Chrysler. Sure enough, as I pulled out of the parking lot, I heard Bentley’s voice on the conference line.

  “Cormie says one of the men from the hotel just gave the cashier twenty dollars for a copy of your receipt. He also asked her to repeat everything you said to her, word for word.”

  “Good. Mama, where you at?”

  “Close now,” Margaux said. “I can see you up ahead. I’m holding about two hundred feet back.”

  “Excellent. Switch off. Bentley, tell Corman to start watching the club.”

  “He says he can hear you, Daniel.”

  “Corman,” I said, “start watching the club.”

  “Now he says,” Bentley replied, then paused. “I’m not translating that. It would be rude.”

  My next stop was back in the city, pushing my way through a molasses snarl of traffic on my way to Wicker Park.

  “Oh, no,” Trevor Manderley said as I strode in through the front door of the Hermetic Inquiry. “No, no, no. You cannot be in here. I did everything you wanted, damn it.”

  “Relax,” I said, surveying the empty shop as I strolled toward the register. “I’m here to give you some free money.”

  He scrunched up his forehead. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because a couple of minutes after I walk out of here, a guy is gonna come in and offer you a bribe to tell me what I bought. He gave a hardware-store cashier twenty bucks. I imagine the great Trevor Manderley could talk him out of a Benjamin, at least.”

  He sniffed at the bait, looking for a hook. “And what is it you’re buying?”

  “A story.” I counted out five twenties and laid them on the counter between us, side by side. “A two-hundred-dollar story. I’ll pay for half now, and the rest later.”

  “What’s this story about?”

  “It’s a story about a book that you sniffed out for me on the black market, rush-ordered, and that I paid you very handsomely for. Do you know anything about ancient Taoist sorcery?”

  “Not my field,” he said.

  “Good. Then it was a book about ancient Taoist sorcery. Do you speak Cantonese?”

  “No, but—”

  “Good,” I said. “Then it was written in Cantonese. What you do know is that it was the real deal, a genuine magical grimoire, and I was absolutely insistent that I had to have it today. I even said, explicitly, that I needed it before the poker tournament at the Bast Club.”

  Trevor’s gaze shifted between me and the money on the counter.

  “And this won’t blow back on me?”

  “Zero chance.”

  “And,” he said slowly, eyeing the cash, “what if I tell them the truth?”

  I shrugged. “Well, you don’t get the other hundred bucks. Oh, also, I’ll kill you. Any more easy questions?”

  He shook his head.

  “Good. Just think of it like this: you’ve got two options, and you have to pick one.” I held out my hands, palms upward, juggling them up and down like the arms of a scale. “Free money? Bullet in the head? Free money? Bullet in the head? Now, I’m no professional merchant such as yourself, but if it was up to me? I’d take the free money.”

  He pocketed the cash as I walked out the door.

  Now I’d thrown magic in the mix, as unpredictable as a revolver with one loaded chamber. Royce would know that I had something exotic cooked up, but that was as far as it went. With no details and no idea exactly how I would be coming for the coin, he couldn’t devise a plan to stop me.

  My final destination waited down in the Chicago Loop, on a side street off a boulevard lined with high-end boutiques and electronics stores. “KM Film Supply” read the sign out front, painted to look like a torn-off movie ticket. “Rental and Leasing Options Available!”

  More of a warehouse than a store. I stood amid racks and racks of cameras, lights, and gadgets. The counter clerk, wearing a name tag that read “Hi! I’m Dell!”, was a college-age hipster in skinny jeans and a loud plaid shirt.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m doing a small local production, and I need to get my hands on some lighting equipment.”

  He lit up, closing his dog-eared Cineaste magazine and standing straight.

  “Sure, we can hook you up! What kind of production is it? Are you shooting exteriors, interiors…?”

  “Interiors,” I told him. “But I need something bright. Really bright. The brightest lights you have.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck, looking dubious. “Huh. Well, I assume you’ll want multiple intensities, or at least variable settings, right?”

  “Nope. Just very, very bright. So bright that there isn’t a single shadow in the shot.”

  Dell looked back toward the steel shelves. “Uh, you know that’ll like, wash out everything, right? I mean that’s not really how it’s done—”

  “Listen to me.” I moved closer, leaning against the counter. “Our needs are very specific. We want to kill shadows. Got it?”

  “Kill shadows,” he repeated, blinking. “Okay. Hey, sure, you’re the customer, whatever. Let me guess…this is an art film, isn’t it?”

  “I do like to think of myself as an artist, yes.”

  Dell shrugged. “Okay, well, if you really want to go all-out, we’ve got an open-face HMI that runs as hot as eighteen kilowatts.”

  I had no idea what that was, but it sounded good to me. I was never going to use it anyway.

  “Fine. How much does that cost?”

  “Twenty-four thousand dollars,” Dell said. “Or we can talk about our daily rental rates?”

  I took out Peter Greyson’s credit card.

  “Yeah,” I said, “rental sounds good. Definitely rental.”

  I idly wondered, as I lugged a heavy clamshell case made of rough black plastic out to the hatchback, if a powerful enough spotlight could kill the Bast Club’s guardian shadows. It was definitely an idea to file for future consideration. For now, all I needed was word of my latest acquisitions to get back to Royce.

  I gave it ten minutes.

  I knew that instead of moving the coin, it’d be a lot easier for Royce to have his agents take me out. So for the final trick of the day, I had to perform a disappearing act.

  “How’s it look, Mama?” I asked as I rode up an expressway on-ramp. I couldn’t see her in the snarl of traffic behind me, but I knew she wasn’t far.

  “They’re good, Danny. Too good. You’ve got three cars on you, at least, and they keep swapping places and changing their distance.”

  A professional tail, then. I’d expected nothing less. “At least? You spotted others you’re not sure about?”

  “I just can’t tell. Maybe four. There’s only two on you right now, but the third was just—guete!”

  “That sounded like a bad word,” I said.

  “Those other two? They’re on me.”

  I craned my neck, watching for road signs. “Break off, right now. Hopefully if you do, they’ll all follow me. Cait? We’re on the Eisenhower Expressway, heading west. Are you anywhere close?”

  “My GPS says I can’t be. However, I’m inclined to disagree.” Given Caitlin’s penchant for fast driving, I didn’t doubt her.

  “Okay,” I said, thinking fast. “Mama, you get off at the next exit and coordinate with Caitlin. Meet up, someplace public. If they do follow you, they won’t start shit in front of Cait.”

  “What about you?” Margaux asked.

  “Don’t worry about me. I’ll improvise.”

  Easier said than done, stuck in a clump of traffic on an endless expressway. The s
peedometer said forty miles an hour, but it felt like an endless crawl. I had no idea how many goons Royce had put on my tail, but one thing was certain: I had to lose all of them, all at once.

  Concrete barriers lined the middle of the expressway, dividing the east- and west-bound traffic. No easy way to pull a U-turn. I spotted small openings every quarter mile or so, for emergency vehicles, but I’d have to telegraph my move and slow down so much that it’d be easy for at least one of Royce’s men to follow me.

  So maybe I do more than slow down, I thought, easing into the far right lane. A forest-green sign announced another exit, two miles up ahead.

  I took a deep breath, then swerved the wheel right and slammed on my brakes. The Chrysler skidded to a jolting stop on the shoulder and all at once, I spotted brake lights flickering in the passing stream of cars. A dirty pickup truck veered out of his lane, earning a screaming horn and nearly causing a pileup, and just as quickly swung back in line.

  You’ve all got two choices, I thought. Either pull over and give yourself away, or keep going with the traffic and hope you can double back fast enough to catch me.

  I counted off thirty seconds, slow, making sure that anyone on my tail had to have overshot my impromptu parking spot. Then I stepped on the gas, tires rumbling as I rode along the shoulder, making a beeline for the off-ramp ahead.

  And you won’t catch me.

  I swung off the expressway, caught a green light at the bottom of the ramp, and drove fast toward nowhere in particular. All that mattered was putting as much distance between me and the chase cars as I could, and not leaving any breadcrumbs for them to follow. I threaded through the streets, coasting on autopilot, choosing my direction on a whim and going anywhere but back.

  Half an hour later, I started feeling safe. I’d swung through the backstreets of a north-side suburb, passing a dozen look-alike townhouses with white vinyl siding and perfect lawns. When I checked my rearview mirror, there wasn’t a car in sight. Either Royce’s agents could turn invisible, or I’d lost them.

  What came next sealed the deal. Bentley’s voice echoed across the conference line, the first comment he’d made in an hour.

  “Everyone. Cormie says that Royce just showed up at the Bast Club with a…very angry-looking blond woman in tow. They left their car running in the parking lot and stormed into the building.”

  “Now that’s more like it,” I said. “Okay, let’s get ready to improvise.”

  31.

  I pulled over to the side of the road long enough to fumble with the GPS on my phone and figure out where I was. Plotting a route to the Bast Club seemed my best bet, hopefully putting me on a collision course with the Judas Coin.

  “Someone’s coming out,” Bentley said. “It’s those two men we saw you with at the airport, Daniel, the ones with Royce.”

  “Mack and Zeke? Interesting. Anything look different about them?”

  “Cormie says, one moment—yes. The big one has a metal briefcase handcuffed to his right wrist. They’re getting into a sedan. Should he follow them?”

  “Hold on,” I said. “Let me think.”

  Caitlin cleared her throat, chiming in on the conference call. “If the coin is in that case, Corman needs to follow them.”

  And if it weren’t, he’d be off on a wild goose chase. Corman’s astral eyes were our only vantage point on the club. The one bullet in my gun. If I pulled the trigger now, I’d better be right.

  “The car is pulling out of the lot,” Bentley said.

  “Daniel.” Caitlin’s voice was strained. “Need a decision. Now, please.”

  I squeezed the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white.

  “No,” I said. “No, it’s a diversion. Bentley, tell Corman to stay put. Let them leave.”

  The line fell silent. I got back on the road.

  “He says they just turned out of sight,” Bentley told us. “I hope you were right.”

  “I am.”

  “How do you know?” Margaux asked.

  “Playing the odds. Look, Royce thinks there’s a serious, viable plot to raid the club and steal the Judas Coin. He’s got to take action, and fast. Given the scale of what he thinks we’re plotting, and the number of unknowns he has to deal with, it’s reasonable for him to suspect we might have eyes on the building.”

  “So you think they were a decoy to draw off anyone watching before they move the coin for real,” Caitlin said.

  “Royce has Nadine with him and access to her elite operatives,” I said. “Taking that into account, if you were in his shoes…would you trust Mack and Zeke to get the coin to safety? I wouldn’t trust those idiots to walk and chew gum at the same time.”

  “And given,” Caitlin said, “that Royce knows this, mightn’t he have used them with the expectation you’d let them slip right through your fingers?”

  Suburbia rolled by outside my window, trimmed lawns glistening under a cold autumn sun.

  “Maybe,” I said, suddenly unsure. “Yeah, maybe. Guess we’ll find out.”

  Twelve minutes ticked by in silence.

  “Daniel,” Bentley said, hesitant, “Cormie’s getting tired. It’s been years since he’s spent this much time out of his body in one stretch. Do you think…?”

  His voice trailed off, but I knew what he was asking.

  “Five minutes,” I said. “Can he give us five more minutes?”

  I kept half an eye on the dashboard as I drove, watching the digital clock. The minutes drifted away, counting down, five, four, three—

  “Someone’s coming out,” Bentley said urgently. “It’s her, the woman who arrived with Royce. She’s got another metal briefcase.”

  I slapped my steering wheel and grinned. “Nadine. Okay, she’s got the real deal. Have Corman follow her, but keep his distance. She’s an incarnate, she’s old, and she’s tricky. Everybody else, get ready to converge wherever she ends up. We’re going to start our very own coin collection.”

  * * *

  Nadine’s trail took us forty minutes west of Chicago, to a suburb called Naperville. “The Golden City” read the sign on the way into town, and the main avenue looked like Norman Rockwell had a head-on collision with new money. Colonial buildings with historic plaques rubbed shoulders with expensive-looking boutiques and fusion-cuisine restaurants.

  According to Corman, Nadine’s final destination was a little florist’s shop by the commuter rail station. She’d gone in with the metal briefcase and came out empty-handed five minutes later. I met up with Caitlin and Margaux, the three of us parking side by side at the edge of the railway parking lot, while Bentley helped Corman recover back at the hotel.

  “Okay,” I said, getting out of the Chrysler, “why a florist?”

  Caitlin leaned back against the hood of her car, an anonymous blue rental sedan, and stretched.

  “It’s what passes for humor among that crowd. The Court of Night-Blooming Flowers has a shell company, just like my court uses the Southern Tropics Import-Export Company back home. There’s a Harvest Bloom Florist in every county under their influence, all over the Midwest. They act as outposts, listening stations, meeting spots. They also sell flowers.”

  I could see the shop from where we parked, a brick building with a bright purple awning and shiny plate-glass windows. A chain-link fence ringed the back of the building, topped with a coil of concertina wire.

  “That many stores?” Margaux asked. “They can’t all be staffed by demons…can they?”

  “No,” Caitlin said. “Unless our intelligence is severely flawed, few of them are. Most have a staff of four or five people, all humans, and they may or may not be aware of who they really work for. More often than not, it’s only the manager who’s in the know. The shop is completely legitimate during daylight hours. All the fun happens at night, when the innocents go home. That’s…the usual arrangement.”

  “And the unusual arrangement?” I said.

  Caitlin shrugged. “Well, those locations deemed critical—f
or example, fronts used to store contraband—have a fully educated staff, sometimes with a competent magician or two, and a demonic overseer. They’re drilled in crisis response and small-arms combat.”

  “Would you say, given Nadine drove forty minutes to get here, that this is one of those places?”

  “Oh,” Caitlin said agreeably, “more likely than not.”

  “Any chance they’ll all go home when the store closes?” Margaux asked.

  Caitlin shook her head. “None. I know Nadine—and so do they. If she ordered them to guard that briefcase until the tournament tomorrow, they will guard that briefcase. It’s worth more than their lives. If anything, security will increase after dark. No customers around, no need to conceal the firepower.”

  This was no good. For one thing, I had no intention of getting into a brawl in the middle of Wonder Bread, Illinois, where I suspected the police response time would be approximately two seconds flat. Then there were the tracks to consider: namely, that we couldn’t leave any. If there were any way to tie the Judas Coin’s disappearance to us, it’d be tantamount to picking a fight with the entire Court of Night-Blooming Flowers. Considering Caitlin’s involvement, I had to imagine that’d be considered an act of war.

  No, that was no good for anybody.

  “Let’s move up,” I said. “I want a closer look.”

  No cameras alongside the shop, but no windows or access points there either. I peeked around the corner. The back was better protected. A security camera angled down from the eaves, keeping watch over the back door and the trash cans, and a length of thick chain and a heavy-duty padlock kept the gate latch secure. Camera or not, the back door was a no-go: with no windows, we could be walking into anything. I had to assume that everybody on site was armed, with bullets, sorcery, or both.

  I looked up to the eaves. “Got an idea. Mama, can you go in and scope out the shop? Buy some flowers for your boyfriend or something.”

  “Antoine? I broke up with that no-good lazy bum last Monday. Thinks he’s too good to get a job. Well, I told him exactly what I thought about—”

  “Yes,” I said quickly, “but that’s the third time you’ve broken up with him this month. So maybe buy some flowers for when you inevitably get back together?”