Dead to Rites (7 page)

He wasn’t around either, though. Dunno if he was off work or out on a case, and I don’t guess it matters. Point is, no dice.

I’ll tell you who
was
there, though, who saw me wanderin’ the paperwork-and-cheap-desks labyrinth and took it on himself to say somethin’ before I could figure out how to duck him. He marched right on up to me, all doughy and florid, mustache you coulda used as a whisk broom carvin’ out a path for him.

“Oberon.”

“Galway.”

“Havin’ a good morning?”

“Not bad so far.”

“Great. The fuck are you doing here?”

And that, ladies and gentleman, is a picture-perfect example of why—even though his job in Robbery made him better suited to the questions I wanted to ask than Keenan, who’s Homicide—I really hadn’t wanted to talk to Donald fucking Galway.

He hadn’t seemed to care for me much when we first met, a few months ago, but I didn’t guess he cared for much of anybody. And yeah, I’d skipped out on a meeting with him, but the department had rescinded the job offer we were supposed to discuss anyway, so he
shouldn’t
have any particular beef with me.

I wasn’t gonna put too many nickels down on that “shouldn’t,” though.

“Was kinda hoping to look at some recent robbery and theft reports,” I told him.

“Why?”

“I’m tired of the pulps and lookin’ for some light reading. Why do you
think
? It’s for a case I’m working.”

See, one of the few details I
had
managed to learn about Ramona—which you’ll remember if you been payin’ attention—is that she worked for a collector, someone among the ranks of the Windy City’s high and mighty who gathered mystical and mysterious objects for fun and profit. So if I was gonna dig her up, I’d decided that lookin’ into the disappearance of items that might fit that bill—and that
hadn’t
been fenced by Hruotlundt or his ilk—might lead me somewhere.

“I meant,” Galway half-sighed, half-shouted (and no, I can’t explain how he managed that), “why would I waste my time helping you?”

“Goodness of your heart?”

“I’m a Chicago cop. They confiscated that when I got the job.”

“Okay, how about ’cause it’ll take some of the workload off your shoulders if I close a case or three?”

“And it’ll add to my workload if I take the time to walk you through a whole fucking pile of files and you
don’t
close anything.”

“What can I say? You coppers get paid to take risks.”

“But not enough to deal with certain kinds of nuisances. How about you go climb your thumb and I go back to work?”

Yeah, so this wasn’t getting me much of anywhere. I looked around at the rest of the clubhouse, watchin’ cops pounding away on typewriters or gabbin’ away between desks, creating enough of a hubbub that I doubt anyone even really noticed me’n Galway talking, let alone paid us much attention. Swell: meant I should be able to stick my fingers in his head—metaphorically speaking—without anybody noticing.

I turned back to him, gathering my focus, and—

“Officer, that’s him! That’s him, right here!”

The both of us—and everyone else around—turned at that shout, saw a uniformed bull escorting a scrawny, mustached fellow with a black eye and swollen lip. He’d raised a spindly finger when he shouted, and that digit was pointed at me like the rifle on a firing squad.

“That’s the man who mugged me!”

* * *

I been in an interrogation room before. All drab walls and cheap furniture and a bright lamp. They don’t get any prettier with repeat viewings.

Galway was there, and a couple uniforms, and the guy who’d accused me. His name was Phelps; I’d picked up on that, on account of that’s what the cops were calling him. That’s my keen detective skills at their sharpest, see?

Wasn’t exactly normal, us all being packed into one room this way, but this wasn’t exactly a normal situation. We’d all come in here mostly to get out of the public eye, not so much for an actual grilling. Though it could still have gone that way.

“…understand you’re upset, Mr. Phelps,” Galway was saying. “And I know you think you’ve got the right guy. But Mr. Oberon here, he’s a private dick. He’s worked with us before, a lot.”

I’ll give the man his due. He may not be all that fond of me, but he still stepped up.

Not that Phelps was buyin’ a word of it.

“I don’t care if he’s the son of the Pope!”

“Uh…”

“I know what he did! It wasn’t even dark; the sun hadn’t gone down yet! He got in my face and laughed at me before he beat me!”

“Wasn’t me,” I said, not for the first time. I was leaning back in the chair, arms crossed, lookin’ more at the ceiling than anyone in the room. “I’ve never seen you before in my life, bo.”

“You’re a damn liar!”

Yeah, we’d been here before a couple times already. This conversation was chasing its tail something fierce.

Galway leaned in, which gave me a nice snootful of sweat and what I think was some combo of eggs, coffee, and liverwurst.

“Listen, Oberon, the guy’s pretty firm. I don’t think you did it, but I dunno if we’re gonna have any choice but to book you until we can get this straightened out.”

Hmm. No, we didn’t want that, did we?

“What time did I supposedly attack you?” I asked Phelps.

“Huh?”

Since I was surrounded by mortals, I went ahead and sighed.

“You said the sun hadn’t gone down. What time was it?” Then, when he just glared at me, “You
were
gonna actually included minor details like that in your police report, yeah?”

“About six-thirty or so,” he grumbled.

I did some quick subtraction in my head.

“There’s a couple lives on Burton Place, name of Marsters. Give ’em a ring. Ask ’em how their evening went yesterday.”

Took a bit of persuading—though not too much, and nothing mystical—and a lot of suspicious glares from Phelps, but one of the bulls finally went and got on the horn. Came back a few minutes later shaking his head.

“They ain’t too happy with you, Oberon.”

“Yeah, I figured. Wasn’t me who broke their crystal dingus, but whatever. I ain’t looking to be pals with ’em. I just need to know if they told you I was with ’em.”

“That they did.”

“And when did they say I left?”

“They weren’t
exactly
sure, but…”

“But?”

“Definitely after six.”

I raised an eyebrow at Phelps. “You wanna tell me how I got from Barton Place to the west side in time to put the broderick on you?”

“They’re lying! Or mistaken! Or—!”

“Look, Mr. Phelps. I’m real sorry you got beaten and robbed. But it
wasn’t me
.”

“I
saw
—!”

“Come on, Mr. Phelps.” Galway stepped around him and opened the door. “Officer Nichols will take your statement, and we’ll be on the lookout for someone who
resembles
Mr. Oberon here.”

“But—!”

“I’m sorry, he’s got an alibi. You heard it. Let’s go.”

Phelps glared at me the entire way out the door, nearly walking into the doorframe in the process.

As for me, this whole affair had me pondering a whole new heap of questions.

What’d been the purpose behind this? I sure as hell didn’t believe for one second it was a coincidence, that someone who just
happened
to look like me had mugged this poor sap. I may not look exactly the same to any given mortal, but I’m still me; still pretty close, between one soul and the next. This all but
had
to be deliberate. Disguise at least, and more likely magic. All kinda ways someone coulda done it—hell, give me a minute in someone’s head, muckin’ with their perceptions and memories, and I could make ’em believe something this way—but the most obvious answer? Shapeshifting. Again.

Goswythe (or whoever) clearly wasn’t too worried about me suspecting him. But why pull a stunt like this?

If he’d actually meant to get me pinched and thrown in the cooler for any real time, it was a clumsy setup. Way
too
clumsy. This frame wouldn’t have held a Monet, let alone me.

Sending me a message? “I’m watching you and I can get to you,” that sorta thing? Maybe, but I’d already known that, and he shoulda known I’d already known. It was dippy to expend that much effort, and confirm for me there was shapeshifting or other magic involved, just for that.

Hell, maybe the whole point was to be inconvenient and irritating, in which case he’d succeeded.
Phouka
can be that way. Didn’t really seem Goswythe’s speed, but you never know; we all gotta act according to our nature. Not probable—he was too much the consummate schemer—but possible.

Goddamn it. Way too many “maybes” and “could bes” and “possibles.” Welcome to my life.

“Mick! Hey, Mick! Where are you?”

Couldn’t help but grin. Even in
my
life, I got certain things I
can
count on, see?

I stood up and stepped outta the box.

“Heya, Pete. Over here.”

My buddy’d clearly taken just enough time to force himself awake and make himself vaguely presentable. He’d brushed his hair neat enough, but his thick mustache was lookin’ a bit wild and prickly, and it was weird seein’ him in the clubhouse while outta uniform. He elbowed his way toward me, drawing growls and grunts and glowers from the various elbowees.

“What’s this bullshit about you bein’ accused of mugging someone?” he demanded as he neared.

“Eh, nothing much.” I’d explain it in detail when we had some quiet—and no other ears around—but not now. “Just a misunderstanding.”

I felt Phelps’s peepers boring into me from across the station. But someone else was gettin’ real steamed at
Pete
, though.

“
Officer Staten!
”

Pete went rigid as a two-by-four in an icebox.

“Sir?”

Galway stomped back over, face red, chest heaving, his own mustache raised to attack and bristling in a show of dominance over Pete’s.

“How the fuck did you hear about this?”

“Well, sir, Mick’s a friend of mine, and I—”

“I didn’t ask why the fuck you were here! I know why you’re here! I asked how you knew!” Then he didn’t narrow his eyes so much as scrunch his whole face up around his nose. “Someone called you. Who was it?”

“I’m not at liberty to say, sir.”

“I asked you a question, Staten!”

“Yes, sir, you did. But I’m not breaking any rules by coming in early, and I’m declining to answer.”

“I could bring you up for disciplinary action!”

“That’s an awful lotta paperwork when I didn’t actually do anything, sir.”

Galway spluttered and cursed and threatened some more, but he was runnin’ outta steam quick. I was relieved, to tell you square, and not just for Pete’s sake. I was glad he hadn’t ratted out Officer Nichols, too. The poor mug hadn’t really had a choice about gettin’ Pete on the horn and telling him what was what. I’d put the thought in his noggin with a quick stare and a whispered suggestion, while they were hauling me into the box to be grilled for a bit, so I’da felt guilty if he’d gotten in Dutch for it. Not a lot, savvy? But some.

Especially since it woulda been for nothing, what with me having smoothed it all over, more or less, before Pete even showed.

“Well, shit, fine then,” the detective said when he’d finally wound down. “Since you’re here anyway, Staten,
you
can spend your afternoon digging through files with your buddy here. Me, I got better things to do with my time.”

Pete’n me watched him stomp away, glaring other cops out of his path.

“So,” I said, smiling, “really appreciate you coming in before your shift. How well do you know Robbery’s files?”

Pete’s own expression wasn’t near so much of a smile as mine.

Since we didn’t have Galway’s assistance—or anyone else’s in the Robbery Division, for that matter—the detective seemed to have something else for every last damn one of ’em to work on, and it all hadda be done
right now—
it took us a couple hours to go through enough of the recent reports to convince me I wasn’t gonna find what I was hoping for.

Well, not here, anyway. But this had always only been step one. Many of the kindsa goods I suspected mighta been snatched belonged to people who wouldn’t call the police at all. Didn’t mean I couldn’t dig ’em up elsewhere.

I thanked Pete, politely, for his time. He groused something, a lot less politely, in reply. And then I made tracks.

I couldn’t go back to Hruotlundt. As I said, if Ramona’d been glomming magic goods, it wouldn’t be to sell ’em, and even if the
dvergr had
heard something—rumors, whispers, whatever—spillin’ it to me wasn’t exactly good for business. Same reasoning ruled out all the other Chicago fences who dealt with the supernatural. But that didn’t mean
nobody
was talking.

Track down Franky? He’d be the easiest of the bunch to find, since everyone else was lying dormy, waiting for the latest trouble to blow over. But we’d just talked; I didn’t wanna get him any deeper into whatever was goin’ down, not since he’d been the only one with the guts to come tell me about the guys—or guy—askin’ questions. I’d only look him up again if I absolutely couldn’t unearth any of the others.

Which meant it was time to find one of the others. Fact that they were lyin’ low would make it harder, but not impossible.

I ain’t gonna bore you with the details. Let’s just say that after hours and hours and hours—far longer than it shoulda taken—of askin’ people who knew people who’d heard of people who knew people I could ask, I finally got myself an address.

The next dawn found me standin’ in front of a filthy, rundown redbrick building in Canaryville, a rough neighborhood down south near the Union Stock Yards. The whole place had a weight to it: the weight of dust and sweat and poverty on the building itself, the weight of hostile peepers on my shoulders as folks glared at me from between twitching yellowed drapes.

Never been fond of outsiders, the people of Canaryville.

The door to the old tenement was locked, but that didn’t prove too tough to deal with. My luck may not’ve been at its best—there’s a reason it took me so damn long to track anybody down, and it wasn’t ’cause they’d done such a swell job of hiding—but I’d have to be dead before I couldn’t handle a chintzy pin-and-tumbler. I sucked the luck outta the dingus, bits and pieces fell into or outta place, and it clicked open with an ugly grinding sound.