Dead to Rites (8 page)

Now, I don’t wanna queer your impression of Canaryville. Place is poor as a beggar’s dog and rough as tree bark, but most of the people here got their own dignity. They ain’t animals, and they keep their homes neat as circumstances allow.

Most.

But every neighborhood’s got its bad seeds, and this particular place? Not even the thick miasma of the stock yards could cover the stench of unwashed misery and calcifying piss. That was actually how I knew when I’d finally come to the right door, down a dusty hallway on the second story: The ambient stench abruptly vanished beneath the scent of soap suds.

I didn’t really expect a response to my knock, what with the whole “in hiding” thing. I knocked anyway. No response.

I knocked again.

Then I said, quiet as I could while still figuring I’d be heard through the door, “It’s gonna attract a lot more attention if you make me bust this thing down to jaw with you.”

The door opened just as far as the security chain permitted. The woman staring up at me—I ain’t exactly a beanstalk, but if she ever managed to top four feet tall it’d only be thanks to some towering footwear or extra thick carpeting—was the spittin’ image of an Old Country washerwoman. Her hair was the gray of a cloud’s underside, dress was undyed wool, and her face and hands had enough deep wrinkles to hide about three bucks and seventy cents-worth of dimes.

“Mornin’, Lenai. You shoulda told me you were movin’. I carry a mean sofa.”

“You wouldn’t have had to kick the door down, you jackass!” Rough and shaky, her voice actually sounded a lot like she herself was bein’ rubbed across one of those corrugated washboards. “You got much quieter ways than that!”

“Yeah, but they wouldn’t have gotten you to open up, would they?”

“Go away.”

“Can’t do it, Lenai. We gotta talk. Lemme in and I’ll get this done with quick as I can.”

“You’re a jackass!”

“So you said.” I pulled a handful of folding green out of a pocket and slipped it through the door. “More of that when we’re done.”

Grumbling, she yanked the lettuce outta my fingers and shut the door to move the chain. She was still grumbling when she opened back up.

“Get in here before somebody sees you.”

I slipped past her, staring at a one-room apartment that looked… well, exactly the way you’d expect. Mattress, cheap table, cheaper icebox, toilet and sink. You don’t move out of this sorta place; you escape it.

The door thumped shut behind me, I turned back around, and Lenai was about twenty years younger. Face was just lined, not wrinkled, ’cept around the eyes and lips, and her hair had come over blonde. The frumpy ensemble had fit perfectly a moment ago; now it looked real outta place.

I felt bad, actually. She only gets younger when she’s real stressed or frightened.

“Why are you bugging me, Oberon?” Still not exactly musical, but at least her pipes didn’t sound like she was begin’ throttled by an epileptic python anymore.

“I’m diggin’ into whoever’s been nosing around about me.”

“You don’t say. Hey, you know what I would’ve done if I wanted any part of that?
Not
gone into goddamn hiding!” She paused, sucking on her lower lip and scowling. “Franky told you, didn’t he? I’m gonna kill that gold-sucking clover-cock.”

“Don’t. I appreciate he was the only one of you had the balls to warn me.”

“You appreciate his balls? I’ll mail them to you in a box.”

“There’s almost gotta be a law against that sorta thing, don’t you figure?”

She leaned back against the door, crossing her arms.

“You were telling me why we’re having this conversation.”

So I did. Not in any real detail, just that I was lookin’ for anything about mystical relics having been snatched lately, or occultists being burgled. Anything that might lead me to one of the city’s collectors.

Lenai bitched at me that she’d been lying dormy for days, so how’d I expect her to know anything? I explained that I was lookin’ for information that went further back than that. She told me to go do rude things to myself. I waited.

Once she got tired of cursing at me and actually took some to think about it, yeah, she’d heard some talk about some mugs being “relieved” of certain goods, gewgaws of the sort you really didn’t want falling into the wrong hands, but that the bulls couldn’t do a damn thing about. Never anything big, nothing like, oh, just for example, the Spear of Lugh, but still significant. A talisman here, a tattered fragment of ritual there.

“Names, Lenai. I need specific names.”

She called me plenty of ’em. Not exactly the ones I was lookin’ for, though.

“The hell makes you think I’d even remember?” she finally demanded. “We’re talking rumors here. And not about anything I thought was important.”

“Because you remember everything.”

“When I’m old and wise!” she crowed, spitefully triumphant. “I’m younger right now! I don’t remember. You’ll have to leave.”

“Nah, I can wait.”

In mythology, the glare of Medusa turned men to stone. Lenai’s glare woulda turned statues to flesh—mostly so they could get up and scram.

“You said you’d make this quick,” she accused.

“Yeah, quick as I can. So soon as you calm down and get to aging, I can call it a day.”

“You being here agitates me!”

“You’d be surprised how often I been told that. I suggest a stiff shot of whiskey.”

All right, I’ve subjected you to enough of this. Today was a bit worse’n normal, since Lenai was worried about whoever knew enough to look her up to ask about me, but on the square, she’s pretty much like this all the time. I did eventually coax a few names outta her, tossed another few bucks her way, and blew the place quick.

It’s
tiring
bein’ around her.

Anyway, names. None of ’em were anybody I knew well, and most I hadn’t heard of at all. That bugged me some. Much as I wished otherwise, the last year-and-change had made it clear I wasn’t gonna be able to restrict myself to “mundane” cases; that what you call the supernatural was gonna keep intruding itself into my life. This bein’ the case, I really hadda do a better job of keeping track of who in Chicago knew something about something, savvy?

All that said, one of the names did jump out at me, but at first I couldn’t figure why. “Georgina Kessler.” I knew I’d come across it, but I’d left Lenai’s dump and ankled a good couple of blocks before it dawned on me.

I hadn’t
known
the dame as “Georgina.” I’d only learned that was her full name when I poked into her background a little after the fact. Now that I’d sussed out who she was, though, it oughta be duck soup to actually find her.

And it was. Place was in her boss’s name, not hers, but that wasn’t much of a hurdle.

How many apartment tenements you want me to describe to you, anyway? It was a lot nicer’n the one I’d just visited, not quite as swanky as some. Comfortable without being ostentatious. That enough for you? Good.

Spotted a couple goons keeping a slant on the place, too. Oh, they were makin’ a stab at inconspicuous, but their aim was off. One guy had his keister planted on a bench and was peeping over the top of a folded newspaper, but you only hadda watch him for a few minutes to figure that either he wasn’t reading at all, or he had the reading comprehension and speed of a particularly uneducated marmoset. Down by the corner, another one sat behind the wheel of a cherry-red Packard 840, smoking what—to judge by what looked like a fog bank struggling desperately to escape the car—hadda be his forty-ninth or fiftieth gasper.

I didn’t figure them for the mugs—or mug—who’d been following me. Didn’t seem to be their style, and anyway they’d already been here when I showed. Whatever else Goswythe or whoever might be, I hadn’t seen any sign yet that they were prophetic.

Which still left any number of options. Coulda been coppers. Coulda been some of her boss’s rivals, or even his own guys keeping tabs. Hell, coulda been a couple of jilted suitors for all I knew.

Or for all I cared, really. I reached into my coat, put a finger on the butt of the L&G, and threw a couple quick thoughts their way. The palooka in the car dropped his cigarette butt and scrambled to grab it before it singed the leather, and the guy with the paper got real interested in a tomato in a tight skirt strutting past him on the sidewalk. I was across the street, up the steps, and through the front door before either of ’em turned blinkers back to the tenement.

I probably hadn’t even hadda do that much, since I had no reason to suspect they’d have the first notion who I was. I’d probably have been just another fella heading on home or visiting a pal. But why take the chance?

Plus, it’d given me an opportunity to stretch the old magical muscles. I was still leery, what with the bad luck I’d been having, and…

Say… Could this be her? Had she put some sorta hex on me? It wouldn’t be the first time, though the last witch who’d tried it was a damn sight more powerful than the lady about to get an
aes sidhe
house call.

I mostly dismissed the notion soon as it occurred to me. I didn’t think she had that kinda power, and given how we’d parted ways last time, I’m pretty sure she was too scared to try.

Mostly. I kept it in the back of my mind, even as I knocked on the door.

Her “Yes? Who is it?” was only slightly muffled by the wood.

“Bumpy sent me.”

The door swung open—real trusting for a gangster’s moll, even one who dabbled in the “dark arts”—and there she stood, staring at me, peepers gone wide and skin turning whiter than a polar bear eating rice.

“Hiya, Gina.”

“Oh, God…”

“Nah. ‘Mr. Oberon’ is fine. Appreciate the thought, though. Mind if I come in?”

Not that she coulda stopped me. She’d actually staggered back three or four steps, and woulda fallen if she hadn’t thumped hard into the edge of a coffee table. It’d probably leave a bruise. I don’t think she even noticed.

She hadn’t changed since I’d seen her last, ’cept she was dressed a lot more casually. Blonde, thin little thing with a bright smile—when she was smiling, anyway.

Right now, she wasn’t smiling so much as gasping in terror. I revised my estimation from “Probably didn’t hex me” to “No way in hell.”

“Breathe,” I told her, shuttin’ the door behind me. “You’re about six heartbeats from fainting.”

“I didn’t do anything I swear I didn’t. You told me to stay out of your world and I have, I been telling Bumpy to stay out too I promise I—”

“Whoa! Slow down, doll. I ain’t here to hurt you.”

Then I noticed that she wasn’t randomly edging and clutching her way around the table. Panicked as she was, she was clear-headed enough to keep a goal in mind.

“Though if you take one more step toward the blower,” I said, glancing meaningfully at the phone, “that could change real quick.”

She froze.

“Better.” I took off my flogger and draped it over one of the coat hooks by the entrance. “Gina, grab a seat before you fall over. I promise, I’m just here to talk.”

She sat.

And I couldn’t help but smile.

“You ain’t really cut out for this business, are you?”

“I was when it was just a few protective charms, or reading the cards to tell Mr. Scola if a job was a good idea or not.”

“Before me, you mean?”

Gina nodded once, then shrank back as if worried I might take offense.

“Trust me, babe, it was never just me. If you knew the sorta mojo Fino Ottati had access to… Well, that ain’t here nor there.” I pulled out a chair and sat down across from her, trying to decide the best way to tackle this.

All right, quick refresher. Gina was a witch, though not exactly a potent one, in the employ of one “Bumpy” Vince Scola. Scola was the
capo
of his own crew, and one of Fino Ottati’s biggest rivals in the Outfit.

Fino has a
lot
of rivals, come to think of it, Outfit and otherwise. Cost of doin’ business in his, uh, business, I suppose.

Anyway, last time we’d met, Gina and some of Scola’s boys had come real near to getting in so far over their heads they were getting shoe prints in their hair. I’d made it clear in the nicest way possible—by which I mean I hadn’t croaked any of ’em or used their minds as bongos—that they didn’t want any further part of Chicago’s supernatural community.

Judging by her reaction to seeing my puss in her doorway, Gina’d taken me seriously. Smart girl.

Probably wisest to just get right to the point, then. Get in, get out, not drag her any deeper in when she’d tried to keep out.

“I’m lookin’ for someone who makes a habit of snatching some pretty select merchandise. Talismans, relics, anything with a legit occult pedigree. Rap on the streets is that you lost something that answers to that description.”

Then, when she hesitated and her expression started goin’ a bit wild again, “Gina, I appreciate the instinct as much as the next guy. Right now, though? You wanna protect yourself, you do it by singing, not clamming up on me. For a whole number of reasons.”

“I… take your point. Yes. I’d recently gotten my hands on an old grimoire. Nothing of any
real
power, nothing you’d have heard of, but enough to enhance some of my spells, maybe make me a little more of a player.

“Not—not to challenge you or your people,” she clarified quickly. “Just, I thought I maybe ought to get better at protecting me and mine, you know?”

If she felt the need to tell me at every step of the way that she wasn’t my enemy and wasn’t trying to be, this was gonna take all day.

“Yeah, makes sense. I take it you didn’t get to keep your new book for long?”

“I still don’t know how they did it,” the witch confessed. “It took me
weeks
of constant searching to find anyone who had one and was willing to sell, and then it was gone ten days later. Bump—that is, Mr. Scola’s always got a guy watching my place, and he swears he never saw anyone suspicious. Though I guess he wouldn’t really know what ‘suspicious’ looked like in this situation.”

A
guy, huh? Interesting. That could mean at least one of the two ginks outside was here on someone else’s say-so. Not my circus for the moment, though.