Hallow Point (25 page)

“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
snick
ing 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.

N
o, nobody else tried to jump us that night. Yeah, once we found O’Deah’s, I was able—after some asking around 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.

I’d fallen for her, hard. Been tied up in a pretty little bow. It felt right. Sometimes I couldn’t even question it, anymore’n I questioned the ground under my plates, or the existence of my left arm.

It felt right.

But I was finally starting, just starting, to think
maybe
it wasn’t.

We were comin’ up on Mr. Soucek’s building, and I still hadn’t decided whether to come out and say anything about all of this—or even if I
could—
when she made the choice for me.

“I’m going home for a time.” She said it real quiet, so that with the workday-morning traffic around us, I’d have just barely been able to make it out if my ears were human.

I turned, leaned one shoulder against a street light.

“What’re you talking about, sweetheart?”

“What am I…? Good God, Mick, did you actually
see
any of last night? I’ve had more guns pointed at me with you than if I’d just stuck around to deal with Jeremy’s, ah,
associates
! You were supposed to keep me
safe
!”

“Simmer down. Nobody’s fittin’ you for a pine overcoat yet.”

“And Rosen? God, I don’t… I will never,
ever
get that out of my mind! The sight, the… the smell…”

She choked up, and you know something? I wasn’t entirely sure I was buying it anymore, not after she’d managed to give that room a thorough look-see despite the gore. Yeah, maybe she was just real good at putting her feelings aside and doing what’s gotta be done—some people are—but it was one too many “maybes.”

“You firing me?”

“I… No. Well, not yet, anyway. I need some time to think, and… Frankly, after all this, I don’t think I’m likely to be in any more danger on my own, or with friends, than I’ve been with you. I’ll call on you tomorrow one way or the other, let you know what I’ve decided.”

“Uh-huh. And if I
don’t
hear from you?”

She smiled, first time in a while, and damn it if it still didn’t make me come over giddy.

“Then,” she said, “I expect you to remember that I
haven’t
fired you, and to come looking for me to make sure I’m okay.”

“Right. Got it. I don’t think this is a keen idea, Ramona. But if it’s what you need…”

“It is. Thank you, Mick.”

Ramona turned one way, back toward the nearest train station, and I went the other, heading home.

For a minute. Until she’d turned the first corner. And
finally
, when I couldn’t see her anymore, when so much about her felt hinky, it came to me. What it was I’d seen in those last minutes at Bumpy’s place. What’d been bothering at me ever since, like ants in my brain.

It was the stool. The one she’d picked up as a makeshift club. A stool from the stage, where the band had been playing. Plenty of bottles and bar stools where she’d been crouched that she coulda snatched up in a second. Yet she’d gone
back
, farther into the mess and chaos, because for some reason she’d wanted
this
stool for her weapon.

This stool, which—unlike the fancier, shinier numbers by the bar, with their stainless steel—had legs of
iron
.

She knew.

I spun and went after her like a lion on a three-legged gazelle.

If I’d been sure she was just a normal one of you dolts, I’d have counted on skill alone. But I wasn’t much sure of anything, anymore, and I wasn’t gonna chance it.

In my wake, as I ran—then walked—after her, people were havin’ a bad morning. Some tripped, stumbled, getting dirt on, or putting tears in, their work rags. Briefcases, purses, and newspapers slipped from what shoulda been secure grips, and I heard a woman shriek as another pedestrian’s dog slipped its leash and stuck its cold, wet nose somewhere she never really wanted a cold, wet
anything
.

Almost as though something was just sucking the good luck from ’em as it passed.

I didn’t take too much from anyone. Nobody got hurt, beyond maybe a skinned knee. But I didn’t have time or patience to do it any more slowly or gently than that.

And I’ll tell you what, it’s a good thing I did. Ramona never
looked
to be watching for shadows, but she sure
acted
as though she was. Extra trips around the block, switching lines at the gates and counters, even boarding the “wrong” train and hoppin’ back off at the last minute.

But I always found a spot, behind a barrier or in a crowd, where I could watch. Always managed to duck behind one of the other commuters if she looked too hard my way. Lucky I had so much… uh, luck.

I knew straight off she wasn’t heading home. Right general direction, but wrong line, especially when she switched trains somewhere around Englewood.