In Truth and Claw (A Mick Oberon Job #4)

by Ari Marmell

  She was waitin’ for me to argue, I figured. If I’d given her a fight, she coulda focused on that, dragged her feet. But I didn’t, and finally the silence got to her.

  “Death.” She dropped back into the chair, so limp I’m surprised she didn’t slide right off to the floor. “I’ve been dreaming about death.”

  Nuts. Any hopes I had that this wasn’t connected to Áebinn’s premonitions were suckin’ in their last gasps.

  “Tell me.”

  She told me. The images themselves weren’t all that awful. I mean, they weren’t fun; bloody fights, putrefied carcasses, the graves of loved ones, Adalina herself wielding a gore-stained knife. Pretty nightmarish stuff, literally, but I’ve heard worse from humans and Fae both. More’n enough to ruin your beauty sleep, especially a couple nights in a row, but accordin’ to Adalina, that wasn’t the worst of it.

  Which brought me to the obvious question. “So what was?”

  And she clammed up again. No amount of waitin’, no convincing or cajoling, would drag it outta her. She just sat in her chair, starin’ at her lap, and cried.

  Yeah, I coulda forced the issue, gotten into her thoughts and made her tell me. It’s harder with Fae than mortals, impossible with some, but she had no teaching, no knowledge how to block me. I coulda pulled it off.

  No way I would, though. I was tryin’ to help her, not make it worse, and not leave her betrayed by the only person she could really talk to.

  Instead… “Adalina?”

  She sniffled twice, looked up.

  “These may not just be bad dreams.”

  I swear to you, I worried for a split second she mighta just up and died on me, pale as she got. “What do you mean?” Voice was tiny as a mouse’s sigh, but I still heard, tasted, the panic beneath the surface.

  Maybe I shouldn’ta said anything, but I couldn’t leave it there now.

  “I’ve heard from Áebinn. You remember? The one who was tryin’ to find me in Elphame?”

  She nodded.

  “She’s felt somethin’ in Chicago, somethin’ bad. And sensing the coming of death is basically her whole shtick. I think you may be pickin’ up on it, too, in your dreams. Like I told you you did with the Spear of Lugh.”

  Adalina’s gaze went so intent, I thought for a moment she was tryin’ to mess with my noggin. “And that could explain the nightmares? I’m having them because I’m feeling this… this other horrible thing?”

  “Could well be, yeah.”

  She sobbed again—in relief. I felt, and I mean literally, a huge weight of tension, of stark terror, leave the room. “Thank you, Mick. Thank you for telling me.”

  “Uh… Yeah. Always glad to be of help.” I was pretty sure I’d missed an ingredient when baking this conversation.

  “So, listen, Adalina… If these dreams are because you’re sensin’ something, you may be able to help me out. If they keep comin’, and you start to see a lot of anywhere or anyone you know, anywhere or anyone real, you gimme a shout.”

  “I will, absolutely.”

  “Swell. Let’s get Archie back in here and get you home.”

  She about floated to her feet, and she was around the desk to wrap me in a hug before I’d even stood up. I let it go on for a few, then gently disentangled myself and made for the coat rack.

  I was really itchin’ to know just what it was she hadn’t told me, what burden or worry I’d taken off her shoulders. Maybe later, when this was done, she’d be more inclined to spill.

  Adalina popped her head out the door to tell Archie she was ready to scram, and went to collect her stuff.

  “I got some of the boys keepin’ a slant on the boss’s house, even though the boss ain’t stayin’ there,” he told me while she was shrugging her way into her coat. “We ain’t got the vision to see through those, whaddaya call, glamours, so I dunno if they’re human or not, but someone’s sittin’ on the place.”

  “Good to know. Just don’t let ’em tumble to you. And—”

  “Yeah, yeah, and be careful. Change the record already, bo. I even told the guys to carry some iron pipes or prybars, just in case they gotta mix it up with the faeries.”

  “Huh. That’s actually pretty sharp thinking, Archie.”

  “You gotta sound that surprised about it?”

  “I don’t gotta, but it does come naturally.”

  “Comes naturally. Cute.”

  He started to go, but… “Hey, Archie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How’d you explain it to ’em? The iron?”

  “Heh. Told ’em I’d go into it later. Hope I think of somethin’ by then.”

  I snorted. “Good luck.”

  “Good luck. Right.”

  He nodded. I nodded. They left. I didn’t.

  I was alone with my thoughts, and they were lousy company.

  Didn’t much care for the notion, but I hadda stop treatin’ this as a distraction, just another chore to check off my list. Whatever it was that Áebinn—and probably Adalina—were sensing, it needed my full attention. Or at least a pretty solid portion of it.

  So, put my ongoing search for Orsola Maldera aside? That didn’t sit right. Then again, I’d been workin’ that angle on and off for months, and had squat to show for it.

  Then again again, depending on what she had cooking, the witch might well be exactly what Áebinn had felt, or at least connected to it.

  But maybe…

  Nuts. My head hurt.

  So, fine. Nobody knew from nothin’ about Orsola, so I’d abandon that trail for now. But my people might know somethin’ that could lead me to this “deathly power” from a different angle. Time for more of that shoe-leather and gum-bumping and huntin’ down my various contacts that you love hearin’ about almost as much as I love doin’ it.

  Normally Four-Leaf Franky’d be my first stop, but when we’d parted ways the other night, he’d promised to shout if he learned anythin’ interesting—about Orsola or Áebinn. Yeah, he wasn’t listenin’ specifically for anything about this thing of corruption and death, whatever that meant, but… Well, much as I give him a hard time, and for all he gets himself into hot water more often than the city’s entire supply of lobster, Franky’s no bunny. Between the bean sidhe and the witch, if he’d tumbled to anythin’ in the way of unnatural deaths, he’d drop me a dime.

  So I hadda dig up one of the others.

  Gaullman had escaped from his latest nuthouse and blown town. He’d be back soon enough, always was, but that didn’t do me any good now. Took me a day to track down Pink Paddy, and he was so completely over the edge with the rams on scotch and curdled milk that, even pushin’ my will into his head and tryin’ to get him to sober up did nothin’ but get me a slurred diatribe on how much better the hooch tasted back when it was illegal.

  Lenai wouldn’t even open her door for me, and told me in no uncertain terms which parts of me she’d remove with garden shears if I threatened to break it down like I had last time, and how she’d prepare ’em before makin’ me eat ’em.

  “I heard,” she told me through the door, “that some of the mojo-humpers—” that’d be her term for any of the Fae-blooded denizens of the Second City with more magic’n she had “—headed for the hills, or at least pulled up the welcome mats and triple-locked their doors. Why don’t you go bug them instead of pestering an old woman, you jackass?”

  Seemed as good a lead as any, and definitely the best I was gonna get from her, so I set out to do just that.

  And she was right. The “mojo-humpers” had gone to ground, the lot of ’em. I spent a couple more days diggin’ around, and came up with nada. I was just wonderin’ if I was desperate enough to go banging on Dan Baskin’s door, see if he or Ramona had any wisdom to share, when I finally got lucky.

  Well, lucky may not be the right word. Wasn’t exactly how I’d wanted things to turn out, and it sure wasn’t how he woulda.

  Can’t say I ever knew his real name. Hell, I ain’t even sure he knew his real n
ame. We all just called him the L King. Old, craggy hobo, lived mostly in and around the train yards, shoutin’ prophecies at passersby and pigeons, both of whom paid him about as much notice. He wasn’t exactly an oracle, far as accuracy went, but he was right just a mite more often than you could chock up to random chance. And between all the yappin’, he kept an ear to the ground and discovered a lot more of what was happenin’ nearby than most gave him credit for.

  But he never saw or heard this comin’, I guess.

  It was the pigeons that led me to him. I’d just dusted from one of the stations where he sometimes loitered and was racking my noodle tryin’ to figure where else to look when I spotted ’em a ways off, circlin’ like vultures or raptors do, and very much like pigeons don’t.

  Took me some while to get there, since I hadda climb through some alleys, over a few fences and scattered junk, and across some mostly bare, autumn-stiffened scrub. I tumbled to where I was goin’ once I stumbled across the tracks—painfully, what with the iron—but they led me right to a small opening in a hillside. Entrance to one of the underground freight and postal railway tunnels that run through parts of Chicago like an oversized anthill.

  More pigeons were gathered at the opening, standing way too still. Almost at attention. Maybe they had listened to some of those prophecies.

  The fetor of days-old rot was gathered pretty thick out here, too. Even if I hadn’t already figured what I was gonna find, that woulda told me all I needed.

  The L King was only a few paces inside, sloppily dumped right around the first bend. Whoever’d left him here’d done the bare minimum to keep the body from bein’ too obvious, but clearly didn’t care all that much about secrecy. The old man was a heap of meat, no longer stiff. His clothes were another matter, starched not just with the usual filth and sweat, but blood. It covered his chin, his shoulders, his chest, a flaky brown shawl that wasn’t ever gonna catch on in the fashion industry.

  The smell was gone this close, of course. That’d always been one of the hinkiest things about the L King: You’d smell him coming from down the block, even upwind and with the worst cold in your life, but the air was always clear within a few feet of him. Like his stink didn’t start until you were well outta arm’s reach.

  As I said, not entirely human.

  I stood over him, feelin’ like I oughta say somethin’ but lacking the words. We’d never been what I’d call pals, never drunk outta the same bottle, but he’d been a useful fella to know. He’d been harmless. And he’d been one of mine.

  Somebody was gonna have a mighty bad day when I learned who did this to him.

  Or what.

  See, the body was pretty badly mangled, the throat torn almost totally apart, so I didn’t have enough to be sure. And even if it’d given me more to go on, this wasn’t a conclusion I wanted to jump to based on a single corpse.

  But everything I could see pointed to the possibility of…

  Well, remember when I said Chicago might be in for a real bad time if we’d had ourselves a genuine vampire, instead of some corrupted fruit?

  It was lookin’ like Chicago was in for a real bad time.

  * * *

  Called the nearest clubhouse, left an anonymous report of the body—figured I’d let the bulls handle it, and even if a few of ’em noticed the hinkiness with the smell, it ain’t as if they’d suss out why—and went back to pestering my contacts.

  Still nobody would talk to me.

  I mean, it don’t take a detective to figure that if you’re dealin’ with a vampire—or even if it’s some other kinda killer beastie—and you got one vicious, bloody murder on your hands, first place you go hunt for clues is in the other recent vicious, bloody murders. Genius, no?

  But the press still hadn’t sniffed out anything helpful in the way of further detail. Keenan still wasn’t “authorized” to talk to me. Pete still didn’t know from nothin’. Baskin and Ramona wouldn’t return my calls, and the idea of payin’ my not-so-favorite Assistant State’s Attorney a visit, confronting Ramona mug to mug, appealed to me about as much as a dental drill suppository.

  I even faced the dreaded contraption at the end of the hall yet again, and dredged up the number Fino’d given me, so I could ask him if the killings might be mob-related, and if he’d heard anything about ’em. He hadn’t, said he’d nose around a little, but that he was pretty sure they had nothin’ to do with his “business.” He’d almost certainly have caught wind of something if they were. I asked him to take an extra close look at Saul Fleischer, the gangster-Kabbalist I’d locked horns with some months back, just in case.

  I retraced my steps and went back to all my usual contacts, but nobody’d heard anything new in the last couple days, and most of ’em just locked up even tighter, or pulled their burrows in after ’em, when I even got near the word “vampire.” Mighta been better for me if I hadn’t spilled that particular tidbit, but I ain’t that big of a crumb. They hadda right to know and to take steps, especially since we don’t necessarily have the same protections from the nosferatu that you mortals do.

  Fine, then. I’d tried to do it the polite and unintrusive way, but it was time for tougher measures.

  “C’mon, Keenan.” His desk was, if anythin’, even more of a disaster area than it had been the other day. So was the good detective; if he’d looked any more all in from lack of sleep, I’d probably have heaved garlic at him or shoved a stake through his pump, just to be certain. “It’s a good deal.”

  “How many times, Oberon? We all got strict orders about—”

  “You know I’m good at my job.” Well, when I’m able to actually tell you how I solved a case, like when it don’t involve bloodthirsty melons. “You know I can keep my head closed around a secret. You need all the people you can get on this before it blows wide open. And I’m willin’ to completely forego my per diem unless I actually dig up somethin’ useful. I don’t deliver, the department don’t owe me a dime. What’s to lose?”

  It was a solid argument, under the circumstances, and he knew it. That just made it easier. When he drew breath to answer, I caught his gaze, slipped in behind his thoughts. All I hadda do was bump up his desperation a little, tamp down his concern about following orders to the letter. It really didn’t take much; he was plenty desperate as it was.

  “All right, Oberon,” he said, shakin’ his head as if he’d just remembered where he was. “I still gotta get the captain to sign off, but I think I can bring him around.”

  And if not, I can always get you to let me jaw with him and convince him myself. “Sounds good. I’ll wait.”

  A short while later I was sittin’ in an empty interrogation room, filling out some of the usual forms, and a couple of unusual ones, so I could look into the case all official and proper.

  “Oberon.”

  I looked up as Detective Driscoll Shaugnessy poked his noggin into the room. I’d known it was him before he spoke, or even gotten to the doorway; the guy’s hair damn near glows orange in the dark. I knew he meant business, too, ’cause his shirt-sleeves were rolled up even tighter’n usual.

  “What’s up, Shaun?”

  “That’s ‘Detective Shaugnessy’ to you until I says otherwise, pally!”

  “Your moniker, your decision, I suppose.”

  “Damn right!”

  “But why would you want people callin’ you ‘Otherwise’?”

  His mouth stuck wide open and did this sorta weird twitchy thing on one side. Also…

  “Your face is goin’ red, detective.” Don’t get the wrong idea, me’n Shaun have no beef, other’n him bein’ just your generally unfriendly sort. He’s fun to wind up, though. “You blushin’? Was it something I said? Or are those freckles just annexing—”

  “I dunno what sorta hot water you got yourself into this time, Mickey.” Guess he was determined to get to his point— but I gotta admit, that point ain’t at all one I saw comin’. “But whatever it is, get a handle on it. I don’t need the fucking Bureau bar
gin’ in here and gummin’ up our day when we got our own messes to clean up!”

  I carefully put down the pencil next to the form I’d been filling in and stood up. “Play that for me again, startin’ with the first verse.”

  “You heard me, you—”

  He was more interested in yellin’ at me than explaining what the hell he’d meant, so back through the eyes and into the brain I went.

  Turned out an agent from the Bureau of Investigation had been in here yesterday, pokin’ around about me. Well, no, not investigatin’ me personally; he’d made a big point of assuring everyone of that. No, he wanted information on who my connections were, who I was chummy with. “Known associates,” as they say in the trade. Especially interested in anything new or changed in the recent past. He’d read up on Franky Donovan (what, you didn’t think Four-Leaf Franky of all guys had a record?), Fino Ottati and family, Pete’s service file. Even dug into Vince Scola and Saul Fleischer, two mobsters I’ve run into a few times but never once palled around with. Honestly, nobody from the Bureau shoulda been wise that I had any connection with ’em at all.

  But then, I hadn’t bought for one second the notion that this had been a real agent.

  She’d done this before, you remember? Last year, though she’d been more specific, come in as part of the Bureau of Prohibition division. Basically the same glamour, though. No reason anyone here woulda tried to see through it, even if they could.

  So, Áebinn was still lookin’ into my contacts. Well, let her. I mean, yeah, I’d prefer she keep her schnozzle focused elsewhere, but as long as she was just reading and watching, probably no harm to be done. And it wasn’t as if I could stop her anyway, not without sparkin’ a conflagration we neither of us needed or wanted just now.

  I didn’t think she was gonna learn much, though. Pretty sure none of the people with files here were likely the source of whatever nastiness she’d sensed. Now, Orsola, maybe Baskin and his collection of mystical gewgaws he didn’t know near enough about… Those mighta led her somewhere useful.