A Covenant of Thieves

by Christian Velguth

  “Did you?”

  Baum held his gaze for a long moment. Then all the air seemed to go out of her. She slumped back in the chair. “No.” Her voice was soft, and that made her sound like a different person entirely. “No. I’ve never killed anyone in my life.”

  She drew a sharp, shuddering breath, letting it out in a hissing burst. “Oh God. I’ve never been this scared before.”

  “You’re safe now,” he said, trying to inject confidence in his voice without making it sound like a platitude. “No one’s getting to you in here. Tell me what happened, and I can make sure it never happens again.”

  “I don’t believe that.” But, slowly, glacially, she nodded. Booker tapped his watch to make sure he was recording everything as she went on. “We took the contract a few days ago. Simple, straight forward. Nothing out of the usual. Client had the whole thing planned, all we had to do was be in the right place at the right time.”

  “And they wanted the skull specifically?” She nodded. “Why?”

  “Who the hell knows? Clients have weird tastes. We don’t ask.”

  “Any idea who your client was?” He posed the question without much hope, and was rewarded with a withering look. “Anonymous. Ok, fair enough. Go on.”

  She took another long drink before continuing. “We were supposed to ditch the van in the garage. That was the plan from the beginning. Hit the museum, lose any eyes on Lower Wacker, then ditch the van.” She segmented each step with a vertical chop of her hand.

  “And after that?”

  “According to the plan? Take the tunnels to an exit. Double back, ride the lake hopper over to Michigan, then catch a bus to Detroit. That’s where the drop was supposed to happen. Where we’d trade in the skull and collect our crypto. But it…that didn’t happen.” Baum drained her mug. “I barely made it out of that tunnel. Could I get some more coffee? Less sugar this time, no cream.”

  “Sure.” Booker poured a fresh mug, adding only half a packet of sweetener as she spoke.

  “I don’t know who it was. I didn’t see anything, alright?”

  “It was dark,” he said, handing her back the mug. She shook her head.

  “Not just that. You’re not going to find these people because they’re ghosts. I mean it. That garage was empty when I parked. Not a single car, not another soul. Nobody to follow us into the tunnels, and the door was still sealed when we got to it. They were waiting for us, get it? In the tunnel. Waiting.”

  Booker felt a chill run through him. “Tell me how it went down.”

  “Keillor and Harlan, my…colleagues. They took point. I followed them. Maybe that’s why…I could see, from behind, when…”

  She fell silent. Booker leaned back, watching her, letting the silence stretch. Her eyes were distant, and when she finally spoke it sounded as if she were recalling a dream. “I remember hearing a splash, up ahead. Something dropping into that shitty water. Something big. Thought maybe it was a rat, there were plenty of them down there. But then Keillor stopped, and Harlan ran into him. They were staring at something, pinning it with their lights. And then –” She whistled sharply through her teeth and held up a finger. “Just once. And they both went down heavy. Splash. Synchronized, like they planned it.”

  “A gun?”

  “I don’t know. Didn’t sound like one…”

  The examiner’s report had been inconclusive when it came to cause of death; too much acidic damage. The bullets, if they had never left the bodies, had been dissolved completely.

  “Who was it?” Booker asked. “When your partners, Keillor and Harlan, stopped, could you see who they were looking at?”

  “No one.”

  Booker frowned. “The shooter was standing outside your light?”

  “No. I don’t know. I don’t.” A bit of heat crept back into her voice. “That’s what I’m telling you. There was nobody there. They were a fucking ghost, even when they offed Keillor and Harlan.”

  “Ok, ok. So your partners go down, then the acid. How’d you get away?”

  She looked up at him, blinking. “What?”

  “How’d you --”

  “No, not that, the -- what acid?”

  “Ah. Your partners, when we found them, they’d, ah…been burned. Some sort of acid was used to erase their…identifying features.”

  He watched her reaction carefully, trying to see if she was really as shocked as she looked or was just acting. The way her throat was working, her face reddening -- he didn’t think she could fake that.

  “I -- I didn’t know about that. I was gone, out of there…”

  Booker nodded. “You need a minute?”

  “No, I just…” She leaned forward, head in her hands, and blew out her breath loudly. “Jesus.”

  He waited until she had collected herself, then asked, “How did you get away?”

  Baum sniffed wetly and shook her head. “I don’t know. Like I said, I was in back, kind of lagging when they – when it happened. After that I just…just ran. In the dark. Turned off my light so I’d be harder to find. Stupid. Was splashing around so much -- but I’m here, aren’t I? So maybe…I don’t know. Maybe the darkness saved me.”

  She took a deep breath and seemed to collect herself. “You made it back outside.”

  “Yeah. And I kept running. Just…did my best to disappear. Eventually I slowed down long enough to log –” Baum caught herself and glanced at him through her eyebrows. “To, uh, reach out to some contacts. Try and find a place to lie low.”

  She was about to give something away. Probably one of the dark web communities that people like Baum operated in. Some of them were pretty hardcore, with their own rules and codes. Betraying them could put Baum at even greater risk. He didn’t push it for now.

  “You came here instead. Why?”

  “Seemed the safest place.” She shrugged. “Stupid, right? Ghosts can walk through walls. This place has ’em, just like any other shithole. Not sure why I thought I’d be any safer.”

  “You are safe, Jane. I can promise you that. We’re in the middle of a hive of cops. Nobody’s getting in.”

  “Sure. Anyway, that’s it, I guess. I don’t have the skull, I’m sorry. Keillor was carrying it, and when I ran…it didn’t even cross my mind. My guess is whoever killed Keillor and Harlan has it now.”

  “It wasn’t in the tunnel, so you’re probably right.” Booker sighed, rubbing his eyes. “Hollis isn’t going to like that. Or any of this. He was pretty set on you being the killer. On all of this being just your average job-gone-wrong.”

  “He can kiss my tits. I don’t care what he likes, what I said was the truth.” Now that she had gotten her story out, Baum’s strength was coming back, as if the tale had been a poison eating at her the longer she kept it bottled up. “Hey. You believe me?”

  Booker met her eyes. They were hard again, piercing – but they also needed to be believed. And he found that he did. “Yeah. I don’t know what the hell it means, but I intend to find out. I’m gonna need more from you, though. If we’re going to figure this out, we’ll need to do it together.”

  She nodded once, a sharp jerk of the head. “Good. Because whoever did this is still out there. And if they can walk through walls, what’s to stop them from doing this whenever and wherever they want?”

  He nodded, standing and buttoning his jacket. “I’m gonna go talk to some people. I don’t need to tell you to stay here, but stay here. Someone will be outside.”

  “I guess I’m still under arrest, huh? Fuck. Should’ve asked for immunity or something.”

  “Yeah, that business with the museum isn’t going away any time soon.” He shrugged. “Still, who knows. Things change. Maybe your luck will, too.”

  * * *

  “And you believe that bullshit?”

  They were in Hollis’ office, with someone lower on the totem pole taking his place guarding Baum. Hollis was sitting, Booker was standing. After Baum’s story, he didn’t think he’d be able to sit for the r
est of the night.

  “I believe she believes it. Do I actually think an invisible man killed her partners? No. It was dark, everything happened fast, and she was panicked. Memory is tricky even under the best of conditions. But I don’t think she killed Keillor or Harlan. You didn’t find any gun on her?”

  “Could’ve dumped it.”

  “I don’t think she lied to me once in that room, Hollis. You saw it.”

  Booker had played back the interview on the detective’s terminal, watching again from the perspective of his own eyes. It was always a bit odd, when recordings were taken by his smart lenses. Closer to a memory than a digital artifact.

  “Yeah, I saw it. But…ahh, shit.” Hollis ran both hands over his bald head. “What am I supposed to do with this? What she gave us is worse than nothing, it’s a ghost story. Who knows how much of it actually happened and how much of it she hallucinated?”

  Booker circled the desk and leaned over the terminal. He scrubbed back a few minutes from the end of the recording, then hit play. “Eventually I slowed down enough to log –,” Jane Baum repeated. “To, uh, reach out to some contacts.”

  He hit pause. “That was something. My guess, she’s part of an online group, a marketplace or something, where freelance thieves can offer their services and find work.”

  “They have those?”

  “Yeah. And if I can figure out which network it was, I might be able to figure out who her client was.”

  “You think the, ah, client set up the hit.”

  “I think someone on the other side was behind all this, yeah. No other way for them to know when and where to hit.”

  “Great.” He sighed, grabbing his hat from his desk and jamming it on. “Can’t believe it’s only Monday. I’m not getting that skull back, am I?”

  “You might. Finding Baum’s client is our best bet.”

  “She said the drop was supposed to happen in Detroit,” Hollis muttered. “Maybe we should be focusing there as well. Make more sense for you to go. Michigan isn’t exactly within my jurisdiction.”

  * * *

  “One cheeseburger, tofu patty with extra mayo. And may God have mercy on your soul.”

  Booker set the Happy Meal on the table, and Baum attacked it with gusto. “Ain’ a burger wifout mayo,” she said around a mouthful of bun and tofu. She washed it down with a gulp of soda. “Oh, sweet baby Jesus, that hits the spot. I was ready to start chewing on the furniture.”

  Booker nibbled some French fries and tried to watch her without looking like he was watching her. About an hour had passed since Baum told her story. In that time she’d recovered a good chunk of her energy. She was certainly eating like a person who had something to live for, even if that living was going to be spent behind bars for the foreseeable future.

  “You’re staring, Mr. Agent Man. If you want a bite, you can just ask.”

  “Oh, I’d rather shoot myself in the foot,” he said pleasantly.

  “Good, because I wasn’t going to give you any.” The burger was gone in another two chomps. She got started on her own fries.

  “So,” Booker said, in conversational tones. “Which of your partners shot the security guard?”

  Baum rolled her eyes. “Harlan. Kid so young his skull was still soft. Keillor never should’ve put bullets in his gun.”

  “So it was an accident.”

  “Probably.” She shrugged, stuffing a handful of fries into her mouth. “Pretty sure he was on uppers when we picked him up, though. So make of that what you will.” She began rummaging in her bag. “There a toy in here? Ha! Look what I found!”

  Baum tore the clear plastic off her prize and set it on the table. It was a cartoonish skull set on small ball bearings. When she thumbed the small button in the back of the skull, the clear plastic flashed with a psychedelic display of LED light and it scooted across the table.

  “Put that in your museum.”

  Booker caught it before it zoomed over the edge to its doom. “I’m sure Hollis will be ecstatic. Speaking of the skull – the real one – I was hoping we could talk about who wanted it so badly.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Back to that, huh? There’s a killer out there and you guys are still worried about your shiny objects.”

  “The client could be the killer. Or at least connected somehow. They knew where to intercept you and your partners. They took the skull. Find one and I bet we’ll find the other.”

  “I don’t know…it could have been a rival crew.” She glanced at him carefully. “Why would someone hire us and then kill us? That’s not how it works – I mean, obviously. But everyone…look, the professional circles I frequent have certain expectations. Acceptable behavior, yeah? I know it sounds stupid, we’re thieves, right? But we’re still professionals. Take this job, for example. There weren’t supposed to be any bodies. No blood. Harlan fucked that up. Young, like I said.”

  “Maybe you can tell me about those professional circles.” Booker decided to take a leap. “Anything you can give me, about the client or the network, could be the key to catching these people.”

  Baum chewed thoughtfully, then set her fries aside. “I don’t know who the client was. They never give us a name. Anonymity is queen. And I can’t tell you anything about my networks. I’m sorry, but that would be burning bridges I can’t afford to lose. I know my career is over, and I probably won’t see the outside of a cell until the end of the century. But there’s a…code. And it matters.”

  “More than finding this guy and locking him up?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation. “I’m not just trying to save face here. Breaking the code goes both ways. You forfeit any protection you might have had within or from the community. If someone’s not happy about you running around with knowledge of the network, they can do something about it without risking their own reputation.”

  “You’re talking hitmen?”

  Baum aimed a finger-gun at him. “Bingo.”

  “We can offer you protection, keep you safe.” When she only gave him a stony look, Booker went on. “Look, you’re already here. Your people already have probable cause to go after you, right? So what do you have to lose? Tell me the name of your network and I can do better than track down the killer. I can expose your former colleagues before any of them can move against you.”

  Baum remained silent. She wasn’t looking at him, but her expression was thoughtful. She was considering it. Booker waited breathlessly, not wanting to pressure her -- doing that would only push her back in the opposite direction.

  Finally, she sighed. “No. I’m sorry, but…I just can’t. There’s good people in my network, and I can’t burn them all.”

  Damn. “I’m sorry to hear that. It’s not going to be dropped, you know. In the end, it might be taken out of your hands, and then it’ll be too late for me to help you.”

  She bit her lip. “Look…maybe later, ok? Just -- just find this killer first. I’ll do all I can to help you there. Then, when I can stop worrying about my face being melted off, maybe I’ll tell you more about my network.”

  Booker dumped his fries on the table and picked out the crunchy bits. “I can work with that. So. Let’s talk about the drop. You said it was supposed to happen in Detroit. What was the timetable for that?”

  At this, Baum’s eyes brightened. “Oh! That’s the thing, there was no timetable. It was supposed to be a dead-drop. We show up, stash the skull, skedaddle, and message the client. Then they wire us the crypto and pick up their prize whenever it’s convenient.”

  Booker straightened, abandoning his food entirely. “Message the client. How?”

  “Well, with an app. Duh. Any one of us could’ve done it.”

  “Jane, have you talked to the client at all since hitting the museum? Is there any way they could know what happened?”

  “No. I mean, unless they really are the ones who tried to kill me. Why? What’re you thinking?”

  He was on his feet, pacing. He spoke aloud, as much t
o work out his thoughts as to answer her. “Two possibilities. Either the client didn’t set up the hit, and they’re still waiting for you to reach out and make the drop in Detroit. News of the murders hasn’t been given to the press yet, so as far as your client knows, you’re lying low, waiting for the heat to die down. Or they did set up the hit…in which case they probably know one of you got away. And they might not be too happy about that. Either way, I think we might be able to flush them out.”

  He came to a halt and found Baum staring up at him, eyes narrowed. “If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, I’m going to dump this soda down those expensive-looking pants of yours.”

  Eight

  Milwaukee

  Wisconsin, The Third Coast

  The pachyderm raised its trunk and trumpeted into the air, a blat of sound that set Kai’s ears ringing. Amy danced back on her paws, whining as if concerned for this strange-looking dog. The ring of children that had gathered around the little elephant squealed in delight.

  “What’s her name?” asked a girl with long dark braids.

  “Cleo,” said the elephant’s owner. He held one end of a thick leather leash, which connected to a harness secured around the elephant’s middle. It was only a little larger than Amy, yet it had all the proportions of a full-grown African elephant. The latest in designer pets, thanks to Radical Dynamics.

  The same girl, bravest of the group, approached Cleo the elephant and crouched down. “Hi Cleo,” she cooed, reaching out a hand. Kai noticed for the first time that it was a prosthetic -- the coloration matched the girl’s skin tone perfectly, but its joints were obvious once you knew what to look for.

  Cleo was apparently better at detecting prostheses than he was. Her long trunk sniffed the girl’s hand, then wrapped around it and pulled it towards her mouth. The elephant’s owner scolded Cleo as she began to chew on it, but the girl merely laughed hysterically.

  “Ok, Serena, come on.” The girl’s mother pulled her back by the other arm, fighting a bit against the insistent elephant. “Ugh. That’s going to be a pain to clean.” She caught Kai’s eye, and they shared a smile.