by Dan Willis
“You want to talk about it?” Sherry asked, as he emerged back into the waiting room.
“No,” he growled. “I’ve got an hour, two at most, before I have to explain to an angry mob boss how the bodyguard he lent me got shot and whether or not his nephew had anything to do with it.”
“Okay,” Sherry said with a worried look. “I heard from Charles Grier.” She picked up one of her many notebooks, shook a few drops of coffee off it, then began flipping pages. “Here it is. According to him, most of the things on your shopping list are commonly used in alchemy. The only one that was kind of rare was Bourbon Vanilla. He said your alchemist might have trouble finding that fresh, since it comes from Madagascar. The extract is much easier to find, but might not work for every recipe.”
Alex chewed on his lip as he absorbed that information.
“You want me to get Linda on the phone?”
Alex shook his head.
“I’ll call her,” he said, heading for his office.
“What are you going to tell the mob boss?” Sherry’s voice trailed after him.
That was the million-dollar question and so far, Alex didn’t have an answer.
Sitting down behind his enormous desk, Alex pulled out his directory book and flipped to the letter K. He dialed Linda’s number and waited until the familiar voice came on the line. A momentary pang went through Alex that had nothing to do with the bruises the bullets had left on his body.
She sounds so much like Jessica.
“I was just about to call you,” Linda said, after Alex identified himself. “I went over that list you gave me, even checked the ingredients against Mom’s recipe book. Nothing really stood out, since lots of recipes use those ingredients.”
Alex sighed.
“All right,” he said, managing to keep the frustration out of his voice.
“There was one thing, though,” she went on.
Alex’s fading hopes perked up.
“Go on.”
“When Sherry gave me this list, she had cashews and apples listed, but those aren’t typically alchemy ingredients.”
That might be what made Colton’s Euphorian special, but neither of those ingredients were hard to find. Cashew nuts were expensive, but it wasn’t anything that would faze Lucky Tony.
“I’m thinking she might have given me the wrong ingredients,” Linda went on.
Alex pinned the phone receiver between his ear and shoulder, then pulled his flip notebook from his pocket. Finding the page where he’d transcribed Colton’s list, he ran his finger across it.
“No,” he said. “Both cashew and apple are on here.”
“Are you sure that’s what he meant?” Linda asked.
Even as she said it, Alex noticed what wasn’t on the list. He’d copied the text exactly as Colton had written it. There was a comma after every item but there wasn’t one between ‘cashew’ and ‘apple.’
“Hm. Is there such a thing as a cashew apple?”
“Yes,” Linda said. “Cashew nuts are actually seeds, and they’re part of a fruit known as a cashew apple.”
You’ve been looking for the wrong stuff, he chided himself.
“Are you sure about that?” he asked, not wanting to be sent off on a wild goose chase.
“That’s what’s funny,” she said. “There was an article in this month’s AAC Journal. It was about a South American alchemist named Rafael Bolsonaro. Apparently he just developed a process to make cashew apple extract.”
Alex wrote that down in his notebook, but it didn’t make any sense.
“Why is that important?”
“Because,” Linda said, with a smile Alex could hear. “Cashew Apples are used in lots of Brazilian alchemy. There’s demand for them all over the world.”
“How come I’ve never heard of them?”
“The fruit spoils very quickly,” Linda said. “And until Rafael Bolsonaro came along, it was impossible to ship very far.”
“But with the extract, it will become a viable ingredient for alchemists anywhere,” Alex said, nodding even though Linda couldn’t see him. “Thanks, doll. You’ve been a big help.”
He hung up and headed back to the waiting area.
“Any luck?” Sherry asked.
“Maybe,” he said, jotting a note in his flip book, then tearing the paper out and handing it to Sherry. “I need you to send a telegram.”
Alex shut his vault behind him as he re-entered his hotel suite. He went immediately to the little writing desk and poured himself two fingers of scotch in a tumbler before picking up the telephone.
“MacReady,” the lieutenant’s gruff voice greeted him after half a minute.
“It’s Alex Lockerby,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of time, so I need you to just listen. Call Lyle Gundersen over at the Smithsonian. Tell him to go out immediately and visit three of those storage warehouses the museum maintains. Any three will do, but make it at least three. He should talk to whoever is there and spend ten or fifteen minutes alone in the storage area.”
“Slow down, Lockerby,” the lieutenant said, and Alex could hear the sound of scribbling.
“When you’re on the phone with him,” Alex went on, speaking a bit slower, “arrange to meet him somewhere before he goes out to the first warehouse and give him a manila folder with a bunch of blank paper inside. Then, once Gundersen gets back to the museum, tell him to go straight to his office and lock the folder in his safe.”
“You think the thief is going to fall for that?” MacReady asked, catching Alex’s train of thought.
“Whoever is behind this is desperate,” he replied. “If they weren’t, they never would have sent their wolf-lackey after me.”
There was a long pause accompanied by scribbling, then MacReady came back on the line.
“All right, Lockerby,” he said. “It’s worth a shot.”
“Tell Gundersen to get lunch and go to the bathroom while he’s out,” Alex added. “He needs to stay in his office for the rest of the day once he gets back.”
MacReady promised that he would, and Alex hung up. He was tempted to call the hospital where he’d left Connie and check on the man’s condition. If the big mobster was dead, it might be better for Alex to just leave town. Instead, he downed his Scotch, picked up his hat, and headed for the elevator.
Lucky Tony Casetti’s face turned an angry shade of red when Alex looked into the recovery room where Connie was resting. He sat in a chair next to Connie’s bed with two of his men sitting on the far side. Connie lay asleep in the bed, looking pale. His left hand was wrapped in a bandage, revealing that his middle finger was missing. Alex felt a pang of guilt about that. If he could have reached Iggy, the finger might have been saved, but the doctors at the hospital had to prioritize saving the man’s life. Alex didn’t blame them.
“There you are,” he growled as Alex came in.
Alex had expected this kind of a response and he made sure to keep his face calm. Behind Tony, his goons stood as well, easing to each side so they had a clear line of sight on Alex.
“How’s he doing?”
“The doctor says he has a fifty-fifty chance,” Tony said. “Which is more than I can say for you, unless you’ve got a damn good excuse for why you left Connie here and just took off.”
“Connie needed surgery,” Alex said as if that explained everything. “I called you, so he’d have someone here, but that’s all I could do for him.”
“So you just decided to go out for lunch?” Tony said, balling his hands into fists.
Alex shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I went out to find out who shot him.”
Tony stepped up so close Alex could smell his last cigarette.
“Connie was awake a little while ago,” he said. “He told me you think Colton was involved in a theft at the museum, that he’s developed some kind of monster potion.”
“That’s the way I had it figured,” he admitted.
“That’s nonsense,” L
ucky Tony fumed. “Colton’s not a thief, and even if he were, there’s no potion that can turn a man into a monster. You’d better start talking fast.”
The ‘or else’ was implied, and even though Tony was two inches shorter than Alex, his presence filled the room. Alex took a calming breath and let it out.
“First off, there is such a potion,” Alex explained. “I’ve seen it work with my own eyes.”
Tony sucked in an angry breath, but before he could interject, Alex continued.
“But Colton didn’t make it,” he said. “In fact Colton didn’t have anything to do with the museum thefts or with the attack on me that got Connie shot.”
Tony closed his mouth for a moment, his face shifting from angry to shrewd.
“Connie got shot because of you?” he asked, his voice quiet and dangerous.
“Unfortunately,” Alex said. “I suspect the people who were behind Senator Young’s murder didn’t like me asking questions.”
Alex knew that Colton hadn’t been behind the attack when the gunman shot him in the back of his head. His companion had known about shield runes and directed the shot to a location he didn’t believe they could cover. An alchemist like Colton wouldn’t know that, but someone working for the Legion would.
“If you had stuck to the case I gave you, then Connie wouldn’t be laying here clinging to life,” he fumed. “You’d better hope he lives, scribbler. If he doesn’t, I’m going to make sure you join him.”
Alex tried to look nonplussed. He was relatively sure that if Tony came after him, Sorsha would turn him into a ferret, but that didn’t mean Tony couldn’t have Alex killed in an apparent accident. The mob boss was not an enemy to be taken lightly.
“I did what I could for him,” Alex said, nodding at Connie’s sleeping form.
“The doctor told me,” Tony said, still inches away. “That’s the only reason we’re talking here, and not down by the river while we wait for your cement shoes to harden. So tell me why we should keep talking here, and be quick about it.”
Alex reached into his coat pocket and the goons on either side of Tony reached into their coats.
“Easy,” Alex said, slowly pulling out a yellow envelope.
“What’s this?” Tony asked as Alex handed it to him.
“Telegram from the Hotel Americana in Rio de Janeiro. It’s from Colton. He went down there to secure the rights to the newly invented Extract of Cashew Apple; it’s one of the ingredients he needs to make Euphorian on a large scale.”
Tony tore open the telegram and read it, his face relaxing as he did so. When he finished, he sighed and crossed himself.
“Thank God,” he said. A moment later, his skeptical face came back. “But what about Sal? How did he end up dead?”
“That one’s easy,” Alex said. “The Aerodrome is on the other side of the river. Colton drove his car over there to catch an airship for Brazil. According to the timetable, one left at four thirty-five that afternoon. Sal, being a good bodyguard, went with him, then walked back across the river to the city.”
“And some random person just hit him while he was on the bridge?” Tony said.
Alex shrugged and nodded.
“Looks that way.”
“Why didn’t he just get a cab at the Aerodrome?”
“I suspect Colton needed more cash than he realized,” Alex said. “Sal probably gave him whatever cash he had on him, figuring it was only a couple of miles to your house once he’d crossed the bridge.”
“So Colton leaves town,” Tony summarized. “He expects Sal to tell me where he went, but Sal gets hit before he can. Why didn’t the driver of the truck report the accident?”
“No idea,” Alex said. “He may have had contraband in the truck, or maybe he was wanted. There are plenty of reasons the driver would just keep driving.”
Tony didn’t like that answer, but he couldn’t fault it, either.
“All right,” he said at last. “You’re off the hook — for now. But I’m going to confirm this telegram and it had better be on the level.”
“I told him to wire you as well,” Alex said. “I suspect you’ve got a telegram waiting for you at your house.”
Tony turned to the tall, thin goon on his right and nodded toward the door. The man grunted an acknowledgement and headed out past Alex, presumably to call the house and confirm the telegram. Alex was relieved that Tony was easy to predict; he was a businessman and behaved like anyone whose life was made up of transactions. He’d wanted to balance the scales for Connie’s injuries, and Alex had brought him something of value. He wasn’t sure he was out of the woods with the gangster yet, but it was a good start.
“One more thing,” Alex said, nodding at Connie’s unconscious form. “Once he’s back on his feet, I know a runewright who can do a regrowth rune. It’s a variant of a major restoration rune, and it can restore Connie’s missing finger.”
“I know what it is,” Tony said, giving Alex a wary look. “Those are expensive.”
He wasn’t wrong. Major restoration runes could cost up to a grand to produce normally. Fortunately Iggy and the Monograph had a few shortcuts that reduced the cost by half.
“Consider it an apology for putting Connie in harm’s way.”
Tony chuckled, then he smiled and nodded at Alex.
“You’re all right, kid,” he said. “You understand how to take responsibility for your actions, and how to make amends. These are things men do,” he said, and put emphasis on the word ‘men.’ “Unfortunately there aren’t enough people who understand that anymore.”
“It’s the least I can do.”
“There is one more thing I want you to do,” Tony said, resuming his seat by Connie. “I want you to find out who did this,” he jerked his head at the bed. “You find them, and you come and tell me.”
His voice hadn’t changed. It was still the cultured businessman, but the implications were loud and clear. Alex had no wish to get on Tony’s bad side, having just managed to get off it, but he had no intention of bringing Connie’s shooters to the mob. If he was right, they were members of the Legion, and he and Sorsha had first claim on them.
Out loud he said, “I’ll see what I can do.”
28
Not in the Cards
Alex got out of a cab in front of D.C.P.D.’s Command Office one with just 30 minutes to spare. He needed to be over at the Smithsonian before the doors closed at seven, and he was cutting it close. It had been several hours since he left Connie in his hospital room, but his experiences in D.C. had prompted him to make some much-needed changes to his vault before he met Lieutenant MacReady.
“You’re late,” the Lieutenant said as Alex entered the building. MacReady and six large uniformed policemen waited for him in the lobby. MacReady carried a shotgun over his arm and the uniforms were armed with billy clubs, pistols, and a large, heavy net.
“We’ve got time,” Alex said.
“You still haven’t told me how we’re going to sneak all these boys into Gundersen’s office,” MacReady said, jerking his thumb at the men behind him.
Alex held up a bit of chalk and smiled.
“With this,” he said, heading for the stairwell to get some privacy.
Once the Lieutenant and his men had crammed into the space, Alex opened his vault against the side wall of the landing. The space beyond was radically different than it had been, and it surprised Alex for a moment. The door used to lead directly into his great room, but now it opened into a rectangular room with a large conference table in the center and chairs all around. At the back of the room was a plain wooden door that Alex knew none of the police would be able to open. It was one of three spare cover doors he had on hand in case he ever needed to leave his vault door open for some reason.
The table and chairs had come from the unused conference room in Alex’s office in Empire Tower. He and Mike had muscled them in once Alex pushed the wall of his great room back and created the space he was now thinking of as his
vault’s vestibule. Unlike the fancy, stained-glass-enclosed one at the brownstone, this one could be used for meetings, to hold gear he might need at a moment’s notice, or as in tonight’s case, a place to man a stakeout.
“What is that?” one of the uniforms asked.
“This is my vault,” Alex said. “It’s a magical space I can use for any number of reasons, In this case, I’m going to use it to transport all of you to the museum without being noticed.”
“You want me to get in there?” MacReady said, his skeptical look bordering on hostile.
“It’s perfectly safe,” Alex said. “I’ve done this before.”
“What if something happens to you while I’m in there?” MacReady asked.
“My secretary has a key,” he said. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but Sherry had no real way to get the lieutenant and his men out of Alex’s vault if something were to happen. Of course, Iggy could still get in from the brownstone.
You mean from your office or apartment, he reminded himself. He still didn’t know why his door to the brownstone had closed, but he’d worry about that later.
What if the brownstone door closed when Sherry opened the back door?
That thought brought him up short. What if he could only have a certain number of doors open at once?
Shaking his head to banish that train of thought, Alex stepped inside the vestibule.
“Everyone come in and grab a seat,” he said. “Once you’re in, I’m going to close the door and it will disappear. Don’t be alarmed, because it will open up again as soon as I get to the museum.”
MacReady gave Alex a long, penetrating look, no doubt searching for signs of deception, then he stepped inside. One by one, his men followed.
“Okay,” Alex said, stepping out again. “Sit tight and I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
“You’d better,” MacReady said. “It’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow.”
Alex gave him a reassuring look, then he shut the big steel door and waited as it vanished back into the gray wall of the precinct stairwell.
