"Ms. Demeter," I said, keeping my tone neutral. "Good day."
She finished turning off her laptop, folded it shut, and put it away in a drawer before she looked up and gave me a quiet nod. "Mister Dresden. What happened to your face?"
"It"s always like this," I said. "I forgot to put on my makeup today."
"Ah," she said. "Will you have a seat?"
"Thanks," I said. I sat down across the desk from her. "I apologize if I"ve inconvenienced you."
Her shoulder twitched in a nanoshrug. "It"s nice to know the limitations of those I"ve appointed my receptionist," she replied. "What can I do for you?" Then she lifted her hand. "Wait. Allow me to rephrase. What can I do to most quickly get rid of you?"
A sensitive guy might have felt a little hurt by that remark. Good thing I"m me. "I"m looking for Marcone," I told her.
"Have you called his office?"
I blinked slowly at her once. Then I repeated, "I"m looking for Marcone."
"I"m sure you are," Demeter said, her expression never flickering. "What does that have to do with me?"
I felt a tight smile strain my lips. "Ms. D, I can"t help but wonder why you instructed your receptionist to tell anyone who asked after you that you weren"t in the office."
"Perhaps I had some paperwork I needed to get done."
"Or perhaps you know that Marcone is missing, and you"re using it as a tactic to stall any of his lieutenants who come nosing around looking to fill the void."
She stared at me for a moment, her expression giving away nothing. "I really can"t say that I know what you"re talking about, Mister Dresden."
"You sure you don"t want to get rid of me?" I asked. "You want me to stay here and lean on you? I can make it really hard for you to do business, if I"m feeling motivated."
"I"m sure," Demeter replied. "Why would you want to find him?"
I grimaced. "I have to help him."
She arched a single, well-plucked eyebrow. "Have to?"
"It"s complicated," I said.
"And not terribly credible," she replied. "I am well aware of your opinions regarding John Marcone. And even a.s.suming that I had any information as to his whereabouts, I"m not sure that I"d wish to make a bad situation worse."
"How could you do that?" I asked.
"By involving you you," she replied. "You clearly do not have Mr. Marcone"s best interests in mind, and your involvement could push his captors into precipitous action. I doubt you"d lose a moment"s sleep were he to be killed."
I would have shot back a witty reply if I hadn"t slipped on a banana peel of self-recrimination, having said more or less those exact words not long before.
"But sir!" came Billie"s voice in protest from the hall outside.
The doorway darkened behind me, and I turned to find several large men standing there. The foremost of their number was a big guy, late forties, with an ongoing romance with beer, or maybe pasta. He wore his heart on his potbelly. His well-tailored suit mostly hid the gut, and it would have concealed the shoulder rig and sidearm he wore beneath it if he"d made the least effort to avoid exposing it as he moved.
"Demeter," the big man said. "I need to speak to you privately."
"You couldn"t afford me, Torelli," Demeter replied smoothly. "And I"m in the middle of a business meeting."
"Get one of your wh.o.r.es to get him off," Torelli said. "You and I have to talk."
She arched an eyebrow at him. "Regarding?"
"I need a list of your bank accounts, security pa.s.swords, and a copy of your records for the last six months." He scowled, looming over her. Torelli was the kind of guy who was used to getting his way if he loomed and scowled enough. I knew the type. I tried to glance past the goons to see whether Thomas was in the hallway, but could detect no sign of him.
"One wonders if you have been partaking of your product," Demeter said. "Why on earth should I provide you with my records, accounts, and funds?"
"Things are going to change around here, wh.o.r.e. Starting with your att.i.tude." Torelli glanced at two of the four men behind him and angled his head toward Demeter. The two goons, both of them medium-caliber Chicago bruisers, stepped around Torelli and walked toward her.
I grimaced. I didn"t care for Demeter much, personally, but I needed her, and I wouldn"t be able to talk her into helping me if she were laid up in intensive care. Besides, she was a girl, and you don"t hit girls. You don"t let two-bit hired bullies do it, either.
I stood up and turned to face Torelli"s men, staff in hand. I gave them my hardest look, which didn"t even slow them down. The one on the right threw something at my face, and I had no time to work out what it might be. I ducked, recognized it as a snow-speckled winter glove, and realized that it had been a distraction.
The guy on the left came in on me when I was ducking and kicked a steel-toed work boot at my left knee. I turned my leg and took it on the shin. It hurt like h.e.l.l, but at least I could still move. I rolled to one side, placing the goon on my left between myself and the goon on the right. He threw a looping right hand at me, and I met his knuckles with my staff. Knuckles crunched. The goon howled.
The other one bulled past his pain-stunned partner and came at me, obviously planning on tackling me to the floor so that all of his buddies could circle up and kick me for a while.
Couldn"t have that. So I raised my right hand, clenched in a fist, baring four triple-wire bands, one on each finger. With a thought and a word I released the kinetic energy stored in one of the rings. It hit the goon like a locomotive, slamming him back and to the floor with a very satisfying thud.
I turned and kicked the stunned first goon in both both shins, shins, hah hah, then placed one of my heels against his hip and shoved him to the floor. He crumpled.
I turned to find myself staring down the barrel of Torelli"s gun.
"Not bad, kid," the would-be kingpin said. "That judo or something?"
"Something like that."
"I could use a man of your skills, once my health club finishes"-he gave Demeter a sour glance-"reprioritizing."
"You couldn"t afford me," I said.
"I"m going to be able to afford a lot," he said. "Name your price."
"One hundred and fifty-six gajillion dollars," I said promptly.
He squinted at me, as if trying to decide if I was joking. Or maybe he was just trying to figure out how many zeros I was talking about. "Think you"re cute, huh?"
"I"m freaking adorable," I said. "Especially with the racc.o.o.n face I"ve got going here."
Torelli"s features darkened. "Kid. You just made the last mistake of your life."
"G.o.d," I said. "I wish wish."
Thomas put the barrel of his Desert Eagle against the back of Torelli"s head and said in a pleasant voice, "Lose the iron, nice and slow."
Torelli stiffened in surprise and wasted no time in complying. He turned his head slightly, looking for his other two goons. I could see a pair of feet lying toes-up in the hallway, but there was no other sign of them.
I stepped up to him and said calmly, "Take your men and get out. Don"t come back."
He regarded me with dull eyes, then pressed his lips together, nodded once, and began gathering up his men. Thomas picked up Torelli"s gun and stuck it down the front of his pants, just like you"re not supposed to do. He walked quietly over to stand beside me, his eyes tracking every movement the thugs made.
They departed, half carrying the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d with the broken hand, while the two in the hallway staggered along, barely recovered from being choked unconscious.
Once they were gone I turned to face Demeter. "Where were we?"
"I was questioning your motives," she said.
I shook my head. "Helen. You know who I am. You know what I do. Yeah, I think Marcone is a twisted son of a b.i.t.c.h who probably deserves to die. But that doesn"t mean I"m planning on carrying out the deed."
She stared at me in silence for ten or fifteen seconds. Then she turned to her desk, drew out a notepad, and wrote something on a piece of paper. She folded it and offered it to me. I reached out for it, but when I tugged she didn"t let go.
"Promise me," she said. "Give me your word that you"ll do everything you can to help him."
I sighed. Of course.
The words tasted like a rancid pickle coated in salt and vinegar, but I managed to say them. "I will. You have my word."
Demeter let go of the paper. I looked at it. An address, nothing more.
"It might help you," she said. "It might not."
"That"s more than I had a minute ago," I said. I nodded to Thomas. "Let"s go."
"Dresden," Demeter said as I walked to the door.
I paused.
"Thank you. For handling Torelli. He would have hurt some of my girls tonight."
I glanced back at her and nodded once.
Then Thomas and I headed for the suburbs.
Chapter Twelve.
M arcone"s business interests were wide and varied. They had to be when you"re laundering as much money as he was. He had restaurants, holding companies, import/export businesses, investment firms, financial businesses of every description-and construction companies. arcone"s business interests were wide and varied. They had to be when you"re laundering as much money as he was. He had restaurants, holding companies, import/export businesses, investment firms, financial businesses of every description-and construction companies.
Sunset Point was one of those boils festering on the face of the planet: a subdivision. Located half an hour north of Chicago, it had once been a pleasant little wood of rolling hills around a single tiny river. The trees and hills had all been bulldozed flat, exposing naked earth to the sky. The little river had been choked into a sludgy trough. Underneath the blanket of snow the place looked as smooth and white and sterile as the inside of a new refrigerator.
"Look at this," I said to Thomas. I gestured at the houses, each of them on a lot that exceeded the building"s foundation by the width of a postage stamp. "People pay pay to live in places like this?" to live in places like this?"
"You live in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a boardinghouse," Thomas said.
"I live in a big city, and I rent," I said. "Houses like these go for several hundred thousand dollars, if not more. It"ll take thirty years to pay them off."
"They"re nice houses," Thomas said.
"They"re nice cages," I responded. "No s.p.a.ce around them. Nothing alive. Places like this turn a man into a gerbil. He comes home and scurries inside. Then he stays there until he"s forced to go back out to the job he has to work so that he can make the mortgage payments on this gerbil habitat."
"And they"re way nicer than your apartment," Thomas said.
"Totally."
He brought the Hummer to a crunching halt in the snow, glaring through the windshield. "d.a.m.n snow. I"m only guessing where the streets are at this point."
"Just don"t drive into what"s going to be somebody"s bas.e.m.e.nt," I said. "We pa.s.sed Twenty-third a minute ago. We must be close."
"Twenty-third Court, Place, Street, Terrace, or Avenue?" Thomas asked.
"Circle."
"d.a.m.ned cul-de-sacs." He started forward again, driving slowly. "There," he said, nodding to the next sign that emerged from the haze. "That one?"
"Yeah." Next to the customized street sign was a standard road sign declaring Twenty-fourth Terrace a dead end.
"d.a.m.ned foreshadowing," I muttered.
"What"s that?"
"Nothing."
We drove through the murky grey and white of a heavy snowfall, the light luminous, without source, reflected from billions of crystals of ice. The Hummer"s engine was a barely audible purr. By comparison the crunch of its tires on snow was a dreadful racket. We rolled past half a dozen model houses, all of them lovely and empty, the snow piling up around windows that gaped like eye sockets in a half-buried skull.
Something wasn"t right. I couldn"t have told you what, exactly, but I could feel it as plainly as I could feel the carved wood of the staff I gripped in my hands.
We weren"t alone.
Thomas felt it too. Moving smoothly, he reached an arm behind the driver"s seat and drew forth his sword belt. It bore an old U.S. Cavalry saber he"d carried on a number of dicey occasions, paired up with a more recent toy he"d become fond of, a bent-bladed knife called a kukri, like the one carried by the Ghurkas.
"What is that?" he asked quietly.
I closed my eyes for a moment, reaching out with my arcane senses, attempting to detect any energies that might be moving in around us. The falling snow m.u.f.fled my magical perceptions every bit as much as it did my physical senses. "Not sure," I said quietly. "But whatever it is, it"s a safe bet it knows we"re here."
"How do you want to play it if the music starts?"
"I"ve got nothing to prove," I said. "I say we run like little girls."
"Suits me. But don"t let Murphy hear you talking like that."