Dead to Rites (16 page)

A few more minutes, and I was about ready to start dumpin’ cups of water onto the ginks until one of ’em sputtered, when the Italian guy started to come around. I poked him until he opened his peepers, and then shoved my willpower through his pupils like needles.

I’ve sometimes described what I do in people’s heads as shuffling their thoughts like a deck of cards. These guys? It was more of a poker hand. Not the sharpest hammers in the shed, is what I’m sayin’.

And yet, I couldn’t get a whole lot outta them. Oh, they knew they’d been sent to rough me up, maybe even rub me out if they had to, but they didn’t seem real clear on who’d done the sending. They knew they hated my guts, personally, had been only too happy to take on the job, yet neither of ’em could give me a straight answer as to
why
, what I’d done to get ’em so good’n steamed, or even if we’d actually met before.

Golly-gee, why did
that
sound familiar?

Ramona again? Or McCall? I could ponder up motives for either of ’em; problem was, I could also come up with better reasons against it. Hmm.

Well, maybe they’d be able to tell me more later, given some time and distance for their scrambled noggins to unscramble. For now? Nothin’ left to do but wait for Pete to return my call.

Since my guests didn’t seem real taken by the idea of playin’ cards with their hands tied behind their backs, I dealt out a row of piles for Solitaire on the desk where the typewriter would go back to, once I got around to cleaning it up, and settled in.

* * *

Pete wasn’t alone when he finally showed, a couple hours before dawn.

He finally came wanderin’ down the steps to Soucek’s basement, a pair of uniformed bulls in tow. Him bein’ my friend, and appearances and procedure bein’ what they are, Pete stepped aside and let the other two question me about what’d happened, why I had two saps beaten black and blue and bound next to my desk. I gave ’em the skinny, they agreed it was pretty clear-cut self-defense, and then dragged the grumbling goons back out to their radio car and vamoosed. Only when all that was done did Pete’n me sit down to bump gums over everything goin’ down.

“To start with…” I tried to start with.

He didn’t even let me get that far. “To start with, why don’tcha tell me why your map looks like you just went ten rounds with Barney Ross.”

“You can see that?” Between the healin’ I’d already done, and the unpredictable way each of you mugs sees somethin’ a bit different when you give me the up-and-down, I didn’t figure it was all that noticeable.

He snorted. “I spend enough time around you, Mick. You ain’t the prettiest thing I see on a good day, but I
do
know you fairly well by now.”

Maybe that was it, sure. And maybe Pete’s other, uh, “problem” had somethin’ to do with it. We were between full moons right now, and so far as I could tell he remained entirely normal and human ’cept for those three nights a month, but who could say for certain?

Didn’t matter much, really. He’d seen it, so I went ahead and gave him the gist of what’d happened over the past few days.

“Jesus, Mick.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought this Ramona skirt was supposed to like you!”

“Well, I don’t think she meant for me to get plugged…”

“Oh, that makes it
all
better.”

He tugged a small metal flask outta his coat, took a deep gulp. Then he stood, walked over to the icebox, and tossed me a bottle of milk.

“Looks like you’re runnin’ low, Mick.”

I nodded a thank-you, popped the lid.

“Been drinking a lot while I been waitin’.”

“Hmm.” He took his seat again, gazing idly at the bloody typewriter on the floor. “I think you’ve got somebody’s tooth in your semicolon.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“So what’s your next step?”

“Well,” I said around a swallow of cow juice, “that partly depends on what you got for me.”

“Not a lot you hadn’t already guessed.” He flipped open his notebook, skimming back over the notes he’d copied down from department files back at the clubhouse. “They’re both small fry. Get by mostly on mugging, knockin’ over newsstands, some local protection rackets. Kinda goons most self-respecting mobsters only use as errand boys, if they bother with ’em at all.”

In other words, all useless. I scowled into my milk.

“There is
one
bit stands out, though,” he continued. “Could be a coincidence real easy, may not be anything hinky, but…”

“So, out with it. I’m the edge of my seat, here.”

“You’re leaning all the way back, Mick.”

“I didn’t say
which
edge. Spill already.”

“Well, they were both under glass awaiting trial not a week ago. Various charges, nothing big, but enough to put ’em both over for a few years if they were convicted. And then the charges were dropped and they were sprung, just a few days back.”

Now that
was
fascinating. As Pete’d said, could be a coincidence. Small-time crooks were bein’ released all the time, to make room in an already packed judiciary for bigger fish. So it
could
just be that they were freshly back on the streets and lookin’ for work, and that’s how they got picked for the “ruin Mick’s day” run.

Could be.

Could.

Damn. It was gonna be a while yet before there was any use tryin’ to grill ’em again. I could probably have forced my way through the confusion of whatever Ramona or McCall or whoever had done to ’em—and maybe I should have—but I was still nervous about tryin’ anything too heavy, magic-wise. If nothing else, it could do ’em some real damage, and I didn’t hate the ginks enough to wanna leave ’em as drooling vegetables.

Well, they’d be cooling their heels for a while. I could afford to wait, chat ’em up in a day or two. In the meantime…

“C’mon, Pete.” I was up and reaching for my coat before I realized I’d even made a decision.

“Uh…” He took one last swallow and shoved the flask back in his coat. “We going somewhere?”

“Yep. One of the only places I’m sure there’ve gotta be
some
answers to all of this. I’ve dug around there once already, but I think it’s worth a second trip. Especially with an extra pair of eyes.”

Not sure what he saw in my smile or my own peepers, but he actually wilted.

“I ain’t gonna like whatever you got in mind, am I?”

“Well, you’re a cop.” I grinned even wider. “So you damn well better not.”

* * *

“You were right, Mick. I don’t like this at all.”

“C’mon, Pete. What’s a little B&E between friends?”

“On a first offense? Probably not more’n two or three years.”

“See there? Nothin’ to worry about.”

Pete grumbled something rude I pretended not to hear, and stepped back to fidget and watch the hallway. Me, I was down on one knee, poking at the lock for the second time this week. No way for me to tell if Ramona’d been back here since my last visit, not from out here, but the wards on the lock were still down. If she
had
been back, she either hadn’t taken—or
couldn’t
take—the time’n effort to reset them.

Took just a few seconds to get that musical
click
, and then I pushed the door open and stood.

“You comin’?”

“I’d say I should stay and guard the hallway,” Pete muttered, “but that still makes me an accomplice.”

“Exactly. So come be a
good
accomplice, at least.”

“I’d feel better if we had a warrant.”

“Me, too, if it’d stop your constant bitching.”

Not sure if it was his shoulder or his scowl that shoved me aside as he pushed past me into Ramona’s apartment.

Everything stood more or less as I’d left it, including the piles of papers and scribblings and different envelopes addressed to different names on the nightstand. If Ramona
had
come back here after our encounter at the carnival, she hadn’t left any obvious signs of it.

Which also meant there was no new evidence jumping into view, wavin’ its hands at us and screamin’ for attention. I took another look-see around the place while Pete sifted through those papers, and then I waited while
he
poked around some. All of which led us to nothing much. Still no sign of who Ramona’s mystery boss was, or where we might find him.

Probably goes without saying that we didn’t come across any stolen mummies, either. I’da mentioned something like that.

“What about this?” I jabbed one of the envelopes with a fingernail. “You recognize the handwriting, by any chance?”

“Sorry, Mick.”

Guess I didn’t expect anything else. It still nagged at me, though. I could
swear
I’d seen it before. Cursing softly—in Old Gaelic, ’cause why not?—I scooped up the whole pile and started cramming half-crumpled pieces into various pockets.

“Uh, Mick? What’re you doing?”

“Taking these to study more closely later.”

“You mean stealing them.”

I almost missed a pocket due to shrugging at him.

“Book me.”

“She’s gonna know you were here!”

“She’ll get wise to that—if she ain’t already—soon as she sees the lock, Pete.”

He rolled his hands and threw up his eyes, or maybe it was the other way around.

“Whatever. Do what you want.”

“I was gonna. It’s nice to have your support, though.”

That task complete, I wandered across the apartment to stare at the blower.

“Hey, Pete?”

He grunted.

“You mind making a call or two?”

“Oh, now I’m useful?”

“I dunno, let’s see.”

Thankfully, it was just enough past dawn at this point that I figured there’d be people already at work in the various offices he’d need to speak to. I left him dialing around while I did yet more fruitless searching.

“Sorry, Mick,” he said eventually, joining me in the dining room. “Everything about the place is in one of her fake names.” He sorta gestured at me while he said that—or rather, I realized, at the papers I’d taken, where we’d first found those aliases. “Nothin’ that leads to an employer.”

Well, it’d been worth a try. But damn, I was gettin’ frustrated! I’d known she was good, that she
hadda
be good, but if she turned out to be
too
good for me to track down or outsmart, I was gonna start takin’ it personal.

“Could you get on the horn one more time?” I asked. “Find out if those two idiots who tried to jump me have been booked yet, and if we can grill ’em for a few?”

Yeah, I know. I said it’d be safer to wait a couple days, and it’d only been a few hours. Whaddaya want from me? I was gettin’ desperate for a lead.

And oh, I got one.

“Uh, Mick?” Pete lowered the blower, puttin’ one hand over the mouthpiece. “They ain’t there.”

Felt as if the air in the apartment got real thick all of a sudden.

“Define ‘ain’t there.’”

“I mean they’re not at the station. Got diverted to the state pen en route. They’re bein’ processed and kept
there
.”

Which meant a whole different set of procedures, under a whole different system. Different hoops to jump through in order to see ’em or question ’em, too. Sure, they’da gotten there eventually, but this quick? Totally bypassing county and city officials, a few days in the city slammer? On a simple assault charge? No way. Either somebody thought they needed protection—or somebody didn’t want anyone to have easy access to ’em.

“Anyone” meaning
us
.

“Who gave the word to transfer ’em?” I demanded.

Pete raised the receiver again and repeated my question.

“Dunno,” he told me. “Paperwork came down with all the proper seals through all the proper channels, is all guys at the front desk can tell me.”

Hinkier and hinkier, as the man almost said.

“Pete… Who dropped the earlier charges on these two? Who arranged their release in the first place?”

Again Pete spoke and cajoled and commanded for another few minutes, sometimes stopping to wait while the desk sergeant on the other end picked up a different line to make
more
calls. When he finally put down the phone, his face was red from shouting and wrinkled in thought.

“You look like a shriveled apple,” I told him.

“Nobody can answer the question, Mick. He said the secretary at the courthouse told him that the records ain’t complete. They know the order has to have come from someone legitimate, or the ginks wouldn’t have been released in the first place, but whoever it was never got around to signing the damn paperwork.”

“Gee, what a coincidence.”

“Ain’t it, though? What now?”

What now, indeed. Wheels in my noggin’ were finally turning again. Guess they’d slipped back into place from where the bullet’d jarred them loose, because I felt like I was thinkin’ clearly for the first time in days.

I’d already known that Ramona’s boss was somebody important, somebody powerful, somebody with access to police and banking records. What I hadn’t known until just now was that he actually had strings he could pull in the legal system, could make decisions affectin’ prisoners and trials and the judiciary.

That by itself didn’t prove much, didn’t tell me much. But now that I knew, now that I was already thinking in that direction? That was the push I’d needed. I finally knew where I’d seen that handwriting before.

And a
whole lot
finally fell into place.

It wasn’t enough to just suspect, of course, no matter how sure I was. I hadda know. You don’t move against a guy with that sorta clout
without
knowing.

Which made our next stop City Hall.

I ain’t gonna bore you with the specifics. Another train ride. Wanderin’ from office to office, sometimes just askin’ directions, sometimes throwing down a little mojo to get the answers I needed.

Then a lot more magic, even risking another backlash of bad luck (which, thankfully, didn’t happen this time). Enough magic to get me’n Pete into rooms we shouldn’t have been in, making sure to get the truth outta people we shouldn’t have been talking to. Until I finally found and mind-whammied a secretary who’d been ordered to keep her mouth shut, but was able to tell me who’d given the order to drop the charges against my two recent unwanted visitors.