A Plain-Dealing Villain (6 page)

By the time the cab dropped me off on the edge of Millennium Park, the rain had turned to a slow drizzle drifting down from gray velvet clouds. The mist felt good against my cheeks, cool and clean, and the air smelled like fresh-cut grass. The
Cloud Gate
was the first thing that caught my eye: a giant curving sculpture of mirrored metal, like a kidney bean made of liquid mercury, reflecting the city back at itself.

I walked the other way. Too much self-reflection can be bad for you.

I waited for the crossing light, jogged across six lanes of traffic, then followed East Madison for a block. Chicago was cavernous, skyscrapers looming around me like art deco mountains, and the crowds on the sidewalks could give the Vegas Strip a run for its money.

Money, again. The smell of it hung in the air, stronger than the rain. Back home, I was used to being the fastest thing on the street, moving like a shark through the packs of tourists in cheap sunglasses and flip-flops. Here, everybody had a little hustle in their step. Phones to faces, charging straight ahead, chasing that money down.

I turned south onto Wabash Avenue. Here it was: Jewelers Row, two solid blocks filled with the stuff that dreams are made of, cast in the shade of the elevated train tracks. I drifted past diamond wholesalers and custom wedding-ring designers, trying to figure how much cash flowed along this street on any given day.

An “L” train rolled by overhead, rattling the iron rails and sending a shower of sparks down onto the street below.

Ecko’s shop looked like it catered to a discreet crowd. No big marquee out front, just a marble plaque reading “D. Ecko and Company” over a thick glass door. I pretended to window-shop, eyeing the necklaces on display while looking past them to the showroom. Security was no joke, not that I’d expect it to be. Even from outside I could see a wide-angle camera and a motion-detector box high up in the back, and the corner of the window glass was rigged to a tiny plastic disc and a cord that snaked out of sight. Seismic alarm.

The keypad inside the door bore a stylized lapis lazuli
P
. Polymath Security. I gritted my teeth. Polymath was the best in the business: multiple backups, rock-solid security systems, and a reaction time measured in seconds. I knew a few heisters who would just walk away and look for an easier score the instant they saw that logo. I didn’t have that luxury.

I hooked a right down an alley barely wide enough to fit a car through, looking for another angle. Much as I liked the idea of robbing Ecko’s
entire
castle, the only thing I needed was supposedly up in his second-floor loft. If I could find another way in, and bypass the shop altogether, it’d make my life that much easier.

No such luck. What I found around back was a small parking nook and a couple of overstuffed Dumpsters. The windows of Ecko’s loft looked down from a flat brick wall devoid of a fire escape. I could even see the empty bolt holes where an emergency stairway used to be.

I called Stanwyck back, got the address for his favorite motel, and went looking for another cab. I’d done all I could as a solo act.

*     *     *

The motel manager had deep jowls, a potbelly, and more hair on his cheeks than on his head. I waited on the other side of the check-in desk as he hunt-and-pecked his way around his computer, one glacial tap at a time.

“Two nights,” he said, like he was thinking hard. “That’s $59.98, plus tax.”

“I’ll be paying in cash.”

He squinted at me. “I need to get a credit card. Even if you pay cash. In case of damages.”

I counted out six crisp twenties from my envelope and laid them out side by side on the counter between us. Making the math easy.

“So how about I put down a nonrefundable security deposit, and we skip that step?”

Three twenties went into the register, and three went into his back pocket. He handed me a key clipped to a heavy plastic tag.

“Room four,” he said. “Enjoy your stay, Mr. Smith.”

I walked along the edge of the lot, trying to ignore the drug deal going down in plain sight between a couple of parked sedans. Between that and the empty beer cans scattered around the dirty asphalt, I obviously wasn’t in the best part of town. The first thing I did in the room, after throwing the deadbolt, was check for bedbugs. The mattress was clean, but I couldn’t say the same for the musty sheets or the mildew spots clinging to the shower stall in the bathroom.

I unpacked my messenger bag. Inside were toiletries, a change of clothes, my laptop, a camera I’d borrowed from Bentley, and a set of batteries. I thumbed open the camera’s battery compartment and tugged out a small plastic baggie filled with glittering red dust. Mama Margaux couldn’t come along on this job, but she still made sure I had a little something special to work with. Her spirit powder had saved my life back when I ran into Stacy Pankow’s wraith in the storm tunnels under Las Vegas. I figured it was the perfect thing to have in my hip pocket if Damien Ecko really was a necromancer.

After that there wasn’t much left to do but sit on the edge of the bed and watch local television on a grainy, twenty-inch screen while I waited for a knock at the door. When the knock finally came, I jumped up and took a look through the peephole. The man outside was stocky, clean-cut, and standing at parade rest.

“Faust?” he said as I cracked the door.

I nodded. “Stanwyck?”

“May I?”

I let him in. He moved like ex-military, someone who hadn’t been out of the service long enough to forget old habits. I gestured to the round table by the window and he pulled back a chair, but he didn’t sit down until I did.

“Coop says you’re dependable,” I told him.

“And he says you’ve got a pedigree. Nicky Agnelli?”

“Not anymore. This job is for a private client. I need a wheelman who knows the streets here.”

“That’s me,” he said.

“Done anything I might know about?”

“Palmidero Street Currency Exchange in ’09, First Boston Federal in winter of 2012. You should have seen that one. Blizzard rolling through and the streets were carved from sheets of black ice. Silent alarm blew, Boston PD rolled in, and I still got the whole team out clean. Not even a scratch on the fenders.”

“Palmidero.” I frowned, trying to remember why that name was nagging at me. “That went sideways, didn’t it? I remember there were a couple of hostages.”

“Wasn’t my fault.”

“Those hostages wound up dead.”

“They shouldn’t have played hero.” Stanwyck shrugged one shoulder. “It happens.”

“Not on my crew. No civilian casualties, no cowboy bullshit. I do it clean or I don’t do it.”

“Whatever you say. I’m just the driver.” He gave me a lopsided smile. “Clean, dirty, you call the shots. Long as I get my cut, I’m a good soldier.”

“Fair enough. Got a car?”

“A rental under a fake name, but we won’t be using that for the job. I’ll boost something on the day of. We exfiltrate in the stolen car, drive it a few blocks, dump it, and switch to the rental once I know our trail’s clean. What’s the target?”

“A loft above a store on Jewelers Row,” I said. “Coop told me you used to be a local here. Ever hear anything about a guy named Damien Ecko?”

His eyes narrowed, just a bit.

“Nothing good. Word is—and this is all secondhand, mind you—Ecko runs a backroom banking operation for half the drug dealers in the city. See, you give him something for collateral, usually something high-value but hard to fence, like a piece of stolen art. He fronts you a stack of cash. You go buy a brick of coke or whatever your poison is, sell it on the street, and buy back your collateral—plus twenty percent interest—with part of the profits. Everybody wins.”

And now I knew why an ancient Aztec knife, once kept in a museum, was sitting in a jewelry merchant’s safe.
Private collector, my ass
, I thought. It looked like Nicky Agnelli wasn’t Drake’s only contact in the underworld. This job had been sketchy from the start, and it just kept getting sketchier.

“Is he connected?” I asked.

“What, to the Outfit? On the outside edge, maybe. Gotta assume he pays out for the right to do business in Chicago. Lots of people do, though. Doesn’t mean he’s a made man.”

Those familiar old alarm bells in the back of my mind, ringing strong and loud.

“You still have any local contacts? Somebody you might ask?”

Stanwyck nodded. “Sure, a couple.”

“I just want to be certain, if we do this thing, that nobody
but
Ecko is gonna come looking for us.”

And if it turns out Cameron Drake tried to con me into stealing from the Chicago mob
, I thought,
I’m flying straight back to Austin to kick his head in
.

“Knowing’s half the battle,” Stanwyck said. “I can make some calls tomorrow, before Coop and Augie get here.”

“Good. Can you help me with something else tomorrow morning? I need to do a little more recon, and it’s a two-man job.”

Stanwyck pushed his chair back. “Just say when. I’m in room seven. Got any objections to drinking the night before a score?”

“Long as you aren’t hung over tomorrow, it’s no business of mine.”

“Good,” he said. “Then I’ve got a date with a six-pack. Come on by if you’re feeling thirsty. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the morning.”

I let him out, slid the deadbolt, and sat back down. I had some thinking to do.

The client was weird. Now the score was weird, too. Didn’t make the job any less real, though, and it didn’t change what I’d come here to do. I decided it would all come down to Stanwyck’s contacts. If they said Damien Ecko was protected from on high by the Outfit, I’d pull the plug and send everybody home. I needed cash, but I didn’t need it badly enough to go toe-to-toe with the mob. On the other hand, if the local wise guys wouldn’t shed any tears over Ecko getting ripped off, we’d give it our best shot.

A family diner stood across the street from the motel. I walked over and ordered the pot roast dinner, with mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese on the side. It was midwestern food, basic stick-to-your-ribs fare, and the meal left me feeling stuffed and vaguely drowsy.

I headed back to my room and went to bed early, keeping my clothes on and lying on top of the musty blankets. I had a lot of work to do, and tomorrow was going to be a very, very long night.

“We’re golden,” Stanwyck told me, turning the key in the ignition. His rental was a plain blue Camry, the kind of car that blends into traffic. I sat on the passenger side, still waking up, feeling the morning sun on my face. Yesterday’s storms had given way to clear blue sky, but it was still about twenty degrees cooler than back home. Bentley’s camera rested on my lap, fitted with a zoom lens.

“You asked around?”

“Yep. Ecko doesn’t have a whole lot of friends in the Outfit. They wet their beak in his wallet, but that’s about as far as that relationship goes. I wouldn’t say it’s open season on the guy, but they’re not gonna put too much effort into avenging him unless he raises a major squawk.”

“And we’ll be in the wind long before that happens. Good. Game on, then.”

Stanwyck drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Glad I didn’t come all the way out here for nothing. Where to, boss?”

“Downtown. I want a closer look at that loft.”

Our stop was almost directly across the street from Ecko’s store. The words chiseled into the pink granite mantle above twin revolving glass doors read The Cantor Building in block capitals. The Cantor looked like a jewel of the 1800s, all rough-cut stone and vintage architecture, but the old girl had fallen on hard times. Half the window displays were curtained off and gathering dust.

Inside the front door, a marquee with slots for fifty names displayed a paltry twelve, the last few gem merchants and jewelers able to keep their doors open. The rest were blank slates, locked doors and dark, empty shops. I gave the antique elevator cage a dubious look. We took the stairs instead.

I’d called ahead. The Cantor’s rental agent, a skinny bundle of nerves named Elaine, was already waiting for us on the second floor with a clipboard in her hands and an anxious bounce in her step.

“Elaine,” I said. “Peter Greyson. We spoke about the rental. This is my finance manager—”

“Joe,” Stanwyck offered.

She had a fluttery handshake. “It’s so good to meet you both, and you’ve picked
such
a great time to expand your business. The Cantor is one of the most competitive addresses on Wabash. I expect we’ll be filled to capacity by the end of the year.”

Stanwyck snorted into his hand, disguising it as a cough. I just smiled and gestured down the silent hallway.

“Well, if it’s still available, we’d love to see that street-facing unit.”

“Of course,” she said, leading the way. A key ring jingled against her clipboard. “That would be…loft 2-C. An excellent choice. One of our pricier units, but—”

“We’re good for it,” Stanwyck said.

She unlocked a frosted glass door, still streaked with the scraped-off remnants of the last tenant’s name, and let us in. Sunlight cascaded through tall windows spaced out along the long, narrow loft, laying warm fingers upon the dusty hardwood floors. Outside the window, another “L” train rumbled past.

I held up my camera. “Is it all right if I take some pictures? The investors are going to want to see everything before they commit.”

“Of course!” Elaine’s head bobbed like a metronome. “Please, feel free.”

I gave Stanwyck a nod. His turn.

“While he’s doing that,” Stanwyck said, “I need to go over some particulars with you. First, let’s talk about the utilities…”

Stanwyck took Elaine aside, turning so she had to face the door to talk to him. I’d prepped him with about ten minutes’ worth of legitimate-sounding questions to ask her, and he was a quick study. I snapped a couple of shots, just to look professional, and stepped through an open partition into the next room.

Ecko’s loft sat directly across the street, with only the elevated train tracks between us. I stepped close to a window, out of Elaine’s sight line, and took aim. One twist of the telephoto lens and I found myself staring right into Ecko’s living room.

It looked like a five-room loft, maybe six. I could only peer into the street-facing rooms, and bamboo shades shrouded two windows, but I could see plenty. The place wasn’t cheap. Ecko went in for dark wood, high ceilings, and leather furniture, and his decorating style screamed, “Look at my vacation photos.” From the African tribal drums by the couch and the wall-mounted wooden masks to what looked like an actual elephant tusk over his plasma TV, he apparently wasn’t shy about visiting far-off destinations and coming home with trophies.

I panned slowly from right to left, snapping pictures, hunting for a safe. The lens zoomed in on an open doorway as I tried to get a good look at the room beyond it.

The air in the doorway blurred.

I glimpsed a curlicue of white light, like a frosty breath in the winter air. Then it was gone. For a second I wasn’t sure if I’d seen anything at all. I slowed my breathing, focused, and stared intently into the camera’s viewfinder. I moved the lens again, slowly sweeping across the loft.

Another blur. My index finger hammered the button like I was a paparazzo stalking an A-list celebrity. I caught a third blur, on the far side of the room, and snapped off another flurry of pictures.

I couldn’t get a magical read on the blur—I’d need to get closer for that—but whatever it was, it was fast. Fast, nearly invisible, and guarding a necromancer’s home turf. Great.

I scanned the rest of the loft. Over on the far left side I found Ecko’s home office. He’d gone all-in with mahogany fixtures, a plush high-backed leather chair…and a wall-to-wall bookshelf behind his desk, where I could barely make out the edge of a black steel safe.

While I tried to get a good angle on the safe, moving down to another window, something else caught my eye. Four clay jars, about a foot and a half tall and almost as wide, sat upon a glass credenza in his office. They lined up neatly side by side, each lid topped with what looked like a sculpted animal head.

Even from across the street, they radiated power. Their energy tasted like razor blades and misery, and just looking at them through the camera’s lens set my teeth on edge. At maximum zoom, I could see the faded Egyptian hieroglyphs, inscribed in red pigment that spiraled around each jar.

The jars were bad news, I knew that much, but past that I was at a loss. Some kind of cursed artifact? A ward to keep people like me out of Ecko’s office? Between the jars and the blur, I needed more than a handful of Mama’s special powder before I walked up those stairs. I needed information.

I snapped a few final shots, slung the camera strap over my shoulder, and walked back out to join Stanwyck and Elaine.

“Think I’ve got everything we need,” I said. We said our goodbyes, promised to be in touch, and gave her a bogus address and a number for a burner phone about to be tossed into the nearest trash can.

Stanwyck didn’t say a word until we were back in the car. As he cruised down Wabash, taking advantage of the sluggish traffic to take it nice and slow, I leaned low in the seat and got another few shots of Ecko’s storefront from ground level.

“How’s it look?”

“Dodgy,” I said. “Once we get back to the motel, I’ll dump these pictures to my laptop. That’ll let me check for extra cameras, disguised motion detectors, all that fun stuff.”

Specifically
, I thought,
the “fun stuff” that only I can deal with
.

*     *     *

Stanwyck dropped me off. He wanted to prowl the neighborhood a little and work out our escape route. I sat at the table in my motel room, curtains drawn, with a takeout carton of General Tso’s chicken and a lukewarm can of Pepsi at my side as I flipped through the photos on my laptop.

One picture, shot through an open door and giving me a clear view of the opposite side of the loft, exposed a rugged plastic box bolted under one of the back windows. That explained the missing fire escape. The box was for a rolled-up chain ladder, something Ecko could unfurl and climb down in case of an emergency. I knew it on sight because Bentley and Corman had one in their apartment too. All the benefits of a back exit and none of the risks.

We’d have to go in the hard way: through the shop downstairs. I pondered our options while I clicked through the pictures, frame by frame. No such thing as an impregnable security system. There was always a weak link, a crack in the armor. Finding it, that was the trick.

I clicked to the next photo, and a face stared back at me.

It emerged from the blur in the doorway, translucent and silver like a reflection on glass. A lunatic’s face, mad-eyed and shrieking with what could have been horror, pain, or bloodlust.

In the next picture, taken a second later, it was gone.

I advanced slowly now, my finger hovering over the arrow key. The next few shots were empty. Just Ecko’s apartment and his art.

I tapped the keyboard and called up the next picture. Two arms, fused at the shoulder and bent into impossible, bone-breaking angles, hovered in midair at the edge of a streak of light. A human head—not the first one, this one had long tangled hair and milky eyes—lay on Ecko’s carpet. A bloated tongue protruded from its open mouth.

The next picture just showed the streak of light, fading to half its size. In the one after that, it was gone.

I retraced my steps. I remembered trying to catch the doorway blur, then the one in the middle of the living room…there’d been one last ripple in the air, the big one right near the door to Ecko’s office. I rushed through the pictures, clicking through the photos racing headlong toward that final moment to see what I’d captured.

I hit the arrow key one last time and froze.

I’d captured it, all right.

It nearly filled the frame, so big it would have to squeeze through the loft’s doors to move around. Or squirm through. I couldn’t take it all in at first. My eyes darted around, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. There were broken arms and opposite-facing legs, a bloated torso lined with sewn-on hands that grasped and pinched. And there were heads. I counted five, sprouting like tumors from the creature’s body, including the head on the floor being dragged along by a tentacle of meat.

A man’s head and torso rose up from the back of the creature, spine curved like a scorpion’s tail. His one arm aimed directly at the camera lens, pointing an accusing finger. That was when I realized all of the heads were staring right at me.

And screaming.

They had seen me photographing them from across the street. While I was watching the loft, they were watching
me
.

I shut the laptop’s lid and sat very still, alone in my motel room. A moment later, I got up and turned on the television set, tuning it to some inane sitcom. The silence wasn’t my friend.