Hallow Point (2 page)

“C’mon, Mick!”
Pound, pound, pound
. “I know you’re in there.”
Pound
.

Pound
.

“Scram already! I’m sleeping here!”

Least, that’s what I think I said. It’s what I
meant
to say. But since my whole weight seemed to be on my face, which was pressed into the pillow so tight I coulda chewed through to Neverland, I can’t be sure.

“C’mon, Mick,” he said again—from a lot closer, this time. Not voices plural, then; just the one. Pete. “Kind of in a jam here.”

“Call the cops.”

Pete—or Officer Pete Staten, if you’d rather—snorted like a pig inhaling a smaller pig.

“Beat feet, Pete. We’re closed for the night.”

“Your door was open.”

It was? Damn, I musta have been all in when I got home.

“So what the hell you been knocking on?” I asked him.

“Doorframe. Then the desk.”

“Well, shit. You mind shutting that for me?”

Footsteps, a loud thump.

“Good, thanks. Beat it.
Now
we’re closed for the night.”

I think I told you palookas before, I don’t have to sleep a lot. Not near as much as you do. But when I’m tired enough that I
do
gotta bunk for a spell, I do
not
take kindly to being woken up.

The fact that Pete was a good friend was the main reason he wasn’t wearing my typewriter for a collar already.

He also pretty clearly didn’t mean to blow anytime soon. Groaning like a ghost in an accordion, I forced myself to sit up.

“Hey, he lives!” Pete announced all cheerful-like.

“Makes one of us.” I didn’t bother to knuckle my eyes at all, though I knew he expected me to, and tried to get something close to my bearings.

I hadn’t gotten undressed or even crawled under the sheets. Just toppled over in a two-dollar suit and coat, both of which were now made of more wrinkles than sheep. Whole office smelled of wet wool—guess there was still enough sheep in my rags to soak up the rainwater.

Pete leaned back against the desk, half-sitting on it. Judging by the glistening spots on his uniform blues, it was
still
coming down out there.

“Jesus, Mick. What’ve you been working on?”

“Funniest thing,” I groused. “Case of the beat cop who just flat out vanished, right in the middle of bothering a buddy.”

“Cute, but I haven’t gone anywhere.”

“Guess you know what you oughta do next, then, don’tcha?”

My not-so-welcome guest pulled the chair away from the desk and sat.

“Have a seat,” I told him.

“I brought milk,” he countered.

You might remember that’s more or less all I drink—or eat—so of course Pete knew that. Then again, if he’d
really
wanted to suck up to me, he’da brought cream.

“Warm?” I asked.

“Whaddaya take me for? Don’t answer that. Yeah, of course warm.”

“All right.” I reached out, waited for the feel of the glass bottle in my mitt.

“Forgiven?” he asked.

I took a big slug. “Stay of execution, anyway. All right, spill it.”

He ran a couple fingertips over his mustache, and I almost groaned again. Now that he had me listening, he didn’t wanna sing. No way
that
was a good sign.

“Seriously, Mick, what
are
you working on? I’ve never seen you this joed.”

“Miles Caro,” I said. “Don’t know him.”

I sorta waved it off. “No reason you should.”

Caro was a missing persons job who, the way things’d been going for me, was gonna
stay
missing. He had a worried family—which was how I had gotten roped in—and he had a few regular joints where he liked cutting the rug or whetting the whistle, all of which had proved about as useful to me as a Braille coloring book. Gink owed some trouble boys money, word was, and had either got himself involved in something ugly trying to pay ’em back, or had lammed while the getting was good, depending on who you asked. Since I don’t much care for working anything gets me too close to the Mob—you saw how well that shook out for me last time—and since clues were proving about as common as an honest alderman, I’d actually been considering dropping the case.

No, I didn’t much
want
to. Hate to leave a job hangin’—and the mystery was drivin’ me crazy. But I’d been up to my earlobes in it for weeks, see? Merlin only knows how many other, maybe better payin’, cases I’d missed. I had no idea what was up in the world, since I hadn’t peeped a news rag in days. Hell, I’d only just started hearin’ half-spoken whispers that there were more of
us
—Fae, I mean—in Chicago’n usual, and that’s the kinda skinny I usually pick up pretty early on.

I still didn’t know if it was true, or why, but least I could be fairly sure that if the Windy City
did
have extra guests, they weren’t Unseelie. Newspapers or no, if a buncha the Unfit
had
been runnin’ around, they’da been leaving enough blood’n bodies behind ’em that I’d have heard about it for sure.

Anyway, gettin’ off-track here. Point is, I’d been putting every smidge of focus I could into digging this gink up, and I had absolute bupkis left to go on. I’d been pounding pavement for days straight without a break, giving the Caro case one last big push before I hadda admit defeat. All of which is why I was so done in.

Also all of which—well, maybe not the “there’s supposedly a bunch of us throwin’ a shindig in the mortal half of Chicago” bit, but all the rest—I mighta been willing to explain to Pete if I’d been in a better mood.

“Pretty sure you proved you didn’t care what I was doing,” I said, “when you barged in here and woke me up.”

“Aw, don’t be like—”

“Pete? What? Do you want?”

Pete sighed. “I need your help on a case.”

I glared. “Deduced that much. You mighta forgotten, but I
am
a detective.”

“Oh, for the… There’s been a break-in at the museum.”

All right, on the square,
that
got my attention. “Which one?”

“The Field.”

I think I nodded, then, though I’m not sure. Somebody’d robbed the museum of natural history? Christ, that’d be all over the papers come tomorrow! Not sure why the department would bring in an outsider, but…

Actually, that was a damn good question. So. Being as that that’s what I
do
with good questions, I asked it.

His answer was an unhelpful, “Uh, well…”

Oh, goddamn it. “They didn’t ask you to bring me in on this, did they? You decided to do it yourself.”

“Uh, well…”

“Which means nobody’s gonna be happy when I show my puss over there, and it may not pay a plug nickel.”

“Uh, well…”

Thing is, much as I hated to admit it, Pete
had
got me interested. I may bust his chops, but the man’s no fool. If he thought the bulls needed me on this, he had a reason for it.

“There’s gonna be a lot of political pressure on the department here, Mick. Even if it turns out to be nothing, the Field’s big news and big dollars.”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“And the whole force’s in a tizzy right now anyway, on account of Judge Meadors.”

Huh?
I knew the name—local bench-warmer the boys in blue actually considered a pal, since he was a soft touch when it came to issuing warrants. No idea what he had to do with the price of tea in China, though.

“Huh?”

“For heaven’s sake, Mick, where you been? Was all over the papers a few days ago. Poor guy stepped outta some burger joint and right in front of a truck.”

I decided right now wasn’t the best time for a joke about meat patties.

“Point is, everyone’s got everything on their plate right now. So I figured, I can help my bosses and my buddy out, if I can get you on this early. Plus, I dunno if the detectives are gonna want to even bother with this one.”

He mumbled that last bit quiet as a phonograph without a needle.

“Wait…”

“
Plus
, this one’s just
weird
.”

Oh,
joy
. “I fucking hate the weird ones, Pete.”

“Yeah, but you’re good at ’em.”

Since it woulda been rude to bump off a guy for complimenting me, no matter how annoying, I decided against strangling him at this time.

“Why wouldn’t the cops wanna spend their time on this? Seems like solving a high-profile theft would be good for—”

“Well, see, thing is, um… We’re still cataloging’n all, be a few more hours before we can say for sure. There’s a lot to go through. But, uh, we’re not real sure anything was snatched.”

I was starting to wonder if I’d ever actually woken up.

“You’re not…?”

“Like I said, there’s a
lot
there. But we checked the most valuable stuff first, and, least last I checked in, there wasn’t a thing missing.”

“Shit,
something’s
gotta be gone! Nobody’s gonna break into the museum for no reason, unless it was just some delinquents smashin’ windows.”

“Wasn’t nothing, though. Actually, they
left
something. Hidden with some of the other artifacts.”

“They… You… You wanna drag me out there to investigate an… an
anti
-theft?”

Pete shrugged. “Guess you could say so.”

“You’re anti-sane!” I bitched at him.

“Maybe you’ll get lucky and something’ll be missing after all,” he offered through a tight grin.

Thing was, he’d got me, and we both knew it. I was curious enough now to wanna see what I could see.

“You’re a bastard, Pete.”

“So you’ve said before.”

“Just making sure you were listening.”

* * *

Pete and I probably jawed a bit on the ride out, or rather he jawed at me, but I don’t remember a word of it. Too busy trying to ignore the hornets and hacksaws buzzing around in my noggin to pay any real attention. Pain and itching and irritation got so bad, I started wondering if it was possible to scratch a headache if you stuck a finger in your ear deep enough.

I’ve told you how much I fucking hate flivvers, right? That’s how most of us
aes sidhe
feel when we’re all cocooned in metal and technology like that. By the time we turned onto Lake Shore, I was pretty sure I could smell time, and I was damn happy to escape the fucking thing. I know that Pete’s beat-up Plymouth wasn’t
actually
the corpse-grey of dead flesh, that the headlights weren’t actually staring me down, that the red spokes and fading whitewalls weren’t really bloody grins, but…

Well, yeah. But.

All right, shake it off, you lug. Got work to do.

Maybe.

Turning my back on the two-door heap, I craned my neck to get a good slant on the scene of the crime—or the
not
crime.

You been to the Field Museum of Natural History? Damn thing’s bigger’n a
faun
’s libido. Back in the olden days, in older countries, I’ve lived in towns smaller than the place.

Up front, where we were, you’d never know anything was hinky. Nobody around but one guy staggering down the street, misbuttoned coat flapping, trying to pretend he
wasn’t
lit like a Broadway production.

Windows were dark, building was locked up tight. No tourists climbing the broad steps, or lingering by the fat pillars.

Yeah, the main entrance is supposed to look all Classical and Greek. I
saw
Classical Greece, and they’da scoffed. Parth-anonymous, this place.

Ouch. Sorry.

Anyway, Pete figured they were probably around back, so we went around back. And there they were, gathered around a rear entrance I figure was probably used for deliveries and whatnot. Just a handful of bulls, a single plainclothes dick in rags almost as cheap and wrinkly as mine, and—to judge by the occasional flash and the fact I could taste the detectives’ aggravation from
here
—a couple’a late-shift news boys, probably hanging around just in case there was more of a story here than it seemed.

Okay, I know Pete’d said they hadn’t yet found anything missing, but I still hadda wonder about the police presence, or lack thereof.

“Looks like a lot of the guys have left since I headed out to your place,” Pete said. “All that nothing that was missing? Guess they found even more of it.”

“Guess nobody told those last couple reporters about it.”

“Maybe—but you don’t tell ’em either,” he warned me. “No comment on active investigations, you dig?”

“In other words, since you bulls don’t like newshawks much anyway, you’re deliberately wasting their time.”

Pete’s smirk was answer enough.

“Keenan in charge here?” I asked.

Pete looked at me like I’d just broken out in a rash of Austrians, and I got a sudden hunch that this was something he’d told me in the flivver, a really dippy question, or both.

“B-and-E, Mick,” he reminded me. “Not homicide. That makes this Robbery’s case, even if nothing was stolen.”

“Right.” Jeez, I musta been out of it on the way over. “So who’s in charge?”

“Galway. Detective Donald Galway.”

I didn’t know Galway personally, not to speak of. Think we’d met in passing at the clubhouse a time or two when I was there booshwashing with Pete or Detective Keenan. We’d traded nods, that kinda meaningless hooey.

“He a right copper?” I asked Pete.

“Not someone I’ll be inviting over for Thanksgiving next month, but honest so far’s I know.”

“And how’s he feel about the department using outside consultants?”

Pete wouldn’t look at me. “He’s honest, so far’s I know.”

Oh, dandy. “So why’d you bring me in on this again?”

“Like I told you, you’re good with the weird ones. Besides, he’ll be tickled not to have to waste any more of his time on this.”

Funny how I heard Pete’s “
I think
” so loud, though he didn’t actually say it.

When we finally approached him, Galway—who looked like Charlie Chaplin might have, if he’d traded some height for weight and then forgot to iron his suit for a couple presidential administrations—proved even less happy to see me than I’d expected.

Though of course, it wasn’t
me
who caught a faceful for it.