And if you’re wondering why I bother to mention my little run-in with Mrs. Martha Ross, and her gratitude for the portrait I tracked down last year, it’s because I wanna make it crystal clear that most of my cases are just as regular as you could ask. Plain, mundane, boring, with no shooting and no spells to be seen.
I figure I better mention that now, because considering what I’ve told you so far about my job for Baskin, and especially when I tell everything that happened next, you’d never buy it if I waited to make that claim later.
* * *
For some reason, Archie wasn’t polite enough to just sit around waiting for me to find him, and knowing a man’s haunts only helps you so much when he’s got half a dozen of ’em. So I spent the next day-and-a-half looking for the son of a bitch, and my nerves were so frazzled from spending so much time on the L that I was about ready to bust—and probably take half a neighborhood or so with me.
It didn’t used to be that hard, back when the L had an actual engine, way a train’s supposed to. Then I could sit way in the back, get some distance from the machinery. Nowadays it’s all electric, same as the city’s streetcars, and there ain’t anywhere in the train to go that’s better’n anywhere else. I weathered it, because I had to weather it, and damn near ground my teeth down to the gums.
I almost dropped to my knees and offered a few Hail Somebodies—anybody woulda done, honestly—when I finally found him in a tiny deli called Kellman’s, down on Newberry, with wide windows and a blinding blue-and-yellow awning. Just a few blocks from the Jewish neighborhood called the Ghetto, even though it’s not, really, Kellman’s offered the best pastrami, mustard, and kraut in Chicago.
I knew this ’cause the banner in the window told me so, in English and Hebrew both. (Well, I suppose that’s what the Hebrew said, anyway.)
A few of the customers inside looked Hasidic, with the black hats and coats and beards, but they were actually a minority of the clientele. I spotted Archie, along with a few galoots who were probably part of his crew, sitting around a garish yellow table in the corner, talking around mouthfuls of sandwich. Echoes saw me giving him the up-and-down and scowled at me, but waved me over.
The sandwiches did smell good, or as good as food ever smells to me, considering how rarely I eat anything solid. Guess maybe it was the best in the Chicago.
“Aren’t you supposed to be sitting in some Sicilian café sucking down spaghetti?” I asked as I squeezed past an old man in a tweed suit and bowtie.
“Sucking down spaghetti.” Archie shook his head. “Funny guy. What, I can’t get a craving for a good corned beef on rye once in a while?”
“I wish you hadn’t. Took me a dog’s age to find you.”
“Dog’s age. Right.” He looked at the guys seated around him, took a moment to wipe some mustard off his kisser. “How did you find me, anyway?”
“Um… What’s my job, again, Archie?”
“Yeah, but…” He was obviously unhappy that I’d tracked him down, and just as obviously unwilling to press it. “You boys scram for a bit, wouldja? Me and this gavone gotta talk.”
I flopped into one of the chairs just vacated, and watched Archie watching me ignore the angry glowers they heaped on me as they left. “You don’t scare easy, do you?” he asked with what sounded like grudging respect.
“I try to terrify myself real good at the beginning of the week, so I don’t have any left later on.”
He didn’t look amused, but at least he didn’t repeat it.
“Get you anything, mister?”
I didn’t even glance at the young boy behind my shoulder. “Glass of milk, please. Warm, if you can manage it.”
Archie laughed. “What’re you, stupid? This here’s a Jewish deli, babbo. They don’t serve milk; wouldn’t be, ah, whatchacallit? Kosher.”
I’d actually known that, just hadn’t been thinking. I was a little surprised that he knew it, though.
“Right. No thanks, then.” I heard the boy wander off to the next table.
“So, Mickey…” Archie began, reaching for the remains of his corned beef.
“Mick. Not Mickey.”
“Mick?”
I was starting to get the strangest sense of déjà vu. What is it with my name, anyway. “Yeah. Mick.”
“What’s the difference?”
“One’s me, the other’s a mouse.”
“Other’s a mouse. Right.” He smirked at me. “You don’t look all that much like a mick, Mick.”
“You don’t look all that much like a wop, Caristo. Are we done slinging slurs at each other? Or should we keep wasting each other’s time?”
I just wanna put on record that I fucking hate the way you people make me talk sometimes.
Archie bit off a huge chunk of sandwich and chewed at me. Yeah, at me. Finally, after a heavy gulp, “You’re awful gutsy, to come in here and insult me after giving me the bum’s rush.”
“But that’s why I’m here, Archie. I’ve decided to hear you out.”
“You’ve decided to hear me out, huh? What changed?”
I shrugged. “What changed is my mind. You much care why?”
“Not much, no.”
“So talk.”
“Ain’t that simple, Mick. It ain’t my yarn to spin. Wait here; I gotta make a call. Don’t touch my sandwich.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. Archie?”
He stopped halfway out of his seat. “Yeah?”
“Tell whoever you’re ringing up that this won’t come cheap.”
He frowned even deeper—I swear his chin was ready to just drop off his face by then—and headed outside. I saw the brim of his fedora swivel as he looked for a phone booth, and then he vanished down Newberry.
I only waited maybe five minutes before he was back, motioning me to stand up. “Meet’s on,” he told me. “Now.” He gave me a quick pat-down—it says a lot about Chicago’s current state that barely anyone gave him a second glance for it—and pulled my L&G from its holster with two fingers, like it was a snake he owed money.
I gave him the same song and dance I’d given Lieutenant Keenan, but I could see he wasn’t buying a word of it. Either Archie Echoes was a damn paranoid son of a bitch—which, to be fair, was probably a job requirement in his line of work—or he knew more about me than he rightly should.
Either way, he stuck the wand in an inside pocket of his circus-tent-colored coat. “You’ll get it back after,” he said.
“I’d better.”
“You’d better. Right.” But I think he knew I was serious, since he had the good grace to flinch at my tone a little. He swiveled back toward the door, leaving me to follow him out onto the street. The hems of skirts and jackets kicked up a breeze along the bustling sidewalk. People tromped in and out of neighboring shops and tenements, and the air smelled a lot more of cooking meats and burning firewood and car exhaust than it did the coming spring.
Just another March day in what you saps think is the “real” world.
And then I was yanked right back out of my musing and into the world—real or otherwise—when Archie asked, “You got a flivver?”
“Uh…” That snake I mentioned a minute ago? My gut started churning as though I’d swallowed it, and a few dozen of its closest pals. “No, I don’t drive. I’m more a train kinda guy.”
“Train kinda guy. Huh. Well, I got mine parked around the block a ways. Let’s go.”
“Couldn’t we…?” I clamped my trap shut before I embarrassed myself. No, of course we couldn’t. We had a meeting to get to—possibly with Fino Ottati, if I figured right—and he wasn’t about to delay it because the great detective Mick Oberon would rather stick his hand in a redcap’s mouth than climb into an automobile.
My feet seemed to move faster than ever before, even though everything else was crawling through molasses, and we reached our destination way too soon for my tastes. To you, it woulda just been an oak leaf-green Model 37 Marquette, sitting on gleaming whitewalls. To me, it was a
rolling torture chamber in a metal box. Archie showed surprising manners in opening the door for me, and gave me a very peculiar look when I reached past him to open the back door instead. “I look like a chauffeur to you, Oberon?”
“I’m more comfortable in back,” I explained, in what I think was a steady voice. I sure wasn’t going to tell him it was ’cause I wanted to be as far away from the engine as I could get.
“More comfortable in back. Okay…” He shut both doors and wandered around to the driver’s side.
I suppose I’ve danced around this thing with me and human technology long enough; I probably oughta explain.
Y’see, it’s the whole reason we—and by “we” I mean all sorts of Fae—ain’t around much anymore. The whole reason, or one of the big ones, why you were able to drive most of us away over the years. We’re creatures of the old world; primal, natural. Technology, industry, all that jazz, it hurts. Being around anything too advanced… You know those itches you get that keep moving around, so you can’t ever scratch ’em good? That high-pitched hum in your ears from some lights or power lines? Those deep muscle aches that come from nowhere, and that no amount of aspirin can help? It’s all of those combined, but in the soul, not the body. We feel it all the time, in the modern world, but some of us learn to tune it out. Mostly.
But actually using it? Talking on the horn, sitting in a car? That’s awful enough to get to even the strongest of us. I’ve known Fae—mostly other aes sidhe, but a few gancanagh and haltijas—who had reasons as solid as mine for leaving Elphame, and who eventually went back anyway, just ’cause they couldn’t tolerate this place anymore. Every device you build, every advance you make, your world gets that much more uncomfortable, that much more alien, to us.
I suppose there may come a day where I follow them. But for now, my reasons for leaving the Otherworld are stronger than my reasons for leaving this one.
Though sitting in the back of that flivver, twitching with every bump, pale and shaking hands clutching the edge of the seat, it was a damn near thing.
I couldn’t tell you how long the drive was, since I was mostly concentrating on not either screaming or lashing out with my will at the engine; I probably couldn’t do much to it without my wand, since I sure as hell wasn’t in any condition to concentrate, but you never know for certain. I wasn’t completely oblivious, though. I recognized Michigan Avenue, the fancy shopfronts and more formal dress on the pedestrians.
And down the street, I recognized the rounded corners, brick façade with terracotta trim, and big honking stone pillars of the Lexington Hotel.
“You’re kidding me, right? For a meet like this? Ain’t that a little cheeky?”
Archie shrugged. From behind, I couldn’t tell if he was actually embarrassed or just humoring me. “Whaddaya want from me, Oberon? She got fond of the food, back when Al called all his sit-downs here.”
She? We weren’t meeting Fino the Shark then? Interesting… And well timed, since mulling over the implications in my head kept me distracted from the last couple of minutes of the drive. We pulled up in front of the column-flanked doors, Archie tossed his keys to the white-shirted and black-vested valet—I have to assume they already knew each other, since Echoes didn’t bother to threaten the man about taking care of the flivver—and we headed inside.
I’ve been in palaces smaller and less ornate than the lobby of this place. Pathways of tiled linoleum ran around and between carpeted sitting areas of plush sofas, marble-faced counters, and a whole heap of shops and meeting rooms, all lit by hanging chandeliers. The Lexington mighta lost their biggest client when Capone got shipped off to the pen last year, but it didn’t seem to be hurting them any.
I heard a live jazz band from the direction of the banquet hall, but Archie was guiding me in a different direction. We stepped through a couple of doors, past a couple of waiters in fancy shirts—one white, one black, which I gotta admit surprised me—and into the dining room.
The joint was crowded, but not too. Rows of tables draped in pristine cloths provided pathways for the waiters to bustle between the customers. I couldn’t help but notice that all the waiters who were actually, y’know, waiting on people were white. I guess the fella at the front was mostly for show.
Nice, huh?
Archie went and traded a few quick words with the waiters at the door, and then led me to one particular table. Then, as I started to sit, he pointed to a different chair. “No. There.”
“Why’s it matter?”
“Why’s it…? Just do it, Oberon, wouldja? You’ll see.”
He then draped his own coat over a chair at a table next to mine, and I thought I’d figured it out.
I knew I’d figured it out when the others arrived: two guys dressed a lot like Archie himself, only a little less loud, accompanying the woman I was there to meet. Her hair was black, a lot longer than the current fashion, and she was without a hat. She wore a burgundy dress and pearls as though she’d rather have been wearing a pantsuit, and if you wanna know what that looks like, tough. I can’t describe it; I just know that’s how she came across. I’d put her close to forty, at a quick estimate, and she mighta been beautiful if the worry and grief under her face hadn’t twisted the skin into such ugly shapes.
I ordered a glass of milk while they were getting situated.
She returned Archie’s wave with a simple nod, whispered something to her bodyguards, and headed this way. The other two men took seats at a table by the door, near enough for trouble but not enough to overhear her conversation. She sat across from Archie, and yep, he’d done what I thought he had. She and I had our backs to each other, but we were only a few feet apart. Anyone, even her boys back there, would think she was talking to him.
As for me, I twisted sideways just a little, so that I could hold up my menu, or my glass once it arrived, and her bodyguards wouldn’t see me talking at all.
“I’m so glad you reconsidered my offer, Mr. Oberon,” she said. Her voice was husky, just slightly hoarse. She’d either been sick, smoking a whole heck of a lot, or crying. Maybe all three. “I’m terribly afraid that you’re the only one who can help me.”
“Well, I’m willing to listen, anyway. No promises, you understand.”
She nodded. “Thank you all the same. My name is Bianca Ottati.”
Ah. The Shark’s wife. “Your husband don’t know you’re here, does he, Mrs. Ottati.” I didn’t really ask it as a question.
I heard her stiffen, but she said nothing as the waiter returned with my glass. It was chilly; how friggin’ hard of an order is “warm milk,” anyway? He asked if I wanted anything else, I told him I’d study the menu for a while, he went to the next table and asked if they wanted anything, and I could tell that Bianca was about to bust by the time they finally shooed him away.
“How did you know?” she asked once we finally had some privacy again.
I shifted in my chair, raised the glass to my lips. “This whole setup. This ain’t just about making sure nobody overhears us, you don’t even want your boys back there to know we’re talking.”
“Very good, Mr. Oberon. You’re quite right. I couldn’t leave the house without them—my husband’s currently having some, ah, disagreements with his rivals—but I don’t want them hearing this. So far as they know, I’m just here visiting with my friend.”
“And Echoes over there? You trust him?” I didn’t have to see him to know he was scowling at me when I said that.
“As I just said, Archie and I are friends—have been for years. Since before I met my husband, in fact. I trust him implicitly.”
And Fino trusts him with you? But I didn’t think that’d be the most politic thing to ask right about then.
“So, Mrs. Ottati. So what’s the big, ugly secret you need me to handle?”
I heard her take a deep breath behind me, as well as a sniffle that could only be the forerunner of tears. “I need you to find my daughter, Mr. Oberon.”
My turn to go a bit sti
ff. That was not what I’d been expecting; I’d imagined she’d lost some of her husband’s money, or maybe she was being leaned on by an ex-lover. A missing girl? A Mafioso’s daughter, at that?
“And,” she continued, “I need you to find her before my husband learns she’s missing. He’s already involved in one war; I don’t want him tearing this town apart looking for her. The distraction could get him killed, and it’ll certainly get someone killed.”
I nodded; she’d anticipated my first question, right enough. “Okay. How long’s she been missing?”
“Sixteen years.”
Um… What? “Mrs. Ottati, I’m not sure I follow. How could your husband not—?”
“That’s why it had to be you and no one else.” She was crying now, openly but softly. “As far as my husband knows, our daughter’s at home as we speak. But Mr. Oberon, the girl we’ve raised for sixteen years is not our daughter at all.
“She’s a changeling.”
CHAPTER FOUR
You ever experienced noisy silence before? I mean like when you’re sitting in a big, public room—let’s say, oh, a half-crowded dining room—and you can hear all the talking and laughing and clattering of spoons and squeaking of chairs and sparking of lighters, but it’s all distant. It’s all happening somewhere far, far away, so that even though it’s there, it’s all background. And around you, in your ears and your mind, there’s nothing at all but quiet.
Yeah. The whole world had gone away, and I was having one of those.
I tried to say something, croaked a little, took a big slug of milk and tried again. “What?” I finally asked.
Brilliant question, Mick.
“A changeling,” she said again, her tone surprised—and pretty blatantly suggesting that I was some kinda special idiot. “When they…” She sniffled. “When they take a human baby, and replace it with—”
“I know what a changeling is, Mrs. Ottati.” I was starting to recover a little, starting to think again, and not liking anything I was thinking about. “I mean, what on Earth could possess you to think that your daughter’s one?”