Chapter 4: You Can't Fight City Hall
The sound of laughter was heard throughout the underground car park they had left the limousine in, and it was getting on Harry's nerves. "Would you all just quit it?" Harry spat out "how was I to know it was an invisible barrier?" This led to more chortling by the assembled group, except of course the hit wizards, who never broke a smile "This way, folks" said Johnny, leading the way into an elevator at the wall of the garage.
Once inside, Harry noticed there were 68 floors numbered (except 13) and the top button was labeled 'PH'. That is the one pushed by Johnny three times before it lit up. He then placed his right thumb on the PH button and it flashed red, and then went back to white. "Why wouldn't it work the first time?" Harry inquired. "Because we're not going to the penthouse, our offices are on the thirteenth floor but you have to do the sequence and have the correct thumbprint to access them" Johnny replied. "Many people think the number 13 is bad luck, and don't notice it missing from the buttons. The vast majority of wizarding offices in Chicago are on the thirteenth floor if they're in a high-rise. We don't generally do underground unless it's a government facility, right boys" he said, nodding to the two hit wizards in the elevator with them. "We are not at liberty to discuss the operational structure of other clients" replied one of the nondescript hit wizards.
When the elevator suddenly slowed its descent, Harry saw that they had not yet passed the 10th floor. A cold feeling like that of a dementor in close proximity came over Harry and he pulled out his wand, noticing that Moody, Tonks and all the other wizards in the elevator were also holding wands, Johnny and Mr. Lombardo had armed themselves with handguns. "It must be the Red Squad" said one of the hit wizards, as the door was forced partially open from the outside. "Damn meddling city cops" said Joey as a skeletal hand grasped the door and was slowly forcing it to open further. The walls of the elevator had turned to ice from the cold, and Harry was hearing his mother screaming in his mind.
"Expecto-Patronum! Yelled five voices at once, Harry's already impressive stag had leapt through the broken elevator door, and was joined by Moody's parrot patronus (Harry thought that pirate must be in his blood) and Tonk's mongrel dog, reminiscent of Padfoot. Two large twin pit bulls (from who else, the hit wizards) and what looked like a large fat groundhog ran out and started gnawing on the bottom of the closest dementor. Frankie looked at Harry and shrugged his shoulders. "My birthday is Groundhog Day, and I loved the movie". There turned out to be about ten dementors in the corridor outside the elevator. They quickly fled due to the overwhelming strength of the patronus cast by Harry's group.
"Freeze!" came an amplified voice from down the hall. (Harry thought he was already frozen from the effect of the dementors.) "This is the police, you're surrounded, drop your weapons and come out with your hands up!" The voice continued. "Joey Lombardo, we know you're in there!" "You'll never take me alive, Coppers!" yelled Joey the Clown. Harry wanted to laugh at the classic gangster line from old movies, but the situation seemed too serious for levity at the moment. "What?" said Joey, looking at Harry, "I've always wanted to say that." This time Harry did laugh out loud, earning a dirty look from Moody. "Now you know why he's known as The Clown" said Moody.
Tonks had been busy trying to charm a toothbrush into a portkey during this last exchange. Where she got a toothbrush in a Chicago elevator, Harry didn't want to know. "Anti-portkey wards, she mumbled. "Anti-apparition, too" said one of the hit-wizards "Looks like we'll have to fight our way out."
"This is your last warning!" came the voice "thirty seconds and we're coming in after you!" it said. The two hit-wizards looked at each other, seeming to have the same idea, then silently waved their wands over everybody in the elevator. All the other occupants disappeared from Harry's sight and re-appeared to him in an instant with a misty glow around them. "Stay put" said one of the hit-wizards, "As long as we're all in the elevator they'll never notice".
There was the sound of spells being cast towards the door of the elevator from outside. A well-placed Reducto blew apart what was left of the door, sending shrapnel into the elevator, but surprisingly none of the occupants were struck. Two wizards wearing black body armor with large white letters SWAT on them appeared from both sides of the doorway. They quickly peeked inside, and looked again at length. "Damn" one of them said. "Did we get the wrong elevator?" the other one asked. "Nope, the tracer led us to this one" the first cop replied. Harry could see ten other men similarly dressed, now milling around the front of the elevator. "Report!" came a deep voice from around the corner. A man dressed in black wizarding robes appeared, he was about to enter the elevator when one of the other swat team members stopped him. "Excuse me Sir; I think we should check it out before you step inside. "Nonsense, I am Mayor Doiley's representative to the Red Squad, step aside, I need to investigate" he said with an air of self importance about him. (Harry was reminded of Percy Weasley's attitude while discussing cauldron bottom thickness.) With that he looked apprehensively into the elevator. Seeing nothing but debris from the damage done by the swat team members, he stepped into the elevator and promptly was sucked through the floor. Harry could hear his screaming for about ten seconds before a faraway 'thud' was heard. "No big loss" said the swat team member that tried to stop him. "Guess the mayor will have to find a new lacky" chuckled the other one standing by the entrance. "Do we really have to put up with another one" asked the first. "You can't fight city hall" said a third swat team member.
"They must have charmed the floor and levitated themselves down" one of the other cops said. "Alpha team, back to the precinct!" the first one snapped "the mayor ain't gonna like this at all" he grumbled to himself. "Martinez, go and get his body". "Geez, why me, why always me?" Martinez asked rhetorically as they turned and walked back the way they came.
Harry took a deep breath and let it out with a heavy sigh of relief. "What charm did you use on us" asked Tonks to the hit-wizard closest to her. "Twin-Modified Fidelius took us and the floor slightly out of sync with time, using each other as secret-keeper." "Can only be used by fraternal twins" quipped the other one, with a serious look on his face. "Oh" she asked "you're twins?" "No" said the first hit-wizard. He did not explain further, but each of them waved their wands over the occupants once again and the misty glow disappeared.
"All clear" said Frankie, peering around the elevator entrance and looking each way down the hallway. "We'll have to 'hoof it' from here" he continued. The group exited quietly from the elevator and turned left, away from the direction the swat team had gone.
"We'd better go back to the car and boogie out to the burbs" Frankie said, indicating they should use the stairway and go down. "Naa" replied Johnny, "let's go to thirteen and use the portal out to the Sam's safe house". "I'm sure that our guests would like to relax for awhile before tonight's meeting", said Joey the Clown, now leading the group with the two hit-wizards taking position, one in front and one in back, constantly looking behind them as if expecting the swat team to reappear. They went up the stairwell several levels and Johnny tapped the brick wall between the twelfth and fourteenth floor twice. It opened up al-la Diagon Alley style and they entered a busy, modern looking office with cloth sided cubicles everywhere, computers on the tables and what appeared to be normal muggles working as you would find in any downtown business office while ignoring the intruders. Telephones were ringing, secretaries were typing, birds were singing (I digress) and you get the general picture of a boring work environment that everybody comes to hate. (Digressing again)
Joey led the way around the cubicles, in a maze-like fashion they wound their way towards the center of the office where there was a doorway marked 'Supervisor'. He pressed a cipher lock in a particular order, opened the door and ushered them into the supervisor's office. Moody had been unusually quiet during most of the way, keeping up while favoring his repaired wooden leg as best he could. Tonks had also been quietly observing their surroundings, looking for potential threats and trying not to trip over anything. She was reasonably successful in this endeavor.
Once inside the inner office Harry noticed there was no furniture, only a telephone hanging from one wall, and torches lighting the interior. There were no windows, just walls. "Why are there lights out in the outer office, and only torches in here?" he asked.
"Yar, I'd believe that the magic required for this portal would be interfered with by florescent lighting, am I correct?" he asked Joey. "Yup" came the reply. With a cloud of dust and a hearty "Hi Ho Silver, Awaaaay!" (Yelled by Johnny) the room seemed to jump up and back down once, leaving Harry scrambling to stay on his feet. Tonks, of course was flat on her backside. Moody surprisingly enough was unruffled as were the other people in their group.
Johnny opened the door that they had just come through, waiving them out into what appeared to be a well-to-do common room, complete with overstuffed couches, a full kitchen, armchairs, a billiard table (pool) and a television that Harry estimated to be two meters across. Sitting on a couch watching the local news on television was Severus Snape.