Magie Noire

By Rurouni Star

Chapter Two

"We're not going very far with means or opportunity," I told Carmichael. "I can't even begin to speculate how you explode someone's heart, let alone whether you need in the room with them to do it. That leaves us with motive."

My partner dropped two fresh coffees on the table in the tiny conference room we'd nabbed at the department, and pulled himself out a chair. "If we want motive, we work from IDs," he reasoned. "Organized Crime thinks that tat belongs to Tommy Tomm, but we can't be sure until his fingerprints come back. The woman's probably an upscale call girl, so maybe we'll get lucky and she's in the system too." He sighed. "Damned impolite of 'em to die without their wallets nearby. I hate wasting time like this."

We'd spent most of the day combing over the crime scene with the techs when they arrived. Normally the forensic geeks were thrilled to work on S.I. cases — they appreciated a little weirdness now and then — but their enthusiasm had dimmed perceptibly on this one, given that it was in a hotel room. Some poor sap was probably still there, lifting fingerprints from every conceivable surface.

I frowned at the whiteboard in front of me, where I'd started up some rough notes. "Tommy Tomm?" I said. "I've heard that name. What circles does he run in?"

"Mafia." Carmichael's tone was grim. "He's Marcone's enforcer."

I winced as I wrote the name Marcone on the whiteboard. Great. "Gentleman" Johnny Marcone was the latest and greatest figure to rise to the top of the scummy pond that was Chicago's organized crime. Some cops quietly talked about him as though he were a civilizing influence on crime in the city. The memory of the bloody Vargassi civil war, with bodies dropping every other day, was still fresh in everyone's mind; by comparison, Marcone's iron grip on the city felt almost pleasant. I still considered him vermin, but he was very well-connected vermin. His battery of high-priced lawyers were bound to meddle in any case connected to one of his people. I sometimes suspected Marcone had his fingers directly in the police department as well… but that was the kind of thing you only voiced out loud rarely, if ever, and only for a damned good reason.

Marcone and I had a history, of sorts. I had the dubious distinction of being one of the few people to get up on the stand and testify against him. Naturally, he'd gotten off not guilty.

"All right," I said. "Well, we've gotta start with some kind of assumption if we're gonna get anywhere with this case. May as well go with that. If our male vic really is Tommy Tomm, then he's gotta have a long list of people who might want him dead. We can focus on the biggest names. Did Organized Crime offer anything useful on that front?"

Carmichael hauled himself to his feet again and headed to the board. He started writing out names, and I… admittedly zoned out.

My brain kept getting stuck in a horrific loop, replaying the image of the crime scene in my head. After so many years in Homicide, I thought I'd gotten up close and comfortable with the idea of my own mortality… but the realization that there was a new way to die that I'd never even considered before had shaken me pretty hard.

We all deal with death in different ways. My mother disappeared when I was a kid; my father, a cop in his own right, hadn't softballed it for me. Your mother never would've left you on purpose, he said. Something bad's probably happened to her, and I won't give up until I know who did it.

Dad did give up, though. I watched as the years went by, and the lack of answers ground him down. Not long after I finally left the house and struck out on my own, the last of his strength gave out. He died with his own gun in his mouth… and my already screwed-up relationship with death got even more twisted.

I hadn't been intending to be a cop back then. I'd grown up watching what it had done to my father, and I thought I was smart enough not to want anything to do with that kind of damage. But once Dad was gone for good, I found myself at Academy, feeling like maybe police work would fill the hole that he'd left in my life. Sometimes I felt like I was living in my father's shadow on purpose, clinging to all the little shreds of himself he'd left behind. I lived in my childhood house, surrounded by his old things; I passed through the same Academy, walked the same halls, and heard echoes of him in the stories some of the older cops still told about him.

The whole time, I forced myself to confront the worst that humanity had to offer. I had a pathological need to understand how and why the world kept taking things from me. I saw more than one person die right in front of my eyes, victimized by a dark, dirty side of human nature that most people walked through their lives blissfully incapable of understanding. I looked killers in the eye and saw not just a total lack of guilt, but a sense of deep satisfaction.

Every time I faced up to that darkness, I felt… not safe, exactly. Maybe satiated is the word. I'd briefly feel like I'd faced something so much worse than death that I didn't need to be afraid of it anymore.

The scene in that hotel room had upset that precarious equilibrium of mine. At this point, I was rarely surprised by how much human beings would torment each other if they could. But now someone had found a way to go further than I'd thought was physically possible.

There was something out there that was darker than anything I'd ever met before. And that… that scared me.

"Murph?"

I blinked slowly, dragging myself back to the present. Carmichael had paused in front of the whiteboard. He was looking at me with a hint of concern.

That wouldn't do. We weren't good enough partners for that shit yet.

"Yeah," I said. "Sorry, just tired. I'm gonna stretch my legs for a bit, get my blood going. Maybe it'll kick something loose."

He nodded, taking the excuse without complaint. That's what we all did around here. We pretended we were okay, and then we pretended like we believed each other's lies about how we were okay.

I shoved to my feet and headed for the door. I was getting maudlin again. I definitely needed a walk.

0-0-0-0

A light shower of rain pitter-pattered down onto me as I walked. I hiked up the hood of my coat and stuck my hands into my pockets. The weather was just starting to warm up as spring came around, but things still got just a bit chilly when the sun went down.

The brisk air helped clear my head, but it didn't push out the image of those two dead people. I probably shouldn't have expected it to. I obsess. It's what I do.

Some wary instinct managed to ping my senses, though, as I took the second block from the precinct. I noticed the dark blue Cadillac that had started following me out of the corner of my eye. Whoever it was, they were ballsy, following a cop still in plain view of their own workplace. I grimaced, and reached for my cell phone.

"Yeah?" Carmichael's voice answered.

"Some dipshit is real interested in my little evening walk," I told him. "I think they were waiting for me to leave the building."

"You want me to cut 'em off?" I already heard him up and moving.

"Nah. Just checking in before I have a chat with them myself. I'll give you the license plate number."

I turned on my heel and headed over for the car. To be fair, I don't think the driver was trying to hide their interest. They paused and let me circle around the back while I rattled off numbers to Carmichael. When I knocked on the tinted front window, the back door of the car opened instead.

A tall man with bright red hair stepped out of the vehicle. His square jaw and linebacker shoulders made him an intimidating presence — but he seemed very cognizant of the nearby precinct, because I saw him intentionally relax his posture and show his empty palms.

"Miss," he said, in a gravelly voice. "The boss would like a word."

I spread my feet shoulder-width, steeling my own posture. The phone was still at my ear. "It's detective," I replied. "That's what the badge is for. And maybe your boss ought to ask me himself."

"Detective Murphy," called a man's polite voice, from inside the car. "I was hoping to have a word, if you don't mind."

My back went up. I recognized that voice. My tone cooled considerably. "I don't get into cars with strange men. You can always come into the station, Johnny. It's right there."

"I'm not looking for anything so official." The tall, heavyset man stepped aside, and I got a better look at the man inside the car. He was probably around my age, though stress had given him a bit of salt in his pepper hair, and money had smoothed the lines on his face and given him an impeccable tan. He was wearing a casual sports jacket and jeans, and he had a friendly smile — but I knew he was a shark.

I met Johnny Marcone's faded green eyes directly.

"You hear that, Ron?" I said into the phone. "Gentleman Johnny Marcone doesn't want things to get too official. Why don't you write that down so we've got it on the record?"

Marcone's smile inched a bit wider at that, as though he was in on the joke and not the target of it. "You haven't changed a bit, Detective," he said. "How comforting."

"Hey Murph, while you've got him, can you ask if he's really got a gold toilet in his bathroom? Me and the boys got a longstanding bet to settle."

"Aw, hell, why not," I said. "Hey Johnny, Ron wants to know if you've really got a gold toilet in your bathroom." I leaned back on my heels, making it clear that I had no intention of getting into the car with him.

"Detective." Marcone's smile faded very slightly. I saw the shark come out behind his eyes. "We both know that you were going to end up on my doorstep eventually. I am giving you the opportunity to do this in a friendly manner — no lawyers, no recorders. If you turn me down now and ask me into interview later, I can assure you that you will find it very difficult to make it onto my schedule."

That stopped me. A dull, aching rage rose in my stomach. You piece of shit. Obviously, it hadn't been a coincidence that Johnny Marcone decided to invite me into his car on the very same day that one of his men turned up dead in a murder that had been assigned to me. But the deeper implication was that someone in the department had called him up to tip him off. The rats were real.

Marcone held up a hand my way. He could see me getting ready to tell him to go fuck himself. "We have the same ultimate aims here, Detective," he told me. "I assure you, I have only the greatest respect for your work, and for you personally. I am not here to make things difficult for you — in fact, the exact opposite. Please take a moment and consider the dead, before you throw that back into my face."

My teeth clicked shut on the words I'd been about to say. I set my jaw. For all that I hated Marcone, he'd hit me in exactly the right spot. There were two people dead — one of them probably an innocent bystander — and their killer was still on the loose. A killer that was different from anything I had ever encountered before, and maybe far outside my means to catch.

"...Ron?" I said into the phone quietly.

Carmichael was deadly silent, on the other side of the line. He slowly cleared his throat. "You getting in that car, Murph?" he asked me.

"Yeah," I snarled, though I hated the word. "You got my back?"

"I got your back," Carmichael said. "I heard his voice, you ID'd him. If you don't come back, we'll nail him to the wall."

Marcone jerked his chin at the man outside the car. "Please get the door for the detective, Mister Hendricks," he said.

"I can get my own damn door," I muttered. I stalked past the big man for the other side of the car, and jerked the door open.

As I settled into the other seat, I became very acutely aware that I was sitting within only a few feet of the man who had climbed his way to the top of Chicago's underworld on a staircase made of dead bodies. Many of those bodies had names marked on folders that also had my name, as the primary investigator. I'd gotten my guy in a few of those cases… but the killers were ultimately just trigger-men for Marcone himself. Once caught, they'd gone down voluntarily, never copping to their employer.

Marcone held out his hand toward me expectantly. "Please let me keep an eye on your phone for you, Detective." He said it like it was a generous offer, instead of a way to cover his criminal ass.

I slapped the phone into his hand perhaps a little harder than was strictly necessary. Marcone held it up to his ear briefly. "Goodbye, Detective Carmichael," he said into the receiver. "I'll try to have your partner home before curfew."

He hit the end call button before Carmichael had the chance to respond.

Marcone turned to regard me more fully, as the car continued idling its way along the street. "Let's get to the point, Detective," he said. "My man is dead. You have his case. I have an obvious interest in finding out who killed him and why."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "The only reason I got into this car is because you implied you had information for me," I said. "Now you think you're going to get case details out of me?"

Marcone shook his head. "I am offering a trade, Detective," he said. "I can give you details about Tommy's comings and goings, his associates, his enemies. I'm prepared to offer you information that you don't yet know you even need. But if I do that, there are things that I need from you in return."

I raised my eyebrows incredulously. "We are not friends, Marcone," I said. "We're not even allies. I want you behind bars. You can't possibly believe that I'm going to strike a deal with you like the other dirty bastards on your payroll."

Marcone sized me up. I know he didn't see much: I'm a five foot nothing blond woman, and I've had men describe me unironically using the words cute as a button.

But I had come close — so close — to sending Marcone away to prison forever. We both knew that. It had to color his perceptions of me.

"I'm not crude enough to offer you money," Marcone told me. "We both know that isn't something that drives you." His flat eyes fixed upon me, and I imagined a yawning void behind them, where normal people kept their soul. "I am offering you cooperation, backup. The support you need in order to find this killer and survive them. In return, I am asking only that you call me first, when you find something. That request is for your own good, Detective, and for the good of your associates. Your department cannot handle this case. If you try to keep it in-house, there are very good odds that the body count gets very high. As primary investigator, your body would sit near the top of the pile."

I stared him down. The offer was a slap in the face, and I could tell he knew it. "Do you know why I'm in S.I., Marcone?" I asked softly.

Those shark-like eyes sharpened on me. "I know quite a lot about you, Detective," Marcone said. But he didn't specifically respond to my question, so I elaborated anyway, to drive home my point.

"I caught another cop re-selling drugs," I told Marcone. "And I ratted him out. Testified against him. The whole nine yards." I sucked in a breath. "That killed my career. No one but S.I. is ever gonna want to work with me again. Hell, I got a pile of death threats at home telling me what my own side will do to me for not looking the other way. The guy I put away? He was one of my dad's old buddies. If I wasn't willing to sell my integrity for him, I don't know what the hell makes you think I'll do it for you."

Marcone didn't look away from me as I spoke. I knew I should have just stopped there, but I was still rattled and angry, and some part of me needed to stare down something I understood, just one more time.

"I've met a hundred guys like you," I said. "You won't apologize for being ruthless. You think it's a virtue. You sell people like cattle, you peddle drugs, you order people's deaths. And you sleep perfectly well at night, using whatever shitty excuses you've made up for yourself. You don't have the balls to hold onto your own integrity, so you made up a bunch of shades of grey to hide in." I grabbed the door handle. "We're not playing classy cops and robbers. You can respect me all you want, but I don't respect you — and I never will. You're human trash to me. I have no interest in walking down this road with you for any reason."

I pushed open the car door and reached out to snatch my phone back from his hand.

Marcone seized my wrist. I twitched. Instinct had me halfway through an aikido move that would have broken his thumb and maybe a few other bones with it… but I restrained myself just in time. I'd gone far enough already. If I committed physical assault, neither of us would probably like where this went next.

"We are allies," Marcone told me. His voice was cold now, closer to the snake that I knew hid behind that kind, personable facade. "You don't yet understand that, Detective, because you are lacking in exactly the information I propose to give you. I am not the worst thing in this city. There is such a thing out there as real evil — things that see you and I and the rest of humanity as prey, playthings." He pressed my phone into my hand. "Things that can tear a man's heart from his chest from miles away." He released my wrist… then handed me a card. "You may yet change your mind. I'm a practical man. I'll take your call if you do."

I clenched my hand around the card. It wrinkled slightly… but he knew I wouldn't throw it away. If I decided I wanted Marcone in interview, it was the first line I'd call.

As I stepped out of the vehicle onto the street, Marcone looked back toward the front of the car. "The woman is Jennifer Stanton," he said. "She worked at the Velvet Room. If you don't think you need me, it's a good place to go get yourself killed."

I turned away from his car, and started hiking back the way I'd come.