Death Masks

He fumbled with it, his eyes wide, as I brought the Beetle to life with a roar. Well. Not really a roar. A Volkswagen Bug doesn’t roar. But it sort of growled, and I mashed it into gear before the priest had managed to completely shut the door.

I headed for the parking garage’s exit, whipping around the ramps and turns.

"What are you doing?" Father Vincent demanded.

"He’s an outfit hitter," I spat. "They’ll have the exit covered."

We screeched around the final corner and toward the parking garage’s exit. I heard someone yelling in a breathless voice, and a couple of large and unfriendly-looking men in a car parked across the street were just getting out. One of them held a shotgun, and the other had a heavy-duty semiautomatic, maybe a Desert Eagle.

I didn’t recognize the thug with the shotgun, but Thug Number Three was an enormous man with reddish hair, no neck, and a cheap suit-Cujo Hendricks, right hand enforcer to the crime lord of Chicago, Gentleman Johnny Marcone.

I had to bounce the Beetle up onto the sidewalk at the parking-garage exit to get around the security bar, and I mowed down some landscaped bushes on the way. I jounced over the curb and into the street, hauling the wheel to the right, and mashed the accelerator to the floor.

I glanced back and saw the original gunman standing at a fire-exit door, pointing the silenced pistol at us. He snapped off several more shots, though I only heard the last few, as the silencer started to give out. He didn’t have a prayer of a clean shot, but he got lucky and my back window shattered inward. I gulped and took the first corner against the light, nearly colliding with a U-Haul moving truck, and kept accelerating away.

A couple of blocks later, my heart slowed down enough that I could think. I slowed the car down to something approaching the speed limit, thanked my lucky stars the suppression spell had fallen apart in the studio and not in the car, and rolled down my window. I stuck my head out for a second to see if Hendricks and his goons were following us, but I didn’t see anyone coming along behind us, and took it on faith.

I pulled my head in and found the barrel of the shotgun pointed at my chin, while Father Vincent, his face pale, muttered to himself under his breath in Italian.

"Hey!" I said, and pushed the gun’s barrel away. "Careful with that thing. You wanna kill me?" I reached down and flicked the safety on. "Put it down. A patrolman sees that and we’re in trouble."

Father Vincent gulped, and tried to lower the gun below the level of the dash. "This weapon is illegal?"

"Illegal is such a strong word," I muttered.

"Oh, my," Father Vincent said with a gulp. "Those men," he said. "They tried to kill you."

"That’s what hitters for the outfit do," I agreed.

"How do you know who they are?"

"First guy had a silenced weapon. A good silencer, metal and glass, not a cheapo plastic bottle." I checked out the window again. "He was using a small-caliber weapon, too, and he was trying to get real close before he started shooting."

"Why does that matter?"

It looked clear. My hands trembled and felt a little weak. "Because it means he was using light ammunition. Subsonic. If the bullet breaks the sound barrier, it sort of defeats the point of a silenced weapon. When he saw I was armed, he ran. Covered himself doing it, and went for help. He’s a pro."

"Oh, my," Father Vincent said again. He looked a little pale.

"Plus I recognized one of the men waiting at the exit."

"Someone was at the exit?" Father Vincent said.

"Yeah. Some of Marcone’s rent-a-thugs." I glanced back at the shattered window and sighed. "Dammit. So where are we going?"

Father Vincent gave me directions in a numb voice, and I concentrated on driving, trying to ignore the quivering in my stomach and the continued trembling of my hands. Getting shot at is not something I handle very well.

Hendricks. Why the hell was Marcone sending goons after me? Marcone was the lord of the mean streets of Second City, but generally he didn’t like to use that kind of violence. He thought it was bad for business. I had believed Marcone and I had an understanding-or at least an agreement to stay out of each other’s way. So why would he make a move like this?

Maybe I had already stepped over a line somewhere, that I didn’t know existed.

I glanced at the shaken Father Vincent.

He hadn’t told me yet what he wanted, but whatever it was, it was important enough to covertly drag one of the Vatican’s staff all the way to Chicago. Maybe it was important enough to kill a nosy wizard over, too.

Hoo- boy.

It was turning into one hell of a day.

Chapter Three

Father Vincent directed me to a motel a little ways north of O’Hare. It was a national chain, cheap but clean, with rows of doors facing the parking lot. I drove around to the back of the motel, away from the street, frowning. It didn’t look like the kind of place someone like Vincent would stay in. The priest left my car almost before I’d set the parking break, hurried to the nearest door, and ducked inside as quickly as he could open the lock.

I followed him. Vincent shut the door behind us, locked it, and then fiddled with the blinds until they closed. He nodded at the room’s little table and said, "Please, sit down."

I did, and stretched out my legs. Father Vincent pulled open a drawer on the plain dresser, and drew out a file folder, held closed with a wide rubber band. He sat down across from me, took off the rubber band, and said, "The Church is interested in recovering some stolen property."

I shrugged and said, "Sounds like a job for the police."

"An investigation is under way and I am giving your police department my full cooperation. But – How to phrase this politely." He frowned. "History is an able teacher."

"You don’t trust the police," I said. "Gotcha."

He grimaced. "It is only that there have been a number of associations between Chicago police and various underworld figures in the past."

"That’s mostly movies now, padre. You may not have heard, but the whole Al Capone thing has been over for a while."

"Perhaps," he said. "Perhaps not. I simply seek to do everything within my power to recover the stolen article. That includes involving an independent and discreet investigator."

Aha. So he didn’t trust the police and wanted me to work for him on the sly. That’s why we were meeting at a cheap motel rather than wherever he was really staying. "What do you want me to find for you?"

"A relic," he said.

"A what?"