Storm Front

I didn’t find my hair anywhere. I looked up at Marcone, and he regarded me, my eyes, without any readable emotion.

"Nothing," I told him.

"Interesting. He must have passed the material in question to someone else before he came here," Marcone said.

"Someone after he got here, maybe?"

Marcone shook his head. "I am quite sure he did not do that. I would have noticed."

"I believe you," I told him, and I did. "But who?"

"Our enemy," Marcone said. "Obviously."

I closed my eyes, suddenly sagging with weariness. "Dammit."

Marcone said nothing. He stood up, and issued a few quiet orders to Hendricks and Spike. Hendricks wiped down his gun with a napkin, then left it lying on the floor. Spike went over behind the bar and started to do something involving a power cord and a bottle of whiskey.

I gathered up my staff and rod, stood up, and turned to Marcone. "Tell me what else you know. I need everything you have if I’m going to catch this guy."

Marcone considered that, and nodded. "Yes, you do. Unfortunately, you chose a public forum for this discussion. You have set yourself up in the eyes of anyone who cared to watch as my enemy. As understandable as your reasons might have been, the fact that you have publicly defied me remains. I cannot let that go without response, regardless of my personal feelings, without inviting more of the same. I must maintain control. It isn’t personal, Mr. Dresden. It’s business."

I tightened my jaw, and my grip on my blasting rod, and made sure my shield was still there, ready to go. "So what are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing," he said. "I need do nothing. Either our enemy will kill you, in which case I need not risk myself or my people in removing you, or you will find him in time and bring him down. If you do defeat him, I will let it be understood to any who ask that you did so at my behest, after which I will be inclined to forget this evening. Either way, it profits me best to wait and see."

"If he kills me," I pointed out, "if I’m the next one to have my heart ripped out, you still won’t know where he is. You won’t be any closer to removing him and protecting your business."

"True," Marcone said. Then he smiled, an expression that lasted for only a fraction of a second. "But I think you will not be such easy prey. I think that even if he kills you, he will reveal himself in some way. And since our encounter the other day, I think I have a better feel for what sorts of things to look for."

I scowled at him and turned to go, moving briskly toward the door.

"Harry," he said. I stopped and turned back around.

"On a personal note – I know nothing that would profit you in any case. All of his people we managed to take revealed nothing. They were that afraid of him. No one seems to know just where the drug comes from, from what it is made, or where this person does business. Shadows, they say. That he is always in the shadows. That is all that I have learned."

I regarded Johnny Marcone for a moment, and then nodded, once. "Thank you."

He shrugged. "Good luck. I think it would be best if you and I did not encounter one another in the future. I cannot tolerate any more interference in my affairs."

"I think that’s a good idea, too," I said.

"Excellent. It is good to have someone who understands." And then he turned back toward his remaining two men, leaving the corpse of Gimpy Lawrence on the floor behind him.

I turned and trudged out of the place, into the night and the cold and the misty rain. I still felt sick, could still see Gimpy Lawrence’s eyes as he died. I could still hear Linda Randall’s husky laughter in my head. I still regretted lying to Murphy, and I still had no intentions of telling her any more than I already had. I still didn’t know who was trying to kill me. I still had no defense to present to the White Council.

"Let’s face it, Harry," I told myself. "You’re still screwed."

Chapter Eighteen

Have you ever felt despair? Absolute hopelessness? Have you ever stood in the darkness and known, deep in your heart, in your spirit, that it was never, ever going to get better? That something had been lost, forever, and that it wasn’t coming back?

That’s what it felt like, walking out of the Varsity, walking out into the rain. When I’m in turmoil, when I can’t think, when I’m exhausted and afraid and feeling very, very alone, I go for walks. It’s just one of those things I do. I walk and I walk and sooner or later something comes to me, something to make me feel less like jumping off a building.

So I walked. It was pretty stupid, in retrospect, walking around Chicago late on a Saturday night. I didn’t look up very often. I walked and let things roll around in my head, my hands in the pockets of my duster, which flapped around my long legs while the light rain gradually plastered my hair to my head.

I thought about my father. I usually do, when I get that low. He was a good man, a generous man, a hopeless loser. A stage magician at a time when technology was producing more magic than magic, he had never had much to give his family. He was on the road most of the time, playing run-down houses, trying to scratch out a living for my mother. He wasn’t there when I was born.

He wasn’t there when she died.

He showed up more than a day after I’d been born. He gave me the names of three magicians, then took me with him, on the road, entertaining children and retirees, performing in school gymnasiums and grocery stores. He was always generous, kind – more kind and more generous than we could afford, really. And he was always a little bit sad. He would show me pictures of my mother, and talk about her, every night. It got to where I almost felt that I knew her, myself.

As I got older, the feeling increased. I saw my father, I think, as she must have – as a dear, sweet, gentle man. A little naive, but honest and kind. Someone who cared for others, and who didn’t value material gain over all else. I can see why she would have loved him.

I never got to be old enough to be his assistant, as he had promised me. He died in his sleep one night. An aneurism, the doctors said. I found him, cold, smiling. Maybe he’d been dreaming of Mother when he went. And as I looked at him, I suddenly felt, for the very first time in my life, utterly, entirely alone. That something was gone that would never return, that a little hole had been hollowed out inside of me that wasn’t ever going to be filled again.

And that was how I felt, that rainy spring night in Chicago, walking along the streets, my breath pluming into steam, my right boot creaking with every step, dead people occupying all of my thoughts.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, I suppose, when after hours of walking, my steps carried me back to Linda Randall’s apartment. The police were all gone, now, the lights all off, all the gawking neighbors cozy in their beds. It was quiet in the apartment complex. Dawn wasn’t yet brushing the sky, but somewhere, on a window ledge or in a rooftop nest, a bird was twittering.