Hallow Point, Page 2

  I think I nodded, then, though I’m not sure. Somebody’d robbed the museum of natural history? Christ, that’d be all over the papers come tomorrow! Not sure why the department would bring in an outsider, but…

  Actually, that was a damn good question. So. Being as that that’s what I do with good questions, I asked it.

  His answer was an unhelpful, “Uh, well…”

  Oh, goddamn it. “They didn’t ask you to bring me in on this, did they? You decided to do it yourself.”

  “Uh, well…”

  “Which means nobody’s gonna be happy when I show my puss over there, and it may not pay a plug nickel.”

  “Uh, well…”

  Thing is, much as I hated to admit it, Pete had got me interested. I may bust his chops, but the man’s no fool. If he thought the bulls needed me on this, he had a reason for it.

  “There’s gonna be a lot of political pressure on the department here, Mick. Even if it turns out to be nothing, the Field’s big news and big dollars.”

  “Yeah, no kidding.”

  “And the whole force’s in a tizzy right now anyway, on account of Judge Meadors.”

  Huh? I knew the name—local bench-warmer the boys in blue actually considered a pal, since he was a soft touch when it came to issuing warrants. No idea what he had to do with the price of tea in China, though.

  “Huh?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Mick, where you been? Was all over the papers a few days ago. Poor guy stepped outta some burger joint and right in front of a truck.”

  I decided right now wasn’t the best time for a joke about meat patties.

  “Point is, everyone’s got everything on their plate right now. So I figured, I can help my bosses and my buddy out, if I can get you on this early. Plus, I dunno if the detectives are gonna want to even bother with this one.”

  He mumbled that last bit quiet as a phonograph without a needle.

  “Wait…”

  “Plus, this one’s just weird.”

  Oh, joy. “I fucking hate the weird ones, Pete.”

  “Yeah, but you’re good at ’em.”

  Since it woulda been rude to bump off a guy for complimenting me, no matter how annoying, I decided against strangling him at this time.

  “Why wouldn’t the cops wanna spend their time on this? Seems like solving a high-profile theft would be good for—”

  “Well, see, thing is, um… We’re still cataloging’n all, be a few more hours before we can say for sure. There’s a lot to go through. But, uh, we’re not real sure anything was snatched.”

  I was starting to wonder if I’d ever actually woken up.

  “You’re not…?”

  “Like I said, there’s a lot there. But we checked the most valuable stuff first, and, least last I checked in, there wasn’t a thing missing.”

  “Shit, something’s gotta be gone! Nobody’s gonna break into the museum for no reason, unless it was just some delinquents smashin’ windows.”

  “Wasn’t nothing, though. Actually, they left something. Hidden with some of the other artifacts.”

  “They… You… You wanna drag me out there to investigate an… an anti-theft?”

  Pete shrugged. “Guess you could say so.”

  “You’re anti-sane!” I bitched at him.

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky and something’ll be missing after all,” he offered through a tight grin.

  Thing was, he’d got me, and we both knew it. I was curious enough now to wanna see what I could see.

  “You’re a bastard, Pete.”

  “So you’ve said before.”

  “Just making sure you were listening.”

  * * *

  Pete and I probably jawed a bit on the ride out, or rather he jawed at me, but I don’t remember a word of it. Too busy trying to ignore the hornets and hacksaws buzzing around in my noggin to pay any real attention. Pain and itching and irritation got so bad, I started wondering if it was possible to scratch a headache if you stuck a finger in your ear deep enough.

  I’ve told you how much I fucking hate flivvers, right? That’s how most of us aes sidhe feel when we’re all cocooned in metal and technology like that. By the time we turned onto Lake Shore, I was pretty sure I could smell time, and I was damn happy to escape the fucking thing. I know that Pete’s beat-up Plymouth wasn’t actually the corpse-grey of dead flesh, that the headlights weren’t actually staring me down, that the red spokes and fading whitewalls weren’t really bloody grins, but…

  Well, yeah. But.

  All right, shake it off, you lug. Got work to do.

  Maybe.

  Turning my back on the two-door heap, I craned my neck to get a good slant on the scene of the crime—or the not crime.

  You been to the Field Museum of Natural History? Damn thing’s bigger’n a faun’s libido. Back in the olden days, in older countries, I’ve lived in towns smaller than the place.

  Up front, where we were, you’d never know anything was hinky. Nobody around but one guy staggering down the street, misbuttoned coat flapping, trying to pretend he wasn’t lit like a Broadway production.

  Windows were dark, building was locked up tight. No tourists climbing the broad steps, or lingering by the fat pillars.

  Yeah, the main entrance is supposed to look all Classical and Greek. I saw Classical Greece, and they’da scoffed. Parth-anonymous, this place.

  Ouch. Sorry.

  Anyway, Pete figured they were probably around back, so we went around back. And there they were, gathered around a rear entrance I figure was probably used for deliveries and whatnot. Just a handful of bulls, a single plainclothes dick in rags almost as cheap and wrinkly as mine, and—to judge by the occasional flash and the fact I could taste the detectives’ aggravation from here—a couple’a late-shift news boys, probably hanging around just in case there was more of a story here than it seemed.

  Okay, I know Pete’d said they hadn’t yet found anything missing, but I still hadda wonder about the police presence, or lack thereof.

  “Looks like a lot of the guys have left since I headed out to your place,” Pete said. “All that nothing that was missing? Guess they found even more of it.”

  “Guess nobody told those last couple reporters about it.”

  “Maybe—but you don’t tell ’em either,” he warned me. “No comment on active investigations, you dig?”

  “In other words, since you bulls don’t like newshawks much anyway, you’re deliberately wasting their time.”

  Pete’s smirk was answer enough.

  “Keenan in charge here?” I asked.

  Pete looked at me like I’d just broken out in a rash of Austrians, and I got a sudden hunch that this was something he’d told me in the flivver, a really dippy question, or both.

  “B-and-E, Mick,” he reminded me. “Not homicide. That makes this Robbery’s case, even if nothing was stolen.”

  “Right.” Jeez, I musta been out of it on the way over. “So who’s in charge?”

  “Galway. Detective Donald Galway.”

  I didn’t know Galway personally, not to speak of. Think we’d met in passing at the clubhouse a time or two when I was there booshwashing with Pete or Detective Keenan. We’d traded nods, that kinda meaningless hooey.

  “He a right copper?” I asked Pete.

  “Not someone I’ll be inviting over for Thanksgiving next month, but honest so far’s I know.”

  “And how’s he feel about the department using outside consultants?”

  Pete wouldn’t look at me. “He’s honest, so far’s I know.”

  Oh, dandy. “So why’d you bring me in on this again?”

  “Like I told you, you’re good with the weird ones. Besides, he’ll be tickled not to have to waste any more of his time on this.”

  Funny how I heard Pete’s “I think” so loud, though he didn’t actually say it.

  When we finally approached him, Galway—who looked like Charlie Chaplin might have, if he’d traded some height for
weight and then forgot to iron his suit for a couple presidential administrations—proved even less happy to see me than I’d expected.

  Though of course, it wasn’t me who caught a faceful for it.

  “Staten, what the fuck is wrong with you? You’re supposed to be taking Baker’s beat while he’s here securing…”

  I kinda tuned out, right about then. I’d heard these rants before, and it was gonna drag on a while. I tried to nose around some without actually going anywhere, tried to find an angle on what’d happened here. I couldn’t tell much from where I was, though, and while I woulda taken some of the heat off Pete if I could, I didn’t think maybe getting pinched for trespassing on a crime scene was the wise way to go about it.

  Which meant I couldn’t accomplish bupkis other’n note a wet tang in the breeze and figure it was gonna rain again before sunup.

  Then I heard every copper’s favorite phrase, “have your badge,” and figured I’d have to do something after all.

  I thought about just stepping between the two, snagging Galway’s gaze and fiddling around with his noodle a bit until he thought about this whole situation how I wanted him to think. While there weren’t an awful lot of people around, though, there were enough. I don’t like to fall back on the hocus-pocus with too much of an audience.

  So I just needed to get Galway’s peepers on me some other way.

  Whistling softly, I stuck my hands in my pockets and made straight for the last lonely remaining couple’a camera-wielding reporters.

  Got Galway’s attention faster’n a priest at a peepshow, I’ll tell you what.

  “Hey! Hey!” he yelled. Almost wanted to ask if he had a bit of mojo himself, given how quick he was at my elbow. “The fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  “Going to talk to the newshawks, see what’s up, since it don’t look as if you’re gonna tell me.” I shrugged. “Why? What’s it look like I’m doing?”

  He tossed me a glare sharp enough I felt I oughta be sitting in a barber’s chair.

  “Oberon, right?”

  “Oberon, actually,” I corrected instinctively. Aw, damn it. The drive and the interrupted snooze had really taken it out of me. I’m so used to people mistaking my name for “O’Brien” in this city…

  Anyway, he blinked at me a few times, I blinked back—glad I don’t blush like you mugs—until he finally let it go.

  “You trying to get arrested?” he demanded.

  “Wasn’t my first goal, no.”

  “You got any idea how bad you’ll gum this up if you start flapping your yap to the press before we suss out what was stolen?”

  “If anything,” I added, just to prove that I knew what the hell I was talkin’ about. (Figured Pete wasn’t gonna get in any more trouble.) “Look, detective…”

  We still had folks watching, yeah, but now he was right up in my puss. Nobody was gonna glom to anything hinky if I… pushed a little. His peepers went wide as I slipped my focus in past ’em, plucking at his thoughts a bit. Not a lot, just shuffling a few cards around: suspicion and anger to the bottom of the deck, confusion and impatience with the case to the top.

  “You and me,” I continued, “we both know the department’s behind the eight ball on this one. Break-in at the Field? No way the press is gonna buy that nothing, or almost nothing, is missing. You’re gonna be chasing more rumors’n crooks. You’re gonna have the mayor and the city council climbing up your ass like cheap long johns to shush those whispers. And you’re gonna have biscuits for resources, since the force’s got better crimes than breaking-and-gift-giving to worry over. So what’s the harm in letting me give this an up-and-down? I don’t find anything, I go home. I do find something, and you’re the genius who thought to bring in somebody to take the heat off the department.”

  All nice and reasonable-sounding, yeah? Least, it was thanks to the mental nudge. Galway might come out of it later wondering why he went along, but by that point I didn’t think he’d say much.

  “Okay, Oberon,” he said, sounding just a touch slow, scratching under his hat with one finger as though he wasn’t quite sure what itched. “You’re on. But it’s off the books—and off the account—unless you find something.”

  Sigh. Fine. “I’m sure Officer Staten can guide me from here.”

  I think Galway wanted to argue that one—he was still pretty sore at Pete—but another aes sidhe-special push took care of that.

  The rest of the bulls gave me and Pete some queer stares as I stepped up to him and steered us toward the entrance, but nobody said boo about it.

  “You called it, Pete. He was just real tickled to see me.”

  “I mighta figured that one wrong,” he admitted quietly, out of earshot of the other uniforms. “Guess I don’t got Galway worked out as good as I thought. Everything jake now, though?”

  “Long as I’m here, yeah. After I make tracks, you’re on your own.”

  “Gee, thanks. You’re all heart.”

  “Oh, and if I come up with anything, it was Galway’s idea to call me in.”

  “And if you don’t? Lemme guess.”

  “Yep. Then you get the credit.”

  “You this nice to all your friends, Mick?”

  “Hey, you just wanted what was best for the case, right? Now, why don’tcha show me where the break-in happened, before you gotta find a doctor and get that twitch looked at?”

  Turned out, though, that the actual point of entry told me squat. Nothing but a smashed window. Not a pro job; anybody with a rock or a brick coulda done it. I was kinda surprised the twit had managed not to bleed all over the jagged glass.

  Sloppy. Careless. ’Cept for one teeny problem.

  None of the alarms had gone off.

  That much, I remembered Pete telling me in that rolling torture chamber he calls a Plymouth. And even if I hadn’t, I’d have picked it up from the whispers and conversation among the lingering coppers outside. The Field had some real high-technology stuff, with bells and klaxons, and nobody’d heard so much as the squeak of a goosed mouse.

  So what kinda ham-fisted galoot smashes his way in like a caveman but manages not to trip any switches or break any connections? That’s a sort of luck even I might have some trouble arranging.

  I wasn’t sure what any of that meant, yet, but I knew it meant something.

  “All right,” I said to Pete. “Lead the way.”

  Suppose I was kinda unfair earlier. The place actually does a decent job of emulating Ancient Greek architecture, or at least what you lot think it looked like. Got your caryatid columns and bas-reliefs and white stone and everything. It’s not your fault you weren’t around to see the real thing before it was stripped to ruins.

  I just ain’t inclined to be charitable. I don’t much care for museums, see? You might think I’d feel better around all the history and old dinguses and whatnot, and yeah, sometimes I can take comfort in ’em for a few. And they’re bursting with mojo, or at least potential mojo, thanks to all the luck’n history’n symbolism of everything on display. But there’s always this bitter aftertaste of technology to it. All the lighting and alarms, all the science buzzing along downstairs, the echoes of a few million modern souls passing through… Well, imagine a relaxing, soft-handed masseuse suddenly switching to sandpaper, or free-floating globs of cod-liver oil in your cocktail, and you probably get the gist of it.

  As I discovered, though, maybe I wasn’t gonna have to deal with any of that.

  “Not an exhibit,” Pete told me when I asked which particular exhibit had been, uh, un-robbed. “Was in the stores, downstairs.”

  So, after just a wink of the sorta dead lighting and antiseptic smell of museum hallway, we passed through a door with a big warning sign saying “authorized personnel”—sounds like a big deal, but it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be—and tromped down an open, echoing staircase, which was full of even deader lighting and an even stronger antiseptic stink from below. Guess I shouldn’t have been surprised.

  It
wasn’t a long staircase, but we still got interrupted before we made the bottom. Voices, not shouting but sure as shootin’ not happy, drifted up to us. Pete dropped a hand to his heater, and I almost went for the L&G Model 1592 I keep in my shoulder holster in lieu of a roscoe, but none of that was necessary. Couple more of the boys in blue appeared on the steps. They were shoulder-to-shoulder with the bird doing most of the yammering: a pale old man with pale bushy hair and a pale beard, in a dark three-piece. He looked like a dandelion undertaker.

  “Clancy, Pat,” Pete greeted the two of ’em. “How’s it figure?”

  “Pete,” the one on the left—Clancy, I think—said. “I don’t… We’re not…”

  He and Pat gave me a once-over; dunno if they figured I was another plainclothes, or what, but I guess being with Pete was good enough.

  “Galway ain’t with you, is he?” Clancy asked. They both peered around me, like the fat gumshoe was somehow hiding behind one of us.

  “Uh, no…” Pete replied.

  “Good. I dunno how the hell we’re supposed to explain—”

  “Explain? Explain?” That was the dandelion squawking now. “You had damn well better do a damn sight more than ‘explain,’ officers!”

  The two flatfeet grimaced pretty much in unison.

  “Pete,” Clancy said, “this here’s Morton Lydecker. Assistant Curator. Mr. Lydecker, this is Officer Pete Staten and… Uh…”

  “Oberon,” I chimed in. “Mick Oberon. PI and consultant on cases of certain, let’s say, historical interest.” It wasn’t even a fib, really. There was history here, and I was interested, so…

  “What,” I continued, so nobody could ask any questions or whine any whines, “seems to be the problem now, Mr. Lydecker?”

  “The problem? Problem?”

  I swore right then that if he kept screeching, I was gonna drag him up to the African elephant display and dangle him from a tusk.

  “The problem, Mr. Oberon,” he said, calming himself with a big, deep breath, “is that it’s vanished.”

  In what was already a seriously hinky case, that was not what I’d expected to hear.

  “What?” I asked, ’cause that was the sort of brilliant questioning that made me a successful dick.