It was too early for it to be properly crowded, and Murphy and I sat down at a corner table, the one farthest from the windows, and therefore from laser microphones, in case our federal pursuers had doubled up on their paranoia meds.
I began without preamble. “Who said Rudolph was getting his orders from his direct superiors? Or from anyone in Chicago at all?”
She frowned and thought about it for a moment. I waited it out patiently. “You don’t really think that,” she said. “Do you?”
“I think it’s worth looking at. He looked shaky when I saw him.”
“Yeah,” Murphy said thoughtfully. “At my place, too.”
I filled her in on the details of what she’d missed, at my apartment and the FBI building, and by the time I was done she was nodding confidently. “Go on.”
“We both know that ladder climbers like Rudolph don’t usually get nervous, rushed, and pressured when they’re operating with official sanction. They have too much fun swaggering around beating people over the head with their authority club.”
“Don’t know if all of them do that,” she said, “but I know damned well that Rudolph does.”
“Yeah. But this time, he was edgy, impatient. Desperate.” I told her about his behavior in general, and specifically at my place and in the interrogation room downtown. “Tilly said that Rudolph had lied his ass off to point the FBI at me.”
“And you believe that?” Murphy asked.
“Don’t you?”
She shrugged. “Point. But that doesn’t mean he’s being used as some kind of agent.”
“I think it does,” I said. “He’s not operating with the full authority of his superiors. Someone else has got to be pushing him—someone who scared him enough to make him nervous and hasty.”
“Maybe that works,” Murphy said. “Why would he do it?”
“Someone wanted to make sure I wasn’t involved in the search for Maggie. So, maybe they sent Rudolph after me. Then, when Tilly turns me loose, they take things to the next level and try to whack me outside the FBI building.”
Murphy’s blue eyes were cold at the mention of the assassination attempt. “Could they have gotten someone into position that fast?”
I tried to work it through in my head. “After Tilly sent Rudolph out of the room, it didn’t take long for me to get out. Ten minutes, fifteen at the most. Time enough to call in his failure, and for his handler to send in a hit, you think?”
Murphy thought about it herself and then shook her head slowly. “Only if they were very, very close, and moved like greased lightning. But . . . Harry, that hit was too calm, too smooth for something thrown together at the last possible moment.”
I frowned, and we both clammed up as Mac came over to our table and put a pair of brown bottles down. He was a spare man, bald, and had been ever since I knew him, dressed in dark clothes and a spotless white apron. We both murmured thanks, and he withdrew again.
“Okay,” she said, and took a pull from the bottle. “Maybe Rudolph’s handler had already put the assassin in place as a contingency measure, in case you got loose despite Rudolph’s efforts.”
I shook my head. “It makes more sense if the assassin was already there, positioned to remove Rudolph, once he had served his purpose. Whoever his handler was, they would need a safety measure in place, a link they could cut out of the chain so that nothing would lead back to them. Only once Rudy calls them and tells them he isn’t able to keep me locked up, they have the shooter switch targets.”
Which meant . . . I had taken three bullets meant for Rudolph.
“Harry?” Murphy asked. “Why are you laughing?”
“I heard a joke yesterday,” I said. “I just got it.”
She frowned at me. “You need some rest. You look like hell. And you’re obviously tired enough to have gotten the giggles.”
“Wizards don’t giggle,” I said, hardly able to speak. “This is cackling.”
She eyed me askance and sipped her beer. She waited until I had laughed myself out before speaking again. “You find out about Maggie yet?”
“Sort of,” I said, abruptly sobered. “I think I know where she will be in the next few days.” I gave her what we had learned about the duchess’s intentions, leaving out the parts where I committed a bunch of crimes like theft, trespassing, and vandalism. “So right now,”