His suit jacket, hung over the back of his chair, was worth more than some small nations. His loosened tie, a simple silver number rather than a bright “power” tie, bespoke confidence and strength that needed no such sartorial declaration. His hands were broad and looked strong. There were scars on his knuckles. His short, conservatively cut hair was dark, except for just enough silver at his temples to announce a man in his physical and mental prime. He was well built and obviously kept himself in shape, and his features were regular and appealing. He was by no means beautiful, but his face projected strength and competence.
He looked like a man others would willingly follow.
Two other people stood on the stage, slightly behind him, testimony to his ability to lead. The first was a woman, a blond amazon more than six feet tall in a grey business suit. She had the legs that had been cruelly denied me at birth, the bitch. Her name was Gard, and Dresden had believed she was an actual, literal Valkyrie.
The other was Hendricks. He wasn’t truly ugly, but he reminded me of a gargoyle, anyway, a slab-muscled being with a misshapen appearance and beady eyes, ready to leap into action on behalf of the man he watched over. His eyes tracked me as I approached. Gard’s blue eyes focused on me for a moment, then skipped past me to Will. She narrowed her eyes and murmured something toward Marcone.
Chicago’s resident lord of the underworld gave no indication that he’d heard her, and I caught the last few lines of a conversation as I approached.
“You’ll just have to do it yourself.” He paused, listening. Then he said, “I don’t have the proper resources for such a thing—and even if I did, I wouldn’t waste them by sending them there blind and unprepared. You’ll have to use your own people.” He paused again and then said, “Neither of us will ever be scratching each other’s back, mutually or otherwise. I will not send my people into danger without more information. Should you change your mind, you may feel free to contact me. Good day.”
He hung up the phone and then turned toward me. He had eyes the color of several-days-old grass clippings. They were opaque, reptilian. He made a steeple of his fingertips and said, “Ms. Murphy.”
“News travels fast,” I said.
“To me. Yes.” His mouth turned up in a heartless smile. “Which are you here for? Work or revenge?”
“Why would I want revenge on such a pillar of the community?”
“Dresden,” he said simply. “I assume you’re here because you think me responsible.”
“What if I am?” I asked.
“Then I would advise you to leave. You wouldn’t live long enough to take your gun from your coat.”
“And besides,” I said, “you didn’t do it. Right? And you have a perfectly rational reason to explain why you didn’t even want him dead.”
He shrugged, a motion he managed to infuse with elegance. “No more than any other day, at any rate,” he said. “I had no need to assassinate Dresden. He’d been working diligently to get himself killed for several years—as I pointed out to him a few days ago.”
I kept my heart on lockdown. The cocky bastard’s tone made me want to scream and tear out his eyes. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d rattled me. “I’m here for another reason.”
“Oh?” he asked politely.
Too politely. He knew. He’d known why I was coming since before I came through the door. I stopped and played the past several hours back in my imagination, before I spotted where I’d contacted his net.
“Maria,” I said. “She was one of yours.”
Hendricks eyed Gard.
She rolled her eyes and withdrew a twenty-dollar bill from her jacket pocket. She passed it to the big man.
Hendricks pocketed it with a small, complacent smile.
Marcone took no evident note of the interaction. “Yes. The superintendent you met had been providing the means for some of my competitors to operate. Maria was observing his business partners, so that we could track them back to their source and encourage them to operate elsewhere.”
I stared at him, hard. “She just let Ray treat her like that?”
“And was well paid to do it,” Marcone replied. “Admittedly, she was looking forward to closing the contract.”
Maria hadn’t been a broken little mouse. Hell, she was one of Marcone’s troubleshooters. It was a widely used euphemism for hitters in Marcone’s outfit. Everyone knew it was the troubleshooter’s job to identify trouble within