Nick shuddered and glanced at his top drawer. “Yeah. That. So if you came here for that, you’re out of luck.”
“No,” Fitz said. “It’s about gangs. Dresden said you knew them.”
Nick shrugged one shoulder. “Some.”
“A man I know was abducted,” Fitz said. “There’s a description of the guy we think did it.” Fitz dished out what I remembered about the thug who had broken into Morty’s house.
Nick listened to it all without saying a word. Then he nodded once. Then he asked, “Who is this man to you?”
“No idea,” Fitz said. “You’re the expert.”
“Not the kidnapper.” Nick sighed. “The victim.”
Fitz hardly hesitated. “My uncle.”
Nick mused over that. Then he said, “I am too old to get up in the middle of the night and get conned. Get out.”
“Wait,” Fitz said, holding out a hand. “Wait, please.”
Nick opened the top drawer again, but this time he came out with an old 1911. He didn’t point it at Fitz. “Good try, kid. But I’ve been in this town a while. Walk back to the door and let yourself out.”
“Dammit,” I muttered. “Fitz, listen to me. Tell him this, word for word.”
Fitz listened, nodded, and then said, “I can’t tell you everything for a reason, Mr. Christian. Dresden said you and he had an understanding. That you wanted nothing to do with his side of the street.”
“I don’t,” he said. “Get out.”
I fed Fitz his next line.
“He also said that you owed him a favor.”
Nick narrowed his eyes to slits. “What favor?”
Fitz listened to me, then said, “All the money and fame the Astor case brought you.”
Nick arched an eyebrow. “All the . . .” He looked away and shook his head. He couldn’t keep the smile off his mouth, until he finally snorted. When he spoke, there was laughter under his words. “That sounds like Harry.”
The Astor case had been about a little girl lost. Her parents cared more about the fame of having an abducted daughter than they did about her, and when she ran off one day, they hired the child-recovery specialist Nick Christian and his apprentice, Harry Dresden, to find her. We did. She hadn’t been kidnapped, but the Astors had reported her so, and, in the absence of an actual perpetrator, fingered Nick and me. It had been a trick and a half to get her safely back into her parents’ custody without going to jail. There was a lawsuit afterward. The judge threw it out. But, all in all, finding that little girl had cost Nick about two thousand bucks.
Nick hadn’t wanted to take the case. I had talked him into it. He had wanted to cut and run the moment I confirmed the kid was at liberty. I had talked him into seeing it through, being sure she was safe. When I’d completed my apprenticeship, Nick’s graduation present had been to forgive me the two grand I owed him.
“You were tight with him?” Nick asked.
“He was sort of my adviser,” Fitz said. “Sometimes it’s almost like he’s right there next to me, still.”
Nick grunted. “Investigation apprentice or the other kind?”
Fitz put on a sober face. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Hngh,” Nick said, nodding. “Heard he’d picked up an apprentice. You’re holding back to keep me distanced from the situation.”
“Yes.”
“And you just want the information? You don’t want me to work the field on it?”
“That’s right.”
“A wwww,” Nick said. He scratched at his ear and said, “Yeah. I guess. What else can you tell me about this guy?”
I fed Fitz his lines. “He was crazy.”
Nick snorted. “Whole hell of a lot of gangers are crazy, kid. Or the next best thing.”
“Less money-drugs-sex-violence crazy,” Fitz said. “More creepy-cult crazy.”
“Hngh,” Nick said. Lines appeared on his brow. “There’s one, where they all wear the hoodies with the hoods up all the time. Got rolling maybe three or four years back. They don’t call themselves anything, but the gangs call them the Big Hoods. No one knows much about them.”
“Perfect,” I said to Fitz. “Sounds like the assholes we’re looking for. Ask him where they’re set up.”
“A tunnel under the Eisenhower Expressway, on the south end of the Meatpacking District. The other gangs think they’re crazy to be where the cops move so freely, but the Big Hoods never seem to attract any police attention.” He scrunched up his eyes. “Don’t think they even claim any territory. That’s all I got.”
“Because they aren’t a gang, per se,” I said. “Excellent, Fitz. Let’s move.”
“Thank you,” Fitz said to Nick.
“Thank Dresden. Wouldn’t have said that much to anyone else.”
“I’ll do that.” Fitz stared intently at Nick for a moment and then said, “What do you do here?”
“As a private cop?” Nick asked. “Take some cruddy work to keep the lights on—divorces and so on. But mostly I look for lost kids.”
“Doing it a while?” Fitz asked.
“Thirty years.”
“Find any?”
“Plenty.”
“Find any in one piece?”
Nick stared hard at Fitz for a long time. Then he pointed a finger up and behind him, to the row of portraits on the wall.
“Seven?” Fitz asked.
“Seven,” Nick said.
“In thirty
Nick leaned back in his chair and gave Fitz a small smile. “That’s enough.”
Outside, Fitz said, to me, “He’s crazy.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And he helps people.”
Fitz frowned and moved hurriedly back out of the Vice Lords’ domain. He was silent for several blocks, seemingly content to walk beside me and think. Eventually, he looked up and asked, “You still there?”
“Yeah.”
“All right. I helped you. Pay up.”
“Okay,” I said. “Take a right at the next corner.”
“Why?”
“So I can introduce you to someone who will help.”
Fitz made a rude sound. “You really love not telling people things, don’t you?”
“I don’t love it, so much as I’m just really good at it.”
Fitz snorted. “Does this guy drink, too?”
“Nah. Sober as a priest.”
“Fine,” Fitz sighed, and kept trudging.
Chapter Twenty-six
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Fitz.
We were standing outside Saint Mary of the Angels. Calling the place a church is like calling Lake Michigan a swimming hole. It’s huge, literally taking up an entire city block, and an architectural landmark of Chicago. Gorgeously built, a true piece of gothic art, both inside and out, St. Mary’s had often served as a refuge for people with the kind of trouble Fitz was facing.
