location for criminals with mutual trust issues to meet up. Each could be sure the other was alone. Each could be reasonably sure the other wouldn’t start shooting, right out there in front of God and everybody.
The park, as it should have been, was empty. The surrounding streetlights left little hidden on the green grass, but the playground equipment cast long, asymmetric shadows.
A man sat on one of the swings. He was huge—the biggest individual I’d ever seen. He was heavy with muscle, though it was an athlete’s balanced build—made for action, not for display. His hips strained the heavy flexible plastic seat of the swing to the horizontal. He must have been better than seven feet tall.
He was quietly sitting there, completely still, watching and waiting. His head was shaved and his skin was dark. He wore a simple outfit—black chinos and a thin turtleneck sweater. If the October chill was bothering him, it didn’t show. I stomped over toward him in my Munster boots. When I was about thirty feet away, he turned his head toward me. His gaze was startling. His eyes were blue-white, as on some northern sled dogs, and looked nearly luminous in the half shadows.
He lifted his eyebrows as I came closer, then rose and bowed politely from the waist. I realized that he wasn’t seven feet tall. He was more like seven foot four or five.
“Good evening,” he said. His basso rumble was unmistakable. This was the person I had spoken to earlier.
I stopped in front of him and put a hand on my hip, eyeing him as if I wasn’t much impressed. “As long as you brought the money, it will be,” I drawled.
He reached into a cavernous pocket in his pants and drew out a brick wrapped in plastic. He tossed it to me. “Half.”
I caught it and tore open the plastic with my teeth. Then I started counting the money, all of it in nonsequential Ben Franklins.
A trace of impatience entered my contact’s voice. “It’s all there.”
“Talking to me is just going to make me lose count and start over,” I said. “What am I supposed to call you?”
“Nothing,” he said. “No one. I am nothing to you.”
“Nothing it is,” I replied. The bills were bound in groups of fifty. I counted one out and compared its thickness to that of the others, then flipped through just to be sure Nothing wasn’t trying to short me by throwing some twenties into the middle of the stack. Then I stuck the money in my jacket pocket and said, “We’re in business.”
Nothing inclined his head a bit. “The merchandise?”
“Come with me,” I said, injecting my voice with breezy confidence. I turned to stomp back toward the garage parking lot, and Nothing paced along beside me.
Already, this wasn’t going well. This guy was huge. I was good, but training and practice can get you only so far. The old saying is that a good big man will beat a good little man. Which is sexist as all get-out, but no less true. Levels of skill being equal, whoever has the size and weight advantage damn near always wins. Nothing probably outweighed all three of us together, and I already had a sense, from the way he held himself and moved, that he was a person accustomed to violence. He was good.
I could shoot him (probably), but I didn’t need a dead trafficker on my hands. I needed one who could talk—which meant I was going to have to let Will and Marcy be taken.
“How long you fellas setting up shop?” I asked him as we walked. “Might be able to come up with another one, if the price is right.”
Nothing looked at me for a moment before speaking. “If you cannot do it by dawn, do not bother.”
“Maybe. We’ll see how this plays out.”
Nothing shrugged and kept on walking. I caught sight of our reflection in a passing window—Biker Barbie and Bigfoot. I tried to keep out of his reach as we walked, but there was only so much sidewalk, and Nothing’s arms looked long enough to slap me from the middle of the street.
As we walked, I noticed the smell. The man just smelled
“You aren’t really human, are you,” I noted as we walked into the parking garage—and away from any potential witnesses.
“Not anymore,” he replied.
As he spoke, the collar of the turtleneck . . . stirred. It rippled, as if something had moved beneath it.
“Well, I am,” I said. “Completely worthless for whatever you’re doing collecting specials. So don’t be thinking you can get three for the price of two.”
Nothing looked down at me with those unsettling eyes. “You are pathetic.”
I put a little extra swagger into my step. “Careful what you say there, big guy. You’ll turn me on.”
Nothing made a small, quiet sound of disgust and shook his head. It was hard not to smile as I watched him pigeonhole me into “scum, treacherous, decadent.”
“It’s right up here.”
“Before we approach the vehicle,” he said, “you should know that if you have associates waiting in ambuscade, I will break their necks—and yours.”
I lifted my hands. “Jesus. Show a little trust, will you? We’re all capitalists here.” I pointed the fob at the SUV and disarmed the alarm with a little electronic chirp. The lights flashed once. I tossed him the keys. “That one. I’ll stay back here if you like.”
“Acceptable,” he said, and strode to the SUV. Watching him bend down to look in was like a scene from
The skin of Nothing’s neck was deformed with narrow flaps of skin, somehow, and it took me a few seconds to realize what I was looking at.
Gills.
The man had
“Werewolves,” he said. “Valuable.”
“They make good pets?” I asked.
He reached in and seized Will, lifting him with one hand. The young man remained limp, his eyes closed.
“Their blood has unique properties. What did you use to subdue them?”
“Roofies. The way my dating life has been going, I keep some on hand.”
He made a dissatisfied sound and tugged his collar up again. “The drug might lower their value.”
“I hope not,” I said. “This has been such a nice conversation. I’d hate for it to end in a gunshot.”
Nothing turned his head slightly and gave me a very cold little smile.
I felt threatened enough to produce my gun without even consciously thinking about it. I held it in two hands, pointed at the ground near his feet. We stayed that way, facing off for several seconds. Then he shrugged a shoulder. He produced another brick of bills and threw it to me, along with the truck keys. Then he gathered up Marcy and tossed her over one shoulder, and Will over the other.
He turned to the entrance of the garage and made several sharp, popping clicks as he went, producing with an odd quiver of his chest and throat a sound that was somehow familiar. They must have been a signal. A moment later, a van with rental-agency plates pulled up to the curb and stopped.
A man dressed identically to Nothing rolled open the side door. Nothing put the two werewolves inside, then followed them, somehow compressing his bulk enough to get into the van. The driver pulled back into traffic a second later. The entire pickup had taken less than ten seconds.
I got back onto my motorcycle and rolled out of the garage with my lights off before their van had gotten to the end of the block. Then, settling in to follow them from several car lengths back, I tried to make like a hole in the air.
Nothing and his driver headed for the docks, which was hardly unanticipated. Chicago supports an enormous amount of shipping traffic that travels through the Great Lakes, and offloads cargo to be transferred to railroads or trucking companies for shipment throughout the United States. Such ships remain one of the best
