“Trust me, Harry. I’ll change his mind.”
“No,” Morgan said fiercely. He coughed a couple of times. “No. I would rather be dead-do you hear me? Be dead than have you use black magic on my behalf.”
Molly set the beer down on the shelf by the door and blinked at Morgan. “You’re right,” she said to me. “He is kind of a drama queen. Who said anything about magic?”
She pulled one arm into her T-shirt, and wriggled around a little. A few seconds later, she was tugging her bra out of the arm hole of her shirt. She dropped it on the shelf, picked up the bottle, and held it against each breast in turn. Then she turned to face me, took a deep breath, and arched her back a little. The tips of her breasts pressed quite noticeably against the rather strained fabric of her shirt.
“What do you think?” she asked, giving me a wicked smile.
I thought Vince was doomed.
“I think your mother would scream bloody murder,” I said.
Molly smirked. “Call the mechanic. I’ll just keep him company until the truck gets there.” She turned with a little extra hip action and left the apartment.
Morgan made a low, appreciative sound as the door closed.
I eyed him.
Morgan looked from the door to me. “I’m not dead yet, Dresden.” He closed his eyes. “Doesn’t hurt to admire a woman’s beauty once in a while.”
“Maybe. But that was just… just wrong.”
Morgan smiled, though it was strained with discomfort. “She’s right, though. Especially with a young man. A woman can make a man see everything in a different light.”
“Wrong,” I muttered. “Just wrong.”
I went to call Mike the mechanic.
Molly came back about forty-five minutes later, beaming.
Morgan had been forced to take more pain medication and was tossing in a restless sleep. I closed the door carefully so that we wouldn’t wake him.
“Well?” I asked.
“His car has really good air-conditioning,” Molly said smugly. “He never had a chance.” Between two fingers, she held up a business card like the one I’d gotten.
I did the same thing with mine, mirroring her.
She flipped hers over, showing me a handwritten note on the other side. “I’m worried about my job as your assistant.” She put the back of her hand against her forehead melodramatically. “If something happens to you, whatever will I do? Wherever shall I go?”
“And?”
She held out the card to me. “And Vince suggested that I might consider work as a paralegal. He even suggested a law firm. Smith Cohen Mackleroy.”
“His job-hunting suggestion, eh?” I asked.
She smirked. “Well, obviously he couldn’t just tell me who hired him. That would be wrong.”
“You are a cruel and devious young woman.” I took the card from her and read it. It said: Smith Cohen Mackleroy, listed a phone number, and had the name “Evelyn Derek” printed under that.
I looked up to meet Molly’s smiling eyes. Her grin widened. “Damn, I’m good.”
“No argument here,” I told her. “Now we have a name, a lead. One might even call it a clue.”
“Not only that,” Molly said. “I have a date.”
“Good work, grasshopper,” I said, grinning as I rolled my eyes. “Way to take one for the team.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Smith Cohen and Mackleroy, as it turned out, was an upscale law firm in downtown Chicago. The building their offices occupied stood in the shadow of the Sears Tower, and must have had a fantastic view of the lake. Having plucked out the enemy’s eyes, so to speak, I thought that I might have bought us some breathing space. Without Vince on our tail, I hoped that Morgan could get a few hours of rest in relative safety.
I’d figure out somewhere else to move him-just as soon as I leaned on Ms. Evelyn Derek and found out to whom she reported Vince’s findings.
I guess I looked sort of mussed and scraggly, because the building’s security guard gave me a wary look as I entered solidly in the middle of lunch hour. I could practically see him deciding whether or not to stop me.
I gave him my friendliest smile-which my weariness and stress probably reduced to merely polite-and said, “Excuse me, sir. I have an appointment with an attorney at Smith Cohen and Mackleroy. They’re on the twenty- second floor, right?”
He relaxed, which was good. Beneath his suit, he looked like he had enough muscle to bounce me handily out the door. “Twenty-four, sir.”
“Right, thanks.” I smiled at him and strode confidently past. Confidence is critical to convincing people that you really are supposed to be somewhere-especially when you aren’t.
“Sir,” said the guard from behind me. “I’d appreciate it if you left your club here.”
I paused and looked over my shoulder.
He had a gun. His hand wasn’t exactly resting on it, but he’d tucked his thumb into his belt about half an inch away.
“It isn’t a club,” I said calmly. “It’s a walking stick.”
“Six feet long.”
“It’s traditional Ozark folk art.”
“With dents and nicks all over it.”
I thought about it for a second. “I’m insecure?”
“Get a blanket.” He held out his hand.
I sighed and passed my staff over to him. “Do I get a receipt?”
He took a notepad from his pocket and wrote on it. Then he passed it over to me. It read: Received, one six foot traditional Ozark walking club from Mr. Smart-ass.
“That’s Doctor Smart-ass,” I said. “I didn’t spend eight years in insult college to be called Mister.”
He leaned the staff against the wall behind his desk and sat back down at his chair.
I went to the elevator and rode up. It was one of those express contraptions that goes fast enough to compress your spine and make your ears pop. It opened on the twenty-fourth floor facing a reception desk. The law office, apparently, took up the entire floor.
The receptionist was, inevitably, a young woman, and just as unavoidably attractive. She went with the solid- oak furnishings, the actual oil paintings, and the handcrafted furniture in the reception area, and the faint scent of lemon wood polish in the air-variations on a theme of beautiful practicality.
She looked up at me with a polite smile, her dark hair long and appealing, her shirt cut just low enough to make you notice, but not so low as to make you think less of her. I liked the smile. Maybe I didn’t look like a beaten-up bum. Maybe on me it just looked ruggedly determined.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, “but the addiction-counseling center is on twenty-six.”
Sigh.
“I’m actually here to see someone,” I said. “Assuming that this is Smith Cohen and Mackleroy?”
She glanced rather pointedly-but still politely-at the front of her desk, where a plaque bore the firm’s name in simple sans serif lettering. “I see, sir. Who are you looking for?”
“Ms. Evelyn Derek, please.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No,” I said. “But she’ll want to talk to me.”
The receptionist looked at me as though she had some kind of bitter, unpleasant taste in her mouth. I’d timed my arrival correctly, then. The young lady clearly would have been much more comfortable handing me off to a
