"I broke into his room while he was doing it," Vince said. "Maybe you could save your questions until the end of the presentation."
"Hard to imagine you not fitting in with the cops," I said.
Vince ignored the comment. "He takes a shower and calls another cab."
"Tell me you followed the cab," I said.
"Tell me your check cleared."
"I'm good for it."
"Yeah, I'm following the cab right now," Vince said. "But I don't need to. He's headed for the Hotel Sax."
"Who are you, the Amazing Kreskin?"
"Listened in on the cabbie's CB," he said. "ETA, eighteen minutes."
"Eighteen?" I asked.
"Usually found between seventeen and nineteen," he said. "I can't guarantee I can stay on him at the hotel, especially if he tumbles to the tail. Too many ways out."
"I'll take it from there. Do not get close to him, man. You get an instinct he's looking in your direction, run for the hills. This guy's dangerous."
"Yeah," Vince said. "Hell, I'm lucky I haven't wet my pants already."
"I'm serious."
"I know you are. It's cute. Seventeen minutes."
"I'll be there."
"With my check. I've got a two-day minimum. You know that, right?"
"Right, right," I said. "I'll be there."
"What have we got?" Murphy asked as I put the phone down.
"Binder thinks he shook me," I said. "He's headed for a meeting at Hotel Sax."
She stood up and grabbed her car keys. "How do you know it's a meeting?"
"Because he's been made. If he was here alone, he'd be on his way out of town right now." I nodded. "He's running back to whoever hired him."
"Who is that?" Murphy asked.
"Let's find out."
Chapter Thirty-two
The Hotel Sax is a pretty good example of its kind in the beating heart of downtown Chicago. It's located on Dearborn, just across the street from the House of Blues, and if you look up while standing outside of the place, it looks like someone slapped one of those fish-eye camera lenses on the sky. Buildings stretch up and up and up, at angles that seem geometrically impossible.
Many similar sections of Chicago have wider streets than you find in other metropolises, and it makes them feel slightly less claustrophobic, but outside of the Sax, the street was barely three narrow lanes across, curb to curb. As Murphy and I approached, looking up made me feel like an ant walking along the bottom of a crack in the sidewalk.
"It bugs you, doesn't it?" Murphy said.
We walked under a streetlight, our shadows briefly equal in length. "What?"
"Those big things looming over you."
"I wouldn't say it bothers me," I said. "I'm just ... aware of them."
She faced serenely ahead as we walked. "Welcome to my life."
I glanced down at her and snorted quietly.
We entered the lobby of the hotel, a place with a lot of glass and white paint with rich red accents. Given how late it was, it was no surprise only one member of the staff was visible: a young woman who stood behind one of the glass-fronted check-in counters. One guest reading a magazine sat in a nearby chair, and even though he was the only guy in the room, it took me a second glance to realize that he was Vince.
Vince set the magazine aside and ambled over to us. His unremarkable brown eyes scanned over Murphy. He nodded to her and offered me his hand.
I shook it, and offered a check to him with my left as we did. He took it, glanced at it noncommittally, and put it away in a pocket. "He took an elevator to the twelfth floor," Vince said. "He's in room twelve thirty-three."
I blinked at him. "How the hell did you get that? Ride up with him?"
"Good way for me to get hurt. I stayed down here." He shrugged. "You said he was trouble."
"He is. How'd you do it?"
He gave me a bland look. "I'm good at this. You need to know which chair he's in, too?"
"No. That's close enough," I said.
Vince looked at Murphy again, frowned, and then frowned at me. "Jesus," he said. "You two look pretty serious."
"Yeah," I said. "I told you, this guy's dangerous. He have anyone with him?"
"One person," he said. "A woman, I think."
Murphy suddenly smiled.
"How the hell do you know that?" I asked him.
"Room service," she said.
Vince smiled in faint approval at Murphy and nodded his head. "Could have been someone else on twelve who ordered champagne and two glasses two minutes after he got off the elevator. But this late at night, I doubt it." Vince glanced at me. "I'll take the bill I duked the steward out of my fee."
"Appreciated," I said.
He shrugged. "That it?"
"Yeah. Thanks, Vince."
"As long as the check clears," he said, "you're welcome." He nodded to me, to Murphy, and walked out of the hotel.
Murphy eyed me, after Vince left, and smiled. "The mighty Harry Dresden. Subcontracting detective work."
"They're expecting me to be all magicky and stuff," I said. "And I gave them what they expected to see. Binder wouldn't have been looking for someone like Vince."
"You're just annoyed because they pulled that trick on you," Murphy said. "And you're taking your vengeance."
I sniffed. "I like to think of it as symmetry."
"That does make it sound nobler," she said. "We obviously can't just go up there and haul them off somewhere for questioning. What's the plan?"
"Get more information," I said. "I'm gonna listen in and see what they're chatting about."
Murphy nodded, glancing around. "Hotel security is going to have an issue with you lurking about the hallways. I'll go have a word with them."
I nodded. "I'll be on twelve."
"Don't kick down any doors without someone to watch your back," she warned me.
"No kicking at all," I said. "Not until I know enough to kick them where it's going to hurt."
I went up to the twelfth floor, left the elevator, and pulled a can of Silly String out of my duster pocket. I shook it up as I walked down the hallway until I found room twelve thirty-three. Then, without preamble, I blasted a bit of the Silly String at the door. It slithered cheerfully through the air and stuck.
Then I turned and walked back down the hall until I found a door that opened onto a tiny room containing an ice dispenser and a couple of vending machines. I sat down, drew a quick circle around me on the tile floor with a dry-erase marker, and got to work.
I closed the circle with an effort of will, and it sprang up around me in a sudden invisible screen. It wasn't exactly a heavy-duty magical construct, but such a quick circle would still serve perfectly well to seal away external energies and allow me to gather my own and shape it for a specific purpose without interference. I took the Silly String and sprayed a bunch of it into the palm of my left hand so that it mounded up sort of like shaving cream. Then I set the can down, held the mound of Silly String out in front of me, closed my eyes, and gathered my will.
Working magic is all about creating connections. Earlier, I'd taken Binder's hairs to create a link back to him and used it for a tracking spell. I could have done any number of things with that connection, including some that were extremely nasty and dangerous. I'd seen it happen before, generally from the receiving end.
This time, I was creating a link between the Silly String in my hand, and the bit stuck to the door down the hall. They'd both come from the same can, and they'd been part of one distinct amount of liquid when they'd been canned. That meant I would be able to take advantage of that sameness and create a connection between them.
I focused my will on my desired outcome, gathered it all up together, and released it with a murmur of "Finiculus sonitus." "Finiculus sonitus." I reached out and smeared away a section of the circle I'd drawn, breaking it, and instantly began feeling a buzzing vibration in the palm of my left hand. I reached out and smeared away a section of the circle I'd drawn, breaking it, and instantly began feeling a buzzing vibration in the palm of my left hand.
Then I tilted my head far to my right and slapped a bunch of Silly String into my left ear.
"Don't try this at home folks," I muttered. "I'm a professional."
The first thing I heard was hectic-sounding, hyperactive music. A singer was screaming tunelessly and drums were pounding and someone was either playing electric guitars or slowly dipping partially laryngitic cats in boiling oil. None of the supposed musicians appeared to be paying attention to anything anyone else in the band was doing.
"Christ," came Binder's accented voice. "Not even you could dance to that tripe."
There was a low-throated female laugh, and a slurred and very happy-sounding Madeline Raith replied, "This music isn't about skill and precision, my sweet. It's about hunger and passion. And I could dance to it to make your eyes fall out."
"I am not 'your sweet,' " Binder said, his voice annoyed. "I am not your anything, ducks, excepting your contracted employee."
"I'm not sure I'd emphasize that if I were you, Binder," Madeline said. "Since you've been a crushing disappointment as a hireling."
"I told you when I got started that if anyone from the White Council showed up, I couldn't make you any promises," he shot back, his voice annoyed. "And lo and behold, what happens? That buggering lunatic Harry Dresden shows up with backup-and with the support of the local constabulary, to boot."
"I'm getting so sick of this," Madeline said. "He's only one man."
"One bloody member of the White bloody Council," Binder countered. "Bear in mind that someone like him can do everything I can do and considerable besides. And even people on on the bloody Council are nervous about that one." the bloody Council are nervous about that one."
"Well, I'm sick of him," spat Madeline. "Did you find out where he's got Morgan hidden?"
"Maybe you didn't hear, love, but I spent my day chained to a chair getting popped in the mouth."
Madeline laughed, a cold, mocking sound. "There are places you'd have to pay for that."
"Not bloody likely."
"Did you find find Morgan?" Morgan?"
Binder growled. "Dresden had him stashed in rental storage for a bit, but he hared off before the cops could pick him up. Probably took him into the Nevernever. They could be anywhere."
"Not if Dresden is back in Chicago," Madeline said. "He'd never let himself be too far from Morgan."
"So check his bloody apartment," Binder said.
"Don't be an idiot," Madeline said. "That's the first place anyone would look. He's not a total moron."
Yeah. I wasn't. Ahem.
Binder snickered. "You're money, Raith. Money never really gets it."
Madeline's voice turned waspish. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"That not everyone has a bloody string of mansions around the world that they live in or extra cars that they never really drive or cash enough to not think twice about dropping two hundred bloody dollars on a bottle of forty-dollar room service champagne."
"So?"
"So, Dresden's a bloody kid by Council standards. Lives in that crappy little hole. And pays for an office for his business, to boot. He ain't had a century or two of compounded interest to shore up his accounts, now, has he? And when he set himself up an emergency retreat, did he buy himself a furnished condo in another town? No. He rents out a cruddy little storage unit and stacks some camping gear inside."
"All right," Madeline said, her tone impatient. "Suppose you're right. Suppose he's got Morgan at his apartment. He won't have left him unprotected."
"Naturally not," Binder replied. "He'll have a bloody minefield of wards around the place. Might have some conjured guardians or some such as well."
"Could you get through them?"