“Think about it,” I said. “The Cubs have the most loyal, diehard fan following in Major League ball. Those fans aren’t in it to see the Cubs run rampant over other teams because they’ve spent more money hiring the best players. You know they aren’t—because they all know about the curse. If you know your team isn’t going to carry off the Series, then cheering them on becomes something more than yelling when they’re beating someone. It’s about tradition. It’s about loyalty to the team and camaraderie with the other fans, and win or lose, just enjoying the damned game.”
I spread my hands. “It’s about fun again, Mr. Donovan. Wrigley Field might be the only stadium in professional ball where you can say that.”
Donovan stared at me as though I’d started speaking in Welsh. “I don’t understand.”
I sighed again. “Yeah. I know.”
MY TICKET WAS for general admission, but I thought I’d take a look around before the game got started. Carlos Zambrano was on the mound warming up when I sat down next to Gwynn ap Nudd.
Human sized, he was considerably over six feet tall, and he was dressed in the same clothes I’d seen back at his baseball shrine. Other than that, he looked exactly the way I remembered him. He was talking to a couple of folks in the row behind him, animatedly relating some kind of tale that revolved around the incredible arc of a single game-deciding breaking ball. I waited until he was finished with the story and turned back out to the field.
“Good day,” Gwynn said to me.
I nodded just a little bit deeply. “And to you.”
He watched Zambrano warming up and grinned. “They’re going to fight through it eventually,” he said. “There are so many mortals now. Too many players and fans want them to do it.” His voice turned a little sad. “One day they will.”
My equations and I had eventually come to the same conclusion. “I know.”
“But you want me to do it now, I suppose,” he said. “Or else why would you be here?”
I flagged down a beer vendor and bought one for myself and one for Gwynn.
He stared at me for a few seconds, his head tilted to one side.
“No business,” I said, passing him one of the beers. “How about we just enjoy the game?”
Gwynn ap Nudd’s handsome face broke into a wide smile, and we both settled back in our seats as the Cubs took the cursed field.
In this tale, set between Turn Coat and Changes, I got to do one of the most enjoyable things a writer working on a really giant story possibly can do: write from the perspective of another pivotal character in a series.
John Marcone has been an underworld establishment in the Dresden Files since the first book of the series—longer than anyone except Bob, Murphy, and Harry himself. Keeping that position in the Dresden Files story world has required him to be a very smart, tough, resourceful, and dangerous human being. Marcone, much like Dresden, has been challenged by increasingly dangerous interlopers, and he has grown more cunning, dangerous, and ruthless by way of adapting to the challenges they’ve presented.
In this story, we get to see a little bit of Marcone operating in his own world—a place considerably more grey and nebulous than the relatively clear-cut moral environment Harry Dresden has created with his choices. It is probably worth remembering that Marcone, despite some of the more vile things he presides over, would probably have been considered a rather decent sort of leader for the majority of recorded human history—he is, in fact, rather strongly modeled on the ideals of medieval barons, who, it seems to me, would have made surpassingly excellent and dangerous crime lords. Here we see Marcone, operating from the bastion of his power, as the only mortal man considered competent and dangerous enough to join the Unseelie Accords of the varied supernatural nations.
A successful murder is like a successful restaurant: Ninety percent of it is about location, location, location.
Three men in black hoods knelt on the waterfront warehouse floor, their wrists and ankles trussed with heavy plastic zip ties. There were few lights. They knelt over a large, faded stain on the concrete floor, left behind by the hypocritically named White Council of Wizardry during their last execution.
I nodded to Hendricks, who took the hood off the first man, then stood clear. The man was young and good-looking. He wore an expensive yet ill-fitting suit and even more expensive yet tasteless jewelry.
“Where are you from?” I asked him.
He sneered at me. “What’s it to y—”
I shot him in the head as soon as I heard the bravado in his voice. The body fell heavily to the floor.
The other two jumped and cursed, their voices angry and terrified.
I took the hood off the second man. His suit was a close cousin of the dead man’s, and I thought I recognized its cut. “Boston?” I asked him.
“You can’t do this to us,” he said, more angry than frightened. “Do you know who we are?”
Once I heard the nasal quality of the word are, I shot him.
I took off the third man’s hood. He screamed and fell away from me. “Boston,” I said, nodding, and put the barrel of my .45 against the third man’s forehead. He stared at me, showing the whites of his eyes. “You know who I am. I run drugs in Chicago. I run the numbers, the books. I run the whores. It’s my town. Do you understand?”
His body jittered in what might have been a nod. His lips formed the word yes, though no sound came out.
“I’m glad you can answer a simple question,” I told him, and lowered the gun. “I want you to tell Mr. Morelli that I won’t be this lenient the next time his people try to clip the edges of my territory.” I looked at Hendricks. “Put the three of them in a sealed trailer and rail-freight them back to Boston, care of Mr. Morelli.”
Hendricks was a large, trustworthy man, his red hair cropped in a crew cut. He twitched his chin in the slight motion that he used for a nod when he disapproved of my actions but intended to obey me anyway.
Hendricks and the cleaners on my staff would handle the matter from here.
I passed him the gun and the gloves on my hands. Both would see the bottom of Lake Michigan before I was halfway home, along with the two slugs the cleaners would remove from the site. When they were done, there would be nothing left of the two dead men but a slight variation on the outline of the stain in the old warehouse floor, where no one would look twice in any case.
Location, location, location.
Obviously, I am not Harry Dresden. My name is something I rarely trouble to remember, but for most of my adult life, I have been called John Marcone.
I am a professional monster.
It sounds pretentious. After all, I’m not a flesh-devouring ghoul, hiding behind a human mask until it is time to gorge. I’m no vampire, draining the blood or soul from my victim—no ogre, no demon, no cursed beast from the spirit world dwelling amid the unsuspecting sheep of humanity. I’m not even possessed of the mystic abilities of a mortal wizard.
But they will never be what I am. One and all, those beings were born to be what they are.
I made a choice.
I walked outside of the warehouse and was met by my consultant, Gard—a tall blond woman without any makeup whose eyes continually swept her surroundings. She fell into step beside me as we walked to the car. “Two?”
“They couldn’t be bothered to answer a question in a civil manner.”
She opened the back door for me and I got in. I picked up my personal weapon and slipped it into the holster beneath my left arm while she settled down behind the wheel. She started driving and then said, “No. That wasn’t it.”
“It was business.”
“And the fact that one of them was pushing heroin to thirteen-year-old girls and the other was pimping them out had nothing to do with it,” Gard said.
“It was business,” I said, enunciating. “Morelli can find pushers and pimps anywhere. A decent accountant is invaluable. I sent his bookkeeper back as a gesture of respect.”
“You don’t respect Morelli.”
I almost smiled. “Perhaps not.”
“Then why?”
I did not answer. She didn’t push the issue, and we rode in silence back to the office. As she put the car in park, I said, “They were in my territory. They broke my rule.”
“No children,” she said.
“No children,” I said. “I do not tolerate challenges, Ms. Gard. They’re bad for business.”
She looked at me in the mirror, her blue eyes oddly intent, and nodded.