The Law (The Dresden Files #17.4)(14)

He shrugged, but his expression affirmed what I’d asked.

I thought about it. “So he ran girls long enough to make enough money to get a stake as a dealer. How long did he play that?”

Triple-J snorted. “About a week. Then he recruited some DEA bitch to work for him. Dumbass.”

“He lost his inventory,” I said.

He shrugged again, without quite saying ‘obviously.’

I leaned my head back. “But Marcone is backing him. So, he didn’t do wrong by Marcone.”

“Stupid bastard dealt with a supplier in St. Louis,” he said. “Now that’s a rough town.”

I straightened in my chair. “That’s why Gregory was trying to make money on the inside.”

“Hell yeah,” Triple-J said. “Mr. Marcone don’t care if his people run a little side business, long as he gets his cut. And he got his first.”

“But St. Louis didn’t,” I guessed.

“And they charge interest, boss.”

I sat back and blew out my breath. That’s why Tripp Gregory was going after Maya and company. He was desperate. “Let’s say they got upset with him,” I said.

Triple-J snorted. “They bury him.”

“Marcone allow that sort of thing?”

“Always more pimps, boss,” he said. “Mr. Marcone likes discretion. Long as St. Louis did it discreet, he wouldn’t care. Just business.”

“So Gregory was safe from them in here?”

Triple-J shrugged. “Mr. Marcone decides who gets attended to in here. Tripp didn’t rat. Marcone says he’s not to be touched. So, St. Louis decides to wait, maybe recoup their losses.” He shook his head. “Dumbass could have stayed in here a couple more years. Maybe the guys he owed are out of business by then. But he was tired of getting no women.” He shook his head. “Some men got no head for business.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “He say how much he owed them?”

“’Bout a million times,” Triple J said. “Hundred grand. Then the vig. He’d figure it out on paper every couple of days and bitch about it. Must be a quarter million by now.” He tilted his head. “He trying to scam the money out of someone, huh? That’s why you’re here.”

“Yeah. Anything else you can tell me about him?”

Triple-J scratched at his ear. “Guy is a weasel. You ever tried to get a weasel off a chicken?”

“No.”

“I have,” he said. He held up a hand and showed me a mess of scars on the inside of his index finger. “They ain’t big. But they don’t give up easy, boss.”

“Me neither,” I said.





Chapter Ten





I got back to the Castle in the early evening and went straight to my office. “Bob.”

A pale blue light zipped across the wall, rushed to the skull and kindled as warm glowing candlelights inside the eye sockets. “Yo.”

“Who are you, Stallone now?” I asked.

“Adrian!” Bob said in a terrible imitation. “I did it!”

I snorted and slouched into my chair. “What did you figure out about Talvi Inverno?” I asked.

“Well, boss,” Bob said. “There’s good news and terrible news.”

“That’s nice,” I sighed. “Let’s have it.”

“Believe it or not, there aren’t a lot of nameless things running around interacting with society,” Bob said. “I mean, it makes sense, right? If you’re in folklore, you get a name so that everyone can talk about you.”

“Sure,” I said. “Individual identity is something common to practically everyone.”

“Yep,” Bob said. “Outside of hive or maybe herd intelligences, individuality is kind of how things are arranged, which requires individual designations. So, there’s maybe a few dozen nameless entities running around folklore, and mostly nobody’s heard of most of them cause, well, they’re nameless and it’s kinda hard to talk about them. It’s just hell on PR.”

I snorted and got the old coffee maker going. Michael had secured that one for me as well, and it seemed to be mostly reliable. “Okay, so being all nameless, what kind of advantage is it going to give this guy?”

“What you can imagine,” Bob said. “You can’t use his Name against him cause he doesn’t have one. It would be extremely difficult to compel him magically in any way, to find him with divining spells, all of that kind of thing.”

“He’s magical Jason Bourne,” I said.

“I don’t know if he can fight with pens and rolled up magazines, but yes, that’s pretty close,” Bob said. “Now tell me about his hot assistant again?”

“Ms. Lapland,” I said. “She creeped me in a major way, also had a major sexual whammy going. Not quite Lara Raith bad, but bad enough.”

“Bad?” Bob said.

I rubbed at one eyebrow with my knuckles. “Look, she’s got a sexual thing going on, and she seemed to… hmmm. Arrogance seemed to get her going, in the potentially violent killer way. But at the same time, she was also completely subservient to Talvi.”

“Right, well,” Bob said, clearly disappointed that I hadn’t given measurements or snapshots, “given her name and the alias Talvi is choosing, Paranoid Gary and I—”