Big Chicago

Big Chicago Part 30...by Samayel


It’s so cool in the air of the night, but the car is warm, and I’m quite in the crook of Harry’s arm with nothing to say as we depart. Tonight, debriefing. It never waits. That’s the way they do it. Planning, Briefing, Mission, Debriefing. All so professional. It puts a pretty spin on drugging a man and loading his computer with evidence of a crime he never committed. The anger is gone as we move through town in a car that slides along like oiled silk. It’s started to rain.

Droplets smear the windows, and soft sounds of water on tires is barely audible outside. The refraction from streetlights makes the water shine like a million diamonds, like shards of glass on a hardwood floor. I cleaned up the mess, made everything look nice, and I got away with my ass intact. I should be cheering. Why do I feel as hollow inside as if I’d actually killed him?

Hermione estimated that it might take a week or more before the tips she’s left for the Vice Squad get acted on. When they investigate, they’ll find records of equipment transactions that have been falsified, all for film and recording equipment. A rented studio, a storage locker, all rented by Blaise, and while the hard copy paperwork won’t exist, the computer records of the company will show that he’s been in the business of selling the stuff for about a year. If they get nothing else, the files hidden in his computer will carry the day for the cops, and that alone is worth a fairly long term in prison, especially since internet crimes can easily be treated as federal crimes, since any crime based on interstate or international communication falls under the jurisdiction of the feds, just like I did.

He could tie me to this, guessing at it, suspecting, but Blaise knows me as the helpless kid who uses his cute ass to make his way in the world. He could only make the most random guesses about where I’ve been or who I’ve known since then. For Blaise, I’ve disappeared, and even the cellphone records have been altered to remove my calls. He has nothing, and by the time he could realize what must have really happened, he’ll be in custody, awaiting trial, and police are very unsympathetic to pleas like ‘I was framed.’ Everyone is guilty to a cop…it’s only a question of what they’re hiding.

Is this how Blaise felt? Sitting somewhere safe and sound, wondering what was happening to me because of his choices? Maybe it is…maybe it isn’t…but like everything else related to this little scenario, it’s too late to matter now.

“Are you alright?”

Harry’s voice breaks the silence. He gave me space and silence for awhile, but we’re almost to our headquarters now, and it’s going to be time for debriefing in just a few minutes. No more time for thinking quietly, or reflecting on the way my little drama has played out.

“Too many thoughts. You know how it is. I’m just glad it’s done. It was only tense for a minute or two at most in there. I’m fine…don’t worry for me, love.”

I say it with a smile, and we both know he’ll worry over me anyway. My time doing fieldwork is done, and we’re pulling into the empty shell of a building that welcomes being left alone. The resting hulks of machinery that haven’t run in years slide past us. The automatic entrance closes behind us, and the movement of the car triggers a set of small lights that illuminate our path to the elevator.

It all goes down in black and white. Questions while I explain the night step by step. Right down to the lipstick on Blaise’s dick. No detail is left unrecorded, and I get congratulations for the fast thinking that kept the evening from turning into a bloodbath. It would have been easier if Harry had just slipped in and killed them all, but in spite of the hassles, I still got the job done, and the atmosphere is celebratory. They like me, and it shows. I don’t feel like a whore that was brought here on Harry’s say so, I feel like a member of a team, and no one touches on the subject of where I came from, even though the entire job was rooted in it. I am content.

So surreal. An office party in the basement of a ruined warehouse, surrounded by millions of dollars in computer equipment and communications gear, drinking champagne with a team of people who are willing to commit any crime to make the world a better, safer place. Oh, no…my life’s not full to the fucking brim with weirdness!

And then it’s closing on midnight, and we drift away one by one, because tomorrow is just another day and there are no holidays here. Riddle is at work somewhere, making deals and buying power, and until he’s either dead or out of this town we’re here doing what we do. Life goes on…and on.

Harry is cheerful, full of small touches that remind me he’s near. A hand at the small of my back, or a fingertip brushing against my cheek. He doesn’t do public affection much, because he’s a lot more reserved than I am, but the car isn’t public…if you don’t count poor Ron. Still, I get my kisses and Ron is feeling generous enough to not interrupt with acid commentary. I still don’t feel right. I want that shower…or better, a long, hot bath! With Harry at the end of it. Maybe I feel dirty for what I’ve done, but it’s not the first time I’ve felt that way, and I can be very good at putting things behind me…in more ways than one! Home is heaven, and there isn’t much that hot water, a little good product, and the warmth of Harry’s arms can’t scour away.

“You really did do well.”

He’s washing my back, while I just flop forward and let him, lost in the hazy comfort of safety where only the sound of water dripping from us is heard. I don’t feel much now, just a lazy desire to be pampered, secure in the knowledge that I’m loved…and desired. The past is dead…and I just buried the stinking remains, and even the memory of the stench of it is being driven away by expensive bath oils.

“Maybe…but make me forget it anyway. Please?”

He does it so well, every little thing I need and demand. I make a question of my flesh, and he is the answer. I need pain to expiate my sins, and he can give it when he truly believes that it’s what I want. And I believe it...and I want it, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t tell how much he dislikes this. I can feel his discomfort, even while he makes sure that I get what I ask for. The sick, dark feeling inside of me doesn’t dissipate easily. The truth is an ugly thing, as warped and bent as we all are. I can see the truth reflected in his eyes…when he stares only at me. The fact that Blaise was no Christ…makes me no less of a Judas. I’m no better than him in the end, and if Harry knew the little things of my life as I do…

He should. He deserves to know. And if I loved him any less, I would never voice my fears. The first rule of queens is to never place all your cards on the table. Never wear your heart on your sleeve. I can be sore and spent, hollow and shaky, curled in his arms, quiet in the aftermath of what we’ve done tonight, but I know what I should say, and because of what I feel for him, I can say things…things I’ve never told. He wanted to know the things you can’t learn in a file…and now he will.

“Harry…I’m sorry…”

“What? For what?”

“Shhh…just listen. About tonight…what we did…why I…I have to get this out.”

I can feel the arms slacken a little around me, the intentness of that gaze on the back of my skull, but I don’t want to look at him while I say these things.

“I played him. Like I play everyone. I’m sorry I did it…like that. I’ve always done that. Being beautiful…is a tool…or a weapon for me, and it’s never been any other way. That’s the kind of person I’ve been. I think that’s who I am. The way I played Blaise was the way I’ve used everyone I’ve ever been with. To get what I wanted.

I was tired of Pansy having all the bragging rights about what she’d done with boys. When summer came around, just before I started high school, I prick teased the kid that had hired on to take care of the grounds that year. He was only a few years older than I was, and I’m not even sure he was gay to start with, but after I’d spent a few weeks tanning around him, he was…adaptable…enough. I used him to get rid of my virginity, then threw him away. Worse…when he was too nervous to keep doing it on a schedule that suited me, I just blackmailed him until he gave in and did what I wanted. I never even opened the letter he sent at the end of summer. I threw it away, because he’d served his purpose.

There were others too. Always what I wanted at the moment, whether it was someone else’s boyfriend or not, whether they actually liked me or not. That wasn’t even a consideration. They were either useful…or they weren’t. I guess that made it easy later…to work tricks and get what I wanted for as little work as possible. I played that game with everyone. Even Blaise, even then and not just this time. He was a free pass. A way out of trouble and bad times. The only difference was that he played me first. I pined over him, hated him, missed him…but I also know that…if enough time had gone by…I’d have tired of him too.

I’ve always used what I am…what I can offer…to get what I want. Even with you. I could taste freedom on you. Safety. Something better. I use sex for everything. For gain. For solace. To remember. To forget. I just thought…I thought you should know what isn’t in the files. You should know what I hate…about me. There aren’t that many reasons to believe me, Harry…but I won’t play you. I love you…like no one…and nothing else I‘ve ever known.”

Silence. Then lips on the back of my neck, warm and soft. The voice that whispers to me in serene and confident, and makes the last oily traces of the ugliness inside of me melt away.

“I don’t need a lot of reasons. I only need one. I believe you…because I love you. What you are…is not what you have done…or been…or anything else. You are…now…here. Be whatever you want. Change whatever you want. I’ll still be here. Just…be…yourself, whatever form that takes along the way. I love you.”

And that’s the end of a chapter of my life. A page turns, a scene closes. The spiteful little creature that used sex for power isn’t dead. Not really. He is evolving though. Changing like a caterpillar, cocooned in love, able to nurture changes within and without. Becoming more than he imagined was possible. What will emerge when the transformation is complete? Or will it ever be complete in this lifetime? Is life just an endless series of changes of the self, shifting and morphing in every situation, struggling to adapt to every new environment? Perhaps. That’s the only answer I can give myself. Maybe I’m exhausted of the uncertain, the unknown, and the unknowable, but I can have the concrete and real in my arms every night, and every morning. I am loved…and I am content.

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Blaise Zabini rubbed his head sullenly as the morning light stabbed through the window, muttering to himself in Italian. The hangover he had was the stuff of legends, and he could barely remember anything after dinner with Dee the night before.

‘How the hell did I get that bombed? I can hold my liquor better that that! Not like I had an empty stomach or anything. Damn…I gotta piss.’

He slid out of the large and comfortable old four-poster bed that dominated the back left corner of his personal suite and stumbled toward the bathroom. He also normally recovered from a night of indulgence faster than this. It was definitely off for him to be feeling this logy after a few drinks and…

Lipstick. He was holding his dick steady while letting his bladder slowly empty into the toilet, and there was lipstick on his dick. Blaise couldn’t help smirking, even though the effort of smiling made his headache worse.

‘Sonofabitch. Even drunk off my ass I got a little action. I guess he couldn’t resist the old charms after all. Ahh…my head! Hope those bozos got coffee ready. Better throw some whiskey in it too. I need a hair of the dog that bit my fuckin’ head off.’

When Blaise finally left the bathroom, after a shower that was long enough and hot enough to have parboiled a meal, he threw on his favorite bathrobe and drifted toward the kitchen. He had a nice dining room, but it was really only for company. The kitchen had a counter and plenty of room, as well as a small table. Most mornings, Vinny or Greg could usually be found soaking up coffee or making a little breakfast, and this one was no exception, especially given that it was already fairly late in the day.

“Gimme that coffee! Ow…an’ aspirin…and the whiskey…the Bushmills. I fuckin’ hate the Irish, but they know what the fuck to put in their coffee. Ugh.”

Greg just smirked while opening cabinets and fetching the things Blaise wanted, but Vinny chuckled and spoke up.

“Good night? Didn’t expect you to be such a sourpuss today…seein’ as you got your groove on the minute the rest of us were outta sight. Figured you’d be all smiles.”

Blaise raised an eyebrow. “So whatta you know about it? Just a hangover…but when did Dee take off?”

“Last night. You don’t remember? You too were going at it almost as soon as you left the table! Man…seven years ain’t changed much. He was on you like cheap soup on a pricey tie. I accidentally opened the door to your room…cuz’ I heard a glass break, or I thought I did, and what an eyeful I got! When he left last night, he looked like you put him through the wringer, ya stud. Wobblin’ around, smiling from ear to ear. Little guy was half done in, but I‘m thinkin‘ he‘ll be back for more.”

Blaise smiled and shrugged while Greg handed over the Irish coffee and two aspirin. “What can I say boys? When you got it…you got it. Next time I’m skipping the scotch on the rocks. Didn’t mix too good with all the wine I had at dinner. Did the receipts come in from the club while I was out?”

Greg nodded, then pointed to a manila envelope on the far counter. “Yeah. Right there. They dropped it off at nine. You want some eggs?”

“Nah. Not yet. Stomach’s no good right now. I’ll run the paperwork and just soak up some more coffee for awhile. I’m thinking’ lazy day today. Count up last night’s till, maybe have a little lunch later, maybe call Dee up and make sure he knows he’s welcome to come on by again…and maybe we’ll drop in tonight and keep em’ on their toes at the club. Always good to know the boss is watchin’, right?”

Blaise shuffled down the hall, envelope in one hand, coffee in the other, savoring the aroma of high end coffee blended with good Irish whiskey. He sat down at his computer desk, unfolding the envelope and sorting the contents while the soft hum of the machine starting up filled the background. While Blaise clicked at keys, calculating numbers and making entries into spreadsheet columns, programming that didn’t appear in any visible file silently worked in the background, a ticking time bomb, waiting to leave his life a blasted ruin.

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“Dora! Let’s get moving! They picked up the bartender from that Italian club execution back at the start. The guy had been hiding out at his uncle’s place, but a hot tip phoned in and fingered him for a small reward. He’s still getting booked, and it looks like we’re doing the interrogation. Finally something that might drop a lead into our laps.”

Dora snatched the coffee off of her desk and grabbed her coat. Kingsley was unusually perky this morning…which was probably almost directly linked to Deirdre being in a better mood now that they’d gone back to almost normal shifts. Maybe Dawlish and Scrimgeour were glory hounds, but they had their own staff handling the work that had really been more than two people could handle. It was good to get home at a decent hour, even if the sting of being moved out of the top slot for the investigation hadn’t completely dimmed.

“Great! You drive. About time something new happened with this mess. I got absolutely nothing out of that security guy who was off sick during the night of the construction yard killings. It seems too convenient, but he’s got a record so squeaky clean that I just can’t picture him as dirty.”

Every day a different bundle of records came to her desk, and some got shuffled off to other teams for follow up investigation, but Dora and Kingsley pulled key interviews and interrogations, assembled timelines and issued reports, and at least their names were still right in the heart of the biggest task force event in living memory. Even so, the piles of paperwork in their respective offices were getting out of control. Even as she left her office and hurried down the hall, an old man from records was pushing a little cart toward her office with a delivery of new files she’d requested.

Fletcher slowly picked out the files earmarked for Detective Tonks’ office from his cart, then brought them to her desk. No one was too close at the moment, and it was the first time in days that he’d made a delivery of files to her or Shacklebolt without anyone present. Keeping the same bored and businesslike demeanor, Fletcher flipped open file after file, neatly placing them on her desk after committing as much to memory as possible. It wasn’t much, but even the little bits he picked up here and there might be enough to get that little bonus that Remus had been dangling in front of him. Anything about Harry Black. Anything at all. Even a few words might be worth a few dollars.

At the bottom of the pile of files were handwritten notes. Tonks’ own case notes. Paydirt! Maybe it wasn’t a goldmine, but it was information that had never reached the press, and wasn’t even widely known by anyone outside of the Organized Crime Task Force. Remus was sure to put a decent price on these, especially if he still put a lot of stock in his own ex-wife’s work! Fletcher’s face never showed his excitement while he put the files carefully back in place and returned to his little cart, pushing his was from office to office, delivering file after file.

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Hermione sat at her desk, or rather, her desks, since with a rolling office chair with a smooth swivel action she could manage three monitors at the same time, rolling from one to the next with ease, printing or forwarding file after file to the others in the office. Her work was less about translation that it was about recognizing and prioritizing information. She acted as a hacker only when necessity called, and generally only translated when there was spare time or a slow period in the office. Most days were like this one, hustling from monitor to monitor, scanning reams of data and earmarking the ones that were of interest. Phone records, wiretaps, legal events, deaths, corporate announcements, money transfers and on and on endlessly.

The great events that moved the world weren’t the ones that people laughed or cried over on television, they weren’t debated over on cable TV news shows, and they weren’t even known to any but a handful of people in the world. Small things added up to make big things, but small things often went unnoticed. That’s why Hermione had always made the effort to find the small things along with the big things. Somewhere in the mix of the two was the truth, the knowledge of what moves people were making when they thought no one was looking. And Hermione was always looking.

What separated Hermione from most people was her intelligence. With an IQ approaching 200, she was formidable at every field she applied herself to, but that wasn’t the key to her value here. Loosely put, she was an adept ’pattern reader’. A person who could assimilate enormous amounts of information, and still make accurate guesses at the meanings hidden in the flow of words and seemingly unrelated events. Some folks just called people like her ’media gurus’ or ’computer whizkids’ because they had no idea what it meant to possess an intelligence that set you apart from most of humanity. The hard part was that it didn’t make you any less a creature of emotion or desire. It just made you smart. It also occasionally made you bored, since the only way to challenge yourself was to push the boundaries of your abilities right to their edge, and Hermione’s boundaries were hard to reach.

It was possible to do her job, and do it well, and occupy most of her mind most of the time, but there were moments…like this…when thoughts of Ron stole in and captured her attention completely. It wasn’t that he was gracious, or perfectly proportioned, or scintillatingly brilliant, but something about him…just…felt…good. The way he blushed or stammered when she was too close, or the way his eyes widened when she spoke to him suddenly, making him look for all the world like an enormous child whose universe could only center on one thing at a time. The fact that she’d long since noticed that he only ever had that look when she was the one speaking, and that he was suddenly deaf to everything else in the world. That was a gift only he had ever given her, and it had to be something worth snatching after, even if things like love seemed like mist that could never quite be grasped.

Then a series of words that might have been meaningless to anyone else met her eyes, and Hermione’s attention snapped instantly back into place. Harry Black. Harry Potter. Random searches. All in vain, but lots of them now that she took the time follow up the number of requests for information that had cropped up over these last weeks. From an amazing number of sources too. Almost all in the Chicago area. A little research showed that both police and federal agents, as well as private investigators, were following up leads that Hermione had long ago ensured only met dead ends. What was important was that they were all asking the same questions…at the same time. Someone had tipped them off, and that hinted at Riddle pulling strings and moving the little information that he had onto the market.

There were other concerns as well. The would be senator that happened to be Drake’s father was rattling his saber and making a lot of noise lately, and some of it was reaping results. Contractors were on the move, deals were getting made, and new firms were signing on to the Revitalization Project in surprising numbers. Many of them were strictly legit, which meant that executions couldn’t be used as scare tactics. The Phoenix Corporation didn’t kill people over small bribes or questionable hiring practices. When dealing with murderers, violence was a practical and efficient solution, but as more and more ordinary citizens entered the mix, targets became scarce, and new ways to discourage Riddle and frustrate his goals would have to be found. Congressman Malfoy was at the center of it, like a spider tugging at the strings of a web, playing the peacemaker adeptly and getting things done with a speed that would have surprised anyone who didn’t know how deep his pockets really were.

Somehow, the Congressman would have to be dealt with, and if he was really tied to Riddle, as Hermione suspected, he might be their best chance at pinpointing their enemy by tracing his communications to the source. It wouldn’t be easy even if it was possible. Riddle knew all the same tricks that they did, and when he communicated directly, which was rare, it was always via mediums that were hard, if not impossible, to trace. In the meantime, Harry would have to be used strategically when possible, but keep an even lower public profile than usual. It wouldn’t do to have him spotted on the street corner by a pair of eyes looking for the enigmatic Harry Black.

That settled it. They needed a strategy session, and the sooner the better. Congressman Malfoy would have to be observed much closer than ever before, and some kind of intervention or red herring would have to be set up to draw attention off of the names Harry Black and Harry Potter. For now, Harry would have to switch to yet another false ID that had been prepared long in advance. It was a waiting game now. How long before someone on one of two sides finally made a critical mistake? If Hermione had her way, Riddle would be in hell long before a slip-up occurred on her watch. It was time to call in the others.

Especially Ron. Something about the big lug even made meetings less about work and more about fun, a thing with which Hermione had surprisingly little experience. She hummed a Grateful Dead tune while she fired off a memo to the relevant staff members, then grabbed her cell phone and started dialing. The Enigma was one step behind them…and by God…that’s where the bastards were going to stay!


TBC!!!