Mark Del Franco - Unfallen Dead

He lifted a shirt box from the side of the love seat. Looking at me briefly, he tilted the lid of the box open. A gold neck-ring known as a torc nestled in a pile of tissue. Torcs are neck jewelry favored by the fey, C-shaped and worn by sliding the open gap around the neck. The age and gold content of this one made it worth a pretty penny. The essence wafting off it-pure Faerie-made it more rare and doubled its value. Any kind of original material from Faerie demanded high prices. Fey abilities worked better with it.

“Why didn’t she wait until you handed it over before she tried to kill you?”

Belgor closed the box. “She wasn’t here for the torc. She came for some jewelry. The torc was my… processing payment, shall we say?”

It didn’t make sense to me. The torc was worth a fortune. “How much jewelry are we talking about?”

“Three fibulae, pre-Convergence, very nice quality, made of gold and silver, and a lovely ring, from Saxony, I would say, by its craftsmanship.”

It was a decent list. Fibulae were old brooches used to clip clothing together. Old, as in the previous millennium. Still, the torc looked priceless. It had to outvalue the sum of the other items. “How did the deal came about, Belgor?”

His eyes shifted for several moments as he decided what to tell me. His risk. If he didn’t tell me enough and got screwed by the Guild, his fault. If he told me too much and I could hold it over him, my gain. “A courier I occasionally work with told me he had an opportunity. His client did not want to conclude the transaction with him directly for personal reasons, but asked that I hold the material until she arrived. In exchange, I could retain the torc.”

“You were directly asked for?”

“Apparently.”

“And the torc was specifically offered as payment?”

He sighed. “Yes.”

I shook my head. “You were baited, Belgor. You let your greed overwhelm your usual caution.”

Nodding, he frowned. “So it would seem, Mr. Grey. I have not erred like this in many years. The question now is what we do about it.”

I chuckled. “ ‘We’? I’m not seeing a ‘we’ here, Belgor.”

Annoyance flickered in his eyes. “I believe I know the source of this material. It would be of particular interest to the Guild. I will pledge to you that I will find the name of the purchaser in exchange for helping my role in this unfortunate affair be overlooked.”

Given Dylan’s stakeout, I knew what particular Guild interest he might be talking about. “You know I’m not Guild anymore.”

He smiled. “Yes, but you are not held in high esteem at the moment. Providing this information would go far to ingratiate you with your former masters.”

I let slide the crack about former masters. “That would benefit me with the Guild. Why should I do this for you?”

The shrewd look from years of dealing came over Belgor. “I am sure we will both know that moment when it arrives, Mr. Grey.”

We stared at each other in the gathering gloom of the store. The sun had gone down, leaving the sallow, dirty bulbs as the only source of light. The scene could have been any one of several Belgor and I had acted our way through over the years. This part of our interaction infuriated Murdock. While he understood the game of looking the other way to further the greater goal, Murdock thought Belgor crossed the line too often without consequence.

“Is there anything else in here you have to worry about?”

Belgor shook his head. “As I’ve always told you, Mr. Grey, I am a legitimate business owner.”

I sighed. “Take it out of the box and mask it with a dampening glamour. Make it strong enough to last at least until tomorrow morning.”

He didn’t smile or gloat but got down to business. He flipped the box lid onto the love seat and gathered the torc in its tissue wrapping. As he muttered under his breath, little flashes of green slid off his fingers and wrapped themselves around the packaging. I opened my essence-sensing ability but could no longer feel the torc. A fey who could sense essence-and, more importantly, Dylan-would pick up nothing but the ambient essence of the Weird. Belgor handed me the package, and I slipped it inside my jacket.

I flexed a thin smile. “Let’s invite them in, shall we?”

Murdock had arrived while I was inside with Belgor. He and Dylan eyed each other in front of the store with wary professional courtesy. The Guild and the Boston P.D. didn’t have the greatest rapport in the best of times. With the Guild alternating between ignoring minor essence fights in the Weird and coming down hard on major ones, and consulting the police or the city on neither, these were decidedly not the best of times. They both looked relieved when I stepped into the street. “I see you’ve met each other.”

Dylan extended his hand to Murdock. “I didn’t realize you were that Murdock. I’ve read interesting things about you.”

Murdock didn’t smile back, but he did shake. Dylan didn’t let it faze him. “You’re in homicide, aren’t you? What brings you down here?”

Murdock shrugged. “I work the Weird. I heard the words ‘Belgor’ and ‘Guild’ and figured something interesting might be up.”

Dylan glanced at the Boston patrol officer who stood to the side. “I couldn’t guess where you might have heard the words.”

If there’s one thing policing organizations hate, it’s jurisdictional disputes. If there’s one thing policing organizations love, it’s irritating each other over jurisdictional disputes. The Boston patrol officer had probably called Murdock a fraction of a second after arriving on the scene and seeing Guild operatives. Murdock looked at the missing window. “Belgor bite off more than he could chew this time?”

I leaned against the building opposite the shop. “Hard to tell. He claims a nutcase attacked him.”

Dylan frowned. You were in there a long time.

I gestured to the store. “We can go in. He’s just shy.”

Dylan and Murdock exchanged glances. The problem with working with partners is they knew how you operated. They knew the kinds of corners you liked to cut. They knew what your sarcasm meant. And they knew when you were up to something. The look they exchanged said as much. It also said neither was sure how much the other understood me.

Murdock, I knew, would cut me some slack. He wouldn’t push it in front of Dylan without knowing who he was and where things stood between the two of us. Dylan would be thinking the same thing. He would wonder how far Murdock had gone to cover my back, as he himself had covered for me in New York. Those were things I knew because I’d been partners with both of them and knew them just as well.

Dylan strode into Belgor’s shop with an air of command. He kept a professional detachment that reminded me of someone observing a museum exhibit, Late-Twentieth-Century Commercial Pigsty, with Elf.

Murdock and I stayed out of the way by the counter. I had no official capacity to help, and Belgor wasn’t dead enough to motivate Murdock to flash his badge.

While he examined the scorched aisle, Dylan let his underlings run the routine questions by Belgor. He scanned the space with an investigator’s eye, stopping here and there to examine merchandise as if he were shopping. About three-quarters of the way down the aisle, he crouched. “Mr. Belgor, could you join me, please?”

Hearing that, I realized I had no idea if Belgor was his first name or last or only. Belgor moved up behind Dylan, blocking my view, so Murdock and I walked up the main aisle to the front and came around the other way.

Dylan pointed. “Is this yours?”

Belgor stretched his fleshy neck to see the item in question. In the kick space below a bottom shelf lay an old gold dagger with a black hilt. Dylan’s question was moot. The dagger had elf blood on the tip and, given its freshness, Dylan and I had no problem sensing the blood was Belgor’s.