Chapter 5 — Clean Hands on Chicago Chronicles

The Starlite — Friday, 11 January 1991, 4:28 PM

Fri, 11 Jan 1991 16:28:00 +0000

Starlite Motel / Cottage Grove / North Side / Clark Street

Chicago, Illinois

The Starlite Motel smelled like the last tenant and the one before that and the one before that. Room 9. Dishwater curtains, a radiator that clanked every forty seconds, an ice machine at the end of the hall that cycled on the hour. Twenty-eight dollars a night, paid cash, no questions asked.

Darius opened his eyes to water stains he’d memorized three nights ago and lay still for ten seconds, listening. The building talked to itself — pipes, wind, the couple in Room 7 watching something with a laugh track. He sat up. The .357 was where he’d left it. The garment bag hung in the closet with the micro-cassettes stitched into the lining. His watch read 4:52. Sunset twenty-four minutes ago.

The Debrief — Thursday, 10 January 1991, 4:28 PM

Thu, 10 Jan 1991 16:28:01 +0000

Tremere Chantry / Succubus Club / Near North Side Chicago, Illinois

The parlor smelled like binding glue and radiator dust. Nicolai sat in the wingback chair with a volume of Thucydides open on his lap, the Greek text angled toward the lamp. A ten-year-old boy in wool trousers and a cardigan buttoned to the throat, legs not reaching the floor. The eyes were wrong. They’d been wrong for six hundred years.

Tomás closed the front door behind him and stood at the threshold until the ward pulsed once against his sternum and released. He crossed to the center of the room and delivered the report standing.

The Succubus Club — Thursday, 10 January 1991, 4:28 PM

Thu, 10 Jan 1991 16:28:00 +0000

Allerton Hotel / Clark Street / Succubus Club Chicago, Illinois

She woke to the sound of the radiator and Michigan Avenue below, muffled under an inch of new snow. Six-twelve by the clock on the nightstand (the Allerton put real clocks in the rooms, brass and glass, the kind of hotel detail that survived from the era when guests expected to be treated like guests and not like credit-card numbers in transit). The phone hadn’t rung. Not Modius, not the Gary chain, not anyone.

The Nightclub — Wednesday, 9 January 1991, 4:28 PM

Wed, 09 Jan 1991 16:28:00 +0000

Succubus Club / Starlite Motel Chicago, Illinois

They took the Buick. Sable drove. Michigan Avenue to State Street, the lake wind cutting between buildings like it owned the corridor. The Succubus Club’s neon bled pink and violet onto wet pavement.

Wednesday was looser than Tuesday. The doorman waved them through. Sable touched Darius’s elbow – a gesture, not a grip – and moved toward the back corridor. Modius first. Then the room.

Darius took the bar.

The Recruiter — Tuesday, 8 January 1991, 4:28 PM

Tue, 08 Jan 1991 16:28:00 +0000

Succubus Club / North Side / Allerton Hotel Chicago, Illinois

The Starlite Motel smelled like the last tenant and the one before that. Room 9: dishwater curtains, a radiator that clanked every forty seconds, an ice machine at the end of the hall that cycled on the hour. Darius had catalogued every sound the building made in two nights of waiting for a phone call that never came.

He showered. Dressed. Checked the .357 in the nightstand and left it. The micro-cassettes stayed in the garment bag lining. Two nights since Hell’s Pasture. Two nights since Lodin looked him in the eye and said he’d have word before dawn. The silence wasn’t absence. It was architecture.