That was the plan, anyway. And it’s why he was in Chicago. But for all his time here, this was his first invitation to actually meet his mysterious employer. Now, standing in the entry of his famous mansion, even the ever-steady Commander Korigan was shaking with excitement as he grabbed the nearest servant and spoke the words he’d been waiting ten years to say.
“Take me to St. Luke.”
The name alone was enough to make the young man look nervous, but he clearly knew who Korigan was, and he didn’t ask questions. He simply motioned for the police chief to follow him as he made his way through the wild drug-fueled escapades going on in the front of the house to the slightly quieter, but no less extravagant, party going on in the back.
The huge hall that ran along the side of the mansion facing the lake had clearly been intended as a ballroom. Now, though, it looked—and smelled and sounded—like the inside of a sultan’s harem. Everywhere he looked, beautiful, naked bodies of both sexes lay in writhing piles on enormous silken pillows. Interspersed between them were giant hookahs and opium pipes, their trays of coals glowing like hellfire in the smoky dark as they filled the room with their heavy, intoxicating scent.
Just stepping into the place was enough to give Korigan a slight contact high, but he’d spent enough time in the worst scumholes in the third world to be virtually immune to narcotics at this point. Which meant that he was able to scan the room and see that, while this was clearly the party’s inner sanctum, the man he’d come to meet wasn’t here. Instead, the servant who’d led him here motioned for Korigan to wait and scuttled over to the nearest pile of pillows to speak to a man currently buried under multiple women. There was a brief exchange, and then the man stood up, his drugged lovers rolling off him like raindrops as he shrugged his muscular fighter’s body into the dark jacket and leather pants the servant discreetly handed him. When he was presentable, the man reached down and picked up a sword off the floor. Not a replica or showpiece, either, but an actual long-handled slightly curving blade with clear wear marks notched into its edge. The man checked his weapon and slipped it into a sheath on his belt before sending the servant fleeing with a wave of his hand as he turned to greet Chicago’s chief of police.
“Well, well, look who’s wandered in out of the cold.”
Korigan’s jaw tightened. This was not the man he’d come to see, but it also wasn’t someone he could ignore. He’d never personally met the tall, lanky, dark-skinned man, but he’d talked to him on the phone enough to recognize the voice. This was Lincoln Black, head of St. Luke’s operations in Chicago for the last eight months and, if one gave credit to the rumors, St. Luke’s own personal monster.
Personally, Korigan wasn’t sure how much of that last part he believed. Every two-bit gang lord and drug kingpin cultivated a bloody reputation to keep the troops in line, but he’d played up his own reputation as a monster enough to have very high standards for the real thing. Still, watching Lincoln Black as he slipped on a pair of mirror-polished black leather shoes before turning to walk soundlessly toward him through the smoke, a killer’s smile stretching his face, Korigan couldn’t help but think that maybe this time, the rumors didn’t go far enough.
“Nice monkey suit,” Black said, stopping to look Korigan’s best tux up and down. “Lemme guess, you’re all dressed up to see the wizard.”
“I’m here to see St. Luke,” Korigan said coldly, lifting his chin to show Black just how unimpressed he was by the attack-dog routine. “He wants a report on operational security after the recent series of junkie freak-outs.” He narrowed his eyes. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
Black smiled. “We all have our roles to play, policeman,” he said as he turned around, beckoning over his shoulder for Korigan to follow.
Grudgingly, Korigan did, moving behind Black and stepping out of the ballroom turned opium den, through a door into a side hallway lined with picture windows overlooking the mansion’s snow-covered lawn. Unlike the rest of the house, though, there was no party here. Just a plain, empty hall running down the length of the house to what appeared to be a dead end. As they got closer, however, Korigan realized that the subtly striped paper covering the wall at the hall’s end was actually an optical illusion. There was a door here, an opening lined up perfectly with the stripes so as to be invisible when viewed from the front. Even after he’d spotted it, it wasn’t until Black actually stepped through where the wall should have been that Korigan’s eyes finally realized the deception, leaving him a little dizzy as he walked through himself. Korigan stepped sideways past the hidden corner and through a small wooden door into a room completely cut off from the bacchanal just feet away.
It was not large, but unlike the hall leading up to it, the secret space was anything but plain. Everything inside—the walls, the floor, even the ceiling—was swarming with ornate decorations that, in keeping with the man who owned them, seemed to be competing to display the most outrageous examples of sin in all its myriad forms.
Elegant oil paintings depicted Catholic nightmares of satanic rituals and cloven-hoofed women tempting priests from their churches, while the long runner carpet was a nest of snakes and apples. But while Biblical themes were dominant, the decorations weren’t limited to Western debauchery. Beautifully detailed Japanese watercolor depictions of unclean souls suffering appropriate punishments at the hands of demons in the eight Buddhist hells hung beside Hindi carvings depicting Yama, God of Death, overseeing the torture of a wide variety of sinners. It was the sort of collection you’d expect being protested at an edgy museum looking for press, but other than a quick assessment, Korigan didn’t spare the art more than a glance. His eyes were locked on the man standing in the middle of it all.
Not surprisingly, Christopher St. Luke looked exactly like he did on television: a handsome, fit man in his late fifties with winking blue eyes, silver-fox hair, and a wry smile that made him appear like he was constantly appreciating a joke you weren’t sophisticated enough to understand. Like the partygoers at the front of his mansion, he was dressed in a suit that cost more than the average American made in a decade, but unlike them, he wore it like it didn’t matter. The ridiculously expensive tux—which Korigan could have traded for a year’s worth of food for him and his men in the old days—was just clothing to him. Black-and-white fabric not worthy of special regard. It was like he lived in an entirely different reality, one Korigan would trade any life on the planet to be part of, and he could barely keep his fingers from shaking as he reached out to take the billionaire’s offered hand.
“The infamous Victor Korigan,” St. Luke said, shaking Korigan’s hand not quite hard enough to hurt. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you in person. I’ve been very impressed with your work so far keeping the police so agreeably out of my hair.”
“I do my best, as always, sir,” Korigan said, keeping his voice carefully neutral. This was his big shot. He wouldn’t ruin it with overconfidence. “Thank you for inviting me tonight.”
“It was long past due,” St. Luke said with a wide smile. “You’ve done good work for me for some time now, and today was no exception. I’m very pleased with how you handled the curveball we threw you today.”