Conceal Me What I Am Ch. 05

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Most of the lights in the cellar were off, with just one small central desk lamp upon one of a pair of small tables in the middle of private dining or wine tasting area next to three nice and comfortable looking leather club chairs perfect for sipping the in-vogue rare vintage of the season and burning some decent Jamaican cigars. Bel took the chair offered to her, next to the middle-aged and rather portly looking gentleman in an old-fashioned suit with the jacket unbuttoned to display his rather splendid, and rather constrained, waistcoat. Not at all a bad outfit, and probably from a custom tailor. Dear old Aunt Millie didn't leave me with near enough of a fortune to afford any sort of tailor, and I bought my suits off of the rack (and on sale), but otherwise, Sebestyen Dénes gave me much the forewarning of just about what I would exactly look like in another twenty years, if I get gorging on cheesecake and ignored exercise. I declined the offer of the remaining empty chair and more or less remained behind Bel's, as if I were her bodyguard. The chair looked soft and comfy, but I wanted to keep my wits and not drink any more wine and I also tend to think better when on my feet. Well, slightly better anyway.

Examining him rather more closely I was none too sure what to think about Bel's reluctant crime lord. His round earnest face reminded me of a grocer back home in Austin and he dressed like a chartered accountant. Frankly couldn't picture him running amok with a tommy gun or gleefully kneecapping business rivals with a baseball bat. Upon further reflection, that was probably precisely why he had more or less succeeded and become one of the biggest boss around. Crime, especially organized crime, is a business and really needs to be run like one. There are fiendishly amoral lieutenants to handle all of the nasty violent and disreputable things, but the man up at the top needs to know how to run a big enterprise; sort of a CEO at least, if not quite a proper Napoleon of crime. Other than a single obviously visible bodyguard and the hidden mage, we were now quite alone and could speak entirely in private.

While Bel made her exceedingly polite and respectful introductions and minor grovelings, I politely nodded my head and began a detailed examination of the wine cellar. I know just two things about wine; it comes in white and red and shades in-between, and the dustier the bottle the more expensive it is. If I had a small fortune that I wasn't doing anything important with I'd love to train myself to become a wine-snob. You know, one of those insufferable people that can swizzle just a taste and tell you the vineyard, the vintage, and probably what side of the hill that the grapes grew on. For some reason, both the 'cultured' and the obscenely rich fawn all over a good wine snob and you tend to get invited to the best sort of parties. Definitely not the sort of affairs or do's where I'd often been in my life, but I was willing to be educated.

My minute examination just revealed lots of very dusty bottles, but I was willing to wager that this was the lair of some really, really good stuff. As for magic, there were no obvious protections set, no magical traps and nothing that made any of my magical senses tingle. Well, there was this one other magician lurking hidden in a corner behind some racks, out of sight and remaining rather passive. She had a bit of an aversion spell running but nothing I couldn't easily sense through. Strictly minor adept level grade talent I thought, but it wasn't likely that even big crime bosses had much access to top-shelf wizardly talent. A little rumble of magical force told me that she knew that I knew that she was there, but I kept my energies all to myself and just pretended that I was just there for the ride as well, which was more or less the case since I'd planned on letting Bel do 99% of the talking anyway. Keeping the illusion spell going upstairs, out of sight and through some rather thick earth and stone, was straining my talents. It wasn't an issue of magical strength, but of 'touch' and if I were to lose focus the spell would fade quickly.

Bel finished her introduction of me and more or less stuck to the facts. We had very strong indications that several deep underground manufacturing plants were making weapons for delivery to agents of Deseret, being smuggled in convoys, probably by members of the Clinton Street gang, working in conjunction with unknown high level political support, possibly including governmental agencies. At the very first mention of Deseret, our crime lord turned around in his overstuffed leather club chair and whispered something to the gunsel bodyguard behind him, who promptly scurried off into the darkness and probably down some tunnel as if his short and curlies were on fire.

"I was afraid it would be something like this." Sebestyen Dénes said, while waving me over towards the vacant chair. "I'd prefer not to shout to your companion from Texas. Sit please... with our eyes all, please, at an even level, so we can discuss matters quickly and earnestly, and with no unnecessary confusion or complications. This matter you've described offers enough opportunity for uncertainty and perplexity as it is. Now please seat yourself!" I shrugged and did so. The gang boss obviously had important things to say and didn't want to raise his voice a bit more than was necessary. Heck, I didn't blame him.

"Now..." he continued, "To my precise knowledge there are at least six underground weapons manufacturing facilities in or near Chicago. In fact, I do own and control two of them. While I admit it is not possible to completely control where every single gun ends up at, I can tentatively say for almost certain that my guns are most certainly not ending up into the hands of Deseret. I say 'almost certain' because after my meeting with you I will be taking a good many of my men to both facilities where everything will be secured and locked down tight, along with everyone working there, until an extremely exacting audit has been performed. None, I repeat none, of my guns should ever end up in Deseret. You have my oath and pledge on this! As for the other weapons plants, I cannot say precisely now where any of them are, or where their firearms end up, but by this evening I shall make it my business to know and then a course of action shall be decided upon."

"You have rather strong feelings about this, I see." Bel stated. "Already your attitude quite amazes me, as you've taken my concerns rather more deeply and personally that I would have anticipated, or even hoped for. Patriotism? A desire for better governmental relations, or does this particular agenda fit into your own long term plans?"

"Each and all of the above." He stated, and started to pour the contents of an extremely dusty wine bottle into three empty crystal wineglasses. "First, let's get the patriotism out of the way. Let us be clear, I have little love for the government this nation currently enjoys, and the increasingly misguided and unconstitutional way in which it has governed during my lifetime, but I have not the slightest misconception that life on our knees as slaves to Deseret would offer even the most meager improvement to anyone. In fact, I have a much more personal motivation to see Deseret's ambitions foiled, as my only son died about ten years as a young officer fighting with the army in Eastern Colorado. As for governmental relations, I'd prefer to see the stolid ranchers and farmers of the west armed, to defend their homes against the foreign aggression of Deseret, not to mention the tyranny of our own government. It is to this destination and cause that my own guns flow. As for personal gain, why not? If the Clinton Street gang is manufacturing guns specifically to be smuggled into Deseret, I very much want to know. If this turns out to indeed be so, then every soldier and asset at my disposal will be engaged to put them out of business... or rather, put their entire operation under new and more enlightened management."

"This then gives you the reasonable excuse to take out an important competitor then and maybe then perhaps become the top boss for the entire city?" Bel smiled with a bit of a giggle.

"Perhaps, the timing wouldn't be particularly inconvenient at the moment. Not ideal certainly, but then again there would always be uncertainty about a new gangland war at any time. Certainly there are several ways that my organization should benefit, but our gains would not be at little cost either and for the immediate short term might only equal the rewards gained. I also now have two rather uncertain allies that I cannot be sure of how they might best contribute to this rather uncertain enterprise. Miss Belanger, we have never met before now, nor have I ever called upon your professional services. Perhaps while we wait for further more detailed news, it might be instructive if I now called upon your service, if you are willing? Call it perhaps a small demonstration of loyalty."

Bel nodded and then looked at me and I shrugged and commented. "Is this perhaps a small matter that your rather young lady magician hidden in the corner could further enlighten us on? I assume the matter involves magical issues, otherwise I'm fairly certain that for other more mundane matters your lieutenants and officers would hardly need or require our meager help."

He smiled and shouted out, "Miranda, come join us."

Miranda, the young adept I had sensed earlier, came out from out of the shadows and I at once offered her my chair with a very genteel Texan flourish. She'd probably never met a real man before, let alone a Texan, so I wanted to make a good first impression. She give me a hard glare and enough of second look and then a third bewildered one that it could probably be accurately classified as a stare, but I guess she hadn't met many men not wearing white pancake makeup or lisping. Her father poured her a glass of wine which I was happy to offer her, but I wasn't entirely sure if she was of quite yet of legal drinking age back home. She didn't appear to be eighteen yet, but since booze was illegal up here anyway, I guess it really didn't matter anyway.

At much closer range, I could get a much sharper gauge of her talents such as they were and I wasn't particularly impressed.

"Did you have any formal magical schooling Miranda?" I enquired.

"None. Father has kept me hidden and mostly underground since my talents emerged a few years ago. I can help him a little with truth-reading but anything else is tricky for me to do. I'm usually good at appearing invisible to strangers and I'm rather put out that you saw through my spell so easily! Technically, I'm a 'renegade', an unlicensed witch without any government papers." She seemed almost proud of this fact and gave me a sort of 'so what -- do something about it!' sneer. Looks of derision and distain is never becoming to young ladies, especially pretty ones that weren't decked to the nines with pseudo-Victorialn Revival laces and frills, or a bustle or petticoat even. I disregarded the urge to put the surly teen into her place a bit... it's also never good to piss off the boss's daughter.

"That's a shame, you really do need a mentor, because even with textbooks you only just learn the technique but not the feel of how things should be done. Magic is as much of an art as a science, and often equally unreliable. Without training you can get the magic 98% right and still screw it all up. In the GWA you'd be an Adept, a rather weak one I think, but still capable of doing rather exceptional and useful things for yourself and your father... and without being called a witch or being micromanaged by an uncaring and fearful government. If you've any inclination towards traveling south to visit Texas sometime, if your father can wrangle the transit papers, I could perhaps help to arrange an apprenticeship. Hopefully, if my own mission up here works out acceptably, it could also be done without any inconvenient political strings from my own government."

In a nutshell and not particularly subtly put, this gave her father the clear message, scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. If you could find the weapons factory (or factories) producing arms for Deseret, and we could shut them down, this would probably gain me a fairly serious IOU back home. This might be enough to get my Adept's license reinstated, certainly, but in any case I should have little trouble finding a sponsor to mentor Miranda.

Since nearly all magicians are identified and sent to special schools for training from the time they were young children, mostly, it is quite uncommon for a 'late bloomer' to appear rather too late for conventional schooling. Still, it is not unheard of for the families of some young wizardlings to somehow evade the virtually mandatory testing and keep the child hidden away at home. Even in the enlightened GWA, there are always some prejudiced or superstitious folks in remote rural corners that still feel that magic is nothing other than the work of the devil, or something even worse. When eventually identified, and if they're too old for traditional schooling, an old-style traditional apprenticeship is then usually arranged. Usually this works out acceptably to all parties, giving a young (or not so) magician a chance to develop their talents better and providing them a place within the BMA structure. Sometimes though this just makes a bad situation worse and then there can be some real trouble, but I wasn't going to mention any of that to Miranda!

She blinked a bit at this offer and looked over towards her father with obviously transparent yearning, but his face and eyes revealed nothing. I wouldn't have wanted to have played poker against him! Instead, he just with an idle toss of hand beckoned to his daughter to explain the situation, and how she thought we might be able to help. The problem was indeed a bit of a brain-churner.