Severus Spade and the Dame that was Harry Potter

Part 7: I've Got to See a Man About a Dog

I haul Karkaroff to his feet and start shaking him. "Pull a gun on me, eh? All right, now I'm mad. I've been beat up once and had guns pulled on me twice, all in less than twenty-four hours, and all over a damned Oriental decoration. Now, I don't know what the hell is so special about this thing, but I'm gonna find out, 'cause you're gonna tell me." I jerk Karkaroff close to my nose by his lapels, and he goes white.

"I don't know what to tell you," he whines. "You're asking the wrong guy!" His educated vocabulary is slipping away with his courage.

I shake him more roughly. "All right, pal-sie, who's the right guy, then?" I wanna hear 'Voldemort,' dammit! I want someone to come out and say it.

"I don't know nothing!" he gasps as his head snaps back and forth on his neck, courtesy of my bad temper. "I don't know who's behind it! I don't know what it is! I swear!"

"Boy, you don't know much, do you?" I snarl, giving him a bitter sort of smile.

"I know that you're a loudmouth blowhard that deserves to have his face punched in," he spits at me. He's good and angry now.

"You don't know nothin' about nothin', then," I tell him. "Everyone I've met knows that." I shake him again a little. "A hundred grand," I laugh sourly. "Tell me another one!"

"You're a fool!" he shouts with ire. "I haven't the whole hundred yet, but I will very soon, and you're taking tricks from this whore instead?"

I backhand him in response. "That's another thing I'd like to know about. Where'd you meet my good buddy Harry, anyway?"

"Sev--"

"Dry up," I order, and the kid doesn't make another peep.

Karkaroff laughs. "It looks like the honeymoon's over." My hand meets his face with another resounding thwack.

"I didn't ask for your opinion. Three questions; what's so great about this text, who wants it, and where's the money?"

He stares at me for a moment, blood trailing from his lip. "It makes a prediction concerning a dark force attacking heaven," he whispers, shaken. "The Dark Lord wants it. I think he wants to be the one to do it. The money is in the bag."

I glance over his shoulder to where a brown paper bag is propped up against one of my chairs. For a moment, I'm confused; I hadn't meant it literally, I just meant, you know; what's everyone's big incentive for going after that thing. I nod at the bag. "Take a look and tell me what you see, Mister Potter."

The kid takes a look and yelps. "Holy cow, Sev! There's gotta be thousands in here!"

The guy grimaces. "Twenty five thousand, and I earned it. That's my mazuma," he whines.

"Used to be," I corrected him. "Now you're making a generous donation to the 'Keep Severus Spade From Ramming Your Lousy Nose Down Your Throat' fund. My motto is, 'Give today and don't wake up missing important body parts tomorrow.' Take it and get out of here, kid. And watch your back. They'll be casing the joint. I'll meet you back at the dive."

He nods sharply and takes off. At the door, he pauses. "Say, this means you can blow somebody else's hard-earned cash on me for a change, doesn't it?" Then he blows me a kiss and blows the joint. Brat.

"All right," I turn to Karkaroff. "Spill. Where'd you get this much green? How do you know my boy Harry? What're you after the text for?"

He laughs humorlessly. "What am I after the text for? You're a very ignorant man, Mister Spade." Now that I'm not manhandling him so much, he's chewing the big words again.

"So make me less ignorant and tell me something," I advise him.

"I want the text because that two-timing kid of yours crossed me, after he'd said he'd give it to me. I made promises based on that, Spade. Do you know what the Dark Lord does to people that don't keep their promises?"

I have to flinch at that, thinking of the scar that takes up most of my left forearm; my price for leaving the fold. "Why did you make a promise you weren't sure you could keep?" I rejoined.

He makes an ugly face at me. "I had to offer something," he said, as if that explained it all. "Now I can't pay with anything but money, and money is a poor substitute for power. Power is what the Dark Lord craves. I can buy myself time, with money, but never respect. Never freedom."

"So if you give him that text, you're a brand new man."

"And more. A position of power, loyalty for loyalty, life and death. If I can get a hold of the thing, the Dark Lord will be impressed beyond measure. I will never have to look over my shoulder again," he tells me, eyes glazing over. Yeah, right. What fairy tales has he been reading?

"Where did you get the money?" I watch him closely.

His eyes instantly become shuttered. "If you agree to find this text for me, I will give you whatever you ask." It is meant to sound seductive, but he's simply too pathetic. He trails a hand up and suddenly grabs the barrel of the gun, pushing it away.

"Son of a bitch," I grunt, trying to either get the edge on him or get the gun aimed the right way again; I'm not picky. We're struggling and snarling, and then out of the blue there's another hand on my arm, jerking it almost out of its socket. I leap away and pull the trigger--which causes the bullet to go streaking off harmlessly at the wall and bury itself in the plaster. "Who the hell are you?" I demand.

"Let's get out of here," the guy urges. He's kinda on the heavy side, but I can see there ain't much light in his eyes, and besides that, from the way they shift, he's nervous. Karkaroff laughs, his disgusting little beard wobbling.

"Good timing, Crabbe." He backs toward the door, smirking a little. "Crabbe is my associate. You are not the only one with something to tempt those of younger years," he adds quietly, and I feel ill.

The thought of that creepy little goat in any sexual way--with anyone--is really horrifying. I try not to look at them and picture anything. Karkaroff pats the kid on the shoulder, leering. "Please! I'll go blind!" Momma always told me I would, one day. Looking outraged, he hops it.

"I'll be back for my money, Mister Spade," he informs me as he goes.

He ain't worth chasing, so I head back to the brat's pad, mind seething with questions. Who the hell is Karkaroff, and why does he want the thing that badly? Why would he search me for it? Who does have the thing? The moonshiner? He doesn't act like he has it--he acts like he's tired and maybe scared and definitely hiding something. Malfoy doesn't have it--he wouldn't have bothered with pretending to offer me money to find it, if he did. Voldemort? Not yet, not according to rumor, at any rate. How did Harry and Karkaroff know each other? Was Karkaroff telling the truth? The kid left out more facts than he put out, and that was for sure.

By the time I reach Harry's place, I'm real hacked off. I let the door slam behind me, and the landlady screeches. "Can it, you old bat," I order in menacing tones. To her credit, she doesn't cave, but does take the screech down to a resentful mutter and wanders off to harass some of the other boarders.

The kid is dressed in a smoking robe when I walk in. A smoking robe, I ask you! He probably spent the whole twenty-five K on it, for how gaudy it is. I mean; it's gold. Could be actual gold, for all I know, spun into silk or something. Christ, this brat has lousy taste.

"Hey, Boss," he whispers seductively, letting that gold slip down his shoulder. Yeah, like I'm not onto that, by now.

"Don't you 'Hey, Boss,' me like I'm some kind of sap," I tell him angrily. I'm good and pissed--at myself as well as him. I let him leave. I gave him time to come up with a good yarn. Shit. "I've had sob story after sob story out of you, and I get the feeling ain't one single one is the truth. Who the hell is Karkaroff? What bullshit concoction did you come up with to explain him away, huh?"

His eyes just well right up, only by now I'm getting kinda used to it. Fool me once, you know? I just bare my teeth in response. "I didn't--you don't know how hard it was. I just told him that when the probate was finished, I'd consider selling. But that was before I knew it was gone! I needed the money...I don't want to sell it; I won't if I don't have to. But it's mine by right! I inherited it!"

"You got the papers that say so?" I demand.

He shakes his head, looking so innocent and lost I have to clamp my teeth to keep my mouth shut. "Remus is holding them. He was the executor. You can ask him, if you like; it really did come to me! It's mine. I only want your help to get it back...I'm afraid I'm not very good at all of this." He blinks those pretty eyes.

"Oh, I'd say you're damn good at all of this."

"No, I'm not. They all think so quickly and ruthlessly. And they all...all those men. All hired for size. If one of them came after me, Sev, what could I do?"

I laugh. "Same as you did to me, probably."

He stomps his foot. Actually stomps his foot! It'd be funny, if it weren't so dangerous. "Why the hell do you have to be so heartless? So stubborn? You're getting something out of it, too!"

"You'd better believe I'm getting something out of it, too," I tell him, and crush my lips to his. His hands are all over me, and they're pushing me back onto the bed. Before I know it, everything is hot breath and the kid's legs wrapped around my waist and sweat trickling down that lean chest, and his hands clutching the headboard and the grunts and sighs and squeak squeak squeak of the mattress.

The landlady's hollering something from downstairs, and even that is just a swelling note of song, an addition in the background to the rhythm of our heated copulation. I suddenly think, Good Christ, I'm almost USED to her screaming in the distance whenever I'm having sex. Dimly, I wonder if that can't be just a little bad for my soundness of mind--is the sound of an old lady howling going to twist into a connection with whoopie? Will I get a hard on when I hear it? Good lord.

But then Harry's teeth are raking my skin, and those eyes are gauzy with lust, and he's panting my name, and I can't hear anything but that anymore. Everything else is just backdrop. Everything else is trivial. If it was your name in his mouth, trust me, you'd know what I mean.

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The next afternoon--it's afternoon before I can open my eyes--I slip out of bed before he wakes up. This way, maybe I can find some things out before he knows I'm gone. There are things going on around here that need some serious looking into.

My first stop is Harry's godfather's place. I'm hoping to catch the runner's ear, but the runner ain't around. I decide to make do with the old man instead. It takes him almost fifteen minutes to answer the door, and he's cussing out me and all of creation by the time he gets there. He don't want to talk to me, but I make like I want to listen, and follow him around acting interested for a bit, so he starts talking. They always do.

One of the first things I get from Kreacher is that he and the dead guy didn't get along. That's fine and dandy to me; I can play that knowledge like a violin.

"Yeah, when Harry told me about him, I figured he was a real loser. A one trick pony," I put in, when he's taking a break.

He gives me a dirty look. "Oh, little Master Potter is ever so much better, is he? A lousy thief and a whore to boot, yes he is. Just like Master Black. Whores, the lot of them. This used to be a beautiful estate, beautiful estate, beautiful people; Mrs. Black was a Goddess on earth, he never appreciated her--oh, no--not fit to--"

Godfather was a whore, eh? "Yeah, I heard that he got around quite a bit. That really is disgusting. Nobody has morals, anymore. But he wasn't that bad, was he? I mean, at least he wasn't a politician."

He snorts at this. "Faggots are almost as bad."

This gives me pause. "He bring a lot of boys around?" I even sound surprised. I don't know why I didn't figure that angle sooner.

He looks disgusted with the conversation. "Just that lowlife scum-bucket, Lupin," he grimaces. That's the most interesting thing I've heard all day. "Why couldn't he have been friends with the people his parents were friends with? What is the world coming to when the Notts and the Malfoys aren't good enough for the Blacks?"

When I leave, he's still going on in that vein. I promise if he ever wants to drop by Fletcher's, I'll see he gets treated right. Then I decide to pay the place a visit, myself.

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I chat Dung up for a bit, asking him what he knows about Moony. He seems kinda nervous, but I push it. "Look, I need to talk to the fellow, and I ain't kidding. You gotta know some way I could go about getting a hold of him. Come on, be a pal."

Dung wipes his upper lip, which is sweating a bit. "He does bulk, mostly. He don't do little joints like mine. I could get in touch with him, like, but I got no reason for him to want to talk to me. We don't do business together, see."

I think it over for a few. "Nah, but maybe I could do business with him. Here, Dung. You call him up, and tell him Sev Spade wants to have a little chat with him. Tell him..." What would get his attention? I know he was boffing the dead guy? I know he took the text? I know he's running rum? Nah. It's got to be something that don't get me bumped off before I can even finish spilling it. "Tell him it's about his boy Harry. I gotta meet him in person, tonight, like."

Dung Beetle looks at me under his sweaty mop of hair. "Boy, I sure hope you know what you're doin', Sev," he tells me vehemently. "This ain't no soda-pop and gumdrop deal, here. This is the Big Time you're messing with."

"I know it, Fletcher." Boy, do I ever.

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I walk into the Cat's Pajamas feeling nervous; this is a high-class joint, and I don't fit in here. Moony wanted to meet here though, it had to be here, because he's got another business transaction that he can't get out of. He tells me eight o'clock, so I'm here at six. In time to watch him join Karkaroff in a corner booth.

This place is a noisy party; the girls are doin' their stuff on the stage, and the guys are crowded around. There's yells of 'Get hot! Get hot!' and the girls get hot, and get all the boys in a panic. Well, almost all the boys. It's the perfect place to have a private conversation, though, and my respect for Lupin goes up a notch. He's careful, this one. I'll have to be careful, too.

It takes me a half hour to make my way anywhere near their booth without raising suspicion. That bootlegger has sharp eyes, and they're all over this outfit. Finally, I manage to slink into a seat nearby, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't see me.

I can only get snatches of their conversation, though.

"Oh, come now," Karkaroff's voice comes out all snide. "You must! You're rolling in it! You're lousy with it!"

Most of Lupin's reply is so quiet I don't get it, but the end floats my way. "...since you started your little game." He sounds quite bitter.

"You have enough," Karkaroff hisses, and it's barely loud enough to reach my ears. "This is the last time, if you're lucky. You give me the money, I get the text from my contact, and I'm back in business. And you never have to hear from me again. Can you afford to tell me no? I have the goods on you. And anyone that knows me can tell you what that means." he adds, and his tone has a twisted something to it that sounds really ugly.

I can see Moony, over the goat's shoulder, and the way he shudders delicately. His face is weary and sick. "Well. I am behind the eight ball on this one..." His voice gets too soft to hear again.

"Come off it, old boy!" Karkaroff chuckles. "Who else could have found out what I found out? That two-bit gumshoe your 'nephew' or--whatever euphemism you'd apply to him--is going around with? Not likely!"

"Oh...I don't think he's as senseless as you seem to believe," Lupin tells him in a self-assured, but extremely muted voice that I have to lean way over to catch. "In fact," he adds more loudly, "Why don't you join us, Mister Spade?"

Aw. Fuck. I get to my feet nonchalantly, and slide in next to Karkaroff. I don't trust him at all, but he's less sharp and therefore less dangerous than the moonshine runner. "Moony," I greet him. "Good to see you. Shoulda known I couldn't fool you. You gonna buy me a drink, or offer me some of your own stock?"

"Now, why would I do that? Everyone knows you make your own, and don't touch anyone else's." He smiles at me, a sharp, humorless smile. A wolf's smile.

"True," I agree. "Not since that time a whore slipped me a mickey and I ended up in an alley with nothin' but my underclothes." I turn to Karkaroff with a grin. "So...what'd you find out about old Moony, here, that made him a good mark for blackmail?"

He gives me a nasty look, and Lupin holds up a hand. "Front desk, Karkaroff," he says, and I'm strangely disappointed. I let Karkaroff out, and he doesn't do nothin' but sneer at me when he walks away.

"You gonna let him get away?"

He gives a half-shrug. "He's pretty irrelevant, actually. You know he's the only gangster that actually got a nickname after he left the underworld? They call him Igor the Canary. Because he's yellow, and when the Bulls caught him last time--"

"Let me guess; he sang like a bird," I smirk a little at the image. "No wonder the old man ain't too happy with him."

"Mmm," he responds noncommittally. "What brings you to my humble establishment, anyhow?"

I ignore this. "What's the dope he's got on you? That you're as queer as a plug nickel? I don't think you stole the text, or he'd be wanting that. Is it your connection with the Mayor? Or is it the same thing that Dumbledore's got?" All of a sudden there's a cold, hard weight in my ribs, and I freeze. He's got a heater aimed my way, under the table.

"I'd be careful about what I said here, friend," he advises me, his eyes cold. "In a crowded place like this, accidents can happen." His voice lowers even further. "I won't kill you, because the Chief instructed me to let you be, and I haven't killed Karkaroff because we need him, but if you go spreading my involvement with the Bureau around, I won't be responsible for my actions."

I blink a couple of times. What the fuck is he going on about? Then it dawns on me. "Ah. How long you been with the Department of Justice, Mister Moonshine?"

"Long enough," he informs me shortly.

"And you run hooch for them?" I raise my brows.

"Funny. No. I'm a...Special Agent. Dumbledore is my liason. He...trusts you."

Yeah. Stupid Chief. "Ooo-kay," I blow a breath out. "So the Chief is your contact here in town. What're you doin' here, anyway? You ain't runnin' hooch for 'em, I ain't seen you arresting no bad guys, and you sure as hell ain't purposely getting blackmailed. So, what's your schtick?"

He pinches his lips together, eyes flicking around the room. Slowly, he puts the gun away. "I do the usual kind of thing," he says flippantly. "I keep my ear to the ground, and an eye out for pinkoes, nazis, anyone that might undermine national security. I hardly see why this is any of your interest."

I tilt my head to the side. "I been hired to do a job. I do a job, I do it well. You know the players. You know lots of stuff I don't know, and I'm thinkin' it might work good if you told me about it."

His restless eyes land on me, suspicious. "The F.B.I. does not have a history of cooperation with unknown factions. We do not, in fact, play well with others."

"The F.B.I. don't have any kind of history at all, yet," I tell him with a half smile. "It's the Department that has all the history. You change your name, you have to start over. That's the way it works. Since you're starting over, maybe you oughta try being cooperative, for once."

He gauges my face for a long time. "What is it you want to know?"

Where do I start? "Were you the executor of Black's will?"

He inclines his head.

"Did Harry inherit the Chinese doodad?"

"He will, once it's all out of probate. Of course, there are...unfortunate complications, so it may not be out of probate for ten years. Until then, he may live in the house, and have whatever he requires from me."

"Huh. Well...Karkaroff. He's buying the text?"

"It's what he wants us to believe."

"Yeah. Who's his contact, d'you know?"

He smiles that wolfish smile again. "Clever question. I do know, as a matter of fact. Well, it's my money he intends to hand over to the man. I like to know where my money's going, don't I?"

"Who is it, then?" I demand impatiently.

He lights a stogie and looks around the room speculatively. "Peter 'The Rat' Pettigrew."

I heard about him. Oh, he was clever. Faked his own death to get away from the Feds. "You don't say. And he's got the text?"

"Presumably."

"Why does Voldemort want it so bad?" I wanna see how his answer tallies up with Karkaroff's.

He blows a smoke ring heedlessly past my ear. "Because Hitler wants it, of course. Voldemort suspects it must hold the answer to some ancient riddle. A wealthy tomb, a historical ruin, a forgotten legend. Perhaps they both believe it. They both think it will give them an edge. Of course, they're both completely insane, and it's important to keep that in mind. If it's something good, perhaps Voldemort will keep it for himself. If it's nothing, he'll sell it to Hitler."

"And what'll Hitler give him for it?"

"America, supposedly. If he should ever conquer it. You didn't imagine the F.B.I. would have an agent here after little fish, did you? Voldemort is a traitor. If I can prove that, he'll go in for a very long time. Or up in flames; it doesn't matter to me."

"How much money did Karkaroff ask for this time?"

"Two hundred grand."

I whistle. "He is a mooch, isn't he? Well, I supposed I'd better get a move on. See if I can't worm my way into the big meeting tonight. If the text is gonna make an appearance, I figure I should, too. Say, what're you expecting in payment for giving me all this information?"

He gives me a crooked smile, and I remember we have something in common. I don't like the idea of giving it up for gossip, though. If he were ten years younger and less rough around the edges, he'd be much more my type. But he doesn't say anything about any of that. "Just make sure Harry gets the text back," he orders me. "It's obvious he'll get it one way or another. Perhaps with you along, he'll be able to master some of his more impulsive tendencies. That would be for the best. Now," he says, standing. "If you'll excuse me, I have to see a man about a dog."

I shake his hand, and start walking away. That was the most useful conversation I've had in years. As we part ways, I hear him mutter to me, "Please tell him to be less reckless with it, this time."