Diamond in the Rough

by Isobella Crowley

  He almost reached for his wine glass but stopped himself before he made it obvious. “And how will my pending success affect your consideration of my proposal?”

  “If,” Taylor said, “you can find out what’s happened to these personnel of theirs, I will be more open to a new office.” Something in the set of her mouth suggested she was smiling, albeit so subtly that only someone who knew her would have caught it.

  His response was his biggest, flashiest, most obvious grin. “Deal. I’ll have them found within a day. Or, like, a day and a half, at most.”

  He patted his mouth with a napkin, pushed his chair back, and stood. “It’s been a pleasure, Taylor, but I ought to leave and get to bed shortly. It sounds like I have my work cut out for me tomorrow.”

  She ran a finger around the rim of her wine glass. “Indeed. I’ll have Presley gather the information you’ll need. Good evening, Remington.”

  With a brief nod, he strode away.

  As he passed through the indoor landscaping, his mind went over the list of requirements presented him months before by his family.

  One hundred million in assets. A three-million-per-month positive cash flow. And zero unpaid debt with any of the businesses in which he owned stock. That was how the other Remingtons had defined the term “independently wealthy.” Once he had fulfilled these conditions, he would be back in their good graces, both socially and financially.

  He was…getting there. Slowly but surely.

  And, he gloated, as he stepped out into the wet and gleaming New York night, with the agency growing so fast and gaining so many new clients, we can expect an exponential increase in profits. What could possibly go wrong?

  Chapter Two

  Fluttershire Fairy Colony, Fort Washington Park, New York City

  The morning was bright and cool as David drew his Lincoln into his usual space outside the park. He turned the keys and sat in the silent vehicle for a moment, put his game face on, and rehearsed his pitch.

  First, he needed to begin to think of himself as Remington Davis. That had become his professional name, stage name, and street name. The fairies found it amusing to call him “Remy.” He still found having two names—both equally important—a little confusing but introduced himself as that whenever he worked with the preternatural.

  Last night, at the restaurant, he’d allowed himself to be David Remington again. Now, however, the vacation was over.

  “All right.” He sighed and climbed out of the vehicle.

  Winter was overdue. The autumn had been long and warm, and a white Christmas was by no means guaranteed. Not that he particularly minded. Having to wear a hat outdoors always left his hair looking ridiculous.

  He stretched across to the passenger seat and retrieved a little something he’d brought, hidden within a brown paper bag. It was fairly heavy but he didn’t have far to go. His destination, reachable only by foot, was a subtle roll in the earth at the edge of the shade beneath the George Washington Bridge.

  Remy trudged past the usual assortment of joggers, dog-walkers, and possibly insane homeless people, one of whom eyed his paper bag with salivatory curiosity. He sent the hopeful a death-glare and the man backed away.

  Soon, the two entrances to the colony of the Fair Folk were in sight.

  “Halt!” a tiny voice insisted somewhere to Remy’s left. He obeyed and wondered how it was that the guards always managed to see him before he could see them.

  “Hi,” he said tentatively, “it’s Remy. Remember me? Riley’s…er, friend.”

  Another high-pitched voice snapped at him from the right. “We know who you are. And we have our suspicions of why you’ve come.”

  Both speakers floated toward him and entered his field of vision. They were humanoids but small enough to fit in his hand, with gossamer dragonfly wings and sparkling eyes, and their skin was tinged with odd colors. The one on the left was bluish, whereas the one on the right boasted a bright orange hue.

  Remy smiled in a pleasant, inconspicuous way. He tried to quickly deduce what the hell they might be talking about but came up with nothing certain. Then again, the fae were notoriously fickle and their thought processes often outside of human comprehension.

  “I only wanted to speak to her,” he said. “Riley. May I please be permitted to do so?”

  “Hah!” the blue one scoffed, drifted closer, and gestured toward him with a fist. “Yes, exactly as we suspected. Once again, trying to lure her away.”

  His gut tightened at the open hostility in the thin little voice. During his very first assignment with the Agency, half the colony had ended up beating the crap out of him. A man’s psyche never entirely recovered from losing a fight to a horde of squealing little pricks the size of gerbils.

  “Yes,” the orange one added and swooped closer as well. “She spent too much time with you, grew too infatuated, and now, she acts and even thinks too much like a human. You have corrupted her with your malign influence.”

  He sighed and kept the paper-bagged object hidden behind his back. “I am merely interested in once again paying for her services. On behalf of the entire preternatural community, including yourselves, I have an important investigation to conduct, and I need someone who can magically track and locate people. Riley is the best. Besides, she likes me.”

  “Likes you?” the blue one raged. A few other fairies, by now, had wafted up from their lair to observe the commotion. “You—”

  “Here,” Remy interrupted and held the bundle up. He stripped the paper bag off in the same motion.

  All the fae gasped, frozen in midair, and their faces went slack with ecstasy.

  He allowed himself a smirk. “One entire half-gallon of honey,” he announced. “Pure, unfiltered elixir directly from the beehive, courtesy of the men in the white suits and facemasks. The pound I’d need to pay for a week of Riley’s help is included, and the rest is a gift for your colony.”

  Instantly, he was swarmed by cackling fairies. At least ten of them seized the jug and lifted it, then carried it with some difficulty toward the nearest hole in the ground.

  “You’re a great person, for a human,” one of them remarked.

  “Yeah! Come by more often,” added another.

  The honey-convoy disappeared beneath the earth. The other fairies trailed nearby, giggling and panting. One of them called back over his shoulder, almost as an afterthought, “Riley will be right out.”

  Remy nodded and glanced around. No other humans were nearby, which was just as well. Most people could not see the preternatural—which meant, if they’d been observing, they would have seen him speak to thin air, followed by a jug of honey that floated by itself toward what they probably assumed was a gopher den.

  He waited and swelled with confidence—he’d pulled this off. The only possible hitch was that Riley herself might try to argue with him. Still, he knew he could handle that as well.

  Perhaps two minutes passed before a single tiny, fluttering form rose from the nest.

  “Remy.” A soft, feminine voice sighed.

  He waved. “Hi, Riley. Good to see you again. You’re even wearing the dress.”

  She flew toward him, thankfully not too fast. “Do you still like it? I chose it based on what you said you liked originally.” She raised her arms and twirled slowly in the air, which gave him a nice view of her miniature cleavage, legs, and buttocks.

  “Yes, I remember.” His palms began to sweat. Riley had been flirtatious with him from the get-go, but the fact of her being five inches tall and a member of a different species had buffered him against her advances.

  Of course, that was before she’d demonstrated that she could magically grow to the size of a human woman.

  He cleared his throat and imagined himself in an ice-cold shower. “So,” he began, “I could use your help again. You saved my ass several times when we worked together before. Are you in the mood to do some tracking?”

  “Sure,” she replied with a grin. “As long as I get to
do it with you.”

  Surrly Lending, Chelsea, New York City

  Remy paused at the door. “Is this the place?” He cocked an eyebrow at the fairy.

  “Well, yeah,” she responded. “It says his name right on the door.” She pointed.

  “I see that. I simply meant, do you smell dwarf in here? Do you…uh, sense anything suspicious I should be aware of?”

  Riley shook her head.

  Satisfied, he pushed his way in. A bell attached to the door heralded his entrance. It was deeper and lower than the tinkly ones most shops used, halfway to a gong. He supposed that was more appropriate for a dwarf.

  Within, the place appeared quite normal. Or, at least, the small, cozy lobby was. No other customers were waiting, and behind a window, an apparently human receptionist wearing a burgundy sweater and butterfly glasses studied them curiously.

  “Hello,” she said cheerfully, “how can I help you?” She’d clearly seen Riley but wasn’t fazed by her in the slightest.

  Remy slipped two fingers into his front shirt pocket and produced a business card. “Hi, I’m here on behalf of Moonlight Detective Agency to see Surrly. Is he in? He requested our help.” He showed the front of the card to the lady.

  She squinted at it. “Mmm, yes…we were expecting someone else but let me inform him that you’ve arrived. Wait here, please.” She hoisted herself from her chair and disappeared into a back room.

  Once the receptionist had gone, Riley floated to Remy’s ear and whispered, “I think he was expecting Taylor.”

  Feeling the fairy’s breath on his ear like that brought stirring memories of her at five-feet-three and one hundred and twenty pounds, and naked. He clenched his teeth and made himself think, instead, of other dwarves he’d seen and what they’d look like similarly nude. That cut off the distraction rather effectively.

  “Well, of course,” he said. “It’s not as though Taylor has had any other employees besides herself for…I don’t know, a few decades? Centuries?”

  “Oh.” She sounded dejected.

  Remy cursed himself for being needlessly snarky again. “Don’t worry, not everyone is an ace at detective work, and you’ve always been useful in other ways.”

  He saw her smile out of the corner of his eye.

  The receptionist returned and stood at the window. “Mr Surrly will see you, although he’s not happy about the bait-and-switch. Go through that door to your right when I press the buzzer.”

  “That sounds simple enough.” He nodded, walked toward the door in question, and turned the knob in time with the obnoxious buzzing sound. Beyond was a short, dim corridor that branched off to both left and right.

  “Go left,” the woman’s voice called.

  Remy did and the fairy trailed a little behind his shoulder. He stepped into an office that, at first glance, he mistook for a treasure vault in a Renaissance castle.

  A big, broad hand appeared almost directly in front of his face, palm outwards. “Hold!” a voice grunted. “You’re not armed, are you? I don’t expect you’re that stupid, but one can never be sure.”

  He raised his hands reflexively, mainly because the dwarf aimed a blunderbuss pistol at him with his other hand. The fairy had tensed and seemed poised to employ some kind of defensive magic but waited for any signal from her partner.

  The dwarf blew warm air out of his lips, fluffed his huge mustache, and patted his visitor down with a hand that felt like a tennis racket encased in concrete. “Good. And the fairy can relax. I mean you no harm unless you mean me harm.” He spoke with a gravelly brogue and rolled his R’s.

  “I don’t,” he stated. “May I have a seat?” He glanced toward the guest chair opposite the dwarf’s massive oaken desk.

  “Yes. I am Surrly, as you might well have guessed. And who might you be?” He raised his thick iron-gray unibrow and holstered his bizarre gun.

  He wiped his sweaty palms on the back of his pants. “Remington Davis, Taylor’s partner. It seems she forgot to inform you that I’d be the one handling your case. And this is Riley.” He gestured toward the fairy.

  “Hello!” she chirped.

  Surrly frowned at them both. Even by dwarven standards, he was squat and solid and dour-looking, visibly aged but still spry and strong. He stomped over to his leather chair and sat, shaking the floor a tad, and put his fists together under his beard.

  Remy pulled the other chair out and settled into it. Riley perched on his left shoulder.

  “Now,” the dwarf began, “Taylor and I are longtime associates, and I have been a client of hers in many cases. It seems to me that there is no good reason she should not take care of this herself. I do not know you. In fact, I’ve never even heard of you. With such a long working relationship between us, she owes me the satisfaction of being able to trust her competence.”

  Instinctively, he bristled but inhaled slowly through his nose and tried not to insult the man.

  Riley spoke for him. “He’s legitimate,” she insisted. “I’ve been with him to Taylor’s house, and we both helped her against those werewolves. You heard about that, didn’t you?”

  Surrly grunted. “Yes. I’ve no reason to mistrust you, young lady, but this man is an unknown quantity. I’m a moneylender. I specialize in knowing my quantities.” He waved a bricklike hand.

  The rest of the office was piled with valuables. Now that he had a moment to study them, the dwarf’s itchy trigger finger made more sense. His hasty examination revealed bars of gold and silver, crates full of precious gems, sacks of gold dust, and even objets d’art made of similarly precious materials. One entire wall was lined with steel safe boxes, but half of them hung open. They must have caught Surrly in the middle of an inventory session.

  All these things were the kinds of currency popular in the preternatural community. Paper money had never really caught on, except with humans.

  Remy straightened. “As it so happens,” he explained and raised his voice a little, “it is precisely my competence that led Taylor to take me on as a partner. She asked me to handle this mission personally and I have her complete trust. And that business with the werewolves? I killed one myself. I’ve already leapt through fire and emerged unscathed. Oh, and the fairy helped. With us on the job, success is guaranteed, as surely as if Taylor were handling it herself.” He smiled.

  Surrly snorted. “You’re cocky, I see. But you don’t seem to be lying. Perhaps exaggerating. Nonetheless…I will give you this job, provided Taylor understands that I will hold her accountable for any failure of yours.” He pointed at the investigator’s face with a finger almost as thick as one of his gold bars.

  His smile did not falter. “You won’t be disappointed, good sir. I recently foiled an identity-theft scam run by one hell of a clever face-stealer. Among other things.”

  “Yes, yes.” The dwarf, scowling, had already reached into a drawer of his desk and now withdrew a manila folder. “Allow me to brief you, then. Our cartel often deals with the import of raw, uncut diamonds. Do not bother to ask me exactly how we acquire these diamonds. I will give you an answer so vague as to be pointless.”

  “Understood,” he said and ignored Riley’s hiss of confusion.

  Surrly continued. “A shipment recently arrived in the United States. The escort crew checked in with me immediately after they left the boat here in New York. Then…nothing. It was no tremendous shock since we have been targeted with a series of thefts lately. But this was the first time that our people disappeared, along with the merchandise, and that deepens my concern.”

  The blocky face, already far from pleasant, drooped now in a mixture of grief and anger. Remy knew dwarves to be a tightly-knit group. An attack on one, unless he’d gone rogue, was an attack on all.

  The dwarf opened the folder. “I recommend you begin at the pier where their ship arrived. Your small companion should be able to aid you to find subtle traces, I imagine. Here is a rundown of the information we have, as well as a picture of one of the missing dwarves—a
man who worked directly under me on many similar jobs.”

  Remy accepted the documents—two sheets of paper with details typed in a list format and a full-size photo scan. “Thank you, Mr Surrly. We will hurry to the piers at once. I ought to have something to call you with as early as this evening.”

  Surrly nodded. “Good. Leave a message on the office phone if we’re not here. And one more thing…” He pointed again and his unibrow lowered over his deep-set eyes. “If you get into any trouble, you know nothing about me. Not even my name.”

  Chapter Three

  Pier 88, Western Manhattan, New York

  Riley, stretched on the dashboard, pulled her skirt up a little higher. “Do you think it looks better like this?” she asked. “Or the way it was? I suppose it’s more…suggestive when it’s pulled all the way down.”

  “Whatever you think is best, dear.” Remy tried to ignore her. It was, however, difficult. “We’re almost there, by the way, so get back on the clock. My God, why does this city have so many piers?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. People probably need places to land their ships, and—”

  “It was a rhetorical question.” He interrupted her and she pouted. “Check that note from Surrly. He said Pier Eighty-eight, right?”

  She breezed over to the file folder on the passenger seat. “Yes.” Her eyes bright, she darted up toward his face. “And I can detect a little of his essence—the dwarf we’re looking for. He was here recently but we’ll need to get closer, though.”

  “Good, yes.” He turned off of 12th Avenue in search of somewhere to park. Of course, he had to drive a good quarter-mile deeper into the city before anything presented itself. There was a great deal of bustle in the area and cars hunched evilly in every nearby space.