Birth of a Monster

by Daniel Lawlis

  If there was one thing the Sivingdel Police were known for cracking down on, it was stingy donors.

  If they didn’t get involved quick, they expected the seizure would turn out to have been one of those misunderstandings that large sums of cash had clarified.

  Thus, it was with no leisure that they kneed their horses’ sides, as they headed towards the police station. The wind caressed their crewcut scalps.

  Chapter 10

  When Harold set Righty down in the most wooded area of the city park—an area Righty had hoped not to revisit after the first visit had revealed to him that it was an area the city police found pleasant to patrol—he knew that he might be making his final good-bye to his faithful friend.

  He gave Harold a pat on the back and an appreciative look but knew words would only enervate his soul. Harold quickly ascended to a large tree, and Righty, with exactly two million falons in his various secret coat and pant compartments, set off on foot towards the nearest trail, which would then take him to the park’s circular opening, from where it would then would only be a five- to ten-minute walk before he spotted a coach available for hire.

  He tipped his hat politely at a couple of patrol officers he found sauntering around the park and concluded he must look more confident than he felt, which was like a broken man being led to the scaffold in prison garb.

  The walking itself, he thought, should have calmed his nerves slightly, but every step was one closer to the police station rather than away from it and thus only served to put him more on edge.

  He almost blurted out, when the coachman asked for his destination, To jail! But instead, he made an attempt at discretion, stating coldly, “Oh, I can’t remember the address, but it’s merely a stone’s throw from the police station, so just take me there.”

  The coachman, who was quite argumentative in his private life, almost said, You sure you’re not going to the jail? Most customers at least know the name of their destination, if not the address. But he was rather tolerant in his professional capacity and set off towards the jail, a place he himself had once visited after a nasty dispute with his wife.

  It was a dreary ride, and while neither knew it, they shared a nearly equal displeasure with the destination. Nor did either know that some of the coachman’s particularly long shifts were given a little help from some plants grown at his passenger’s ranch.

  “There she blows,” said the coachman, stopping the carriage.

  As he looked at Righty’s face while he nervously fumbled for pocket change, the coachman realized his passenger had reached his destination after all.

  “Heck, friend. I’ve been there. Today is on the house.”

  Righty’s mood felt slightly elevated by the goodwill he had found in such an unlikely place, but he responded, “On the contrary, today you’ll be generously rewarded,” handing the coachman several times the normal fare.

  “May luck be with you today, friend!” the coachman said happily, and then lay the whip to his horses before his customer had second thoughts.

  Chapter 11

  Righty knew he should have pushed himself forward, like a man dragging a stubborn work bench across a rough floor, because with any loss of momentum, he was likely to turn tail and run in the opposite direction.

  But he could not deny himself a moment of reflection. While his heart continued to gallop, it seemed as if his surroundings were slowing down, almost to the point where an accomplished artist would have time to capture the individual expressions of the passersby.

  A rising wave of analysis loomed in the background, growing ominously by the second, full of questions and objections. He stepped forward to the door, knowing that if the wave landed upon him, he would run back to the forest, call Harold, fly back to Ringsetter, leave the country, and live in hiding for the rest of his life, perhaps shunning even the mirror, which would remind him of his cowardly betrayal.

  He grabbed the door and opened it.

  And walked inside.

  He tried to act calm as he approached the front desk.

  “I’m here to see David Havensford, ma’am,” Righty said to a stern-faced, uniformed woman sitting behind the desk.

  “Are you his attorney?” she asked suspiciously.

  Righty had never been to jail before. A couple of times, during his drinking days, the tavern owner had thrown him out by the ears, but no one—at least in those days—knew how to spend the better part of a week’s pay on a Friday night than Righty Rick, and so the tavern owner had never escalated things to the point where the local sheriff got involved. Thus, Righty knew as much about jail protocol as a fish knows about tap dancing.

  “No, ma’am. I’m just a friend.”

  Righty noticed a nearby male officer was sizing him up suspiciously.

  “May I see the chief of police?” Righty said, wishing he would have started with that approach but realizing it was too late now.

  The male officer was now looking at him with as much interest as a cat hovering over a mouse.

  “Do you have an appointment?” the woman asked.

  “No, ma’am, I’d like to make one.”

  “What’s this in regards to?”

  “I would feel more comfortable talking to him about that directly.”

  “Oh, you would, would you?” the male officer asked, having left the role of spectator behind. The menace in his voice was clear.

  “So, you’re not a lawyer, but you are the friend of a person we just arrested in the largest drug seizure to date?”

  “I’m sorry if I wasted your time,” Righty said, turning to leave. His heart was really galloping now. He thought he was going to keel over.

  “Frisk him!” the male officer ordered curtly.

  Righty was too petrified of making a scene to protest as two burly officers approached him and then led him towards a wall, where they instructed him to place both hands while they began searching him.

  While his secret compartments made their job a bit harder, they quickly noticed the large lumps inside his coat, as well as the dagger inside his sleeve.

  “You’re under arrest on suspicion of being a co-conspirator of David Havensford, aka Tats. Cuff him and book him!”

  They tore off his large coat rudely and smiled greedily when they saw the cash there.

  “Take him to the back!” an officer ordered.

  When they realized his pants and shirt were filled with money too, they told him to disrobe, permitting him only the dignity of keeping his undergarments on, but those too were subjected to a meticulous inspection.

  Righty seethed with shame and impotent anger, and his heart sank as one of the officers fondled his dagger.

  “She’s a beauty!” he said, letting out a whistle the same as if he were viewing a naked woman.

  “What’s your name, you punk?!” one of the officers said.

  “Sam Higler,” Righty said calmly.

  “What kind of a made-up name is that?!”

  The burly officer threw his hardest punch to Righty’s gut.

  When Righty merely grimaced slightly, but didn’t so much as bend over an inch, a chill went down the officer’s spine.

  He knew the chief wanted to do business with the head of the gang, but he had marked this guy as nothing more than a low-level courier attempting to negotiate on the boss’s behalf. He had heard the rumor that the head of the gang was a boxer, and when he saw his right uppercut to the gut—that had doubled over some of the toughest criminals in town—embarrass itself thoroughly like a kitten pawing at its hulking mother, a terrifying apprehension swept over him.

  But he had the chief to worry about too. He had given strict orders to rough anyone up who was sent by the mysterious Mr. Brass. A middle-of-the-road approach suddenly seemed like a good idea.

  “Well,” he said, trying to sound tough but polite, “you can take a punch, sir. If this is your first arrest we’re going to have to sketch you. If you try escaping the sketch by telling
me you’ve been arrested and sketched here before, you’re going to have to wait a reeeal long time while we look for Sam Higler’s dossier.

  “And the chief don’t see nobody without an appointment unless he’s been sketched. It’s your choice, Mr. Higler.”

  “I’ve never been arrested,” Righty said.

  “All right, now we’re cooperating, you see,” the officer said.

  Righty was taken to a seat in a room where one person sat directly in front of him. Off to the side, mostly hidden by shadows, was another person. This person was a journalist, and for a fee, the officers let him sketch prisoners. He had showed up as soon as he got wind of the drug seizure and had been sketching anyone who was processed and suspected to be involved in drugs.

  The chief knew nothing of this, but the processing officers felt it wasn’t necessary to burden him with every last detail of the police department’s activities. And the journalist’s contributions, while small by the chief’s standards—at least, based upon what they had heard—meant a steak dinner per sketch for them, which was no measly amount.

  Righty felt somewhat relieved by the drastic change in the officers’ mood and tone after he had effortlessly withstood the uppercut, but nonetheless he burned with fury that he was being sketched and thus put into the police department’s records.

  “We’ll see what the chief says, but usually we don’t release first-time arrestees until we see an original birth certificate confirming their identity,” Mr. Uppercut said, with a glint of condescending amusement in his eyes.

  Righty was impressed by the swiftness of the sketch. A mere ten minutes later he was being led down the same dreary hallway Tats was led down before being deposited—unbeknownst to either of them—in the cell abutting that of his loyal criminal associate.

  As soon as the door was locked shut, Mr. Uppercut, whose real name was Officer Carl Maher, was practically sprinting down the hallway.

  Destination—Chief Lloyd Benson’s office.

  Chapter 12

  As Benjamin and Willis entered the police station, they were promptly noticed by the secretaries and officers of the station, who eyed them balefully, with a combination of jealousy, resentment, and distrust. They were outsiders, but could make things really uncomfortable if they wanted to. The chief’s mandated policy had been to treat them with counterfeit kindness while simultaneously undermining them at every turn through excuses, lies, and red herrings.

  With smug satisfaction, Willis leaned his crewcut head over the desk and eyeballed the same male officer who not too long ago had enjoyed belittling Righty. With his muscle-bound forearms serving as a perch for his contemptuously smiling face, he looked at the officer and said, “Hear you guys caught some big fish yesterday.” And then his eyeballs scanned him, looking for the truth in his face, since it would be unlikely to emanate from his tongue.

  A small, but unmistakable, gulp was all Willis needed.

  “Drugs are our specialty,” Willis reminded the officer, whose neck he could probably crush with his bare hands in seconds.

  “Now, you don’t want to have this place swarming with federal agents trying to find out why you’re hiding drug peddlers from the NDP, now do you?”

  The officer’s face turned red with anger and shame.

  “Show ‘em,” he barked to the female secretary, attempting to resurrect his manhood.

  “Now thatta boy,” Willis said, smiling, and the officer’s head nearly exploded, though he remained silent.

  As the plump female secretary led Benjamin and Willis down the hallway, she said, “We caught a big one yesterday, and some dumb fella come in here today trying to save him with money,” she said with a self-righteous indignation that suggested she had been left out of the loop when it came to bribery and corruption at Sivingdel City Jail.

  “Which one do you want to see first?” she asked nonchalantly.

  “Oh, I like fresh meat best,” he said, a gleam in his eye.

  The secretary looked as interested as a librarian near retirement directing yet another customer to a requested book.

  “What charges is the fresh meat being held here for?” Willis asked.

  “Well, he had a dagger and lots of cash and is friends with the fella next cell over,” she answered, stern-faced, and then inserted the key into Righty’s cell, turned it, and then walked a respectful distance away so that she could give them some privacy but also be ready to call for help if need be and to be ready to lock up once their conference was over.

  Chapter 13

  “Hi there, buddy,” Willis said to Righty, as he walked in, Benjamin right behind him.

  “Hey, get us some more light in here; it’s too dark!” he barked at the secretary.

  Indignantly submissive, she promptly grabbed a burning candle from the wall and brought it to the men.

  “Now, that’s better,” Willis said. “It’s hard for men to have a reasonable conversation when they can’t see each other, now isn’t it?” Willis inquired of Righty.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. The usual gleam that would have been in his eye was long gone. This had gone too poorly—far worse than he thought the worst-case scenario could be. He was sitting in his underwear in a dark cell at the mercy of the criminal justice system, his two million-falon bribe rudely stolen, and his beloved sword perhaps never to be seen again. In a word, he was broken.

  “Look, I want to help you, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Higler,” Righty replied, almost having said “Simmers,” but he had a shred of resistance left in him.

  “Higler,” Willis replied, trying out the sound of the name the way a man might try on a pair of shoes before buying them.

  “Sounds like a good name,” Willis said, his eyes devouring his quarry.

  “Just what exactly are you in here for?” Willis then asked. “That grumpy secretary didn’t want to tell me much.”

  “I haven’t been formally charged with anything.”

  “Now, don’t go getting cute, son,” Benjamin said. “If you wanna play lawyer, I’ll take you from here to federal prison in the capital on the count of one, two, three. Because I know what you’re in here for, and it happens to fall within my jurisdiction. Willis here just needs to know if you’ll tell him.”

  Willis shot a reproachful glance at Benjamin that looked rehearsed, but Righty was barely paying attention. “Benjamin is a bit rough around the edges, but he does have a point. I’m trying to do you a favor here. But you’ve got to shoot straight with me, tell me what you’re in here for, and never mind the lawyer games. I happen to hate lawyers and anything that reminds me of them.”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “Look, friend,” Willis said, his voice lowering. He then shot a glance over his shoulder outside, which Benjamin—who was closer to the door—seconded, the two of them looking like bank robbers checking to see if the coast was clear.

  “Look,” he said, his face now inches from Righty, in a whisper. “They said you had cash.”

  “Did,” Righty responded laconically.

  “Well . . . ,” Willis’s eyes danced around as if he was trying to say something with them that he dared not with his mouth.

  “Look, if you’re asking for cash, you’re late to the party,” Righty said irritated. “They already confiscated it.”

  “Well, supposing you could get it back, do you think we could then talk like reasonable men?”

  Righty surprised himself as he made his next step, reaching inside his underwear to reveal a small stash that had escaped the processing officer’s frisk. Though small in size, it was large in its currency unit. Righty handed the agent twenty individual thousand-falon bills.

  “It’s all I have,” Righty said.

  “That’s enough to talk, all right,” Willis said, pleased.

  “Now, I just have to cuff you so that I can get you out of here.”

  Righty stood and turned away from the men, hands behind his back.

 
“Now that’s nice and reasonable,” Willis said, snapping the cuffs on. “And now, in addition to being under arrest by the NDP for multiple violations of SISA and operating a criminal enterprise, you are under arrest for attempting to bribe a federal law enforcement agent,” Willis said, laughing, while Benjamin snickered behind him.

  Though Righty’s spirits dropped, they were already near bottom, thus preventing any dramatic sigh or other display of indignation. It was yet one more nail in the coffin. He almost felt a perverse sense of peace, as he realized there was probably nothing else that could happen that would ruin this day, or his life, any more than it already way.

  Righty marched in front of the smirking agents down the hallway, each of whom gripped his unresisting wrists firmly.