The Hidden Throne

by Charlie Cottrell

  “God, how cliché,” I said. Then I heard the loud click of a gun being cocked. I stopped and turned around slowly, my hands held above my head. Calthus had a gun, held in one shaky hand, pointed at me.

  “Really?” I said, sighing theatrically. “You are gonna get your hands dirty?”

  “You’re finished, Hazzard!” Calthus said, steadying the gun with his other hand. “I’ll kill you right now! No one will question it, self-defense, and I’ll erase the data from your computer so no one even knows about it.” There was a manic gleam in his eye.

  “Calthus, put down the gun before you hurt yourself,” I said evenly.

  “Throw your computer to me!” Calthus snapped, his left eye twitching.

  “Sure, sure,” I said soothingly, fishing out the small box of electronics from my pocket and tossing it onto the carpet between us. It stopped just short of Calthus’s feet, and he stared down at it with glee, then back to me. The gun rose, point straight at my chest.

  “And, now, Detective Hazzard,” he said, “it’s the end for you.”

  “Oh, look down again, you big idiot,” I said, jabbing at a button on the handle of my cane.

  The box at Calthus’s feet exploded in a brilliant flash of light and sound, blinding and deafening the mogul. He screamed, dropping the gun and clutching at his eyes. I hobbled over and slapped him across the face with the cane, catching him on the jaw and laying him out with a single blow. I winced, the hit straining my own stitches, and reached down gingerly for the gun he’d pointed at me.

  It didn’t look like any gun I’d ever seen. The barrel was bigger, more open, and the whole contraption felt lighter than any pistol ought to.

  “Is this…the rail gun?” I muttered to myself. I hefted it, popped the clip out of the handle, and saw that the bullets were unlike anything I’d ever encountered. Not even the popgun used such exotic ammunition as this piece.

  “So, a handheld mass accelerator,” I mused, sliding the clip back into place with a click and stuffing the gun in my coat pocket. I looked down at Calthus. “Now, how did I know you would lie about having that, you weasel?”

  XIV.

  The elevator opened out onto the lobby, and I stepped out into the waiting arms of the Arcadia Police Department.

  “Freeze!” shouted an officer. There were about a dozen of them, all with guns drawn and trained on me.

  “Guys, this is all a big misunderstanding. Lemme just reach into my pocket so I can show you some ID,” I said, my hands in the air.

  One officer ran up and relieved me of my cane while another patted me down, taking the popgun and rail gun from me and pulling my wallet out of the breast pocket of my coat. He flipped the wallet open, looked at my private detective license, and shouted back to the line of cops on the other side of the lobby, “It’s Hazzard!”

  “Stand down!” an authoritative voice rang out across the marble and glass, and the cops—some of them rather too reluctantly, to my mind—holstered their weapons. Captain O’Mally walked up to me, holstering his own gun. “Hazzard, you idiot!” he said as he approached. “What the hell were you thinking, making a bomb threat?”

  “I was thinking that doing things nicely and politely, asking for their assistance in my inquiries, had gotten me exactly nowhere,” I replied, dropping my hands and snatching my possessions back from the two cops, “so I figured maybe a little threatened violence might do the trick.”

  O’Mally sighed, a rather dramatic act when you’ve got walrus jowls. Those things quiver like nobody’s business. “Hazzard, you’re making my job twice as difficult here. I can’t sanction an action like this, I can’t let it slide. The news sites would eat me alive.”

  “I think there are bigger things at stake here, O’Mally,” I said, pulling out a cigarette. I handed him the rail gun.

  “What am I looking at, here?” O’Mally asked in hushed tones.

  “The next big thing in violence,” I replied, lighting up the cigarette. “It’s a handheld mass accelerator, or so I’m told. Thing can launch a piece of ammunition at almost the speed of light, punch a hole in something several miles away, and generally do really nasty things to a human body. I’m pretty certain finding out about this is what got Terry Wallace murdered. Hell, this thing is probably the murder weapon.”

  “Any evidence linking Calthus to it?” O’Mally asked, bristling.

  “Sure, plenty,” I said, taking the gun back, which O’Mally really wasn’t happy about, “but nothing that would stick in a court of law. The files may be on his computer terminal upstairs, but given the fact that it was broken into and hacked just a few nights ago, he can make that problem disappear pretty easily.”

  “So you’ve got nothing to really go on,” O’Mally concluded.

  “On the contrary,” I replied, dropping my cigarette to the floor and taking pleasure in grinding it out on the polished marble, “we have plenty of information. I know that Roger Kirkpatrick is behind the theft of the files. I know that one John Bodewell, registered private detective here in the city, is working for Kirkpatrick, and I know they have a hostage in the form of a computer systems expert who they’re trying to force to crack the encryption on the files detailing the rail gun’s design, but she’s refusing. I also know I’ve got very little time to track them down and make them pay.”

  “Eddie, this is still a police matter. You can’t go all vigilante, and you can’t take that gun. It’s evidence in a murder investigation,” O’Mally said firmly.

  “No intention of going off the reservation, sir,” I lied, “but they made it pretty clear they want it to be me who gives them the decryption key. I’ve got until the day after tomorrow to deliver, or they’ll kill the girl and just come over here and take what they want anyway. And I need to keep the gun because I don’t know where Kirkpatrick has spies, so it’s safest with me, not in Arcadia PD’s evidence locker.” And Bodewell’s made this personal, I added silently.

  “Eddie, at least give me an address. I know you’ve got an address for these guys. Let me send in SWAT, we’ll take them out before they know what him ‘em.” O’Mally was desperate not to let me get wrapped up in more carnage. Or maybe he just didn’t want the rail gun getting into the absolute wrong hands.

  It didn’t matter. Either way, O’Mally was going to be disappointed.

  “Sorry, don’t have any such thing. They haven’t contacted me yet with a drop point,” I lied. “I doubt they’d let me into their base anyway, and I don’t want your SWAT guys charging around and endangering the girl’s life.”

  O’Mally sighed once more, sending his jowls a-quiver all over again. “Eddie, I can make you cooperate if I have to, but I’d really rather not.”

  I chuckled a bit. “No, O’Mally,” I said, twirling the cane and heading for the door, “in this case, I don’t think you could.”

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  I went to the Sleep Inn over on 28th and Dippel Avenue. It was, by general consensus, a safe place, hallowed ground amongst criminals and cops in the city. No one did anything there except sleep, or possibly tremendously naughty things with girls who had names like Candi and Sindi. It was agreed that even cops and robbers needed a place where they could relax and let their guard down from time to time.

  Percy Chancel, the man I’d met in Raymond Calthus’s office several days earlier, was currently residing at the Sleep Inn. He was not its usual sort of clientele, which had me thinking he was in something deeper than it seemed. I sat at the coffee shop across the street from the hotel for a couple of hours before he finally emerged, eyes darting back and forth as he crossed the road to a taxi stand, punched a button on the board, and waited for a cab to arrive. I got up from my booth, tossed a handful of change and bills on the table for my coffee, and exited the coffee shop, heading for my car half a block up. By the time I reached my car, Chancel was in the taxi and it was pulling away from the curb. I put my car into gear and pulled out into traffic a few cars behind him, hoping he’d lead m
e somewhere interesting.

  Chancel turned out to be the most boring individual in the world to follow. He went to a dry cleaner’s, a bank, and a diner on 18th Street. I waited outside at the dry cleaner’s and the bank, but followed him into the diner to see what I could find out. He took a seat at the counter and ordered something bland and unappetizing. I took a booth in the corner of the place that gave me line of sight on Chancel and the front door. He sat there and ate his food slowly, fastidiously; I got the feeling this wasn’t the sort of restaurant he usually frequented. When he finished, he paid his bill, left a meager tip, and headed for the door. I walked out right behind him, my cane tapping the ground gently as I walked. He was heading for a taxi stand again, probably to go back to his bolthole. God only knows what he thought he was accomplishing: the whole point of a bolthole was to disappear, to go somewhere unexpected, and to not come back out until everything had blown over. Given his still-furtive movements, I figured he still thought he was in danger, but didn’t have enough sense to stay put.

  I decided I’d had enough of playing follow the leader for one day. As he stood at the taxi stand, I walked by, hooking his foot with the cane and tugging. He wasn’t expecting it, so he went down easy. I pretended to have accidentally been the clumsiest mug on the planet.

  “Oh, dear me, I am so sorry!” I effused, kneeling down next to him as he yelped about suing. He finally saw my face, and the gears of memory turned to a scene that I could almost watch replay itself on the back of his eyes. “That’s right, it’s me again,” I said, keeping a fake smile plastered across my face. “You’re going to stand up and join me in that alley over there—” I gestured to an alley between two buildings about ten feet away “—and we’re going to have a little chat about what you know.” He nodded, so I let him up. He nervously walked over to the alley with me just a few steps behind him. Once out of sight of the main thoroughfare, I pinned him against the wall with the cane to his neck.

  “Talk,” I said, all traces of friendliness gone. “Tell me something interesting that I don’t already know, or get ready to suffer.”

  “I-I don’t know anything!” he squeaked. I applied more pressure with the cane, and he gagged a bit.

  “Tell me about your predecessor, Mr. Chancel,” I said, “and please do be quick about it.”

  “W-what do you want to know?” he asked, terrified. His eyes and nose were both starting to leak.

  “Why was he killed? Did Calthus have something to do with it?”

  “I-I think it had something to do w-with P-project Sabre!” he stammered, sweat and tears mingling on his face with the snot dripping from his nose.

  “Why would Calthus kill him over that?” I asked.

  “H-he was th-threatening to go to public with what he knew!” Chancel was in bad shape now. I started to note a hint of ammonia in the air.

  “Public with what? That the military was developing a new weapon? That seems kinda obvious to most folks, I’d imagine.”

  “Y-yeah, but that they were going to test it on the civilian population here in the city?” Chancel said, trying to breathe. I relaxed a bit of the pressure on his neck, and he sucked in grateful lungfuls of air.

  “Tests on civilian populations?” I said, frowning deeply. “That’s pretty messed up.”

  “I know,” Chancel said, “but they were going to use criminals and nobodies for it. No one would’ve ever known.”

  “Except Wallace figured it out,” I said, “and grew a sudden conscience.”

  “Y-yeah,” Chancel said.

  “So, who did the deed?” I asked, reapplying pressure.

  “I d-don’t know! Some guy from outside the business!” Chancel squirmed and shook, wanting desperately to escape. I wasn’t about to let him.

  “I need a name,” I growled.

  “B’d’w’ll,” He gasped. I relented a bit.

  “Say that again?”

  “Bodewell!” Chancel croaked, pushing at the cane and finally getting free. I stood there in shocked anger as Chancel slipped out of the alley and ran, terrified, down the street.

  Bodewell.

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  I stepped out of the cab at 23rd and Lexington, two blocks from Bodewell’s old dead drop. He was a creature of habit, and when the habits are as old as his were, he wouldn’t be giving them up anytime soon. I knew he’d check this drop today, it was just a question of whether or not I’d see him when it happened.

  The video footage from the Little Blind Girl made perfect sense, now. I’d seen Bodewell exiting the alley, and the bundle he was carrying must have been the mass accelerator. I didn’t know why Bodewell had been the trigger man, but it made one thing very clear: my old mentor had gone completely over to the bad, and redemption probably wasn’t in the cards.

  I meandered slowly down the sidewalk, the crowds of faster pedestrians breaking around me like waves on a rock, splitting to the left and the right to avoid coming into contact with me lest my slowness was some sort of communicable disease. I walked past the dead drop twice, neither time actually looking at the gap between two buildings where one could easily insert a thick envelope if they wanted to.

  The buildings on Lexington Avenue were old. They’d been spread pretty far apart when they were first building in the area; land had been plentiful and there was room to spread out. But as Old Town grew and the rest of the city rose up around it, buildings started inching toward one another. Sometimes it was the addition of new facades, sometimes new businesses built in between existing buildings, and sometimes old buildings simply leaned into one another like drunks walking home after last call. This particular gap existed because someone had built a poorly-planned extension on to building 438, but didn’t quite know how to match it up evenly with building 436.

  On the third pass, I moved closer to the wall, slipping a small envelope of my own into the gap without breaking my stride. I figured Bodewell was watching; how could he not be? I continued on, rounding the corner and then stopping, turning back to keep an eye on the drop.

  I reasoned that Bodewell would know I was watching the drop. I also figured he would think I wouldn’t be so dumb as to watch from the place where I’d last been seen. But he’d probably think I’d think that, so…

  That line of thinking will just give you a headache. Rule #47 of being a Hard-Boiled Detective is to be decisive. It doesn’t matter what your plan is, so long as you make one and stick to it. Even if it’s terrible. Even if it gets you shot at by thugs with automatic weapons, which was a frequent concern for people in the detective field. But abandoning a plan just because it’s stupid and likely to get you killed is just as bad as having no plan, really. Worse, possibly, because now you either have to improvise or have a back-up plan, and the one thing I’ve learned in all my years of making bad plans is that, as terrible as Plan A can be, Plan B is usually ten times worse.

  Don’t even ask about Plan C.

  So, I stood at that corner, peeking around to keep an eye out for anyone approaching the small gap in the wall between the two buildings. I stood there for five minutes, but no one came anywhere near the gap.

  After fifteen minutes, I was ready to give up. That’s when someone walked right up behind me, gripped my arm, and whispered in my ear, “Just sit still, Eddie.” I recognized Bodewell’s voice. My whole body tensed, but I didn’t move a muscle. “Good, good,” he said, stepping back and releasing his grip on me. “You can turn around, Eddie, but know that I’ve got a gun aimed at you and I will not hesitate to pull the trigger if you do anything stupid.” I turned around slowly and faced my former mentor.

  “I don’t have the mass accelerator with me, John. I’m not an idiot,” I said.

  “I know you’re not. I’m just here to take care of a few loose ends.”

  “Oh, has stabbing me lost its allure, so now you’re gonna shoot me, John?” I asked, fishing my cigarettes out of my pocket and lighting one. “Tell me they’re at least paying you a hell of a lot
of money for this.”

  John nodded. “Of course they are, but I’d probably still do this for free, Eddie,” he replied.

  “Okay, that’s gonna take some explaining, old man,” I said. “I know we’re not on the best of terms, but surely you don’t hate me that much.”

  “This isn’t just about me and you, Eddie. It’s about making a new Arcadia, and Kirkpatrick is the guy to do it. You only know him as a criminal, but he’s a lot more than that.”

  “Oh, he’s a hoodlum and a mass-murderer as well?” I asked, flicking ash from the tip of my cigarette.

  “More a revolutionary,” Bodewell replied. “You can’t see it, ‘cause you’re stuck in an old way of thinking about law and order, but imagine Arcadia free of crime and violence. Imagine the city in the hands of someone who could really guide it into a Golden Age.”

  “Have you been drinking someone’s Kool-Aid, Bodewell?” I asked, amazed. “You sound like a sap! Kirkpatrick is a thug, a man who’d watch the world burn just because he thought it looked pretty! Hell, he was willing to kill hundreds of innocents just to get a chance to take control of a part of the city. You can’t honestly believe he’s got some ‘better world’ in mind for this place. He’s no revolutionary, he’s a social cancer! And Calthus is just as bad. You’re playing a really stupid game with some big boys here, John.”

  Bodewell shook his head. “You’re wrong, Eddie. Once we’ve got the mass accelerator and control of the city, you’ll see.” He turned around and started off up the street, then stopped.

  “A word of advice, Eddie,” he called back over his shoulder, “don’t get too involved in this whole thing. Just bring the file to the drop point. I know what I’m about, but this is too big for you.” He walked off while I stared after him until long after he was out of my sight.

  XV.

  “This is too big for you.”

  Bodewell’s last words to me on the street reverberated in my head, my skull an echo chamber for self-doubt and fear as I sat behind my desk, an empty bottle of whiskey clasped in my hand.