Roland was awake when Walter got to his apartment, which was unsurprising when he thought about it. Sometimes the ageing detective forgot that many people were all too happy to wake up before ten o’clock. Sober people could be self-righteous like that.
The big man let Walter in with a courteous wave and Walter found that Roland had acquired some furniture in the preceding week.
“Getting settled in, I see,” Walter opened as he sat himself down in a chair obviously sized for the resident and not his guests. He looked like a child in the enormous thing.
“Starting to, yeah,” Roland replied, “Wanna beer?”
“It’s ten o’clock in the morning, son,” Walter admonished.
“Whiskey, then?”
“Don’t tempt me, Corporal. It’s been a hell of a week.”
Roland tossed him a can of apple juice, “And that’s probably my fault, huh?”
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but yeah. Kind of. Did you not understand what I meant when I asked you to stay away from The Dwarf?”
Roland shrugged, “I haven’t seen a dwarf since I got here, Detective.”
“Well you’ve been kicking the shit out of his boys all week.”
The cyborg scowled, “That doesn’t make sense. Why does he keep sending unarmed and lightly-armed punks to scrap with me? At this point even this Dwarf guy must realize it will take more than a few tweaked-out enforcers to bother me.”
“He’s testing you, junior. He wants to see what kind of guy you are. Can you be bought? You got morals? That sort of thing. I told him to give you a wide berth, but apparently that just made him curious.” Bixby sighed, “There is some serious shit coming down, Roland. There is going to be a big-time gangland dust-up in Dockside and everybody with one fucking ear to the ground knows it. Rodney wants you on his team because he knows you are a big-league hitter. He’s looking for an angle.”
A look crossed the wide, pug-nosed face of the big man. It was a serious, dangerous look. It surprised the detective to see it. It spoke to a deep-seated rage that his words had poked.
Tread carefully, detective. Bixby thought to himself, palms sweating. When Roland spoke, it made the pit of Walter’s stomach lurch.
“There are no angles, Detective,” then his face relaxed a little, “The landlord here has hired me to be the neighborhood fixer. That’s all. I’m not fighting in any gang war, but I will keep this street clean.”
Walter’s eyebrows lifted an inch, “A fixer now? You are settling right in, aren’t you?” He chuckled, relaxing a little, “Well, ‘fixer,’ if you’ll take a little advice form an old cop?”
“Absolutely.”
“Rodney and the other gangs are going to step it up. Normally, you’d call for a sit-down and hash it all out, but you don’t have the rep for that yet.”
“I will.”
“I’m sure. But maybe the new fixer can help me out, too. Rodney is well-respected, and the current front runner for winning the whole ball of wax here in Dockside unless the Uptown boys take over first. Make an example out of him, and the others will fall into place. Get me?”
“You want me to forget what you said before and go after this guy now?”
Bixby shrugged and sipped his juice, “He’s coming after you anyway. Might as well, uh, ‘pre-empt that maneuver,’ as you like to put it.”
“Me against a whole gang, huh? You either want me to get killed or you really like my chances.” Roland had a knowing smirk on his face, and Walter gulped.
Shit. He knows!
Roland chuckled, “That sleight-of-hand shit probably fools the mugs out here a lot, but I’m always watching a guy’s hands when he’s armed. Your shit scanner didn’t tell you anything too interesting anyway.”
“I smashed it and burned the DataPad with the file,” Walter said quickly, with an audible splash of panic in his voice. He hoped he did not have to follow that with “please don’t kill me.”
Roland winked, enjoying the man’s discomfort, “I figured. If you hadn’t I’d have heard about a squad of Council Bagmen dragging half your department away by now. But I had you pegged for a prudent guy so I didn’t sweat it.” Roland had, in fact, ‘sweat it.’ But the cop didn’t need that information.
“So what do you get out of it if I go see this Dwarf guy?”
“Room to breathe. I gotta get ahead of this gang war and try to turn it before the people here start getting hurt.” Bixby shook his head, “People are gonna die because everybody is too busy trying to steal the crumbs from the docks to look up and see the fucking elephant in the room.”
“You understand there’s a real chance I’m going to have to kill a lot of people to make my point to The Dwarf, right? What happens then?” Roland was more curious than anything else. Bixby was walking a serious ethical tightrope here.
The cop shrugged a big defeated shrug, “Try to make sure it’s always self-defense? I’m a good cop and I’m not giving you carte blanche to go marauding through my city. But I am trusting you to be as judicious and discreet as all the war holos tell me you spec-ops spooks are supposed to be.”
He paused, and Roland saw fear and self-loathing in the old cop’s face, “I’m all alone out here, Corporal. Nobody gives a shit about these people except me, and now maybe you. I’m a shitty husband and a shitty cop and I probably deserve to rot in this hellhole, but there are a lot of good people on this street that don’t. If I can’t help them, I might as well not be alive.”
Bixby could not understand exactly how close those words struck to the heart of Roland’s own fears, and Roland was not going to tell him. But the young soldier decided that he would help any way he could, “I know that feeling, detective. You find out who’s pushing from the outside, and I’ll handle Rodney.”
“Be careful, soldier. He’s got a lot of guns.”
Roland actually laughed out loud, “Yeah. That’s not really going to be a problem.”
8
Roland did not have a plan for getting invited to see The Dwarf. Nor was he especially good at reconnaissance or infiltration. His code name had been ‘Breach’ and that was not an ironic moniker. He decided to stick to what he was good at and just walked over to the nightclub that Walter had told him Rodney owned.
It was a nine block walk from his apartment to the Hideaway, and Roland had purchased a big wool coat and and a flat black cap to hide his bulk and mask his bizarre proportions. If he hunched over and stooped his shoulders, he managed to look somewhat less enormous. The generally poor lighting on the streets deepened the illusion and most people simply ignored him to deal with their own problems.
His plan, if it could be called such, was not complex. Roland hated complex plans, because combat operations rarely cared about your meticulous calculations, anyway. He liked plans painted out in broad strokes that had a lot of flexibility built into them. Or at least that’s what he told himself was the reason why he had very little plan at all.
The neighborhood became far less residential and far more entertainment-focused as he walked. The squat gray tenement houses began to thin out and restaurants, bars, and massage parlors started to crop up. Ambiguously themed vapor houses spewed noxious effluvia from vented exhausts and garish multi-color signage began to dominate the alleys and streets as they converged and widened into a vast thoroughfare that split Dockside form north to south. Colloquially called “The Drag,” this main street carved through the commercial and shipping districts like a pink and orange river of flashing lights and milling townsfolk as they thronged up and down plying their wares and partaking of the infinite delights available in this lawless section of the New Boston Megalopolis.
Something about it thrilled Roland. There were so many people. There were happy people out partying with their friends, voices tinkling with laughter and mirth. There were angry people arguing over the price of something or other, growling and barking like sled dogs as each tried to get one over on the other. Rich people shot hard liquor alongside poor peopl
e in open-air bars as if the vast gulf of economic inequality was meaningless in the face of cheap booze and easy company. Every one these scrabbling, scrambling folk seemed like a single cell in some vast beautiful organism. Every one of them was alive, and every one was human.
Roland didn’t know what he was anymore, and he felt crudely disconnected from the greater body of humankind. He envied the people here that never questioned what it was to be truly alive or to be truly human. It was enough for them to work a hard day and make an honest Cred (or even a dishonest one). They had no difficult questions for their gods or masters, no deep confusion over the nature of their own existence. They ate when they were hungry, they drank when they were thirsty. They fought when they were angry and they cried when they were sad. Roland could do all of these things too, but he still felt different. Even his needs seemed artificial, constructed.
Not real.
He watched as he walked. Deeper and deeper into the heart of the entertainment district he walked. The crowds thickened and the lights grew brighter. Voices got louder and the street seemed to thrum and bounce with some unheard yet agreed-upon rhythm. But Roland couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t feel that heartbeat or experience the communal drumbeat that connected all these people. At least he could perceive it through them, though. He could see it in the activity, hear it in the noise, and smell it in the air. These people were alive and even if he couldn’t be, it was enough to know that they were. They were human when he could not be, and that could be enough if that was all he had. They were human when he could not be.
Even better, he could be near them and around them and pretend. It almost felt right. The faded whisper of a memory told him that he was once this thing. He had been the dashing young man in uniform sweet-talking pretty girls in a bar. He had been the tough-talking bravo flashing dangerous looks at the other men, spoiling for a fight. He had been the sad drunk, sobbing into his beer when his father passed. He had sang, he had danced, he had lived.
He had been all of these people once, and they had been him. For the first time in three years, Roland Tankowicz felt something that was neither anger nor depression nor fear. He could not tell if it was happiness, but it felt like... contentment?
It was purpose, he realized. He would protect these people. He would preserve his neighborhood and his city. He would complete his mission. He would fix this.
He found the nightclub on a dusty side street off The Drag. Located a few steps below street-level. “Hideaway” was easy to miss if you were not read in on what to look for. Whereas the other businesses seemed to be competing for eye-space with bright animated signs and loud squawking music, this bar had only a brown featureless door and a square painted sign.
That’s truth in advertising, Roland thought, this place really doesn’t want to be found.
He stepped down to look at the door. It was brown and boring, and loud music from inside vibrated the old thing with tuneless rhythm. He tried the handle and found it locked, which made very little sense.
What kind of nightclub had no signs, no lights, and a locked door at 2130 on a Friday night? Roland could be a little slow on certain things, but he usually worked them out, eventually.
The kind that only lets certain kinds of people in, the big man acknowledged.
Annoyed, he rapped on it three times, just hard enough to rattle it without sounding like he was kicking it in. Within a few seconds, a peephole opened at eye level and someone inside got a good look at Roland’s pectorals.
“Private party tonight. Piss off!” It was a gruff and unfriendly greeting delivered rudely through the hole. Roland’s face split into a toothy grin.
This is going to be a lot of fun.
He stooped so he could look through the peephole. He saw beady black eyes flashing with multi-hued light as the party inside thumped loudly behind the doorman. It was a raucous, screaming affair that night, and even the minuscule aperture of the viewing panel let out enough noise and fury to tell Roland that a serious bacchanal was going on inside.
“I’m here to see The Dwarf. He’ll want to talk to me. Tell him it’s Roland Tankowicz.”
“I ain’t tellin’ the boss shit, pal. Now get the fuck offa’ my stoop before I come out there and somethin’ real bad happens to ya.”
Roland was a mere twenty-seven years old. The horrors of his term with the Army and all the terrible things that he had done and had done to him all conspired to age him greatly. The tragedy of his life had made him jaded and wise beyond his years, but that was not quite the same thing as ‘mature.’
“I can smell your breath, asshole. I’d say something bad has already happened to me. Don’t make it worse by trying me on. Now go tell your boss I’m here before I do something you’ll regret.”
The panel closed with a slam and Roland chuckled while he heard the door locks being manipulated. He stepped back and waited patiently for the night’s first contender to take his shot. He’d be the first of many, Roland was certain.
The man who came through the door was unfeasibly large. Roland was seven-and-a-half feet tall and the doorman made it past his chin, making him a giant among men. The doorman shared Roland’s freakish width and musculature, and Roland suspected that some pharmaceutical enhancement had been employed to get him there. The man’s face was a mass of scars with a near-lipless slit of a mouth and a mangled nose that had been broken far too many times. He wore an ill-fitting suit, cheaply made and shabby. Like Roland the man was bald, but a stubborn brown stubble ringed his head in patchy defiance of nature. All in all, he was a terrifying example of high-end Dockside street muscle. There was a time when Roland would have been taken aback by such an opponent, but that time had long since past. Roland had seen things that beggared the sight of one scrappy hood.
The goon stalked to Roland without a word and grabbed him roughly by the lapels of his wool coat. Roland figured the guy was going to try to lift him by those lapels, the better to hurl him into the street. Roland just smiled and waited.
If Roland was a regular man, he’d weigh about four-hundred pounds at his height and build. The doorman, with his own oversized muscles, probably figured he could hoist a four-hundred-pound man with a decent effort. But Roland weighed nine-hundred-and-forty pounds, and the doorman was taken somewhat by surprise when instead of being lifted from the ground, or at least off-balanced, his opponent simply smiled and refused to budge.
The doorman redoubled his efforts. He sat his hips down and gathered more of the coat in his fists. His knees flexed and he heaved with superhuman might against the weight of the grinning giant. The doorman was probably strong enough to lift Roland with his best effort, but the coat was simply not up to the task. With a loud rip, the lapels tore free and the grizzled goon found himself holding two fistfuls of knotted black wool.
“You’re a bright one, aren’t you?” Roland mocked him.
That really seemed to bother the doorman. He snarled and threw the pieces of coat down and charged, which was a spectacularly stupid stratagem. Roland stepped lightly to the side and helped the massive man on his way with a swat to the back. The doorman careened into the far wall of the alley headfirst where his skull actually crushed one of the masonry blocks. To Roland’s surprise, the doorman lurched upright and turned back to the fight. His forehead was bleeding, and bits of gray concrete were stuck to it. He stared glassy-eyes but defiant at his tormentor, then gamely raised his hands in a vaguely combative posture and advanced.
“Somebody’s been to the body shop, I see,” Roland remarked casually, “Good for you.”
The man looped a lazy overhand right at Roland, who slipped it easily. “Won’t help,” Roland continued casually and shrugged out of the remains of his coat. The doorman got his first good look at the massive arms and boulder-sized shoulders of his opponent and snarled wordless frustration at the deception. But this was no low-rent hood. This was a game brawler, and Roland admitted begrudging respect as the doomed man launched a combination of punches
with murderous intent. The blows were slow, but heavy. They clearly indicated this was a man who relied on his physical advantages to win a fight and not skill. Roland took deep personal and professional pride in his prowess, and he blocked and parried each strike with his left hand and elbow, just to show the guy he was outclassed.
“Ready?” Roland asked after the big goon finished his flailing.
“What?” was the intelligent reply from the doorman.
Roland fired a left jab so fast the air snapped like cracking a bullwhip. His gloved fist flattened the doorman’s nose and fractured his orbital with a crunch. It would have crippled anyone else, but the determined thug refused to go down.
“Ready?” Roland asked again, and the doorman didn’t answer but covered his head with both forearms as fast as he could.
Roland drove his left fist into the man’s flank right where the liver would be. The arms dropped and the doorman looked at him in surprise for an instant before his whole face twisted in agony and his beady eyes rolled back in his head. Roland stepped out of the way to let the big goon crash to the pavement in a moaning, gasping heap.
Roland shook his head sadly, “Oh man. Rodney is going to have to do a lot better than this if he wants to run me out of town. Get up, dumbass.”
Roland reached down and grabbed the retching doorman by the back of the neck and hoisted him up like he weighed nothing at all.
“Let’s go see the boss, shall we?”
Roland’s boot sent the door to Hideaway exploding inward in a shower of shrapnel.
9
Rodney McDowell hated being called The Dwarf. It seemed derogatory. The fact that he more or less exactly resembled an extra from a Tolkien holo was not a coincidence though. Rodney knew the power of an image, and the necessity of a brand that was recognizable and memorable. The little man had been born on a colony that existed at almost 1.5G and could not afford the gravitics to offset it, so those of his family that had not died from heart issues never grew to great heights as a result. Since he needed lifts in his shoes to stand at five feet tall, and criminals tended to be childish and unimaginative, ‘The Dwarf’ was what he was working with. But at least his time at high-G meant that he had the bone density of his namesake, and he grew the beard to match. For effect, he talked in his great-grandmother’s accent just to hammer the whole thing home. Just like that, a character was born.
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