The Hidden Throne (Hazzard Pay Book 2)

by Charlie Cottrell

  “Where to?” the driver asked when Clarence had finally made it in.

  “Eakin Plaza,” Clarence said.

  “Downtown?” I mused, stumped. “Why are we going Downtown?”

  “You’re to be made an example of,” Clarence replied. Though it caused him tremendous pain, he managed to flash a smirk in my general direction. “Kirkpatrick wants everyone to know what happens when you cross him.”

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  The cab pulled up to a curb in Eakin Plaza, the nicest part of the nicest part of town. Eakin Plaza was the financial heart of the city, and one of the few places where there was some grass. A rather ostentatious fountain in the middle of the square dominated the scene, and shiny buildings of chrome and marble and glass surrounded it on all sides. Clarence gestured for me to get out first, but not before he made me pay the cab driver.

  “It’s not enough you’re going to publicly execute me,” I grumbled, “I gotta pay the fare before I go, too?”

  “Shut up,” Clarence growled, jabbing me with the barrel of his gun again. We climbed out of the cab, and Clarence gestured for me to enter an office building a few hundred yards down from where we were standing.

  As we walked—or I shuffled and he hobbled—I tried to wrap my head around what was happening. “So, what’s going on here, Clarence?” I asked.

  “We’re dealing with you,” he bit out, his scales shading back toward red, again. “You’ve been a nuisance, but Kirkpatrick’s gonna take care of you this time.”

  “Well, if it’s anything like last time, it’ll be something worth seeing,” I said, a defiant smirk on my face. Hey, I may not be walking out of this situation, but I wasn’t going to go down without at least making a few snide remarks. We entered the office building, one of probably a dozen identical structures scattered around the plaza. “What’s so special about this place?” I asked.

  “Don’t you worry about it,” Clarence said, jabbing at me with the gun and pushing me deeper into the office building.

  We entered an office toward the back of the building. Inside, Florence Michaelson and Roger Kirkpatrick were sitting at a small table, a bomb between them. Florence was fiddling with the explosive, which was a tangle of wires, small vials of sinister-looking liquid, and delicate electronics to sequence and time everything.

  “Ah, detective,” Kirkpatrick said, not standing. Clarence gave me a shove into a third chair between Florence and Kirkpatrick. “Your little stunt in the warehouse left me feeling more than a little peeved,” the gangster said. He’d exchanged his pinstripe suit for one of dark gray, a crimson pocket square in his breast pocket and a matching tie around his neck. His hair was just as lank and greasy as before. “And the whole business at City Hall,” he continued. “You messed up a good opportunity for me. If that bomb had gone off, I’d’ve knocked out city government and had the chance to run the whole town. But now…” He gestured to the bomb on the table. “Now, we’ve had to put together a new device, pick a new target…the whole thing has been a tremendous hassle. But,” he suddenly seemed to brighten, “I think this will actually work better. Do you know where you are, exactly?”

  “Looks like an accountancy firm,” I said, guessing.

  “Looks are deceiving, Detective Hazzard,” Kirkpatrick said, wagging a finger at me. “This is, in fact, a money laundering operation for the Organization. Your friend, the Boss, funnels every cent his boys bring in through this place. I’ll take out everyone on staff with Compound 16 and pin the whole thing on you.”

  I frowned. “Well, damn it, Kirkpatrick, you are just completely off my Christmas card list now,” I said. “Tell you what, let’s not do any of that. Why don’t you go ahead and just go to hell, take your little bomb and your goons with you, and I’ll go crawl into a bottle of whiskey.”

  Kirkpatrick laughed in a tremendously unpleasant way. “You don’t get it, Hazzard. It’s already all set up. In ten minutes, this bomb will explode, killing everyone in this building, including you. And just in case it doesn’t, I’ve got a failsafe.” Michaelson produced a small capsule about the size of a grain of rice. “It doesn’t take much Compound 16 to kill a person, Hazzard,” Kirkpatrick went on. “Something like two parts per million in the air should do the job, in fact. A dose this size,” and here he flourished the miniature capsule Michaelson had handed him, “will most likely not just kill you, it’ll melt you from the inside out. We’re going to insert it under your skin. There’s a remote trigger, so even if you get away, you’ll still die.” He leaned in close, nose to nose with me. “I. Win.” Kirkpatrick stood up, smoothing out his oversized suit and walking toward the door. “Clarence, Florence, take care of things here, then meet me back at headquarters. Be quick about it.” With that, he was gone.

  Clarence turned to me, that pained smirk on his face again. “Hold still,” he said, grabbing my arm and shoving my sleeve up to expose my forearm. “This will probably hurt like hell.” Florence approached me, the capsule in a small medical implement designed for inserting probes and various things sub-dermally. I struggled against Clarence’s grip, but the thin man was surprisingly strong. Florence raised the inserter, a maniacal gleam in her eye.

  I stomped down on Clarence’s foot as hard as I could, causing him to scream in pain. Stim-mesh is a miraculous, wonderful medical innovation, able to cope with the usual throbbing, constant low-level pain associated with an injury, but it can’t deal with such a sudden, overwhelming stab of pain. His grip relaxed for the briefest of seconds as he yelped in agony, giving me the time to wrench my forearm free. I backed away from Florence, grabbed a chair, and swung it at her head. She ducked back, but Clarence wasn’t so lucky. The chair caught him full in the face, slamming solidly into his fractured jaw. He gave a wordless cry as he hit the floor. Michaelson dropped her inserter and leapt for the big bomb. I was slightly faster, swatting the bomb away from her reach and dangerously close to the edge of the table. Michaelson gasped, but I lashed out with an open hand and caught her across the face, knocking her to the ground. I grabbed the bomb and the small inserter, stuffing the latter into my pocket, and kicked my good buddy Clarence again just to add injury to injury. His gun was lying on the floor next to his hand, so I went ahead and relieved him of that, too. Michaelson was scrambling back to her feet, but I brandished Clarence’s gun at her. She froze, hands held above her head in surrender. The whole incident had taken all of ten seconds.

  “Alright, here’s what’s going to happen,” I said as Clarence groaned on the floor. I put the boot in once more, just for old time’s sake. He slumped to the floor, curled up in pain. “I’m going to call the police. They’re going to arrest the two of you. I’m going to give them this bomb. But first,” I cocked the gun to punctuate my point, “you’re going to call Kirkpatrick and arrange for him to meet me somewhere, but you’re not going to tell him it’s me.” I glanced down at the bomb under my arm. “Also, turn this thing off.”

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  O’Mally arrived with a half-dozen uniformed officers, kicking in doors and waving automatic assault rifles around at accountants in Oxford shirts, and generally doing their damnedest to act like they were in an action movie. I handed over Michaelson, Clarence, the Compound 16 bomb, and Clarence’s gun to O’Mally, explaining what had happened and letting him know I had one more stop to make before I could put this case to bed. O’Mally nodded, warning me to be careful and watch myself. I didn’t tell him I still had the inserter in my coat pocket. I had plans for it.

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  Michaelson had set up the meeting for me, and Kirkpatrick was waiting at the corner of Matthews and 23rd, the site of the first explosion, nearly two months earlier. He stood there, apparently alone, hands in the pockets of his overcoat and with a shifty look about him. He didn’t know it was me coming, didn’t know I’d survived or that all of his plans had failed.

  I slipped silently through the shadows of the gathering night, keeping
out of his line of sight until I was right behind him.

  “Kirkpatrick,” I whispered, right in his ear, causing the short man to jump several feet in the air and let out a small yip. He whirled around, his eyebrows knitting together in fury.

  “Hazzard!” he hissed, then suddenly realized what my arrival meant. “No, no,” he stammered, backing away from me and raising his hands in defense. “You stay away.”

  “Tell you what, Kirkpatrick,” I said, advancing on him. “It’s been a rough week or two for me. That’s due in no small part to you and your gang of thugs and idiots.” I drew the inserter out of my pocket, letting Kirkpatrick see it clearly. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to install this little poison pill under your skin. If I’m lucky, it’ll hurt. If I’m really lucky, it’ll get infected later, and you’ll suffer for weeks. Regardless, you’re going to be booby-trapped.

  “Next, you’re going to leave town. Immediately. You’re going to cease all criminal activities in the city, cancel all of your plans for taking over the Organization with your little confederation or whatever the hell you want to call it, and just leave us the hell alone. Because if you don’t…” I pulled my computer out of my pocket with my other hand. “I’ve already got the detonator linked to my personal machine. It takes the press of a single button to release enough Compound 16 to—how’d you put it?—melt you from the inside out.”

  “You’re a bastard, Hazzard,” Kirkpatrick snarled through gritted teeth.

  “That’s what they tell me,” I replied. I returned my computer to my pocket and snatched at Kirkpatrick’s arm. The diminutive gangster wasn’t fast enough to evade me, and a got a handful of sleeve and flesh. I ripped his sleeve open and jammed the inserter down against the bare, pasty flesh of his forearm. Kirkpatrick squirmed and struggled, but my grip was like unto iron. I pressed the button, and the inserter injected a small capsule of Compound 16 under Kirkpatrick’s skin. When I pulled the inserter away, a small drop of blood welled up at the site of insertion. Kirkpatrick clutched at his forearm, his face drawn and drained of all color.

  “I will kill you for this, Hazzard,” Kirkpatrick hissed.

  “Get in line, jackass,” I replied, shoving the idiot off balance. He tripped and fell backward, landing in a puddle of mud and God-only-knows what else.

  I turned away from Kirkpatrick and started walking back to my car, parked two blocks away. I tossed the inserter into a garbage can without breaking stride.

  “I mean it, Hazzard!” Kirkpatrick called after me. “This isn’t the end!”

  “No, it probably isn’t,” I mumbled to myself.

  I.

  When someone dies in Arcadia, it generally happens without any fanfare or public outcry. Especially in Old Town, death is way too common an occurrence to draw much attention from anyone. Folks studiously avoided looking down dark alleys in Arcadia in case they accidentally caught a terminal case of death by seeing something they shouldn’t have.

  So another nobody dying that night was, well, not noteworthy, just an insignificant footnote in the great-big book of Crap Going on in Arcadia, Volume 47.

  It rained that night, so the first two people who found him—a couple of winos who rolled him for liquor money—never even saw any blood. It had all been washed away already. They didn’t even know he was dead until they saw the giant wound in his chest. Like any reasonable Arcadian, they didn’t bother calling the cops, because then they’d have probably had to give the money back. Not that telling the cops would’ve done the dead guy any good anyway, and getting involved wasn’t worth the effort.

  The winos stumbled off in search of another drink. Neither of them saw the muffled figure who quickly and quietly exited the alleyway that night, collar turned up and hat pulled low. In fact, the only individual who noted the mysterious figure’s passage was a rather lazy and uncaring dog. But who would take a dog’s testimony, anyway? Soon, all that was left in the alley was a dead body of no great consequence and a few rats.

  The dead guy’s name, I can tell you now, was Terry Wallace. As I mentioned, he’s not really important, but his death would set in motion a series of events that would bring the whole organized crime war to a spectacular conclusion.

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  Weeks had passed without distinction. No one had heard from or seen Kirkpatrick since my last confrontation with him, and the rash of terrible explosions had stopped with Michaelson behind bars. I did get a lovely death threat from Clarence, who seemed to be not enjoying his time in Pratchett Correctional at all.

  I filled in Captain O’Mally and the Arcadia PD on as much about my case as I could. I gave them everything I had on Kirkpatrick and his accomplices, and O’Mally told me they’d have a standing APB out on all of them for the foreseeable future.

  I also managed to work in a quick visit with Xavier. He was recovering well, psychologically-speaking. Whatever bizarre mental conditioning Wally Stewart had put Xavier through, it was deep-rooted and tough to dig out. The doctors spent months deprogramming him. I was glad to see him recovering, even if I wasn’t quite sure who he was going to be when the brainwashing was all rinsed out. There was really no way of knowing if some other little surprise was hidden behind an innocuous trigger word until it was too late. I tried to push the thought to the back of my mind; it wasn’t Xavier’s fault he’d been brainwashed.

  “I’ve never heard of Kirkpatrick,” Xavier said as we sat in a quiet corner of the rehab facility. The walls were cinderblocks painted pale green, the floor a mish-mash of linoleum tiles in various shades of ugly. Xavier was wearing a loose-fitting t-shirt and sweatpants, both in gray, both emblazoned with the rehab center’s logo, a rising sun cresting a low hill.

  “He wasn’t a player back when I was working for the Boss. At least, not in Arcadia,” Xavier continued. He seemed calm, in control of himself. He wasn’t trying to murder me like last time, so I took that as a good sign.

  “Think you know anyone who could dig up some dirt on the guy?” I asked. Not that I had much hope: Xavier, despite being Vera Stewart’s second-in-command, had been brainwashed for months if not years by her husband, Wally Stewart. The programming had done weird things to him, and I didn’t know if it’d effected his memory or not. And hell, even if he was of sound mind, that was no guarantee any of his contacts would be able to find anything more than I had on Kirkpatrick. Hell, to my knowledge, even Vera hadn’t found anything on the guy, so I doubted I had much of a chance.

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” Xavier told me. We shook hands and I left him to continue his convalescence.

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  I got the call for the Wallace case at some ungodly hour of the morning about a week after my conversation with Xavier. When I arrived, Officer Higgins was already on the scene. Lloyd Higgins was a uniformed officer who worked out of the 4th Precinct House, a Good Cop who deserved the capital letters. He’d been on the force for a little over five years, walking a beat through one of the rougher neighborhoods in Old Town. Unlike so many others, Higgins’s time on the force hadn’t worn down his spirit. He was a slender, affable man with a quick smile and honest face. If the Arcadia Police Department ever decided they needed to run a PR campaign, Higgins would’ve made a perfect poster child.

  He nodded as I approached. “Hazzard,” he said by way of greeting. The digital crime scene tape flashed red when I crossed it, but Higgins and the Crime Scene Unit guys ignored it. They were busy taking photos of the dead body of Mr. Wallace, searching for clues, and recording data. I tilted my hat back, dug in my pocket for my cigarettes, and lit one as I surveyed the scene with fuzzy, sleep-crusted eyes.

  I stood in the alley next to Higgins, who somehow always ended up at the crime scenes I frequented. I was continually amazed at how he always appeared to be fresh out of the academy, with his pressed and properly-creased uniform, fresh face, and open, honest demeanor. He’d seen about all the evil the city could throw at you without just flat
-out killing you. I liked him, and envied his enduring optimism, even if I always worried it’d get him killed someday.

  “Why the hell are you dragging me out of bed at this ungodly hour, Higgins?” I asked, rubbing my bleary eyes with the palms of my hands.

  “Captain O’Mally requested you be brought in. I did, admittedly, suggest you were probably still awake from last night’s drinking,” he said with a grin.

  “I’d take offense if it weren’t technically true,” I replied, trying again to rub the sleep and whiskey out of my eyes. The business with Kirkpatrick and his Confederacy of Dunces would’ve made me an insomniac, if I didn’t already have tendencies in that direction. “Still doesn’t explain why either of you thought this’d be something to call me in on. Seems pretty routine.”

  “Actually, there’s a couple of wrinkles to this one. O’Mally said something about the case being in your ‘wheelhouse,’ whatever that means.”

  I sighed. “It’s just an old expression, y’darn kid,” I said, squatting next to the dead body of Terry Wallace. “What can you tell me about the body?”

  “Not a whole lot, at least until Franklin gets all the data uploaded and processed. Looks like he died of a GSW, but the burn pattern and wound aren’t consistent with any known firearm, projectile-based, laser-based, or otherwise.” He pointed out the rather large hole where the late Mr. Wallace’s chest had once been. “It’s large-bore, whatever it is, and it looks like he at least died quickly and without too much pain, if that’s any consolation to the poor guy.”

  “You mean aside from the pain of having a giant hole blown through his chest,” I said, flicking ash away from the body onto the steaming concrete.