Crooked Halos

by Charlie Cottrell

  CROOKED HALOS

  HAZZARD PAY, BOOK 4

  BY CHARLIE COTTRELL

  Prologue: OLD FRIENDS, NEW WOUNDS

  I coughed and spit up way more of my blood than I cared to see. Blood’s natural habitat is inside the body, not on the street, but mine didn’t seem to know or care. My stomach felt like it was on fire. I think the bullet wound had something to do with it.

  I tried to push myself into a sitting position using one hand while I clutched at my gut wound with the other. There was no way I was going to die like this in the street, blood loss be damned. I was going to die the way nature always intended for private detectives: alone in a dark bar, three-fourths of the way through a fifth of cheap whiskey, my liver finally giving up the ghost after soldiering on way past where most organs would have lain down their proverbial arms.

  Unfortunately, reality seemed to have different plans for me. My vision swam and I collapsed back onto the pavement, barely even noticing the way various bits of asphalt and street debris poked into the side of my face. Where the hell were my ninja, anyway? They were supposed to protect me from situations like this, but they were nowhere to be seen. Typical; those shadowy bastards only popped up when it was convenient for them.

  Everything went black around the edges of my vision, and I lost a few minutes of time there. When I came back to myself, my head felt like it was stuffed with cotton and Tuvan throat singers warming up their larynxes. I pushed myself up into a sitting position again, my arm wobbling and threatening to give out on me, but I managed to get at least partly upright this time. I clutched at the curb and levered myself into something like a vertical position, still holding my gut as if I could force the blood back into myself through sheer will.

  I looked up at the apartment building in front of me. That’s where he was, the man who’d shot me. Why was I here, again? My mind struggled to answer the question. Wait, right, I was here to stop a murder. But whose murder? My client. But who was she, really? I came up blank. Couldn’t remember. Not that it seemed all that relevant, what with me probably dying myself.

  One man’s name was clear in my mind: the man who’d shot me, the man who was on his way upstairs at that exact moment to commit murder.

  “Crowder,” I rasped, my eyes narrowing.

  I picked up a gun that I found lying on the curb and began a determined shuffle toward the apartment building’s entrance. It was time to kill my old partner.

  Part One: SUICIDE BY MURDER

  I.

  The office was getting crowded.

  Everything had been fine back in the day when it was just me and Miss Typewell. She kept mostly to her office, and I kept to my den of whiskey and cigarette smoke. Occasionally I’d go out and work a case, or she’d disappear for a few days before returning full of energy and enthusiasm for a job that mostly involved sitting around waiting for clients to walk through the door.

  Then Maya Janovich joined us. Maya was a quiet kid, mostly stayed in her own head. Miss Typewell set up a small workstation for her in the corner of the outer office, though Maya seemed to prefer sitting on the floor behind Miss Typewell’s desk. She’d spread the parts of whatever electronic device she was tinkering with that week on the floor around her, following some byzantine organizational system that made sense only to her.

  But then Vera Stewart died, and the role of running the Organization had fallen on me because I happened to be there at the time and managed to sound authoritative. But that just meant there were even more people in the office all the time. I tried to limit my contact with the viler or more feral elements of the criminal syndicate I’d inherited, but Kimiko—the leader of the late Vera Stewart’s elite team of ninja warriors—had become a fairly integral part of my inner circle. She was in the office most every day, reporting on the ongoing effort to dismantle the more illegal elements of the Organization.

  “We shut down five more drug rings last night,” Kimiko was reporting. I sat at my desk, only half-paying attention as Kimiko rattled off her report: villains thwarted, mooks arrested, thugs put in their place. It was a long, tedious process; the criminals who populated the Organization weren’t too keen on giving up their positions of power and authority. Most of them had never done an honest day’s work in their lives, but a quick, quiet visit from Kimiko usually made them reconsider their lives of crime. There was something about the ninja, with her unobtrusive clothing and vague air of competent menace, which seemed to set folks on a straighter, narrower path than they’d previously considered. And those who weren’t inclined to fall in line found themselves suddenly raided by a team of pajama-clad warriors or the Arcadia PD. Either way, we were slowly but surely shutting down organized crime in Arcadia. There was still plenty of disorganized crime, but that was someone else’s problem.

  “What about the Tuba?” I asked. Tommy “the Tuba” Timmons, the former head of the Gambling and Disposal departments, had managed to escape custody after Vera and the ninja had caught him trying to beat the life out of me several months earlier. The fat bastard had gone to ground and stayed hidden surprisingly well.

  “Nothing yet,” Kimiko replied.

  I shrugged. “He’ll turn up. A guy that big can only hide for so long. How are we doing overall?”

  Kimiko opened a vid window and pulled up a series of charts and graphs.

  The short answer was: not great. Apparently taking apart a decades-old criminal empire wasn’t something you could do over a weekend, or even a few months. Even with the martial powers of Kimiko and her ninja—not to mention the organizational and bureaucratic powers of the indomitable Miss Typewell—we were facing lots of resistance. Downsizing is hard on every business, it seems.

  “Well, minimal progress is still progress,” I sighed, settling back in my chair. “Any cases come in for me, Miss Typewell?”

  “Actually, you have an appointment scheduled for this afternoon to meet with a potential client,” she replied. She pulled up the office calendar—an app of her own devising that was somehow superior to every other calendar program that had ever been devised, and which could have made her millions of dollars if she’d made it readily available to the general public—and showed me the appointment. Sure enough, 1 PM: Meet with Genevieve Pratt, glowed in the vid window in bright green, the color she’d assigned to potential clients in the calendar. I still couldn’t understand how a woman as talented and capable as Miss Typewell had stuck with me through all those lean years. She claimed it was because she believed in what we did, and that she felt she could do the most good here. I knew there was more to her than she admitted to me, and I was reasonably certain—like, 70% sure—that I wasn’t her only employer. It was just a hunch, and I had absolutely no solid proof to back it up, but I felt it in my gut. I hadn’t ever pushed her about it, because frankly it meant at least she was getting a paycheck from someone every month, but I felt sure that someday it was going to become a conflict of interest, and she’d have to choose a side. Hopefully, she’d choose me, because the whole business would fall apart otherwise.

  “Okay, then, everyone knows what they’ve got to do. We’re busy, busy, busy, so let’s get stuff done.” I stood up and walked to my closet. As I was pulling out my coat and hat, Miss Typewell gave me a quizzical look.

  “Where are you going? You’ve got an appointment soon.”

  “Yeah, I heard ya. Gotta go check up on my ex first.” There was a grim look on my face that did not match the lightness of my tone. Miss Typewell’s face darkened as well.

  “Out to Pratchett again, huh?” Miss Typewell said sympathetically.

  “Yeah. You know how it is with exes. They seduce you, trick you into helping assassinate a crime lord, literally stab you, then tell you they’re pregnant with your love c
hild after you’ve sent them to prison for trying to take over the local organized crime syndicate. Which, coincidentally, you’ve somehow ended up the head of and are trying your best to dismantle.”

  Miss Typewell cocked her head to one side. “I don’t think your experiences are as universal as you think they are, boss.”

  I gave Miss Typewell a dark look. “Please don’t call me that. Ever.”

  “Whatever you say, Eddie,” Miss Typewell replied, returning to her desk as I stepped out the door.

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  Tess Billings sat across from me in the visitation room, clad in an orange jumpsuit with PCF stenciled across the front in block letters. Even in the drab concrete confines of the prison, even knowing what she’d tried to do to the city and to me, a small part of me still couldn’t help but think she was beautiful.

  She was also extremely pregnant, her pronounced baby bulge straining against the coarse fabric of the jumpsuit.

  “Hello, sweetie,” she said as I sat down. I scowled in response, but that just made her smile. Tess knew all of my buttons, and could push them at will. It would take a real effort to not let her get to me.

  “How’s the kid?” I asked.

  “You used to enjoy the small talk, Eddie,” she chided.

  “I never enjoyed small talk. It’s always been big, life-or-death talk, or inebriated silence.”

  Tess smiled again. “Well, our unborn child is doing fine. Doctors say he’s due any day now.”

  “Good. Once he’s born, I won’t have to keep coming back here.” The custody processing had already been completed; when the baby was born, I’d be the sole custodian of the kid until we got a foster home set up for him. Tess was obviously in no position to parent a child, but a private-investigator-cum-mob-boss wasn’t really that much better. At least in a foster home, the kid would have a chance to have something like a normal life.

  Tess pouted. “I’m hurt, Eddie. I thought we had something.”

  “We did, but then you tried to kill me and sorta killed the romance in the process.”

  Tess shrugged. “Well, what can I say? Every relationship has its rough spots.” I didn’t reply, but stood up to leave. “Going so soon?” Tess asked, surprise and something like fear in her eyes. “But you just got here!”

  “Yeah. I find the company just isn’t to my taste,” I replied drily.

  “Trouble’s coming, you know,” Tess said as I started to walk away. I stopped and looked back over my shoulder expectantly. Tess was standing at the table, her hands flat across its surface, something like genuine concern in her eyes.

  “Care to elaborate?” I asked without moving.

  “I...I can’t,” she said, sagging. “All I can really say is…you’d be better off not taking your next case.” I didn’t ask how she knew I had a new case coming in; the how wasn’t really important anyway.

  I turned away from her, but didn’t walk off. “Thanks for the advice. I’ll be sure to completely disregard it.” I set off without looking back again.

  II.

  I settled back into my office chair just in time for my one o’clock appointment to arrive.

  She breezed right past Miss Typewell, walking with a self-assured stride right through the outer office and into my inner sanctum. She appeared to be in her mid- to late-50s, rain thin and straight-backed, with lines beginning to crease her face. Her hair was as straight and thin as the rest of her, hanging in a flat sheet down her back to just above her waist. She was well-dressed, though the clothing—a pantsuit in a cream color only a few shades darker than her skin—was not of any sort of flattering cut or style. She was carrying a slim, dark briefcase, the sort you might see handcuffed to the wrist of a gentleman in a dark suit and glasses. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it contained nuclear launch codes or top secret government documents.

  “Detective Hazzard, I presume?” she in a clipped, flat tone.

  “Yup, that’s what it says on the door.” I craned my neck around her and called out to Miss Typewell. “Ellen, it does still have my name on the door, right?”

  “I haven’t scraped it off just yet, no,” Miss Typewell replied sarcastically as she carried a small tray with two stained and chipped mugs and a full carafe of fresh coffee into the office and set it on the corner of my desk. My blue-haired secretary poured two cups of steaming, caffeinated goodness, and handed one to the client and one to me. I nodded my thanks as I grabbed the sugar pot and began spooning white crystalized deliciousness into my mug.

  “So, how can I help you, ma’am?” I asked, sipping the coffee and deciding it needed more sugar. I dumped three more heaping spoonfuls in as the woman answered.

  “My name is Genevieve Pratt,” she said, primly holding her own mug of coffee. She gave me a critical eye. “I assume you are discreet, Detective Hazzard?”

  “No one’s ever complained about my lack of propriety before,” I replied. Sure, the sort of folks who might have complained were all pretty much dead, but that hardly seemed germane. I knew how to keep my mouth shut.

  “I need you to catch a murderer,” she said, taking a thin manila folder out of a briefcase and passing it across to me. “Before you ask, I cannot go to the police, because no crime has been committed.”

  “But you said you want me to catch a murderer,” I said, confused.

  “Yes. The catch is that the murder has yet to occur.”

  I opened the folder and looked at its contents: a single hardcopy photograph of an all-too-familiar face.

  I nearly spit my coffee across the room. “This is Dresden Crowder,” I gasped, brushing helplessly at the brown splotch that spread down the front of my shirt. My tie had absorbed a fair amount of liquid, but this shirt was going to need a thorough cleaning and a lot of prayer if it had any chance of surviving this encounter unstained. Not that it wasn’t already stained with years of sweat, coffee, take-out food, and more than a little blood—entirely too much of which was my own—but adding new stains was a frustration I could do without. “Is this some sort of asinine joke?”

  The woman shook her head. “I’m afraid this is no joke, Detective Hazzard. Mr. Crowder is planning to commit a murder in two weeks’ time.”

  “Whose?” I asked.

  The woman gave me a thin-lipped smile. “Mine.”

  I am, by the nature of my profession and my years on the job, fairly hard to surprise at this point. You could call me jaded, I guess, though I prefer to think I’m just aware of how the world really works. Her announcement did earn her an arched eyebrow of incredulity, though, as I unbuttoned my shirt and moved to the closet to find a clean one.

  “Clairvoyant, are we?” I asked, shrugging on a clean shirt.

  Ms. Pratt shook her head. “No, but I know this is going to happen. Dresden Crowder is going to enter my apartment two weeks from tonight and murder me. And I intend to let it happen.”

  I stopped halfway through buttoning up my new shirt and gave Ms. Pratt another look. “No offense, but that is possibly the dumbest thing a client has ever said to me. And I once had a client ask if I could steal the Declaration of Independence for them.” Sure, the guy had been wearing a hat made out of aluminum foil, and I hadn’t taken the case, but that wasn’t relevant.

  “The murder is a matter between Mr. Crowder and myself. I want him to kill me. I just want you to bring him to justice afterward.”

  I settled back into my chair and poured myself another cup of coffee. “Okay, let me summarize this, for my own edification and clarification. First, you have foreknowledge that an individual, one Dresden Crowder, is planning to kill you in your apartment two weeks from tonight.”

  “Correct.”

  “Second, you fully intend to allow Mr. Crowder to end your life in an unlawful, possibly violent manner.”

  “Yes.”

  “Third, you want me to catch Mr. Crowder afterward and arrest him.”

  “No,” Ms. Pratt corrected, “I want him brought to justice. That wi
ll not happen if he is arrested and taken to trial. You must end his life. We both know that Dresden Crowder will not receive an impartial trial in the city of Arcadia.” She was right about that, honestly. Dresden Crowder was a local hero, the sort of person who received free meals at restaurants and handshakes from passers-by. But that wasn’t the point. She was asking me to kill a man, and I balked.

  “I’m not a killer, lady,” I said flatly. I’d only tried to kill someone once, maybe twice in my life, and that had been under extreme, kill-or-be-killed circumstances. Even if Crowder deserved death—and I guess you could argue committing murder qualified as deserving—I wasn’t really the sort to carry out the sentence. That wasn’t my place.

  “Nonetheless, I am asking you to end the life of the man who will kill me and who ruined your career with the APD.” That caught me by surprise. Crowder’s role in my dismissal from the APD wasn’t general knowledge; the fact that this woman knew about it meant she had some pretty impressive sources. That didn’t mean I was any more inclined to take her case.

  “So…you’re nuts, then, right?” I asked.

  “No,” Ms. Pratt responded. “But I am dying anyway. This is simply the perfect way to exact my revenge against Crowder.”

  “Why the complicated assisted suicide shtick? There have to be less-convoluted ways to get revenge on a guy.”

  Ms. Pratt favored me with a wan smile devoid of warmth or humor. “But no other plan would be nearly so satisfying.”

  I sighed. “I’m not going to kill anyone,” I said sternly. “If you want me to follow the guy around, get some evidence on him, or even interfere when he tries to do the deed, I’m fine with that. But murder isn’t a service I’m interested in offering.”

  Ms. Pratt considered my words for a moment, then said, “Fine. That is acceptable. I will forward your fee to your account shortly, and I expect you to have information about Crowder’s movements and activities by the end of the week. Learn his patterns, discover how he plans to kill me, and…well, what happens, happens. I know that you have as much antimony toward Mr. Crowder as I do.” She rose, we shook hands, and she strode out of my office.