Until that inevitable day, I had the Peacekeeper 340 to work with. It fired a projectile that expands into a polymer bubble about two meters in diameter, engulfing your target in a gas-permeable sphere that no weapon can cut or destroy. The bubble only lasts about an hour before the polymer breaks down, but by then you’ve got your perpetrator locked away or incapacitated in some other way.
In response to my provocation, all the ninjas drew their swords, holding them like men familiar and comfortable with their weapons. One,” I said, flexing the fingers of my right hand, wiggling them like a gunslinger getting loose and ready for a quick draw. The ninjas all held their swords in an en garde position. “Two,” I said, unsnapping the clasp holding the popgun in place.
I never got a chance to say three, as the ninjas chose that moment to attack.
The eternal question, guns or swords, doesn’t have a simple answer. Over a short distance, a sword will beat a gun almost every time. Guns are ranged weapons and can only fire in a straight line, while swords and knives and other bladed weapons are designed for up close and personal killing from a variety of angles of attack. Since we were only a few meters apart, the casual observer could be forgiven for thinking I was about to get minced like an onion. The expectation on their part would be that I’d draw my gun as fast as possible and try to pick them off quickly, maintaining a distance from a group of guys who had the numbers advantage and probably the skill advantage.
What they didn’t have was the sneaky, underhanded fighting advantage.
As the ninjas moved in for the kill, I didn’t draw my gun. Instead, I stepped forward and lashed out with a kick at the guy’s nethers.
Don’t let the footie pajamas fool you: ninjas may be master assassins and highly-trained warriors schooled in ancient martial arts, but nobody handles getting kicked in the family jewels very well. The ninja I’d kicked doubled over, clutching at his most delicate bits, and another kick to the jaw laid him out flat.
The other ninjas seemed surprised; apparently, they hadn’t been expecting much of a fight from a guy best known around town for being drunk and belligerent. I took the opportunity to draw my gun then and fired off a round at Ninja #2, the familiar pop! of the gun punctuating his encasement in a transparent bubble of fancy science. I gave the bubble a vicious kick, sending it bouncing towards the remaining two ninjas. The bubble knocked them off their feet and sent their bubble-encased comrade dribbling off down the pier. I caught Ninja #3 with another shot from the popgun as he recovered his feet, leaving me face to face with the last guy as Ninja #2’s bubble splashed into the bay.
“I don’t suppose you could be convinced to just walk away, pal?” I asked conversationally. The ninja cupped something in his hand and then flung it at me. A brilliant flash of silver buried itself painfully in my right hand, causing me to drop the popgun. I cursed and dug the pointy little piece of metal out of my hand. The bleeding was pretty bad, but it wasn’t spurting or anything, so I figured he hadn’t hit anything vital. I looked up to see the ninja advancing slowly, his sword held up in a guard. I adopted a sloppy sort of boxer’s stance, if boxers were drunks who didn’t even bother to work out or anything. I didn’t have the element of surprise anymore, and any effort to retrieve the popgun would probably result in getting a sword in the back of my head. Like usual, I’d have to rely on dumb luck and dirty tricks.
As the ninja advanced, I abruptly stepped inside his guard. He’d have a hell of a time stabbing me with that sword if I was close enough to hug him. I grabbed his mask—always a mistake to wear one of those in a fight—and jerked it sideways, skewing the eye holes away from his eyes and leaving him blind. I had no doubt he’d still be able to kick my ass, even without his sight, but it gave me a second or two to get a few cheap shots in. He gave a wordless cry of frustration that rose an octave as my knee found his groin and connected in a fairly final sort of way. The sword dropped from numb fingers as I pulled a small cosh from my back pocket and slammed it down behind his ear. He dropped like dead weight and didn’t get up again. I pocketed my cosh—a detective’s best friend, as it’s compact, efficient, and you can put one together with just a sock and a handful of gravel if you need to. Mine was professionally-made, filled with tiny ball bearings and sewn into a sturdy black cloth casing.
The ninjas out of the way, I took a moment to doctor my hand. Like all good detectives, I carry a small first aid kit with all the essentials: bandages, antiseptic, painkillers, and a roll of stim-mesh, a pliable bandage made with nanotech that stimulated healing and administered a low-level localized painkiller. Modern medicine is wonderful stuff. I applied a small patch of stim-mesh to my hand and felt the throbbing pain dwindle to a dull ache. Scooping up the popgun, I was ready to investigate the warehouse.
Inside, Building C was dark, dank, and dingy in that sort of industrial way that you just never find in other buildings. Something about the combination of heavy machinery, grease, and lots of metal and chemicals makes places like the warehouses just feel different than any other abandoned building. The Speakeasy might’ve been a dim, smoky sort of dive, and my office was rarely well-lit and only knew clean air in a passing sort of way, but this was something altogether different and worse. Though it was a large, open space, the air felt close and smothering. There was the tang of some industrial solvent hanging around after all those years, sharp and acrid.
I found a switch by the door and shoved it up with both hands, feeling the rusting mechanism give way grudgingly as I did so. To my surprise, the place still had power, and faint lights buzzed to life far overhead, though several of them were burnt out and the ones that survived flickered as though they’d been strobe lights in a past life. The bare bulbs illuminated bare concrete stretching out into the darkness, and . . .
And nothing else.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. This felt wrong. There was nothing here. Nothing. A building like this, even abandoned, should have all sorts of debris cluttering the floor. Winos and vagabonds should’ve used it as temporary shelter, at least one corner should look like it had been used as a bathroom by stray animals, and there ought to be decaying cardboard boxes, chunks of metal, bolts and screws and the detritus of years of commercial-industrial work scattered about. Instead, there was nothing.
Well, okay, there was one thing, a squat package sitting in the middle of the warehouse.
It was ticking.
Ticking usually means one of two things: either someone nearby has an antique clock fetish, or there’s a bomb. This thing didn’t look like a clock.
In such situations, you’ve got a couple of options. You can go take a look at the bomb and try to disarm it, probably when there’s only seconds to go on the timer. Or you can turn around and run like a maniac and hope you get out before the thing blows.
I didn’t even bother trying to get closer to see how the thing was built. I didn’t bother trying to figure out how to diffuse the thing. I hit the door to the warehouse at full tilt and didn’t slow down. With my luck, there hadn’t been enough time left on the bomb to get out of the blast zone, let alone get close enough to take a shot at diffusing the damn thing. At this point, I would be lucky if the bomb just killed me. If I was unlucky—which is usually the case—it’d hurt like hell, then kill me.
People have a lot of misconceptions about explosions. They think it’s a massive fireball that looks impressive but doesn’t hurt you if you’re not within the blast radius.
In reality, explosions throw out a concussion wave that’ll knock you on your ass, wipe out windows for several blocks, and that tosses metal shrapnel around like it’s confetti.
The building didn’t turn into a massive fireball. Instead, it was there one moment, and simply gone the next, basically vaporized in the fraction of a second it took for the explosives to go off. The concussion wave hit the pier, and the aging wood beneath my feet buckled and then simply disintegrated. I was flung fifty meters out into the bay, landing in water that had all the g
ive of concrete. I sank under the surface, chunks of metal and wood and who knows what else falling around me like the worst rain imaginable. I couldn’t even figure out which way was up for a moment, struggling to orient myself and get back to breathable air.
I finally came up sputtering and gagging, waterlogged but alive. Most people don’t want to swim in Montague Bay. It’s not that you can’t swim there, just that there are things in the bay nature never intended. Let’s just say that fish poop was the least of my concerns if I swallowed some of the stuff that could only very generously be called water.
The pier was simply gone. A couple of concrete pylons poked up through the waves, and the roofs of a couple of the warehouses on Pier 5 were visible as the structures sank to the bottom of the bay. I’d survived, much to my surprise and the chagrin of my enemies, I was sure. I didn’t see the ninjas anywhere, so I had no idea if they’d survived or not. I felt a brief pang of guilt at that, concerned that their deaths might be on my head, but they’d probably known the dangers when they signed up. I gave a mental shrug and began pulling for the shore, debris raining down around me in the bay as I swam.
Admittedly, a swim—even in Montague Bay—was still better than getting blown up. As I reached the shore, I considered this turn of events. I still didn’t know what was going on, but one thing was for sure: somebody wanted me dead, which meant I was probably on the right track in my investigation. And Tommy the Tuba had lied to me. There’d be consequences for that, for sure.
Right that moment, though, I really just wanted a towel and a fresh change of clothes.
VII.
I sloshed back into my office more than an hour later, tired and frustrated and desperate for a smoke. The explosion had done in my old heap of a car by way of a giant chunk of corrugated metal sitting right in the middle of the engine. No taxi had been willing to pick me up, given that I’d just taken a swim in Montague Bay, and I was in the Warehouse District after dark, where no cabbie with any sense of self-preservation would ever make a pick-up.
I spent the long walk back to the office looking over my shoulder, wondering if the mook who’d set the bomb would try to follow me and finish the job, but the streets were fairly empty and no one seemed to be following me. My guess was they figured they’d already done the job.
Miss Typewell barely glanced up as I came in, snapping off a clipped but professional, “I’m sorry, we’re closed for the day,” before she looked up and noticed it was me. “Eddie! What the hell happened to you?” she asked, leaping up and coming around her desk. “And why didn’t you change your clothes after whatever it was?”
“I’m fine, Ellen,” I replied, shucking my soaked coat and hat. “I mean, everything I’m wearing is ruined, but that was probably true before my little swim, too.”
“So, spill. What happened?” she asked, digging in the coat closet for one of the towels we keep on hand for occasions such as this. They happen far more often than you’d think was possible when you’re a private detective.
“I’ve been asking myself the same question,” I replied, drying my hair. I doubted it was an Organization-sanctioned effort on my life. They were all precision and fine tuning: a job this sloppy just didn’t fit with what I knew of the syndicate. I went into the inner office and pulled out a fresh change of clothes from my closet while I considered the possibilities. Miss Typewell averted her eyes for privacy’s sake while I started changing out of my wet clothes. “Ellen, I need you to take care of a few things for me,” I said, grabbing a new tie from a hanger. I only owned three, and only one was clean and wearable at this point. I ended up matching a rumpled gray suit to a plain white dress shirt worn thin with age, and a tie an obnoxious shade of orange. I don’t even know how I came to own the damn thing.
“Sure. What do you need?” she asked.
“First, I want you to call Mrs. Stewart. Tell her I want to meet with her first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Easy enough,” Miss Typewell said. “What else?” She opened a vid window and began taking notes.
“Second, find the Fish. He ought to be able to give me a lead, or at least help me narrow down my choices.” I struggled tying the tie, fingers fumbling with the knot.
Ellen frowned and pushed my hands out of the way, tying the tie for me. “Third, see if you can track down Wally Stewart’s secretary. There’s something fishy going on there, and I’m gonna get to the bottom of it.”
“Eddie, you’re starting to talk in noir clichés,” she warned. “Again.”
“Ellen, I don’t ask for much, but a little consideration for my eccentricities would be nice.”
My secretary sighed theatrically and stepped away. My tie was done in a perfect Windsor knot, proving once again that she could do pretty much everything. “So, want to know what I found in the data you grabbed from Stewart’s computer?”
“Yes, yes I do,” I replied. Miss Typewell pulled up a new vid window and slid it over in front of me.
“There were some interesting irregularities in his expense account,” she said, highlighting a column in a spreadsheet. “He and his secretary sure did seem to spend a lot of time at a fancy hotel downtown called the ne Royale. They spent a lot in the hotel’s Business Center.”
“That doesn’t seem too suspicious,” I said dubiously.
“They spent thousands of dollars on champagne,” Miss Typewell added.
“Ah. That seems more suspicious,” I said.
Miss Typewell gave me a smirk. “Anyway, looks like they were probably having an affair,” she continued. “Or possibly meeting with someone else and doing some under the table business transactions.”
“Having seen Mrs. Stewart, I have to imagine it’s the latter, not the former,” I mused.
Miss Typewell cocked an eye at me. “There’s more to a marriage than wiggly hips, a narrow waist, and big breasts,” she said.
“There’s also those eyes,” I said, giving her a cocksure grin.
Miss Typewell rolled her eyes and continued. “There’s a lot of correspondence between the two, and a lot of it doesn’t have anything to do with work. It looks like it’s in code, though, so it’ll take me a while to figure out exactly what they’re saying.”
“Right,” I said, sliding the vid window back over to her. “You get to work on all that. I do have one more favor to ask, though.”
“What’s that?”
I loosened the knot of my tie in what I hoped was a rakish sort of way. “I need to borrow your car keys.”
* * *
I am not, generally speaking, a man prone to violence or revenge. Retribution has never held much fascination for me.
That having been said, I also don’t take kindly to being set up, especially when said setup involves me nearly getting blown to tiny little pieces. It just leaves me in a bad mood, y’know?
I rolled up to the Speakeasy in Miss Typewell’s aging but immaculately-maintained car. Tuba’s thugs were still gathered in front of the bar, but they seemed lulled into disinterest. Hours and hours of standing around with nothing to do and no one to hit will do that to even the most dedicated enforcer. Nothing dulls the edge of security forces like hours of boredom. You just can’t stay keyed up forever, and these guys were clearly used to nothing happening for extended periods of time. My arrival earlier today had probably been the most action they’d seen in weeks, at the very least, and I probably could’ve blindsided the dumb bastards if I’d planned things a little more ahead of time.
I went in without a plan again anyway, anger driving me like a dynamo. The car screeched to a sudden halt at the curb, and I was out with the popgun in my hand before those idiots even knew what was happening. A quick barrage of pops later, all six thugs were encased in polymer bubbles, and I was stalking toward the front door with violence aforethought.
The door flew inward, rebounding off the inner wall with a loud crack. I lowered my foot and leveled the popgun, scanning the room for Tuba. He was still sitting in his booth, a half-empt
y glass of what was probably a fairly-decent wine in front of him. He stared at me standing in the doorway, gun leveled, and managed not to betray his obvious surprise.
“I’m not happy, Tuba,” I snarled, using the nickname even though I knew it irked him. Possibly because I knew. I was in that kind of mood. Almost getting blown up will do that to a guy, and I’d ruined a nearly-full pack of cigarettes in my little swim.
“Detective Hazzard, I think there’s perhaps been a misunderstanding,” Tuba rumbled, trying to rise from his booth. His tremendous bulk and the prefabricated slab of plastic and Formica made it a difficult maneuver.
I strode to the fat man and buried a fist in his overflowing gut. The air whooshed out of him in a booze-scented gust. “I don’t like being made a fool of, Tuba,” I snapped. I threw another punch at his belly. “And I definitely don’t like people trying to blow me up.”
Tuba coughed and wheezed, sounding like an asthmatic elephant in the process. “Y-you don’t seem to fully understand how things work in Arcadia, Detective Hazzard,” he managed. He straightened up and finally gained his feet as I went for another punch, this one aimed at his fat, ugly face. Tuba took the shot, tilting his head so that my first couple of knuckles bounced off the metal plate around that damned cybernetic eye. I let out a rather undignified yelp and shook my hand as Tuba reached out and grabbed me by the lapels of my jacket. Apparently there was more muscle under all that fat than I’d assumed, because he hauled my feet right off the floor and held me in the air for a moment. With what seemed to me to be far too little effort, he hurled me over the bar five meters away. I crashed against the collection of bottles and jugs behind the counter, a flood of booze and glass shards cascading around me as I collapsed unceremoniously to the floor.
The Invisible Crown (Hazzard Pay Book 1) Page 4