“That’s what I need,” I said, pointing to the keys on the list. Higgins turned to the officer in charge of the evidence lock-up and requested the item number. The officer disappeared back into the lock-up, returning a few minutes later with a small box filled with Carly Jennings’s personal effects. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and rummaged through the box, eventually fishing out a key ring in a plastic evidence bag and sliding it across the counter to us, along with a couple of pairs of gloves.
I pulled on the gloves, opened the evidence baggie, and fished the keys out. They were the usual assortment of house keys, car keys, and miscellaneous. None of them looked like they belonged to a P.O. box or a safety deposit box.
“Damn,” I muttered, slipping the keys back into the baggie and handing them back to the lock-up officer. “Dead end.”
“Want to take a look at anything else while you’re here and we have the box out?” Higgins asked.
I shrugged. “Might as well.” It wasn’t likely that I’d find anything useful, but hell, you never knew.
Aside from her keys, the box of Miss Jennings’s effects contained her clothes, her purse, and her personal computer. I rummaged through her purse, turning up a handful of change, several credit cards, membership cards to several stores, a packet of tissues, gum, and a few random scraps of paper. They were mostly receipts and personal reminders, none of which seemed to have anything to do with what I was looking for.
I pulled out her computer and fired it up, opening a vid window and doing a directory search to see if there was anything useful. The datachip port was empty, because finding it there would have been far too easy. I found a file containing a list of her accounts and various passwords, but it was encrypted. I copied the file over and forwarded it to Miss Typewell. I couldn’t be certain it would contain what I needed, but it was better than nothing.
I put everything back in the box and passed it back over to the lock-up officer, thanking him and Officer Higgins for their help. The search hadn’t been completely successful, but there was still a faint glimmer of hope that something may come of it.
XI
V.
Night rolled into Arcadia like an uncertain debutante, slowly and with less grace than you’d hope for. Clouds were building up on the horizon, promising rain before dawn whether we wanted it or not.
Around 11:00, I made my way to the corner of Monument and Mignola. Thunder was rumbling a threat down the canyons of the city streets, echoing off of apartment buildings and office towers like a sugared-up toddler. I pulled my collar up around my throat and walked faster.
I made it to the meeting spot about fifteen minutes early, which had been my intention. You never want to show up late to a meeting like this. First of all, it gives the other guy a chance to establish the best place to wait, and that frequently means it gives them a chance to set up a trap. I checked sightlines and choke points, ambush spots and sniper nests. Everything looked clear, but given the trouble I’d had the day before with the ninjas, I wasn’t going to assume that appearances were the same thing as reality.
My mysterious drinking buddy appeared right at midnight, seemingly melting into view from the shadows of a run-down tenement building. “I’m glad you came, Detective Hazzard,” he said. “I knew you were someone who wanted to know the truth.”
I shrugged. Rain was starting to make its hesitant appearance on the scene, little drips committing water cycle hari-kari all around us. “I just hate not solving a case I’ve taken,” I replied with forced casualness. “I don’t really care about anything else.”
The mystery man paced closer to me, his eyes dark under a furrowed brow. He had amazing eyebrows, like thick, furry caterpillars slamming face-first into each other. “A civil war is brewing, detective. On the one side is the devil you know, the Boss. On the other are the people he’s fought for years to rein in, men like Guido and Billy Sunshine. Those men have no sense of moderation. They would gladly see the city of Arcadia go up in flames if it meant more immediate profit or power for them.”
“While I can see how that might affect me, I fail to see how it’s my responsibility to deal with the problem,” I replied. “I’m not a cop. I’m not a politician. I’m not a gangster. How is this my business?”
The mystery man leveled his dark gaze at me. “This will be everyone’s problem, Detective Hazzard, but you are in a unique position to actually deal with it before the problem becomes too big.” He prowled around me like a jungle cat, ready to pounce. I fought to stand still and not turn to follow his circuit with my eyes. “If you can catch Billy and Guido, find their new boss, and shut them down, you can save the city.”
I paused for a beat before I burst out laughing.
“I am serious, Detective Hazzard,” he said.
“I know,” I said around gasps for air. “That’s what makes it so damn funny.”
“Detective . . .” he began, but I cut him off with a terse look.
“No. I’m not a crusader. I’m sure as hell not a savior. I’m just here to solve the damn case and get paid. That’s it.” I took out a cigarette and lit it. “Now, tell me what you know about Guido and Billy Sunshine so I can find out what the hell happened to Wally Stewart and close the case.”
The mystery man sighed. “Before the end, you’ll see your part,” he said cryptically.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, taking a long drag on the cigarette. “Now gimme the damn information.”
The man handed me a datachip, and that’s about the time we noticed we weren’t alone.
Thugs dressed in black and carrying a variety of nasty-looking improvised weapons gathered around me. I saw a baseball bat, a length of metal pipe, and even a stick with nails in it. You have to admire a guy’s dedication to the old ways.
“So, gentlemen,” I said as the rain began to fall in earnest, “are we here for a café klatch, or is this a fight scene?” In response, one of the thugs grinned like a knucklehead and flourished his length of pipe in my general direction. “Okay, then,” I said, shrugging and stuffing my hands into my coat pockets.
There are traditions in fight scenes. The protagonist—me, for those of you who are only just joining us—thus far a reasonable, fairly non-violent individual, reveals himself to be a martial badass, breaking bones and flipping bad guys onto their backs and generally making a dog’s dinner of the whole thing.
Granted, we already know I’m not a great fighter, and I am rather prone to violence when angered. Narrative conventions were made to be broken.
But, while I’m not a great fighter, I am a dirty one. As the thug with the pipe stepped up and raised his weapon, I pulled my right hand out of the pocket and threw a quick jab at the guy’s midsection. Ordinarily, a punch like that wouldn’t have done much to a guy like him: he was thick with muscle and wearing some sort of Kevlar-weave shirt. This was not an ordinary situation, though, since I was wearing a pair of brass knuckles. But not your everyday brass knuckles. These had prongs built into them that basically turned me into a walking, wisecracking Taser.
I lit the guy up. His body jerked and went rigid, his hand suddenly unable to hold onto the length of pipe. It dropped from his senseless hand, hitting him in the head as it fell. The guy followed the pipe to the ground as I turned to the next opponent. Thankfully, the thugs were following the tradition of attacking one at a time.
Behind me, the mystery man was working his way through three guys. At once. The showoff. The man was practicing a form of martial arts I hadn’t ever seen before, dancing and ducking and moving like a combination of water and lightning. When he struck, a thug went down. When they struck, he wasn’t there anymore. It was a master class, and I was starting to reconsider having antagonized the guy so much.
My second thug swung his stick with a nail in it at my head, growling like a rabid animal. I ducked back, throwing off my center of balance and stumbling back to keep my feet. He moved in for the kill, a vicious grin spread across his flat face.
The
mystery man stepped in between us, fluid and silent, and a quick jab to the thug’s throat had him dropped to the pavement, gurgling in pain and lack of oxygen. Mystery man turned to me and said, “Quickly, you must leave. There will be more of them, and they will be more heavily armed next time.” He turned and faded back into the shadows of the nearest building, his footsteps silent and quick.
I deposited the brass knuckles in my pocket and took off down the street, trying not to draw attention to myself. Running would immediately mark me as suspicious, so I kept it to a brisk walk. The rain had picked up, pelting the concrete like it had a vendetta. Within minutes, I felt like I’d taken another swim in Montague Bay.
Under an awning over the entrance to an apartment building on 12th Street, I took temporary refuge and dug out the datachip Mr. Mystery had given me. I had no idea what was on the little square of plastic and silicon, so I didn’t want to slot it into my personal machine without precautions. Miss Typewell had cobbled together a pretty solid anti-malware program for me, so I loaded it up on my machine before inserting the datachip. The app scanned the datachip, searching for anything malicious or out of the ordinary, and the thing came up clean. Sure, there were probably plenty of viruses and backdoor programs that could sneak past Miss Typewell’s cleverness, but anything that could was probably going get through regardless of any precautions I could take, so I opened the file folder on the datachip and took a look at its contents.
There were three files. One was filled with brief dossiers on Guido and Billy Sunshine. The second was a list of known safe houses held by the Organization and someone’s best guess at where Billy and Guido might hole up.
The third file was about the kidnapping of Wally Stewart. It contained details of the plan to grab him, in broad daylight, not two blocks from his office. There were security camera images of him being taken. There were photos, ostensibly from Guido or Billy Sunshine’s own computers, of Mr. Stewart tied up to a chair in some nondescript room, his face bloodied, his eyes unfocused.
The next photo showed him dead, a bullet hole between the eyes, his body slumped against the ropes tying him to the chair.
“Guess that answers the question of what happened to Wally Stewart,” I muttered to myself. The thunder grumbled a wordless reply, and I heaved a sigh. Sometimes, it just didn’t pay to wander the rainy streets in the wee hours of the morning in search of evidence about your missing person case.
Part Two: Knight Errant
I.
When Miss Typewell arrived at the office the following morning, she was surprised to see I’d made it in before her, and that I was sober.
Very sober.
I’d had, like, ten cups of coffee, and I hadn’t slept the night before, so maybe less sober and more sleep-deprived and loopy.
“Here,” I said, thrusting a disposable cup at her. “We’re out of coffee for the maker here, so I went out and got some for us.”
“Is this from Spiro’s Diner?” she asked, eyeing the coffee suspiciously.
“Yup,” I said, beaming.
She pushed the cup back into my hands. “I’d rather die first,” she said with a shiver.
“Suit yourself,” I replied. I removed the lid and gulped down the coffee. Spiro’s Diner served coffee exactly the way I liked it: dark, strong, and thick as sludge. They’d only changed the filter on the coffeemaker once in all the years I’d been going there, and there’d damn-near been a riot over it.
“So, why are you so chipper this morning?” Miss Typewell asked, putting her belongings away and settling in behind her desk.
“Case had me out late last night. Couldn’t sleep afterwards. Decided to come here and get a jumpstart on the day.” I was pacing, talking much too fast, and starting to see streaks of color where there should be none. The coffee was doing its job.
“What happened last night?” Miss Typewell asked, and I launched into a description of the evening’s festivities, acting out various parts and even using her office supplies as proxies at one point.
“So, yeah, Mr. Stewart is definitely dead, and I’m gonna track down Guido and Billy Sunshine and Boom-Boom and drag ’em all off to jail,” I concluded. My face was shiny with sweat and that greasy feeling you get when it’s been too long since you showered. Miss Typewell was giving me an appraising look; I glanced down to see that my clothes were more rumpled than usual, which I hadn’t even thought possible. “Anyway, I need a line on any known associates of those troublemakers, especially if they’re someone we can pin down easy in, like, prison or something.” I stood still for a minute, swaying slightly on my feet. Miss Typewell hit me with that appraising look again.
“Eddie, you need some sleep. And a shower,” she said flatly.
I shrugged. “No time. So much to do. Gotta find the killers.”
“They’re not going anywhere, Eddie,” she said calmly. “From what you’ve told me, they have plans for Arcadia, so they’re not looking to skip town. They figure they’re safe.”
I sat down heavily on the couch in the anteroom. “Maybe . . . maybe you’re right,” I admitted. My limbs suddenly felt heavy, like they were made out of something . . . um, heavy. My brain was shutting down, regardless of what I wanted.
“Maybe I’ll just, y’know, shut my eyes for a sec’n’,” I muttered, my words slurring by the end of the sentence.
And then I was asleep.
* * *
The couch in Miss Typewell’s office was not the worst place I had ever woken up, not by a long shot. I’ve woken up tied to chairs, in the gutter, clutching the toilet, in my bathtub, under a table, and—following one monumental and completely unmemorable blackout—in the trunk of someone’s car as it was being pushed off the pier into Montague Bay. The couch, old and sagging as it was, with springs poking into my back and foam padding all lumpy in some places and flat and useless in others, was like a cozy featherbed by comparison.
My back still groaned as I stood up, because age doesn’t care about whether this sleeping spot was a nominal improvement over others I’d found myself in. I rose and stretched, feeling my vertebrae creak in protest. Miss Typewell looked at me over the rims of her glasses—she refused to get corrective surgery, despite it being so cheap and easy nowadays that virtually anyone could have it done in their home if they wanted—and said, “You’ve only slept for four hours. The day isn’t completely wasted, so relax.”
“Um, good,” I said, the thought of the day being wasted having never even entered my mind until she said something. “Anyway,” I said, shifting mental gears, “any luck finding known associates?”
“A couple,” she said tentatively, “but you’re not gonna like them.”
“Why? Who is it?”
“Earl Skivers.”
“You’re right, I don’t like it.” I collapsed back onto the couch. “Maybe I should just take another nap and hope you come up with someone less insane.”
“Not likely,” Miss Typewell replied. “Most of their known associates have either gone to ground hard, or they’re dead. Skivers was the only one I could dig up.”
“That just does not sound at all appealing,” I groaned. “I guess I could start checking the safe houses on that list the mystery man gave me.”
Miss Typewell arched an eyebrow at me. “Can you trust that guy or any of his information?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Damned if I know, but I’d rather walk into a trap set up by an unknown enemy than walk into Pratchett Correctional and face Earl Skivers right now.”
“Well, when you put it like that . . .” Miss Typewell said.
* * *
My first stop was designated Safe House Alpha Two-Four, a narrow, dilapidated townhouse in the twenty-four hundred block of South Birchmont Avenue. It’s just a few blocks from Wodehouse Square, deep in the heart of Old Town.
Like most of the Organization’s safe houses, the location of Alpha Two-Four was well-known to law enforcement folks. Knowing where the bad guys were was never the problem.
Even back when I was on the force, before the Organization really got, um, organized, we knew where to go to find the guys who were dealing drugs or running prostitution rings or whatever. The problem was just how entrenched they were in the community; yank one dealer off the streets, and he’d be replaced before you had him processed back at the precinct. The big fish were always the problem; going after the street level types was only attacking the symptoms, not the source of the disease.
In this case, though, I wasn’t after a big fish. I wanted a couple of small-fries. Guido and Billy Sunshine weren’t really anything more than jumped-up thugs, barely higher on the totem pole than the guys who’d been loitering outside the Speakeasy the other day. That they’d managed to kidnap and execute Wally Stewart spoke more to how unprotected the average citizen really was than to how skilled they were at their jobs.
There were a couple of guys hanging out on the front stoop of the townhouse as I pulled up in Miss Typewell’s car. They were dressed in the way they assumed young street toughs would dress: loose-fitting tank tops celebrating professional sports teams, ballcaps turned sideways over one eye, and baggy pants. Their shoes were definitely what the kids were calling on point about thirty or forty years ago. I wasn’t sure what the term was now, since I paid absolutely no attention to kids.
I did know young people didn’t dress like that anymore, especially not in the middle of November. Tank tops just were not seasonably appropriate. But thirty-five year-old thugs trying to cling desperately to their youth and failing miserably apparently did not care about such things.
The two thugs looked up and tried to stare menacingly at me as I approached the safe house. “This ain’t your home, pal,” one of them growled at me. He sounded like he was trying to lower his voice to sound more menacing. I wasn’t buying it.
The Invisible Crown (Hazzard Pay Book 1) Page 8