The Invisible Crown (Hazzard Pay Book 1)

by Charlie Cottrell

  “Move aside, guys,” I said, my hands relaxed at my sides, my fingers limbered and flexed. “I need in, and I’m not in the mood for your bullshit.”

  One of the thugs chuckled in what he probably thought of as a threatening manner. “Big man, talkin’ threats,” he said, standing up. He was a full head taller than I was, and standing on the third step of the stoop to boot. He looked down at me with a cockeyed grin on his face. “You sure you hard enough to mess with us, boy?”

  “Probably,” I said, landing a punch with my stun knuckles right at family jewels level. The thug doubled over, his voice no more than a pained squeak, as his friend tried to rise and draw a gun from his waistband at the same time. Pro tip: waistbands were not designed with weapons storage in mind. Guns have fiddly bits that get caught on belts, making it real tricky to pull off a quick draw. I had time to casually punch him in the face with the shock knuckles before he even had the gun free of his belt, and he went down in a twitching heap. Pocketing the knuckles, I tried the door and found that it was unlocked. “Amateurs,” I said, twisting the knob.

  I barely had time to register the shadow behind me before it solidified into a ninja. He yanked my hand off the doorknob and twisted me around. I tripped over one of the unconscious thugs and fell down the stairs to the sidewalk, managing to bang my head, elbows, and knees on the concrete steps on the way down. I landed in a heap on the sidewalk, cursing a blue streak and damning the day some guys watched one too many anime videos and said, “Hey, we should totally start dressing up in black pajamas and high-kicking people in the face.” I rose unsteadily to find the entrance to the safe house blocked by three ninjas.

  “You cannot enter this place, Detective Hazzard,” one of them said.

  “Why? Are your buddies Guido and Billy Sunshine hiding inside?” I growled.

  “You are mistaken, detective. We are not aligned with the men you seek. Regardless, they are not here, and entering this building would not be advisable.”

  “Nothing I do is ‘advisable,’ guy,” I replied peevishly. “If it were, you wouldn’t need a private detective to do it.”

  “Please, we are only seeking to help you, Detective Hazzard,” the ninja said. It was difficult to tell whether he was being sincere or not, what with the mask muffling his voice. I was starting to wonder, though. Last time, they’d warned me not to enter the warehouse, and the place had blown up. One data point did not make a pattern, but two might start to.

  I wasn’t left with much time to contemplate the warning, though, because the townhouse went up in flames right about then.

  II.

  Boom-Boom must’ve used different explosives for the safe house than he had for the warehouse. This time, the building went up in a massive fireball, the heat from the fire like a physical wall. I was knocked off my already-unsteady feet by the concussion wave, and the ninjas simply vanished as they were swallowed up by the fire. I don’t know if they survived or not, but that wasn’t really my biggest concern at the moment.

  I staggered back to my feet and stumbled away from the no-longer-all-that-safe house. I was feeling woozy and concussed, my eyes struggling to focus as I wobbled down the sidewalk to Miss Typewell’s car.

  Well, what was left of it, anyway. The windows had been blown out by the blast, and a smoldering chunk of concrete and brick was lodged in the engine. She was not going to be happy about that.

  Granted, I had more pressing concerns, such as staying conscious. That ended up being a losing battle, though, as my vision went black and I collapsed onto the sidewalk. The last thing I recognized was the sound of sirens in the distance, getting closer and fading all at once.

  * * *

  I came to sometime later, groggy and tied to a chair.

  “How undignified,” I croaked hoarsely to myself.

  Getting tied to a chair is one of the things you learn to avoid when you’re a hard-boiled detective. It’s practically Rule #1 of the Hard-Boiled Detective Handbook: don’t let yourself get knocked unconscious and tied to a chair in a dimly-lit room. Detectives who don’t learn to follow Rule #1 have short careers, usually ones that end with them tied to chairs in dimly-lit, vaguely-industrial rooms that smell of chemicals, a bullet through their brain for all their troubles.

  In my defense, this had already been a two-explosion week, and it was only Wednesday.

  If you do happen to find yourself tied to a chair, a bare lightbulb hanging over your head and casting flickering shadows in a shallow pool of light, it’s best to skip the whole, “Where am I?” malarkey and jump straight to trying to find a way out. Asking useless questions just wastes time and breath, both of which could be better-spent trying to get the hell out of the situation.

  I strained against the ropes tied around my wrists and found them to be expertly tied, which is never a good sign. They say you can judge a man by his enemies, but I say give me an incompetent enemy any day. You’re way less likely to lose to them.

  “Ah, good, you’re awake,” a harsh, mechanical voice called out across the empty room. I glanced around and saw a wall just beyond the pool of light surrounding my chair. A small speaker grill was built into the wall just below a piece of two-way glass. All I could see was my own faint reflection. I looked a bit worse for wear, my clothes covered in soot and small pock marks, most likely the result of cinders from the explosion. Whoever was on the other side of the glass had me at a distinct disadvantage. I mean, aside from the obvious one of being tied to a damn chair.

  “Okay, this has been great and all, but if you could go ahead and just untie me and let me go, that’d be fantastic. It’s been a rough week, and I’d really like to take a shower and sleep for a year or two.” Hey, it was worth a shot.

  “I’m afraid that is out of the question, detective,” the voice replied. It was distorted; someone was using a voice modulator to hide their identity. It could be anyone behind that glass partition, even my mother.

  “Want to at least tell me who you are?” I asked. “This whole talking to a disembodied robo-voice thing is a little off-putting.”

  The voice chuckled dryly, the voice modulator lending an eerie effect to the sound. “I think it’s best if you just call me . . . the Boss.” My blood ran cold. The Boss? The Boss, the one who headed the Organization? The one no one had ever identified? I’ll admit, I’m a lucky guy. It’s just that all the luck seemed to be of the bad persuasion.

  “Detective Hazzard,” the Boss continued, “I believe it’s time the two of us had a little chat about your case.”

  “The Boss?” I said incredulously. “Sure you are, big guy. Why not prove it?”

  The mechanical voice chuckled again. “And what could I do to prove my identity to you?” it asked robotically. “For the moment, you will simply have to trust me and take my word for it.”

  “Yeah, the word of a crime boss is worth its weight in gold these days,” I replied sarcastically. “Could we at least untie the damn ropes? It’s not like I’m gonna be able to do anything to you. You’ve probably got goons all over the place in here, and I’m sure you took all my weapons before I woke up.”

  “No, you are tied up for your own protection and safety, Mr. Hazzard,” the Boss replied.

  The second rule of Hard-Boiled Detecting states that, if you can’t avoid getting tied up to a chair in a dimly-lit room, for the love of God, don’t go asking stupid, bravado-fueled questions like—

  “My ‘protection and safety,’ huh? Why don’t you come out from behind your wall and talk face-to-face, asshole?”

  Yeah, like that.

  “I’m afraid not, Detective Hazzard,” the Boss replied, managing to convey a sense of amusement even through the digitized voice. “You must rein yourself in. You have quite the gauntlet to run. In fact, I might go so far as to say you are the only one who can save Arcadia from the coming storm.”

  I blinked. “Me?” I asked, more than a little incredulous. Then I laughed.

  The Boss managed to get across a sense
of annoyance when he said, “Are you quite through with your display, Detective Hazzard?”

  “Sorry, but you’ll have to forgive me if I think you’re being more than a little hyperbolic.” I glanced around the room, taking in my surroundings in more detail. Not that there were many more details readily available. The walls were composed entirely of blank concrete cinderblocks, except for the one with the speaker and the window in it. There was a solid metal door behind me, but no handle on this side.

  “Why me, though?” I asked. “Don’t you have, like, an army of thugs at your disposal? Guido, Billy, and Boom-Boom are a pain in the ass, but you should be able to catch them and lean on them hard enough to get at least one of the knuckleheads to spill the beans. They can’t be that hard for someone like you to take care of.”

  “This is about far more than those idiots,” the Boss replied, “and you know that. They are part of a rival faction that has been growing for months, if not years, and they have nothing less than the complete destruction of my empire in mind.”

  “So, let me get this straight, you want me to save the Organization so you can keep running crime in the city and making millions in the process? Yeah, that sounds like something I’d want to do.” I mean, look, I wasn’t a cop anymore. Hadn’t been for over a decade. But just because I’d been kicked off the force and now took a much more flexible approach to things like rules and laws didn’t mean I’d changed sides. I was slightly sketchy, not evil.

  “You mock, Detective Hazzard, but I know the sarcasm is a façade. We don’t have time for you to hem and haw and come to realize on your own what I already know,” the Boss said sharply.

  “And what is it you already know, tough guy?” I asked.

  “That this city is in danger, and there is no one who can avert the danger except you. My men are not . . . trustworthy enough for the task.”

  I gasped in mock surprise. “You mean the crooks aren’t honest? Well, land sakes, whoever would have imagined it!”

  “I am allowing you a certain leeway in how you speak with me, detective,” the Boss said flatly. “Do not assume that means I won’t punish you for insolence.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you will,” I replied, “but then where would you find a patsy to do your dirty work for you?”

  The Boss was quiet for a moment before he finally continued: “Detective Hazzard, I will pay you one million dollars to solve your case and stop whoever is behind the insurgency creating chaos in my ranks.”

  “Gee, that’s a lot of money,” I said, affecting an aw-shucks sort of tone. Shit, that was officially a metric fuckton of money. I wouldn’t even begin to know what to do with all that money. That dirty, tainted money that a mobster was offering me. Sometimes, it just does not pay to have a conscience.

  “I guess I’ll have to say ‘yes’ to that, huh?” I asked sarcastically.

  “Two million,” the Boss said robotically.

  “Yeah, keep raising the number, I’m sure that’ll change my mind eventually. Everyone has a price, right? It’s just a matter of figuring out how many zeroes are in each person’s number.” I scowled at the window. “Get lost, jerk. Find someone else to play your stupid little game, ’cause I’m not interested. Either cut me loose so I can go finish my case the way I want to, or come in here and put a bullet in my brain yourself.” The Boss was silent; I got the feeling whoever was on the other side of the window was gone now. “Yeah, I thought so,” I said more quietly.

  One of the ninja guys came and cut me loose a minute or two later, returning my belongings to me before holding up a blindfold. “You cannot see where we are,” he said simply. I shrugged and let the guy blindfold me, turn me around several times, and lead me by a labyrinthine route to an exit. When I took the blindfold off, I was standing somewhere in Old Town, completely alone.

  “Save the day,” I muttered to myself, balling up the blindfold and stuffing it into my pocket before digging out my cigarettes and lighting one up. “As if that were in my job description.”

  III.

  First order of business was to get stinking drunk. I accomplished that at the Funeral Parlor, drowning my sorrows and my senses in enough cheap swill to drown myself literally as well as figuratively.

  I was about a third of the way through my second fifth when I felt a presence settle in next to me. I swiveled on my barstool to see Captain O’Mally to my right. Or, more accurately, a pair of Captain O’Mallys, both equally betusked and frowning at my sorry state. No one can frown in a surly and disapproving manner like a large man with a walrus face.

  “Cap’n,” I mumbled, tossing off a mocking salute.

  “Eddie, you’re drunk,” he said.

  “Only a little,” I replied. “O’course, ’ve only been here for ha’f ’n hour or so.”

  O’Mally gestured to Rex and ordered a couple of coffees. When they arrived, he added sugar and cream to his own and left my straight black. He sat and sipped his for a moment before he said his piece.

  “So, this case you’re working,” O’Mally said conversationally.

  “How do you know about m’case?” I asked.

  O’Mally gave me an inscrutable look. “We know you’re searching for Wally Stewart. We’re also fairly certain the man was crooked. Probably worked for the Organization.”

  “That sounds about right,” I said, taking a shaky sip of my coffee. I could feel my head starting to clear, whether I wanted it to or not. As soon as O’Mally left me alone, it was back to whiskey for me.

  “What you probably don’t know is that the whole business could lead to a massive gang war,” O’Mally said, staring into his own cup of coffee. I held my peace, waiting to see what else the captain would say.

  “A gang war would destroy Arcadia, figuratively and literally,” he said. “Neither side is very discriminate when it comes to their targets. If this explodes like we think it will, there won’t be much left of the city.”

  I gave O’Mally a squinty-eyed look. “What are you saying, Edison?” I asked.

  “You have to stop the gang war,” he replied. “Do it for the city. Be the hero you know you can be, deep down in your heart.”

  Drunken laughter comes in a couple of varieties: the quiet, wry chuckle, and the annoying roar. Guess which one I opted for.

  “I’m glad your sense of humor is still intact,” O’Mally said crossly.

  “Look, Edison, I appreciate that you think I’ve got some deeper sense of moral righteousness. It’s nice that you believe that’s true. But I’ve got news for you. Any sense of obligation to save Arcadia went right out the window when the APD kicked me to the curb.”

  “And what if I told you the APD would welcome you back with open arms if you solved this case?” O’Mally asked. My face went studiously blank.

  “Let’s pretend I’m really dense. Spell this out for me, Edison,” I said slowly.

  “If you can find out who is behind the coup attempt and bring them in, Chief Esperanza has made it clear she would be willing to let the past be forgotten. You would be welcomed back onto the force, your record clean, and you’d come in as a detective with all the years of experience you’ve accumulated as a private eye.”

  It was a generous offer, that was for sure. Legitimacy, health insurance, retirement benefits . . . there were lots of reasons to accept the olive branch O’Mally was holding out. But I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t suspicious and contrary.

  “Gee, want me to arrest the Boss while I’m at it?” I asked sarcastically.

  O’Mally shook his head. “Not really. Chief won’t say, but I’m pretty sure she’s receiving political pressure to leave the Boss alone. The man has connections all over the city, even within the APD itself. Hell, even if you could get cuffs on the guy, he’d walk in a matter of hours at the most. Besides,” he added, managing to look sheepish despite the walrus gen-mod, “we understand how the Boss operates. If he were removed from power, who knows what we’d end up with in his place?”

  “Better the
devil you know, huh?” I said.

  O’Mally nodded. “No one likes to admit it, but there’s an . . . understanding between the Boss and the APD. We don’t interfere too much, and he doesn’t wipe us out the way we all know he could.” O’Mally took a sip of his coffee. It was a frank and disturbing confession. I knew there were some crooked cops in the APD, and even the good ones like O’Mally and Officer Higgins had to look the other way in some situations, but to hear someone flat-out admit the police let the Boss do his thing . . . it was disturbing.

  “I’ll . . . think about it,” was all I said. In all honesty, there wasn’t anything else I felt confident in promising just then.

  O’Mally patted me on the shoulder and stood up. “You do that, Eddie. The city is counting on you.” He walked away, and I stared into my cup of coffee, my mind awash in possibilities and quandaries.

  * * *

  I spent the next half hour or so wandering Old Town, sobering up, and thinking seriously about my next move. I’m not a man given to serious thoughts about next moves; generally, the next move is a pretty obvious choice between the dumb thing that will probably get you killed and the really dumb thing that will definitely get you killed. It’s always been easier to just go with the flow and see what happens, but this choice was too big to leave to chance. I had to make a real decision, and I had to do it soon, before everything blew up in my face.

  I found myself down the street from the bombed-out safe house. The building was still smoking slightly, a burnt-out reminder of the sort of people I was up against. Boom-Boom wouldn’t hesitate to take out a whole city block if he thought it would eliminate his target, too. And Guido and Billy Sunshine weren’t going to win humanitarian of the year anytime soon, either. They’d put a bullet in Wally Stewart’s head without a second thought, and I had no doubt they’d put one in me if they decided I was in their way.

  I needed more resources than I had. I needed help. As much as I hated to admit it, I probably needed to take the Boss up on his offer, even if it made my skin crawl.