The Invisible Crown (Hazzard Pay Book 1)

by Charlie Cottrell

  “Okay,” I said out loud, “I know one of you pajama-party guys is following me around. Go ahead and come on out.” There was silence on the street, no movement, and then off to my left a shadow seemed to fade into the foreground and resolve itself into the shape of a man. He moved quickly and silently until he was standing right in front of me.

  “What do you need, Detective Hazzard?” he asked.

  “Tell the Boss I’ll take his deal. I’ll solve the case, I’ll find out who’s behind his rival, and I’ll stop them, too. In return, I’m expecting a Scrooge-McDuckian pile of money. The sort you could swim through, if you were so inclined. And I have a list of tools and equipment he’ll need to provide for me.” I opened a vid window, typed up a quick list, and slid the thing over to the ninja, who forwarded the information on to the Boss.

  “Is there anything else, detective?” the ninja asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll need a car.”

  IV.

  “Miss Typewell, come downstairs. I need to show you something outside.”

  “I’m kind of busy, Eddie,” Miss Typewell replied.

  “It’s about your car,” I said.

  Miss Typewell’s head shot up, spitting me with a stare through the vid window. “What did you do to my car, Eddie?” she asked angrily.

  “I totaled it on accident,” I replied, “but it wasn’t my fault! Boom-Boom blew up a building at it.”

  “Edward Francis Hazzard, I swear to everything that is holy, if you put even a dent in my car . . .”

  “Just come downstairs, please,” I said.

  A minute later, Miss Typewell was curbside, staring at the car I was sitting in.

  “This isn’t my car,” she said flatly.

  “It is now,” I replied, tossing her the key fob as I climbed out. It was brand new, top-of-the-line, and loaded with all the options. It probably cost more than I paid Miss Typewell per year.

  “That thing is worth more than you pay me per year,” Miss Typewell breathed. “How did you afford it?”

  I shrugged. “Perks of working for the client I just took on,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “What client? I don’t remember seeing anything about a new client.” And Miss Typewell would know: the new clients usually went through her and her filing system before they ever got to me. I had acted outside of my usual bounds, and would probably suffer for it later.

  I shrugged again. “This client prefers to remain anonymous. Let’s just say they’ve got deep pockets and are feeling rather generous.”

  Miss Typewell’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not suspicious or anything,” she said.

  “Nope, not even a little bit,” I replied. “Anyway, a package should be arriving soon. I’ll be in my office in the meantime.”

  * * *

  In fact, the package arrived less than half an hour later by courier, a young man with a fashionable haircut and gen-mod cat whiskers instead of the usual facial hair. He purred slightly as Miss Typewell signed the delivery slip. He handed over the box and twirled away, headed off down the hallway like a feral tom on the prowl.

  “Your package arrived, Eddie,” Miss Typewell said, bringing the box into my office and setting it down on the desk. I was reclined in my office chair, feet propped on the edge of the desk. I dropped my feet to the floor and sat up, rubbing my hands together eagerly.

  “Excellent,” I said, tearing at the packaging tape like a kid on Christmas. Inside, everything I’d asked the Boss for was there, ready and waiting to be used to solve the case.

  “Eddie, what is all that?” Miss Typewell asked as I lifted items out of the box.

  “Well, these,” I said, gesturing with a pair of goggles I’d just pulled out, “are spectrometer goggles. They can show me different wavelengths of light, like infrared and ultraviolet, and they can detect trace elements of various substances like gunpowder and such. This,” I continued, hauling out a small cylinder, “is a flashbang grenade. Loud noise and bright flash of light, great for confusing your enemies. I’ve got about half a dozen of those. There’s also a personal force field generator, a few backup battery packs for the same, a couple of GPS tracking beacons, a smoke grenade or two, and a couple of other useful odds and ends.”

  “Are you off to fight a war?” Miss Typewell quipped.

  “Pretty much,” I said grimly. “Our new client expects some pretty serious results. Thankfully, they’re providing me with the support necessary to maybe make it happen.”

  Miss Typewell was quiet for a moment, taking it all in. “So, what’s your plan of attack, o’ captain my captain?”

  “I’m kinda making it up as I go along,” I replied. “I don’t think the other safe houses are going to be worth checking into. Any of them the guys might’ve taken cover in are probably booby trapped six ways to Sunday like the one I checked out earlier.” I pulled out a webbed belt filled with pockets and pouches and started loading various tools and implements into it. “Where are we with getting an interview with Skivers?”

  “It’s all set up for tomorrow morning,” Miss Typewell replied, suppressing a shiver. I didn’t blame her; Skivers was a one-man killing machine, a serial killer on par with ten Jack the Rippers or your average videogame character.

  “Okay. In the meantime, I’m going to check in with some informants, see what I can find out about Guido and Billy Sunshine.”

  “Be careful, Eddie,” Miss Typewell said. “This case sounds like it’s getting worse and worse all the time.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said, standing up. “At this rate, I’ll be fighting an all-out war against half of the city’s thugs by the end of the week.”

  V.

  I made my way to Gilbert’s Park, a small green space near the border between Old Town and Downtown. It was firmly within the former’s boundaries, though, as evidenced by the lack of landscape maintenance and the passed-out winos occupying most of the benches.

  I’d put out feelers earlier in the week for some informants I usually relied on. They were fairly trustworthy, as long as you remembered to pay them, and they usually weren’t looking to kill me. That put them in a category of something like a friend, albeit one who would only possibly think twice before selling you out to the highest bidder.

  The informant I was meeting in the park was a bit different. I knew I could trust her. She was the straightest of straight shooters, the most unfailingly honest person I knew. You could bend iron around her sense of self and her honesty, if that was your thing. She was short—maybe five feet tall—and skinny and pale, like she didn’t eat much or ever get any sun. And she cursed like a sailor who’d just lost their shore leave privileges.

  Also, she was blind as the proverbial bat. Couldn’t see a damn thing. She called herself the Little Blind Girl. Whatever her real name might have been, I didn’t know it and she wasn’t sharing.

  Her information was always good. She could also be relied upon to offer unsolicited advice on just about anything you wouldn’t care to ask about. She really cared, in her own rage-fueled way.

  I was sitting on a park bench beneath an ancient oak tree, admiring the changing colors of the leaves. Fall in Arcadia was always a time of transition and change; the few trees in the city did their best to put on a nice performance, changing their leaves from green to a riot of reds, yellows, and oranges, then strewing them about like pieces of chlorophyll confetti. It added a nice splash of color to the otherwise drab gray of the city.

  I heard the Little Blind Girl come sauntering up, kicking at the leaves in boots that looked to be three sizes too big for her. Her eyes were covered by large, dark glasses, and her blonde hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail. She was holding a leash that connected her to a massive Bassett hound, a white and brown behemoth with a sign around his middle that read, Do Not Pet, I Will Bite. From the look of him, though, you wouldn’t think he had anything like teeth. The dog looked to be 90% floppy ears and fuzzy jowls. I was pretty sure about the most damage he could
do would be to love you to death.

  “Eddie fuckin’ Hazzard, what the hell do you want?” she asked as she plopped down on the bench next to me.

  “I’m looking for Guido and Billy Sunshine. Heard of ’em?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, I know those two assholes. Used to be Organization, but they broke away a few weeks back and went sorta freelance. ’Cept not really. They’re working for the Boss’s rival now.”

  “Yeah, I know all that,” I said.

  “Well, look at Mr. I Know Everything Already. Gimme a minute to get to the fuckin’ point, maybe?”

  “Sorry,” I apologized.

  “Damn right. Anyway, let me tell you about those two douche nozzles. Guido thinks he’s old-school Mafia. Guy likes to wear track suits and gold chains, got a face like a slab of beef that’s been left out in the sun too long. It was a bad gen-mod. He wanted to have reptile skin, but he just ended up looking like a candidate for facial reconstruction surgery.”

  “Charming,” I said.

  “Totally. Billy Sunshine’s name ain’t just clever. Idiot has a gen-mod that makes him glow in the dark like a damn firefly. You’ll always see that bastard comin’, but you’ll wish you didn’t. He’s even uglier than his buddy.”

  “Any idea where I could find them?” I asked.

  The Little Blind Girl shrugged. “They’re avoiding most of their usual hangouts right now. They’ve got a van, though. Bright red-orange. Or orange-red. I dunno much about colors. It’s like a mobile headquarters for the two of them. They used it in a lot of kidnappings for the Organization before they went rogue.”

  “There can’t be that many vans that color in Arcadia,” I mused.

  “How the hell would I know?” the Little Blind Girl snapped. “You just keep an eye out for it. It’s bound to turn up somewhere. I’d check around Downtown. Last I’d heard, they were holed up in some fancy hotel, the ne Royale, but that was days ago. They could’ve moved on by now.”

  “Thanks for the information,” I said, digging a manila envelope out of my pocket and pressing it into her hands. “Your fee’s on the datachip inside.”

  “A real pleasure doin’ business with you, Eddie,” the Little Blind Girl said. She hopped to her feet, clicked her tongue at the dog, and they ambled off down the sidewalk to wherever it was she went after our conversations.

  I had some more facts and information. With two connections to the hotel Downtown, it seemed likely that I’d find something important there. It was about time I paid a visit to the ne Royale.

  VI.

  The ne Royale was a pretty damn fancy place, all marble and glass and sleek, smooth curves. The staff were dressed in clothes that were much nicer than mine and definitely more current, fashion-wise. The place was busy, and the massive lobby echoed with the humming susurrus of quiet conversation and the mellow, sophisticated music of a string quartet in one corner. The center of the lobby was dominated by a large water feature, a fountain that shot jets of water fifteen meters into the air to come splashing back down into a wide pool.

  The concierge’s desk was a broad arc of marble across the back of the lobby, staffed by at least three individuals in starched white shirts and black bowties. I stepped up to the first available staff member and flashed them my private investigator’s badge. “Hi. I’m here doing an investigation into the disappearance of Wally Stewart. I was given to understand he’d spent some time here recently. Can I see the room where he was staying?” I was playing a hunch, hoping Wally had checked in under his own name. Private detectives rely very heavily on pure, dumb luck, and mine paid off this time.

  The concierge checked my ID and verified I was who I claimed to be, then pulled up a vid window and did some searching. “It appears Mr. Stewart was staying in one of the executive suites on the tenth floor. I can give you a passkey and have a bellhop show you to the room.” He rang a bell on the desk and took out a passkey and coded it to the correct door. A bellhop appeared at my side, and the concierge told him to take me to room 1014. The bellhop nodded and led me to a bank of elevators on the west side of the room. The elevator rose silently on its hydraulics, a faint electric hum and the sensation of lightness in my stomach the only indicators we were moving. The doors slid open silently at the tenth floor, and the bellhop led me down the hallway to room 1014.

  “Here you are, sir,” he said, gesturing to the door.

  “Thanks, kid,” I said, handing him a couple of dollars. “You might wanna step back, just in case.” I pulled out the popgun, flicked the safety off, and slid the keycard through the lock. The door clicked and I pushed it open, peeking into the room beyond.

  Inside, Guido and Billy Sunshine froze, staring at the doorway and me in it.

  “Hey, guys,” I said casually. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Wally Stewart.”

  Then the bellhop smacked me in the back of the head and I went out like a light.

  * * *

  Getting knocked out is not good for you. It’s really easy to get concussions that way, and those things mess with your brain more than you’d think.

  A not-insignificant side effect of getting your head almost caved in is you wake up groggy and with a terrible headache, the throbbing, blindingly painful kind that you would gladly swallow a bullet to end.

  I had just such a headache when I woke up, tied up to a chair, because of course I was. I also wasn’t in the hotel anymore, unless someone had decided to redecorate with a general rot-and-decay motif. The bellhop was there with me, though. He’d changed out of his uniform into a pair of baggy pants and a shirt that was two sizes too small for him. The guy was thick around the middle, and the fabric of his shirt was stretched in such a way that left nothing about his physique to the imagination. He was sitting on the floor in front of me, fiddling with some wires and a box.

  “Boom-Boom Borglioni, I presume,” I croaked.

  He looked up at me and smiled. “Yup. I see why you’re the clever detective,” he said. His hands were nimble and fine-fingered, and he managed to wire whatever it was he was messing with without even really looking at it.

  “I assume the box is a present for me,” I guessed.

  He nodded and grinned again. “You got it. A little going away gift. Guido and Billy thought you’d appreciate it.” He finished what he was doing and stood up, the box held loosely in his hands. He walked over and placed it in my lap, flipping a switch on the side and stepping away. “In about five minutes, that bomb will go off, taking you and everything in the surrounding block out with it.” His grin widened. “It’ll be a hell of a show, and I’ll have a front-row seat. See ya ’round, detective.” He walked off, chuckling to himself.

  I struggled against my bonds, hoping that Boom-Boom was less skillful with knots than he was with explosives. Turns out, he wasn’t. The ropes were expertly-tied and too tight to wiggle free of. The little package in my lap was ticking away the seconds, counting down to the moment when everything that made up me would be scattered across several city blocks in a thin, red mist.

  In all my years as a private detective, I’d often wondered how it would all end. Would I go out in a blaze a glory, a hail of bullets cutting me down as I fought it out against a gang of enforcers? Or would I die doing something heroic and epic, like saving a busload of kids from a terrorist bomb? Those situations seemed unlikely. My luck didn’t run that direction. In the darkest depths of my shriveled little lump of a heart, I honestly always assumed it’d be something like this: knocked out by a no-name mook, tied up to a chair, and left for dead. Or blown up. Or shot. Hell, the possibilities were endless, when your enemy had you tied down in a dimly-lit room in an undisclosed location.

  “Guess this is it,” I said out loud, thinking maybe it might change something about my situation. It didn’t. I was still tied to a chair with a bomb in my lap, which we can all agree is a less than ideal situation to find one’s self in.

  I couldn’t have had more than a minute or two left. I kept waiting for my life
to flash before my eyes, to see the highlights of a life misspent with booze and cigarettes and bad choices.

  Did I have regrets? Of course. Lots of them. I regretted not fighting to stay on the force. I regretted crawling into a bottle to escape my frustrations and anger. I regretted not saying goodbye to Tess. I regretted taking that long shot bet at the racetrack on Belly Up to the Bar in the fifth. That damn nag had cost me $500 last week, which meant my rent check had bounced again this week.

  Mostly, though, I regretted not getting a chance to have one last drink.

  VII.

  They say there’s no such thing as miracles, that anything you can’t explain scientifically you simply lack the knowledge or information to find the answer.

  Nonetheless, I’m calling it a miracle that, with about a minute left, one of the Boss’s ninjas showed up and untied me.

  “What the hell?” I said, surprised as the ropes fell away from my wrists. I stood up, the bomb falling from my lap to clatter to the floor. The ninja stooped down and flipped the switch on the side of the box to the off position, then grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me away from the bomb.

  “We must leave, now,” he said. “There is no guarantee the bomb will not still go off.” He hustled me out of the building and into the street, then lifted a manhole cover in the pavement and dropped silently into the gloom below. I followed more slowly, using the ladder and hoping my head would be below street level if and when that bomb went off.

  I’d just touched down in the sewer below when the bomb exploded. The walls of the sewer shook, dust and flakes of concrete raining down on us as the building I’d been tied up in disappeared in an instant.

  We stood there in silence for a moment, each of us lost in our thoughts.