The Invisible Crown (Hazzard Pay Book 1)

by Charlie Cottrell

  A quick call to Miss Typewell on my own machine set things in motion. “What’s up, Eddie?” she asked.

  “Got a guy’s computer, and he’s got a number for Guido or Billy Sunshine, dunno which. Doesn’t matter, though. I need to see if we can trace their location.”

  Miss Typewell’s image frowned at me from the vid window. “I can trace it through the computer, but it could be tricky. They could route it through any number of cell towers and proxy servers, make it nearly impossible to track them down quickly.”

  “How much time would you need?” I asked.

  She looked thoughtful. “At least three minutes,” she finally said. “I can at least get a general area in that amount of time, and maybe more specific if they did a crap job of things.”

  “Leave it to me,” I said, minimizing her window and opening up a new one with the goon’s phone. I dialed the number for the crime-namic duo and waited while the line connected.

  After the third ring, an audio-only connection was established, and I heard a rough, guttural voice say, “Did you get ’im?”

  “If by ‘him,’ you mean ‘me,’ then no, they did not,” I replied.

  “Hazzard!” the guy on the other end shouted angrily. “What the hell do we have to do to kill you?”

  “Try not sending the third-stringers after me,” I said nonchalantly. “So, which idiot am I talking to, Guido or Billy?”

  “I’m the guy who’s gonna kill you, Hazzard!” the person shouted in reply. He really needed to work on his voice modulation.

  “Now now, that’s no way to speak to your betters,” I said with a grin. I glanced at the chronometer in the corner of the window. It’d been only thirty seconds. I still had a long way to go. “Tell me who I’m talking to, so we can speak like the civilized individuals we are. Or pretend to be, in at least one case.”

  “I’m Guido,” he growled. At least he didn’t shout.

  “Nice to meet ya, guy. Here’s the thing. I take a dim view of people trying to kill me. Always have. It just feels, I dunno, personal. Vindictive. Unnecessary. I’m a reasonable man. I’ve got nothing against you personally. Billy neither. I’m just out to solve a case. Whatever is between you and the Boss, I don’t really have a horse in the race. Tell me where you stashed Wally Stewart’s body, and I’ll let bygones be bygones.” I picked at some dirt under one of my fingernails. “Of course, if you send more of your goon squad after me, or try to get Boom-Boom to blow me up again, I will take it very personally, and make it my life’s work to hunt you down and see that you spend the rest of your pathetic existence in a ten-by-ten cell. But I think we can avoid any unpleasantness like that, don’t you?”

  Guido was silent for a moment. I almost thought he’d cut the connection, but then he growled, “Sure. Meet us out at Pier 8. We’ll give you the body and go our separate ways.”

  “There now, see, wasn’t that easy?” I asked cheerfully. Guido grumbled something nasty about my parentage and ended the call. I glanced at the chronometer. It’d been exactly three minutes, because narrative likes to cut things close.

  “What did you get, Ellen?” I asked Miss Typewell.

  “He’s over in the Warehouse District. Looks like Pier 8 or 9, but that’s all the closer I got.”

  “Good enough,” I said. “I’ll let you know how it goes later.”

  “Are you sure you’re not about to walk into another trap, Eddie?” Ellen asked with apprehension.

  “Of course I’m about to walk into another trap,” I said with forced cheerfulness. “Those two idiots are about as subtle as sledgehammers.”

  IX.

  Back to the Warehouse District, back to where I’d almost been blown up just a couple of days earlier. This case was taking a pretty circuitous route to reach its end, but it was starting to feel like I was at least approaching an end. Getting Wally Stewart’s body wasn’t my end goal, obviously, but it was a good excuse for trying to nab Guido and Billy Sunshine. If I happened to catch Boom-Boom in the same net, well, who was I to pass up a three-for-one deal on criminal idiots?

  Guido hadn’t specified a particular warehouse on Pier 8, and when I tried calling the number I’d found on his goon’s computer again, I got no response. That wasn’t surprising. I was sure he was using a burner SIM card and swapped out cards—and numbers—pretty frequently anyway. All I’d probably done was accelerate the timetable on that routine a little.

  I pulled up a few blocks from Pier 8, having learned the hard way that parking too close to a warehouse that Boom-Boom had been around was not a good choice. I kept an eye out for anything suspicious, though given that I was walking through the Warehouse District, that could’ve been just about anything or anybody.

  Convinced that I was alone—or at least that I wasn’t in immediate danger of being attacked in the street in broad daylight—I began a building-by-building investigation of the pier. Like every other pier on the bay, there were four warehouses, two on each side of the wooden boardwalk jutting out over the dark waters of Montague Bay. In the case of Pier 8, Building C—on the far left from where I was standing on solid ground—was simply gone, having given in to the ravages of time and weather and just collapsed in on itself some years ago. It was a safe bet they weren’t in there.

  Building A, the front left warehouse on Pier 8, wasn’t in much better shape. The walls and roof were still standing, for the most part, but opening a door revealed a vast, empty open space where a floor must’ve been at some point. It sure wasn’t there anymore. I glanced around at the walls just in case Guido or Billy had some sort of parkour abilities no one had thought to mention, but I didn’t see anyone hanging off the walls anywhere, so I moved across the pier to Building B.

  Building B was likewise empty, though it still had a floor. About half the boards in the floor were rotting through, mind you, and walking across the warehouse was taking your own life into your hands, but the floor was there. Billy and Guido weren’t, though, so I moved on.

  “Process of elimination says you must be the one,” I muttered at the door to Building D, the last warehouse on the pier. It was definitely in the best shape of the four warehouses, at least as far as the exterior went. There were rust spots here and there, pitting the corrugated metal siding of the walls, and one corner of the roof appeared to be sagging under the weight of time and probably heavy rains, but things looked mostly structurally sound. Mostly.

  I pushed the door open as quietly as I could, which wasn’t so quiet, all things considered. The hinges squeaked and went on squeaking, protesting every centimeter of movement as they gave way under my now-less-than-gentle urging. I opened the door just wide enough to slide through, then shoved it closed behind me once again.

  The interior of the warehouse was pretty dark and filled with stacks of crates and boxes, obscuring the rest of the warehouse. There appeared to be power to the building, though, as there were faint lights casting more shadows than light across the inside of the warehouse.

  I drew the handgun I’d taken from the thugs’ glove box and checked the safety before moving deeper into the warehouse. I didn’t want to kill anyone, necessarily, but the popgun didn’t work well in tight, close quarters. My footsteps echoed faintly as I stepped around crates and boxes. I could see my footprints tracking through years of dust and neglect, but I didn’t see any others as I moved further into the building. Maybe I’d been wrong, and they were actually over on Pier 9 instead.

  The bullet tore a chunk out of a wooden crate a few inches from my left ear. I ducked back behind a pile of pallets as a few more shots joined the party. Well, somebody was there, at least. Maybe not Billy or Guido, but I definitely wasn’t alone.

  I kept low and sidled around the pallets, keeping my head down in case anyone else decided to take a potshot at me. I worked my way down a narrow corridor of pallets, crates, boxes, and metal storage containers. Any one of them could have held a trap, an ambush, or some unseen danger that I wasn’t at all prepared to face. I just kept mov
ing forward, hoping I’d spot a problem before it became terminal.

  The first booby trap was a tripwire laid across the aisle, nearly invisible in the low light of the warehouse. I felt it tug at my leg as I moved forward, and I threw myself flat on the floor as a small incendiary went off over me. It would’ve caught me right in the chest if I’d been standing, or the head if I’d still been creeping along on my hands and knees. As it was, the back of my jacket was singed and smoking. I rolled around a little just to make sure I wasn’t on fire.

  I got back up and continued on as quietly as possible, hoping the goons would think I was already dead and wouldn’t be paying much attention. I peeked around the corner of a crate and saw two men standing in the middle of an open space. I figured them for Guido and Billy Sunshine. One of them was glowing faintly. That had to be Billy Sunshine. The other looked more like an animal than a person. Both were wearing tracksuits and seemed oddly oily, even from a distance. They were having a heated if quiet discussion.

  “He’s gotta be dead,” Guido hissed. “Boom-Boom’s tripwire must’ve vaporized the idiot.”

  “I dunno,” Billy Sunshine replied, his bioluminescence dimming slightly. “He managed to avoid everything else we’ve thrown at him.”

  “Then you go check,” Guido snapped, annoyed. “I’m gonna get a drink.”

  Guido wandered off and Billy started making his way my direction. I thumbed the hammer back on the gun quietly and crouched behind the crate, waiting.

  Billy saw me just as he reached the corner. He opened his mouth to call out, and I jammed the gun barrel into it.

  “Not a sound,” I growled, locking eyes with him. “We’re gonna go find your buddy, and then the three of us are going to take a little trip to the police station. Don’t try to say anything or even nod. I’m gonna take the gun out of your mouth, but you’re gonna keep quiet. Just blink if you understand.” He blinked, so I pulled the gun out of his mouth and prodded him in the chest with it. “Lead the way. Don’t try anything stupid.” Billy wheeled around and started across the warehouse. I kept close, the gun up against the small of his back, just in case he tried anything.

  Of course, I wasn’t expecting the other jackass to be the one who tried something. And what Guido tried was walking up behind me and pushing the barrel of his gun into the small of my back.

  The turning of tables sucks, is the takeaway from all this.

  “Detective Hazzard,” Guido said, a sneer in his voice. “Nice of ya t’join us.”

  “Well, I knew you guys were putting together a nice reception for me, with a cheese plate and everything, and I didn’t want you to be disappointed,” I replied. Billy Sunshine turned around and relieved me of the pistol.

  With my hands in the air, I turned to face Guido. He was oily and slick, his thinning hair combed straight back and greasy, a thick gold chain hanging around his neck like an albatross made entirely of clichés. “I’m afraid we’re gonna have a change of plans, detective,” Guido went on, a disgusting grin spread across his face. I wanted to punch him. I wanted to punch both of them. Instead, I was hit in the back of the head by Billy Sunshine, still standing behind me with the pistol in his hand. I went down, and the world went black.

  X.

  I woke up—you guessed it—tied to a chair. This was becoming entirely too frequent an occurrence for my tastes.

  Billy and Guido emerged from the shadows and leered down at me. “Detective Hazzard, nice to see you’re awake again,” Billy said. His skin was glowing brightly now, and it hurt my eyes. I squinted against the glare as he continued. “See, our new boss, he don’t care much for you getting your nose in his business, and he’s asked us to take care of you. So we had Boom-Boom work up a little present for ya.” Guido flourished a small box with wires and a timer taped to it. The timer was already counting down. Guido placed the box in my lap and stepped back, still grinning.

  “It’s been fun, detective,” he said, then punched me in the face, because it was that sort of day for me. I rocked back in the chair, but Guido reached out and righted me before I toppled over. I started to struggle against the ropes as Guido and Billy Sunshine made for the exit, chatting and laughing about how I was going to finally get what was coming to me.

  They never noticed the guy who dropped from the deep shadows overhead to land behind them. Never noticed him creep up right behind them. Never noticed as he took each one out with a well-placed blow behind the ear.

  I noticed, of course. It all happened right in front of me, and it wasn’t like there was a lot else I could do at the time.

  The man turned and hurried over to my chair. He turned out to be the solidly-built man from the other night, the mystery man who’d helped me track these two dumbasses down in the first place. He quickly and deftly undid the knots holding me to the chair, then grabbed the bomb and hurried toward the door.

  “Get out now,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m not sure if I’ll get this thing far enough away before it goes off.”

  “Wait, are you making some sort of stupid, selfless sacrifice?” I asked, rubbing my wrists and looking around for my coat. I found it and my hat lying on a table a few meters away. I grabbed them and started to follow the mystery man.

  “Now is not the time for dumb questions, Detective Hazzard! Go!” He took off at a run for the nearest exit, and I turned around and made a beeline for the exit on the opposite side of the building. I hesitated for a brief moment, considering whether or not to grab one of the two thugs I’d come here to track down, but decided hauling two hundred pounds of unconscious hooligan was probably not the best idea when you’re pressed for time.

  I hit the door to the outside at a dead run, my legs pumping and my lungs working like a bellows. A broken, barely-useable bellows, mind you, but the smoking does take its toll. Not for the first time, I considered the possibility that I needed to quit, or at least cut back. But that was a New Year’s resolution for later, assuming I survived.

  The bomb went off on the other side of the building, flattening the weak walls and dropping the roof down on top of everything. The blast wave knocked me off my feet. I hit the pier and turned my fall into a half-assed roll, coming up on all fours and turning to look back at the warehouse.

  The place was a shambles. The roof had hit the pier hard, cracking the rotten boards that served as the floor for the warehouse, and the whole rusted and rotten carcass of better days was sinking into the bay. So much for Billy and Guido, I guess.

  There was no sign of the mystery man. I assumed he hadn’t gotten far before the bomb went off, probably while it was still in his hand. I gave him a moment of silence, an acknowledgement of his selfless bravery and assistance. I had no idea who he was or why he’d helped me, but I was alive because of him. I’d figure out who he was and avenge him later, if I could. For now, I was stuck, and I had no idea what to do next or where to go.

  XI.

  The Boss gave me another call early the next morning. I was sitting at my desk, hunched over a cup of Miss Typewell’s coffee and staring at an unwinnable game of solitaire when Ellen stuck her head through the door and informed me the Boss was on the line.

  I minimized the solitaire game and pulled up the phone call. It was audio-only, the Boss’s vocal distorter masking his true identity as he told me, “I have a new lead for you. A car will be downstairs in ten minutes. Get in it and go to Eakin Plaza and meet with Vinny the Pooh. He’ll be your contact and support for this job.”

  “You hired Vinny? I don’t know if that’s genius or desperate,” I said.

  “And I frankly do not care what your opinion is,” the Boss replied. “Just do what you’re told.” He hung up without another word.

  Miss Typewell gave me a strange, concerned looked as I shrugged on my coat. “Eddie, I have a bad feeling about this,” she said.

  “So do I. But we’re already on board this ship. Might as well ride it ’til it sinks.”

  She arched an eyebrow at me. “That was not
the most comforting metaphor,” she said.

  I gave her a smile. “I never said this was a comfortable job.”

  * * *

  The long, black towncar pulled up to the curb in Eakin Plaza, the engine idling smoothly as the driver waited for me to crawl out. Eakin Plaza was basically the Bizarro Wodehouse Square. Really, it’s what Wodehouse Square was thirty years ago: sophisticated, elite, and expensive as hell; the financial and social center of the city of Arcadia, the beating heart of its commerce and banking and all that. It was well-lit, clean, and bustling with legitimate, honest financial industry. All the major banks and financial institutions have offices in Eakin Plaza, and ancillary businesses—high-end restaurants, law offices, exclusive boutiques and the like—have sprung up around the Plaza to cater to the needs and desires of a group for whom money is no object. The streets were clean and free of vagrants, the walls weren’t covered in graffiti, and most of the buildings had high-tech security systems instead of the bars-over-the-windows-and-doors technology that served most of Old Town. The people walking around the plaza were well-dressed, professional individuals. The center of Eakin Plaza was dominated by a large marble fountain depicting some old philosopher of some sort spouting water into a large pool.

  The towncar dropped me off in front of Arcadia Savings and Loan, one of the biggest of the big banks in the city. The driver rolled his window down to look at me and said, “Meet with Vinny. He has your instructions. Do not attempt to make contact with us. We will call you when we need to.”