by Thomas Green
“I need you to arrest someone, Paladin,” I said with a smile. “I got the last gang member from the sex traffickers and will send you the GPS coordinates.”
“Did you kill him?” she asked, voice cold.
“No.” I put my gun back into the holster. “But he’s incapacitated.”
“Thanks, I’ll send someone.” She hung up.
I messaged her the coordinates and pocketed my phone. The woman was still crying while the man with the axe was looking around in a daze. He would need a moment to get up.
I looked at the woman and showed her the badge hanging on my belt. “Lucas Johnson, private investigator. It’s all right now. He’s not a threat anymore.”
“You don’t get it,” she screamed. “He’s got my son… he’s got Billy.”
I scratched the back of my head. So that was how he got the family to hide him. He kidnapped their son and told them that if something would happen to him, they’d never see the boy again. And it almost worked.
I put on a sour smile. “I know where your son is. Help your husband up and I’ll lead him there.”
She stared at me breathless.
I glanced at the food on the table and my stomach grumbled. “Mind if I help myself?”
“No… please…” she crawled over to her husband to help him.
I took Keith’s chair and dug into the meal. The boiled beef with spinach and potatoes tasted great.
“How… how can you eat now?” the woman asked, raising the unconscious child in her hands. She had enough reason not to try to wake him up while her husband was clawing up to his wobbly feet.
I swallowed and cut myself another piece of meat. “I’ve been doing this for a while.”
The man poured himself a glass of water and drank it. His eyes dropped to the ground. “I’m… sorry about the axe.”
I waved the apology away with my hand, hastily stuffed my mouth with food, and rose. I motioned to the door and stepped forward. He grabbed a sports jacket from the hanger and followed me.
As we stepped out of the house, the old man with the newspaper was watching us. I tipped him my hat. He smiled and turned his eyes back to the papers.
I led the father through the forest. As I walked, I took out my phone and texted Antonio. Keith is gone. LJ
A reply soon came: Thank you!
Good. At least someone had a good day.
Fifteen minutes later, the father cleared his throat. “How… how did you find him?”
“Trade secrets,” I said with a smile. “Did the man leave yesterday for more than three hours?”
“No… he didn’t leave at all, why?”
“Someone dear to me disappeared and he was my prime suspect.” I sighed, my heart sunk into the stomach. The other suspects I had were a lot more complicated cases than this one. “What happened?”
“I... I was taking a walk with my son,” the man said, his eyes glistening. “Then I felt pain from the back of my neck and passed out. When I woke up, that man sat near me. He told me he had my son and that if I wanted to ever see the boy again, I would need to shelter him.” Tears started sliding down his face.
I let him speak since that would help him make peace with what happened. I was sure I knew where his son was, but didn’t know if the kid lived.
“He said that if we would shelter him for two weeks, we would get our son back… I didn’t know what to do. We were so afraid.”
“That’s normal.”
He sniffed once. “Thank you.”
We reached Keith’s cottage in silence. I headed straight into the basement. The man followed me, barely breathing. I haven’t even asked for his name. Not that it mattered.
I entered the cellar and started moving the sacks of potatoes. Once I cleared them, I saw a square frame in the floor. My fingers fit into the gap and I raised the wooden desk.
Stench of piss and sweat punched my nose.
Below was a shallow hole inside which lay a plastic barrel wrapped with ropes with a tube in the lid. I loosened the ropes, grabbed the barrel and raised it up.
I peeled off the lid and gazed inside. The boy huddled within stared at me with wide eyes, his face covered with dried tears.
I tossed the lid aside and the man looked into the barrel. He burst into tears and grabbed his son, who started crying too. He raised him from the barrel, clutching him in his arms.
Well, at least someone got the happy ending. I turned and left. I went straight to my car, changed the address on GPS back to New York and started driving. This man kidnapped someone, but it wasn’t Evelyn. And I wasn’t going to get back the five hours this cost me.
On the way back, I called Sora.
He picked up after four beeps. “Sora Yamato.”
“Lucas. Would you happen to know where the Yakuza’s boss, Gonnosuke, lives in New York?”
He took a moment to answer. “Why would I tell you that?”
“Because I’m going to pay him a very unfriendly visit.”
Sora told me the address.
Chapter 12
THE LOCAL YAKUZA BOSS, Gonnosuke Muso, lived in an apartment in Lower Manhattan, straight across the street from their new building. The sun has already set, leaving the city at the mercy of streetlights. I wasn’t lucky enough to catch a blackout though.
I circled the skyscraper containing dozens of apartments and eyed the maintenance door. The front was access-card only and was visible from the street. Here, in the side street between two skyscrapers, the door was much better shielded from sight. I approached and looked at the panel by the side.
As if I had time to get an access code. I filled my eyes with aether and tweaked my vision for a moment. After half a minute of effort, I started seeing low, yellow light within the wall. The electricity cables led upward from the panel.
I was rushing, wasn’t I?
Time for a cigarette. I took a smoke and let the nicotine calm me down, if only for a moment. There were two ways to approach the Yakuza investigation. I could call Gonnosuke, try to arrange a meeting and attempt to be friendly. The advantage would be that this wouldn’t harm the relationship between me and the Yakuza and could prevent a lot of potential trouble in the case I was wrong about them kidnapping her.
The risk was that such approach would take a long time and I would trap myself if they indeed had Evelyn because it would tell them I knew. They would prepare for me then, severely limiting my options. On the other hand, violence was sure to produce fast results at the cost of burning all bridges.
I remembered the cross amulet hanging around my neck. Katherine said something about not choosing violence, hadn’t she?
She did. And I would follow her advice some other time.
Not today, not when it was about Evelyn.
I always tiptoed around organizations like the Yakuza, careful to maintain good relationships with the bosses of Secret Societies. But when it came to Evelyn, I couldn’t care less about anyone else. The Yakuza was about to join the Nether Mart on the list of organizations that wanted me dead.
I donned my leather gloves, fuelled my hand with aether and hit the wall above the panel with two fingers. Steel screeched and my fingers passed through. The panel went dark as I severed the connection. There was bound to be an alarm that would go off if the panel was damaged. But loss of power was unlikely to trigger anything. I jabbed the door’s lock with the same two fingers, destroying the mechanism, and entered.
Beyond lay a hallway that led to the maintenance rooms. I felt authorized and passed through. Finding the main transistor wasn’t difficult. The machine was locked inside a barred room with a large DO NOT ENTER sign written with yellow letters on a red plaque.
I never excelled at reading comprehension tests, so I broke the lock and looked at the humming metal case. The static electricity made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I drew my gun, aimed and fired. One, two, three, four, five, six. Transistors weren’t constructed to withstand .44 caliber bullets.
T
he lights went off. Rumbling and humming echoed through the air and the lights went back up. With a scowl, I prowled through the maintenance rooms and soon found the secondary transistor, locked in the same manner as the first one.
My right pocket became the new home of the used shells. I reloaded with a full moon clip, kicked out the door and gave the reserve generator six bullets. That knocked it out and the lights went off for good.
I left the maintenance rooms and rushed to the stairs. This was bound to cause an alarm and, after an investigation, would lead to the electric company calling the police. But by the time that happened, I would be long gone.
Yes, this was risky and bound to bring future trouble. Yet it was the fastest way to knock out all the defense mechanisms and seal all escape routes. I had no idea how a Yakuza boss would secure his apartment, but most of it was sure to run on electricity.
I dashed up the stairs. For the people inside, this had to look like a blackout. Those weren’t common in the New York, but also not impossibly rare.
The forty-three floors of stairs I ran made me pant and my legs screamed with strain. My pulse beat in my temples. Of course, the Yakuza boss had to live on the highest floor of the tallest building around. I started taking long, steadying breaths to calm my beating heart.
On the plus side, any reinforcements would have to come in the same way, and I doubted many could. As I reached the top floor, I crossed the platform and softly pushed the door open. Beyond lay a hallway with the elevator door. In front of it was the apartment door and nearby stood guards, four men in suits with guns in hand.
Yakuza apparently owned the entire floor. Since dark clouds covered the sky and there were no buildings of similar height around, nearly complete darkness drowned the hallway. I could see thanks to my aether sight but doubted the others could.
I snuck through the door and soundlessly crept toward the nearest man. He raised his gun, aiming next to me and whispered something in Japanese.
All the others tensed and raised their guns. Okay, I wasn’t as silent as I thought. But that changed nothing about them being unable to see me.
I bolted forward and jabbed the first man’s chin. He fell to the ground and the others fired. Since small caliber bullets couldn’t get past my aether barrier, I stepped to the next one and punched him. My strength slipped. His jaw blew apart, he spun like a top and fell. The last two men followed him in the next three seconds.
The door to Gonnosuke’s apartment was made of steel. My aether sight revealed arcane symbols etched into both the door and the frame. Great.
I walked by the wall, knocking. The concrete released a dull sound after each tap. After three minutes, I found a spot where the sound was louder. The concrete must have been thinner here because it contained cables or water pipes or something else of that sort.
From my aether, I formed a sphere in my palm. I compressed the aether, made the energy spin faster, and aimed at the wall. The explosion thundered through the air. The aether blast shattered concrete to dust, including the five-foot-wide ventilation shaft that led through the wall.
I gazed down into the shaft, feeling a slight chill running up my back, and leapt through the opening. Candles illuminated the following room with dim light. Two men were rushing toward me from the direction of the door, their bodies filled with aether, katanas in hand.
As the first man stepped in, I clenched my thigh, drew my colt and fired at his knee. One, two, three, four, five, six. His aether barrier blocked the first four bullets. The remaining two shattered his knee. He fell to the ground, screaming with pain.
The second one slashed at me. I sidestepped the cut and swung at his head. He ducked. I stepped in, caught his head and launched my knee. My wounded, exhausted calf screamed but obeyed. He raised his hand to block. My strength slipped. Bones snapped as my knee crushed his arm into his face, cracking the skull. His body went limp.
The men I shot slashed at my leg. I tried to dodge, but my leg had enough. He grazed my right calf, cutting through the pants and scratching the flesh. I stomped on his head. Luckily, my strength didn’t slip, and I only knocked him out.
Good. I ducked and checked my leg. Blood dripped out of the wound. Just a scratch… phew. I had to start being a lot more careful. With my magical sight, I searched for more traces of aether. The corpses lying around me oozed a dark blue color.
After a moment of looking around, I found traces of gray aether, most likely Gonnosuke’s. I followed them. This part of the vast apartment was an open space. The dividing point was apparently the elevator and its platform in the middle, where a wall stood across with a door on each side.
The room around me contained a large TV, several couches, a small swimming pool, a reading table and a small library. I took out my phone, looked up the number of Sasaki Kojiro, the Yakuza’s head of security, and pressed call.
He picked up within a single beep. “Hello.”
“Sasaki, I suppose you’re now driving to your boss’s house.”
His voice dropped down an octave and he took a short pause. “How would you know that?”
“Because I’m standing in his living room. Call him and tell him I’m there and that we need to talk.” I glanced at the table which contained a picture of a family of four with the oldest man being Gonnosuke. “If he has anyone who he doesn’t want to die as collateral damage, he’s got a minute to come here and talk to me. Afterward, I’ll start searching the place by blasting through walls with magic.” That wasn’t precisely what I was planning to do, but I figured this would be the fastest way to force Gonnosuke to talk to me. Nice of me, I knew.
“You’ll pay for this with your life.”
“Perhaps.” I hung up and walked to a cabinet. I poured myself a glass of water and, not even thirty seconds later, one door opened and Gonnosuke entered the room. Even in the dim light, he was visibly pale, but held his back straight as he walked toward me. His white shirt shone from his black suit. “This is a rather strange way to come to talk.”
I swirled the water in the glass and turned the picture of his family so he would see it. While I didn’t intend to hurt them, he would cooperate better if he thought I would. “The situation is rather extreme, I admit. I have a reason to believe your organization kidnapped someone it shouldn’t have.”
He sat on the couch five feet away from me and crossed his legs. “And what if we have?”
“Then I’d hurt you, take your family hostage and not release them unless I get the person in exchange.”
He measured me with a long, appraising stare. “I don’t think you’re the type of man who would do that.”
I reached out to Lucifer’s soul. Without asking, I grabbed it and pulled it into my body. I only felt cold, but knew my eyes turned into pools of darkness. “You seem to be forgetting you’re talking to a fallen angel.”
He gulped and his eyes widened ever so slightly. He shifted in his seat and forced himself into a relaxed posture. “And who would that person you think we’ve kidnapped be?”
I forced Lucifer out of my mind. ‘Did you just use me like a cheap whore?’ he asked in my mind.
Yeah, what about it? I pushed him out of my mind and refocused on Gonnosuke. “Evelyn. Crimson hair, orange eyes, lives with me.”
A smile split his face, his teeth flashing through the darkness. “We haven’t kidnapped her.”
The amount of confidence he had in the statement convinced me. But that wasn’t enough. “Prove it.”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew his phone. After a moment of tapping on the screen, he said, “I can show you our operation log from the past week.”
“Toss me the phone. I’ll search it myself.”
He smiled. “I’m afraid that is not acceptable.”
I clenched my thigh, drew my gun and shot the elbow of the hand that held the phone.
He screamed with pain and the phone fell on the floor. I picked it up, pleased to see the screen was unlocked. With the gun held in my l
eft, I sat on the sofa opposite of him while using my right to go through his phone. “So, where do I find this log?”
“You’ll die for this.” He snarled, holding his wounded arm.
“Should I shoot the other one too?” I arched my eyebrow. “Or do I need to go ask your wife?”
His face twisted into an expression of pure rage and hatred. But he told me.
I flipped through the files. They contained every name of a person they kidnapped, extorted, or murdered. I ran through their yesterday’s activities and saw Evelyn wasn’t present. They could had kidnapped her and not filed it in, sure, but then they would have used her kidnapping to subdue me after I called Sasaki.
Going up the folders led me to the top of the file tree. There, I packed the entire tree into an archive. I opened his browser and put in the address of my ftp server. His email would have a limit on the file size, but my ftp server didn’t. And yes, I had it precisely for instances like this and to backup all my phone files.
I started uploading the archive and watched the speed with a smile. Oh, yes, fourth generation networks had their pluses. With a grim smile, I searched through the phone for the application that managed the entrance code for the safe in his headquarters. I tapped show code and it did. I remembered the ten-character code and went to see how the upload was going.
Gonnosuke kept whimpering on the couch in front of me, apparently wishing he could kill me with a glare alone. Once the upload finished, I jabbed the home button, locked the screen, and threw him back the phone.
“That settles this.” I said, rose, and headed to the hole in the wall.
“Till next time, Mr. Johnson,” he said in a murderously low tone.
Oh, yes, he would send his people after me. As I walked, I grabbed a statuette of a red fox. The base was painted metal, but colorful gems ran in belts around the statuette, making it shine even in low light.
When I got to the hole in the wall and stopped by the edge of the ventilation shaft, the sound of steps already echoed from the stairs. That must have been Sasaki since I didn’t think Yakuza had another aether wielder capable of running up forty-three floors worth of stairs in the few minutes he had.