An Ill Wind Blows

by Charlie Cottrell

  “Look, Rupert, have you ever had dealings with the Boss? Because I have. And let me tell you, he is a mean sonofabitch. I’ve seen him spend weeks torturing someone who crossed him in the smallest way. He’s inhuman. A monster.”

  “He doesn’t like it when you don’t refill the coffee pot,” Maya chimed in.

  “He’ll make death seem like a gift if he finds out I stole from him,” I said quickly, hoping Montgomery didn’t think too much on Maya’s comment. “Especially something like the Jewel of Hakido. Death would be too easy, too quick.”

  “You’ll be well-paid.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” I said. “This isn’t a question of pay. This is about the principle of the thing, and the principle is ‘don’t steal from the guy who can come up with creative new ways to break you with just a pair of pliers.’ So I’m sure you’ll understand if we pass on this great opportunity.” I rose from my chair and motioned for Maya to follow me out of the room.

  Montgomery’s goons had a different idea. They stood between us and the door, their guns drawn.

  “I’m afraid I can’t take ‘no’ for an answer, detective,” Montgomery said from behind us. The goons grabbed us by the shoulders and turned us back around to face their master.

  “Have you heard of the story of the Gordian Knot?” Montgomery asked, coming back around the desk to stand before us.

  “Something about Alexander the Great, right?” I responded.

  Montgomery nodded appreciatively, as if he hadn’t expected me to know. “Yes. Alexander was confronted with a complex puzzle, a rope tied in the most convoluted knot imaginable. Many had tried and failed over the years to unravel it. Alexander, though, he was not your average man. He drew his sword and simply sliced the knot in twain, a perfect example of the unique problem-solving skills the knot demanded.” Montgomery gave me a strange look. “You are to be my Alexander, detective. Think of finding and retrieving the jewel as your Gordian Knot.”

  “And then maybe I can go conquer Persia. Is the stupid history lesson over?” I asked. “You’re boring me.”

  Montgomery sighed heavily. It was the sound of a man much put-upon, at least in his own mind. “You are wanted for murder,” he said slowly, as if explaining to a child. “I am, in fact, the only person who can help you get exonerated. Without me, you will, as they say, ‘dangle in the wind.’ And you don’t get my help unless you find the Jewel of Hakido.”

  “It’s ‘twist.’ The saying is ‘twist in the wind,’” I corrected as pedantically as possible. Maybe it’s not a good idea to antagonize the villain, but I’ve always had a bit of a rebel in me. “And I’m sure I’ll have no trouble waltzing up to the nearest Organization thug and saying, ‘take me to your leader so I can steal a priceless artifact from him, please. What’s that? I’m super dead now?’”

  “Charming,” Montgomery said, his tone flat. “You can drop the charade, detective. I know you have dealings with the Boss. Everyone knows. You will approach him and make an offer. I will provide the funds, and believe me, even the Boss will think it’s an offer he can’t refuse.”

  “What’s to stop me from taking the money and running, or teaming up with the Boss to take you down?” I asked, because I always have to open my damn fool mouth.

  “Fortunately, I have taken that issue under consideration, and I have a solution.” He gestured at one of the goons, who brought out two metal cuffs and clamped one around Maya’s wrist and the other around mine. “These are shock bracelets. Over the course of the next forty-eight hours, they will send electronic shocks through your system. Small ones at first, but gradually increasing in intensity and duration until they leave you a twitching, gibbering heap. You’ll lose control of your muscles, your bowels, your mind, and then…you’ll die. It will be quite painful, I promise. But, if you bring me the Jewel of Hakido before then, I will remove the cuffs and make your difficulties with the police disappear.”

  “If you want to torture me, that’s fine, but leave her out of it,” I snarled, gesturing at Maya.

  Montgomery shook her head. “Guilt by association, I’m afraid. You rise up together, or you fall together.” The cuffs beeped and then began to make a low, constant hum. I felt a slight tingle as it delivered its first shock.

  “You have forty-eight hours, Detective Hazzard,” Montgomery said, settling into his desk chair and leaning back. He tossed a credit chip onto the desk. “There’s my offer to the Boss.” He tossed another credit chip onto the desk. “And here is your payment for acting on my behalf.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Payment? We’re getting paid for this?” I asked incredulously.

  Montgomery had the temerity to look wounded. “Of course you’re getting paid. I am a man of business and of my word. I always pay my debts, even to ungrateful individuals who don’t deserve it.”

  “Gee, that wasn’t a pointed dig at anyone,” I grumbled, pocketing the two credit chips. I motioned to Maya. “C’mon, we’ve apparently got work to do.”

  “Best of luck, detective,” Montgomery called after us. We were certainly going to need it.

  VII.

  “So, this is a problem,” I said, standing outside Montgomery’s office building. Traffic was bustling; it was nearly noon, and the sidewalks were crowded with the powerful and the beautiful, looking to see and be seen Downtown. I dug a cigarette out of my pocket and lit it, cupping my hand around the lit cherry to block the wind.

  “What’re we, um, going to do, sir?” Maya asked.

  I exhaled smoke and shrugged. “I guess we’re gonna track down this jewel. Could be kinda tricky, since we know the Boss doesn’t have it.”

  “Where do we start, then?” Maya asked.

  I shrugged again. “Back at the hotel, I guess. Maybe we can find the scene of the crime, at least.”

  * * *

  But first, we needed disguises.

  “Like, a fake nose or glasses?” Maya asked.

  “Something like that. A little less obvious, though,” I said. “Mostly, it’ll just be a change of clothes.”

  First, a detour to an ATM, where I withdrew enough cash to hopefully last us a couple of days. Between disguises and bribes and taxi rides, I knew it could get expensive, but the ATM would only allow me to withdraw a couple thousand dollars in one shot. If we needed more, we’d hit up another ATM or one of the caches I had scattered around town for emergencies like this.

  Next, we stopped off at a couple of clothing stores while we were Downtown. Maya complained bitterly about having to wear a dress, but she did enjoy finding a coat with lots of pockets in it. I opted for a new suit, off the rack because we didn’t have time for tailoring, and a new coat of my own. We put our old clothes in a bag and left them in a locker at a bus station on Shankar Avenue. Next, we dropped by a salon and got our hair cut and styled.

  “I always wondered what I’d look like as a blond,” I said, running my hands through my hair. “Now I know, and I hate it.”

  “It, uh, doesn’t look that bad,” Maya said, almost-convincingly. Her own hair was spikey and bright, fluorescent green.

  Properly attired and coifed, we made our way back to the Hotel d’Palm.

  The interior was no less disturbing in the light of day. If anything, the overwhelming pinkness was more garish. Thankfully, the bar kept the lights turned down low, offering an oasis of dimly-lit calm in a desert of eye-assaulting color.

  The bartender was the same guy from the night before. The mess Henry and I had made with our little confrontation had been cleaned up, and the bartender was wiping down the bar top with a damp rag in an absentminded sort of way. I told Maya to hang back; seeing both of us at the same time might trigger a connection, and I didn’t want to be recognized by this guy.

  I slid onto a barstool and ordered a whiskey sour. It was close enough to my usual drink order to be comfortable for me, and different enough to not arouse suspicion. He poured the drink and placed it in front of me without ever looking up.

  �
�So, I heard there was a ruckus here last night,” I said, making my voice slightly more nasal than usual. He’d heard me talk quite a bit last night, so the last thing I wanted was him to catch me that way.

  “Nothing too serious, sir,” the bartender assured me. “Just a couple of undesirables causing trouble. They were removed from the establishment with haste and no permanent damage was done.”

  “That’s good to hear,” I said, leaning in toward him conspiratorially. “I also heard that a woman who’d been here was murdered last night.”

  The bartender frowned. “Yes, Mrs. Montgomery,” he said. “Most unfortunate. She was a long-standing patron of the establishment. She will be missed.”

  “They say one of the miscreants involved in the fracas here was the murderer,” I added. The word fracas might’ve been too much.

  The bartender gave a barely-noticeable shrug, neither confirming nor denying. “It’s possible. He was a worthless lout, I can tell you that. Like I told the police when they asked, he looked shifty-eyed. Dark-skinned, probably a foreigner. Certainly not the sort of upscale clientele we generally serve here.” It took considerable effort not to react to that. It wasn’t that I was tremendously upset with his casual xenophobia – though it did irk a little – it was that he had it so completely, totally wrong. I’m half Cherokee, making him more of a foreigner than I am.

  “Any idea where the murder happened? It wasn’t here, was it?” I asked, feigned horror creeping into my voice.

  “Certainly not, sir,” the bartender said, aghast. “I can assure you we would never allow anything as untoward as a murder to occur at the Hotel d’Palm.”

  “So, where did it happen, then? Has to be somewhere close, right?”

  The bartender took a hard look at me. “Are you a reporter, sir?”

  “Goodness, no,” I replied, giving him a winning smile, “just a curious patron.” I tossed a pair of twenties down on the bar top. “Thank you for indulging me.” I stepped away and Maya followed me out of the bar.

  “Where are we going now?” she asked.

  “Time to check around back,” I replied.

  * * *

  The back of the Hotel d’Palm was like the back of every other hotel in existence. There was a loading bay, a few dumpsters, and the back door to the kitchen, where a couple of sous chefs were sneaking a smoke break in a city where smoking anywhere was pretty much illegal now.

  “Hey, guys,” I called out, walking up. “Got a minute?”

  The two cooks gave me an uncertain look; I was dressed like a swell, someone from the Other Side of things, and thus automatically suspicious. I pulled out a small roll of cash and flashed it for them. “Just got a couple of questions for you, and I’ll definitely make it worth your while.” The two chefs looked at each other; the one on the left shrugged and nodded at me.

  “Were either of you working last night?” I asked, leaning against the wall and pulling out my own pack of cigarettes. I offered each woman a smoke, which they accepted gratefully.

  “I was,” said the one on the right, whose hair was cropped close on one side and left long and shaggy on the other, the whole thing dyed a bright pink.

  “Hear about the murder?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah. It was pretty fucked up.”

  “Definitely,” I said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “Any idea where it happened?”

  The two chefs gave me a strange look. “You’re not some sort of sex weirdo, are you?” asked the one on the left, whose dark hair was pulled back in a tight bun. “Get off on murder scenes or some weird shit like that?”

  “No, no, it’s nothing like that at all,” I said. “I’m a private detective investigating the woman’s death. Jesus, why does everyone assume it’s a sex pervert thing all the time?”

  “Maybe you’ve just got one of those faces, guy,” pink hair said.

  “Whatever,” I said dismissively. “So, any idea where it happened?”

  The girl with the bun took a long drag on her cigarette. “There were a bunch of police cars just around the corner from here when I got in this morning.” She gestured with her cigarette. “Over in that alley. It’s probably what you’re looking for.”

  “Thanks,” I said, tossing each of them a twenty. Maya and I walked toward the alley.

  “Think we’ll, um, finding anything?” Maya asked as we walked.

  “Probably not,” I said. “You know my feelings on clues.”

  Maya nodded. “Um, ‘they’re usually b-bullshit,’” she recited.

  I gave her a grim grin. “Exactly. But maybe we’ll get lucky and the police missed something like the killer scrawling his name on a brick wall in blood.”

  The alley was empty. There were signs that the cops had been there already: a torn strip of crime scene tape, a card with a six printed on it, a few dark spots on the ground here and there that could’ve been bloodstains. Nothing much to indicate a terrible crime had been committed there just the night before.

  I didn’t have any of my usual investigative tools, so all I could do was take a few photos of the scene and hope later analysis would turn up something.

  “What are we going to do next?” Maya asked, standing nervously in the mouth of the alleyway. She wasn’t very comfortable in narrow, cramped spaces where people had been brutally murdered.

  I scratched at my chin thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” I admitted, giving her a shrug. That’s when I noticed the assassin.

  The first thing you caught was his scent. He hadn’t just sprayed on cologne, he’d bathed in the stuff. Marinated in it. His entire being was infused with a strong, musky odor not that different from a yak in heat.

  The second thing you caught was the tuneless whistle. Now, I’m a big fan of tuneless whistling. There’s nothing quite like it for putting your enemy off his game, except for maybe the knowing smile. This particular whistle was atonal, arrhythmic, and grating. It found your rawest nerve and played a virtuoso solo on it with nails and angry cats. I was impressed.

  “You’re not particularly stealthy for an assassin,” I commented over my shoulder. The guy stepped out of the shadows, an easy grin spreading across his face. He was dressed in a fashionable suit with a plain black t-shirt underneath and sneakers. He was carrying a gun of some sort in his right hand. It was a bizarre-looking weapon, with tubes and cables running out of it to a pack of some sort clipped to his belt. There was steam or smoke or something coming out of the end of the barrel.

  “I wasn’t trying to be stealthy,” he replied lazily. “Stealth is for those who think they’ll fail.”

  “Cocky, too, huh?” I said. I was entirely too aware of the fact that I was unarmed. I had no weapons and nothing within easy reach that could be used as a weapon, no convenient lead pipe to use as a blunt object or trashcan lid to hurl like a Frisbee.

  “The Ill Winds are always confident. We are the best,” the man replied. I must have looked puzzled, because he continued. “You have not heard of us? I’m surprised. It’s a pity. The Seven Ill Winds are the greatest assassins the world has ever known. No one has ever escaped us.”

  “Well, I really only have your word for it,” I said. “I’d like to speak with a few satisfied customers, maybe a couple of individuals who’ve experienced your skills firsthand, before I’m ready to take you at your word.”

  The man’s grin remained fixed on his face. “You make jokes to hide your fear. You are far from the first.” He began stalking toward me slowly, his sneakers quiet on the asphalt of the alley. “Allow me to properly introduce myself. I am the First Ill Wind, the Frozen Gale. My attacks will leave you chilled to the very marrow.”

  “Great speech, guy. If it’s gonna be any longer, could you go ahead and kill me and put me out of my misery?”

  His smiled slipped a bit then. That’s the great thing about being a loudmouth: eventually, you get to everyone, regardless of their patience. “You are a mouthy one, aren’t you? But you’ll be begging for mercy soon enough.” He br
ought the gun up and aimed it at me, his smile returning in full force. “Are you ready, Edward Hazzard, for your doom to descend?”

  VIII.

  When you’re facing down an enemy with superior firepower, endeavor to be on the other end of the gun. It ain’t Sun Tzu, but it isn’t wrong, either.

  “The Frozen Gale,” as he called himself, was pointing that damn-fool gun at me. I was starting to suspect it wouldn’t fire regular bullets when he pulled the trigger.

  Turns out, I wasn’t wrong.

  The assassin squeezed the trigger, and the gun cut loose with a high-pitched whine and spat out a blast of frozen air. It moved slower than your average bullet, which was the only reason I was able to dodge the shot before it hit me. I hit the ground hard, tried to turn it into a roll and failed. Instead, I found myself sprawled across the dirty ground in the alley, ruining my brand-new suit.

  I glanced at Maya, who stood paralyzed in the alley’s entrance. “Run, Maya!” I hollered at her, scrambling to my feet and taking off myself. She snapped out of her fear-induced haze and began loping across the pavement like a gazelle back toward the hotel. Our only hope, as I saw it, was to get back inside and find something there we could fight with. This Frozen Gale character was the haughty, condescending type, so I was pretty sure he’d casually walk after us, certain in his own ability to catch up and put an end to us.

  I risked a quick glance behind me; sure enough, the Frozen Gale was strolling along, the gun held loosely in his hand and whistling tunelessly. We reached the backdoor of the hotel. The two chefs were gone, but the door stood open. Maya slipped in, and I was just a step or two behind. I tugged the door closed behind us. It wouldn’t stop the guy, but it might slow him down a few seconds, at least.

  We raced into the kitchen, where we paused to catch our breath and take stock. The two chefs from earlier were there, each of them looking askance at us.

  “Okay, any ideas?” I asked Maya. She was huffing and puffing, but shook her head no.

  “What the hell are you two doing?” the pink-haired one asked.