“Is that so, sir?” she replied, nonplussed.
She was good, even back then. Only an expert would’ve caught the slight twitch in her eye, but I was that expert. I hadn’t known she was that treasury clerk, but it certainly made sense.
“So,” I said, grinning widely, and exhaling a large cloud of smoke, “why do you really want this job?”
She sighed and dropped into a sagging chair in the waiting room. “They fired me yesterday,” she admitted, scowling. “All because I blew the whistle!”
“Well, no one likes a tattle-tale, dear,” I said consolingly.
Her scowl deepened. “Don’t ever call me that. I will not be condescended to.” She seemed to suddenly realize she was haranguing a potential employer and a look of horror crossed her face. She rose silently, heading toward the door with slumped shoulders.
“Where are you going?” I drawled. “I thought you wanted the job.”
She turned back around, a slight smile playing across her lips. It lit up her entire face with genuine pleasure. “Not particularly,” she said, walking over to her new desk, “but it’s bound to be better than nothing.”
Back in my present predicament, Miss Typewell answered on the third ring. “Eddie!” she shouted when the line connected. “What the hell is going on? The police where here when I got in this morning, and they said you’re wanted in connection with a murder! Does it have something to do with Crowder?” I’d killed him a few months back, but I’d been cleared of any wrongdoing. The courts had ruled it was self-defense and dismissed the case.
“No, totally unrelated,” I said, giving her a quick rundown of the Montgomery case and the whole business with the Jewel of Hakido. “And now I’ve got ninja assassins with weird sciencey guns chasing me, and the Cromhower Gang is back in town trying to make me steal the jewel for them, and Montgomery is going to kill Maya and me if I don’t find the damn rock in the next…oh, 40 hours.”
“That’s a lot to take in,” Miss Typewell said, worry in her voice. “I’ve been trying to reach Kimiko all morning, to see what she can do to find you, but she hasn’t answered her phone.”
“She might have gone to ground. She helped us get out of the office this morning.”
“What are you going to do now?” Ellen asked.
“Well, there’s a couple of options,” I said. “There’s a guy I know Downtown, Ollie Rivers. Best fence in Arcadia. He might know where the stone is. We could also contact…her.”
I could hear the frown in Ellen’s voice when she replied. “Really? After all the trouble you had with your last run-in? I mean, the guard bear…”
“I know,” I said, irritated, “but she’s the best there is. You still know how to contact her, right?”
“Yeah,” Miss Typewell said. “I’ll set up a meeting. When and where?”
“Just let her know I’m looking for her. She’ll find me,” I replied, then closed the connection.
“So, where to?” Maya asked.
“I think we should go pay Mr. Rivers a visit, see what he knows,” I said.
* * *
Getting a cab to take us Downtown was a daunting task. No one wanted to give Vinny a ride. I finally found a guy willing to drive the three of us, but he wasn’t too happy about it. Neither were we. The three of us crammed into that back seat was a little too close for comfort. Vinny may’ve had his intelligence increased, but he didn’t have a person’s sense of hygiene or personal space. The back seat of a cab holds a lot more gorilla than just the creature’s physical size, let me tell you.
We pulled up half an hour later in front of Ollie Rivers’s antiques store. Ollie was the best fence in Arcadia, but he wouldn’t deal with just anyone. You had to meet his stringent requirements and prove yourself to be a reliable, trustworthy individual before he’d have anything to do with you. He’s a wizened old man, bent nearly double by age and arthritis, with a pale dome of head peeking up through a feathery fringe of wispy white hair. His shop on 111th Street was a small, cramped antiques store filled to the brim with knick-knacks, curios, and the detritus of a thousand people’s lives, all at tremendously reasonable prices. Bringing Vinny in there was just asking for the old bull in the china shop situation. It didn’t help that he had to turn sideways to fit through the door behind Maya and myself. Ollie saw us enter and squeaked in surprise.
“Ollie,” I said conversationally, leaning against a glass case displaying tarnished watches and a small notice asking people not to lean on the case, “I’m here about a jewel. I think you know which one.”
I kept a trained, keen eye on the old pawnbroker as Maya and Vinny wandered around the shop. Ollie was mostly respectable these days, having decided legitimate business with antiques and curios was preferable to the high-stress world of fencing, but he still kept a hand in the game, still did jobs for certain clientele. His face was a mass of wrinkles, and he had a small optical implant over his left eye that whirred and clicked as it focused and refocused on things. Despite his initial squeak of surprise, he had an excellent poker face: it’d be hard to tell if he frowned or smiled with all the wrinkles.
“You mean the Jewel of Hakido, of course,” he replied, taking out an ancient, yellowed handkerchief and wiping his brow with it. “Everyone who’s anyone in the market knows you’re looking for it.”
“Any idea where I might find the gem?” I asked casually, sliding a hand into my pocket. Behind me, Vinny picked up a delicate vase covered in intricate geometric patterns. I couldn’t say I recognized the significance of the piece, but Ollie tensed up when he spied the gorilla pawing the merchandise.
“Eddie Hazzard, you ain’t getting anything out of me,” Ollie said defiantly. I looked back at Vinny, who was now surreptitiously sniffing the vase. Maya put a small hand on the gorilla’s forearm and convinced him to return the vase to its proper place.
“Look, Ollie, I’m sure we can work something out.” I pulled my hand out of my pocket and rested it gently on the glass of the counter. When I pulled my hand away, a roll of twenties was left sitting there. Ollie’s arthritic hand shot out faster than you’d think possible, but my hand was quicker. I snagged his wrist and held it there, meeting his gaze with my own. “Ollie, you’d better be honest with me,” I warned, before releasing his hand. He rotated his wrist a couple of times, then quickly pocketed the wad of cash.
“Well, the rumor was that Mrs. Montgomery had the stone and was going to sell it to the Boss,” Ollie began.
“Yeah, I’m well-aware of all that,” I said. Vinny was tossing a small casement clock experimentally into the air, testing its weight and heft. Maya was doing a panicked little dance around him, trying to convince the great ape to stop playing with the merchandise. I leaned over and gently took it from him. He hooted at me in annoyance.
“Well, they say she hid the thing right before she died,” Ollie continued, now eying Vinny as he picked up a fragile-looking figurine of some sort. “Someplace safe, somewhere no one would ever look for it.”
“That’s pretty vague, Ollie,” I said, turning to shake my head at Vinny. He put the figurine back carefully with a pout. It was a sight to behold. If you’ve never seen a gorilla pout, I recommend it. There’s a hell of a lot of lip for pouting there. He looked at Maya, but she shook her head, too.
“Well, no one’s quite sure where she hid it, right? But rumor has it she left some clues.”
“Clues?” I groaned inwardly. This was gonna be a damn scavenger hunt. “Where?”
“Supposedly at the Hotel d’Palm,” Ollie replied.
“And who’s going around saying all this, Ollie?” I asked. “Mrs. Montgomery’s dead, so it can’t be her. But if she left a bunch of clues behind, how come no one’s found the Jewel of Hakido yet? Why are people still pushing me around the board like a chess piece?”
“Well, just because there are clues, it doesn’t mean folks know what to make of them, or even what to really look for. They’re just rumors.” Ollie was still staring at Vinny,
who had taken to flexing various muscles in lieu of picking up things. The fabric of his tailored suit strained against his muscles, which threatened to tear straight through the seams.
“Alright, sure, folks can’t find or interpret the clues. Maybe they just don’t know where to start?”
“Plenty of folks know where to start, Eddie,” Ollie replied slyly. “They start with you.”
That was about the time the windows of the shop exploded inward.
XI.
The blast came from outside, a small shaped charge designed to create maximum mess with minimum structural damage. Through the smoke, I could see Vinny standing there, confused, glass and dust covering his fine suit. He turned to face the front of the store, a low growl building in the back of his throat. I went to check on Maya, who was lying on the floor covered in shards of broken glass. She sat up, pieces of the window cascading off of her, as a half dozen men in mottled tactical outfits, submachine guns held at the ready, stormed up to the front of the store.
Ollie’s head came into view over the edge of the counter, a pale orb clearing the horizon of the glass case. “Looks like some folks have decided to take the first clue from you by force,” he said shakily.
I took my hat off and brushed some glass off of it, then looked out over the mess and the men with their guns. “Gentlemen,” I said calmly.
“Give us the clue, Hazzard,” one of the men said.
“I’m afraid you’ve got me at a loss here, guys,” I replied. “I don’t know anything about any clue, and I’m 99% certain I’m not carrying anything that could even kind of be considered a clue.”
“We’ll decide on that,” the same assailant called back. He gestured with the barrel of his gun at me. “Kill him. We can find the clue on his corpse.”
“Aren’t you afraid of damaging it?” I asked.
“Not terribly,” the man replied.
That was the point when Vinny decided to remind the world he still existed.
The gorilla leapt across the shop, flipping shelves and spilling the contents of tables across the floor, destroying the breakables left standing after the hit squad’s explosion. In less time than it took to blink, he was across the shop floor, out the window, and grabbing the first assailant by the neck. Assailant #1 was flung unceremoniously into the two men to his right, knocking all three of them to the ground with a muffled thud. Vinny turned to the three men on his left, all of whom had suddenly reconsidered the plan. The guy closest to Vinny swung his gun up to aim at Vinny, a classic rookie mistake. Vinny grabbed the guy’s gun and hand in one massive paw, crushing the two things into one mangled collection of bone, flesh, and metal. The guy screamed, though the sound was cut off when Vinny whipped him around by the arm and swatted the next two men aside like a big league slugger at batting practice.
The whole incident took less than ten seconds.
Vinny dropped the goon, whose arm was bent at a rather unnatural angle, determined that there were no more goons to attack, and seemed to switch off. I helped Maya up and strolled out through the shattered front door, maintaining a certain level of decorum and protocol as I picked my way across the destruction, and ambled up to the leader, who was lying in a groaning heap on the sidewalk. I tipped my hat back on my head and squatted down next to him.
“So, I think we got off on the wrong foot here, guy,” I said conversationally. “First of all, you very nearly injured my protégé. She’s going to put the boot in you a couple of times now, just so we’re clear about how unhappy I am with that.” I gestured to Maya, who looked uncertain.
“Do I have to?” she asked nervously. “I-I’m fine, really.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” I replied. “You can’t let folks go around blowing up storefronts and almost hurting private detectives. We let it slide once, it’ll become habit, and everyone will be trying to blow up storefronts and hurt us.” Maya still looked uneasy, but she kicked the fallen leader a couple of times. He grunted in pain. I gave Maya a thumbs up and returned my attention to the thug.
“Okay, second issue. You tried to hurt me. I’m gonna put the boot in you a few times myself.” I proceeded to give the guy a vigorous kicking of my own. That completed, I squatted down next to him again. “So, as I was saying, I think we got off on the wrong foot. Now that we’ve gotten off on the right foot – and the left, honestly – let’s see if we can’t come to an understanding. Why are you here?”
“Th…the first clue,” he groaned. He made a slow, sneaky grab for his machine pistol, which I snatched from where it lay on the pavement before he could reach it.
“Now, now,” I said, wagging a finger at him. “It’s awful hard to have a real conversation when you’re trying to shoot me full of holes. I’ll just hold onto this for now. Back to the matter at hand. I don’t have any damn clue.” My inner Miss Typewell snickered and I tried to ignore it. “So, you and your buddies here, once they’ve all regained consciousness, ought to just head on back home and forget the whole ridiculous business. It’s not like Mrs. Montgomery even gave…me…any…” I trailed off, an idea hitting my brain like one of Vinny’s fists: hard, fast, and dizzying.
Mrs. Montgomery had given me something: the credit chip.
“Right,” I said, straightening up and pocketing the guy’s machine pistol. “You lot, I don’t want to see you around again. If I do, I’ll let Vinny get real mean.” The gorilla picked up on his cue and gave them all a toothy, vicious grin that would surely plague their dreams for weeks to come. The ones who were still conscious, anyway. I stepped back into Ollie’s store and grabbed the old man. “You don’t tell anyone I was here, got it? Or when I come back, I won’t be so nice to you.” The old man nodded an emphatic agreement and scampered off. I could hear police sirens in the distance, signaling that our time at Ollie’s shop had reached an end. “C’mon,” I said to Maya and Vinny. “It’s time we got moving.”
XII.
We hot-stepped it off of 111th Street as the cops were rolling up. Ducking through a series of alleys, we wound our way back toward the Hotel d’Palm and, apparently, the first clue. Along the way, I took out the credit chip Mrs. Montgomery had given me and handed it over to Maya.
“Can you scan this credit chip for me real quick?” I asked. The late-afternoon sun was already sinking toward the horizon. Maya and I had been wearing the shock cuffs for seven or eight hours. We’d get a tingle every five minutes or so; nothing too bad so far, but enough that you’d notice it. The night was going to be rough. It wouldn’t be easy to sleep getting a jolt every five minutes.
Maya inserted the credit chip into her computer and pulled up a vid window. “On the surface, it just looks like a regular credit chip,” she said, her voice steady. All the insecurity and hesitancy that I usually heard in her voice disappeared when she got into her electronic element. She was punching up different apps and running scans of the chip while we walked. “But there’s some weird garbage code tacked onto it. I’ll run it through a couple of decryption routines to see if I can figure it out.” She was silent as we walked a couple more blocks, then her face lit up in triumph. “Got it! There’s a secret message for you, Eddie.” She flipped the vid window over my direction.
The message was short and simple:
Detective: In the Hotel d’Palm’s bar, look behind the portrait of my forebearer.
“Her forebearer?” Maya asked, confused.
“Yeah. Before she was Eileen Montgomery, what was her name?” I asked.
Maya opened up a new vid window and did a quick search of city records. “Roberts,” she said, identifying one of the wealthiest families in Arcadian history.
“I do believe there was a Roberts in a picture on the wall of the bar,” I said, smiling. “Looks like we’ve got our first clue.”
* * *
The rest of our return trip to the hotel was uneventful, for once. No meathead thugs or deadly assassins waylaid us. Evening was descending on the city like a dark shroud when we reached
the hotel. I had Maya and Vinny stay hidden in a nearby alleyway while I made my way back into the Hotel d’Palm for the third time in under twenty-four hours.
I slipped through the bright-pink lobby like a shabby ghost and into the dim interior of the bar. A different bartender was there tonight, though he looked like he’d been made from the same mold. I said nothing, making my way across the bar. Along the back wall were dozens of animal heads and the photos of the wealthy aristocrats who’d shot them. Among the photos was one of a man named Eli Roberts IV, grandfather of one Eileen Montgomery, nee Roberts.
Rupert Montgomery’s late wife, in case you didn’t get the connection.
I reached up and took the photo down off the wall, feeling around the back of the frame for any foreign object that might be there. I found it: a data chip, taped to the bottom edge of the frame. I pulled it free and stripped the tape off the data chip, pocketing the small silicon wafer and rehanging the picture back on the wall as crookedly as possible. The bartender noticed what I was doing and hollered at me to leave the pictures alone. I waved him off and started for the door, my head down and my thoughts miles away. I’d have Maya run her decryption on this one, figure out the next clue, and we’d be off on our little treasure hunt. As much as I usually hated clues, and as much as I disliked being Montgomery’s patsy, I was actually starting to enjoy myself. Never let it be said that I’m always curmudgeonly. Just most of the time. Because life is usually full of shit getting thrown at you. Or bullets being shot at you.
I looked up as I reached the lobby door, just in time to run face-first into another assassin.
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