An Ill Wind Blows

by Charlie Cottrell

  XIII.

  This assassin was well-dressed but extremely fat. He was almost spherical, in fact, and very short, but something about his facial features reminded me of that Frozen Gale jackass I’d run into earlier.

  “S’cuse me,” I said, trying to sidestep the guy. He shifted over in front of me again.

  “Buddy, I really don’t have time to play right now,” I said, trying to sidestep around him the other way. Again, he shifted into my path. “Do we have a problem?” I asked, giving him a glare. The guy didn’t say anything, but he shifted his stance and thrust both palms forward, slamming into my midsection and sending me flying across the hotel lobby. I skidded across slick marble and into a pink sofa. Hotel guests gasped in surprise and scattered out of the way. “What the hell?” I gasped, pushing myself into a sitting position.

  The fat man was lumbering toward me, slow and inevitable, like an incoming tide. “I am the second Ill Wind, the Hindered Path. I am your doom, Eddie Hazzard.”

  “As if,” I muttered, digging the confiscated machine pistol out of my pocket. I swung it up to aim at the guy, but he was gone.

  “Move fast for a big guy, huh?” I said. I stood up, gun still held at the ready, and turned a slow circle looking for him.

  Of course, he was right behind me. He hit me in the chest with that open-palm strike again, sending me skittering across the marble floor. Again. The gun flew out of my hand and clattered into a corner, useless to me.

  “I am not surprised you beat my brother. He is arrogant,” Hindered Path said.

  “And I’m sure you’re just as humble as pie,” I replied sarcastically.

  The Hindered Path allowed himself a faint smile. “I know my limits.”

  I scrambled back to my feet and scooted around behind the sofa. Not that I figured a pink Chesterfield was going to stop this guy.

  The Hindered Path stepped forward and slammed a fist into the couch, sending the piece of furniture spinning away and crashing into the concierge’s stand. The few hotel patrons left in the lobby made a frantic beeline for the exit. I was alone with the assassin, and completely unarmed.

  He made a grab for me, a quick grapple that I was completely unprepared for. He caught me in a bear hug and started to squeeze. I felt my bones creaking as he tightened the hold. The air was pressed from my lungs, and my spine felt like it was going to pop out through the skin of my back. My vision started going black around the edges. As deaths go, suffocation isn’t the worst. I mean, you struggle at the beginning, but in the end it’s kind of peaceful.

  Something solid slammed into the assassin, who had to let go of me in order to retaliate. Sensation came roaring back, and I sucked in a grateful lungful of air. From my place on the floor, I looked up to see the Hindered Path squaring off against Vinny.

  The Hindered Path, who’d barely registered a facial expression throughout my entire encounter with him, was sporting a feral grin now. “Finally, a worthy opponent,” he said. Vinny just growled, a prelude to launching himself across the lobby at the assassin.

  “Mr. Hazzard, come on!” a quiet voice from behind me called. I turned to see Maya hiding behind a pillar, waving me toward her. I scrambled to my feet and tottered over to her.

  “We have to leave!” she squeaked. “Vinny said he would eat this guy.”

  “I think you mean ‘beat,’” I corrected.

  Maya shook her head. “No. Trust me, I double-checked.” I cringed and looked back to see what was happening.

  Vinny leapt and hit the Hindered Path at full speed, a move that usually ends any resistance the target might want to offer because they’re a pulpy mess under Vinny’s feet at that point. But the assassin just grunted and slid back a few feet across the polished marble floor, Vinny hanging off the front of him like the world’s furriest barnacle. The Hindered Path reached up, grabbed Vinny by the shoulders, and slowly pried the gorilla off of him. A surprised Vinny was then hurled across the room, a look of extreme astonishment on his not-quite-human face. I could understand: usually, the only way to defeat Vinny was to drop a tactical nuke from orbit or, barring that, don’t get in a fight with him in the first place. The ape wasn’t used to an opponent being able to put up a fight, much less one who could take his best shot and give it right back.

  I will say this for Vinny: he’s not a quitter. He bounced off a pillar and landed on all fours, his teeth bared and his muscles bulging against the seams of his clothes. The Hindered Path stood, stolid and implacable, waiting for the gorilla’s next attack. It would clearly be the same attack as before, only Vinny would probably be howling some sort of primal war cry when he did it. The results probably wouldn’t be all that different. The Hindered Path obviously wasn’t your regular, run-of-the-mill human. Gen-modding came to mind, but I had no idea what he’d been modded with. Even a gorilla’s strength wouldn’t have allowed him to withstand Vinny’s earlier attack. Hell, even a full-grown elephant with cement sneakers would’ve found it hard to resist a quarter ton of furry fury leaping on their head.

  I took another look at the Hindered Path. He didn’t look like anything except a rather overweight man of Asian descent. His features were small and close together, his hair was slicked back, dark black, and thinning. He was just below average height but had a solid-looking frame to hang all that bulk on. He didn’t look particularly muscular, just fat.

  As I watched, Vinny gathered himself for another leap. The Hindered Path scuffed his shoes against the floor before planting both feet flat and firm on the smooth surface.

  Vinny leapt, letting loose a ululating howl of anger and determination that bounced off all that marble and echoed around the lobby. He cleared a good twenty feet of distance in that leap, slamming into the Hindered Path again with all the force of a wrecking ball. Again, it was a move that had served him well over the years. I’d seen him flatten people and small buildings with it. But the Hindered Path kept his feet and seemed to absorb the kinetic energy from Vinny’s attack.

  It still didn’t make any sense.

  “How come this guy isn’t getting knocked on his ass?” I asked out loud. Maya, never the best at recognizing rhetorical questions, answered.

  “Maybe he’s got some sort of, um, kinetic barrier?” she said. I gave her a look.

  “Do you have a spectral analyzer program loaded up on your machine?” I asked. She nodded and started fiddling with her computer. A vid window emerged in the air in front of me. I moved it so it was between me and the Hindered Path, who was casually removing a very confused and increasingly angry Vinny from his person.

  “Okay, turn it on,” I said. Maya tapped a button in another vid window and the panel of hard light in front of me shimmered briefly as the program kicked in. I looked at the Hindered Path, and sure enough, there was the tell-tale shimmer of an energy barrier surrounding the assassin.

  “Of course,” I muttered. “It makes perfect sense.”

  “What?” Maya asked.

  “He’s wearing a force field. A really powerful one, I’d say. I mean, the guy’s pretty solidly-built anyway, but there was no way he could stand up to the forces Vinny was throwing at him, not without some sort of augmentation. A kinetic barrier would bleed off all of energy from Vinny’s attack and just leave the weight for the guy to handle. He’s big enough and has a low-enough center of gravity to manage that.”

  “So, uh, what do we do?” Maya asked.

  “We need to find a way to short out the barrier. Vinny can take care of the rest.” I gave the young computer expert a questioning look. “Got any bright ideas?”

  Maya wrapped her arms around her head for a minute while she thought. “Um…we need access to the city’s power grid,” she finally said. I glanced around the lobby and saw a power outlet built into one of the pillars, discreetly placed to allow customers to recharge their electronic devices.

  “There,” I said, pointing at it.

  Maya nodded. “Right. C’mon.”

  We scrambled quietly over to t
he outlet. At Maya’s direction, I pried the cover off the outlet. Next, she took a long cable out of her pocket and stripped the insulation off the wiring on both ends.

  “We need him to get closer,” she said. I nodded.

  The Hindered Path was tossing Vinny again, this time swinging the ape by his legs and slamming him headfirst into a pillar. The gorilla enforcer roared in pain and tried to rise up again, but slumped back down.

  “Part two of our plan may need a couple of minutes to recover,” I said. “I’ll try to distract our friend.” I rose to my feet and cupped my hands around my mouth. “Hey, big guy, are you done playing with the monkey yet?”

  “Eddie, what are you doing?!” Maya squeaked in terror. “Don’t bring him over here!”

  “He’ll be coming after me, don’t worry,” I said, taking one end of the wires from Maya. “Just be ready.”

  The Hindered Path lumbered toward me, as slow and inevitable as an avalanche.

  “Hey, so, tell me, what’s it like being the second worst of the Ill Winds?” I asked.

  “Are you trying to make him angry?” Maya hissed from behind her pillar.

  “Yes.”

  “There is something wrong with you, sir,” Maya said, the most respectful disrespect I’d ever heard.

  “Very probably,” I replied. Turning back to the Hindered Path, I said, “C’mon, the Frozen Gale was way more intimidating. Well, his smell was. Let me ask you, does he bathe in that cologne?”

  “Why do you insist on making your final moments so inane?” the assassin asked.

  “Force of habit. I want to die as I have lived.”

  The Hindered Path stood before me, his hands clenched in preparation for pounding me into a greasy paste. “Farewell, detective,” he said.

  I thrust the wires toward the guy just as Maya closed the circuit at the outlet. There was a sudden electrical hum, the sensation of a thousand bees crawling up my arm, and then a loud pop as the Hindered Path’s force field shorted out. The assassin was caught off guard, and I pulled out the only weapon I had on me: brass knuckles.

  There’s something simple if inelegant about brass knuckles. They are not weapons designed for finesse, there’re no flourishes with them. All you can do is brutalize your opponent, slamming them in the face or gut or whatever as hard as you can until they fall down and don’t get back up again.

  My fist connected with his gut first. It was like punching pudding, if pudding had a solid layer of muscle under it. I managed to knock the wind out of him, then took a shot at his jaw. Usually, punching someone in the jaw is a quick way to break several bones in your hand, but this is an instance where those brass knuckles come in handy: rather than shattering my metacarpals, I fractured the big guy’s jaw.

  That wasn’t to say he was down for the count. The Hindered Path was a professional assassin, trained for the job from an early age. He gave me a solid backhand that sent me flying across the lobby again. I landed on the back of my head, which is thankfully the thickest part of my skull. I was still pretty dazed, though, as he stalked toward me, murder in his eyes.

  That was when a recovered Vinny launched another attack.

  With the Hindered Path’s force field down, the full weight of the massive gorilla slammed into the assassin and sent him sprawling across the marble floor. I heard a series of small cracks, but I wasn’t sure if I was hearing the floor cracking or the Hindered Path’s bones. Either way, he was having a rough time of it. Vinny squatted on the guy’s back and started pounding away at him, those heavy, furry fists slamming into the Hindered Path’s back and neck and head again and again and again. Say one thing for Vinny, say that he’s a gorilla who dishes out a pretty hefty dose of revenge.

  It was pretty short work from there. Vinny leapt up and down on the Hindered Path’s back and whaled on him. Vinny eventually decided the Hindered Path had had enough, or he’d just gotten bored with mangling a guy who wasn’t fighting back. Either way, Vinny climbed off him and hooted contentedly to himself while I gathered myself up off the floor and walked over to the assassin’s prone form.

  The Hindered Path was definitely dead. Living people didn’t have concave skulls like that with the brains leaking out.

  “Guess he won’t be answering any questions,” I said philosophically. I pulled out a cigarette and lit it, took a shaky drag and tried to calm my nerves. We’d gotten lucky this time, but continuing to fight against these assassins was going to take more than luck. It was probably going to take more than Vinny, as hard as that was to believe. I needed firepower. It was time to visit my man with the goods.

  XIV.

  Everyone living in the more disreputable part of Arcadia had to know that one guy. The one who could get you what you needed, no questions asked, as long as you had the cash. And it had to be cash. Nothing traceable, nothing that could get him in trouble later on. He needed plausible deniability in case you got caught and tried to point the finger. It wasn’t anything personal, it was just good business.

  My guy was named Clyde. He’d started out as a freelancer doing odd jobs for the Organization now and then, but really made his living supplying guys like me: individuals who were technically on the side of law and order, but who didn’t wear a badge and sometimes needed something that was just a smidge illegal, if you were the sort to worry about that sort of thing. Guns, passcodes, forged ID cards…there wasn’t much Clyde couldn’t get his hands on, given enough time and cash. My requests were going to be fairly simple, but probably very expensive.

  I arranged a rendezvous with Clyde at our usual spot, a diner in Old Town on 21st Street. It was a run-down dive of a place, the sort where the drinking glasses were made of plastic that had once been clear but had turned brownish-gray over the years, stained by countless glasses of sweet tea and soda. Half the lights in the place were flickering or completely burnt out, and the booths were upholstered in what was very generously called vinyl but was really mostly duct tape at this point. The foam padding was gone from most of the seats, and the hard wooden benches offered little in the way of comfort. The place smelled of old cooking oil, the short-order cook’s sweat, and some unidentifiable burnt food smell that could have been just about anything except edible.

  The coffee there was great.

  I sat in a corner booth with Maya, waiting for Clyde to show up. I’d instructed Vinny to stay outside and keep an eye out for any more assassins. He’d hooted an assent and went into his standby mode, settled on his haunches and waiting for someone angry enough—or stupid enough—to come along and try to start something.

  While we waited, I had Maya fire up her decryption program and run the new data chip through it. Just like the first chip, this one had what appeared to be junk data on it. In reality, though, the data was the next clue.

  It was pretty straightforward: the address for a jeweler named Gerard Carson and a series of numbers, followed simply by a cryptic phrase: Go after dark.

  “What’re the numbers for?” Maya asked.

  “Probably the combination for a safe in Carson’s office,” I said, taking a sip of my coffee and sighing with pleasure. Then a tingly zap from my shock bracelet reminded me what was at stake. “Carson’s one of the biggest gemstone guys in Arcadia. My guess is he’s got the Jewel of Hakido stuffed in a safe in his back room.”

  Clyde finally sauntered into the diner a half hour later. Promptness was never one of his strong suits. He ambled over to our table, a tall, lanky man with a slightly bowlegged gait and a mop of dirty blond hair. He always had a cock-eyed, shit-eating grin on his face, and today was no different. Clyde folded himself up and slid into the booth opposite of Maya and me.

  “What can I do for ya, Eddie?” He asked. When the waitress came over, he turned the smile her direction and asked for a sweet tea, even though this was nowhere near the region of the country he’d be able to purchase such a drink. She called him sugar and said she’d be right back with his drink anyway.

  “I need a weapon,” I sai
d.

  “Right down to business, just like always,” Clyde said with a drawl. “You thinkin’ somethin’ lethal this time? Did you finally get tired of that silly popgun of yours?”

  I scowled. “No. Damn thing broke on me.” I didn’t want to go into all the specifics. But I’d felt naked ever since the popgun had been damaged beyond repair. I’m not a big fan of traditional guns, though I’ve used them when I needed to, and would prefer something nonlethal but with plenty of stopping power.

  “I would prefer something nonlethal but with plenty of stopping power,” I said.

  “I think I can find something right up your alley,” Clyde replied. “Gimme an hour to go through my inventory.” He slipped out of the booth and ambled back out of the diner as the waitress brought his drink to the table.

  * * *

  True to his word, Clyde was back an hour later. He gestured for us to join him outside. I tossed a few bills down on our table and followed the black-market gun seller outside, Maya close at my heels.

  “Can we, um, trust him?” she whispered as we walked across the parking lot.

  I shrugged. “As much as we can trust anyone, I guess.”

  “That’s not very reassuring, sir,” Maya chided.

  I shrugged again. “He’s reliable, as long as your money’s good.” I felt in my pocket for the roll of bills; they were still there, and the wad was still plenty thick. “I should have enough to buy some loyalty, at least for as long as we’ll need it to last.”

  “How long is that?” Maya asked.

  “Until I can figure out who put the bounty on my head and get it removed.” I paused for a second. “The bounty, I mean.”

  “Right.”

  “Not my head.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I would like to keep my head.”

  “I understood, sir,” Maya said dutifully.

  Clyde arrived at the rear of a white utility van, the sort that everyone and their son drives when they start up a plumbing/carpentry/HVAC/handyman concern. All the rear windows were painted over, and a rusted-out extension ladder was hooked to the passenger side. “Come, take a look at our wares!” Clyde said with a flourish. He swept the back door open; the effect was only slightly spoiled by the loud, rusted creak of protest the door made.