Target Rich Environment

by Larry Correia

  “Arthur knew right away who you were and said that if we ever had need of a private detective, then you would be the only man for the job because you didn’t know the meaning of the word quit. You see, he had a lot of respect for you. Arthur was in the First Volunteers during the war too, Mr. Sullivan. I believe every survivor of the Second Somme knows who you are.”

  Sullivan was humbled. His respect for Arthur Fordyce had just grown tremendously. Very few Healers had bothered to join the Volunteers. “Men like your husband saved a lot of lives over there.”

  “Arthur led me to believe that you saved even more, Mr. Sullivan. . . . Now please do it again, and if my husband has been . . .” She choked on the word, then couldn’t finish. Sullivan came around, but he didn’t know the first thing about how to comfort a grieving woman. Luckily, she waved him away. “I’m fine . . . I’m fine. I’ll be going.”

  Sullivan opened the door for her. Emily stopped, and her voice grew unexpectedly hard. “If Arthur is gone, then I don’t want the men who did it arrested, I want them gone too. Do you understand me, Mr. Sullivan? If they hurt him, I want you to hurt them right back, and if you do so, I will double your fee again. I want you to do to them what Arthur said you did to the Kaiser’s army.”

  Sullivan closed the door behind her. Rage at the men who might have made her a widow notwithstanding, Emily didn’t know what she was asking for. He wouldn’t wish the fate of the Kaiser’s army on anyone.

  It was snowing when he left the office.

  Arthur Fordyce’s automobile had been towed to a police lot. A quick phone call to a Detroit P.D. officer who owed him a favor got Sullivan inside for a quick look. The car was a ritzy ’29 Dusenberg roadster. The paint gleamed with tiny flecks of real gold. Ostentatious, but fitting for a Healer. The only thing that spoiled the perfection was the gallon of blood someone had left to dry on the leather seats. Most of the blood was on the driver’s side, like it had pooled around a body. No wonder the law was assuming it was a murder instead of a kidnapping.

  Sullivan was still poking around the Dusenberg when there was an angry cough from behind. He turned to see Detective Sergeant Ragan. “Afternoon, Detective.”

  “What’re you doing in there, Sullivan?”

  He’d cultivated a decent enough relationship with many of the local cops, but not all of them. Ragan was in the latter category. An old-fashioned, hard-drinking tough guy, Ragan didn’t like magicals, and he especially didn’t like ones with reputations for having accidentally killed a law enforcement officer, even if the officer in question had been a murderous piece of work. “Mrs. Fordyce hired me to find her husband.”

  “Find her husband’s body is more like it . . .”

  “Who do you think did it?” Sullivan asked, still going about his business.

  “Whole case is fishy. I’m thinking the wife had him popped, just to get the insurance money. Fellow like that’s bound to have a hefty life insurance policy.”

  Sullivan snorted. “That’s rich.”

  “Why am I even talking to the likes of you? Get out of there! That’s evidence.” Sullivan climbed out of the car, quickly hiding the handkerchief he’d used to wipe up some blood. “You can’t be in here. Who let you in?”

  “Nice fella. Forgot his name. About this tall . . .” Sullivan held his hand out about shoulder height then moved it up and down six inches.

  “You private ops are a pain in the neck. I ought to have you arrested for tampering with evidence.”

  That would never hold, but Sullivan definitely didn’t want to spend Christmas in a cell. It was time to go. “My apologies, Detective.” Sullivan tipped his hat and walked away.

  Sometimes prejudices make life harder than it needs to be. Sullivan was fairly certain that if Ragan was running the official investigation then there was no way in the world that he’d resort to consulting a Finder. Ragan distrusted magic, and besides, any clues divulged through magical means wouldn’t be admissible in a court of law. Sullivan didn’t have those issues. He just wanted to find Arthur Fordyce and get paid.

  To be fair, it wasn’t just about the money this time. Fordyce was a fellow veteran of Roosevelt’s First Volunteer Active Brigade. Sullivan had never associated with any of the unit’s Healers, other than to dump wounded soldiers onto their tables. The valuable Healers had been kept as far from the front as possible, while the dime-a-dozen Spikers were always where the bullets were flying. Healers were officers, Sullivan had been an enlisted man, but despite those differences, they’d both shared a little slice of hell in the biggest battle in human history, and that made them brothers.

  Sullivan would have done his best no matter what, that was just his single-minded nature, but Fordyce wasn’t some anonymous victim. He was First Volunteer, and that made it personal.

  The fourth best Finder in Detroit lived in a humble home in Brush Park. Sullivan couldn’t afford the other three. A reliable Finder demanded a premium wage. Finders existed in that nebulous grey area of Active popularity. The public considered them useful but scary. At least Finders were far more well-liked than their more powerful cousins, the Summoners. Most religious types simply wouldn’t tolerate them or their alien Summoned.

  It didn’t help that Finders tended to be a few bricks shy of a wall. Talking to disembodied spirits all day tended to do that to a person. Bernie was all right though . . . usually.

  Sullivan knocked and only had to wait a minute to be let in. Bernie was a pudgy, unshaven, wild-eyed fellow, and today was wearing some pajamas that had seen better days. “Sullivan! Good to see you, my boy.”

  “Nice hat, Bernie.”

  Bernie’s head was wrapped in a tin foil cone. “Keeps some of the voices out,” he explained. “I picked up a screamer this morning. Poor thing won’t shut up. You know how it goes.”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Come in! Come in!” Bernie dragged him inside. The interior of the home was filled with stacks of newspapers and at least a dozen mangy cats. Bernie kicked stray felines out of the way as he led Sullivan to the living room. “Did you bring me a present?”

  “I got you a sandwich.” He passed over a paper sack. Bernie had a reputation for forgetting to eat when he was on a Finding, and Sullivan needed him focused. Sullivan then pulled out the red-stained handkerchief. “And this.”

  Bernie took the handkerchief. “Oh . . .” He sounded disappointed. “I meant a Christmas present.”

  “Sandwich isn’t good enough? Well, if you Find me the body that blood came out of I’ll give you fifty bucks. This is a rush job.”

  The Finder studied the stain. “Half up front . . . and you still owe me a present.”

  “Fair enough.” Sullivan had cashed Emily Fordyce’s generous advance check already and he counted out the bills. “What do you get for the man that’s already got everything?”

  “I’m almost out of tin foil.” Bernie shoved a particularly ugly cat off the couch and took a seat. He placed the handkerchief on the stack of newspapers that, judging from all the dirty plates and dishes stacked on it, served as his table. “Rush job, eh? I’ve got just the spirit for you. Strongest thing on her plane. I call her Mae, ’cause you know, she kinda reminds me of this poster of Mae West I got. Bringing her in burns up all my Power for a few days, but she works real fast. I’m warning ya, if this body ain’t close, it could take time.”

  Sullivan leaned against the wall. His overcoat was black and he didn’t particularly want to cover it in cat hair. “If you can do a Finding for me today, I’ll get you two rolls of foil.”

  Bernie rubbed his hands together greedily. “You got a deal, but lots of things can go wrong. If the body is buried real deep, takes time. If the thing I’m Finding is behind iron . . . If it’s been cut into little bits and scattered, or if it’s been burned to ash, or if—”

  “Just do your best, Bernie.” Sullivan settled in to wait. He knew how erratic this method was, but when it worked, it worked really well. They’d used the disembodied cr
eatures of the Finders as scouts during the war. Nobody knew where the creatures came from exactly, they tended to be flaky, but they could cover a lot of ground and see things a person couldn’t.

  Bernie concentrated on the handkerchief, scowled, confused, then cheered up as he remembered he was wearing a hat. He took the tin foil off and went back to concentrating. “That’s better. Here comes Mae.”

  The lights flickered and the house shook. Stacks of newspapers tumbled. Cats screeched and ran for cover. At first Sullivan thought that they were having an earthquake, but then the wind hit, sending the curtains billowing across the room. Sullivan stumbled back as his fedora was blown off.

  “Ain’t she a good girl? Yes, she is. Mae’s my good girl.”

  Bernie hadn’t been lying. This one was a doozy. Sullivan had been around many Summonings, but this was the first time he’d actually been able to see the shape of the vaporous creature, even it was only for an instant. The thing hovered in the center of the room, a weird conglomeration of winged hippopotamus and six-legged porcupine with four glowing eyes, and then it was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

  The curtains and blowing trash settled. Sullivan picked up his fedora and brushed away the cat hair. “Impressive critter . . . though I don’t see the resemblance to Mae West.”

  Bernie put his tin foil hat back on. “Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, Sullivan.”

  Mae had told Bernie that it was going to take awhile. Arthur Fordyce wasn’t close, which meant she needed time to roam. Sullivan was still holding out hopes that Fordyce was alive, he was a Healer after all. Despite the volume of blood, he could only assume that Healers could fix themselves like they could fix everyone else, provided he was conscious or had Power enough to do it. Hopefully the demon-hippopotamus-porcupine ghost would come back with good news.

  In the meantime, Sullivan had another lead to follow.

  Abraham Horowitz ran with the Purple Gang, and the Purple Gang ran most of Detroit. Predominately Jewish, they were strongest on the east side, but there wasn’t a criminal activity in this city that they didn’t have a piece of. Mostly they stuck with bootlegging, tried to limit their killing to competitors, and kept the petty crooks under heel well enough to keep the law happy. They were tough enough that even Al Capone knew it was easier to just buy from them than to go to war.

  If you saw a boat on the Detroit River with gunmen on it, then it probably belonged to the Purples. Nobody brought Canadian booze across the river except for the Purple Gang, and if you got caught trying it, you’d get boarded, robbed, and sunk . . . And swimming is difficult with a .45 slug in your chest. The locals called them the Little Jewish Navy, which meant that Abraham Horowitz probably held the rank equivalent to admiral.

  The snow had gotten worse and the worn-out tires on Sullivan’s old Ford didn’t get the best traction, so it took him awhile to get across town. Horowitz’s base of operations was at a sugar mill on the river’s edge. The mill was legitimate. The hoodlums hanging out in front of the business office obviously were not.

  Sullivan stopped the car and got out. The sun was going down and taking the last bit of warmth with it. He threw on his scarf and gloves, but left his coat open in order to get to the .45 automatic on his hip. He knew some of the Purples’ muscle since they’d also worked the UBF strike, so wasn’t expecting any trouble, but with these types violence was always in the air.

  Three men were loafing on a bench at the top of the steps. To the side, the rollup doors to the sugarhouse were open and two burly men were throwing burlap sacks onto the back of a truck. He didn’t even need to activate his Power to know they were like him. The way that each of them was effortlessly lifting four or five fifty-pound sacks at a time told him that the workers were fellow Spikers. A bunch of guys were sitting around smoking while Actives did all the work . . . Figures.

  The Purple thugs got off the bench when they saw him coming up the stairs. The lead tough intercepted him before he could reach the door. The kid was barely old enough to shave, but had already developed a street swagger, but everyone was tougher when they had two buddies standing behind them. He tossed his cigarette into the snow. “Whadda you want?”

  “I want to talk to Mr. Horowitz.”

  “You got an appointment? You don’t look like you’re here to buy sugar.”

  “Tell Mr. Horowitz it’s about a mutual friend, Arthur Fordyce.”

  The three thugs exchanged a look that told him they recognized the name, but the kid didn’t budge. “Who’re you supposed to be?”

  “Jake Sullivan.” He looked over the group. Unfortunately, he didn’t recognize any of them. “Isadore Lebowitz around? He can vouch for me.”

  “Buddy, Izzy got put in the ground weeks ago. He ain’t vouching for nobody ever again.”

  “I hadn’t heard.”

  They were starting to fan out around him. “He got shot in the teeth. If you was his friend, you shoulda knew that,” said the second thug as he walked behind Sullivan. The sharks were circling.

  “Mr. Horowitz said no visitors,” said the last, this one with the bleary eyes of someone on the weed. “Not till the bone man leaves town.”

  “Shut up, idiot,” hissed the second.

  Sullivan didn’t have time for intergang nonsense. “Why don’t one of you guys go ask Mr. Horowitz if he wants to talk to me.”

  The kid snickered. “Yeah? Well, he’s busy. You should come back . . . oh . . . never.” His buddies all had a good laugh at that. “Now beat it ’fore we beat you.”

  Sullivan’s magic was collected in his chest, just waiting. He’d saved up quite a bit. He activated the Power, using just a bit of his reserves, and tested the world around him. The weed head had something dense enough in the small of his back to be a pistol. The leader had something metal in his pocket. The Spikers loading the truck both stopped and looked over his way, having sensed the subtle flux in gravity.

  “I’m not leaving until one of you asks Mr. Horowitz if he’ll talk to me.”

  The leader glared at him and the look in those cold eyes said that he’d seen a fair share of blood spilled in his young life. “Last chance to walk away,” he said.

  Sullivan took his time taking out a cigarette, putting it to his mouth, and striking a match. The thugs watched him light up, incredulous as he took a puff, held it for a moment, then let it out. “Last chance to get your boss.”

  He had to hand it to the kid. He was fast with that straight razor. It came out in a silver flash. “You know what time it is now, big man?”

  Sullivan shrugged. “Can’t say I do.”

  The kid held the razor low at his side. “Now’s the part where you say you don’t want any trouble.”

  “Does that ever work?”

  “Nope.”

  The kid lunged. The razor zipped out like a striking rattlesnake. Sullivan grabbed his Power and twisted gravity. When in a hurry, there was no time for finesse. A small piece of the world broke. Up was down and down was up. The kid’s feet left the ground as he tumbled, surprised, toward the overhang. He slammed into the sheet metal cover overhead. Sullivan let him hang there for a moment, just so that he could know he’d barked up the wrong tree, before cutting his Power. The kid hit the concrete in a shower of dust and snow.

  Sullivan turned just as the weed head went for the gun under his coat. He had plenty of Power stored up, and it never hurt to make an example of idiots, so Sullivan drastically lessened the strength of gravity around his target before he slugged the punk square in the face. Weedy left the ground, flew back to the end of Sullivan’s range, then fell and bounced down the steps. A little nickel-plated pistol went skittering off into the snow.

  There was one Purple left. He was just standing there, too flummoxed to move. Sullivan removed the cigarette from his mouth and pointed at him. “Like I said . . . I’ll wait here while you go tell Mr. Horowitz.”

  The punk jerked open the doors and ran for his life. Sullivan looked over to see the two Spike
rs coming his way. One of them had picked up a length of pipe. “Brothers, you don’t want to try me. I may be like you . . .” Sullivan let a bit more of his Power slip so they could feel the obvious surge. Gravity distorted. Falling snow stopped and hung in midair. The workers looked at each other, surprised at the display of control. Sullivan cut it off before he wasted too much precious Power. The snow resumed falling. “But I’ve got way more practice.”

  The Heavies returned to their truck, but they kept an uneasy eye on him. The punk at the bottom of the stairs was moaning about the condition of his face. The kid with the razor was out cold. That’s what they got for picking a fight with someone who’d survived Second Somme and Rockville. Sullivan took a seat on the bench and finished his smoke.

  Two minutes later the door opened again. This time four Purples filed out and they all trained shotguns on him. “Mr. Horowitz will see you now.”

  Abraham Horowitz sat behind a giant oak desk, thick arms folded, and prepared to listen to Sullivan’s request. The bootlegger was a steely-eyed killer, past his physical prime now, but this was a man who’d grown up busting heads and collecting protection money. This was not somebody to short change, so it was probably wise to start with an apology. “Sorry about your boys downstairs, but I didn’t do anything until the kid tried to carve me a new smile.”

  “Well, they should have asked me first. There was no need to be impolite to guests. Bad for business.” Horowitz grunted. “From your rep I’m surprised you didn’t just kill ’em all. You’re a living legend. Way I hear it, you got an early release ’cause you’re so good at it . . . You cut a deal with the enemy to take down dangerous Actives, right? You wouldn’t happen to be here on the government dime, are you, Mr. Sullivan?”

  “No, sir. Far as I’d tell anybody, you run a sugar mill, that’s all. As for the enemy, any man would make a deal with the devil to get out of Rockville. It’s a hard place. I just do what I’ve got to get by, same as anybody.”