The Other Side of the Mirror

by Lex H Jones

  “Amber DuBois,” Carl said with a shallow tone.

  “What about her?” Dice asked.

  “One of your girls, right? In the agency you run?”

  “She was, until she ran away. Lord knows what she’s doing with herself now.”

  “Not much of anything. She’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Did you know she was pregnant?”

  “She was? Oh shit, that’s—wait, you think I did this?” Dice asked, looking up at Carl, who remained standing before him with his hands in the pockets of his long leather jacket.

  “You telling me you didn’t?”

  “Kill a pregnant girl? No, I fucking didn’t!” Dice protested.

  “Forgive me for the accusation, what with you being such a fine and upstanding citizen and all,” Carl scowled.

  “Look, there’s a difference between getting rich by any means and murder! Especially a pregnant nineteen year old,”

  “You beat your girls. That’s why she ran,” Carl explained, taking a walk around to the side of Dice’s desk. “Maybe one day you lost your temper more than usual, reached for your gun...”

  “She was shot?” Dice asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, here you are then...” said Dice, unlocking his desk drawer. Carl saw that he was about to take a gun from inside, so instantly drew his own. Dice raised his hands suddenly and cried, “Whoa whoa, hold on big man... I’m just going to pass it to you.”

  “Do it slowly,” Carl warned him, keeping his gun fixed on Dice’s forehead.

  “You’re a bloody gun nut, like all you Yanks,” Dice protested in his phoney English accent. He passed the gun to Carl, revealing it to be a customised Glock with a silver polish. On the handle was engraved the symbol of a playing card Spade.

  “Nice gun,” Carl remarked.

  “Take it to your CSI boys if you want. They’ll tell you it hasn’t been fired recently, and that the bullets don’t match the one you probably found in Amber.”

  “Maybe you got another gun you’re not telling me about.”

  “I have that one out of necessity. I certainly don’t want any more of the bloody things. You’ll notice that one was locked in my desk drawer, to which only I have the key. I don’t even carry it on my person.”

  “Seems an expensive gun to have purely for necessity.”

  “Everything I have is expensive. This suit probably cost more than your annual wage.”

  “Be a shame to bleed all over it then, wouldn’t it?” Carl asked, putting his thumb to the hammer of his gun.

  “Hey, hey, cool it... I told you it wasn’t me that killed her, all right? I swear,” Dice protested, his hands raised in submission.

  “Okay,” Carl shrugged, re-holstering his gun at his shoulder.

  “You believe me?” Dice asked, the surprise evident in his tone.

  “Yup,” Carl nodded.

  “Mind if I ask why?”

  “Because in my experience, the guilty guys don’t usually wet themselves under pressure,” Carl remarked.

  Dice glanced down and saw the wet patch around his groin and then rolled his eyes, “For fuck’s sake.”

  “Yeah, classy bunch, you English guys,” Carl smirked.

  “Can I go now? I need to get cleaned up and back down to the casino floor. My boys will start worrying.”

  “I already had a nice chat with one of them. If the others have seen him, they won’t be in any rush to make my acquaintance.

  “Always violence with you lot on the East side, isn’t it?” Dice sighed.

  “Did you know that Amber had come over to my side of the river?” Carl enquired, perching on the edge of the desk as Dice hopelessly tried to clean his suit with a handkerchief.

  “I assumed as much, but it’s not like I went looking for her,” Dice replied, tossing the handkerchief in a waste paper basket and opening a cupboard in the corner of the room. Carl reached for his gun once more, but Dice raised a hand and said, “I’m getting some spare pants, alright?

  “In England they call them trousers,” Carl smirked.

  “Do you mind if I use the bathroom next to this office? Sink and toilet, no window, no gun cabinet,” Dice assured him.

  “Go ahead. I’m getting sick of breathing in piss anyway.”

  Dice walked into the small bathroom, leaving the door open behind him so that he could continue talking to Carl as he washed and changed.

  “I heard that Amber was one of your higher earners. Why didn’t you chase after her when she made a run for it?” Carl asked.

  “Damaged goods, mate,” Dice called back from the bathroom. “No one on my client list is going to hire a girl that’s worked on your side of the City.”

  “Fair point,” Carl nodded. “And you weren’t a little ticked off at all?”

  “Course I was, lot of money to be lost. But that doesn’t mean I’d shoot a pregnant girl!” Dice said sincerely, re-entering the office as he fastened a new orange shirt, his trousers already changed.

  “So when she left, you made no effort to find out where she went?”

  “Can’t say that I did, no. Why would I? Like I said, she wasn’t worth it anymore. Bringing her back would be pointless, so I just let her run.”

  “How kind of you.”

  “Look, I’m not a fucking saint, all right? Never said that I was.”

  “Lucky you. Then you won’t be getting a visit from His Holiness,” Carl said with a sinister smile.

  “You bloody haven’t...” said Dice, the blood draining from his face as his eyes widened beyond their normal measure.

  “Relax, you think I’m the sort of guy that would get Pope involved in police business? The further he stays away, the better,” Carl assured him. “Once that guy steps in, I get a clock on how long I have to speak with my suspects. I don’t like feeling rushed.”

  “Oh, thank Christ,” Dice breathed an audible sigh of relief, his entire body letting go of the tension that had just frozen it.

  “Amber was found on the banks of the Styx. Girl like that, we assumed at first that she’d been killed on your side of the river. Now we know otherwise, and if you had nothing to do with it, then it makes sense that she was killed in the West side.”

  “I said that I wasn’t the kind of guy who could kill a pregnant girl... but you have plenty of arseholes over there that would,” Dice reminded him, somewhat unnecessarily. “I’m assuming she found work? Only one type of work a girl like that can do. Perhaps her new pimp found out she was up the duff and didn’t take too kindly to it.”

  “That was actually my next train of thought.”

  “Sure it was, Detective,” Dice smiled.

  “Don’t get smart. I think you’re innocent in this but I’m damn sure I could think of about another ten reasons from tonight alone that would warrant me hauling your ass to the station.”

  “You could, but you won’t. That’s not the way things work and you know it,” Dice said with a confident grin, revealing once more the tacky golden tooth on the side of his mouth.

  “I have jurisdiction over the entire city, Dice.”

  “Technically yes, but you won’t take me because it’s a waste of time. I have friends that sign your boss’s paycheque. I wouldn’t even get to trial and you know it. That’s why you threatened me in a purely ‘off the record’ way when you entered. You knew that the threat of anything legal was meaningless.”

  “True enough, so what’s to stop me blowing out the back of your skull right now?”

  “Look, I have a date with three lovely ladies tonight, two of them related. I really don’t want to turn up with any wounds, visible or otherwise, that might impede the evening’s enjoyment,” Dice explained. “So if I make it worth your while, how about you leave without laying a hand on me?”

  “What have you got?” Carl asked, folding his arms.

  “I know the names of all the pimps in your shite-hole half of the city. I know which ones woul
d specialise in providing younger girls like Amber. There’s only two of them, actually, as most of your clientele over there prefer dirty old hags, for some reason. Anyway, one of those is still serving time, so that just leaves Big Dog.”

  “Big Dog?” Carl asked with a sigh. “That’s what he fucking calls himself?”

  “The man’s an idiot, what do you want?” Dice shrugged. “I thought a man like you would know all the players in your half of the city?”

  “I work homicide, not prostitution. If one of them turns up dead it becomes my business, otherwise not so much.”

  “In that case you’ll be interested to know that Big Dog can usually be found near the bus station. Trolling for new employees, as it happens. Runaways, emancipated kids, that sort of thing. Good business strategy, I have to say.”

  “I’ll let myself out,” Carl nodded, taking his leave of Dice before he wavered his agreement and broke the prick’s face.

  Chapter Eight;

  One-Way Ticket

  T he City Bus Station was the centre of new visitors into the city and could be found in the East side. There was a reason for that, of course, which was that no one who was new to the city got to go straight to the West. That was a privilege you had to earn. Desecrate enough of your morals, sell enough of your body and soul and you just might win that golden ticket. But to start with you came here, into the dirt and grime. Off the bus and away from the land of the bright and the living, into darkness and desolation. No one ever bought a return fare because they knew that once in the City, they wouldn’t be leaving. A one-way ticket to the worst place you’d ever go.

  The bus depot was adjacent to the old train station, but it was decades since a train had actually rattled along those tracks. Most people that came here couldn’t afford the fare on a train, and the lack of business had caused one service after another to be withdrawn. Now the worn out old husk of the train station had become a den for drug addicts and the homeless, dirty and cold, but at least it was shelter. Now and again someone would find a corpse on the tracks, usually one of the addicts tripping over his own feet and cracking his head open on the rails. Anywhere else and they would have blocked the whole place off, but here the authorities simply didn’t give a crap. Let them shelter there, let them die there. At least it stopped them from being anywhere in sight.

  Carl sat on a bench that at some point in the past was painted green, but now covered in so much graffiti that its colour was virtually invisible. It wasn’t the good kind of graffiti either, the kind that almost resembled art. This was just the dumbass idiots writing their name and random gangster words in an attempt to justify the importance of their own existence. Juvenile morons shouting at the world because they knew no one was listening. Above the bench was a sign that displayed the number of the buses that would stop here when their appointed time arrived. Strangely enough, the buses were always on time in the City, as they didn’t have to compete with any other traffic. No one wanted to come here, after all, and those that did never left. Little coming in, nothing going out. Empty roads, buses running smoothly.

  Several buses came and went as Carl sat there on that bench, wondering when the sky would give it up and let the rain fall. He wasn’t waiting for a bus, but rather the right person getting off one of them. A girl, aged between fifteen and twenty, clearly naïve and vulnerable, desperate for help from someone. The kind that would draw scum like Big Dog to her like a moth to a flame. Carl assumed that the pimp or at least some of his cronies were in the station already, but he couldn’t act until he was sure. If he gave away his game too early by making a move on the wrong person, the whole thing would blow up. He’d promised Felicity that he would find the man responsible for killing her sister, and the Dog could be him.

  The number 50 bus pulled up at the stop where Carl was sat, and its four passengers descended from the steps. There was a middle-aged couple that looked miserable and downtrodden, a single man with a dog, and then just what Carl had been waiting for; a young girl, barely seventeen from his estimation, her hair died a cheap purple and the rucksack on her back, worn and old. She wore a denim skirt with torn fishnets and unlaced boots that were seemingly too big for her, the way they rode up and down her ankles as she walked. Either this one had run away from home or she’d never had one to begin with, Carl mused.

  Perfect.

  Sure enough, as the girl stepped off the bus and looked around, a figure from the other side of the station put down the newspaper he had been reading and made his way towards her. As he came closer, Carl saw that he was a black guy wearing a dark grey suit, gold-rimmed sunglasses covering his eyes and gold beads adorning his long dreadlocks. On his belt buckle were golden letters which, when illuminated in the headlights of a parked bus, spelled the words “Big Dog”. Carl congratulated himself on the shortest time it had ever taken him to decide that someone was an asshole.

  “Gotcha,” Carl smiled as the pimp approached the purple-haired young girl.

  “Can I help you, sweetheart? You look a little lost,” Big Dog said gently as he put his arm around the young girl.

  “Um, I’m okay... I just need to find a place to stay tonight,” the girl replied with a nervous smile.

  “Well, I might be able to...”

  Big Dog didn’t get a change to finish his sentence before a strong arm locked itself around his neck, at which point he found himself forcibly dragged away by an unshaven man much larger than himself. As Carl easily moved the pimp away from the girl, he called back, “Find a motel.”

  “Yo, what the fuck is this?” Big Dog asked as Carl tossed him onto a bench.

  “Big Dog?” Carl enquired.

  “That’s right, who wants to know?”

  “My name’s Duggan,” Carl informed him, opening his coat and taking out his badge.

  “Aw come on man, I’m paid up for this month. I ain’t got no more to give you blue boys.”

  “I don’t want your damn money, you shit. I want you to tell me about a girl,” Carl growled.

  “Why didn’t you say so, big guy? I got lotsa girls, blonde ones, brunettes, redheads. I even got chicks with dicks if that’s your thing.”

  “I want a blonde.” said Carl.

  “Blondes we got,” Big Dog nodded, straightening his coat as he sat himself more comfortably on the bench.

  “I have one in mind, actually. Amber DuBois.”

  “Ah, she don’t work for me no more.”

  “Why not?”

  “We had a disagreement. Bitch got pregnant on me.”

  “So where is she now?” Carl asked, feeling his hand reach for his gun.

  “What’s it matter, man? You can’t use her no more. But I got a ton of blondes, sure you can find one that...”

  “Where. Is. She. Now?” Carl repeated, drawing his gun and pointing it directly at Big Dog’s crotch, a shot made all the easier by the way in which the pimp insisted on sitting with his legs wide open. A statement of pride gone horribly wrong very quickly.

  “Jesus Christ!” Big Dog exclaimed. “What’s it to you?”

  “Answer the damn question.”

  “Like I said, we had a disagreement. She wouldn’t ice the damn kid, so she was no use to me.”

  “She wouldn’t get an abortion, so you killed her?”

  “I didn’t say I killed her, man. You putting damn words in my mouth.”

  Carl felt his cell vibrate, so he took it from his pocket and answered it, keeping his gun trained on Big Dog. He muttered a few words and then replaced the phone. “Give me your gun,” he instructed.

  “I ain’t packing.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Dog. Take it out, slowly.”

  Big Dog could never claim to be the most intelligent businessman in the city, but he was smart enough to know when he was beaten. This wasn’t an overweight cop that he could hope to outrun, nor one of the skinny young ones that he could bribe. This was the real deal, the kind that would beat the living shit out of him if he even attempted to draw his
gun for any purpose other than to hand it over. Wasn’t even worth the attempt, he decided, passively handing the revolver to Carl.

  “Well what do you know...” Carl remarked, popping the chamber to the side and studying the bullet he removed. “Same calibre.”

  “Same calibre as what?” Big Dog asked nervously.

  “The bullet my CSI guys have been studying. The one they took out of Amber. Bunch of nerds don’t know what the outside of that lab looks like, but they have their uses.”

  “All right, all right, I killed her. But look, man, I just hired that bitch. Got a lot of clients lined up, big people, powerful people. She was booked solid for months, skank didn’t tell me she was pregnant. You know what these people were gonna do to me?”

  “Worse than this?” Carl asked, firing a single shot straight into Big Dog’s testicles.

  The gunshot echoed throughout the bus depot and a few heads turned, but not nearly enough to cause a scene. It was hardly an unfamiliar sound in the station, after all. Two guys having a disagreement and one of them gets shot. Who gives a shit? No one that was in the vicinity to hear it, that much was certain. Big Dog screamed, then fell from the bench and rolled on the floor. He lay hunched into a ball and sobbing as he clutched at what remained of his genitals, the blood pouring out onto the wet ground below him.

  “What the fuck man, what the fuck...” He sobbed.