The Dirty City

by Jim Cogan

  “Mr Jerome, thank you for fitting us into your busy schedule,” she offered a dainty hand, which I shook politely. “This is my lab associate, Dr Walter Smitts.”

  Christ, I hadn’t even noticed him! He was sat to her right side, sporting a look of general disinterest, a short, skinny, runt of a guy – I estimated about mid-thirties. He sported a conservative shirt, trousers and tie coupled with a truly tasteless waistcoat. He was evidently also a brainiac, but without the social skills that Dr Del-Ray possessed. He barely acknowledged being introduced, so I merely smiled briefly in his direction then turned my attention back her.

  “And how can I assist you both?”

  “We’re both research academics at the Santa Justina Institute for Advanced Studies. Our current research is a little, unusual.”

  “Unusual is always good, keeps life interesting. Do go on.”

  “The occult, Mr Jerome,” piped up Smitts for the first time.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Paranormal activity, unexplained phenomena – places modern science doesn’t normally go,” said Del-Ray, in a diffusing tone.

  “What, ghosts and shit?” Great, yet more crazy talk.

  Smitts rolled his eyes, but Del-Ray persisted, “I appreciate this sounds a little - farfetched, I can assure you, we’re not crazies, We apply scientific methods to investigating things that don’t provide simple, rational explanations. Like all scientists, we are seekers of the truth.”

  “Okay, sounds swell, but what do you need me for?”

  “Why indeed?” Smitts muttered under his breath, but knowingly loud enough for me to hear. So there was a dynamic here, she was the one who wanted to hire me, he was against it – but she was the senior partner.

  “Walter, please. That’s enough, let Mr Jerome hear us out first.”

  “I’m all ears, sweetheart.” I could tell right away she hated being labelled with such a disposable term of endearment, I could read the disapproval in her face. Which cheered me a up a bit, I was coming to the conclusion she was a bit of a tight-ass.

  “There are some strange things going on in this city, Mr Jerome. People are going missing, the city is being flooded with cheap, plentiful supplies of an extremely dangerous and addictive narcotic-.”

  “Yep, know all that.”

  She hated being interrupted too!

  “Witnesses are reporting very unusual sightings. People, after dark who lurk in the shadows-.”

  “Dr Del-Ray, you’re describing three quarters of the underworld gangsters in the entire city.”

  “Please can you refrain from interrupting me with your petty wisecracks, there is no-one else here in this room to appreciate them.”

  Well, that told me!

  “These people, they’re described as being fast, unbelievably stealthy, impossibly strong. And they only come out at night.”

  Oh boy, I couldn’t believe it, yet more crazy talk!

  “I still don’t see what you want me to do?”

  “We want to understand what they are, Mr Jerome. And what they want with the people they’re kidnapping,” interjected Smitts.

  “Sounds really fascinating, honest – it really does,” which was my nice way of saying that this sounds like time wasting bullshit! “But, this is the stuff of teenage Halloween fiction and I’m a serious private detective, I don’t see a job for me here.”

  “Frankly, you disappoint me, Mr Jerome.” Del-Ray’s features hardened, I figured she’d finally had enough of me at that point. “Two respected academics want to hire you to investigate something of extraordinary scientific and social significance, and you’d sooner be doing what? Finding missing drug addicts and spying on unfaithful spouses?”

  “Hey, I do my best to keep an open mind, but this – this is a folly that could damage my credibility.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way – most PI’s share your sentiment, but I was led to believe that you might be more understanding, evidently I was mistaken.”

  “I apologise if I’ve been misrepresented.”

  “This is my card, it has my contact details for me at the Institute. I would urge you, if in a few days time things start going a little bit insane, then you might actually find you need our help.” She dropped the printed card onto my desk and briskly rose from her chair, “good afternoon, Mr Jerome.”

  “And good afternoon to you, Dr Del-Ray,” I looked over at Smitts and couldn’t resist a last jibe at him, “And whatever your name was, my friend.”

  Smitts sneered and turned his nose up at me as if he’d just seen me defecate on the floor. What an asshole. She was feisty, though, but definitely a tight-ass.

  I found Del-Ray and Smitts somewhat laughable, I was an ashamed sceptic, but the days strangeness quota kept on increasing. I had to admit, it was interesting and I was curious, but I was also a realist – I had real work to do and chasing shadows was surely going to be a distraction from that, so I tried to put it out of my mind…

  CHAPTER 5

  With the trail on Anton Jameson going colder by the hour, I decided to change tack a little. I’d tried talking to the mob, I figured it was time to get the inside track from the cops.

  I got told once, by a pretty senior cop, that if you see a cop in his fifties, working the beat on the streets, no promotions, no upwardly rising career - still one of the guys and seemingly no aspirations to go any further, you can bet that cop is as crooked as a bag of snakes. No-one could afford to live on a patrol officers salary their whole life, let alone retire on their measly pension. It stands to reason that they must be supplementing their income – and in a city like Santa Justina that was pretty easy to do.

  One such cop was Edgar Blunt. He was already a fifteen year veteran of the streets when I arrived in town, and to be fair, the police work that he did do, he did it pretty well. He was good with the general public, always jovial and fair. But he could be bought really easily. $10 was all it took to get a person off being arrested for minor offence, $5 if they were under twenty one, but that was just beer money. He was paid the real money for turning a blind eye to things. The illegal distillery on Harper Street, $50 a month to pretend it wasn’t there. The brothel in Noon Town, $75 a month – and some ‘perks’ from the girls every now and then. $500 in unmarked bills – for arriving two minutes too late at the scene of a bank heist. The list went on, and the money kept coming in. I’d hazard a guess that in a year Officer Edgar Blunt probably earned more than the Police commissioner and the Chief District attorney combined.

  But he knew how to play the game, you mustn’t get greedy, you mustn’t publicise your wealth, just quietly accumulate – only occasionally enjoy the profits, live humbly, well within your means, keep it all on the down low.

  One of Edgar’s many income streams was cash for information. I was a pretty regular customer of his.

  He was a portly man, now in his early fifties and sporting a reasonable middle-aged spread, but he was bulky and powerfully built. He didn’t do too much of chasing perps these days, but if you were within reach and weren’t fast off the mark, he’d probably get you.

  His face showed a number of lines, etchings from years of being outdoors on the beat, and he sported a shock of greying hair, with the start of pattern baldness usually concealed by his hat.

  I’d arranged to meet Edgar while he took a brief afternoon sabbatical in the park plaza downtown. It was a popular lunch and meeting spot, a picturesque grass park, with winding paths, ornate flowerbeds and pretty water features. After lunchtime it got real quiet, almost deserted, and that’s why Edgar liked meeting his clients there.

  I could see him from a distance, his dark navy blue uniform standing out against the surrounding natural green hues around him. He was casually seated on one of the many wooden benches dotted around, tucking into some kind of oversized sandwich.

  “Heart attack food, Ed.” I joked.

  “Hey, I gotta’ maintain my figure, huh?”

  “Good to see you, thanks for meet
ing up at short notice.”

  “No worries, Johnny, always glad to be of service. Fancy a donut?”

  “Not for me, Ed, can’t stomach the sugar these days.”

  During our patter, I’d produced a blank envelope and placed it casually next Edgar, as I took a seat next to him. Without either of us actually looking at it, he picked it up and stashed it out of site in a concealed pocket in his jacket. Edgar did a lot deals like this – it never ceased to amaze me how his jacket seemed to have an extraordinary quantity of concealed pockets.

  “Need some info, Ed, bit stumped on a case.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Anything - weird going on in the city at the moment?”

  “Define weird.”

  “What’s going on with the local mobs? Vitalli is the main man now, right?”

  “Everyone knows that.”

  “How did that come about?”

  “Bosses rise to the top, usually by taking down their rivals, this is no different.”

  “But it’s sudden, isn’t it?”

  “True.”

  “You ain’t seen this kind of domination occur so quick anywhere else before, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “So what is different here, what’s given him that advantage?”

  “Well, there are rumours...”

  “Uh huh?”

  “It’s mostly crazy talk, drunken wino talk, most of it ain’t worth the time of day.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “You aware of Vitalli’s operations at the old docklands?”

  “Heard about them. D’you know what’s going down out there?”

  “Nah, no-one does. Been raided twice and we ain’t found shit – but the word is that the raids were prearranged, we weren’t meant to find anything, but there is stuff going on there.”

  “What about missing persons?”

  “That is an odd one. On average, three or four a week in the vicinity of the Old Portland Bridge and the surrounding area. No trace found yet for any of them.”

  “Word is you’re not exactly carrying out an exhaustive investigation.”

  “We ain’t. The people vanishing are scum, Johnny. Beggars, petty crooks, old winos, hobos and lowlifes. The taxpayer wants us to catch crooks and keep them safe, not commit resources searching for crazy old bag ladies with a gin habit.”

  “You heard of a chick called Shelly Valance?”

  “We’ve heard talk, but we’ve no idea if she’s a real person or just a smokescreen, but word is she is some out of town business woman who has a specialist team of enforcers at her command. She’s thrown her lot in with Vitalli, and it’s her boys who’ve been taking down Vitalli’s rivals. We also assume it’s through her that all the heroin we’re seeing on the streets is getting in.”

  “Any other weird shit happened?”

  “Funnily enough, two very strange things. We stopped a suspicious transport truck a week back, middle of the night. Driver jumps out and is gone in literally seconds, I mean he moved so damn fast it was like he vanished. We searched the truck, it’s stacked out wall to wall with crates. Each crate contains 25,000 vials of human blood.”

  “Really?”

  “But it’s odd – it’s not any one person or group of persons blood, its hundreds of peoples blood, and all different blood groups, just mixed together, and we have no idea where it all came from. None of the hospitals are missing stocks of blood, it’s a complete mystery. And apparently there are trucks like this sited pretty much every night heading out of town.”

  “You managed to catch any of the drivers?”

  “No, they’re sneaky, take all the back routes, they keep out of site. And it’s very likely that most are being deliberately ignored, if you know what I mean? We did manage to corner one suspect, though – we gave pursuit until he wrong-turned down a dead alley, just before dawn.”

  “Did you apprehend him.”

  “What I’m about to tell you is a little hard to believe, but it’s true. Big group of cops head into the alley, this guy goes stir crazy, he tries to fight his way out with his bare hands – I’m told he was doing pretty good 'til the cops opened fire on him. They totally unloaded on the guy, but he doesn’t go down, he takes all these bullets but it’s like they’re passing through him without doing any damage. But then the sun came up.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Well, the witnesses say he just exploded, right there and then.”

  “What?”

  “Literally, he came apart, he blew up. Into pieces.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “Hey, I wasn’t there, but I witnessed the remains being brought to the coroner. In plastic bags.”

  “There must be some reasonable explanation?”

  “Initial thoughts were that it was spontaneous human combustion, SHC. Extremely rare phenomenon – still just a theory, really, a bit of supportive evidence from previous possible cases. But...”

  “But?”

  “It wasn’t consistent with the few documented previous examples. In SHC it’s thought the combustion begins within, typically in the stomach. The body burns from the inside out, often leaving the clothes only mildly scorched. But this guy, his flesh burnt off first, his bones crumbled almost to dust and then his vital organs exploded.”

  I honestly had no response to that.

  “And one more weird thing. When he went pop, blood was sprayed all over the place, but it was all the wrong consistency. It only travelled a few yards from exploding out of the body to hitting walls and shit, but in that short distance it almost completely coagulated, it had dried to powder before forensics got there. Blood doesn’t normally behave like that, the process usually takes hours to get to that stage.”

  “So what was the official verdict?”

  “It was all so bizarre and difficult to explain that it was agreed, seeing as the guy was a John Doe, that SHC would be the best explanation, providing no-one asked too many questions. But in truth, they didn’t have a God damn clue. Because the incident coincided with sunrise their best guess was maybe some kind of photosensitive reaction to ultra violet light, but it would have been off the chart and incomparably larger than anything anyone has ever seen before. Photosensitives get bad sunburn in direct sunlight, but they don’t explode.”

  I left Edgar to the rest of his lunch and headed back to the car. The city was dirty, but these reports were just plain crazy. I wondered just what the hell was going on here?

  My rational mind was still trying to keep things in balance, and for all the bizarre stuff going on it kept repeating to me that there had to be a completely logical explanation. But... The rest of me could not help itself, I was a detective, I have a deductive mind, and it was leaping to some awkward conclusions. People vanishing, strange shadow-like figures, mysterious consignments of human blood and people exploding in sunlight. My rational mind was screaming, ‘Bullshit!’ But my deductive mind was reluctantly saying, ‘Vampires...’

  *

  I knew something wasn’t quite right the moment I got back to the office.

  “Hi, sweetheart, how’s it been here?”

  Lydia said nothing. She put one finger to her lips to indicate I be quiet and gestured me over to her desk. Once I was close enough she whispered into my ear.

  “Johnny, there’s a guy in your office, he just turned up, he’s built like a brick shithouse and is demanding to speak to you. I think he could be mob.”

  “Sure, thanks for the heads up.” I whispered back, “listen, I’ll go in, if things get crazy, you just get out, get a few blocks away then call the cops, alright?”

  “Be careful, Johnny, please.”

  I wasn’t sure how to play this. I was known to the mob, most PI’s were, and sometimes we had to ask questions that revealed things that perhaps they’d rather we didn’t know about. And sometimes that required a little, polite word in the PI’s ear, just a subtle warning across the bow to say, ‘hey, stand down.’
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br />   I hadn’t dug too deep into the mob’s operations in this case – or at least I didn’t think I had. I was reasonably confident that the guy in my office was here just to talk – but at the back of my mind was the possibility that I could walk in there and the son of bitch might just put a slug through my temples. And so it was, with trepidation, that I opened the door. I decided I would take what I called the ‘unshakable’ approach, and with a deep breath and a shot of courage, I strode diminutively into the room.

  “Good afternoon, apologies if you’ve been waiting a while for me, I’ve been having one of those days.”

  I marched past the man and got a good look at his features. He was a big guy. Seriously big, I reckon he must have been a tleast 6’5” – and very heavily built. But he was young, no more than 25, probably not vastly experienced in dealing with people, and judging by the looks of him, he was employed because of his physical presence rather than his brain power.

  I had breezed past him and gotten my desk between us, which for me was always one of those weird psychological things – like the barrier it created put me in a position of strength. I hoped it served to remind him that this was my domain. Territory secured, I knew that next I had to keep hold of the dialogue. I sat down, and beckoned him to do the same.

  “Now, Mr...? Sorry, I don’t believe my PA caught your name, what shall I call you?”

  He looked a little unsure – not of his name, you understand, but that by now he should be the one doing the talking, not me.

  “Hugo. I’ve been sent to-.”

  I interrupted promptly, “Hugo, great, now – tell me, Hugo, do you work for Mr Vitalli?”

  This was definitely not what he was expecting, so far so good.

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Excellent, has he sent you to give me a message?”

  “It’s more of a warning, really.”

  “Does it involve not asking any more questions about Anton Jameson or poking around near the Old Docklands?

  “Uh-.”

  “Only, I’d have to query Mr Vitalli’s choice in respect to yourself for this kind of job.”

  Hugo looked confused, as I had anticipated, words were not his strongpoint. I could see from his expression that he knew he was not in control of this conversation and was mightily uncomfortable about it.