Parabolis

by Eddie Han

  “Yeah, just figuring some things out,” Dale replied.

  “You got a job at least?”

  “Sort of. I’m trying to run a business.”

  “No kidding. A businessman, huh? That’s a jump from the Guard, isn’t it?” Arturo took a sip of his ale. He did not bother to wait for an answer and just kept going. “I’ll tell you a secret. Business is all about making the right connections. Networking. You don’t have to be very bright or possess any particular skill, really. You just need to know how to butter people up and sell them the same lies you’re selling yourself. Eventually, if enough people start believing it, it becomes true.”

  “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

  “Well, it’s true in my business.”

  “What business is that?”

  “I’m a fixer.”

  “A what?”

  “A fixer. I work with clients who are in need of very specialized services. I connect them to those specialists who can service them. Introduce them to the right people, the right products. I’m basically the guy who gets you whatever you want whenever you want it. And depending on the client and what they’re looking for, it can be a lucrative line of work.”

  “How’d you get into that?”

  “I used to be a sea merchant, so I got around a lot. Got to know pretty much everyone that’s worth knowing. And every now and then, someone would ask me if I knew someone that could get them this or help them out with that. Pretty soon, word got out that I was the go-to guy. Next thing I know, I’m making enough to quit my merchant trade and the rest is history.” Arturo paused and glanced over at the barkeep. When he was out of earshot, he quickly put out his smoke and leaned in. “Hey, so how much are you pulling in a week, anyway?”

  “What?

  “How much do you make?”

  “Not much.”

  “How much? Give me a figure.”

  “Why?”

  “Amuse me.”

  Dale shrugged. “Right now, about four hundred maybe,” he replied. “And I’m sitting on another three in inventory.”

  Arturo scoffed.

  “What if I told you I could set you up with someone who would be willing to pay you up to two thousand Republican marks in one night?”

  Dale looked at him, more skeptical than impressed. “I’d ask you for what?”

  “It’s all about making the right connections.” Arturo did another scan around the room and continued in a hushed voice. “All the guy needs is a safe place to dock a ship for an hour. Maybe not even an hour.”

  “What’s he smuggling?”

  “Shh. No, no. Look, it’s not like that.”

  “Then what do you mean by ‘a safe place to dock?’”

  “It’s a simple transport.”

  “If it’s so simple, why doesn’t he just use the harbor like everyone else?”

  “Look, he’s offering two thousand marks and all you have to do is open your breaker. You don’t even have to be there.”

  Suddenly, it occurred to Dale that his reunion with Arturo in the obscure tavern might not have been so serendipitous after all.

  “Wait, do you live around here?” he asked.

  “No. Why?”

  “How’d you find this place?”

  “What?”

  “This bar. It isn’t exactly the city’s main attraction. And you’re obviously not a regular.”

  “So?”

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “What do you mean? I just happened to be walking by.” He looked at Dale, incredulous. “I was thirsty.”

  “I never said I was running a breaker.”

  Arturo stared blankly for a moment.

  “I just assumed—it’s what your father did, right? I mean, what other kind of business could you be in? Textiles?” He chuckled nervously.

  “Did you follow me here?” asked Dale.

  “No! What? No, of course not.” Arturo scoffed. “What are you, paranoid or something? Why would I follow you?”

  Dale shrugged and went back to his bourbon.

  “Okay, fine,” Arturo surrendered. “I followed you, all right? I did. I’m sorry. I’m a fixer. It’s my job to keep an eye out. To know who’s where and doin’ what. Anyway, your breaker is perfect for what my client needs and it worked out even better that you run it because this is an opportunity for you to make in one night what would normally take you five weeks. So I get to help you out in the process. Everybody wins, right?”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “Look, Dale—”

  “Really.”

  Arturo sighed, scratched his chin, and rubbed the back of his neck. Then he chuckled. “How do you like that? I’m a fixer and you’re a breaker.”

  Dale shook his head. “It’s kind of creepy, actually, that you followed me,” he said.

  “I was trying to be tactful.”

  “You didn’t do a very good job.”

  They both quietly finished their drinks.

  “You want another one?” Arturo asked.

  “I’m all right.”

  “No, no, come on. It’s the least I can do for not being straight,” he insisted. He flagged the barkeep. “Whiskey. Two.”

  “On the rocks?”

  “Neat.”

  When the barkeep had poured them a shot each, Arturo held up his glass.

  “To old times.”

  Then they tossed them back.

  Dale’s stomach felt warm as the whiskey poured in. He hadn’t eaten dinner yet. Three drinks on an empty stomach were enough to get him tipsy.

  “I need to get some food.”

  “Well, you’re in luck,” said the barkeep. “I happen to make the best potato fish stew in the city.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Give me five minutes.”

  “Can we time you?” asked Arturo.

  “Be my guest.”

  As soon as the barkeep went into the back kitchen, Arturo stood and stretched. “Well, I should get going now. I mean, all stalking aside, it was good seeing you again, Dale. Honest.”

  “You too, Art.”

  Then he started for the door before Dale stopped him.

  “Hey, aren’t you going to pay for your drinks?”

  “Oh! Right.” Arturo chuckled and shook his head as he returned to the bar. “Been so absent minded lately.”

  He removed some coins from a leather purse and tossed them on the counter. It was more than enough to cover all of their drinks and Dale’s potato fish stew.

  “Oh, and listen,” he then added. “If you change your mind about my business proposition, you can find me at the Velvet Fray. You know where that is, right?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you can’t miss it. It’s the casino near the Halo. The biggest and brightest. I’m there pretty much every night, so just ask around. They know me there. Everyone knows me.”

  “I meant ‘no,’ as in, nothing’s changed in the past five minutes. Not interested.”

  “Of course. Of course you’re not. I’ll see you around, Dale,” he said with a warm smile and darting eyes. And then he walked out.

  CH 12

  FELIX

  Dale sat in his office, feet propped up on the old wooden desk cluttered with receipts and other dated documents. It had been another slow day. He was near nodding off when a visitor knocked on the frame of his open door. The man was in a tailored suit complete with top hat, an opera cloak, and a brass-handled cane.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Mister Sunday? Mister Dale Sunday?”

  “Yes?”

  The man had sharp features. He spoke clearly, careful to enunciate every word. At a salvage shipyard, the man was conspicuously out of place. Dale noticed a black rose on his lapel and thought it peculiar. Just as the thought crossed his mind, the visitor removed his hat, bowed low with one arm out, as if a thespian about to exit the stage.

  “My name is Remy Guillaume. I am a representative of Felix Egl
on.” He paused to study Dale’s reaction. When it was obvious he was not getting one, Remy Guillaume continued. “He requests your audience.”

  “I’m sorry. Who are you?”

  “Who I am is hardly important. What is important is that I represent the Fat Fox. He has sent me here to present to you an invitation to a late lunch—” He checked his watch and corrected himself. “An early dinner with him.”

  “What’s this about?”

  The visitor studied the office, walking around it slowly with an air of someone about to purchase the place. He stopped at the window overlooking the breaker’s hangar. “This will do,” he said to himself. Then he turned to Dale. “Mister Sunday, you are familiar with Mister Eglon and his organization?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have heard of him—of us? You have heard of the Carousel Rogues, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I do not have to tell you that accepting this invitation is not a matter of convenience.”

  “Again, Mister—”

  “Remy. Please, call me Remy.”

  “Remy, what exactly is this regarding?”

  “We have been informed that you have graciously volunteered your facilities to us for an evening. We intend to take you up on your offer.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “All the arrangements have been finalized but there are a few items the Fat Fox would like to discuss with you regarding the transport.”

  “Look, there must be some mistake. I don’t arrange ‘transports.’ This is a ship-breaking yard. Whoever informed you—” It dawned on Dale. “It was Arturo, wasn’t it? You’re his client, right? I don’t know what he told you, but I told him I wasn’t interested. And I’m not.”

  “Mister Sunday, please. If you will come with me.”

  “Where?”

  “I have a coach waiting for us outside.”

  “What? Now?”

  “Yes, now.”

  “Look, I’m not trying to be disagreeable here. I’m just trying to run a legitimate business so I’d rather not get involved.”

  “I am afraid you are already involved. As I mentioned, the arrangements have been finalized. If it is legitimacy that concerns you, the transport will not involve smuggling of contraband and your role in the operation will be quite minimal. As for compensation for your services, I am sure you will find that the Fat Fox is quite fair. Perhaps even generous. But all of this you can discuss with him in person. Now, if you will.”

  “I can’t just leave now.”

  “Mister Sunday, if you do not accept his invitation now, then Mister Eglon will be forced to come visit you. I assure you, that would not be in your best interest so I suggest you accept his invitation while it stands.”

  “I’ll have to close up.”

  “You have—” Remy glanced at his golden pocket watch, “—precisely four minutes and forty-eight seconds to do so. Forty-seven. Forty-six. I will be waiting outside. If you do not join me in the allotted time, I will relay your answer to the Fox.”

  Dale stood behind his desk dumbfounded. He ran over to the window and saw a limousine stretch-coach waiting in tow behind four draft horses. There was a guard and a driver, both large men with hardened faces. They too wore black roses on their lapels, and they were armed with flintlock pistols holstered at their sides and short swords sheathed at the hips. Remy was already outside, standing in front of the coach door, taking frequent peeks at his watch.

  “Shit.”

  Dale locked up the gates and hangar bay doors. It was nowhere near closing time but the last thing he wanted was another visit from the Carousel Rogues. He looked at his own short sword, a standard issue from his service as a Republican Guard that he kept hidden in his office bureau, but decided against taking it with him. When the guard frisked him before he boarded the coach, he was glad he’d left his blade behind.

  The interior of the coach smelled of cigars. They traveled from the waterfront over to the Central District’s entertainment quarter on the upper westside. Dale looked out onto the streets lined with exotic restaurants, fancy hotels, and various overpriced specialty shops. At a glance, the people he saw walking along the sidewalk and sitting in restaurants appeared to Dale as happier and healthier than their counterparts on the other side of town. At the center of the five-block radius, under a constant fog of confetti and dizzying lights, was the Halo. It was an arrangement of buildings in an enclosed ring featuring the Opera House, the Theatre, the Arena, the Circus, and the Concert Hall where Mosaic occasionally performed.

  The limousine coach came to a stop in front of a restaurant sandwiched between the Opera House and Theatre. The building was an extravagant display of wealth and excess. A relief was carved into the Seddonian granite surface just above the large vaulted doors that read “The Loviett.”

  Walking through the forecourt of the lobby where the upscale patronage waited for a table, Dale could see he was underdressed. The restaurant had ceilings decorated in glass and crystal, with golden crown molding framing walls of imported marble. An orchestra provided mood music in a recessed stage at the bottom of the main floor.

  Dale followed Remy, who nodded occasionally at various Loviett staff members. They reciprocated as if recognizing him. Dale was led to the back of the restaurant where the Fat Fox sat at a cozy table facing the lobby. There was an entourage standing behind him. They were well armed. Dale was searched again by the guild master’s right hand enforcer—a tall, imposing figure with deep-set eyes, fair skin cratered with pockmarks, and a lipless sliver for a mouth that looked as if it had been carved into his face with a knife.

  “Come,” said the Fat Fox. “Take a seat.”

  Felix “the Fat Fox” Eglon was a portly man. He was well groomed, donning a smart three-piece suit with, as Dale came to realize, the guild’s signature black rose on his lapel. A diamond-encrusted chain led to a vest pocket which, Dale assumed, must contain a very expensive watch. His ashy hair was slicked back with oil. He was clean-shaven. As Dale approached the table, he smelled the heavy, musky cologne.

  The waiter in a full tuxedo, accompanied by the restaurant manager, brought out a cheese and caviar platter with tartar of Borellian beef and Nalic oysters. A rare bottle of Poulain was uncorked. What sat on that table cost more than a year’s wages, Dale thought.

  “Please, Master Eglon, let us know if there’s anything else I can do for you,” said the manager, as the waiter filled his glass.

  Then he mumbled some sort of warning to the waiter, his face stern, before they both quickly disappeared as if on a timer with grave consequences when expired.

  Studying Dale with beady eyes, Felix started on the caviar.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked, nibbling bits and pieces.

  Dale nodded.

  “Who?”

  “Guild master of the Carousel Rogues.”

  “That’s right. Take a good look. This is the most wanted face in Carnaval City. Now, do you think all these people in here know who I am?”

  “I don’t know,” Dale replied.

  “They do. They know who I am and what I do. They know that I kill, I steal, and sleep in the sewers. And yet they don’t seem to mind that I crawl out from below the city to eat in their fancy restaurants and attend their social galas. Do you know why? Because I dress like them.” He laughed heartily and stopped abruptly. He continued, “And if you can do that, these people don’t care to know the difference. There is no difference. Everyone here has something in common. Greed. I break the law, they buy it. Wealth is a moral equalizer. Which begs the question: What’s an honest, hardworking young middleclass nobody like you doing here?”

  “You invited me.”

  “Yes, I did, didn’t I?” Felix smiled. He gave a chuckle. “That was a rhetorical question but you knew that. You’re a clever one aren’t you? That’s good. I have an appreciation for wit. It’s irreverence I cannot abide. There are two kinds of people I disapprove of. The irreverent and the
womanizer. And I’ll tell you why. The irreverent have no respect for anything or anyone, including themselves. They have no standards by which they govern their lives. You can’t do business with someone like that. As for the womanizer, now he is just weak. These kinds of men, men ruled by their loins, they have no self-restraint. Men of compromise. And you can’t trust a man like that. You’re not a womanizer, are you, Dale? No. No, you don’t look like one. You’re not rich enough. And you’re neither handsome nor charming. So just don’t be irreverent and we’ll carry on just fine.”

  The waiter brought out a small plate decorated with some variant of scallops and mushrooms, the second of a six-course meal.

  “Soliveres scallops au black truffle mer’dure,” said the waiter.

  Felix ate the fine delicacy like a peasant eats food from a pushcart vendor. He held his fork in a fist and he wrapped his whole, pudgy hand around the wine glass. With the fork he shoveled the scallops in, swallowing before chewing. And washed them down with a mouthful of wine.

  “You’re here, Dale,” he continued, when the waiter was gone, “because, as I’m sure Remy’s already explained, I have a very important transport coming in. Unfortunately, we don’t know when exactly that’ll be. It could be tomorrow night. It could be in three weeks. What we do know is that it’ll be arriving within the month at an absurd hour when decent people are deep in slumber. People like us, we’ll be awake. And when it arrives, you will be there to open the breaker and receive it.”

  “Do you mind if I ask what the nature of the transport will be?”

  “Yes, Dale, I do mind. That’s a privileged matter. But I will tell you that it’s not illicit. Now, I have a question for you. Can I trust you?”

  Dale glanced at Remy, then the enforcer, who suddenly moved his hand ready on the grip of his pistol tucked into his pants and underneath his coat. Felix wiped his mouth, slid the plate aside, and leaned forward with his hands folded in front of him. After he motioned to one of his men to keep the wait staff away, the Fat Fox stared intently into Dale’s eyes. Something in Dale told him not to avert his eyes.

  “That was not rhetorical.”