Crooked Halos

by Charlie Cottrell

  “Who the hell could be above the Organization’s reach?” Ellen asked.

  “Um, the Boss could,” Maya replied.

  “Right,” I said, “but the Boss was Vera Stewart.” Before I inadvertently took over, anyway.

  “Yes, but, um, was she always the Boss?” Maya asked.

  It was a hell of a question, and one I’d never given much thought to. Vera was fairly young—mid- to late-thirties at most—and the Organization had been around for at least fifteen or twenty years. I remembered hearing about it around the time I’d become a cop, though it could have existed for several years before then. Cops like to pride themselves on their ability to keep up with the latest news and gossip from the underworld, but the truth was that there were just some things they’d never be privy to because they were cops. The Organization could have existed for decades without Arcadia PD knowing about it, to be honest.

  “I think this might be a mystery that’s going to go with Ms. Pratt to her grave,” Ellen said, taking a sip from her own mug.

  I frowned. “No,” I said, “I refuse to accept that. There’s an answer out there, somewhere. We just don’t have enough information to find it yet.”

  “Better look fast,” Ellen replied gravely. I nodded; there was really nothing else to be said about the matter.

  XVI.

  We finally caught our big break—our only break, really—on Carmen just a day before Crowder was scheduled to kill Genevieve Pratt.

  “Carmen isn’t in the city anymore,” Maya said as she came into my office. I’d been staring at the wall, doing my best impression of a man lost deep in thought, but in reality, nodding off occasionally as the exhaustion of the constant tension and apprehension finally caught up to me.

  See, when I work a big case, I end up letting myself get…emotionally invested in the outcome, I guess. I get worked up, I admit it. And this case was pushing all my buttons, ticking things off like there was a checklist: person from my past. A case where I have no control over the outcome. A crime I can’t prevent. People threatening me and those closest to me. Mysteries I couldn’t unravel. A plan with too many variables. If this thing wasn’t going to cause me to lose sleep and crawl deeper into a bottle, nothing would.

  “What do you mean, Carmen’s not in the city?” I asked dubiously. “She was just outside my window yesterday afternoon.” It’s true: I’d looked out the window and seen her standing on the fire escape, as casually as if she’d been standing on the sidewalk.

  “Well, she’s, um, not going to be there today, because, uh, she’s gone,” Maya replied.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Well, I saw a video of her getting on a, uh, plane this morning,” she answered.

  “Show me.”

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  Sure enough, there was Carmen, climbing the stairs to board a small private jet at the regional airport. The timestamp on the video was from this morning.

  “Any chance it was faked?” I asked.

  Maya shook her head. “No. Raw feed,” she replied. “Unaltered. I checked the, um, metadata.”

  “Well,” I said, sitting back in my chair and staring through the vid window. Carmen out of Arcadia changed things a bit. Sure, Crowder still had his goon squad, but they were already in pretty rough shape from our last encounter. With Kimiko and the ninja on my side, it made the odds lopsided in my favor for once.

  “Okay, so, she’s not here now. Where did she go?”

  “That particular plane logged a, erm, flight plan, right? Yeah, a flight plan. For, um, the west coast.”

  “And what the hell is she doing out there?” I mused.

  “I don’t know, Eddie,” Maya said apologetically. “I’m sorry.”

  I turned to her with a slight smile. “No, Maya, I wasn’t asking you specifically. It was more of a rhetorical question.”

  “Oh. I’m not so good with those,” she said sheepishly.

  “I know. That’s okay. You did great.” I patted her gently on the shoulder and stood. “Anyway, this may be a bit of a break for us. Maybe she won’t be around when the murder happens tomorrow night.”

  Maya frowned. “But couldn’t she make it back here by then if she took a, uh, plane?”

  “Stop ruining this beautiful moment with logic, Maya,” I replied.

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  The night of Pratt’s murder arrived, and I was apprehensive and twitchy like a rookie on his first beat again. It was always like this before the moment of truth: the knot in my stomach, the lightheadedness, the twitch reflexes making me jump at every single sound, every movement caught out of the corner of my eye, or every barely-perceived sensation of dread.

  Pratt had no idea what time Crowder would arrive to murder her; she just knew it would happen sometime that evening. I’d spent the afternoon in preparation, which meant I’d smoked a lot, paced the office, and swore like a sailor who’d found out he was the last one to make it to the brothel on shore leave. As evening approached, though, I fell into a sullen silence, and Miss Typewell and Maya avoided me as much as was possible in a small, two-room office.

  Around 5:00, I gathered my equipment and headed out to Pratt’s hotel room at the Zimmerman, where Kimiko and the ninja would meet up with me.

  “Eddie, be careful,” Miss Typewell said, watching me holster the popgun and load various devices and materials into my coat pockets. “Crowder isn’t the same man you used to work with.”

  “No, he’s exactly the man I used to work with,” I replied, my jaw clenched. “I just never knew who that really was until now.”

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  The roads were surprisingly empty as I drove to Pratt’s hotel. People were bundled up against the surprisingly-bitter and unseasonably chill spring wind; they hurried off the streets into homes and offices and restaurants and stores, barely willing to look each other in the eye.

  I stopped a couple of blocks away from the Zimmerman, shutting the car off and sitting there in silence for several minutes. For fifteen years I’d hated Dresden Crowder for betraying me and getting me kicked off the force. Sometime in the next few hours, I’d try to arrest him for murder and drag him off to jail for the rest of his life. Was it justice? Maybe of a sort. It was closure, at least, and God knows most folks don’t ever get that. Most of us go through life unfulfilled, never seeing things through to their end, because we end too soon. Before all of this was over, I’d know what had really happened with Crowder back in the day; I’d know for sure why I was thrown under the proverbial bus and hung out to dry by a man I’d considered a friend and partner.

  I sighed. I always get stupidly philosophical right before a case comes to an end. It came with that sense of dread I always felt when I knew I was about to probably get shot at.

  Getting out of the car, I turned up my collar against the wind and thrust my hands deep into my pockets. It was one of the first truly cold nights of the year; there was a sharpness to the air and a wind that cut through everything and left your extremities numb after just a few minutes of exposure. There would be a frost tonight, probably.

  I reached the Zimmerman after only a few minutes and stood across the street from the hotel, watching the entrance from an alcove between a small office building and an Italian restaurant, the sort with bottles on the table that had candles in them for ambiance. I settled in for a long wait, unsure of when Crowder might appear. Darkness crept in, the sunset casting long tombstone shadows from the skyscrapers all around us. The narrow trench of a street I was standing in turned dark quickly, the light taking on a dull, gray aspect as the sun slipped completely behind the buildings. One by one, the shops and restaurants began turning on their lights, but the streets remained surprisingly empty.

  I tucked a cigarette between my lips and lit it, shielding the bright tip with my free hand and saving the night vision I had built up. After two hours of waiting, there was still no sign of Crowder. After three hours, I starting to thi
nk I should have brought a book or at least an extra pack of cigarettes. As the clock swung toward 11:00, I began to think Crowder had lost his nerve.

  I felt rather than saw Crowder’s arrival. One minute, I was definitely very much alone on the street; the next, he was there, twenty yards away, walking casually toward the hotel. He wasn’t even looking my direction.

  “Dresden!” I called out, raising a hand to him. Crowder stopped, turned toward me, and raised a hand of his own. Only, instead of raising it high in the air, as I had, his hand stopped when it was perpendicular to his body. And then I noticed his hand wasn’t empty.

  A sudden loud, sharp retort cut through the quiet night, and my midsection exploded in a violent flower of pain.

  I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting the bullet.

  It caught me off-guard and just below the ribs on my left side; the bullet managed to avoid hitting anything vital, including organs and that pesky spinal column. The sound of the gunshot echoed in the concrete canyon of the street; a couple turning the corner down the block suddenly ducked back the way they came, doubled over and hands covering their heads. I blacked out as I fell to the ground, clutching my stomach as it roiled in agony. My vision came back slowly, fading in from the edges. Shapes came first in gray tones, followed by color seeping in as though it were welling up from the inside of everything. I looked down at my hands, saw they were covered in dark red blood, and moaned slightly. I managed to look up and see Crowder standing over me, a gun held loosely in his hand.

  “Eddie,” he said simply. I gritted my teeth and tried to rise. Crowder placed a foot on my chest and pushed, almost gently. I fell back on my ass and stayed there, breathing heavily.

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” Crowder continued. I noticed he was wearing latex gloves, the sort used across the country in doctor’s offices and dentists’ offices. He tossed the gun away; I heard it skitter across the pavement. “I told you I’d kill you if I saw you again. Did you think I was lying? If you hadn’t tried to help this woman, you would never have been hurt.”

  “Why…why are you…” I gasped, unable to form a complete sentence.

  “It’s just revenge, Eddie,” Crowder said. “She took everything from me. Now, I’m gonna take something from her.”

  “So… cliché,” I groaned, rolling over and trying to stand again. My legs wouldn’t support me and I flopped back over, the rise and fall of my chest like a bellows in an ironworks. “Don’t you…have…anything…original, Dresden?”

  “You always did think it terms of the narrative, didn’t you? But that’s okay, because this? What’s happening tonight? It fits narrative just fine. It’s poetic fucking justice.” He took one last look at me, then turned on his heel and walked into the hotel.

  I sat on the pavement, curled around my wound, for several minutes. Just breathing was difficult; I couldn’t imagine trying to actually move. But I had to. Crowder was up there right now, killing the Pratt woman, exactly like they both wanted.

  This was, needless to say, a weird damn case.

  I managed to roll over onto my hands and knees and force myself upright again. Looking back at the pavement, I could see where I’d left bloody handprints and several large, drippy splotches of blood. I glanced down and saw the spreading red stain on my shirt. Things were starting to go numb, which my pain receptors said was fine but everything else suggested was very, very bad.

  “Get up and get moving, you son of a bitch,” I growled at myself. I stumbled forward one, then two steps, making my way toward the door. Along the way, I found the pistol Crowder had discarded and picked it up. I hadn’t fired a traditional gun in ages; I much prefer the popgun, since suspects are way more likely to talk if they’ve been stuck in a polymer bubble for an hour than they are if they’re dead. I shuffled my way into the building, leaving a trail of bloody handprints along the wall and a thin trail of blood on the floor.

  “She’s way up on the damn fifth floor,” I wheezed to myself. “How the hell am I supposed to make it that far?” I managed to hit the elevator call button anyway, and stayed upright until the lift car arrived. I stepped inside and hit the button for the fifth floor with the barrel of the gun. The car lifted slowly, smoothly, and I clutched the gun in one hand and my stomach in the other.

  The elevator dinged at me as the doors swished open silently. There was Crowder, a look of satisfaction on his face. So, I hadn’t made it up here fast enough. He’d already killed Genevieve Pratt. Well, I could bring Crowder to justice, at least. I raised the gun, my finger already poised on the trigger.

  “Dresden,” I said between clenched teeth. My off hand was clutching my stomach, a growing patch of scarlet blooming beneath my shirt and coat. The gut wound burned like fire, but I’d probably live for at least a few more minutes. Long enough to end this bastard, at any rate.

  “Eddie,” he replied casually, as though my sudden arrival was not a surprise. Who knows; maybe he was expecting me to survive the wound and come after him. Dresden Crowder was always full of surprises himself. “You’re too late,” he continued, “I’ve already killed Genevieve.”

  “I don’t care about her, Dresden,” I replied, wincing in pain. “I’ve got you at the scene of the crime, gloved, and with a statement that’s almost as good as a confession. Come along quietly, or get ready to take a bullet.”

  Dresden chuckled—a deep, warm sound that would have seemed friendly in other circumstances—and met my eyes. “Eddie, you’re always so dramatic. How is it your business, what goes on between two consenting adults behind closed doors? She asked me to do it, you know that.”

  “That’s a giant pile of bullshit. Murder is murder, whether the victim was complicit in the deed or not.”

  “Still seeing everything in black and white terms, even after all these years,” Crowder said with resigned sadness. “But you and I both know you won’t pull that trigger. You can’t kill me in cold blood.” He stepped forward so that the barrel of the gun rested against his chest. “Put a bullet in me, Eddie Hazzard.” There was a sinister gleam in his eye. “I dare you.”

  Crowder stood there, the barrel of my gun pressed against his sternum and an easy grin on his face. My finger tightened on the trigger, but I didn’t pull it yet.

  “You never did have the guts to shoot a man,” Crowder said, his grin widening. “May as well admit you can’t do it now.”

  I sighed. The gun was shaking in my hand. Even from this distance, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to shoot him if I did pull the trigger. If I could pull the trigger.

  The gun fell out of my hand, my fingers too numb to hold it anymore. Crowder shook his head sadly. “So close,” he said pityingly. Off in the distance, the sound of sirens began to grow. “Uh-oh, sounds like the cops are on their way. Have fun explaining all of this to them.” Crowder punched me in the gut, hard, and I collapsed, coughing and choking. Crowder stepped into the elevator, tossing off a mocking salute as the doors slid closed.

  I sat in the hallway, coughing and aching, my vision going black around the edges. I was going to die there. The bleeding from my gut wound had slowed, which was a bad sign. I was going to die, and it was all Crowder’s fault. Or maybe mine. I wasn’t able to really think straight. Blood loss has that effect on you.

  What would happen when I died? I’d been there, on the edge of death, more times than I’d care to admit, but this felt different. More final.

  Was there an afterlife? If there was, where would I go? I’d tried to live a good life, walking the fairly straight and almost narrow. But I’d done some bad things. I’d messed up more than once. I’d always had the best intentions, but you know what they say about the pavement on the road to Hell.

  Everything blurred together, sound and color blending into a fuzzy, numb sensation as I passed out from exertion and blood loss.

  Part Two: FRANZ KAFKA

  I.

  I woke up in a hospital, which is probably the most frustrating habit I’ve developed over the years. No
t that I minded the waking up part, mind you. It’s just that hospitals usually mean I nearly died between the last time I’d been awake and the moment I woke up with IVs plugged into me and a hose up my nose. My entire body ached, even though I was pretty sure I’d only been shot in the gut.

  This particular instance of waking up in a hospital included something new: a set of handcuffs locking me to the frame of the bed.

  “Did I miss something?” I croaked hoarsely.

  “You’ve been placed under arrest,” a masculine voice replied from somewhere off to my left. I turned my head—a herculean task, given my condition—and saw the blurry form of Officer Higgins sitting in a chair beside my hospital bed.

  “Any particular reason?” I asked, trying to clear the raspiness from my throat. Higgins held out a glass of water with a straw for me to drink from.

  “You’re the prime suspect in the murder of Genevieve Pratt,” Higgins replied. I choked and coughed on the water.

  “Crowder! That bastard! He tried to pin that crap on me?” I sputtered.

  “Who?” Higgins asked.

  “Dresden Crowder!” I snapped, trying to sit up and failing miserably. I collapsed back into the bed, my chest heaving from exertion. “He killed her and managed to escape before you slowpokes got to the scene of the crime.”

  “Eddie, there was no sign of anyone else there. We’ve got the murder weapon with your fingerprints on it, you had the victim’s gun—which you were shot with—and you had blood splatter on you consistent with the victim’s blood and murder. You’re in serious trouble.”

  Shit. This was a nice frame job Crowder had put together.

  “Higgins, you know me. You know I wouldn’t do this,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady and even.

  Higgins had the decency to look embarrassed. “The evidence is pretty damning, Eddie,” he said. “I’m afraid you’re under arrest for the murder of Genevieve Pratt.”