The Invisible Crown (Hazzard Pay Book 1)

by Charlie Cottrell

  “Vinny,” I called, my hands held open at my sides and my face a mask of calm. I made sure not to display my teeth, since he usually took that as a sign of and for aggression. Honestly, showing any sort of emotional response to someone—or something, really—like Vinny was a good way to get your head pushed down your neck. “I’m not a licensed chiropractor or anything, but I don’t think the guy’s spine is supposed to bend like that.” Vinny growled at me as he dropped the poor sap onto the damp concrete and devoted his full attention to me.

  “Whudda yew wan’?” he rumbled, his knuckles resting on the ground and the seams of his coat straining against his bulging muscles. It was well-tailored. Vinny made enough off his work to buy the best, and he didn’t really have much to spend his cash on. The coat was custom made to fit his exaggerated proportions, but even the best tailor wasn’t properly equipped—either literally or metaphorically—to deal with a gorilla’s physique.

  “I’m looking for your boss, Vinny,” I said slowly. Vinny’s brow furrowed in concentration, and let me tell you that no one furrows a brow like an ape. It was like watching plate tectonics in action, his thoughts moved with all the speed of continental drift, and if I didn’t speed things up, I would probably grow old and die before he replied.

  “Vinny, where’s the Tuba?” I asked.

  Vinny’s eyes focused on me again. “Tuba don’ wanna see yew,” he growled.

  I dug a cigarette out of my pocket as calmly as I could. “Why not?” I asked.

  “S’cause a’ whatchu did t’ Four Eyes,” Vinny replied. He meant Four Eyes Malone, the Tuba’s personal accountant, who I’d sent to Pratchett Correctional a few months ago to do a long sum. He’d been committing several different types of fraud and money laundering, and I’d set him up in a sting operation that got him put away. Tuba was taking it personally, it seemed.

  “Hey, Four Eyes should’ve known better,” I said, lighting my cigarette. “C’mon, Vinny, where’s Tuba?”

  Vinny stood there silent while I smoked nervously. Finally, he rumbled again, a volcano in search of a virgin sacrifice. “He’s at th’ Speakeasy.”

  I exhaled a cloud of smoke. “That’s the bar over on 8th Street, right?” I asked.

  “Yur,” Vinny rumbled.

  “Thanks, Vinny,” I said, patting the gorilla on the shoulder and giving him a tight-lipped smile. He growled at me, looking at my hand like he wanted to bite it off. I withdrew slowly, backing away from Vinny and trying to make myself seem as small and non-threatening as possible. Vinny seemed to switch off as I slipped out of the alleyway, his brain apparently turning off like a television. I headed back to my car and the den of inequity that was the Speakeasy.

  V.

  The Speakeasy was a throwback to the Age of Prohibition, when men were men and drinks were made in bathtubs. Sure, the bar hadn’t been built until 1976 or so, but folks nowadays are pretty fuzzy on everything that happened more than a couple of days ago. The Organization used the place for money laundering and conducting various shady deals, and it was the unofficial headquarters for Tommy “the Tuba” Timmons.

  My car rattled to a stop a few doors down from the Speakeasy. Gathered around outside the entrance were a half-dozen guys in ill-fitting suits making no effort to hide their purpose: they were guarding the place and the Organization muckity-muck who was inside. I climbed out of my car and strolled toward the door, no plan for getting past the mooks coming to mind. I was going to have to do the thing detectives hate the most but do almost always: I was going to have to wing it.

  Winging it is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it allows you to remain flexible and adapt to the situation as it develops. If you don’t have a plan, you don’t have to worry about the plan going awry. On the other hand, without a plan, you have to just hope that an opportunity presents itself, and opportunity can be a harsh mistress.

  The six goons straightened up and fixed me with death glares as I sauntered up, trailing cigarette smoke. I was opting for the act like you own the place approach, one which had served me well over the years. The lead goon—you could tell he was the leader because he could follow my progress without having to move his head—stepped into my path, putting a hand against my chest and stopping me. The guy stood a good four or five inches taller than me, was at least half again as broad across the shoulders, and had the familiar bulge of a pistol under his left arm.

  “Closed to the public,” he said sharply. The other five goons gathered behind him, leering at me menacingly in their matching suits like the business club of the damned.

  “Hey, I have an appointment with your boss,” I replied, flicking ash from my cigarette nonchalantly.

  “I don’t think so. He don’t have no appointments today,” the lead goon said.

  “Just need to see him for a minute, guys. I promise I’m not up to any mischief.”

  “Are you deaf, little man?” he asked me, giving me a slight push. I stumbled back a step or two, dropping my cigarette. I sighed, fishing the slightly crumpled pack of cigarettes out of my coat pocket and lighting a new one, purposely ignoring the look of anger on the face of the lead thug.

  “Really, guys, you need to let me by,” I said calmly, taking a deep pull on the cigarette. It was time to rely on the detective’s greatest ally: the bluff.

  “Why’s that, tough guy?” the leader asked.

  “Because none of us are gonna like it if you don’t let me by,” I replied. Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. I wasn’t going to like it, because I wouldn’t be able to make any progress in my investigation, and they’d probably beat six shades of it out of me. The worst that would happen to them would be the knuckles they’d possibly bruise beating me to death.

  I blew a plume of smoke into the lead goon’s face, causing him to cough. I usually operated under the assumption that an angry, pissed-off opponent is more likely to make a dumb mistake that I can take advantage of. Plus, it’s just kinda fun. “Seriously, guys, let’s not start something we don’t want to finish here,” I said. “Final warning.”

  The goon dug a hand into his jacket, reaching for the pistol he had holstered in a shoulder rig. I tensed, aware that I was likely going to die in the next several seconds if I couldn’t find a way to stop him. I started to consider my life. I’d had a good run. Sure, this wasn’t how I wanted to die, but you don’t always get to pick when and how you die, or I’d’ve gone out in a haze of whiskey and a comfortable recliner.

  “Charlie,” a deep voice called from a speaker hanging over the door of the bar. The goon flinched, his hand darting away from his gun like a guilty child caught with his hand inside the cookie jar.

  “Yeah, boss?” the goon called over his shoulder, never taking his eyes off me.

  “Let the detective in,” the voice rumbled. A wave of relief flooded my body, but I kept the expression on my face neutral and disinterested. It’s a tough trick to pull off, but I had years of experience. Charlie and his goon squad stepped aside, allowing me to enter the bar.

  I strolled past the goons, a small grin on my face. “His master’s voice,” I muttered to Charlie as I brushed past him. I could feel the tension and pure rage radiating off the goon, but I didn’t care. For the moment, no one was going to shoot me, and that was usually the best a private detective could ask for.

  Inside, the Speakeasy was a grungy, dimly-lit dive of a bar. You’d think the Organization would try to keep the place up a little better, but apparently not. The carpets were worn and threadbare, splattered with stains from beer, blood, and various other fluids. The upholstery in the booths was cracked and faded, despite the fact that they couldn’t have ever been exposed to sunlight. The bartender stood behind the bar, wiping a glass with a yellowish rag. I couldn’t tell if he was cleaning the glass or simply moving grease around the surface of it.

  In the back corner, I saw a large, shadowy individual filling one side of a booth. He was huge, easily over 350 pounds. It wasn’t like the guy was muscular. Rou
ghly 110% of the man’s body was fat. It’s like he feared there was a fat shortage coming and wanted to stockpile strategic reserves just in case.

  Everyone called him Tuba, but never to his face. The nickname came from his voice: deep, resonant, and something similar in tone and general style to an out-of-tune tuba. He considered himself something of a bigshot within the Organization’s hierarchy, and as the head of the gambling and disposal departments, he probably was right. I’d always thought there was something ironic about combining the two departments. It made sense, though: if someone got in too deep with the former, they came up as a “customer” in the latter.

  Tuba was not, in my experience, a very pleasant man. I didn’t like him at all, but in all honesty, neither did anyone else who had to deal with him. The Tuba, for his part, didn’t seem to give two damns about what anyone thought about him.

  I slid into the bench seat across from Tuba, signaling to the bartender to bring me a drink. He ignored me, much to my annoyance, but what could you do? I had just barged in uninvited. Tuba sat shrouded in shadow, the yellow bulb in the hanging fixture above the table flickering and casting a strobing pool of dim light across the center of the table.

  “You have one minute to explain why you’re here before I turn you back over to Charlie and the boys outside,” Tuba’s basso voice rumbled. In the shadows, I could see the faint red glow of his cybernetic eye.

  Cybernetics have gotten pretty sophisticated in recent years. Nowadays, they looked just as good as the real thing, with artificial skin, color matching, and quiet electronics that you couldn’t hear even from up close. But Tuba had a downright ancient piece for his left eye, a slab of metal covering the optical socket and a bright red “iris” burning like Lucifer’s butthole in the middle of it all. You could hear the mechanical hum every time the eye refocused on something new, an old-fashioned aperture irising open and closed in place of an eyelid. Tuba could easily afford a newer, nicer replacement, but he enjoyed the way it intimidated other people. Plus, I think he was just a cheap bastard.

  “I’m just here for information, Tommy,” I replied casually, “not looking to start anything.”

  Tuba chuckled roughly. “What makes you think I got anything to say to you, Hazzard, after what you did to Four Eyes?” he growled.

  I leaned forward in my booth, bringing me much closer to Tuba’s fat face than anyone really ever wanted to be. “Hey, Four Eyes had it comin’, Tommy. The guy walked right into a sting, and then he decided to take a swing at me.” I sat back and gave him a cocksure grin. “Besides, it’s not like he couldn’t still work the calculator after I was done.” Sure, he’d needed some physical therapy to get him there, but that was hardly the point. I waved at the bartender again, who continued to ignore me. “Anyway, you know that pencil neck was skimming off the top from you, right?”

  “Of course I knew he was skimmin’,” Tuba replied tersely, “but at least I knew how much he was takin’. The new guy I got, who the hell knows?”

  “Tell you what, Tommy. Do me this favor, and maybe I’ll put in a good word for Four Eyes, help get him out of Pratchett a few months early,” I said magnanimously. I can admit it, I’m not above making an under the table deal if it’ll help me solve the case. Besides, it wasn’t like I thought I’d actually be able to do anything to change his sentence.

  Tuba’s eyes, both his natural one and the red cybernetic, narrowed. “And what is it exactly that you want, Hazzard?”

  “I’m looking for a missing person, name of Wally Stewart. Accountant type. His wife’s awful worried about the guy. You heard of him?”

  Tuba shifted on his side of the booth, the bench seat squeaking and groaning in protest. “Maybe I have, Hazzard. What’s in it for me if I tell ya what I know?”

  “What, getting Four Eyes back isn’t enough?” I asked, trying to hide my annoyance.

  “Nah. I don’t give a damn about the pencil pusher. You don’t have anything else to offer, you can go jump in Montague Bay,” Tuba rumbled, a faint grin crossing his fat face.

  “Fine,” I said, “how about I’ll owe you a favor?”

  Tuba’s grin widened. “What sort of favor?”

  I shrugged. “I won’t do anything illegal for you, but if you get into a jam, I’ll try to help get you out of it.”

  “That’s pretty weak, Hazzard,” Tuba rumbled. “I think it’ll be up to me what the favor is, and I’ll call it in whenever I want. I won’t make ya dispose of anybody for me or anything, so you can relax.”

  “Good enough,” I said, hoping I wouldn’t regret the deal. “So, spill. What do you know about Wally Stewart?”

  “Guy was hangin’ out with some disreputable sorts,” Tuba said. “Word is, he’s been keepin’ company with Guido and Billy Sunshine.” I knew most of the thugs and two-bit hoods in Arcadia, but these two were a mystery to me.

  “They sound like real winners,” I said.

  Tuba’s chuckle was a throaty rumble, like the sound of an impending stampede. “I can tell ya we ain’t seem ’im in Disposal,” he said. “Whatever he may be involved in, it don’t have nothin’ to do with me.”

  “So, where could I find Guido and Billy Sunshine?” I asked.

  Tuba shrugged. “They ain’t in my department. Ask the Fish. I think they were his guys.” The Fish was in charge of the Kidnapping Department. If Wally had seen something he shouldn’t have, or gotten mixed up in some bad business, there was a chance he’d been grabbed by them.

  Tuba cracked his knuckles, one by one, and spitted me with a glare. “That’s all I got. Get the hell outta my bar, y’bum,” he growled.

  I rose from my seat and buttoned by coat. “Thanks for the help, Tommy. You’re a great humanitarian, you know that?” Tuba just growled low in his throat. “Where’s Kidnapping based these days, anyway?”

  “Warehouse District, out on Pier 5, Building C,” he replied, a faint grin playing across his pudgy features. “Have fun, Hazzard.”

  I stepped out of the bar and past Charlie and the goon squad. I tossed them a mocking salute as I headed toward my car. “Keep up the good work, boys,” I said with a smirk. It was off to the Warehouse District on Montague Bay for me.

  VI.

  If there’s anywhere in Arcadia that’s worse than Wodehouse Square, it’d be the Warehouse District. Located along Montague Bay on the east side of the city, the Warehouse District was once a thriving, bustling concern, a port of entry for thousands of tons of freight and goods. The warehouses and the port employed thousands of Arcadians and formed the foundation of the city’s economy.

  Now, though, it was an abandoned derelict, a rotten reminder of Arcadia’s once-great economic influence. The piers sprawled along the bay for about a quarter of a mile, and a dozen or so piers jutted out over the dark water. Everyone in town knew the Organization controlled the area now, since it was out of the way and isolated. The once-busy warehouses now stored nothing except illicit substances, and the occasional rust and tetanus collection.

  No one went to the warehouses who didn’t have business with the Organization, so appearing there was a sign you were either (1) on the wrong side of the law or (2) really, really lost. Of course, I fell into a small, rarified third category: (3) idiot detectives who think they can just waltz into enemy territory with impunity.

  The Warehouse District was an unpleasant place in the middle of a bright, sunny day, and downright disconcerting when you got there in the gathering gloom of the early evening. When I got there, it was entirely too quiet. Usually, you’d at least find a vagrant or two who’d wandered into the wrong place, or a goon going about their appointed rounds, but tonight it was as silent as the grave, a metaphor I immediately regretted using. Shadows seemed to build up too thick around the warehouses, and it’s not like those giant corrugated metal sheds didn’t build up shadows on a massive scale anyway. Each pier consisted of a heavy, broad boardwalk and four warehouses, two on each side, all built on massive concrete pylons over the choppy water o
f Montague Bay. Pier 5 was located almost halfway along the piers, and Building C was the furthest out on the pier.

  As I approached Building C, a handful of shadows seemed to detach themselves from the walls and step between me and the entrance. The shadows solidified into the shapes of four men, all of them clad in black from head to toe, each armed with a sword carried in over-the-shoulder scabbards.

  “Guys, Halloween ain’t for months, and you look a bit old for trick-or-treating anyway,” I said, incredulous. “And everyone knows the ninja craze died out ages ago. Get with the times.”

  “Detective Hazzard,” the lead ninja said solemnly, “we cannot allow you to pursue your investigation into this warehouse. If you insist on continuing, we will be forced to subdue you.”

  I surveyed the pier as I pulled out a new cigarette and lit it. Pier 5 was deserted except for us. “What makes you think you boys can stop me?” I asked, blowing a pretty damn impressive smoke ring. In response to my question, the ninja drew his sword. The waning light of the evening sun hit the blade at just the right angle to make it look like the edge of the sword itself was made of light. It was an intimidating display, I had to give it that much. Too bad these guys brought swords to a tech fight.

  I sighed and flicked ash from the tip of my cigarette. “Tell you what, guys,” I said, unbuttoning my coat and revealing the shoulder rig slung under my left arm. “I’ll give you to the count of three before I pull my sidearm and see to it that you have a really bad day.” My gun, the Marks & Saunders Peacekeeper 340 was nestled in its holster, snug and comforting in its familiarity. I call it the popgun. It’s a piece of specialty equipment you don’t see all that often. It was designed a decade or so back as a nonlethal riot suppression tool that turned out to be highly impractical for its stated purpose and just never caught on. It didn’t help that the things were expensive to produce, or that the company that manufactured them went out of business following a terrible fire a few months after the Peacekeeper 340 was debuted. Cartridges for the gun were becoming almost impossible to find. I was pretty sure that in another five or ten years, I’d have to start either making my own—which seemed patently absurd and highly unlikely—or find an unexpected cache of them buried in some surplus warehouse. Or find a new weapon, I suppose, which seemed far more likely.