The Invisible Crown (Hazzard Pay Book 1)

by Charlie Cottrell

But hey, no one is perfect.

  The difficulty at this point was tracking down Wally Stewart, but Mrs. Stewart had an advantage in that regard: the ninja, which is apparently the plural for ninja. Like moose, if moose wore black clothes and carried fancy Japanese swords. Which they might, I don’t know. I’m not much of a nature lover.

  Mrs. Stewart said the ninja were the only people in the Organization she trusted, and only because she’d only recently hired them as her personal bodyguards. The ninja made quick work of the search. Kimiko reported back to Mrs. Stewart within a few hours to inform us they’d tracked Wally to the Industrial Sector on the east side of town.

  “So, what’s the plan?” Miss Typewell asked. Kimiko had joined us in Miss Typewell’s kitchen.

  “We send in the ninja and let them handle it,” I said. “Seems simple enough to me.”

  Vera shook her head. “No. I want to handle this personally. I need to confront my husband and look him in the eye. He has to know the price of betrayal.”

  “Melodramatic much?” I asked. Vera glared at me.

  “How about a compromise?” Miss Typewell suggested. “Send in the ninja first, let them capture your husband, and then you can go in and do whatever it is you’re planning to do.”

  “He needs to be brought to justice,” I said simply. “We arrest him and drag him off to jail.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Stewart, a rod of iron in her voice. “If he goes to trial, he’ll reveal everything he knows about me. I cannot allow that. He must be dealt with my way.”

  “Your way is murder,” I snapped. “I may not always follow the letter of the law, but even I know you can’t just kill someone because the alternative might be inconvenient.”

  “‘Inconvenient?’ My life and livelihood are not just conveniences, Hazzard. I will not allow my bastard of a husband to destroy everything I’ve worked so hard to build.”

  “What you’ve built is a criminal empire, lady,” I shouted. “I can’t say I’d be sad to see it fall apart.”

  “Then you’re a bigger fool than I thought you were,” Mrs. Stewart said, rising suddenly and stalking towards the door. Kimiko followed her silently.

  “Don’t bother following us, Detective Hazzard,” Mrs. Stewart said as she reached the door. “If I see you again, I will kill you.”

  “And a good day to you, too, lady,” I said as she slammed the door shut behind her. Miss Typewell and I sat in silence for a few minutes, staring off into space. Finally, she broke the silence.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “She made it real clear she didn’t want me involved. I won’t go where I’m not wanted, I’m sure.”

  “But she’s planning on killing him,” Ellen protested.

  “That’s between the two of them,” I replied. “I don’t think marriage counselling is going to solve their problems.”

  “You can’t just let her commit murder because you’re put out,” Miss Typewell said.

  “And I don’t want to be murdered myself, either,” I shot back. “Look, we solved the case. Wally Stewart was behind his own kidnapping and the coup attempt. He probably killed his secretary, too, because she found out what he was up to. Case closed, I’m going for a drink.”

  “You’re a damn fool, Eddie Hazzard,” Miss Typewell snapped. “If you don’t go stop her from killing her husband, then . . . then I’ll quit.”

  I stood there in a staring contest with Miss Typewell, who had the will and unblinking stare of a statue. “Dammit,” I muttered eventually, breaking her gaze.

  “You know what the right thing to do is,” Miss Typewell said.

  “Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “Doesn’t mean it’s going to be fun or easy.”

  Miss Typewell laughed. “When was anything having to do with you easy?”

  II.

  The Industrial Sector was just north of the Warehouse District on the east side of Arcadia. Thirty or forty years ago, it’d been a bustling hub of commerce and manufacturing. Then the economy crashed, and most of the factories shut down. Since then, the Industrial Sector had become a decaying relic of a more prosperous past. One or two of the factories were still in operation, but the vast majority of the buildings were empty and lifeless now, reminders that time marches on whether you want it to or not.

  I got out of Miss Typewell’s car, checked that the popgun was ready to draw from my shoulder rig, and set off into the maze of buildings, pipes, and fences that was the Industrial Sector. Kimiko had given us the specific location of Wally Stewart, so I knew roughly where I was going. It was just a question of whether or not I’d run into trouble before I got there.

  My approach was uneventful; no one shot at me or tried to punch me or anything, which was a rare gift in the hard-boiled detective field.

  I found the factory I was looking for after about twenty minutes of searching. I could tell it was the right one because Kimiko and Vera were standing outside the door, frowns clear on their faces even from a dozen meters away. Mrs. Stewart had traded in her usual attire of slinky dress and expensive shoes for a pair of black pants, a black sweater, and a belt loaded with weapons and ammunition. Kimiko wore her trench coat with one of her swords slung across her back for quick access.

  I sidled up to them as quietly as possible, but Kimiko still noticed my approach and had her sword drawn and pointed at my throat before I could greet them.

  “I told you what would happen if I saw you again, Hazzard,” Mrs. Stewart growled. She gave a look to Kimiko, who drew back her sword to put an end to my career and my life.

  I was saved by the sound of gunshots from inside, followed by screams of pain that were cut off by more gunfire. “What the hell just happened?” Mrs. Stewart snapped into an earpiece. I couldn’t hear a reply, but apparently there wasn’t one to hear. “Hello? Squad One? Squad Two? Someone report in!” From the look on her face, no one was left to do so.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” I said, gingerly pushing Kimiko’s blade away from my neck. “Do you want my help?”

  Mrs. Stewart glared daggers at me, but relented. “I don’t want it, but it appears I may need it. We go in together. Kimiko will go up the middle. You take the left, and I’ll go right.” She drew a pistol from her belt, checked the magazine, and flicked off the safety. I drew the popgun and held it at the ready.

  “Shall we?” I asked. Mrs. Stewart nodded, and after a three-count from Kimiko, we slipped in through the door and split up along our separate paths.

  Inside the factory, the smell of heavy industrial chemicals left an acrid, tangy taste in the air. It took everything I had not to burst out in a hacking cough. Despite the dilapidated condition of the building’s exterior, this factory was clearly still in use for something.

  I kept low in a crouching trot, trying to stick to the plentiful shadows. Massive metal vats surrounded me, and pipes of various sizes zig-zagged overhead in a confusing Gordian knot. Catwalks crisscrossed the space above the pipes, metal mesh with flimsy-looking guardrails. So far, I hadn’t seen anyone in the place except for Kimiko and Mrs. Stewart.

  That changed as I rounded a corner. One of the ninja lay dead on the floor, his chest riddled with bullet holes. I muttered a quick prayer under my breath for the guy and continued on. There wasn’t really anything else I could do for him.

  Across the factory, I heard the cacophonous echo of a gunshot ring out, followed by several more gunshots and lots of yelling. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but I knew it wasn’t close. I started working my way across the factory toward Vera and Kimiko, hoping they were both okay.

  I rounded a corner, metal vats on either side of me, and found myself face to face with a scrawny, Oxford-shirted man with the demeanor of a bookkeeper.

  “Mr. Stewart, I presume,” I said, aiming the popgun at him.

  The man grinned toothily. “And you must be Detective Hazzard. I’d put the gun away, if I were you. If anything happens to me, your friends won’t live to
see the next sunrise.”

  I scoffed. “They’re no friends of mine,” I said. “Go ahead, kill ’em. You’ll still go to jail for the rest of your miserable life.”

  Wally Stewart chuckled nasally. “Now now, Detective Hazzard, I think we both know you better than that. You wouldn’t let innocents die unnecessarily.”

  “Who said your wife or her pals are innocents?” I asked. “As far as I can tell, they’re just as guilty of all sorts of stuff as you are. I’d gladly drag all of your asses to jail if I could, but I’ll settle for just you if I have to.”

  Wally chuckled again. It was like feedback from a speaker, grating and painful. “No, Detective Hazzard, I think that won’t do. I have a criminal empire to take over.” I heard the tell-tale sound of a gun hammer being cocked behind me. I knelt down, placing the popgun on the ground and rising with my hands in the air. “I have plans for you,” Mr. Stewart continued. “Such wonderful plans.”

  III.

  I was stripped of my weapons and equipment, my hands were zip-tied together in front of me, and I was led up onto a catwalk where Mrs. Stewart and Kimiko were similarly subdued. Kimiko’s face was a mass of bruises, and her left shoulder looked like it had caught a bullet. Her face was ashen, but her will kept her upright for the time being.

  One of Mr. Stewart’s mooks shoved me along the catwalk to where my two companions stood. I stumbled a bit and fell to my hands and knees, landing hard on the metal of the walkway. Next to my hand, I spied a small sliver of metal, jagged and sharp. I palmed it, reckoning that it might come in useful.

  I was yanked back to my feet by my collar and made to stand next to Vera and Kimiko.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said, “I got lost on the way to the party.”

  “This is not the time,” Vera hissed between clenched teeth.

  “Why? Because your husband is attempting a violent overthrow of your criminal empire? I can see how that might put a damper on the romance, but surely you two lovebirds can work it out.”

  “I do not appreciate the dry wit, Detective Hazzard,” Vera snapped.

  I shrugged. “Sorry, I’m sober. ‘Dry’ is all I’ve got.”

  “If the two of you are done bantering,” Wally Stewart said drily, “I would like to get on with the murder of my wife and the takeover of her criminal syndicate.”

  “So, Wally, tell me, why do all this?” I asked. Rule #3 of Hard-Boiled Detecting: get the bad guy to monologue if you can, and buy yourself some time to think of an escape plan.

  “You mean aside from gaining control of the largest criminal empire on the eastern seaboard?” he asked.

  “Well, obviously aside from that,” I replied flippantly.

  “It’s really all Vera’s fault, I’m sad to say,” he began, trying to look melancholy and morose and landing somewhere closer to constipated. “You see, ours has always been a loveless marriage, one of convenience more than anything else. And when I found out she’d been hiding her true identity from me all these years . . . well, it wounded me, I must say.”

  “Couldn’t stand that she was the one wearing the pants in the relationship, huh?” I said, goading him.

  Wally’s face twisted up in a sneer. “You are a complete and utter fool, Detective Hazzard. Not only do I gain control of the Organization, my wife is legitimately wealthy, heiress to a massive fortune. Honestly, I’d be a fool not to kill her and take everything.”

  “And how did your secretary figure into all this?” I asked, trying to stall for more time. “Did she figure out your plan and try to warn Vera?”

  “Carly? No, she just fell desperately, madly in love with me. When I told her no, she threatened to go to the Boss and tell him I’d forced myself on her. I couldn’t let that happen, obviously.” The more the man talked, the more of a creep he seemed to be. I hoped he’d either let us go or kill us soon, because I couldn’t take much more of this.

  The latter seemed the more likely option as Wally gestured to one of his thugs, who started pushing buttons on a panel set into the guardrail. A mechanical hum filled the air, and a massive hook swung around and lowered toward the catwalk. Other thugs grabbed us by the wrist and guided us to the hook as two more swiveled into place. Each of us was hung from a hook by our wrists, and the thug at the controls lifted us up off our feet and swung us out over an open vat. I glanced down to see a roiling, sludgy green substance in the vat. I wasn’t completely sure, but I thought it might be raw mutagen, the material used to initiate gen-mods. In its raw form, without any of the DNA markers and stabilizing enzymes used to keep your body from mutating uncontrollably, contact with the mutagen would . . . well, mutate your body uncontrollably. It was probably going to be a tremendously painful way to die.

  I managed to finagle the piece of metal I’d palmed up into my fingertips, and I proceeded to saw through the zip tie as fast as I could. As I felt the plastic give way, I grabbed hold of the hook and continued to hang there. If I knew Wally, he’d lower us slowly into the vat, making the pain and humiliation last as long as possible.

  “This is, I’m afraid, the end. Goodbye, Vera. You were never much of a wife, and even less of a crime boss. I’ll enjoy taking your crown for my own.” He gestured to the thug at the winch controls, and the hooks began to descend with a shudder.

  I looked around, hoping to find some way to escape our problem, and saw the massive metal disc that was the lid for the vat. It was propped open with a small wooden arm, and if I could swing at just the right angle, I thought I could kick the prop out and drop the lid.

  I started to swing back and forth. As I’d thought, Wally was going for the slow, showy death. I had time to build up momentum and angle towards the wooden prop. My first kick was just a glancing blow, sending a shiver through the metal vat that reverberated more loudly than I’d have liked.

  “Shoot him!” Wally screamed from the catwalk. “He’ll ruin everything!”

  I knew I had seconds at best, so I swung back as hard as I could and lashed out prop once more. This time, I made solid contact. The wooden prop snapped in half and the lid dropped down over the vat with a metallic clang. I let go of the hook and dropped onto the lid, sending another echoing clang through the vat. I grabbed Vera by the waist and hoisted her off of her hook, then helped Kimiko down from hers. By that point, Wally’s mooks had rushed to the end of the catwalk and were training their guns on us.

  “Get under the catwalk!” I shouted to Vera and Kimiko, hustling them off the top of the vat and back under the catwalk. Bullets ricocheted off metal all around us, but thankfully we avoided getting hit. We raced along under the catwalk, avoiding the wild shots from Wally Stewart’s thugs. As the catwalk came to an end, we rounded another vat and ducked under cover. I took my metal shard and cut the bonds holding Vera and Kimiko, who both nodded their thanks.

  “Okay, now what?” I asked.

  Vera gave me a nasty look. “I thought you had a plan,” she snapped.

  I shrugged. “My plan began and ended with ‘don’t die in the vat of mutagen.’”

  Vera rolled her eyes. “You are utterly useless,” she said.

  “Tell me that the next time you’re hanging over a vat of chemical death and need my help,” I replied. I looked at the vat we were hiding behind. There was a hose coiled next to the vat, and a valve on a pipe leading from the vat to the hose. “Hey, turn that valve over there. I’ve just had an amazing idea.” Vera gave me a strange look, but followed my instructions. I grabbed the hose and adjusted the nozzle to give it a wide spray.

  And not a moment too soon. Three thugs leapt down off the catwalk and charged us, guns at the ready. I trained the hose their direction and flicked the hose on. Raw mutagen sprayed out, coating the thugs in the slick green chemicals. Their screams were horrible, but thankfully short-lived. I felt bad killing the men, but less bad than I’d’ve felt if they’d killed me. I shut off the hose and turned back to Vera and Kimiko. “C’mon,” I said, making my way back toward the catwalk. “We need to ge
t back up there and grab Wally.” I gestured at the floor. “Um, try not to let that stuff touch you.”

  We rounded the corner and saw another thug crouched low, his eyes wide and his hands shaking so badly he would’ve only been able to shoot us by sheer luck.

  I crouched down next to him and took his gun from him gently. “Hey, guy, maybe it’s time to give up the life of crime.” He nodded and then took off for the nearest exit.

  “Hey, Wally!” I shouted. “Come on out and show yourself!” We made our way back up the nearest ladder to the catwalk. Most of the thugs had disappeared, apparently, but Wally was also nowhere to be seen.

  “Maybe he scarpered off, too?” I said hopefully.

  “Doubtful,” Vera said. “He’s still here. He won’t back down from this fight.”

  We walked out across the catwalk, vats of mutagen on either side of us. Unlike the one we’d nearly been dropped into, these were still uncovered. “Where the hell is the guy?” I said, mostly to myself. I barely even registered the thud behind me, a sound not unlike a body hitting the catwalk.

  “Um, Eddie?” Vera said behind me.

  “Seriously, I know this is a pretty large factory, but he wasn’t out of sight for that long. The damn pencil-neck oughta be here somewhere still.”

  “Detective Hazzard?” Vera said, more insistently.

  “I mean, he couldn’t possibly move very fast on those scrawny chicken legs of his,” I went on.

  “Detective Hazzard, pay attention!” Vera snapped. I turned around.

  “What?”

  I saw Wally Stewart standing behind Vera, a gun pressed into the small of her back. Kimiko was crumpled in a heap on the catwalk, unconscious or dead I couldn’t tell.

  “Put down the gun, detective,” he said.

  “Sure, sure,” I said, tossing the gun at his feet and holding my hands up. “Let’s not shoot the nice redhead, okay?”

  “I,” Wally said, one hand holding the gun and the other gripping the nape of Vera’s neck as he backed away from me with a hint of madness in his eyes, “am going to walk out of here unharmed. My lovely wife will be an insurance policy to make sure you don’t try anything stupid or heroic.”