by Alex P. Berg
“Oh. That.” I shot Shay a smile. “Well, I couldn’t very well deny my partner the sheer joy of filing past-due forms.”
Shay rolled her eyes. “Yeah, it’s boring moments at your desk where you really form those lifelong bonds, you know?”
“Precisely,” I said. “Who needs passion and adventure when you can dive into a good T99 or 1053B?”
“Or a P96.” Rodgers, bright eyed and bushy tailed as ever, arrived and slapped a sheet of paper against my chest.
I furrowed my brows at my blonde-haired, blue-eyed, unfairly handsome pal. “P96?” I glanced at the sheet. “What the heck is this?”
“A requisition sheet from the folks in accounting,” said Rodgers. “Apparently they took your three day saunter around the station as evidence you don’t have anything to do, so they’re letting us conduct our own inventory on office supplies.” Rodgers turned to Steele. “You heard, right?”
“I heard.”
I shook my head. “I should’ve seen this coming. The Captain’s not the only one with a mean streak. Speaking of which, where is the old jarhead?” I glanced at the bulldog’s office, but I didn’t spot him through the windows.
Quinto glanced at the empty office, too. “Apparently he’s meeting with the chief of police and the DA. Fallout from the Wyverns case.”
I chewed on my lip. During our last investigation, the Captain had revealed to me information about a former smuggling ring which we’d eventually brought down. As it turned out, the Captain had known one of the major players in said ring. At one point, they’d had a cordial relationship. While I believed the Captain had never taken hush money or acted against the best interests of the department, he might look less than sympathetic in the eyes of the public, especially once the prime suspect in the case was forced to testify. The Captain had assured me he’d get through the mess unscathed, but I wasn’t so sure.
I forced my eyes away from the office. “So I’m guessing there haven’t been any new murders this morning?”
“Not that we know of,” said Quinto.
I pumped my fist.
Shay unleashed her upturned eyebrows on me. “You do realize this means we need to wade through that stack of paperwork?”
My face fell. “Oh. Right.”
Rodgers lifted a finger. “Actually…that’s going to have to wait. The Captain left instructions for the two of you before he left for his meeting this morning.”
That was different. “Go on.”
“He said you should talk to a Detective Steck in vice, on the third floor,” said Quinto.
“What about?” I said.
The big guy shrugged. “How should I know? He didn’t elaborate as he stormed out the front doors. Just made sure we knew to tell you your cooperation with Steck wasn’t voluntary. Whatever he says goes.”
I scratched my head. “Well, I’m not sure how much I know about vice crime, but it if gets me away from a T99, who am I to complain?”
“But you don’t need passion or adventure if you’ve got forms.” Steele made her eyebrows dance at me.
“You really need to stop using my own words against me,” I said. “It’s eminently fair and reasonable, and I can’t stand it.”
“Then maybe you should stop stretching the truth all the time,” said Steele.
“And ruin the aura of carefree indifference I’ve toiled for years to create? In your dreams.”
Shay leaned in. “As if you knew what I dreamed about…”
She pulled away, and I took a long draught of my coffee, more as a way of preventing speech than anything else. It wasn’t really a question, but for my own well-being, I didn’t trust myself to provide an answer.
3
We found the indicated desk on the third floor by the bronze placard on it that read ‘G. Steck.’ Luckily for us, a man sat in the chair behind hit, his head buried in a notebook and a pencil twirling between his fingers.
“Excuse me,” said Steele. “Detective Steck?”
The man lowered the notebook, revealing a face so smooth I was surprised his nose hadn’t slid right off. I would’ve pegged him as having barely celebrated his twentieth birthday if not for the dangerous lack of hair at the corners of his temples. Short, golden brown stubble covered the rest of his head, and a prominent mole on the top of his left cheek provided a point of reference in an otherwise featureless face.
He smiled. “Ah. Detectives Steele and Daggers, am I right?”
I eyed the mole. It wasn’t hairy, thank the gods, which meant I could probably force myself to ignore it. “Guilty as charged. I’m Jake, and this is Shay.”
“Glenn. Nice to meet you.” We all shook hands. “Pull up some chairs. I’ll be right back.”
Steck stood and rounded a corner, calling out as he did so. “Munn? Hey, Munn! They’re here.”
Steele and I grabbed chairs from a pair of empty desks and plopped them in front of Steck’s workspace. Steck returned and seated himself, as did we. A moment later, a stocky middle-aged woman with a bouffant haircut and a maroon pantsuit appeared.
She extended her hand. “Detective Summer Munn. Fraud. Nice to meet you.”
Steele stood and shook the woman’s hand. “Detective Munn. How is it we haven’t met yet? I thought I’d sought out all the women in this precinct by now.”
“There aren’t many, are there?” She shook my hand in a perfunctory manner. “But you didn’t miss me. The Grant Street Precinct is my home base. I’ve only been here a couple weeks collaborating with Steck on our case.”
“About that,” I said. “I’m afraid you have us at a disadvantage. We arrived after the Captain left this morning, so all we know is you wanted to speak with us.”
Steck launched into a spiel as Munn left in search of another chair. “Right. Sorry. This all developed so quickly. Well, not really. It’s been in the works for two weeks now, but it all went to hell overnight, and the Captain thought the two of you would give us as good a shot of success as anyone in the precinct.”
I shared a glance with Steele.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” said Shay.
“Of course,” said Steck. “As I suspect you know, I’m in the vice division. I mostly work on gambling cases. I can’t tell you how many underground dice parlors I’ve shut down. Actually, I can tell you. Thirty-seven. I tend to obsessively count things. And share too much personal information, which is neither here nor there, but you’re going to figure it out yourselves, so I might as well warn you.”
Munn returned with a chair. “What he means is he has a hard time shutting up.”
Steele snickered. “Don’t worry. Daggers suffers from a similar ailment. I call it foot in mouth disease.”
“Anyway,” said Steck, “as Munn already let you know, she’s in fraud. Now you might be wondering why fraud and vice are collaborating, but it’s quite simple. You see—”
“Somebody’s running a gambling con?” I said.
Steck deflated like an old balloon. “Um…yes.”
I felt bad for stealing the guy’s thunder. “Sorry. I should’ve let you finish. Like my partner said, foot in mouth.”
“No, it’s good,” said Steck. “You’re thinking. You’re on your toes. We’ll need that for later. But yes, we’re investigating a potential gambling con, one involving three well-known players: Johann Preiss, Orrin Wyvernjaw, and Ghorza Skeez. We’re not entirely sure how the con is going to go down, but we’ve heard enough rumors from contacts in the underworld to know something is afoot, and we have a very good idea of when and where it’s going to happen.”
“Well, if you know when and where the illegal gambling event is going to take place,” said Steele, “then it should be easy to take down. You can stop it before it starts.”
“If it were that simple,” said Munn, “then Detective Steck wouldn’t have needed to collaborate with me.”
“So what’s the problem?” I asked.
&nb
sp; “The problem is the purported con isn’t supposed to occur at an illegal gambling event. The event we’re tracking is one hundred percent legal. Have either of you heard of the Prodigious?”
“The prodigious what?” I said.
“It’s not an adjective,” said Steele. “It’s a noun. A ship’s name. She’s the enormous new steam ship whose construction recently finished, isn’t she?”
“Correct,” said Munn.
I eyed Steele over the length of my nose. “Steam ship?”
She responded in kind. “Yes, Daggers. Get with the program. You remember when we went to the World’s Wonders fair, right? And we saw that Bock Industries steam engine and generator? I told you steam technology was old hat. The impressive part of Bock’s design was getting it into such a small package. But the Prodigious has been making headlines for the exact opposite reason. It’s, well…huge, to use a synonym. Every part of it. Including the steam engines.”
“To be specific,” said Munn, “the Prodigious isn’t simply a steam ship. She’s an ocean liner. A ‘pleasure vessel’ as the press is calling her. She has a ballroom and a theater, an indoor pool, a massage parlor, and exercise quarters, among other things. And the main draw is its casino.”
“They can have that on the ship legally?” I said.
“As long as they only operate it while over international waters, yes,” said Steck. “And to celebrate the Prodigious’s maiden voyage, the ship is hosting a high stakes poker tournament in one of its private rooms. So now you know why we can’t shut down the event which is supposedly being targeted.”
I stroked my chin. “I see. How high a stakes are we talking about?”
“Twenty thousand crown buy in,” said Steck.
I tried to whistle and failed. I’m a horrible whistler.
Steele took up my slack. “Wow.”
“Exactly,” said Detective Munn. “Not only is this tournament going to be a huge money maker for the ship’s owners, but they hope the publicity it generates will attract other high rollers, both domestic and international, to its tables. So you can imagine they haven’t been particularly receptive to our suggestion they shut the tournament down until we can get a bead on the con we’ve heard rumors about.”
“The ship’s top brass won’t less us shutter it unless we come to them with definitive evidence showing who’s going to commit the fraud and how it’s going to be committed,” said Steck. “Unfortunately, we don’t have that yet, and given the ship departs tonight, it’s simply not going to happen.”
“I could see how that’s problematic,” said Steele.
“The good thing,” said Steck, “is the ship’s owners are concerned about publicity, and they realize how detrimental news of a botched poker tournament would be to their public perception. So they’ve agreed to—nay, demanded—a police presence onboard. They want officers with eyes on the table at all times. But they don’t want square-shouldered thugs loitering around, intimidating their patrons and stinking up the joint. Neither would we. If the parties involved found out we knew what they were up to, they surely wouldn’t try anything, or they’d drop out entirely. So, in conjunction with the ship’s management, we’ve come up with a solution we think fits everyone’s best interests.”
“You’re putting someone in the poker game?” I said. “Sorry. Sorry. Foot in mouth, again. You tell us.”
“Not someone,” said Steck. “Two someones.”
Suddenly, I knew why the Captain had called on us. “Hold on. You want to insert me and Detective Steele into a high stakes poker tournament on a swanky luxury boat?”
“Oh, we don’t want to,” said Munn. “We’d rather send in Detectives Hawthorne and Reeves who’ve been training to go undercover on this mission for the past week. But two days ago they started to feel unwell, and last night they both broke out in a full body rash. The doctor says they’ve come down with a case of the goblin pox. It won’t do any lasting harm, but it’s highly contagious, and the two of them need to be quarantined for at least ten days.”
“And the Captain somehow thought Steele and I would be good at this?” I said. “I’m not sure how much he knows about my private life, but what Quinto, Rodgers, and I used to do on the weekends over beers was purely for fun. We bet pocket change.”
“It’s not that simple,” said Steck. “You don’t know them because they hail from Grant Street, but Detectives Hawthorne and Reeves are a husband and wife pair.”
I glanced at Steele. “Uh…where are you going with this?”
“We built a profile for them,” said Munn. “A young power couple made rich off commodities trading, Thomas and Samantha Waters, who now play fast and loose with their money in search of adventure and excitement. They hail from up the coast in Littleneck Harbor, to keep their identities mysterious. By now all the other players will have heard the rumors. They’ll be eager to learn more about their new competitors, and while I doubt they’ll bat an eye if your temperaments don’t fully match expectations, if nothing else, they will be expecting a couple. And unfortunately for me, no two other people on my fraud team fit that bill. Heck, nobody in the whole Grant Street Precinct does.”
“When we came to him with the problem, the Captain suggested you,” said Steck. “For one, he thought Detective Steele’s unique abilities might come in handy, and for another, he assured us you had a very close working relationship.”
The first part didn’t faze me. Steele was known as the precinct’s resident spell-slinger due to her psychic ability—something only I, Quinto, Rodgers, and Cairny knew to be a total load of hogwash. I carried as much psychic power around in my big toe as Shay did in her whole body. But the second part? Was it my imagination, or had Steck had gone out of his way to emphasize the ‘working’ in working relationship? Did that mean the Captain knew? Steele and I had tried to keep our feelings for one another hidden, but we’d engaged in that one spat in the interrogation room, and Steele had kissed me outside the precinct not less than a week ago. Rumors had a way of travelling.
Steele took it all in better than I did. “So let me make sure I understand this correctly. You need a pair of detectives, one male and one female, who can pose as a couple. A pair with a strong relationship who know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, not only because they’ll be working together to unearth some as yet unknown gambling fraud, but because they’ll need that strong connection to get them through the tournament. And I’m guessing you’re also looking for a pair with all the qualities you’d otherwise want in undercover detectives: quick wits, good eyes, and the ability to play a role.”
“Don’t forget gambling experience,” said Munn. “But that might be asking too much.”
“Well, I dabbled with card games in college,” said Steele. “And I’m quick on the uptake. What do you think, Daggers? We’ve got this, right?”
No hesitation. I liked that about Steele. She was strong and confident and wasn’t prone to false modesty, but there was a lot more to this assignment than wits and gambling prowess. The part where we were supposed to pose as a couple, specifically. And she hadn’t hesitated.
“I don’t know, Steele,” I said. “It’s one thing to play a few hands of cards with buddies over brews, but the dynamics change when you raise the stakes. I mean, twenty thousand crowns? Apiece? Even accounting for the fact that we’re not playing with our own money, we can throw betting and bluffing psychology out the window. Speaking of which, is the department really putting up forty thousand crowns on this endeavor?”
“We get it back if either of you win,” said Steck. “Or if we catch any of the other competitors in a con. So, uh…no pressure.”
“The good news,” said Munn, “is the ocean liner’s managing corporation is so desperate for positive press from this tournament that even if we lose—and there’s no fraud committed—they’ll refund us half the buy in. So even the worst case scenario won’t be a total loss. But if we go in and fail to uncover anything
, you can bet the accountants will never authorize anything of this magnitude again. So, yeah. No pressure.”
I glanced at Steele. She raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“If it makes any difference,” said Steck, “I’ll be on board the whole time posing as a porter, and I’ll be working with the staff behind the scenes, which means even though the two of you will be limited in your authority due to your cover, I’ll be able to poke and prod and hopefully give us an advantage over the competition.”
I took a deep breath and let it out through my nose.
“Did I mention the trip is all-expenses-paid?” said Steck.
“Oh. Well in that case, count me in,” I said.
“Please, Detective Daggers,” said Munn. “This is serious.”
“I know. I’m kidding.” I sort of was. “But Detective Steele is right. You can count on us. We’ll get the job done.”
Steck breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank goodness. Munn, get the files on Preiss, Wyvernjaw, and Skeez. And the dossiers we put together for Hawthorne and Reeves. We’re severely short on time, so you two are going to have to cram. And speaking of time—how are you two on formal attire? Ball gowns and cocktail dresses for you, Steele. And Daggers, you have a tuxedo, I hope?”
I blinked. “Say what now?”
Steck passed his hand over his short hair. “Wonderful. Okay, come with me. We can go over the files while the two of you get fitted. Hopefully the tailors won’t charge us an arm and a leg for same day service.”
Steck stood to go, but I was still a few paces behind the lead. Tuxedo? By the gods, what had I gotten myself into?
4
I stood on a fitting platform in front of a tri-paneled mirror while some old dude in a three-piece suit prodded my junk with a tape measure. It wasn’t how I’d envisioned my day going.
I felt a light touch against my goods.
“Thirty-four inch inseam,” said the tailor.
“You, uh…leaving enough space for the boys?”
