by Alex P. Berg
The Bridge was a true feat of modern engineering, with only one small caveat: the drawbridge portions in the middle were powered by a team of oxen that moved with about as much pep as a herd of dairy cows. From start to finish, the raising and lowering of the central portions of the Bridge could take nearly a half hour, and that inevitably led to traffic jams and lots of unruly foot traffic.
As luck would have it, we arrived at the Bridge right before one of its daily lift-offs. I swore. Captain wouldn’t be happy about the rickshaw tab. Most of the drivers who took east-west traffic were smart. They charged by the hour.
I tried to pass the time by engaging Shay in some people watching, but she found much less enjoyment in making fun of others than I did. Apparently I was the only one she enjoyed seeing made the object of derision.
I tried not to let Miss Sourpuss ruin my crowd-watching venture. I chuckled at the massive, bulbous schnoz protruding from a heavyset laborer’s face. I panted and howled when I caught sight of a sweet young piece of tail in a nearby rickshaw. And I couldn’t help but stare at the unfortunate tragedy of a nearby street sweeper, who as far as I could tell was some sort of gnome-goblin hybrid. Talk about getting the short end of the stick in the gene pool lottery.
Eventually, the oxen got their hooves into gear and the Bridge reopened for traffic. Of course, we still had to fight our way through the teeming crowd of unruly barbarians who I was certain had much less of a right to be in a hurry than we did.
By the time we reached the eastern banks of the Earl, we ran right into a pile of dock traffic generated by teamsters and laborers unloading goods from the freighter that had just sailed by. I worried the Captain would skip right over Shay to blame the inflated rickshaw tab all on me. That wouldn’t be good. The coffee might get confiscated again. Oh, the horror.
Luckily, before I drowned in a sea of self-imagined nightmare scenarios, the crowd thinned and our rickshaw driver ran double-time to get us to the forty-nine hundred block of 23rd street in a scant quarter hour.
I hopped off the cart, handed our driver some coins to cover our ride, and turned to examine our destination—Drury Arms. It stretched across half the block, and a two-story brick wall topped with barbed wire surrounded it. Behind the wall, tall smoke stacks jutted into the sky, belching black fumes that stained the neighboring rooftops as easily as the tips of the stacks themselves.
Soot was the price of progress, I suppose. In the past, outfits like Drury Arms would’ve used charcoal to stoke their fires, but decades of logging operations had taken their toll. Not only had local deforestation resulted in the mass immigration of elves and dark elves into the city, but it’d also driven up prices for charcoal—dramatically so. Just when it looked like businesses around town might have to close up shop, along came a budding goblin entrepreneur who offered an intriguing alternative.
As it turned out, goblins in the nearby mountain ranges had been digging foul, dirty rocks out of their tunnels for years. One day during a freak midnight torch-fighting accident, a goblin fell into the pile of discarded rocks and set the entire thing ablaze.
Can you believe it? Burning rocks. They called the stuff coal.
Anyway, the goblin entrepreneur organized a team of his cohorts to mine the stuff and sold it to local businesses. It worked out well for everyone. The goblins enjoyed rooting around in dark enclosed spaces, and the city’s residents loved burning things. The only losers were the poor charcoal vendors who’d been set to make a killing during the shortage, but that’s economics for you.
For the time being, the flow of coal out of the mountains was limited, but if the goblins could figure out more effective ways to mine it, the implications would be profound. If coal prices dropped enough, guys like Perspicacious Blaze might find themselves out of work.
I shuddered at the thought. As an officer of the law, I certainly didn’t want to have to deal with derelict, hobo fire mages with grudges against society. Regular, run of the mill psychos and crazies were bad enough.
“You alright?” asked Shay.
“Huh?”
“You’ve been standing there for like a minute staring at those smoke stacks.” She gave me a look that was part concern and part confusion. “Is there something about them I should know?”
“Oh. Uh, no,” I said. “I was just thinking.”
My partner smirked. “I see. You didn’t break anything up there, did you?”
“If I did, I’d have to solve this case solely on intuition from my gut and my man parts. Don’t worry. They rarely lead me astray.”
Shay rolled her eyes, but I swear I caught a hint of a smile.
24
A secretary in the lobby of Drury Arms gave us a hard time about wandering in unannounced and expecting to see the owner. She badgered us with questions. Do you have an appointment? Do you have any idea how valuable Mr. Drury’s time is? A quick flash of my badge and the words ‘detective’ and ‘official police business’ caused her yapper to clamp shut. Like a dog with its tail between its legs, the secretary quietly led us up a flight of grated steel stairs and into a glass-walled office that overlooked the factory floor.
The manufactory’s owner, a large barrel-chested man with a short brush cut, stood with his arms crossed behind his back looking out over the blacksmiths and their forges.
“Um. Excuse me. Mr. Drury, sir?” When cowed, the secretary squeaked like a mouse. “Sorry to interrupt, but there are some, um, detectives here to see you.”
Mr. Drury turned around, giving us a clean look at his face. His nose, which featured a bit of a crook under the bridge, and his wide, clean-shaven jaw gave him the look of a military man, similar to the bulldog back at the precinct.
Based on his muscular arms and chest, I wondered if he’d been a former blacksmith, perhaps while enlisted. Field smiths aren’t quite as vital to an infantry unit as field medics, but a soldier without a well-honed weapon is essentially a walking bag of meat. I suspected Mr. Drury may have started his business upon returning from a tour of duty.
“Detectives, eh?” His bushy eyebrows constricted. He waved a hand at the secretary.
Once she’d ducked out of the office and closed the door behind her, Mr. Drury motioned to a couple of padded leather armchairs that faced his wide, austere desk. He sat down as we took our seats.
“So, Detectives… I didn’t catch your names.”
“I’m Detective Daggers,” I said, “and this is, um, Detective Steele.”
Shay nodded. The words still felt weird rolling off my tongue. I wondered how long it would take before calling my prep school lackey a detective would sound normal to me.
“I see. I’m Thurmond Drury, sole proprietor of Drury Arms. Now, what seems to be the problem?”
“Well, Mr. Drury, we’re actually here to talk about Reginald Powers.”
“Oh.” Thurmond’s bushy eyebrows relaxed. “Well yeah, sure, I know Reginald. What do you want to know about him?”
I pulled out my old spiral-bound. “How about you start with your relationship?”
“He’s one of my employees,” said Mr. Drury. “Well, not really. He’s an independent contractor. Works on commission. Gets a 15% cut of any deals he strikes for my company. May not seem like much, but at the rate he’s signing new customers he’s doing quite well for himself.”
“So he’s helping expand your clientele?”
“Oh, absolutely. We’ve always been mostly a local distributor, but Reginald’s helped us develop our international profile. We’ve got shipments heading overseas at least every other month. Some of them quite big. And not just weapons. All kinds of stuff. He recently landed a deal for grappling hooks for the Maudrican Navy. I prefer weapons manufacturing, myself, but I’ve learned not to turn my nose up at free money.”
I made a note in my pad.
Thurmond’s eyebrows slowly came back together. “So…what’s this all about, anyway? Is Reginald in some sort of trouble?”
“You could say that,”
I said. “He’s dead.”
“DEAD!” Thurmond’s bushy eyebrows shot up in surprise before crashing back down in a fuzzy mound of consternation. “How?”
“Murdered. Someone burned a hole through his chest.”
“Burned a…gods, man. That’s grim. Who’d do such a thing?”
Shay piped up. “Well Mr. Drury, that’s what we’re trying to find out. Had Reginald shown any strange behavior lately?”
“No. Not that I can recall.”
“What about problems at work? Any disagreements with co-workers? That sort of thing?”
“What? No.” Thurmond shook his head. “Reginald was a great guy. Everyone here loved him. No one ever had any problems with him despite his, well…you know.”
Mr. Drury cast a glance at Shay.
“Heritage?” she offered.
“Yes.”
I could’ve mentioned Shay was a half-elf of the regular variety, but I didn’t have any interest in diving into the pot of worms that comprised Mr. Drury’s personal prejudices. Most of us carried them, but we didn’t need to air them in public.
Mr. Drury muttered to himself as he raked a hand through his hair. “Poor guy. And him so close to his wedding day, too.”
“Well, I hate to be the bearer of more bad news,” I said. Which was a lie—I really didn’t mind. “But this story gets worse, I’m afraid.”
Thurmond cast me a wary glance. “Worse? How could it get worse than being murdered? And in such a gruesome fashion?”
“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean for Reginald. I should’ve said it gets worse for you. We found a half-dozen illicit weapons in Reginald’s apartment. All of them were crafted in your armory.”
Mr. Drury swore and leaned back in his chair. “By the dragons’ breath, you’ve got to be kidding me! Are you telling me Reginald was stealing from me?”
“That’s what it looks like, Mr. Drury,” said Shay.
“But why would he do that? I was paying him, wasn’t I? Wasn’t that enough for him?”
“Who knows,” I said. “Maybe he had need of the weapons for some other reason.”
Mr. Drury sighed. “You know, I’ve always tried to run a clean operation. The gods know I’ve tried. But this just goes to show you never truly know who you can trust.” Thurmond swore under his breath. “I knew I never should’ve hired a…you know.”
The prejudices reared their ugly heads again. Shay took it in stride, but I figured I’d move the conversation in a less racist direction.
“Mr. Drury, certain other things we found in Reginald’s apartment lead me to believe you likely weren’t aware of those weapons getting out. I’ll be sure to let the Department of Commerce know that when they contact me regarding your license. For now though, we need to look into all possible leads that might direct us to Mr. Powers’ murderer. The weapons he stole from you are one. The contracts he brokered for you are another. We’re going to need a full list of all the deals in which Reginald was involved. I’m talking bank statements, invoices, shipping statements—you name it.”
Mr. Drury groaned. Despite my assurances, the possibility of him losing his business license was starting to sink in.
“Sure, sure,” he said. “Anything you need. Talk to my accountant downstairs. He’ll be able to provide you with copies of everything.”
I stowed my pad and nodded to Shay to go. I didn’t have the heart to tell Mr. Drury that a citation and fine from the commerce guys for letting a few of his weapons leak out was probably the least of his worries. If it turned out Reginald had been involved in felony offenses, then Mr. Drury would find out fast how hot the water could really get.
25
The accountant turned out to be a squirrely little guy by the name of Walter Fry. A pair of black-rimmed spectacles sat over his smushed nose, and a bad comb-over traversed the top of his head. I wagered the guy was in his mid-to-late thirties, but the mop gods hadn’t been kind to him. The line drawn by his hair was being slowly pushed back, and a small regiment of follicles staging a brave last stand on the front of his forehead was surrounded by a battalion of bare skin. The battle was lost.
“You know,” I said. “You’d be better off if you owned it.”
The accountant, his face stuck deep within the drawers of a filing cabinet, popped his head out and cringed. He reminded me of a skittish rabbit staring down the throat of a rabid wolf.
“E-e-excuse me, owned w-w-what, D-D-Detective?”
As if Wally’s appearance didn’t scream ‘bookish nerd’ loud enough, he also spoke with a noticeable stutter. I’m sure the presence of two inquisitive police officers in his office, one of them an attractive young female and the other a loudmouthed jerk, did little to help matters.
“The battle, man. It’s lost. Time to cut ties with the soldiers and admit defeat.”
Wally looked at me as if I’d jumped off the deep end and might take him with me.
“Never mind,” I said.
Shay leaned against the wall of filing cabinets that took up half of Wally’s cramped corner office, flipping through a shipping report by the light of a lone oil lamp. While I could appreciate that Mr. Drury valued security of his goods as well as his records, you’d think he could’ve put a small window in. Poor Wally looked like he was a few weeks away from developing a debilitating case of rickets, and that wouldn’t be good for anyone—especially Mr. Drury. He’d be out an accountant, and his healthcare premiums would skyrocket.
Shay snapped the manila folder shut. “Well, you’ve sure got a lot of paperwork in here, that’s for sure. How far back do you keep records?”
Walter gingerly plucked the file from Shay’s fingers, handling it as if it were his firstborn. Assuming babies could be held at arm’s length, that is. Those buggers are heavy.
“W-w-well, Detective Steele, the c-c-city mandates we keep records on hand for t-t-ten years. But we’ve got all the records from the entire b-b-business here, all t-t-twenty-three years. This is only the paperwork for the last f-f-five. The rest is in st-st-storage.”
I glanced across the wall. Ten full size filing cabinets for five years of paperwork? That seemed excessive, and I worked for the government. Apparently the commerce department kept the arms manufacturers on a tight leash.
I drummed my fingers on rabbit man’s desk. “Well, like I said, we’re going to need to see all your files that have even the most tangential relevance to Reginald Powers. Purchase orders, bank statements, shipping receipts. Everything. If he touched it, breathed on it, or wiped his butt with it, I want to see it.”
My last comment rubbed Wally the wrong way. He recoiled again. I started to wonder if his squeamishness was simply the product of our intrusion into his tightly structured environment or if the little guy was hiding something.
“Of course, D-D-Detective, of course.” Wally drew a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his moist brow. “But that’s going to amount to a lot of p-p-paperwork. I’ll need time to get it all to-to-together.”
My verbal fertilizer sirens went off. Wally definitely knew something he wasn’t sharing. I put my big boy pants on and leaned on him.
“Come on Wally, you seem like an organized guy,” I said. “What’s so hard about this? You find the files. You grab the files. You hand over the files.”
Wally pressed on his spectacles, which were sagging on his nose. A sudden memory of grade school assaulted me, that of a know-it-all four-eyed pipsqueak who would constantly correct me every time I made a mistake in class.
With the memory fresh in my mind, my affinity for Mr. Fry dropped to a new low.
“You d-d-don’t understand,” stammered Wally. “These files are o-o-organized, but they’re not organized by i-i-individual, they’re organized by d-d-date. I’ll have to comb through s-s-stacks of them before I find everything you’ve requested.”
I leaned over and brought my face mere inches from Wally’s. I could feel his breath on my cheeks. I spoke slowly in a low, measured voice.
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br /> “Listen here, Wally, and listen good. I’ve got a buddy at the precinct by the name of Folton Quinto. He’s about six foot seven, weighs maybe three bills. If the files I’ve asked for aren’t on my desk before we all head home for the night, I’m going to send Quinto over here to find out why. And for a point of reference, Quinto lives on the west side. He’s not going to be happy if he has to come all the way out here for courier duty. Do you understand me?”
Wally swallowed heavily and nodded, sweat dripping down his face. He could barely squeak out an answer. “Y-y-yes, D-D-Detective, I un-d-d-derstand.”
I turned about-face and left the office with Shay trailing.
“That was a little harsh, don’t you think?” she said as we exited the factory.
I shrugged. “Eh, yeah. Maybe. I’m not actually going to sick Quinto on him. Probably not, anyway. But sometimes you get further with a stick than with a carrot.”
Shay glanced back. “I think he almost fainted…”
“What can I say? He triggered some sort of…reaction in me, I guess.”
Shay didn’t pry. I appreciated that. I should probably learn to do the same, but what fun would that be.
26
Another long rickshaw ride later and we arrived at the precinct. The sun was working its way toward the tops of the apartment buildings across the street, sending lengthening shadows crawling from the Captain’s office across the rest of the common room. Darkness had already consumed half my desk, hiding unfinished paperwork from last week. I silently thanked the impending gloom for its kind thoughts.
I lit a lamp and turned up the flame as I approached the desks, sending some much needed light cascading over Rodgers and his workspace. He looked up and gave me a nod of thanks.
“Where’s Quinto?” I asked.
The big fellow was nowhere to be seen, and most of the junk that had sprawled across his and Rodgers’ desks was gone.
“He’s moving stuff down into the evidence lockers,” said Rodgers.
