by Alex P. Berg
Tiny groaned, holding his head as he pulled himself to his feet. “I get it. You’re fuzz. Now what in blazes do ya’ want? I didn’t kill nobody. Ain’t so much as handed out a black eye in weeks.”
“We’re not here about a murder. Well, actually, we are. But that’s not why we need to talk to you.” I looked up and down the alley to check for stray ears. “Morales gave us your name.”
Tiny sighed, letting loose a cloud of banana and feet sweat vapor. Shay gagged.
“Great…I coulda’ done without the shiner.”
“Sorry pal,” I said. “Had to sell it, you know?”
“So what do ya’ want to know?” asked Mikey.
“We’re looking for a guy named Occam Silvervein. Heard of him?”
Tiny rubbed his forehead. A nice lump was sprouting there. “’Course I’ve heard of him. Everybody’s heard of him. Can’t go two skips in the Erming without stepping on a crankhead who’s hopped up on his dope.”
“You skip around the Erming?” I tried to envision it and failed.
“Figure o’ speech,” said the big lug. “Anyway, if you’re looking for Occam he shouldn’t be too hard to find. Just look for whatever flophouse has a bunch of his goons hanging around outside it. They’re easy to spot with those ugly face tattoos of theirs.”
“They have the tattoos on their faces?” Morales had failed to mention that.
“Yeah. They’re a bunch o’ loonies.” Tiny hawked a loogie and spit. “And Occam’s the worst o’ the lot. You’ll recognize him right away. His tattoos are the craziest of ‘em all, and he’s got a lazy left eye.
“Anyway, last I heard there was a gang of his guys near East 61st and Terrace. But if you’re planning on going after him, you’d better get more bluecoats.” He eyed Shay with a mixture of desire and contempt. “I don’t think your backup is gonna’ be much help in a squab.”
“Duly noted,” I said. “Now get the hell out of here before anyone gets suspicious.”
Tiny made himself scarce.
“I can’t believe that worked,” said Shay.
“Which part?” I asked.
“Well…everything. I have to admit, I thought my stint with you was going to be very short-lived once you beaned him with your nightstick.”
I realized I still gripped Daisy in my fist. I tucked her away in my coat, making sure she was comfortable—wouldn’t want the old girl getting angry at me.
“Ehh, big dudes aren’t that tough to deal with. Tiny probably weighs as much as a cart full of bricks, but his balance is too high. Makes him easy to knock over. Not like what we’re going to have to deal with.”
Shay crossed her arms. “You mean the dwarves?”
“Yeah. Squat with a low center of gravity. They can be real demons in a fight.” I headed down the alley, motioning for Shay to follow. “We should do some quick recon. If those dwarven gangbangers are where Mikey said they’d be, we’re going to have a fun morning ahead of us.”
35
Tiny’s intel proved accurate. A pack of short bearded uglies with tribal face tattoos milled about at our destination. Behind them stood a column of dull red brick buildings plucked from the same cookie cutter as every other hovel in the Erming.
I often wondered what sort of kickback the contractor who built the slum centuries ago received from the bloke who was selling red bricks. Must’ve involved a pile of money as tall as the clouds—or a woman with exceptional carnal talents. The only structures constructed of anything other than the cinnamon-colored clay blocks were those that had cropped up in the alleys between buildings, and those were mostly scrap wood lean-tos held together with rusty nails and the hopes and dreams of the destitute.
It wasn’t immediately obvious which dwelling hid the dwarves’ base of operations, but a few minutes of reconnoitering provided the answer. Shay and I set up base in the shade of a set of stairs leading to a split-level home. We made awkward small talk while fending off cutpurses and street urchins. Soon enough, I spotted a vertically-challenged tough with a tattoo around his left eye socket. He emerged from a walk-up basement three buildings from the street corner, sauntered over to the herd of dwarven loiterers, and passed out some unmarked brown paper bags. The bearded ones scattered.
“Looks like we found where Occam is hiding,” I said.
My partner, bouncing back and forth on the balls of her feet, tried to steal a glance in the direction of the guy with the face art. “Please tell me you’re not going to follow your last strategy here.”
I scoffed. “Why not? The combination of Daisy’s charm and my muscle has never let me down before. I mean, there can’t be more than…what? A dozen or so dwarves in that basement? How many can you handle? Three? I don’t know if I can take more than ten.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Shay’s wide eyes spoke of disbelief and terror. “I don’t want to die on my second day on the job. The Captain warned me about you before we met, but if you think—”
“Relax, Steele. I’m pulling your leg. Come on. Let’s go muster up some backup.”
Police stations occupied the four corners of the Erming. Slums are a lot like diseases, and police officers act as the city’s immune system. Not only do they maintain the peace, but they keep the ghetto from spreading. I headed in the direction of the nearest precinct.
“Really, Daggers,” said Shay. “Even with backup, are you sure this is a wise idea? Don’t you think there’s a reason Morales hasn’t moved in on Silvervein yet?”
“Of course,” I said. “It wasn’t worth it to bust the guy on drug charges. But now we’re knee deep in a murder investigation. One that involves large quantities of illicit weapons. If there’s any chance this Occam lowlife is involved in Reggie’s death, we need to get to the bottom of it. The Captain would back me up on that. Never forget what this job is about—finding the truth and delivering justice to those who deserve it, regardless of the risk.”
That greased the wheels in Shay’s brain. She kept quiet until we reached the local bluecoat branch.
Once there, I forced a meeting with the lieutenant in charge.
He didn’t want to be my friend.
I explained to him my manpower needs and he flat-out refused. He told me I was crazy to think I could waltz into his station and request a detail of over a dozen cops for an unplanned raid on a known drug dealer and suspected arms trader. Told me quite plainly that things worked differently in the Erming than in my neck of the woods. That he wasn’t going to needlessly risk his men on a mad whim from some midtown gumshoe.
Much to my own surprise, I kept a level head. I kindly informed him that while, no, I wouldn’t expect his men to charge into a herd of armed dwarves simply to take down a small-to-medium-time drug dealer, that yes, I did expect them to follow me into battle when said drug dealer was now a prime person of interest in a murder investigation.
My bureaucratic nemesis held firm. I got a little sassy. I asked if it was common practice for him to let murders slide as easily as drug deals in his neck of the woods.
The lieutenant snarled.
I threatened to get my Captain involved.
After some back and forth, Lieutenant Protruding Broomstick Handle assigned me ten of his surliest crowd controllers, outfitted with body armor, riot shields, and lead-weighted billy clubs. Funny—he didn’t offer me so much as a bandage. He did, however, give some unsolicited advice to my partner. Something along the lines of staying the hell out of the way once the fur started to fly. Despite having grabbed a baton of her own back at headquarters, Shay agreed.
With my officially sanctioned head-thumpers in tow, I led the way back toward Silvervein’s hideout. The streets emptied themselves as we marched.
The folks in the Erming may be poor, but dumb they aren’t. I’ve often thought slums are microcosms that succinctly prove the validity of evolution. In a slum, survivability trumps all other traits. Those individuals that don’t possess the proper level of respect for their own hides tend to lose t
hem fairly quickly. Folks in other neighborhoods don’t understand the survival-of-the-fittest, winner-takes-all paradigm quite like slum rats do. Walk down the streets of the Pearl with a goon squad in tow, and people will come out of stores and cafés to gawk. In the Erming, people don’t bother to check what side of the law a pack of toughs falls on. They just run.
Our wavefront of riot shields and living muscle attenuated in front of the building where I’d spotted my buddy with the eye socket tattoo. The street team of dealers had vanished, as had most every other living soul.
I pointed out the basement of sin and debauchery to my surly retinue. A few nodded in acknowledgement, but not a one said a word.
I couldn’t blame them. The surge of adrenaline and fear that rushes through your body as you prepare for a fight tends to put the kibosh on light conversation.
I loosened my kicking foot and grabbed Daisy, caressing her as we prepared to expand our usual solo dance into a group number. I took a deep breath and headed down the stairs.
36
The door exploded off its hinges under the weight of my boot. Armored bluecoats swarmed into the cellar. I shouldered my way inside, Daisy held above my head, ready to strike anything that moved.
The basement space stretched out in front of us like a spider with rough stone passageways radiating from both sides of the main hallway. Flimsy pastel-colored drapes hung in the entryways of the corridors, adding a touch of color to the gloom. Slurred baritone shouts from deep inside the hovel mingled with the pounding of boots and the wet thuds of truncheons meeting dwarf flesh.
I only had a few seconds to orient myself before a couple of dwarven uglies came at me with pigstickers. Tweedledum and Tweedledee lunged and jabbed with their knives simultaneously, but their short arms limited their reach.
I stepped back and swept Daisy in an arc at my knees, cracking Tweedledum on the wrist. He howled in pain and dropped his knife. Tweedledee circled to my right in a defensive stance, knife held before him.
I feinted left and stutter-stepped to my right, nearly shaking Tweedledee out of his shoes. Daisy caught him in the side of the head. She whispered sweet nothings in his ear, trying to lull him to sleep, but the thickheaded blighter only dropped to his knees. I cocked a haymaker to finish him off, but before I could swing Tweedledum pounced on my back.
He’d dropped his knife in favor of the ape-like limbs that protruded from his sides. He wrapped his injured arm around my neck from behind, trying to choke the life out of me as he beat on my melon with his free fist.
Like a bronco struggling to remain unbroken, I pitched around wildly trying to free myself from Tweedledum’s loving embrace. As we struggled, we fell into one of the pastel drapes which wrapped itself around our heads like an overzealous turban. In a stroke of luck, it bound my lover’s arm in place, keeping him from landing further blows to my head. On the downside, it also blinded me, limiting my field of vision to a sea of mauve. With Tweedledum’s chokehold still firmly in place, I began to panic.
I crashed into walls and bookshelves and cabinets, breaking glass and creating a ruckus, all the while taking pot shots at my rider with Daisy. Due to his awkward position on my back, I couldn’t land any solid blows.
As darks spots danced in front of my eyes, I did the only thing I could. I threw myself into the air, arched my back, and drove the full weight of my meat, cheese, and fried dough-fed physique into the ground. Tweedledum made a noise like air being bled out of a half-filled balloon. His choking arm went slack.
With all the speed I could muster, I rolled off him, ripped the drapes from my head, and delivered a solid kick to lover boy’s skull. It wasn’t a particularly sporting move, but it kept him from getting up for a while.
I gathered my bearings as I sucked in stale basement air. Much to my surprise, I’d only traveled one room over from the entryway during my battle with Sir Burlyarms. In true Jake Daggers’ fashion, however, I’d managed to totally lay waste to the place. Nary a piece of furniture lay unsplintered. Captain would’ve thrown a fit if we’d had to pay restitution for the damages, but given that my vertically-challenged friend had been trying to kill me, I think we could argue against it.
I hitched up my pants and stepped back into the entryway. Tweedledee was sawing logs on the floor. Apparently one of my more industrious escorts had finished him off while I danced the blind hokey-pokey with Tweedledum.
A series of shouts from further on in the basement brought me to attention. My steel lady friend still clutched in my hand, I ventured further into the abyss.
After a short jog, I found the remainder of my buddies. I burst into a large open room and was nearly brought to my knees by the fumes. I blinked back tears and covered my nose with my sleeve. Enameled cast iron cauldrons spewing toxic vapors lined the side of the room to my left, while crates of raw, unfiltered opiate resin leaned against the wall at my right. My club-wielding cronies occupied the far side of the room, locked in a fierce battle with the remaining dwarves.
At the center of the melee, one particular dwarf stood out. Dark as midnight tribal tattoos crept up his neck and onto his face. They encircled his eyes before spilling onto his forehead and diving into the mass of fur that covered his cheeks. Muscles bulged from every orifice of his stained tank top. He grasped a sword as long as he was tall and swung it about with a wild, fiery rage, almost single-handedly keeping the riot cops at bay.
He also had a lazy left eye.
Using my razor-sharp deductive wit, I identified him as Occam Silvervein.
The dwarves fought well, but craziness and an opiate-induced drug haze could only get a pack of navel-gazers so far. My boys were better equipped and better trained. With a few well-coordinated blocks and strikes, the tide turned in favor of the good guys.
Occam, despite the obvious milky drug film that coated his eyes, noticed the shift in the fight as soon as I did. Abandoning his remaining gangbangers, he dropped the sword and turned toward the wall.
That’s when I realized why the room happened to be better lit than the rest of the basement. Lookout windows lined the top of the far wall, all of which had been propped fully open. It was a logical choice. If not for the windows, the fumes from the drug cauldrons would’ve proved deadly rather than merely extremely irritating.
I swore and yelled for him to stop.
With the bluecoats still engaging the remaining toughs, I raced forward and launched myself toward the middle window. Occam beat me by a hair, wriggling out the half-sized opening and into the adjoining alley.
Sucking in my gut and pinching my shoulders, I pulled myself up and out the window, flopping on the ground outside with all the grace of a dying fish. Stumbling and bumbling, I gathered my feet under me and turned after my prey.
Occam raced toward the mouth of the alley. He had a good twenty pace head start on me. Despite my own admitted lack of closing speed, I figured I had a good chance to catch him, what with his stubby legs and all. My biggest concern would be not losing him in one of the Erming’s nooks and crannies. Silvervein knew the slum. I didn’t. That could prove to be critical.
Occam, however, seemed to think his escape was all but inevitable. As he reached the end of the alley, he turned his head, probably to gauge the separation between us. And then the little bugger had the nerve to wink.
I growled and ran after him. There was no way I was about to let some murdering, crank-cooking dwarven gangbanger get the best of me.
Occam whipped his head back as he spilled into the street and immediately took a whistling, high-speed nightstick to the neck. He fell to the ground clutching his throat, making odd gasping sounds. Over him stood none other than my svelte, cream-colored blouse-clad partner.
I pulled up short as I reached Shay and the writhing dwarf.
“Wow. Nice shot,” I said. “A guy built like him probably would’ve shrugged off a shot to the face, but a shot to the Adam’s apple? That’s cold-blooded.”
Shay dropped her truncheon. She
was visibly shaking. “Uh…thanks. I guess. I was actually aiming for his face, though.”
“Oh. Well, nicely done anyway. Let’s just hope we don’t have to give him a tracheotomy. He doesn’t sound so good.”
Occam’s gasping was turning more into a sort of gurgling noise, but I distinctly picked out the rasping sound of air coming in and out of his windpipe. Not wanting to risk losing him again, I gave him a love tap on the chin with Daisy.
Shay leaned against a brick wall and took a deep breath. I wandered over.
“You ok?” I asked.
“Um, yeah. I’m fine. It’s just…It’s just that…” She stared at the ground.
“You’ve never hit a guy before, have you?”
Shay shook her head. “Not like that.”
“Don’t sweat it,” I said. “It’ll get easier. You’re a natural.”
I got a raised eyebrow in response. “Seriously? You’re kidding, right?”
“Nah. What you did there was no joke.” I jerked a thumb at Silvervein. “Now I’m not going to lie—you’ll need to put some meat on your bones so you can pack a better punch. But you did good, Steele. Which reminds me—good thinking on staking out the back exit.”
“I’m starting to think I’m the one who took a blow to the skull instead of that dwarf there. Did you just give me two compliments in the same breath?”
I scratched my head. I had at that.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m sure I’ll find something disparaging to say soon enough.”
Shay pushed off from the wall, stretching back to her full height. “I was sure you’d scold me for not following you into the Razors’ hideout.”
“No, not really,” I said. “I figured you’d wait out front. I had you pegged as a pretty big coward.”
My partner rolled her eyes. “And there it is. Didn’t take too long, did it?”
“Told you,” I said. “Now stop whining and help me gather that lump of dwarf flesh so we can question him at the station.”
