an episodic Vivian Locke noir

This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

The scalding water of the club’s cast-iron shower felt like an exorcism. I stood under the sputtering spray until the hot water tank coughed its last, watching the black, sulfurous grime of the past eighteen hours… Had it only been eighteen hours? …swirl down the drain like a broken promise.

I stepped out into the humid, cramped bathroom and dried off with one of the thick, luxurious towels The Canary kept around — one of several small luxuries afforded the employees who worked the club. I winced, tracing the deep, clean glass cuts across my left hand, then carefully redid the bandages. A girl gets used to the sight of her own blood in this city.

Margot had left a dress hanging on the door. Midnight blue silk, the kind that whispered promises. It was cut on the bias to cling like a second, dangerous skin, but with a slit high enough to allow a full, unimpeded draw from a thigh holster. I strapped the heavy snub-nose to my leg, the cold steel a comforting anchor against the soft fabric, and slipped the silk over my head.

A sharp knock rattled the frosted glass of the door.

an episodic Vivian Locke noir

This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

I carefully wrapped the impossible token back into the velvet and shoved it deep into my coat pocket. The brimstone receded, swallowed by the scent of old fryer grease.

Leviathan’s Cross was the mark of the Meridian Club. They wouldn’t let a banged-up, worn-out gumshoe like me past the bouncers at the door of that upscale joint in a hundred years, let alone to the back room where I could suss out which of the fat cats was my likely Johnson and shake them down.

an episodic Vivian Locke noir

This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

The flat edge of my hook pick slid into the narrow crack. I braced my knee against the hull’s sickening rock, the whole procedure a grim reenactment of the dentist who’d torn a wisdom tooth from my jaw last year. The relief at the time, when it finally came, was probably the whiskey talking. It sure as hell hadn’t been in the dentist’s technique. My ribs ached for days afterward.

The square panel popped loose with a wet, suctioned thwack, spitting out a blast of freezing, diesel-slicked air. It hit me in the face like a fistful of brass knuckles, carrying the rotten-egg stench of the river water sloshing just beneath the deck.

I plunged my good right hand into the darkness, steeling myself for the shock of freezing bilge. My fingers didn’t find water; they found cold, dry iron.