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.
I slid out of the booth and walked up to the front counter. Cookie was wiping down the laminate with a gray rag, cigarette hanging precariously from his bottom lip. He didn’t ask why I looked like I’d just seen a ghost. That was why I liked him.
“Coffee’s on me tonight, Viv,” he grunted, waving my cash away.
I dropped a crumpled five-dollar bill on the counter anyway. He started to tell me it was too much, but I ignored him. I could settle at least one of my tabs if my plans went sideways, and in this city, “sideways” was often the only direction things ever really went.
I thought about that, running the numbers in my head. My guess was that any bookie worth his salt would place good odds on things doing just that in the coming hours. I reached into my coat and pulled out the manila envelope, the thing that weighed more than its contents suggested, and handed it to Cookie.
“Mind keeping an eye on that for me?” I asked. “If I don’t come back for it by sometime tomorrow, it’s yours.” It was a promise, a grim form of insurance.
Cookie peeked into the envelope, his eyes growing wide as he saw the cash tucked inside. It was a lot of green, enough to buy silence, or trouble, depending on who was asking. It could maybe clear a few of Cookie’s debts — the inevitable debts everyone operating in The Gills picks up just trying to keep their heads above the streams rushing down the gutters.
“I’m borrowing the van again,” I told him before the surprise could melt into a question.
“Same rules,” he said. The same unspoken code of honor among thieves and shadows. I nodded, not wanting to say much about my plans. The fewer words spoken, the fewer echoes left behind.
The rain was a cold, indifferent curtain as I slipped into the alley. It felt like a grudging baptism after the tight, sweating fear of the booth. Cookie’s van was waiting where I left it. I wrestled the heavy clutch, found first gear, and pulled the old truck out of the slums, leaving the stench behind.
The city unspooled around me, a slow, ugly scar. The rusted, stooping skeletons of The Gills dissolved into the clean, arrogant glass and steel of the inner city. Here, the streetlights didn’t just burn, they blazed, and the gutters weren’t choked with the city’s trash. They spent a fortune keeping the rot downriver, out of sight.
I parked the van two blocks away from the theater district, not wanting the rusted delivery truck to draw the eyes of the beat cops patrolling the wealthy wards.
I pulled my coat tighter against the chill. Every step I took brought me closer to a world I’d sworn off.
The Brass Canary wasn’t marked by a neon sign, just a heavy, polished oak door set halfway down a clean, well-lit alley, guarded by a man in a tailored suit who looked like he used to break legs for a living. I didn’t go to the front. I slipped past the dumpsters and down a narrow, subterranean flight of concrete stairs to the service entrance.
My hand settled on the cold steel. Through the metal, I could feel the low, vulgar throb of a stand-up bass, and the faint, treacherous scent of imported gin and gardenias—the perfume of a life I’d thought I’d successfully put six feet under.
I pushed the door open and stepped into the smoke.
The backstage of The Brass Canary was a sensory assault. The air was a thick, suffocating blend of aerosol hairspray, face powder, cheap gin, and the sharp tang of nervous sweat. A chorus line of girls in silver sequins and ostrich feathers rushed past me, their heels clicking frantically against the scuffed linoleum, completely ignoring the soaking wet woman dripping rainwater onto the floorboards.
I navigated the narrow corridor of clothing racks and vanity mirrors until I found her.
Margot was sitting on a reinforced wardrobe trunk, smoke curling from a cigarette pinched between her crimson lips as she stitched a torn hem on a silk slip. She was a lifer. She had been a hostess when I started. When her knees gave out, she took over the wardrobe department. She knew every secret in the theater district, and exactly what they cost.
She looked up, her eyes flicking over my soaked trench coat, the bandage on my left hand, and the alleyway grime I’d tracked in. The silence that followed was heavy with unspoken questions and the scent of trouble.
“Well,” Margot said, her voice like cracked leather. “Look what The Choke finally spat back out. I always said playing private dick would get you killed, Viv. Guess I was wrong, for once.”
“Good to see you too, Margot,” I said, leaning against the cold cinderblock wall. The air in her cramped back room was thick with smoke and desperation. “I need a favor. A big one,
She took a long drag of her cigarette. “You need a tetanus shot and a hot bath. You smell like an oil spill.”
“I need a dress. Something expensive. Silk or velvet, dark colors. It needs to say I have a trust fund.”
Margot raised a perfectly penciled eyebrow, a cynical arch above an eye that had seen too much of the city’s underbelly. “Since when do your clients care about haute couture, Vivian?”
“It’s not for a client. I need to walk through the front doors of the Meridian Club in about an hour, and I need to do it without the bouncers looking twice.”
The needle stopped moving. Margot let out a slow, whistling exhale, the smoke hitting the bare bulb of the vanity mirror and swirling like a captured ghost. The cynical amusement vanished from her face, replaced by a hard, cold professional concern that was more frightening than a pistol.
“The Meridian? Viv, that isn’t a place you go to solve a problem. That’s where you go to disappear. The men who play cards in that basement own the police commissioner, the mayor, and probably the devil himself.”
“I know who they own. But I have something they want, and I need to look the part to get to the table.” I shifted my weight, letting my coat fall open just enough to reveal the leather strap of my shoulder holster. “And Margot? It needs to have a cut that hides the hardware. I’m not walking in there naked.”
She stared at the gun, then up at my face. She just sighed, crushed her cigarette out under her heel, and stood up.
“Give me ten minutes to dig through the VIP overflow racks,” Margot muttered, turning toward the dense rows of hanging silk and tulle. “There’s a rotary phone at the end of the hall by the ice machine. Call whoever you need to call to say goodbye, then get out of those wet rags and clean up.”
I found the payphone in a rusted alcove, tucked beside the humming industrial ice machine. The air smelled of freon and stale beer — a slight improvement over the ozone and sulfur leaking from my coat pocket.
I fumbled a dime out with my good right hand, the neon burns and glass cuts on my left throbbing in time with the thumping bass from the stage above. The heavy clunk as the coin dropped grounded me. I dialed Kogan’s shop.
He picked up on the fourth ring, sounding like he was chewing gravel. “Shop’s closed, Viv. Call me tomorrow. Late morning,” he cut in before I could speak.
“There’s a third party,” I said, my voice tight. “And I need to settle up with Dredge’s Johnson first. I need a favor. Now.”
“Vivian, you’re exhausted,” Kogan said, the patronizing patience in his tone making my jaw clench. “You’re confused. The Order hired Dredge. They are the only players. You’re dealing with Lead. Stasis. Heavy men who stop time. Hand over the case in the morning. Maybe they’ll forget you were involved. That advice, babe, is free.”
“I have the token that opens it,” I said, leaning my forehead against the cool, damp cinderblock.
Kogan let out a long, suffering sigh. “The Order of the Suspended King won’t negotiate, Vivian. Hand over the token with the case and pray they don’t crush you into a diamond for the inconvenience.”
“Dammit, Kogan. I’m not confused,” I snapped, the adrenaline finally cutting through the nausea. “I’m standing here at the Brass Canary smelling like rotten eggs and burning ozone, and the token in my pocket just threw a shadow of a Leviathan Cross across the table back at Cookie’s.”
The line went dead silent, broken only by the rattle of the ice machine dropping cubes.
When Kogan finally spoke, the patronizing patience was gone. His voice was thin, reedy, and terrified.
“Black Sulfur,” he whispered. It wasn’t a question.
“The engine of the Nigredo,” I confirmed. “The Order didn’t hire Dredge. They were hunting him. The Johnson is Black Sulfur. They used Dredge for bait. I need to walk into the Meridian Club to cash this token in, and I need to do it without my brain melting out of my ears.”
“The Meridian…” Kogan’s voice was a rough swallow. “Vivian, you can’t. They deal in pure entropy. The building’s geometry will tear your mind apart. You’re walking into a woodchipper.”
“I’m already in the hopper, Kogan. Just jam the blades.”
I heard the frantic scrabble of his workbench—paper, glass vials clinking.
“Listen,” he panted. “Sulfur is volatile. Corrupts. Breaks things down. You need the opposite: grounding mass. I have a ward. Cold iron shavings, purified sea salt, a drop of dead quicksilver. Sealed in lead. It’s heavy. Dense.”
“Will it work?”
“It’s an anchor,” Kogan said, grim. “It’ll pull the impossible geometry back to local reality. Keep it in your pocket, next to the token. It buys you a conversation. But Vivian…” Fear was a dry rasp in his voice. “Don’t let the ampoule break. Sulfur touches quicksilver, it ignites.”
“Send it to the service alley behind The Brass Canary. Knock twice, leave it with who answers. I’ve got a dress to catch.”
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