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.
“Delivery for Viv,” the muffled voice of one of the chorus girls called out. “Creepy kid at the alley door said Kogan sent it.”
I opened the door an inch, took the small, unmarked cardboard box tied with rough jute twine from her hands, and locked it again.
Inside the box was a dull, gray cylinder, cold and heavy as a bullet, the size of a lipstick tube. Kogan’s ampoule. The moment my fingers brushed the lead casing, the ambient, dizzying hum in the back of my skull snapped off like a busted neon sign in a two-bit flophouse. It was unnaturally heavy, dense with cold iron, dead quicksilver, and sea salt. I was holding dead gravity in the palm of my hand.
I walked over to the brightly lit vanity mirror in a dressing room otherwise drowned in shadow.
The dame looking back at me didn’t look like a battered gumshoe who had seen better days. She looked like old money and bad intentions. The illusion was unavoidably fractured at the edges: the stark white medical tape wrapped around my hand, the lethal bulk of the revolver hidden just beneath the silk, and the terrifying payload sitting on the vanity.
I picked up the impossible möbius token with my bandaged hand, dropped it into a rigid velvet clutch, and immediately dropped Kogan’s lead ampoule right next to it. The suffocating stench of brimstone emanating from the token was instantly choked out.
I snapped the clutch shut. Time to cash out.
The Meridian Club sat in the financial district like a gold-leafed tombstone. It was pure, aggressive Art Deco—black marble columns, sharp geometric brass inlays, and a heavy set of windowless double doors.
I paid the cabbie, fresh rain begging to turn the granite steps slick and dark. Without the static charge in Rhea’s curse on The Gills, the rain was almost pleasant against my face.
My heart was a frantic drumbeat against my ribs, but my face was stone. I had my story straight. I was ready to bluff the doorman, flash the token, bribe a pit boss, or put a gun to a manager’s ribs if that was what it took to get a meeting with the owner.
I gripped the heavy brass handle and pulled. The doors didn’t open onto an empty, waiting tomb. They opened into the roaring, smoke-filled belly of the beast.
The Meridian Club was operating at full tilt, a chaotic symphony of clinking crystal, the rhythmic clatter of spinning roulette wheels, and frantic, brassy jazz. The air was thick with imported tobacco and the sharp, desperate sweat of millionaires betting on margin. I stepped onto the geometric marble floor, letting the doors shut behind me, and tightened my grip on the velvet clutch.
I stopped at the edge of the lobby and scanned the floor. Two thick-necked men in tuxedos stood by the coat check, looking like bad news in expensive wrappings. A pit boss with dead eyes was watching the baccarat tables. I started doing the math, plotting a route through the cocktail tables toward the velvet ropes of the private stairs, calculating exactly how much trouble it was going to take to force a meeting with the owner.
I didn’t even see him move through the crowd. He was just suddenly there, occupying the space to my right as naturally as a shadow cast by the chandelier.
“Miss Locke, I believe you are looking for me,” the figure said, the words smooth as polished marble. “My name is Julian Cross.”
The voice was… impossible. It wasn’t loud, but it didn’t compete with the blaring, frenetic jazz or the thunderous roar of the casino floor. It simply bypassed them, vibrating directly against my eardrums. It was a smooth, perfectly cultured baritone, but carrying a faint, grinding undertone like the hum of a high-voltage wire threatening to snap. A sound that belonged in a back alley at 3 AM, not this palace of neon and bad decisions.
I forced myself to look at him. Cross was tall, lean, and immaculately dressed in a bespoke tuxedo. He looked like old money and effortless charm, right up until my eyes tried to focus on the fabric of his suit. It wasn’t just black silk. It was an absolute, localized absence of light. The glare of the crystal chandeliers didn’t reflect off his lapels; it just sank into them and died.
“You’re the Johnson,” I said, the words tasting like stale cigarettes. I kept my hand tight around the velvet clutch. The lead ampoule inside felt like a block of ice against my palm, the only solid thing anchoring my rapidly fraying nerves in this place of smoke and mirrors.
“I prefer ‘investor,’” Cross smiled. It was a handsome smile, the kind that promised you everything and delivered only a shiv in the ribs, but it didn’t reach his eyes. His eyes were the color of tarnished pennies. “Please. Let’s not conduct business in the doorway. It’s terribly gauche.”
He didn’t lead me to a dark, soundproofed back office as his kind were fond of doing. Instead, he turned and walked straight into the chaotic, throbbing heart of the casino floor.
I had no choice but to follow, watching the crowd as I flowed between them. It was terrifying. The desperate gamblers with faces contorted by anticipation or fresh loss, the cocktail waitresses with rictus smiles, the broad-shouldered pit bosses cracking knuckles. And none of them looked at him. But as he moved, the dense crowd subconsciously parted, swaying out of his physical space like seaweed shifting around a toxic vent. They didn’t even realize they were doing it.
Cross stopped at an opulent, high-stakes baccarat table, sitting dead center under the brightest, most unforgiving chandelier in the room. He didn’t say a word to the dealer. The man just blinked, his eyes glazing over in a sudden, vacant daze, and silently walked away from the chips. The gamblers followed suit, leaving their winnings, and losses behind at the felt.
Cross pulled out a velvet-backed chair for me. It was a power move. He was putting us center stage, stripping away my shadows and my cover, proving that he was perfectly comfortable operating in plain sight, under the harsh light that showed all the sins.
I sat down, careful to keep the slit of the dress draped loosely over my right thigh. A girl had to keep some of her aces up her sleeve, even when she was sitting across from the devil himself.
Cross took the seat across the felt table, leaning forward on his elbows, a predatory smile playing on his lips. “Can I offer you a drink, Miss Locke? A gin? Perhaps something for the pain in your hand? You’ve had a remarkably taxing evening doing my heavy lifting.”
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