an episodic novelette | a Vivian Locke noir
This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.
“So,” Cookie said, sliding a plate of fries onto the table. “You gonna tell me why a walking statue wants to turn you into a paperweight?”
I grabbed the bottle of ketchup and gave the bottom a hard whack before remembering my burned fingers and it sent a nasty jolt of pain, a little deadly dagger that traced a line from my palm to my elbow. I considered asking Cookie to do the honors when I saw the cheap, red sludge escape its glass prison and splurt onto the chipped ceramic plate. A generous third of the bottle, enough to coat the next helping of grease without having to risk the razorblades of agony shredding my arm.
“I lifted his batteries,” I said, the words tasting like old smoke, as I picked up a fry. “Or maybe I just helped shift the cargo Dredge was moving. You might have noticed that he takes issue with things that don’t stick to the heavy and immobile.”
I thought about the ghost-smoke in Kogan’s shop and the phantom whisper of a name in the gray vapor.
Martin Dredge
The Order had traded a couple of spikes in Dredge’s chest for the briefcase. The punishment wasn’t for the theft, but for the mortal sin of handing the thing over to me instead of them. After that, their goons had tried to melt the rest of him from existence.
So… Dredge was unlikely one of the Hanging Man’s boys. And no Johnson with an ounce of sense would’ve had him running protection on a case; he was small-time, a bagboy with no skills, no gear, and less respect. He couldn’t keep a paper bag from getting snatched, much less a leaden, rime-crusted attaché. Adding to the sour arithmetic was the cold, hard cash in that manila envelope—enough scratch to hire a competent crew of armed mooks. Why waste that kind of filthy lucre on one single, unarmed stooge? Something about the whole affair stank, like a week’s worth of rot seeping out of the dumpster in the back alley of Cookie’s cafe.
My office was a tomb, quite possibly still stuck in the ice age. Going back for files and resources was a risk I wasn’t willing to take, not for what little I had on the Order or Dredge. All I had to work with was the attaché, a dead trinket in the shape of a copper coin, and those two names. Not much to light the way in this kind of darkness.
“Cookie,” I said, pulling a crumpled napkin from the dispenser to scratch down some notes. “Do you have a phone book?”
“Under the register. Why?”
“Because the guy chasing me thinks in straight lines. He thinks I’m running away.” I uncapped my pen with my teeth. “But I need to know where this started. I need to find out what Martin Dredge was carrying or who the Johnson was that hired him.”
I needed Dredge’s address. He might have kept records.
“I need to search his pad,” I said. “If the Order is busy tossing my office, maybe they haven’t gotten around to scrubbing his place yet.”
“And if they have?” Cookie asked.
“Then I might be walking into a trap. But at least I know what they look like now. They look like guys who are afraid of hot coffee.”
No surprises. Dredge’s name wasn’t listed in the phone book. He wasn’t the kind of stiff who kept a regular address, let alone had enough scratch for a phone. And a low-life in his line of work didn’t surface in any of the usual directories a shamus like me might check.
I was overlooking something. I snapped my fingers, the sound sharp in the stale air, and stuck my hand into the inner breast pocket of my trenchcoat.
The bourbon sat there, a lonely monument on the laminated table, sweating under the weak light. I left it alone and pulled out the heavy manila envelope—Dredge’s retainer, now mine. It had taken a beating diving out that window, but it had seen worse days. Aside from a quick, early morning count, I hadn’t given the contents a proper look. A greasy fingerprint—Dredge’s, most likely—sullied the cheap paper. The boys in blue had cut me out of the loop once they saw I wasn’t the kind of dame to trade special favors for intel, so the fingerprint avenue was a dead end. But maybe the envelope could tell me more. It wasn’t just the affair that stank. The envelope, fresh out of my pocket, gave off a sickening, putrid odor, the smell of something rotten that had crawled into the light.
I brought it to my nose and a wince tightened my mouth. It wasn’t just the stench of the alley. It was a vile mix of sulfur, diesel, and dead fish. The distinct, chemical perfume of The Choke—the city’s industrial vein in the shape of a river, where the acid rain met the factory runoff, and everything died slow.
I flipped the envelope over. Scrawled across the back flap in a frantic, pencil-pressed hand was a note Dredge must have scratched out in the gutter light, his eyes already on the bottom of a glass.
Pay damn slip fee before Boyle shanks me.
The Choke. A slip fee. The name “Boyle”. That name was a stain on the ledger of my memory, never associated with anything that didn’t smell of cold steel and bad intentions.
“Henry Boyle,” I muttered, the name tasting like ash on my tongue as I tapped my pen against the table. “Harbormaster at Stillwater Moorings.”
On the plus side, it would get me out of this rain. Stillwater Moorings was just outside The Rook’s sphere of static rain, a place where the grime might actually dry up long enough to flake away. On the negative side? I’d have to hoof it eighteen blocks, all uphill in both directions. Taxis didn’t deliver or pick up fares in that cesspool of the city and dames didn’t walk in that neighborhood, even if they were packing a .38 in their pocket like I do. My car, that old heap sputtered its last breath, a final, metallic sigh, shortly after the judge’s gavel sealed the deal on my first and only dive into the institution of matrimony.
I drained the bourbon in a single swallow, the cheap liquor burning a familiar path down my throat. I stood, shoving the manila envelope back into the trenchcoat that had seen too many times like this.
“Cookie,” I rasped, leaning on the counter to where he was wrestling with the greasy grill and snagged the van keys hanging on a thin brass hook just under the counter.
“Yeah, Viv? Spit it out.”
“I’m taking the van. A long shot, but I’m checking out Slag Point. A lead dropped, something about Henry Boyle maybe having a professional relationship with that Dredge character.”
Cookie’s spatula clattered on the steel. “Slag Point? You got a death wish, Viv? Fine. But if that rust bucket comes back minus even one tire, you’re on foot. You deliver my food orders yourself until you replace them. Every damn one.”
I was already heading towards the door before he could change his mind.
“And,” he added as the door swung open, casting a long shadow into the hallway. “Feel free to give ol’ Henry a knuckle sandwich if the opportunity presents itself. He stiffed me a while back on some late-night helpings to the blue plate special, and a man’s gotta settle his tab one way or another.”
I jumped into the delivery van and turned the key in the tumbler. It started hard, like a dying man trying to gasp a final breath, but that was nothing new. Cookie’s delivery van was a rusted, lumbering beast that smelled permanently of old fryer grease and onions, and it handled the rain-soaked streets like a shopping cart with a broken wheel.
But it was a roof over my head and a shield against the impending Slag Point night. And tonight, I needed all the shields I could get. This town was a labyrinth of shadows, and every dark corner felt like it was waiting to spring a trap.
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