CHAPTER 4: CAPTAIN'S CALL

  CYPRUS ALLEY—OCTOBER 17th, 1992 | MORNING

  ?

  “You what?” Leroy sat on his couch in his boxer briefs with his feet kicked up onto the coffee table.

  A phone cord wrapped around his wrist, and he held the receiver tight against his ear. His mouth was drawn long across his wrinkled face, and he ran a hand through his blonde-white hair. What used to be a widow’s peak was now receding, and he stared longingly at the flat cap on the far side of the couch. A black cat sat on his lap, soundly asleep.

  “We can’t spare the staff,” a voice buzzed from the phone. “Hausser called, and we’re busy handling things elsewhere, we can’t—”

  “Can’t, won’t,” interrupted Leroy, nearly yelling into the phone. He lowered his voice upon noticing the cat shift a bit. “You know two of your new blackjackets pointed their guns at me just the other day?”

  “We wouldn’t be calling you if we had the men to spare, Leroy, but—”

  “Constable Heathcliff and Constable Briggs. So green they nearly shit themselves when they walked in on me.”

  “I.. yes. I know. Look, Leroy, I’ve spoken to them. Won’t happen again.”

  “Ah-huh. You said Hausser? As in Elizabeth Hausser? Here’s what you should do, Holmes. You take what men you’ve got—the busy ones—and you send them there. Unless you have one hell of an arbitration note written and signed by her, I don’t want anything to do with it.”

  “Leroy,” droned Holmes, exhaling into his end of the phone and flooding Leroy’s right ear with static. “We got one half of the Special Response Unit over at the Grove Cemetery dealing with a banshee and the other half running escort detail on a new shipment of prisoners headed to Blackpool Penitentiary.”

  Leroy’s tone lowered, and he squinted, shifting a bit. “Special Response Unit?”

  “Last night, some South Enders knocked on her doors, tried to sell her something. Deal went bad, and it went bad quickly. Guns, I think it was. Point is, Hausser’s hired muscle, a pair of accursed, were both murdered. The ones behind it are some small fry gang, call themselves the South End Sables.”

  “Get to the point,” Leroy said into the phone.

  “There were only three of them. But one of them was a hexling.”

  Leroy grabbed the black cat with one hand and placed him onto the couch, taking the phone cord and his empty coffee cup into the kitchen. “And she lived?”

  The cat followed him, brushing up closely against his leg.

  “The Sables left her alive on purpose, she said. Didn’t even steal from her. My guess? These guys were in over their heads. Shit hit the fan, and they tried to salvage it by turning it into some way to get their cred up. Let her live so she could spread the word.”

  “She writing me the arbitration note, or are you?” Leroy asked.

  “When she called in we told her the same thing I told you, about our being ah.. short-staffed and all. Suffice it to say she wasn’t pleased, but she drafted the note after I mentioned you’d be taking on the job. Told her to drop it off and to bring it to me the morning-of.”

  “The job. What is it?”

  Holmes cleared his throat, and Leroy could hear him shuffling through some papers on the opposite end of the line. “Find the Sables and hand them over to the Occult & Civic Authority.”

  “You’re okay with this?” Leroy knew the answer.

  “No,” Holmes stated. “But it’s an arbitration note, and you’re an arbiter, and Captain Holmes is out of men and out of patience. If we don’t get this handled, she’ll bitch to city hall, and then it's my ass—and the OCA’s—on the line, and then I’ve got Chief Montgrave all pissy with me for the next month. And then, and then, Leroy! Before we know it, Hausser gets her garbage men to go on strike until she’s guaranteed better protections, and then the whole city smells like shit more than it already does, ‘cause the truth is, we aren’t putting more men in the South End. Not now. Not ever. The one station we’ve got there is barely holding on as-is. Look, Leroy. Something like this, its in and out for a guy like you. Find them, and when you’re done, you call, we bring them in. Simple. Easy. Yes?”

  By the time Captain Holmes had finished his spiel, Leroy was halfway through his freshly poured cup of coffee, and he'd already pet his cat several times. Pesky bugger had leapt onto the counter, and tried as he did, the cat ignored Leroy's snaps and hand gestures, and much preferred to idle close to Leroy. “She’s paying?” Leroy asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “She knows my rates?”

  “She left the arbitration note blank,” he answered.

  Leroy smiled at that. “This is a tall order on short notice, Holmes. My license expires today, hence why I need to be at city hall. Need to renew it. That takes time, you know. Couple of hours at least, and I’m wasting that time talking to you on a job that I don’t have to take.”

  “Ah,” Holmes began, voice tired. “Had a feeling you’d do this, Leroy. Fine. I’ll throw in an extra however-much-the-fuck-you-want on top of that. Happy?”

  “Overjoyed,” Leroy retorted. “But I’ll need information. Something like this, something short notice? Not happening unless I have something to go off of."

  “Did some digging after she gave me the descriptions. Got three names for you. One David St. James, a Mercedes Garcia and—”

  “Which one is the hexling?”

  “I was getting to that. Cameron Kessler. He’s the one you’ll need to look out for.”

  “And the other two?”

  “Those two are mundies, nothing to write home about. One of em’ has an artificed glove or something, according to Hausser, and the other has a caged sprite.”

  Leroy took the final sip of his coffee and promptly placed it onto the counter. Artificed glove he could deal with. A well-crafted one might get you a real bang for your buck, but that was about it. It could make a mundy a little bit more useful, but not by much. A caged sprite, however, might pose some cause for concern. Nasty, violent little things. A handful of constables could handle that, but they’d be hard pressed to handle a hexling. Leroy inhaled sharply, making his way back towards the wall-mounted phone, unraveling the cord a little bit more with each step.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “I’ll head there now, call in once it’s done. You and your blackjackets are going to have twenty minutes to get there, and then I’m gone.” Leroy went to hang up, but stopped as he heard the buzz of the phone tingle in his hand.

  “Twenty minut—”

  Leroy pressed the receiver up to his face, gripping the device tightly. “I have somewhere to be. City hall. Be there, or figure it out."

  ?

  Leroy hit the brakes and honked his horn.

  He sat in his black SUV behind three cars crossing into the South End by way of the 3rd Sister, one of three bridges that connected the boroughs together where the metal statue of Archangel Raphael loomed, holding its staff towards the Gulf of Maine just beyond the reaches of the Commonwealth’s waters.

  Leroy hated driving past that thing. It was a pale imitation of the Statue of Liberty, just as green, but about three times smaller and stupidly self-important. Apparently, it was armed to the brim with a specific array of sigils, crafted by sigilmasons during the founding of the Commonwealth. People like Holmes swore by it, said it was the single biggest warding mechanism the city had.

  If it was as good as they said it was, the city wouldn’t need to hire a dozen recent graduates from the Brinehaven College of the Occult to reinforce said sigils twice a year, and there wouldn’t be nearly as many incidents requiring the use of the Special Response Unit. But because it wasn’t, Leroy was waiting to get extorted by South End’s primary toll collectors, venturing into the South End a second time within the same week to solve a problem he didn’t need to.

  By the time he pulled up to the edge of the bridge, a number of cars lingered on either side of the large gate leading into the South End. It was a mess of patchworked metal on top of fencing lined with barbed wire, surrounded by people with knives and guns and pipes. The only thing that tied them together was their denim vests—all colored a deep burgundy—that identified them as the Bridge Jockeys.

  The car in front of Leroy handed over a wad of cash before entering, and he was expected to do the same. When he rolled down his window, the main collector, a young woman with too many piercings and dyed hair, saw Leroy for what he was: fifty-something, wearing a checkered flat cap and brown-leather jacket, with two large hands gripping the wheel of his car.

  “Forty dollars,” she croaked.

  “Forty dollars?” Leroy asked.

  “The money, old man, or you can turn around.”

  Leroy grumbled and awkwardly shifted in his car seat. Even in a SUV, his taller features and broad shoulders made reaching into his pocket more annoying than it had to be. He grabbed his wallet begrudgingly, wetting the tip of his index finger to separate the bills before handing them to the young woman. “I was here five days ago and it was thirty. How the fuck are you going to up the price in the span of a week?”

  “I don’t make the rules,” she shrugged, taking the cash.

  Leroy held his grip there for a moment longer. “And Hausser Waste Company? You guys, what, have those garbage trucks on retainer, or something?”

  She squinted and tugged her hand out, taking the money and pocketing it. “Monthly fee. Now go on in before I decide to take another forty just for the sake of it."

  Leroy grunted under his breath and rolled the window up, driving past the rickety toll booth and beyond the dozen or so Bridge Jockeys nestled around it. He drove beyond a large patch of what used to be a public park, which had long since been reduced to rusty metal skeletons and dead grass. Not a soul in sight.

  There was a single, long road that ran from one edge of the South End to the other, and he followed it without further delay—save for the traffic itself. Rows of apartment complexes and mixed-use buildings ruined whatever view he might have had of the bay, all loosely connected together by cast-iron archways and permanent scaffolding that offered the South Enders a means of walking above and around. There were hanging lights and hanging clothes and hanging advertisements; all unified by a tangled spider web of electrical lines.

  Dirty, gritty, grimey. As off-kilter as the place was, and as much as Leroy hated going there, he couldn’t deny that the place had character. It embraced the mess of it all, didn’t shy away from it. That was worth something, even if the end result of it was a semi-lawless borough only held together by the gangs that ran it. Order from disorder, with one derelict hospital and one half-abandoned school to boot. They made it work, somehow, and Leroy respected that.

  He caught a handful of eyes as he continued onwards. More gangs, uniformed in their own ways, loitering inside and outside of the various establishments. Convenience stores, laundromats, bars, diners, unregistered pharmacies, gambling dens, pleasure houses. Anything and everything you’d find in any other borough, just rougher around the edges and constantly patrolled by whoever called the place their turf. Gangs as police. Gangs as landlords. Gangs as businessmen.

  Leroy could understand why the Civic & Occult Authority only had one station here—most of the criminals they’d go after did their jobs for them. As he went to park his car in an alleyway just beside an old bar called Dante’s, Leroy thought of Constable Heathcliff and Constable Briggs and smiled to himself. Jumpy, over-excited, ready and willing to deliver justice where they thought justice was due. The two of them probably signed up and got placed at the South End Station thinking they’d make a difference. Poor things.

  He exited the black SUV and locked it, wiping off the dust next to the handle to reveal a sigil etched onto it. A simple ward with the watermark of MULDER & SON just below it that had more than paid for itself twenty times over since he got it on the car. Leroy pocketed his keys and turned the corner, walking past a few bouncers posted outside of Dante’s, and entered. It was mostly empty, save for a few patrons, which was to be expected.

  The day was young, but Dante’s never closed. The floors were checkered, the walls were lined with old branded mirrors advertising beers, and the posters of pin-up girls and magazine models were about twenty years out of date. It smelled like cigarettes and sweat.

  Leroy opted to stand at the bar and smacked a hand onto the table.

  “Be right with you,” croaked an older fellow. He had about ten years on Leroy, and when he turned, Leroy saw that he was wearing a simple black tee shirt with a large chain. He had darker skin and a graying, tightly coiled hair. He had a tattoo visible even from the back; a large 8 that took up one side of his neck.

  “Better take my business elsewhere. Looks like you’re busy,” Leroy said, a smile stretching across his face.

  Dante turned, one rag in hand, empty glass in another. “Leroy Waters! I’ll be damned. How’d that last job for you go? The ah.. tattoo shop, yeah?”

  “Solid,” Leroy answered. “I’ve got you to thank for that. Saved me the trouble of finding the damn place.”

  “Anytime,” said Dante with a nod. “You here again for more of the same, then?”

  “That and a shot of your cheapest and nastiest.”

  Dante shook his head. He placed his wash rag onto his shoulder, put the newly cleaned cup down, and turned back to the bar to grab something else—a tall bottle with Cyrillic lettering—which was opened and poured into two shot glasses. They clink glasses, down the shot, and both reel in disgust at the taste of it.

  “Pretty rough, that stuff,” said Leroy, reeling at the bitter taste of it. “Put it on my tab?”

  “On the house for today. What can I do for you?”

  “South End Sables. Need to find them. Got anything for me?”

  Dante crossed his arms across his chest. “Small time gang, if you can even call em’ that. That shit they pulled with Elizabeth Hausser has them making some waves around the South End, though. Some of the guys have been looking for them since it happened, nothing yet. But word is they work with this guy out of Oldport every now and again. Goes by Crazy Rosco. You find him, he’ll probably know.”

  Leroy stood up, withdrawing his wallet once more. A wad of cash was taken out and placed firmly onto the counter. “Some of the guys? The 8th Street Gang need something from the Sables?”

  Dante took it and placed it into his pocket. “Not my gig, but if you ask me? Big Pony probably wants to deliver them a message, you know, rough them up. Straight them out. Hausser’s always been off limits, and they’re the first in years to be stupid enough to make a move on her. Guess that’s old news now. I’ll have to let him know you’re looking into it. Fingers crossed he takes the hint, pulls whatever attack dogs he’s sent out off the Sables.

  “Fingers crossed,” said Leroy.

  He tipped his checkered flat cap to Dante and made for the door.

  LEROY WATERS

  DANTE

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