Fatal Mistakes
Pilot lights burn across the bay, extensions of the streetlight and picket fire constellations that smoulder across the city. Ships quiver in their dock, invisible leviathans defined by their phosphorescent running lights. The low sky glows with the reflected glory of the city, gouging out the stars and scorching the clouds with non-coloured light. Cranes reach up from the docks like dry thistles, desperately stretching for what natural light would pass through the tenements.
The tenements, the towers, the blocks; these concrete titans define the city, brooding in the rain like jealous lovers. The princely skyscrapers, in their art-deco finery, downtown lord it over the nouveau-riche apartments and office blocks. And then there are the Barrens, the crumbling warehouses and slums that form an elephant’s graveyard between the docks and the District, just glad to be standing. This is where my office lies.
Sirens wail through the wind and rain. Normally, I wouldn’t notice, but these ones are getting closer. A braying scream and a Doppler whoop- it can only be an ambulance and the police, not a good combination. Warily, I approach the window, opening the blinds as much as I dare. It doesn’t pay to be nosy in this town, trust me; I’m a private eye and barely keep myself in rent and booze.
On the pavement opposite lies a man, red ink runs thin into the gutter from a wound in his chest. His eyes are open, but he has the stillness of the dead. Another soul dies alone and un-mourned in the city. It’s pity ‘cause he was good guy.
James Lockery, hence forth referred to as the victim, was indeed a good man, and therein lies the problem; he was- operative word, was- a lawyer and damned good at it, too. But instead of charging fat fees to mobsters and crooked cops, the Victim chose to work for next to nothing prosecuting the said mobsters and scum. He’d just sent down half a dozen crooked cops and union men for racketeering only last week and had now set his sights on Angelo Martini. This was his fatal mistake.
There are three clues to how the Victim’s career had gone wrong. One, he owned his own practice. Ordinarily, an achievement, but this meant that no one else wanted a piece of what he was selling. Secondly, the said practice was in the Barrens, where the only thing cheaper than floor space is human life. I should know; that’s why I’m here. And finally, and this is where his career and mine diverge, he pissed off someone enough that not only did they kill him, but also, they called the police to pick up the body.
I can’t see that much from the window, but I know how it was done. A .45 slug at close range, so close that shirt and tie are scorched by cordite, in the chest, shattering bone and rupturing organs. Nobody hears or sees anything in the Barrens, but between the shouting, screaming and alley cats, it’s a regular wall of noise out there. I know I haven’t heard anything but I’ve been listening to Nina Simone since sunset. Even if- and that’s a big if- he’s still alive, he’ll have bled out by the time I reach the lobby of my building. He’ll still be dead, and I’ll have to explain why I’m standing over a corpse.
Things would only get worse when they find the- perfectly legal- .45 revolver I keep filed between “rum” and “refill pad” in my desk drawer. The kind of cops speeding to this scene will be of one of two sorts: the kind that gets results and the kind that get manila envelopes full of cash. Both of who would be more interested in fitting up an ex-cop and a strikebreaker than chasing up a made man and ballistic evidence. Besides, even if the Police did catch the guy who did the hit, who’d have the balls to prosecute him? James Lockery, attorney-at-law? Even with a cast-iron case, blood on hand and smoking gun, no one smart enough to pass the bar would convict. Unless their bribe was short this month or they had a death wish.
So I’m sorry, buddy, in this city, you die alone.
This was meant to be the first part of a serial, but the plan has been changed.
It's much more Noir than the other stories and is steeped in apathy.
