One Foot in the Fade, page 7
Arrogance dripped from every word that passed his tobacco-stained lips.
“Thanks for the smoke, Niles. I’ll see myself out.”
I got up but, as always, Thurston wanted the last word.
“Are you ready to work for me yet? It wouldn’t take much. I’ll give you a new suit and one of our signature charcoal ties. You’ll keep doing what you’re doing, except you bring the information you find back to me. Say yes, and I’ll take you to see your friend right now.”
And he wondered why I hated him.
“How about I shoot the both of us instead? Then the city can find its future without the two of us interfering.”
He stubbed out the cigar.
“You were a lot more fun when you’d drink with me.”
“Sorry, but I’m working now. See you later, Niles.”
“Take the side exit. Less light. Wouldn’t want anybody to spot you and ruin both of our reputations. And give the clothesline a try.”
Though I hated doing a single thing that Thurston asked of me, I took the clothesline and the side exit out into the darkness.
Did he actually think I’d ever work for him? Impossible. I’d given up too much to hand over this city now.
Eliah Hendricks had seen Sunder as a poison; a toxic, fire-fueled monstrosity that would suck the life from Archetellos until nothing was left. In our world without magic, he believed that the temptations of this place would stop us from fighting for a better tomorrow. He bet the lives of everyone here on his hunch.
But I’d bet against him. I’d saved this city, so now it was mine to protect.
I guess I am a fucking Ponoto.
Fine.
Let’s go take a look at this body.
11
“Yes! Of course! Let’s go!”
Portemus stepped away from the splayed Dwarf he’d been working on, grabbed a black cloak from the wall, and made for the exit.
“Portemus, wait! We need a plan!”
He turned, and his shiny shoes squeaked on the tiles.
“A plan?”
“So we don’t get caught. The body is somewhere inside the police station. The Brothers can’t know we’ve been in there, and if the city or the cops find out then they might stop sending you bodies altogether.”
His expression was shocked, then hurt. Nobody had adjusted to life after the Coda as enthusiastically as Portemus. Before the factories were full or the carts were loaded, our local Necromancer was caring for our recently deceased. If Portemus couldn’t do his work, I wasn’t sure what would happen to him, but it probably wouldn’t be pretty.
“Yes,” he said solemnly, “we must be clandestine.”
“Do you know anything about the room they’re keeping him in?”
“I have been there before, to pick up specimens sometimes, when the police are too busy to deliver them. It is a room beneath the station. Not as nice as mine, not as chilled, not as kind to the bodies, but it is fine for a night or two.”
“How do you get in?”
“There is a stairwell inside the station, on the left. Down two levels.”
“Damn.” I was familiar with some areas of the station but nothing below ground level.
“It is not very busy, this room, and it is kept locked when it is not being used.”
“So, we need to get the keys.”
“Or,” said a voice from the shadows, “you need someone inside.”
Mora used a slab to pull herself up to standing. The flesh of one of her legs was all the way gone, and her femur was visible beneath the hem of her skirt.
“Eyes up here, Mr Phillips. It ain’t nice to stare at a girl’s skeleton.”
She winked, but since she only had one eyelid, it was a common occurrence.
“Sorry, Mora. Those Succubae are happy to meet you, by the way. If you can get down to the surgery.”
“Let’s worry about your little infiltration adventure first.” She turned to Portemus. “That room can probably be unlocked from the inside, right?”
Portemus made a face as he tried to remember.
“I’m not sure.”
“What about you, Phillips? You’re friends with the cops, ain’t you?”
It sounded like an accusation, though I don’t think she meant it that way.
“Occasional reluctant collaborator. I’ve never been down to the morgue, though.”
“If I’m going to go in there, I want to know that I can get out. Any cops you trust that can give us the lowdown?”
I shook my head. Even though I’d fought alongside them against the uprising a year ago, the cops tolerated me at best. Simms couldn’t be counted on, she’d made that clear, and Richie… Well, apparently Richie was no longer a cop. If that was true, he might be the one person with inside knowledge of the police department who wouldn’t be worried about losing his job.
“I might have someone who can help.”
The phone rang and rang, and I wondered whether Richie might have left town. I was just about to hang up when he finally answered.
“Hello?”
“Richie, it’s Fetch. What happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not a cop anymore.”
“It’s been over a month.”
“Well, I don’t keep tabs on the hiring and firing process of the Sunder PD. You retire or what?”
He grumbled into the receiver for a bit, then said, “Meet me at the Ditch and I’ll tell you all about it.” He waited for me to agree to the plan. When I didn’t, he offered up another idea. “Or maybe come over here. That place is too crowded these days.”
“Works for me.”
He gave me his home address and I stopped by the corner store to pick up some of his favorite Orcish cider. When I came out, there was a man standing in the middle of the road.
It was the guy I’d tripped over in Five Shadows Square. He was wearing nothing but a filthy pair of trousers, his five red scabs, and a wondrous expression, as if he’d just witnessed something incredible. There was nothing incredible anywhere around us, just the usual pedestrians and an old, refurbished automobile that was driving up on the curb to avoid the smiling wanderer, the driver yelling obscenities from the window.
I watched him as he watched the world go by, waiting for him to do something. Anything. But he just stared at the people as they passed like they were part of a parade put on in his honor. Eventually, his eyes fell on me and his smile widened.
It made me uncomfortable and then it made me angry, so I stepped out into the road to confront him.
“Do I know you?” I asked.
The question only increased his amusement. I thought for a moment that he didn’t understand the language, and might just be reacting to the strangeness of sounds, but eventually he shrugged and said, “Why ask a question that only you know the answer to?”
Oh shit. A two-bit street-corner soothsayer.
“What’s your problem?” I asked him. “Is that some kind of injury?” I pointed to the red spots on his forehead and temple.
“Quite the opposite,” he said, and looked at me like that meant something.
“Get off the road,” I snarled.
“All right.”
He walked past me, still grinning maniacally, and weaved through the river of pedestrians like a fish through water, not letting any of them get in his way. He was light on his feet, but something had come loose in his head.
I kept going west, struggling against a city that was focused on going north and south, bouncing off pedestrians or waiting impatiently for gaps between the cars.
Why did it feel like everybody else was going the wrong way?
The house was small for such a big fellow; one of those places that used to be bigger until they ran a wall through the middle of it and split it in two to double the rent. When Richie opened the door, he filled the frame and then some.
I held out the paper bag of booze. He peered in, saw that it was the kind that I couldn’t stomach, gave an understanding nod and said, “Come on in.”
I’d never been to Richie’s home before. He’d only been to mine because it was also my place of business. It was a long half-house with a living room at the front, a kitchen visible through the door behind it, and presumably a bedroom at the back. Whenever Richie stopped moving, and the floorboards stopped creaking beneath his weight, you could hear the neighbor’s radio through the wall.
He sat on the couch, I sat on an armchair, and he opened one of the bottles.
“You want a glass?” he asked.
“No. That’s all for you.”
He sat back and took a satisfied slurp.
The couch was too small for him. The house was too small for him. Seeing him out of his police uniform, wearing worn woolen pants and a loose threadbare sweater, the whole city seemed too small for him. The table was covered with open tin cans, the dregs of ready-made meals stuck to the bottom. I was thankful that having Georgio beneath my building meant that it had been over a year since I’d been reduced to eating tinned dinners.
Richie took another healthy sip, and I felt a sliver of judgment slink into my head. What a joke; I was the last person who should be allowed to judge someone for drinking too much during the day. Besides, he was a Half-Ogre whose constitution could handle a lot more than mine, even with all my practice.
My eye was drawn to a coat rack in the corner that held his police-issue trench and a couple of winter coats beside a familiar blue jacket. It matched the one I was wearing, except it was twice the size and without the fur lining. It was the Shepherd’s uniform he’d been wearing when we’d first met: two optimistic boys tasked with protecting the magical creatures of our world. Now we were two tired men with gray in their whiskers who still didn’t know how to talk to each other.
“Nice place,” I said, to fill the silence. Richie looked around as if he was also on his first visit.
“No it’s not. A nice place has warmth and a view and someone else to share it with. This is the place you end up in when you spend your life chasing things that can’t be caught.”
I would have argued with him if he wasn’t so right. It wasn’t the kind of place you plan for, it was the kind of place you find yourself in when you don’t make plans, or the plans you make go south and you never get around to making new ones. It was where most of us would end up. Men especially, but by no means exclusively. These musty little pockets are tucked into every corner of the world: flats, townhouses and trailers where nobody ever goes except for the quiet, solitary souls who call them home. Uncles, widows and widowers, and the single parents who got the short end of the stick. The ones who never found themselves after school, and the romantics who risked it all on that first great love and never mustered up the energy to try again.
Richie attempted to resurrect the stub of a cigar and I sat back, soaking up an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy. Richie had pulled me back from the brink countless times. The first conversation we ever had happened because he chose to reach out to me, a near stranger, and offer some guidance when he saw that I was struggling. Now, he was the one who was struggling, and I felt pathetically inept in my ability to lend a hand. Who was I to offer advice? Why would compliments or words of kindness mean anything from a screw-up like me? Anything I said to make him feel better would likely make things worse, if history was anything to go by, so I just asked, “What’s with the retirement? Was pushing papers too much exercise for you?”
It was one of my usual jabs and it fell limp and awkward out of my mouth. Richie gave up on the crumbling cigar and went back to the cider.
“I couldn’t do it anymore, Fetch. It’s gone rotten. Maybe it always was.”
“The police force? You know I’m not the biggest fan of the pig pen, but you’re a good cop.”
“I’m not sure there’s any such thing. There are good people, but once you put on the uniform, it does all kinds of crazy things to you. Any kind of uniform, really. I’ve worn enough to know. So have you. All these patches, jackets and tattoos, they’re just excuses. Ways to blame the things we’ve done on someone else.”
He was talking the way I used to, a year or so ago, before I forced myself to fight for the future that I wanted. I should have had something to say that would help lift him up, but instead, I could feel him dragging me down towards a familiar place; a comfortable, lazy darkness that was waiting with open arms.
The bottle looked more appealing by the minute.
“Richie, this isn’t like you.” My words sounded unconvincing, even to me. Had I ever spent time trying to find out who Richie really was? “What changed?”
He dropped the first empty bottle on the coffee table.
“We shouldn’t have done it, Fetch.”
“Done what?”
“Stopped him. Hendricks.”
“He was going to destroy the city.”
“I know, but… there must have been another way. We could have put an end to his stupid plan without having to go to war with our own people. We were so full of adrenaline and the excitement of some big bad guy to fight that we didn’t see what was happening.”
I didn’t need him to tell me that. I was well aware that I’d led the police into a battle to put down the last great fight for old-world creatures that this city might ever see.
“That was Niles’s first move on this city,” Richie continued, “and we helped him make it. Since then, half the job of the police has been enforcing his new rules about banned magical practices. All this talk about keeping people safe and bringing order to the city: it’s a pile of bullshit, but it’s too late to go back.”
“Maybe it’s not.” I leaned forward and tried to sound convincing. “Everyone’s going along with it because they think there’s no other way. As long as they believe that the magic is gone for good, they’ll accept that Thurston’s future is the only option. But I’m not giving up. If you want to keep fighting, I could use your help.”
He shook his two-ton head.
“That’s not what I mean, Fetch. Whatever pipedream crusade you’re on, you keep at it, but I can’t muster up that kind of optimism anymore. There’s no big secret waiting to be unlocked. No relic we can find that will solve our problems. That’s not how life operates. It takes work. Constant work from a community of people who care about doing the right thing. We lost that. Now we just have a city full of people who want to get paid, and are willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. It’s over.”
“Oh, fuck off, Richie.” He raised his eyebrows in surprise. It was the liveliest he’d looked since I’d walked in the door. “Last night, an Angel landed on Main Street, splattered on the sidewalk from a greater height than could be reached by climbing any of the buildings nearby. That doesn’t fit into Thurston’s story. That’s our story, if we can put all the pieces together.”
“Yeah, I read the paper.”
“Screw the paper. You know the Star has become another Niles bullshit machine. Benjamin’s body is some kind of secret, and they don’t want it getting out. Right now, it’s inside the police station. Tomorrow, it’ll be taken out and cremated. That’s why I need to get to it tonight.”
Richie stared me down.
“Why are you like this?”
“Like what?”
“So worked up. So angry.”
“I’m not angry. I’m just trying to do the right thing.”
“For who?”
“What?”
“For who, Fetch? Who are you doing it for?”
“Everyone!”
“Bullshit!” He slammed his hand down on the table, rattling the beer bottles and empty bean tins. “You’re doing this for you, just like you always have been! You killed Hendricks, and because you can’t handle the fact that you might have made another big mistake, you’re going to run around town kicking everyone in the teeth until the world lines up the way you want it to. It’s not for Sunder or for the world or whoever you say it’s for, it’s for you.”
The neighbor’s radio began an upbeat number that did nothing to lighten the mood.
“Richie,” I began carefully, “you know that Niles is up to something big, something that spreads out across the whole continent. We have to do something.”
“You’re not Niles.”
“I know that.”
“No, you don’t!” He took a big gulp of cider to drown his frustration. “You can’t fight the fight like he does. He’s a faceless fucker in a house on a hill, moving a million little pieces all around us. Of course he can make this city dance to his beat. Of course he has people thinking and talking the way he wants them to, when he’s the one putting pay in their pockets. You can’t do things the same way, so stop trying to.”
“I’m not.”
“You bloody are! You want everyone to think the way you think and want what you want, but how can that happen when you don’t actually talk to anyone? When you don’t listen? How can you change this city if you won’t be part of it?”
“I am this city!” I shouted, finally snapping. “I spend every waking second working to protect the people who won’t protect themselves. I’m the only one who gives a shit.”
“Then why didn’t you call?”
His question caught me off guard.
“What?”
“It’s been a month since I left the force, Fetch. A month.”
“I only just found out.”
“And whose fault is that? I left a message with Georgio the day I quit, and I only hear from you now you want something.”
Fuck.
There was a note, on a page torn out from Georgio’s notepad, still sitting on the top of my desk. I was supposed to get around to it.
“Richie, I’m sorry. I thought you were just going to bust my balls about some cop bullshit.”
He bit his lip to hold back his frown.
“You’re my friend, Fetch. Doesn’t that count for something?”
I couldn’t look at him. Not with those big, watery eyes staring back. I grew up in Weatherly, of all places. We didn’t talk about friendship or feelings – not even with my adopted father, who went out on every limb he could for me. I didn’t know what to say in response, except for the truth.
