Fantasy Noir Part III

The one good thing I could say about tonight was that it wasn’t raining. No, instead there was a dark, cloudy sky overhead, the kind that foreshadowed the evil that could presumably hit the Earth at any time, but never actually brought itself to that moment. Nothing but the sound of our footsteps, the mumbling of the occasional drunk in the alleyway, the noodle cart owner closing up for the night, or the gaslamp flickering as another moth flew headlong into the light without thinking of the consequences.

Alyssa, the dame’s name was Alyssa. We walked down the street together, our footsteps eerily synchronized as we spoke to each other about slightly different things. Alyssa told me about the job she wanted done, and I think my eyes nearly jumped out of their sockets when I heard the specifics. She wanted me to tail the cop currently “suspended, pending further investigation” after the “alleged” shooting of a young Drow boy just outside the Metro.

“What do you want me to dig up on this guy?” I asked, “I mean, ain’t the police already investigating him?”

“It’s a mere trifle,” she told me, “an empty gesture to make the police look like they are doing something. But you and I both know that the city wants to sweep this under the rug, never to be seen or heard again. I want to know where he is going, who he associates with, if there was any motive at all behind the shooting of our dear, dear boy.”

I nodded, but on the inside I was trying to construct a proper motive. Who was this kid? What was his relationship to this dame? What did she want with me that she couldn’t get with one of her own people? I decided to ask her, “Alyssa, might I ask your relation to the kid who got capped by the Metro cops? Do you know what he was doing at the time? None of the news reports said anything about his name.”

Alyssa halted her stride slightly, breaking that synchronization of our footsteps as she kicked a pebble on the sidewalk. I wondered if she imagined it to be the face of that cop. Then she stopped walking altogether, and told me in a low voice, “His name was Ruzmal. Ruzmal Guhan.”

“Are you his mother?”

“That’s not your concern.” She snapped at me awfully quickly, which meant I had either stepped on her toes or struck a nerve. Considering that we were currently out of the light, both scenarios were possible, metaphorically and literally. “And I don’t know why he was shot. No one but that…ud’raan seems to know.”

I didn’t need a basic-Elvish dictionary to know she was talking about the cop.

“I need you to find out all you can about him, and if possible, why he shot Ruzmal. Trust me, you will be rewarded for your time and effort on this matter.”

She began to walk away, but I continued to walk with her. “Trust me, if the money’s good, I will give it all I’ve got.”

“Good to hear,” She said.

“But before I go, I need to know that you’ve got money to spare. I’ve been suckered one too many times to simply take words as collateral.”

“Collateral?”

“I need an advance.”

The drow woman stopped again, standing right next to a beggar on the street. He was currently wrapped in a dirty blanket and mumbling in his sleep, probably dreaming of a better life than the one the fates had apparently picked for him. Considering my current position, I wasn’t much better off.

It was a point Alyssa probably thought of as she looked at the beggar for a few seconds before turning back to me. “Collateral, you say? You mean bailing you out of that jail cell wasn’t enough?” I said nothing, but kept my focus on her eyes. A few moments later, she reached into her pocket and dropped a few bills on the ground. “See if you can snatch the money off the ground before this beggar does.”

I couldn’t do much more than raise a crooked eyebrow, though I don’t know if it was entirely visible at the time. “You’re serious?”

“If it were not for your…talents, there would be little difference between you two.” Alyssa kicked the beggar in the stomach to wake him up. “You will be contacted in two days and report back. I expect there will be some progress, or else you will have to find another line of work.”

“Is that a threat, lady?” She didn’t answer me as she turned the corner and disappeared. I reached for the bills on the ground, but the beggar had already woken up and grabbed them for himself. I pointed a finger at him like it was a threat from the Lord Almighty and demanded that he give me the money.

“I got it fair, you ain’t heard her say ’bout the rules?” He spoke in a garbled syntax, the language of someone whose brain had been fried either due to drugs, booze, or a particularly nasty incident involving magic. “You not fast ‘nough to grab, so I got more. Now buzz off, I’m gonna get some food tomorrow.”

I wanted to get food today, and I had little money with which to buy it.

“So? You got clothes, you probably got a bed. Ain’t lost all hope like see here. Go yourself get some food to you belly, no? Help a brother out.”

On one hand, I was tempted to grab the cash back, but I’m not sure that hurting beggars would look good when it became my time to stand before the fates. Also, even though I could barely understand his words, I did understand that he needed money for food as much as I did, if not more so.

In the end, after carefully weighing the pros and cons of the situation for about thirty seconds, I ripped the blanket off of the homeless man. I hoped that the fates weren’t watching to see what I did next as I grabbed the homeless man’s shirt collar while he complained about his blanket.

“I have been arrested for something I didn’t do,” I growled as I punched him in the face with my free hand. “I have had to take shit from a goddamn dark elf, assigned to a case I know very little about, and that money she dropped? That’s my fucking advance!” I punched him again and then dropped him on the ground. “If you want to earn that money so much, how about you stop sleeping on the sidewalk and do something useful with your goddamn free time?” I grabbed the bum’s arm, the one holding my money, and twisted until he cried out in pain and dropped the cash. “You want money? Get yourself a fucking job. Otherwise, be prepared to deal with the consequences of taking other people’s livelihood from them.”

It was not pretty what I did, and chances are the fates were gonna put that as a strike against me when Judgment Day came around. But for the moment, at least I had something to pay the landlord with. Now it was time to head home and get some sleep. I was going to have to do quite a bit of work tomorrow and earn my keep, but I had no clue how hard that work would soon become.