d**k Richards: Private Eye

Chapter 1-3

He’s gangly, awkward, and stops by about once each week to give me dubiously useful tips. Once it was a raiding party of hobgoblins who turned out to be high on parsley, so focused on headbutting each other that the only way they could do real damage was if anyone got close enough to be knocked out by their stench. Most of them were passed out for good by the time David and I got there, lying in contorted poses like little hardcore lotus eaters. David and I just tossed them all in the Dumpster by the Italian restaurant, closed the lid with a solid clang, and let nature take its course.

If I got rid of my office I could easily avoid him, but I’m not that much of a d**k. Plus, I have too much money tied up in the place and as the world gets larger and more interconnected, people’s individual worlds get smaller. I’m not so self-absorbed that I think the purpose of the Internet is to show me everything I want to know, while spam filters keep the real world handily at bay. A physical location helps ground me. It’s also nice to have a place to escape from advertising. I resent psychological manipulation of all kinds and that’s all that is. And strangely, once my enemies learn I have an office, they focus any retribution there, rather than searching out my apartment or hunting me down in the streets. Having a physical office and keeping regular hours is unusual enough that they assume I must have something extremely valuable hidden away.

It’s not a bad assumption because I do: the most expensive traps I can afford.

Raven’s back at the office when I arrive. Every day at four P.M. she waters the plastic plants with a hipster’s dedication to irony. She’s in professional mode as usual, sporting an attractive suit whose jacket follows her waist and flares out slightly at the hips. More retro. She says that the baggy, peasant style of clothing is back in style but that if she wants to look like a sack of potatoes she’ll just wear a sack of potatoes. It’s just as stylish and she’ll have lunch too.

At her insistence, I once bought what she called a “dashing, single-breasted coat with matching elbow patches and trousers, conceived in earth tones and completed with power tie.” I honestly couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic.

My other suits are pretty much the same style, all some shade of dark brown. It helps with stains and I actually like the look. Modern business attire has literally been inspired by speed skating. “Your business moves at the speed of thought,” one ad proclaims. “Shouldn’t you?” Personally, I think a sane person has better things to do than take an early monorail to the next city to ensure that electronic paperwork’s been filed properly, but it won’t be long before the FDA approves the first subcutaneous caffeine injection system. The black market version, hacked to use amphetamines, is already a best-seller among aspiring VPs with severe emotional issues.

“How’d it go?” Raven asks. She pauses to check her work and, satisfied, sets her spritzer on her desk.

“A little disappointing,” I say. As always, I find her presence to be invigorating and a little uncomfortable.

“No demons appeared? No holes in the fabric of reality itself?”

“You know that only happened once,” I reply. “You were there.” I solved that particular problem by using the carcass of the demon to plug the hole it crawled out of. It’s amazing how many things go down when exposed to fully automatic fire.

“You’re not still sensitive about that, are you?” Raven teases.

I ignore that. “Baron Rutgert’s still analyzing. He should be done in a few days.”

Thankfully, she takes the hint. While it was technically my fault the demon was able to break through, I fixed it before it had a chance to get out of hand.

“How long do you think it’ll take the Count to get impatient this time?” she says.

“A few days.”

Raven grins wickedly. “I’ll let you know when he leaves another angry, barely understandable voicemail.”

I feel like I’ve been punched in the gut. “You don’t answer those calls?”

“Isn’t that what caller ID is for?” she says as she returns to spritzing the plastic plants. “Besides, you never interrupt a soliloquy and voicemail’s the best way to preserve them for posterity.”

“You don’t answer the Count,” I repeat, slowly.

“I’m just about ready to release a compilation, actually. The Count’s Classic Rants, Volume 1.”

Belatedly, I realize she’s yanking my chain and I relax, decide to play along. “Really? How does it start out?”

Raven perches on her desk, legs crossed, and places her left hand on her chest. She tilts her head back, hair turning the Count’s shade of black, and flings her right arm out into a melodramatic pose. “While inquiry into iniquity,” she recites, “is inevitable in time’s due course, the thrust of your course is marked by quickness. I will no coarseness yet, but hurry your—” Raven mimics the Count excellently, but she’s speaking too deeply for her voice, “—ass up,” she finishes while coughing. “Sorry, I’m out of practice.”

I give her a golf clap for effort. “When’s David showing up?”

“About an hour, I think. I have a research appointment at Miskatonic. You planning on sticking around?”

“Yeah. Paperwork. You know how it is.”

#

Along with a tendency to exaggerate absolutely everything, one of David’s many quirks is that he always announces his presence by knocking on the doorframe to my office. I’ve only drawn down on him once, and hadn’t even been close to shooting, but ever since then he’s made sure to be as conspicuous as possible. It’s a thin, weak knock, and next comes, “May I be granted leave to enter your domicile?” in a reedy voice. I doubt he knows “domicile” means “living quarters.”

“Come in, David,” I say. I get up from my desk/chair and it goes to standby, beeping once as the shaped fiber optic cables dim. The light show has nothing to do with how it works, but I like the effect anyway.

In addition to his omnipresent hat, David’s wearing dark blue jeans and a T-shirt from some obscure band I’ve never heard of. Apparently, their name’s Whimsical Death and their logo, front and center, is a skull in profile wearing a winged helmet. A laurel wreath above two crossed candy canes form the background. The broken straps of his backpack are knotted together, so close to his neck it looks like they’re trying to strangle him.

He glances around, then darts inside. His favorite place in the room is next to my tool bin; one of the strongest protective sigils is etched into the wall behind it, underneath the paint. David always stands there if he has a choice.

“What did you find this time?” I say.

He puffs himself up, easing the backpack straps away from his throat, and proclaims, “I have uncovered a Brotherhood jewel, hidden deep in the Under and most fair.”

That actually surprises me. The Brotherhood, or Brotherhood of the Unspoken Secrets, is always a wildcard. No one knows much about them. A magical fraternity sworn to silence, most people know them as street mimes, but they’re rumored to predate history, and some whisper they predate human civilization itself. Even a drunk dwarven war party would quiet down and cross the street upon spotting a Brotherhood patrol.

I’m tempted to squelch this in its tracks. There’s no reason for David to be poking into this kind of thing. He’ll just get hurt. On the other hand, my job involves poking around into exactly this kind of thing, and you never know when extra information will come in useful. Either way, he’s probably just exaggerating and it won’t hurt to humor him.

I press him for more details, but he’s preening with pride and wants to surprise me. Fair enough.

“Tell you what,” I say. “I have another place to investigate first. Why don’t you come along and then I’ll look at this jewel.” I can at least keep him out of trouble for a few hours.

His eyes light up. “With certainty. The night aids stealth.”

#

I have no idea why David talks the way he does. I assume he knows regular English, so maybe it comes with the hats. Raven thinks he’s trying to impress me but she jokes around way too much for me to take that seriously. Besides, if he wants to be an esoteric detective, why doesn’t he just say so?

According to my notes, the Baron Marcus found the gun at the old Thriftwood Shopping Court, in the Dumpster just behind Antique Motor Sandwiches. I know the place. All three stories are decked out in chrome, and pictures of hot rods line the walls. There’d been a bit of a PR disaster a few years ago when they started cutting up classic cars for booths, but since the general public has the attention span of a hyperactive three-year-old everything has already been forgotten.

David and I are unable to avoid the greeter, an attractive young woman in mechanic’s overalls. David stares just a bit too long.

“Thanks for coming to Antique Motor Sandwiches. Your grease monkey will show you to your table shortly. Your name, please?”

Instead of answering, I cast a simple spell which makes David and I much less noticeable. Power breezes lightly through me and the greeter blinks before deciding she must be seeing things. The spell doesn’t make us invisible, just so low on everyone’s list of priorities that we might as well be. Tapping David on the shoulder, I indicate he should follow me.

Weaving our way through the beginning of the dinner rush, we head for the kitchen. The sounds of conversation cover us in the fluffy blanket of everyone else’s self-absorption. Everyone has layers of thoughts and concerns that usually dominate their mind. Ask them, and they’ll call it their personality, but among other things it prevents them from seeing anything they’re not expecting to see. The spell encourages them to stay that way, then whispers in the back of their minds that we’re so far from their day-to-day concerns that we’re not worth paying attention to.

Halfway through the kitchen, David speaks. “What are we looking for?”

I shush him immediately. Just because we’re less noticeable doesn’t mean no one will notice us. True, no one would ever expect a teen to dress like David, let alone go out in public looking like that, but it’s not worth taking chances. We make it to the back exit without incident and step into another world.

Opposed to Thriftwood’s faded consumerism, the professional polish of the utility corridor is jarring. It’s one thing for what’s basically a glorified maintenance hallway to be well-kept, and another for the metal beams supporting the fifteen-foot ceiling to be noticeably gleaming. I’d heard that the dwarves were making forays into the invisible professions, mostly through front companies, but I wasn’t expecting this. When I think about it, though, it’s a perfect match. They have an aptitude for technology, don’t mind getting dirty whether it’s coal dust from mining or the efflux from a backed up sewer, and they’re almost neurotically hard-working.

The main road is a wide two-lane, paved with a shiny gray metal-ceramic blend. Each lane is marked by a series of reflectors, with long stripes of fluorescent lighting in the ceiling casting soft shadows. Garbage stoops and truck loading/unloading bays dot the corridor like apartments and, remarkably, there’s no trace of gang graffiti. Knowing dwarves, they probably spent a week or so coating every surface with spray-paint resistant coating.

I wonder briefly what the Count’s men were doing back here, then judge the question irrelevant. Everyone has their reasons, and few are beautiful under close scrutiny. There’s sporadic activity in the corridor, but we’re in no danger of being noticed.

“We’re going in the Dumpster,” I tell David.

It’s seated in a special groove, and like all city Dumpsters since time immemorial is a magnificent shade of green with a black plastic top. A readout on the side estimates it at 20% of capacity, and I’m not looking forward to jumping inside. Restaurant garbage is nasty garbage. Thank God for dry cleaners.

David lifts the top and a smell that’s best described as reluctant vomit assaults our noses like a mugger bored with parole.

“Let’s make this quick,” I say. “I hope you’ve got a change of clothes in that bag.”

He smiles uncertainly, then nods. I make a stirrup with my hands to hoist him up and in, then grab the lip myself and clamber over.

I land on something that squelches and slips under my feet. It takes me a moment to right myself, and as I do David says, “I believe I’ve uncovered the object of inquiry.”

“Satan’s biscuits!” the object in question says. “Either the trash came twice or I have company.”

The head of a gnome, poking through the upper layer of trash, is staring at David, who’s trying to carefully edge away. I nearly burst out laughing.

Gnomes are elemental spirits that, quite honestly, look and act as if the detritus from some forgotten corner of creation cobbled itself together with nothing but determination and resentment. Less than one foot tall, this one emerges completely from the trash and fixes us both with a truculent stare. With limbs carved from battery casings and woven together with small wires, it’s obviously an electronics gnome.

“Well?” the gnome insists. “I asked you a question.” It folds its arms over its chest and the small plastic fan embedded in its head whirs impatiently.

I again stifle the urge to laugh at David’s bemusement. Gnomes are as random as lava lamps and laughter has been known to set them off. They don’t negotiate, can’t be reasoned with, and rarely make sense. They also never lie, so on the rare occasions when you can get something out of them, it’s as good as gold.

“Ask it about a gun,” I whisper to David. “We’re looking for one that was dumped here a few days ago.”

The gnome turns to face me, the fan in its head picking up speed, then turns back to David. “Yes,” it says. “Ask me about your toilet paper options.”

The look on David’s face screams, What do I do now? but I stay quiet. The only way to learn to deal with gnomes is to deal with gnomes, as frustrating as that always is.

“Have you resided here a fortnight past?” David asks it.

The gnome stamps its foot. Something crinkles underneath. “Well excuse me, red-eye. I must have forgotten my breathing papers.” It spins around, arms raised in astonishment and disgust.

David just stares at it, completely nonplussed.

Me, I’m thinking. Gnomes are always looking for parts to build more gnomes, but this one shouldn’t be here. I’d expect it to be nosing around the back of an electronics store. Still, gnomes have an instinct for these things and when they’re looking for something in particular, they’re as obstinate as politicians being asked to vote against major campaign contributors. For all I know, this gnome caught a whiff of something he likes, and will now stay here for the next few decades looking for it.

It’s too much to hope for that the gnome was dumped here by the same person who dumped the gun. Judging from the readout and the level of the trash, the garbage trucks have been by since then. On the other hand, the gnome’s first comment might mean it’s been here for a while.

“If it’s in here, it’s looking for something,” I tell David. “If we help it out, it might tell us what it knows.”

“Like what?”

“A rhinoceros fart, obviously,” the gnome chimes in.

“Something electronic,” I say.

While David pokes around the garbage, avoiding the especially damp spots, I quietly cast a charm which attunes my eyes to magical auras. David glows slightly, as does the gnome, but nothing else. I scan the walls, the lid, and the top layer of garbage. Nothing but ordinary Dumpster.

“Why not just conjure the necessary parts?” David asks.

“It doesn’t work like that.” I start poking around too. The gnome starts gnawing its way through a trash bag, obviously enjoying itself. “Besides, how would you do it?”

“Like this,” he says proudly. He mutters some words filled with Ls and Rs. There’s a slight breeze and the smell of loam flirts briefly with my nose, making the stench of garbage that much stronger when it fades.

Great. Of all things, where did the kid learn elf magic?

David grins and holds up an Antique Motor Sandwich Card. The gnome, attracted by the flash of magic, stops chewing plastic and stomps over. David hands it the card. The gnome licks the magnetic strip on the back, then nods in approval.

“150 points left. Eat classy, you sons-of-bitches.”

“Was that elf magic?” I ask David. I hope I’m wrong, but his smirk tells me all I need to know. I hate to jet now, after giving the gnome what it wants but before we have a chance to get something in return, but first things first. I need to make sure David will be all right. He looks a little confused when I order him out, but he complies. As we leave, the gnome yells, “God damn pasty-faced hippies!” and starts banging ineffectually on the sides of the Dumpster.