The Blood Market Chapter 8

The man before me wore clothing that would have embarrased a rag picker, roof canvas scavenged and patched repeatedly and stained dun brown by repeated wear and infrequent cleaning. He had a face that resembled an over ripe apple beaten with a billy club, and wore a grubby knitted watch cap that did nothing to improvehis unfortunate appearance. I guessed his age to be late forties from the lines and liver spots on his face, the patches of grey in his scruffy beard, the unflattering bald spot on the top of his skull and a repeatedly broken and badly healed nose.

"I'd say that you're our ghosts," I commented, "But no ghost smells as bad as you do; not even one who's kept his corpse around for company."

The man glared at me, "You ain't a copper," He said.

"I'm a detective, so you've run out your luck either way," I answered. As I spoke, I noticed his eyes darting about.

"I ain't taking the fall for this." He said as he spotted the door and bolted up and out from his hiding place. I drew my sabre and cut at the man with my right hand, while dragging Victoria back behind me with my left arm. Manhandling Victoria threw off my aim and the man ducked under the cut and ran at the door. My sabre caught on the frame of the hidden door and lodged there. I attempted to wrench the blade loose, but the metal had bit right to the timber frame and had stuck.

"Harbinger!" I called as I continued to work my blade loose, "We've got a suspect on the run!"

"Hello," Harbinger said, stepping into the doorway to bar the man's escape. Harbinger handed the wooden bowl to somebody I couldn't see and raised up his hands, closing them into fists and entering a boxing stance, "I think you need to stop and explain yourself.

I don't want to lay you out, but from the mood of the people who live here, and of course from your impressive odor, I deduce that you are not an invited guest nor a usual resident to this residence."

"You ain't hard enough to stop me." The man said, snarling with a mouth filled with rotting teeth.

"Oh no, I'm very soft," Harbinger said, "Like water, you know, that stuff that falls from the sky during monsoon season and strips paint of buildings and bark off trees. I'm a big old softy, just like water. Want to see?"

"You ain't going to stop me."

"I feel I must, if only to prevent further damage to the English language." Harbinger smiled. The man sneered, then lowered a shoulder and charged like a buffalo. Harbinger nodded to himself and hooked an uppercut that caught the man in the nose and snapped his head back up.

Harbinger followed up with several jabs which forced the man back on his heels, "Incidentally, I may have been lying about being soft. I do that occasionally," he said, throwing a check hook as the man tried to crowd forward again, stepping off line and connecting with the hook as the man stumbled past. The blow knocked the man down to his knees in the door way.

"You see?" Harbinger continued, "I lied there when I said I had lied about being soft. Now let's see here." Harbinger outed and grasped the man by the right arm and twisted the arm behind the man's back applying a chicken wing style wrist lock and driving the man's face into the floor.

"There we go, that's better. So, tell me your name and tell me a story." Harbinger said, "What are you doing in this house? You see I was called about a poltergeist, but poltergeists are harder to deal with as they have no body to threaten. You do have a body, filled with joints that are only supposed to bend a certain way. And if that doesn't work, well I can turn you over to my assistant, or I guess my partner, over there. You see, I'm just a boxing and a wrestler when it comes down to it. She's an ex-soldier. Well, Dahlia why don't you tell the man how you fight."

I shook my head, "I don't fight. I kill."

"And there you go. So we're clearly playing good cop, bad cop. That much is obvious. But we aren't cops, and so if we accidentally go too far, we don't have to write up a report, we just throw your body into a burlap sack and toss it into a creek in the Ring. Now, what was your name?"

"I'm called Buster Brand. I'm nobody. You don't want to talk to me. I'm nobody, ain't nothing interesting about me."

I shook my head again, "We'll decide if you're interesting or not. Why were you hiding in the walls?"

"He was in the walls? That's extraordinary!" Harbinger said.

"This house is one of the houses built after the Banner war, with the secret rooms and escape hatches- when they were afraid Banner boys would loot out cities." I said,  But let's focus."

"Yes, indeed. Mr. Brand, why were you in the walls?"

"I was hiding. Weren't hurting nobody."

"You were scaring the people who actually own this house. Who were you hiding from? And more importantly I imagine why?"

"And how did you get in?" I added.

"Got in through the secret entrance. You rich folk got holes in your walls that us poor folk climb through. You think you're so smart but you ain't."

"You said you didn't want to take the fall for something." I said, "To what were you referring?"

"Ain't going to tell you, am I?"

Harbinger clucked his tongue, "You will eventually. Everyone does, eventually."

"Look, you guys don't scare me as much as the Hummingbird scares me."

"You're afraid of a a little bird?" Harbinger said, raising an eyebrow.

"Ain't afraid of no little bird," Buster Brand said, "I'm scared of The Hummingbird, my boss. And you should be too. He's the territory head of the Hijos de la Guerra. Named after some Mexican War God, whose name i can't say without choking on my tongue."

"Huitzilopochtli," Harbinger said.

"Gesundheit," I said.

"That's the name," Brand said, pulling out a  Gemsbok cigarette from an inside pocket along with a box of stick matches. He lit a match and put it to the cigarette, "He's going to get you. Old Perun and his boys think they're going to take over, on the move on the hunt; but you can't touch the Hummingbird. But The Hummingird is just playing with that old Slave god wannabe."

"Slavic, not slave," I corrected.

"Either way, Perun and his baby boys are in trouble. He's taking over new territory, the Blood Markets, the organ trade, the Asian smuggling business. He thinks he's hot stuff.  He'll eat you for breakfast. He ain't afraid of nobody, but he should be afraid of the Hummingbird."

"So what has you hiding in people's walls?" I asked.

"Why would I tell you?" He asked.

"Honesty is the best policy in all things," Harbinger said, "Honest men don't meet Dahlia's sabre in the wrong way you know. Honest men don't get beaten"

I unsheathed my sword and cut as I drew the sword. I still wasn't perfectly clear headed, but I intended to make a point here. I drew the cut in front of the man's face and struck his Gemsbok cigarette, knocking the filthy thing to the floor. I let the momentum of the cut carry the blade down to my side and with a quick flourish re-sheathed it.
"Look take it easy. I was just babysitting, you know?" He said, staring down at his shattered cigarette. "Hummingbird has me watching some kid, asked me himself- so I know it's big. I don't ask why, that ain't healthy. So I'm playing nurse nanny, and I see this guy Hus, he's from the Sons of Perun, but he's a stand up guy and I ain't going to break his balls, less I have to. That being said, Hus owes me, either money or 108s. So I hit him up and ask for my money or my smokes. And he says he can't talk to me. 'Hijos and the Sons are at war, don't you know?' he says. First I had heard of it, and I tell him it don't matter, he still owes me some cigs. He tells me there's a dispute over control of the human smuggling market from Asia and some side racket being run off the Blood Markets. He tells me he can't even be seen with me unless he's seen giving me a thrashing. I take issue, he takes issue and we have at it, you know how it goes. Next thing I know, the kid's made a break for it. I break off with Hus and chase the kid, Hus laughing at me the whole way, but I can't catch the brat. Little legs and fits in little holes in walls and fences, and then I realize I could catch a bullet for this, or worse. The Hummingbird is good at worse. So I run and I hide here, these old buildings are full of hidey holes. I don't even know why the Hummingbird wanted the kid, but that won't stop me from catching heat for losing the brat."

"What's the connection between the human smuggling and the blood markets?"

"You ain't so smart are you?" Buster Brand said, "Poor people from them Asian countries don't have money to pay for a big long boat trip. So they sell bits of themselves, normally bits they can afford to lose, and that pays for passage."

Victoria's mother stepped forward, "Then it was you? The one moving my books? Not a ghost?"

"I don't move no books. Do I look like a book worm? Didn't go near no library, not in the walls, not in no room."

"Then who moved the books?" She asked.

"Perhaps a guest?" I suggested.

"Perhaps a ghost?" She answered.

"I'll do the exorcism and banishment, just in case." Harbinger said.

"You guys gonna take me in or let me go?" Brand asked.

"No, you told us quite a bit that was useful. And I don't like to punish good behavior, " Harbinger looked at him, "Run along, but you remember that we could have taken you in, had we chosen too. Remember our restraint. Now, where were you when all this happened? Show me on this map."

Harbinger pulled a map of Sticktown from his jacket and unfolded it on a coffee table.

"Yeah sure, whatever. I was here." Brand poked a finger at a point on the map, leaving a greasy mark behind, "So I gave you what you wanted, so you let me go. I get it."

Buster brand left the house in a cloud of unwashed body odor. Harbinger looked at me. I shook my head.

"Was it wise to let him go?" I asked.

"He was only guilty of trespassing."

"And he is apparently party to kidnapping." I point out.

"We don't know that for a fact. He know virtually nothing about the child he was asked to watch."

"The kid ran away," I said, "That doesn't say much for the legality of the supervision."

"True, but there's nothing there that we could prove, and perhaps he will prove useful should we meet him again."

"You think he'll be grateful?" I asked.

"I hope so. But more important here, is that we now has a strong connection here, from the smuggling to the blood markets. People are paying for transportation to New Jericho. The most recent body from the suicides was also missing organs was it not?"

I froze, "And the blood had been drained. That suggests medical harvesting. That should have been obvious, before. But then how was it a suicide? Why kill yourself. What are you paying for in the blood markets if you have to pay with your life?"

"I think we need to have a look at one of these blood markets then. Let's start where everything went wrong for Mister Brand. The child he lost may figure into this as well. We seem to be in the middle a turf war between two of the major gangs in Western New Jericho. The child may have been leverage." harbinger nodded to himself, "I need to finish my work here and then we can go."

Harbinger went back to waving smouldering grass and chanting in weird languages and I sat on a couch in the family's drawing room waiting for him to finish. Victoria slipped back in and sat down on the couch next to me.

"I should apologize for what I said earlier. I don't flirt with many ladies. Force of habit I think, on my mother's part. Marry well, and marry up- and apparently marry male. I don't object, I don't have a preference when it comes to boys and girls. I just know what I like."

"That would make it easier," I answered, "Pick and choose from the whole buffet. "I paused, "Okay, did that sound as bad to you as I did to me? Because I was trying to point out that being flexible would be an advantage. I probably shouldn't have used the word flexible right there. If I hand you my pistol, would just shoot me and put me out of my misery?"

"Are you always this awkward around girls?" Victoria leaned in and looked up at me from under her eye lashes. I blushed again. I was fairly certain that she was doing this on purpose.

"I. No, not normally." I managed to say, stumbling over the words, "I'm an officer, or a was, and you have to be able to talk, to give orders. I think it's just pretty girls." Damn, I said that out loud.

She smiled, "Well, if I'm so very pretty then why haven't you asked me to dinner? Shall I do that for both of us?"

I simply couldn't find words to respond. I could incapacitate foes a hundred pounds heavier than myself. I could command soldiers on the battlefield. I could drag this pretty little slip of a girl out of the way of a fleeing criminal, but I couldn't talk to her in any competent manner. I nodded, unable to manage my lungs.

"Oh, you are adorable. Then I am inviting you to Britell's Dining House for dinner tonight. Not right now of course, after the sun has risen. Say around six o'clock? My treat since I'm doing the asking I suppose. Speak now or forever hold your piece? Wonderfiul, it's a date."