The Lowdown in High Town: An R.R. Johnson Novel Read online

  The Lowdown in High Town

  D.K. Williamson

  . . . . .

  An RR Johnson Novel

  Copyright Notice

  Copyright 2015, DK Williamson

  Dead Eye Fiction Manufactory

  This book is presented free of DRM

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 1

  307

  R.R. JOHNSON, P.I.

  PRIVATE

  INVESTIGATIONS

  That’s what was painted on the frosted plass panel in the door that led into my office. The front window that faced out onto Houston Street had the same script as the door and there were some business cards in a drawer somewhere printed with something similar that also mentioned I was DISCREET, AFFORDABLE, RELIABLE, SINCE 2221. I had it done that way because R.R. Johnson happened to be my name and I happened to be a private investigator. I could have splurged and had a magnifying glass painted on the door or printed on the cards, but I didn’t even own a magnifying glass. Besides, it cost extra.

  I mostly worked High Town District and didn’t handle the kind of cases where a magnifying glass would be much help. I mean a dead man with a knife sticking out of his back was, in all likelihood, killed with a knife wielded by someone he knew. A husband checking into a no-tell-motel with a girl he wasn’t joined with in the bonds of marital bliss was probably cheating on his wife. A magnifying glass wasn’t going to help in either case.

  People liked to think they knew what it meant to be a private detective. All kinds of vids and books out there told tales about fictional detectives. Sure, some of the stuff translated, but they glossed over the meat and bones of the real thing and for good reason: it was boring. Sitting outside a hotel for twelve hours in the rain, waiting to catch a husband or wife cheating so their spouse can get a better divorce settlement isn’t exciting. Nobody wants to watch that or read about it. Who gives a damn about how many cups of coffee the PI downed, or the trials he went through trying to find a legal way to take a leak because of all that coffee he drank.

  People want the well-known French detective who finds everything elementary to crack a case with panache and fanfare before a crowd, forgetting that the Private in Private Eye was just as much for the detective’s benefit as it was his client’s.

  A good PI is a wallflower, not a prize-winning rose. A wallflower blends in, unseen and unnoticed, while the garden party goes on. When the Venus flytraps and exotic poisonous orchids of the world think they have gotten away with it, it’s the wallflower that quietly nails them and gets them sent off to the greenhouse. The wallflower gets paid, maybe; he gets thanked by the prosecutor, maybe; then he slithers back under the rock he calls an office and waits for the next job. The P in PI doesn’t stand for panache.

  People want fistfights, shootouts, and car chases in their PI tales. They want the smoky-voiced femme fatale with the bedroom eyes luring a good man to his doom, the hooker with the heart of gold helping a guy out, and the private dick with the tough exterior that hides the chivalric heart that beats inside.

  The problem is, those real-life fights and chases don’t happen all that often, and usually only to those PIs willing to work the low down places of the city and mix it up with the sort that are serious about being bad. The PIs that get into those situations pay a price for it too.

  There were femme fatales in High Town, but not of the type I mentioned. We certainly had the sort that would lure others to their doom, but smoky voices and good men were rarely involved.

  Hookers with a heart of gold? Considering how many hookers there were in some parts of High Town District there were bound to be at least some, but how do you tell? And if she got played for a sap trying to help someone out, the heart of gold turned to rust pretty damned quick.

  Chivalric shamuses? Chivalry went out of style with Lancelot and he was no PI. A guy’s got to make a credit however he can, and chivalry doesn’t pay. I followed a strict no chivalry policy.

  That’s not to say I wouldn’t stick my neck out in certain situations. I would, if the fee was right.

  I worked solo, but it wasn’t always that way. I once had a partner. He was fat and a capable enough PI, but I never liked the man. We didn’t get along very well. It never came to violence, but we differed on business practices. He didn’t mind taking payment in blowjobs, chems, or other things, while I preferred credits or scrip. I always argued that we were operating a business, not running a swap meet. We split the office rent and he usually managed to make enough to pay his share. In creds.

  Our partnership ended one bright and humid afternoon when fatso was taking payment for some work he did for some wire-head prostitute. Somebody used a hand blaster to turn his head into a canoe. The pro didn’t see anything, she had her mouth full at the time and a face full of a fat man’s gut. By the time she realized what happened, the trigger man was gone, so she wasn’t any help in identifying the killer.

  I said I didn’t like the guy, but he was my partner, and you have to do something when your partner gets killed. It’s in the PI code of conduct somewhere, and those rules go way back, so I went after the killer.

  Turned out the blaster artist was the guy the pro had my dead partner looking into. Pretty simple to figure out. I pinned the case on the man and handed it to the prosecutor. The killer was dumb enough to pull down on a tac squad when they went to arrest him and they burned him down right in the street. No magnifying glass needed.

  With fatso dead, I needed to find a new partner or move to a different office. I never did find a partner worth a damn, at least not one that wanted to work with the likes of me. I couldn’t find a new office that was affordable by the time the rent was due, so I had to get creative until things worked themselves out.

  While I was without an office and a prospective client wanted my services, I’d meet them in restaurants or bars, if they were paying. I would tell them my office was being remodeled, repainted, or resomethinged. It worked well enough until I finally did find a place a few months later.

  That place was a third-story corner office in Building 313(condemned), at least that was how the city plat had it labeled. The metal plate embedded in the cornerstone simply read BLDG 313.

  The landlord, a wily old man named Lo Shen, didn’t charge much for rent, seeing how the building didn’t actually belong to anyone. He maintained the building well enough, and it was not a bad deal even considering what happened to the place.

  The roof of the building got heavily damaged a while before I moved in. A large piece of something landed on it when there was an explosion on the space elevator that threw debris all over the district. Terrorists took credit for the explosion, while the government brushed it off as a routine accident as they quickly whisked the pieces away to places unknown. Who the hell knew if either version was the truth, but the end result for Building 313 was a smashed roof that rendered the top two floors uninhabitable. They poured plascrete-C—the stuff they used to create sarcophaguses around cracked nuke plants—on it in an effort to salvage some use out of the place, but they deemed it to be a failure and condemned the building, then they apparently forgot about it. That’s why my rent was so cheap.

  The office had power, webnet, phone service, and a bathroom. Not bad. A guy cou
ld live there if need be, and I took advantage of that. The water ran clear most of the time and the plascrete kept rain out of the offices during all but the worst of tropical storms coming in off the gulf, so the place was livable.

  There was a small reception area inside the door. That was where a secretary, administrative assistant, receptionist, or in my line of work, a girl Friday would toil.

  I once had the money to hire a girl Friday. It didn’t last long. They didn’t last long I should say. She was with me till lunch time... well, almost lunch time, and the money didn’t last long enough for me to hire a replacement.

  Once I realized it was unlikely I’d ever have anyone actually work out there I had an old fashioned tinkling bell put in over the front door so I would know when someone entered. I had a client call the bell “quaint” once. That was more than I could say about the girl Friday.

  Not long ago I heard the bell ting-a-ling its announcement that somebody was coming to see me.

  A police detective walked into my office. It was easy to tell. They might as well wear a uniform. This detective was a young guy, built like a tennis player, average height, sandy blond, tanned, and nice looking. Never seen him before. I had him pegged as new to the force.

  “I’m Detective Blanc,” the guy said. “I was just assigned to High Town. I’m supposed to start work in a couple of days. Lieutenant Dickerson told me I should look you up first thing, but to make sure not to stop by until after noon.”

  I smiled. Gene Dickerson was an old friend and knew I work nights, mostly. Gene used to work High Town years ago. Made a name for himself and moved up, down to a Midtown district. The next step for him was another move up, over to the Spire. Problem is, men like Gene—honest men who get the job done—can only go so far before their careers stall. It’s the honesty that hangs them up. Honest men can only be trusted to a certain point. Honest men who get the job done can be dangerous to the political animals, so they find benign places to put the stand-up guys where they can toil without being a nuisance to the movers and shakers.

  I pointed at the chair in front of my desk and the detective took a seat.

  “How is Gene? I haven’t talked with him in a long time,” I said.

  “He’s well. He oversees training now. He says you’re a good man and know High Town better than anyone.”

  I’d forgotten how full of shit Gene was at times. “I don’t know about all that, but I’ll help you if I can. How did you get assigned to High Town?”

  “I asked for it.”

  “You think you can clean the place up, detective?” I asked skeptically. I had him penciled in as an idiot or a crusader, sometimes they’re hard to tell apart.

  “It’s not so much that. I noticed there were no detectives assigned to this district and there are a lot of unsolved crimes up here, more so than almost any other district in the city. Major crimes, too.”

  “Fair enough. Solve a few majors and move up. Good career move if it works for you.”

  “I suppose so, but it hadn’t occurred to me. I want to work cases,” he said with some eagerness. “Why didn’t you become a policeman? Gene said you would have made a great cop.”

  I smirked. “I thought about it once. Then I came to my senses.”

  “Funny. Seriously, why didn’t you?”

  “I looked into it, but I just missed meeting their standards.”

  “Physical?”

  “No, intelligence.”

  “Really? The intelligence requirements are not that high.”

  “I know. They told me if I had been just a bit dumber I would have been accepted.”

  “Okay, now you’re just yanking my chain.”

  “Nope. Wait till you get to know your co-workers, especially the patrol units, the High Town patrol units,” I said with a smile, gesturing at the window. “You’ll see what I mean.”

  “But I scored a one-five-zero on the intelligence test and they let me in the academy.”

  “Off the charts smarts, but they had you slated for detective from the get-go. They didn’t mention that when you signed up I bet.”

  “No, they didn’t,” he said with a look that told me he wasn’t sure I was being square with him.

  “Look into it. You’ll see I’m straight on that. They do that to make you feel beholding to them for making you a detective right out of the gate, when that was their plan all along.”

  “I will. Why didn’t they offer to make you a detective if you were so smart?”

  “I was a burned-out ex-soldier with not much education, that’s why. I never said I was smart, just a lot less dumb than your average cop.”

  “You’re a detective now. You had to have received some education. You’ve got certification, right?”

  “That’s right. I didn’t get a university degree and slip into one of the high-powered Spire cert courses. I went from army greens to the gutter to Cool Walker’s Vo-Tech College.”

  “That’s a real place?” he asked with an incredulous look on his face. “You passed a certification test though, didn’t you?”

  “Sure I did. Eight hours of grueling instruction followed by a final test. I finished in the top eighty percent of my class. The class of 6PM, on a Tuesday I think. I never go to the reunions.”

  “Okay,” he said throwing up his hands, getting a bit exacerbated, “all that might be true, but Lieutenant Dickerson said you were the best PI he knows.”

  “That might be the case,” I offered, shrugging my shoulders. “I don’t think Gene knows many PIs. My guess is he wants me to show you the ropes, give you the lay of the land, show you what’s what, help you know who the players are in the game, get you savvy with the lowdown in High Town.” I paused to smile. “Did I miss any metaphors?”

  “No, I think you touched them all, Mr. Johnson.” He was getting irritated. I could tell.

  “Call me Rick.”

  “Okay, Rick. My name is Bob.

  “Okay, Detective. Come back this evening about dark. We’ll get some dinner and I’ll give you the tour. Wear clothes you don’t mind getting messy or stained. Something that doesn’t yell, ‘look at me, I’m a cop,’ okay?”

  “Got it,” he said as he rose from his chair to leave.

  “Oh, and make sure you come strapped,” I said as he headed for the door. He stopped and turned back toward me.

  “You mean bring a gun?”

  “Yeah, that’s what strapped means,” I answered with a smile.

  “I’m not on duty. So...”

  “Better to have and not need, Detective. It’s a rough place. Major crimes, remember?”

  “Got it. See you this evening.”

  The young detective left, closing the door quietly behind him. The bell barely dinged. If I had a girl Friday I suppose he would have exchanged witty banter with her on the way out and I’d feel jealous of her admiration of his good looks and intelligence. It was probably best I didn’t have a girl Friday.

  One thing I did wonder about was why Gene Dickerson sent this kid to see me. Maybe this guy was different, not a lazy sack of crap like most of the police dicks that usually passed through. I decided I’d call Gene in a few days after feeling the young detective out.

  The kid wanted to work High Town. I was fairly sure he wasn’t aware of what he was taking on. High Town was different. High Town was... High Town.

  My office was located in an area of High Town that would be called a red light district in some places. High Town was in the Gulf City Metroplex which encompassed the area around what was called Houston many years ago, in what used to be the American state of Texas, which became the Republic of Texas when the USA went down, then the New Republic of Texas, which broke up into multiple Republics of Texas. One of those became part of the Gulf Confederation, which became the Gulf City Metroplex as a stand-alone city-state when the confederation fell apart. All that in the exhausting span of three-quarters of a century or so.

  The world had been in upheaval for the last several decades, w
hat with the political and economic collapse of nearly every major nation, the damned Swiss trying to rip a hole in the universe with their antimatter disaster, and the cybervirus outbreaks.

  For most people those things were just events in the past, and whatever effect they may have had on their day-to-day activities was simply part of life. Somehow, life went on, like it always had. People adapted, they adjusted to the new norm. In other words, they learned to not give a shit.

  The new normal isn’t the end of the trip. Never was and never will be. Not by a long shot. It’s just a pause before the next shift. A breather before the next one. Odds are, nobody knows what that will be, and that’s fine. Life has to be lived.

  The Midtown Megablock was located in the middle of the Gulf City Metroplex on the north bank of the Buffalo Ship Channel. The megablock was a massive building that stood 800 meters high and ran five kilometers down each side. Who knows how many people lived in the thing. Some of the deep, dark hallways and warrens in the bowels of the place were seriously bad news, never to be visited unless armed and expecting trouble. I’d been down there a time or two. Wise people knew enough to steer clear.

  Rising 300 meters from the southwestern corner of the Midtown Megablock was the Sky Riser where the anchor station for the space elevator was constructed. There were other space elevators built at different locales around the world, the early ones on the equator, but Gulf City’s was the only one left functioning.

  The city officials were officially proud of the space elevator, but privately I think they wished the thing were somewhere else. It cost far more to operate and maintain than predicted long ago by space agency officials in one of the old nations that governed there. Imagine, a government agency proposes some can’t-miss sure thing to government leaders who green light the project only to realize it wasn’t such a sure-thing after all and future generations get to foot the bill. It had probably never happened in the history of man before. In any case, it was supposedly cheaper than sending rockets into space so the thing almost broke even putting satellites into orbit for other nations.