The title is bound to change, but here's Chapter 1.
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Randman Deuce lets a little Canadian Club splash into the juice glass on his desk from a mickey. He leans back in his ergonomic office chair and observes it against the late morning sun. The little glass is fashioned to mimic cut crystal but a hundred tiny scratches and nicks make it dull and dusty-looking. A few storeys down outside on the street there is a honk and a screech. Randman lifts his head, poised, waiting for a crunch. Nothing. The rye goes down in a gulp and a breath, sweetly awful.
He’s a tall, well-made man: some would call a pretty man: golden hair and blue eyes and the pink lips of an aesthete, features at odd with the ascetic pinched eyebrows and the lean figure. His suit is a little too large and a little too brown and makes his body look shapeless except at the shoulders, which are handsome, if unassumingly rounded forwards.
The oak floorboards creak all the way to the window. They were nice, once. Randman twists the string to flip open the venetians. The convex side of the slats is grimy gray with dust. Between them through old warped glass, the sunlight comes uncomfortably hot. Randman puts the end of his finger on one and draws it down to peer outside. He sees nothing worth seeing. He lets the slat go with a snap and returns to his desk, rubbing the grime from his finger onto his shirt. His head swims a little: his stomach is empty and that was not the morning’s first slug.
His partner, slouching in a chair at a desk across the room, looks up at him blankly. There is a dirty magazine resting on his crossed legs and a cup of bad coffee nearby. Nibs has a tired, boyish face with a ruffled mop of unremarkably coloured hair. His suit is blue and wrinkled and his coat is in a ball beside his coffee on the desk. They exchange a wordless glance, and look away: Nibs back to his magazine, digging in his ear with a pinky, Randman to his meditative scrutiny of the emptied juice glass. The air is close and thick.
A knock at the door raises both men’s eyes. Their secretary leans in without letting go of the knob, her perfume effusing the stale room at once. The thick implacable scent does not cut the dusty air so much as coat it and flatter it. She has a natural buoyancy that floats even in the tired office.
“There’s a case here for you,” she says. “Careful with this one.” Her smile is a taunt.
“Sure, Turtle,” says Randman. He throws the mickey of rye in a drawer and slams it shut. Nibs doesn’t look up from his magazine, and puts his feet up on his desk crossed at the ankles.
“You got it. Come on in, miss.” Turtle holds the door open for the case, all five feet of it plus heels, and closes it behind, returning to her desk outside.
The case stands with his hands on his purse, looking lost. The sunlight, even filtered through bubbly glass and cut into strips by dirty blinds, is enough to make his liquor-brown eyes look wet. Nibs’ eyes lift first, then open a little wider; and then his feet hit the ground and he sits up straight, sneaking his magazine out of sight.
Randman watches him levelly.
“Well?” the case asks finally, in a quiet, pleading voice. “Are you Randman the private investigator or aren’t you?” He steps forwards, once, his soles angled obtusely to the floor in steep shoes. His gown is silk brocade, an oriental style.
“Yes, miss, that’s me.” He gets to his feet with a sigh and motions to a plain chair beside his desk. “Have a seat. I’m Randman Deuce, this is my partner Nibs.”
“Pleased to meet you,” says Nibs across the office, eyes glued on the case, smiling somewhat too politely. He folds his hands on the back of his head and watches like a man at a movie.
“Yes, pleased to meet you,” says the young case graciously, and flings himself forward to the chair beside Randman’s desk. He sits on its edge, his hands gripping each other on the desk like a petitioner. His eyes are large and pathetic, and the beginning of a hysteria is working his ribs. “Oh, can’t you please help me? I think I might be in a lot of trouble.” His nostrils flare, and he shoots a plaintive silent glance at the empty juice glass.
Randman blinks and hesitates. “Oh, of course, miss, yes,” he says, turning to fish the mickey and a second glass out of the drawer, and candidly testing his breath under his hand as he does so. “And what’s bothering you, miss – ah –“ he splashes the gold-coloured poison into each glass, and offers the fresh one over – “actually, miss, I didn’t catch your name.”
“My name is Caelo Ruto. It’s... Italian.” Unconsciously, he runs a hand through his black curls, and then takes the rye, draining it with one cough. He puts his hands in his lap and looks at them, taking several long breaths as the drink does its work. A car honks outside, and angry voices exchange invectives, but still no crunch. Nibs stands, crosses the creaky floorboards, and leans backwards against Randman’s desk, folding his arms and looking down at Caelo with a raven-like sympathy.
“Go on then, Miss Ruto,” Nibs says softly.
Caelo swallows, dabs the corner of his mouth with a fingertip, draws a final fortifying lungful, and looks up at Randman. “There’s a man following me,” he says in a near-whisper. “A dangerous man. I don’t know what he wants anymore, but I met him in Beijing. I’ve been there for some time, but with the Olympics it all got to be too much, especially after...” He stops, and leans back all the way into the chair, seeming more at ease with every word. “We met in a café last year. He called himself a fanboy of some kind and I had assumed he was a tourist for the games. At first he was very sweet and charming and mysterious. And vigorous.” Wrestling with a smile, Caelo puts a dainty manicured hand over the top of his ribcage as if to push down a strong feeling. “But as you well know, Mr. Deuce, men are rarely what they seem at first.”
“Some of us are okay,” Nibs says again, as softly, fishing a bent cigarette from his shirt pocket and putting it between his lips without lighting it. “Some of us.”
Randman shoots a look at his partner, and then takes his drink in two mouthfuls. “What about the fanboy, Miss Ruto? You’re having a problem with him?”
“Oh, yes,” Caelo says emphatically, looking up with eyes wide and wet again. “Yes, when I tried to break things off he started to follow me and leave flowers and poetry for me at the hotel. I’m terribly sorry to say I can have that effect on men, Mr. Deuce...” He presses his lips together and looks at his knees. “I thought I’d lost him for good, finally, but I’ve seen him watching me in the hotel lobby and in the street at night, too. I don’t know what he’s capable of and I don’t know what he wants, but I’m not afraid to say that he has most certainly killed before and could again.” His eyes spill over without a sob, and he leans forwards over the desk with hands outstretched. “Can you – can you, Mr. Deuce...”
Randman, again, shoots a look at his partner, steepling his fingers and giving a single, ambiguous move of his head. The silence lays heavy as Caelo looks across at him with dribbling eyes. Smirking, Nibs puts fire to his cigarette, starts to smoke, and looks away from Caelo towards the dusty, bubbled window.
At last some message gets conveyed and Caelo reaches into his butter-soft leather handbag with a slightly embarrassed “Oh!” He hands over two colourful bills with a couple of zeroes on each. Randman takes the money with a smile and makes it disappear very quickly, and Nibs watches the gesture over his shoulder. The sweetish smell of his cigarette is actually something of an improvement over old dust and Canadian Club.
“That’s a start,” Randman says.
Nibs gives his cigarette a flick and lets the ash drift to the floor. “What hotel are you staying at, Miss Ruto?”
“The Fort Garry, downtown,” she says, dabbing his eyes with the exquisitely embroidered sleeve of his gown. His body moves as if a painful knot had just been undone, looser and freer. He puts the strap of his handbag over his shoulder, and lifts the emptied glass to his tastefully painted mouth, tilting out the last few drops from the bottom.
“Classy place – good taste, miss. I’ll be in the lobby this evening after sundown. Don’t pay me any notice except if you see the fanboy around, then you catch my eye and nod him out for me. Then head into the bar – stay around people or head up to your room. We’ll take it from there, not to worry.” Nibs draws from his cigarette, and blows smoke from a slightly predatory grin.
“Oh, please be careful,” Caelo says, and meets Nibs eyes for the first time. “He could be capable of anything. You’ll know him at once, he wears only black and he is quite pale. I’m sure he’ll be there tonight, I’m sure.” The glance becomes a look, which hangs on a silence, until Randman breaks it.
“What’s the fanboy’s name, Miss Ruto?”
“Oh... well, as for that, he went by a handle in Beijing.” He looks away from Nibs to the empty glass in his hands, turning it over in his fingers, speaking shyly. “His initials are F.F. That’s all I know.”
“You spent the whole year with him without knowing his real name?” Randman asks – straight-up, without judgement. Caelo’s eyes lift from under his eyelashes, and fall again.
“As I said, he was quite mysterious.”
“Well, never mind that,” says Nibs, dropping his cigarette straight on the floor and stepping on it. He walks across the room and puts his hand on the dulled brass doorknob. “You go back to the Fort Garry and wait for us. Helluva high tea in the dining room there, I hear.” He turns the knob and holds opens the door. Turtle’s keyboard clacks in the empty waiting room outside.
Caelo stands, looking dry-eyed and pacified, and says a genuine, “thank you both very much.” He sweeps with stiletto-heeled grace and without another word first out the office, and then out the waiting room, leaving the faintest whiff of jasmine on his way.
Turtle leans her head to look into the office from her desk, waggling her eyebrows teasingly, just before Nibs shuts the door and straightens his necktie.
“Jesus, what a knockout,” he says, a tastelessly boyish grin breaking out on his tired face, going back to his desk to sip the crappy tepid coffee beside his balled-up coat. “No work for weeks, and then this! And six hundred for a down payment?” He whistles, and drinks more coffee.
“Just keep your gun in your holster, buddy,” Randman says, wagging a finger and moving the two glasses to the corner of his desk. “This is business.” He finds a cigarette for himself and starts to smoke with a couple of itchy coughs.
Nibs, standing beside his desk with the coffee cup, indicates himself innocently. “Me? I never let pleasure get in the way of business. Or vice versa. Hey, careful you don’t set your breath on fire there, Deuce.”
Randman sniffs a laugh out his nose and stands, taking his hat and coat off the coat tree and donning them on his way towards the door. He tosses one of the bills on Nibs’ desk in the same gesture as he grabs the brass doorknob. “I’m going to get some lunch. See you back here later, Nibs.” Nibs nods his acknowledgement with a friendly “heh” and returns to his dirty magazine.
“Figure you’ll be able to pay me this week now, Mr. Deuce?” Turtle says, looking up from the message boards on her laptop screen with a smile. The two exchange a knowing and playful look.
“Sure, if it means you’ll start doing some work, Turtle. I’m off for lunch, leave my messages on my desk.” He gives his hat a courteous tilt and opens the door to the hall.
“What a looker, huh?” Turtle calls.
“Tell me about it,” Randman says over his shoulder, and closes the door behind him.
Feedback, complimentary or critical, is always welcome.
Originally Posted by Kneenibble
The title is bound to change, but here's Chapter 1.
Re: Shipping itP II: Scourge of the Seven Seas
Epic.
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