Bard Constantine
Red-Eyed Killer
DEDICATION
To the dieselpunks…
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Stefan Prohaczka and Mark Krajnak of Jersey Style Photography continually give of their time and talent to make sure that the visual aspects of The Troubleshooter are top rate and bring the world of Mick Trubble to life. Gentlemen, consider yourselves owed a favor…
After the Cataclysm nearly wiped out humanity, the remnants of mankind survived in Havens: city-sized constructs built to reboot society and usher in a new age of mankind.
However the new age was not the type that the architects had envisioned. The same greed and lust for power that existed before the Cataclysm had resurfaced, and the Havens quickly became quagmires of political and economic conflict that threatened to destroy the future envisioned by the Haven’s founders.
This is the world of Mick Trubble, a man without a past. A man with nothing to lose. But when your luck is down and no one else can help you, he can. He takes the cases that no one else will touch. The type of trouble that no one else can handle.
Mick Trubble is
The Troubleshooter
Chapter 1: Dinner at Luzzattis
In a town like New Haven, favors can be better than money in the long run. Sure, it’s great to have the berries, but when it all hits the fan sometimes all the cabbage in the world ain’t enough to keep a mug from biting the big one. I’ve seen it, so I know. A wise man once told me that if you wanna stay ahead of the game on the streets, you gotta know how to handle your favors. You gotta know when to deal ‘em and when to call ‘em in. Because everyone owes somebody something. And sooner or later you’re gonna have to pay your taxes.
Take me, for example. When I came to The Luzzatti, I had nothing. Just the rags on my back and the one thing that I had to barter with.
A favor.
Mr. Luzzatti gave me a keen once-over when I strode into the lobby of his apartment complex. Luzzatti wasn’t tall, wasn’t quite bald and had the girth of a mug who loved his chow. He didn’t look hard enough to run a housing unit in a neighborhood like the Flats, but appearances are never what they seem in New Haven. He was a pretty smart mug in some ways. Smart enough to let me state my case despite the fact that he knew that I was down on my uppers.
“You’re looking for a place to stay, Mr.…?”
“Trubble. The name’s Mick Trubble.”
“I require a month’s deposit for my rooms, Mr. Trubble. Pardon my saying so, but you don’t look as though you have it.”
“No offense, because I don’t. But I’ll be getting a gig real soon. My line of work is always in demand around here.”
He tapped his chin as he studied me. “And what is it that you do?”
“I’m a Troubleshooter. You might find it advantageous to have someone like me around. You look out for me, and I’ll be sure look out for you if you catch my drift.”
Without any hesitation he smoothly slid a keyless access chip across the counter for me to synch to the holoband around my wrist.
“You should feel right at home in room 2046, Mr. Trubble. Consider the first two months on the house. That should give you the time you need to establish yourself.”
Turns out I was able to establish myself in no time at all. There’s a lot of situations that the brass won’t touch, and a lot of situations that folks don’t want the brass to touch. In either case, when people are in a jam of that sort they usually wind up giving someone like me a buzz.
Word got out, and my cabbage started to grow. I bought myself some new rags: a sturdy flogger and a real darb fedora, or a Bogart as they like to call it in New Haven. In a couple of months I had a cramped office of my own a few blocks away, and my pad at Luzzatti’s was still rent-free. When you ran a complex like his, there was always the unlucky sort that got well behind on his rent or tried to skip out without paying his tab at all. Well, Luzzatti wasn’t the type to get rough with folks, and he’d probably have gotten laughed outta town if he tried.
But getting rough was never a problem for me.
I handled the chasing and bruising while Luzzatti got to focus strictly on the business side of things. He was happy and so was I. Mugs like me are always better off keeping busy. When you’re working, you don’t have time to dwell on your problems. You know, those ghosts that haunt the inside of a bourbon glass late at night when sleep deserts you. I had a few every night. Bourbon shots, I mean. The ghosts came after.
So I stayed busy. I worked at putting aside enough crumbs to buy a wheeler: one of those retro, Tesla-powered roadsters. I hardly took the time to sleep as I took small time cases and worked for Mr. Luzzatti on my downtime. Ol’ Luzzatti took a shine to me after a few months and would even have me over for dinner with his family. His old lady was a stately, slender dame with worried eyes; though it was only later that I found out she had a valid reason for that. They had a daughter, Natasha.
Sweet Natasha.
Natasha was a rose that had only recently bloomed. By that I mean grown into her womanly body, swelled at those places that men pay close attention to. She was slender and raven-haired like her mother, but pleasantly curved and had a face that made you wanna make excuses for hanging around. Her eyes were the smoky gray color of rainy night fog, and just as mysterious. She was a dish, all right.
But in a locale like the Flats, that meant there were a lot of scumbags that wanted to dig into that dish and lick it clean afterwards. Luzzatti knew it, and tried to shelter her as much as possible. But you can’t stop the sun from shining, or put the jack back in the box once it pops out laughing at you.
So it was a major sign of trust that he’d invite me into his home now and again. Mrs. Luzzatti was one of those dames who could cook dishes that looked almost as good as they smelled and smelled almost as good as they tasted. We’d eat, sip wine and discuss whatever was on our minds.
“What do think started the Cataclysm?” Natasha asked one night.
Luzzatti and his wife looked at each other. “No one really knows,” he said.
Mrs. Luzzatti shook her head. “Do we really have to talk about this?”
Natasha rolled her eyes. “Why doesn’t anyone want to talk about it? It happened so long ago. Hundreds of years…”
“Because we’ve moved past all of that. It’s ancient history. Our life is in the Havens, and that’s that.” Mrs. Luzzatti was a sensible dame, like a lot of people. If you couldn’t do anything about the sky being overcast, you ignored it and went about your business.
“What do you think, Mick Trubble?” Natasha always called me by my full name. That tickled me for some reason.
I looked at the Luzzattis before answering. “I don’t tend to think much about old news. The Cataclysm happened, and we’re here because they built the Havens and survived. That’s about all that matters, anyhow. The reasons why won’t put food on your table or a roof over your head.”
Mrs. Luzzatti nodded. “Mr. Trubble is right, Natasha. No point in dwelling on things you can’t change.”
Natasha’s smirk let me know that she was on to my subtle grift. “Then there’s nothing wrong with talking about it.” Her eyes brightened as she leaned forward. “They say that the Havens were supposed to be like paradise. A place to start over and make things right. Where people worked together to create… a utopia. No crime, no hate…” her voice trailed off as she realized how naive those words sounded.