[Fiction] A Shade of Grey

[Sam Grey]

I hate visiting Seattle in the winter. This place is a cesspool of trash, filled with silicon tyrants rubbing elbows with flannel-clad meatheads, all drinking coffee. Mother Nature, God, or just plain fate does its best to rinse away the filth with the constant rain, washing it down the gutters and into Puget Sound. Winter just makes the cleaning water crisper, a cold shower to go with the coffee in an old hangover relief.

An orange flare washed over me and the alley as I lit my cigarette, the blossom of color in the wet, night-blue cityscape settling down to a red glow. It was still raining, the brim of my fedora protecting the rapidly disappearing Lucky Strike logo from the cancer stick. I’ve got no idea why people don’t wear hats anymore, I’m dry and so’s my cigarette. I tucked my lighter away and unconsciously made sure my only friend was still in place. Purifier has this way of making me comfortable.

The rain fell over the mouth of the alley and the parking lot beyond like a pounding veil, a shroud for people to hide their… activities. Like the car parked two blocks down, obfuscating the hooker and her John from prying eyes. Or the mitoid enforcer three blocks in the other direction, pounding some junkie for money. Or even me, concealed in an alley and watching a parking lot where no one can see me.

Yeah, this is the life of a snoop. Waiting in dark alleys, gathering information from the underbelly of society… problem is everything and everyone has that underbelly, no saints in this world. This time it was a small-time gangster, supposedly pushing some kind of new super nova drug. Certain people wanted to know how this punk was the source and that’s where I came in. Sure, there are other places to get information, but people use me because I’m quiet, I have this knack for forgetting things, and I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty. If Uncle Sam gave me anything, it was a tolerance for dirt.

My Lucky was almost out when the punk came out of the building. It looked like he had a couple pals with him, the suspiciously well-dressed type of pals. My patience and luck had paid off; I already knew who he was selling to and neither of these guys appeared to be local unless some Italian tailors had taken up residence in Seattle.

I noted the license plate on their vehicle, some kind of souped-up HC coupe, before I slipped back to my old gasoline sedan. What can I say; I have a bit of nostalgia. I followed them for an hour and did my best not to laugh at the punk’s attempts to shake his imaginary tail. The rain, and my vision, made it so much easier for me to hide and impossible for him to see.

By the time he had stopped driving the rain had reached to the point of a complete downpour, as if some gigantic bucket of ice cold water was being poured onto the city. Even with my eyes I had a problem seeing the punk and his well-dressed friends get out of the car, but I recognized the place. It was in the general file for Seattle and even if it wasn’t I still would’ve known what was going on. I’d been here before and this wannabe gangster definitely had the wrong kind of friends. I lit another Lucky, my third since leaving the alley, and took a belt of scotch before I made the call. This changed things and now it was time to find out just how dirty I was going to get.

[Sam Grey]

The cast-iron fire escape was thoroughly coated with near-freezing water and it made my climb up to the fourth floor window harder than sipping from my flask in a Southern Baptist church. Luck was with me again: not only did this scum have a flare for older buildings; it still wasn’t cold enough for my breath to show. Even the yellow light from the sodium street lamps wasn’t reaching me. So I resisted the urge to light up another cigarette and settled in to watch my mark for the night.

Listen is a better word. See, dark and shady dealings don’t do well in light. They’re also sensitive to sound... more specifically, their own sound and those who can hear it. This one was no different. The shades were drawn on the window and most people couldn’t hear anything through bullet-proof glass on a raining night. But, in case I haven’t made it obvious yet, I’m not like most people. I heard the punk and one of the well-dressed men talking in the room, something about spike and some other substance I’d never heard of before. My heart dropped in my chest like a shot bird, locking the concrete boots called dread around my feet.

I wasn’t worried about the new drug so much, vice wasn’t anything new to this world and it wasn’t going anywhere no matter how much The Man tried to stop it. No, the old brick building was what first set me off; a few acquaintances of mine picked this place for a safe house once upon a time (nothing like hardened criminals trying to feel safe). What confirmed my theory was a poor choice of words by the wannabe inside: sze kau. That meant a triad was involved. Throw in nova-derived drugs and you could be sure the Heaven Thunder Triad was involved. If my ex knew the shit I put up with to pay her alimony I’m sure she’d tell me I’d suffered enough and to keep the money.

No… the bitch would probably keep it just to spite me before vacationing in Europe again on my dime.

The hard thump of gun steel against skull had let me know the punk found out his mistake too and I reached into my coat to grab a few tools. Huddled in my little corner of darkness, I waited to hear footsteps leave the room before I flipped the latch on the window with a thin piece of metal. With the makeshift slim-jim back in my pocket, Purifier and I made a quiet entrance through the open window.

Cracked and mold-stained plaster walls had set the ambiance, the bare and gouged wooden floor only adding to the destitute atmosphere. An old 100 watt light bulb swung alone from the ceiling and it illuminated the room in a harsh light, pushing back the dark void of the unlit hallway through the sole doorway. My ironic luck remained true: the punk was alone in the room, passed out on the floor. Who knew why a triad goon – a sze kau, let alone two – would leave an unconscious body but I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I yanked a syringe out of a small pocket (say what you want about the Hippocratic Oath and ethics, enough green makes anyone forgetful and eager to sell) and gave the wannabe a little wake-up juice.

Just as the punk was coming around, my gut twisted in that familiar way and I knew my luck was about to turn like bad milk. I pulled the wannabe up and started for the window but one of the well-dressed men came into the room first. I’ll give the sze kau credit, he didn’t waste time wagging his jaw or even letting it slack, he just pulled out the gun and made sure the wannabe wasn’t going to tell any tales. He turned the gun on me with the intent to do the same, but Purifier and I had something to say about that. Purifier bucked in my hand, a blotch of red exploded on the sze kau’s nice white shirt, and he hit the floor like a sack of bricks. I took a beat to get a good look at the dead man before his partner came up playing my exit music: the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic gunfire.

I left the triad-fueled lead shower of the blood-stained room for the cold rain of the sodium-yellow alley and diving head first back towards the fold of the night. I let myself slide across the slick iron of the fire escape, tucked myself into a ball, and made sure my hat was still securely on my head. A bit of brick ledge here, a bit of fire escape there and four stories later I landed safely in the alley. When I had left the academy forty years ago I thought my obstacle acrobatic days were over… boy was I wrong. The remaining sze kau tried to continue his lead hose send-off to me but I was out of sight and out of mind by the time he reached the window. That’s alright; I left him a dead comrade and the dark, empty night as a farewell gift.

I stopped in a stoop on the way back to my ride to light another Lucky and took a moment to review what I had seen. The dead sze kau: he was a Westerner… unusual, but not totally unheard of. His suit and shoes were Italian, so business must have been doing well. It seemed his cell followed the old methods: he had a hatchet on his belt. But beneath his shirt I saw the tattoo, a pair of lotus blossoms. That was new, not something I had heard any triad using before. The other sze kau – definitely Cantonese on review – had the same tattoo on the wrist on his off arm holding the submachine gun. And the room… the walls and ceilings looked like something right out of a slumlord’s portfolio, but the floors had another story to tell. The gouges and a faint stain I hadn’t noticed in the moment, maybe evidence of equipment and chemicals. Not that I had a forensics team on hand.

The punk was dead but I was definitely further along than I was before. Not only had that house been used before, but a new nova derived drug was being funneled into the country in Seattle and somehow the two lotus blossoms were related. Yeah, I might have gotten more than I had bargained for when I took this job but at least I knew I was going to have a nice hazard bonus to pay for more scotch.