The Troubleshooter: The Most Dangerous Dame

  The Troubleshooter: The Most Dangerous Dame

  Title Page

  Chapter 1: Staccato

  Chapter 2: Knuckling Down

  Chapter 3: Mean Ol’ Broad Part Deux

  Chapter 4: Murder of Crows

  Chapter 5: The Godfather

  Chapter 6: Falling Hard

  Chapter 7: Taking Names

  Chapter 8: A Dame Named Sinn

  Chapter 9: The Business

  Chapter 10: Bitter Pill

  Chapter 11: Dying Is Easy

  Chapter 12: Death and Desiree

  Chapter 13: A Familiar Face

  Chapter 14: The Easy Way Out

  Chapter 15: Letting Go

  Chapter 16: The Screws Tighten

  Chapter 17: Ben the Bear

  Chapter 18: The Widow’s Web

  Chapter 19: The Payoff

  Chapter 20: Most Dangerous Dame

  Chapter 21: Mastermind

  Chapter 22: Laying Low

  About the Author

  Glossary

  The Most Dangerous Dame

  by Bard Constantine

  The Troubleshooter and all related characters and properties are © Copyright 2015 Bard Constantine. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  Help stop piracy. If you believe this novel was made available by illegal means, please report it to the author at http://bardwritesbooks.com

  Cover and logo design by Stefan Prohaczka featuring Mark Krajnak of JerseyStyle Photography

  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 the architects envisioned. The same greed and lust for power that existed before the Cataclysm 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 no one else will touch. The type of trouble no one else can handle.

  Mick Trubble is…

  The Troubleshooter.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks always goes to Mark Krajnak and Stefan Prohaczka for their selfless contributions to the visuals of the Troubleshooter. Some people I forget to mention in the last novel: Dawn Kilby, Poddar Kushal, Thomas Washington, and Angela Arno among others who allowed me to name characters after them at Gather.com where this story was originally born. Congrats to Ben ‘the Bear’ Mastrogiovanni and Brian Johnson at Johnson Arms for entering Troubleshooter lore by having characters named after them in this installment. If I forgot anyone this time around, I’ll try to catch you the next time.

  Chapter 1: Staccato

  I heard the staccato of her heels down the hall…

  Smoggy days, rainy nights. The windshield wept under the glow of tacky neon lights.

  The good thing about being depressed in New Haven is you can always take a field trip out to a joint where you can feel even worse.

  Like the Gaiden, a high-pillow nightclub in the midst of celebrating its reopening. Course, the irony of me being there was I was the one who burned it down in the first place. In a roundabout way, of course. Kinda the story of my life.

  Everything I touched went up in smoke.

  I was on a case back when it got torched. Along the way I’d gotten into a heap of trouble, but by the end I was out of a heap of debt. A bit wiser, too–though that was more of an accident. I learned some hard facts about my past I didn’t expect, or really like for that matter.

  I still don’t know if the exchange was worth the cost. ‘Course if I had to do it again, I probably wouldn’t change a thing. It’s not as if me and trouble haven’t been chummy for the longest. In the city of New Haven I’m known as the Troubleshooter. The name strongly implies what it is I do.

  When I was on the job, that is. At the particular moment I took on an entirely different type of shot. The kind that came in a tiny glass and packed a wallop. I’d been at the bar so long Ed the barkeep came over to check up on me.

  “Mick Trubble. If you keep living at my bar I’ll have to charge you rent.”

  For a synthetic humanoid, Ed was a real wise guy. Synoids must have gotten sarcasm upgrades lately. The Gaiden had a human barkeep named Vinny before it went up in smoke, but he’d gotten a bad case of dental work and had to seek employment elsewhere.

  A tap of the holoband around my wrist opened an interactive screen. I mumbled something far less eloquent in reply as I slid over to my slush account. Dibs exchanged, clearing up my tab. Another whiskey floated to my spot, making Ed and me friends again.

  The Gaiden was a cozy little nightclub on the outskirts of Downtown. The style and décor was elegantly Eastern: Chinese motifs, curving dragons, samurai armor, statues of mythic creatures and failed deities. The remodel had been particular with the painstaking details, so even the floating lanterns looked authentic. The spot had long been used as common ground where buttons rubbed shoulders with ordinary crumbs, smooth criminals mingled with off-duty coppers, and a regular Joe might find himself sitting across from a legendary movie starlet.

  Just the kind of place for a guy like me.

  The joint was set just right for my state of mind. Dim lights combined with heavy gasper smoke created a haze that made it easy to fade into the background. Slick cats and cool dames made coy exchanges between martini sips in quiet, private booths. A spotlight lit up the stage as Fats the Jazzman made his saxophone weep while a skinny songbird in a slinky red dress poured her soul into the microphone, crooning of lost love and broken spirits.

  The only thing missing was a complimentary handgun to blow your own brains out. But that was ok. Me and depression were old friends. Couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t around to sucker punch me in the gut.

  She walked in around the time when sane people sleep and ghosts wake up yawning. I saw her silhouette in the grainy light and recognized her instantly. The recollection sliced through the alcoholic fog like a razor through wrists, bleeding memories on the floor.

  “Do you think it will always be like this?”

  “No.”

  What a fool I was.

  I worked a case a while back. Gigs were scarce so I did grunt jobs to keep a few dibs in my account. Some rich frail thought her old man was cheating on her (he was), and paid well to keep tabs on him. They have orbots and other nut and bolts that do surveillance, but the thing about digital jobs is they’re too easy to spot. No imagination. Some gigs just need a human touch.

  Seems the old man spent a lot of time at the Ritz, which meant I spent a lot of time at the Swiss, the swanky layover across the street. I enjoyed a luxury suite on the frail’s dime while I shutterbugged the old man and captured audio recordings of his naughty side life.

  That was when I met Scarlett. She worked at the front desk, wearing one of those cute hotel uniforms that summon thoughts of kinky sex to a dirty mind. Not that mine has ever been clean
. A few exchanges, a dab of charm, and soon we were doing a lot more than seeing each other on the pass. I thought she was just another skirt I’d toss while I was on the case, but after I wrapped it up we were still spending our nights in that room on the ninth floor.

  I wish I could say it was just the sex, but that would be a cop-out, and I’m not too fond of cops. There was something about her eyes when she laughed, the way her hands gestured when she talked, the peaceful look on her face when she slept.

  I wished the time could have lasted. But I had the tendency to drift back then. Not much has changed since. When you’re in search of lost memories, you don’t spend a lot of time trying to create new ones. I needed to roam again, but couldn’t come up with a way to break it to her gently. It all came to a head when she asked a simple question.

  “Do you think it will always be like this?”

  “No.”

  I remember the hurt in her eyes at the abruptness of my response. The way she recoiled like I struck her. The stiffness in her back when she left the room.

  The staccato of her heels down the hall…

  Scarlett zeroed in on my location like a guided missile to its target, with my survival chances being about the same. Her long brunette hair tumbled over one of her eyes when she sat beside me with the grace of a stalking panther. The other eye gazed at me with a potent mixture of sensuality and melancholy.

  “I heard you come by here sometimes.” She slowly traced her fingers across my shoulder.

  I stared at contents of my glass. “Only when I can’t sleep.”

  “How often is that?”

  “All the time.”

  She smiled. It was a sad smile. The kind that lingers when all reasons for smiling have died. She took the glass out of my hand and set it on the counter. I was struck by how her eyes were the same color as the whiskey.

  “Dance with me.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve been doing some kind of drinking, darlin’.”

  “It’ll be a slow dance.”

  She led me to the floor. The joint was almost empty. Only a few boozehounds and ghosts were left.

  And us. Fats the Jazzman had turned to pack it up, but I caught his eye.

  “One last song, Fats.”

  He nodded.

  The mournful wail of the sax floated us across the floor for a few melancholy minutes. She pressed her cheek against my chest with her eyes closed, like the time lost between us had never existed. My hands started at the safe zone above the small of her back, but as the sax played on they drifted, much as we did. Across memory, across streams of unforgiving time.

  “Do you like dragonflies?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

  “As much as the next man, I guess. Why?”

  “That’s all the picjector plays on the walls of my hotel room.”

  I wasn’t ready for the aggression, the almost hostile manner of her lovemaking. Ok, lovemaking wasn’t exactly the word for it. Lovemaking involves tenderness, affection displayed through pleasure. Soft moments combined with hard movements. The things we did in that hotel room of ours back when time didn’t exist.

  Times had changed.

  There was a sense of determination in the motion of her hips, an intent look in her eyes that never left my face. As holographic dragonflies flitted around us, she stayed on top the entire time, as if switching positions was a sign of weakness. She was a force of nature–a solar storm, and I was the hapless planet that happened to be in the way.

  Only when my muscles stiffened, when my hands clenched the sheets and groans grated through my teeth, only then did she slow down and let the tempest inside of her pass on like the whisper of distant thunder.

  Only then did she let me hold her.

  Hours passed. The blinds in the windows glowed with the promise of morning.

  I opened my eyes and she was leaving.

  It’s funny. It wasn’t the sex that stood out clearly about that night. It was the profile of her slender back, the hair that fell across her face as she pulled on her stockings in the blush of the early sun.

  I reached out to her. “You don’t have to go. Stay. Stay with me for a little while. We haven’t even talked–”

  “I have to go. It’s ok. It’s better like this.”

  I felt the flush of anger scald my face. “What’s the point, then? Why look me up after all this time?”

  She turned slightly. Shadows brushed stripes across her face. “I… just wanted to see you again. Think of it as a thank you.”

  I scrubbed fingers through my hair. “For what?”

  Those beautiful dark eyes never blinked. “For being the only honest man I’ve known.”

  Depression stepped up once again to punch me right in the kidneys. Whoever said words don’t hurt should be beaten bloody with sticks and stones.

  She tilted her head as she studied me. “Remember what you told me when I asked you if it would always be like that? Perfect, I mean?”

  I winced. “I remember being bad news. I didn’t mean–”

  She held up a hand. “You were right. I didn’t know it at the time, but…you were right. At least you knew. At least you could tell me the truth.”

  I looked in her eyes and saw other men. Men who’d expressed their insecurities with fists to her face, men who’d promised her love and given her lies. Men who’d taken her self-worth and ran over it with a cement truck.

  I tried to take her hand. “Baby, listen. If I had known–”

  She pulled back. Not rudely, but firmly. I was on her terms, and she wasn’t about to show any weakness.

  “You don’t have to apologize for anything. What’s happened has happened. But sometimes…I think of you, is all.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. Words weren’t strong enough to cross the gulf of time and circumstances that separated us.

  The sadness in her smile spoke enough for us both.

  “I got what I came for. Maybe I’ll see you around.” The door closed off any chance of reconciliation. Any promise of second chances.

  And she did get what she came for. She had taken something from me, something I’d carelessly left rusting somewhere; one of those neglected valuable things you never miss until it’s gone. I only felt it when the door closed, when she tucked it under her arm as a keepsake of bygone times.

  It’s funny how you measure your self-worth. A lotta men judge themselves by how many dames they’ve pulled, or the dibs in their account.

  I always thought it was my ability to survive. I didn’t allow myself the luxury of feeling. I knew the damage it could do.

  But when she walked away, she took that feeling of invulnerability with her. I’d been tagged like a boxer meeting the ring floor for the first time. The soapy smell of her skin clung to the bed sheets; the impression of her body mocked me like a vengeful ghost.

  Scarlett was gone. In and out of my life in a flash, leaving only echoes. Footsteps that slowly faded.

  The staccato of her heels down the hall…

  Chapter 2: Knuckling Down

  Getting punched through a window is a lot harder than they make it seem in the picture shows. First of all, folks tend to steer away from windows when they go fisticuffs. And since glass is harder to break than it looks, you gotta have one of two things going for you when you do get the prime location for a window buster: a heavy body on the receiving end of your fist, or one hell of a haymaker.

  I had neither. But that was all right because I wasn’t the one performing the king of the ring imitation.

  Poddar was.

  I’d inherited Poddar as my illegitimate partner of sorts when his moll took over the lease of my foreclosed office. He was fairly tall, well built, and hailed from the region where India used to be, or so I figured. Nationality was a lot harder to determine when the Cataclysm basically wiped out the world so many centuries ago.

  Even though Poddar was a bit square for my taste, one thing he was good at was putting the hurt to a body. I watched J
ohnny Knuckles sail out the window into the rainy night in a shower of glittering glass. He bounced once across the pitted asphalt and lay still, moaning.

  I paused to light a gasper before strolling over. Poddar emerged from the cheap can house Johnny Knuckles had recently inhabited. The other boozehounds didn’t bother to get up to check the scene. We were in the West Docks, where behavior like punching a body through a window was the status quo. If there weren’t a few dozen nightly brawls, the entire area would probably riot to make up for the lack of carnage.

  I tipped my Bogart at Poddar. “Nice punch, Ace.”

  “It was a kick, actually.” Poddar had the kind of calm, polite voice that made people underestimate him. While he looked and sounded like he spent his spare time crocheting sweaters, he was actually a martial arts master who could snap your neck while quoting ancient poetry. It’s always the quiet ones you gotta watch out for.

  We stood over Johnny Knuckles, who still lay on the rain-soaked ground like he’d been run over by a bulldozer. He was a baldheaded, hulking slab of muscles and distended veins, but he’d apparently decided might didn’t always make right. Not when going up against a fighter like Poddar.

  Pretty smart for a common goon. Most don’t know when to call it quits.

  I puffed contentedly. I’d always thought the smoking would catch up to me and I’d die alone in some dark alley coughing up my lungs. But after learning I had microscopic nanomachines repairing my body’s damage, I’d come to worry less about small things like dying of cancer. At least being an ex-member of the United Haven’s most notorious law enforcement agency had a perk or two.

  “Johnny Knuckles. Word out on the street is you’ve been a bad boy. Working both sides of the fence is a pretty daring move for a hardhead like you. Takes balance, see? Equilibrium and all that bunk.”