Starlight Over Detrot
Act 2, Chapter 13: We’re All Ears
Detrot can be and has frequently been likened to a complex ecosystem. While that ecosystem is usually described verbatim as "a large, parasite-infested dog with two legs and irritable bowel syndrome," certain things nonetheless ring true at a deeper level than the sardonic complaints that generate the analogy.
Detrot, as in any ecosystem, is home to competing species. And while a few species remain dominant, lots of the minorities have found their niche within Detrot's metaphorical skin folds and gastric organs.
The sheep and the bovines have found ways to thrive by selling their own bodies, or at least, byproducts thereof; Where would the pony fashion industry be without the former, and where would the pony baking industry be without the latter?
The smarter dragons have stopped rampaging and demanding tribute for treasure, and have instead used their hoards to enter the world of high finance; whereas once ponies quailed at the sight of a dragon's fangs and fiery breath, the sight of them bearing briefcase and tailored suit has become substantially more frightening.
The minotaurs are used as muscle at least as often as they're used as motivational speakers. The diamond dogs, as discussed, have their fingers in a few... shall we say, pies. But there are lesser-known species operating within Detrot, many of which are a barely-felt presence - but no less important for their nigh-invisibility.
-The Scholar
“I’m going to ask this again. What sort of club is this?” Taxi asked as she trotted along beside me in the dank depths of the subterranean tunnel.
I shook my head, pausing to pull off my hat and wipe the sweat from my forehead. The shaft had been getting progressively warmer the deeper we went. “Not a clue.” I jerked up as a scream trickled down one of the corridors, followed by loud, scandalous moaning. “Smells like the Vivarium, but it’s like a mine. A weird... sex... mine… or something.”
Limerence looked contemplative, but he didn't look happy about his conclusions. “As fervently as I believe the words 'sex' and 'mine' should never be adjacent in either order, I may… be able to posit a possible explanation, if you will hear me out.”
"Let's hear this theory,” I murmured.
There was some real hesitation.
"Premise one: During the Crusades, some of the diamond dogs ran slaves for the dragons. Premise two: Detrot is prone to a staggering variety of untoward inclinations and perversions. Based on those, it would not strike me as… entirely impossible to come to the conclusion that some ponies would find themselves... enamored with diamond dogs thereafter. It is… not without precedent.”
I stopped dead in my tracks and turned to the librarian. “Are you saying ponies are paying diamond dogs to treat them like… slaves?!”
He fiddled his pocket watch’s chain. “I am… simply proffering an assessment, based on what I am seeing-" He was interrupted by the crack of a whip, followed by an extremely happy whimper off down the hallway. Limerence swallowed, uncomfortably. “...and hearing. There are odd perversities all throughout Detrot. I’ve no doubt we will encounter more than one flavor before this mission of ours is complete.”
"I think I want out of this place as quickly as possible,” I said, and Taxi nodded in agreement. We picked up the pace a little, going further and further into the pit.
****
We passed by what seemed to be some sort of shower room or bath, then a little deeper, a coat-room, but most of the activities were blessedly hidden away down the branchings. Twice, we had to make room for sweaty, grinning ponies trotting up from the depths reeking of activities best not mentioned. After awhile, the sounds of sex started to die down, or at least became less pervasive.
Another sound, however, was steadily building.
“Is that a drum?” Taxi asked, tilting one ear ahead.
Swift bobbed her head. “Yeah. I heard it a few minutes ago. It sounds like… I don’t even know what.”
I tugged off my hat and held it up to my ear to cup some of the sound. “Some kind of waltz or march, maybe?”
Our progress stopped as we came to a very abrupt corner. The far wall seemed to just stop at some kind of rock face. I took a few steps, and Swift put her wing on my shoulder.
“Sir, I hear some… other noises.”
“What sort of other noises?”
“The kind I think you don’t want to walk in on.”
I couldn’t hear a thing past the drums. I raised one questioning eyebrow at Taxi; she shook her head.
“I’ll take your word for it, kid. That diamond dog we met back there said ‘Go to the end’. This looks like the end.”
“Just... you know…”
“Yeah, yeah…being careful.”
I stepped cautiously around the corner and my hooves clicked loudly as I moved from dirt onto a solid surface. Overhead, bright white neon lights buzzed, then sprang on, leaving me blinking in the sudden illumination.
Limerence poked his head around the corner, took a moment to assess the situation, then said, puzzled, “I don’t know what I expected, but that isn’t it.”
If one happens to be underground, there are any number of mental associations that go with that. Gems, grottos, crazy transvestite dragons. These things all have their explicable places in the world and when it comes down to mentally categorizing them, you can say, with some self-assurance, that they should be somewhere beneath the terra firma and mayhap at the bottom of a mine.
An office door is not usually on that list.
It sat at the end of a short section of unpainted concrete hallway, set into a short depression. The handle was designed for hooves. It looked like it’d been installed no more than a few months ago; the grout around the edges still seemed recently laid and the wooden surface, freshly polished. A soft, yellow light shined through the semi-opaque window. There was no name on the name-plate. Just a simplified symbol which might have been a drum, with two drum-sticks laid across it.
The thumping beat was still going, loud enough to make the dust in the air dance.
“Alright, after Cosmo’s mountain, I think we can call this ‘subtle’,” I said. “I’d still give an eye for us to be going after some criminal with his base in a good old abandoned warehouse, seedy bar or a tenement block, though.”
“Where’s the fun in that, sir?” Swift asked, with an impish smile.
The joke had been weak, but it was what I needed just then. I laughed.
“Oh, fun? Is that what this is?” I asked, giving her a playful little push with one hoof. “If you’re having fun, we could always go down one of these side passages and see if one of the diamond dogs wants a little pegasus to play with. I’m sure they can show you all new definitions of fun. Your grandmother probably knows what I'm talking about!”
Swift sniggered and flapped her good wing at me as Limerence looked back and forth between us, with a growing expression of horror that just made us laugh all the harder.
I opened my muzzle to explain, but he cut me off. “I have no desire to understand the private little joke the two of you are sharing.”
“Fine, fine. Let’s get this over with.” With the tension broken, I, still chuckling, jerked my head at Taxi, who unslung the P.E.A.C.E cannon and snapped off her safety. “What’ve you got loaded in that thing?”
She gave the barrel a little shake. “Slug rounds.”
“Ahhh… mmm. Should do.” I turned the door handle halfway. “On three. One...two…”
The door opened. I pitched forward into the frame, flopping face-first onto the floor.
A young-ish gold mare with a hair-bun and thin glasses that absolutely shrieked ‘secretary' found herself staring down the barrel of one of the biggest weapons in the Detrot Police arsenal. We stared at one another for five seconds, then ten. She was pretty, in a very conventional sort of way, with some cheap mane extensions and a bad dye job that left her attempt at blonde with murky orange bits around the roots. From behind her, the thumping drums continued, slightly louder.
It was telling that her eyes had only widened slightly at the sight of the gun.
“Picking up or dropping off?”
There was an awkward pause during which I didn’t really register that a question had been asked. When I did, I reached up and grabbed the cannon’s barrel, pulling it down and levering myself up on the door.
“Uh…” I peered back at my three companions. Limerence had his head turned as though he might draw his sword. I motioned him to relax, but he kept the sword’s hilt close to his teeth. “We’re here to talk to the Drum Beat. Is he in?”
The secretary squinted at us over the top of her glasses, taking in our armament and appearance with a disconcertingly practiced eye. “He has four diamond dogs guarding him, you know. You want his head, you’ll have to handle them first.”
I dipped my chin and covered my face with one hoof. “I… we’re just here for information! Why is everypony assuming I’m here to kill him?!”
“I dunno. I would.” She shrugged and opened the door. “He just denied me a third request for a raise this month, then asked me to file something in the same sentence, so I’m a little pissed. So, what’s your deal then? He screw your sister? Owe you money?” Wheeling around she gave me another narrow-eyed examination, without waiting for an answer. “Saaay, didn’t I see you on the T.V. the other day with that nutty bitch from the church?”
I stepped into the office and Taxi came in, leaving Limerence and Swift at the door to guard our approach. “I’m… I… ugh. I’m here to see what I can see. You’ll excuse me if I was expecting to have to storm the place to find somepony to talk to.”
The little office had a desk, a filing cabinet, and a ceiling fan. A light haze of cigarette smoke hung near the ceiling and a cigarette, still burning, lay in the ashtray by the secretary’s desk. It might have been the office of any aspiring detective or hoodlum anywhere in Detrot. A second door, similar to the first, led deeper into the building or bunker or whatever it was.
Now I got a look, I saw the secretary’s wings; unusual in a pony working underground. Despite her apparent youth, she had the jaded look of somepony who has been trapped behind a desk for years, pushing pencils for the sort of ‘aggressive go-getter’ who climbs high in either corporate culture or criminal enterprise.
Trotting around the desk, she plunked herself down in her chair and unfolded one wing, using two feathers, in a stunning display of avian dexterity, to pick up the cigarette and bring it to her muzzle. She inhaled, then blew the smoke out through her nose.
“Sorry to disappoint, but I’m inclined to open the door for just about anypony who wants to hurt the bastard right now. What’s your deal, then?” she asked, using her smoke to indicate the chair in front of her desk. “I’m Cutter, by the way. Not that it matters to you, I imagine. If you were some kinda death squad, you probably wouldn’t want witnesses.”
I tugged off my hat, respectfully, and sank gratefully into the chair. “Oof. Thanks. It’s a heckuva walk from up top,” I said, rubbing my hoof back and forth on the edge of the seat before I continued. “We’re not a death squad. Just looking for information on a transaction this ‘Drum Beat’ guy had a few weeks ago. Really, I am curious. Who is he?”
Cutter shifted in her chair, pulling open the drawer of her desk. I tensed, wondering if she was about to pull a gun, but it was a clear, glass bottle that came out along with two glasses. “Who is he really? Dunno. I answered a job ad a few months ago. It’s not like he tells me anything. I’m mostly here because I think he liked the idea of having a secretary or some pony to treat like manure.”
“What’s the job, then? I mean, you work for him. Don’t you know what he does?” I inquired.
“Do I look stupid?” she grunted, waving her wing at herself. “Smart ponies don’t ask questions when there’s a steady paycheck, even if the work is crap. As far as I can tell, he’s some kind of fixer.”
“A fixer?” Taxi asked, watching as Cutter poured brown liquid into two of the glasses, then downed the entire thing. I snatched up the other glass before my driver could and she gave me a sour look.
“He fixes things for ponies with money,” she said, her voice rising. She tossed her glass over one shoulder where shattered against the wall of the second office. “You want me to put some fine points on it?! It means the prick never pays his secretary what she’s worth… and he’s always listening to those friggin’ drums!” Cutter was almost shouting now, but there didn’t seem to be any response from behind the closed door so she sank back in her seat, crossing her legs sulkily and staring into the bottle of liquor.
I cleared my throat and let my gun bit drop from my teeth; I didn’t remember picking it up, but there are few situations in which a pony is unwise to arm themselves before an angry mare. Taking a sip of my glass, I choked down the cheap bourbon, then passed it to my driver who gave it a sniff and discretely tossed the remainder on the carpet.
“You mind if I ask who his last employer was?” I prompted her.
Cutter glowered at me, though her eyes didn’t seem to be focusing properly. I suspected that hadn’t been her first drink of the day. Rather than answering, she pointed at me with one wingtip, “You know, I...hmmm. You do look awful familiar. I know I saw you on the T.V. but...there was somethin’...somethin’ before that...”
“I’ve got one of those faces,” I said, trying to dismiss the issue before she started asking questions.
“Heh, now I remember! You were in one of those pictures from his last job. You and that… that… uh… Cosmic or whatever his name was!” she said, with a triumphant grin, refilling her glass for another drink.
I shot up in my seat. “Last job? He was spying on Cosmo?”
Cutter wiped her mouth on the back of her foreleg, further smearing her lipstick, then nodded. “Yeah, that was the name. He had me pick up this dead drop full of pictures of ponies. Apparently somepony was looking for this bunch. Some pretty thing with a red mane and cherry cutie-mark, this mean looking stallion built like a double-wide trailer on steroids, and...yeah, you.”
Gale started racing in my chest with the hope that we might dig up something other than unsettling dreams in this perverse mine. “...He ever tell you what the job was?”
“Seemed like he was mostly just supposed to watch those ponies or find’em or something. I doubt even he knew all the details, except I heard him talking about setting everything up for a ‘big move’. The pay for that job must have been beautiful. We went from this crappy little office on Tenth Street to...this place. He bought up the whole block, actually. That freaky club upstairs was part of the package. No raise for me, mind you....” She bit off the last two words, angrily, then her lip quirked into a vindictive little smirk. “I think it must not have been what he had in mind, though. Heard him on the phone a couple weeks ago, screaming about somepony gypping him.”
Taxi grunted as she slung her P.E.A.C.E. back across her shoulder and asked, “You happen to know who was paying him?”
The secretary drew a little circle in the air beside her head with one wingtip. “Oh, so you think I’m crazy and stupid, right? I don’t want to know that sort of thing! Go ask him yourself!”
“I intend to,” I murmured.
A calculating expression crossed Cutter’s face as she looked from me to Taxi, then back again.
“Tell you what...” she began, gesturing at the door with one wing as she took a drag from her cigarette with the other. “I’mma take a break and go get some coffee. He’s got one of his ‘girls’ in there right now and those diamond dogs are in the dirt holes behind the desk. While you’re ‘asking’ him whatever questions you mean to, you mind rifling his pockets? He’s got a safe key and I know where the safe is. Whatever he’s got in there will probably pay my way until I get work. I’d be ever so appreciative.”
I set my hat back on my head, flicked the safety on my gun off, and stepped aside as Cutter came around the desk.
“If a key happened to fall out of one of his pockets when we were searching him for weapons and land in that glass you were drinking out of, I doubt anypony would suspect you,” I said.
The secretary flicked her burgundy tail as she pushed by Limerence and Swift, calling over her shoulder, “Hey, if I remember your name one of these days and we meet somewhere, I’ll be sure to buy you a drink, alright?”
“Until then,” I replied. “You take care of yourself, Miss Cutter.”
“I intend to.”
****
Once the secretary was out of sight, we turned back to the second office door and the nerve-jangling drums. Taxi was checking her safety, flicking it on and off a few times.
“Sweets? You ready for this?” I asked, nodding toward the back room.
“Yeah. Yeah, just...we’ve been at this for a long time. You think this pony is the one who helped set up the kill on you and Cosmo?”
“If I’m lucky, yeah. I don’t know who it could have been. He might be able to finally unwind this damn knot.”
“I… guess we shouldn’t keep him waiting then. Remember, as few deaths as possible.”
"I promise to keep it down to single digits."
"There's only supposed to be six in there."
"It'll be an easy promise to keep, then."
****
Earth pony rear hooves are some of the most feared weapons in all of Equestria. Some police teams take along battering rams to storm buildings, but, much to the chagrin of the rams themselves, they never really saw widespread use; a few solid hits with an earth pony's ol' Lefty and Righty, and anything short of a bank vault door will cave.
The door of the Drum Beat’s office was nowhere near a bank vault and I’d struck it right next to the handle with much more force than strictly necessary. It didn’t so much open as it exploded inwards.
Taxi was in first, her P.E.A.C.E. cannon leveled at the pair of moving bodies sprawled over top of the broad, wooden desk in the middle of the room. Limerence followed her in, his sword out and the tip leveled dangerously, as I covered the corners with my pistol, taking in the layout at a glance; a wooden desk, a chair, a few trashy pictures of fillies in various unseemly poses, and a thumping speaker the size of my chest set into the wall which was pumping out a beat that made my bones ache. The room was lit by a single, metal desk lamp which lay on the floor in front of the desk, turned towards the ceiling where it’d apparently been knocked by the two wiggling bodies stretched across the desktop.
The mare, a glowingly floral magenta-coloured mess who might have been of age if you didn’t look too close at her ID, let out a shriek as she caught sight of us and struggled to rise. Her partner seemed to just take it for a signal that his vigor met with her approval and sped up, but overbalanced as she heaved herself against his weight, sending both of them toppling off the side of the desk into a heap of sticky limbs.
My eyes drifted down to the stallion’s flank… A drum. I couldn’t stop myself from grinning as recognition set in.
“Bari?!” I laughed.
I reached over and tapped the volume control beside the speaker, shutting it off. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until that moment that I noticed the line of what seemed to be four holes filled with tiny heaps of dirt lined across the back wall.
****
I’m not a pony to believe in karma. Karma isn’t a force you can kick in the face or put a bullet in when it isn’t behaving. Karma doesn’t obey the law. Karma is what happens in ponies' minds when the law has failed to provide for solutions and when justice can only be achieved in a metaphorical sense sometime down the line.
In my experience, karma is usually just another word for bastard... but now and then, even bastards give you a pass.
****
As I silenced the music, there was an explosion of dust. The filly let out another ear-splitting scream, though the half-light of the desk lamp was only enough to make out the general shapes of four diamond dogs clawing their ways out of the holes.
Reginald Bari, King Cosmo’s erstwhile casino manager -- who Taxi had put in the hospital on at least one occasion -- dragged himself up and began yanking at the drawer of his desk. His eyes fell on my driver, then almost bugged out of his skull. He stopped short and slowly raised his hoof, pointing at her accusingly, his muzzle hanging open.
With four diamond dogs in the space, it was suddenly much smaller, though these were a more compact breed than that great bitch we’d met upstairs.
There was a long pause, as everyone took stock of the situation.
They were also armed with a variety of instruments for the dealing of death.
Thankfully, they weren’t the only ones.
Limerence was the first to move, his sword scything through the air as he jumped forward and onto the desk in one smooth motion, using his momentum to take him over into the first diamond dog’s chest. The sword sank through the shoulder of the shaggy, bipedal beast’s vest as it raised its billy club to crush his skull. Blood spurted and the monster let out a frightened squeal of pain as the librarian pinned it to the wall. Relic or not, that katana was a vicious weapon. There was a crunch as the tip snapped against the wall, then the remaining bit plunged into the badly painted concrete, pinning the creature like a fly on an entomologist's work table.
The dust obscuring our visibility, I barely saw the second diamond dog launching itself at Lim with a short blade of some kind clutched in his paw, glittering in the light of the desk lamp.
Swift’s eyes were miles better, because she was there as the dog brought the blade around to bury it in the librarian’s side, interposing herself between them. She grunted, taking the blade strike on her vest. It sent her tumbling, but not before she could lash out with her good wing and catch Lim’s assailant on the side of the head. Pegasi wings make lethal weapons, and only the dog's inborn toughness saved it from a broken neck. It still hit the wall with a noise like a bag of used kitty litter being slung off a second floor balcony, and slid to the floor.
Somepony kicked the desk lamp and I lost sight of Bari, but he was the least of my worries.
One of the remaining diamond dogs who’d been moving to help his friend with Limerence stooped over as Swift struggled to regain her footing, sweeping its claw down to pin the pegasus by the neck to the carpet. Its teeth gleamed as he held up a short spiked weapon with a hook on the end ready to tear into her spine, then glared at me. The message was clear.
Unfortunately for that diamond dog, I have been known to take such messages with poor grace.
Kicking the wall behind me for a quick boost of speed, I barreled into the desk, sending it skidding into the wall, then lowered my head and aimed for his knees. It was a big bastard and the blow caught the creature low. There was a wet snap, followed by a roar of pain. Something caught in my coat, then tumbled to the carpet before the monster sprawled, freeing Swift. As he it hit the ground, two very tiny but very solid pegasus hooves landed on his forehead. I don’t know what diamond dog skulls are made of, but it must have been some close relative of stone. That hit should have splashed the brains of anything less than a minotaur.
Limerence was dealing with the fourth dog and they were locked in close combat, exchanging quick blows, or rather I should say, Limerence was kicking the diamond dog and the dog was throwing its claws in the librarian’s general direction. I never did see if it was the shot in the genitals or to the side of the head that brought down it down, but when it fell, it hit the ground with nary a whimper.
The dust began to settle somewhat as Swift rose, limping on three legs with her one good wing dragging the carpet, and Limerence attempted to wipe dust from his vest.
“Alrighth!” a voice behind me shouted. “Everypony freezshe or she diesh!”
That’s not a thing a cop ever wants to hear. It triggers some basic instinct in the cop mind that goes back to the paleo-pony period that knows hostage takers are the lowest of the low. They can’t face an opponent personally, won’t surrender, and aren’t ‘playing fair’ as it were. Therefore they receive no mercy.
I turned my head, very slowly, to the door.
Framed in the dusty opening, my driver held her P.E.A.C.E. cannon loosely by its strap, the string she’d rigged around the trigger pull still clutched in her teeth. Beside her, Reginald Bari, his black mane wild and his eyes wide with fear, held a derringer in his muzzle. It was aimed squarely at her face.
I hadn’t seen him sneak around the edge of the room, but then, I’d been otherwise occupied. My cutie-mark gave a little sizzle.
“Taxi…” I murmured.
“Yes, Hardy?” my driver replied, softly. Her eyes crept sideways to the gun inches from her face.
“You alright?”
“Oh, peachy,” she deadpanned. “How’d he get past you?”
“Not sure. Still working that out.” I turned to the stiff backed stallion and asked, “You want to enlighten us?”
Bari’s eyes flicked towards his back where I noticed a thin cloak of some kind dangling from his shoulders that he definitely hadn’t been wearing when we came in. His lips curled a little as he spoke around the weapon. I hoped, sincerely, that he didn’t accidentally lick the trigger. “I’m leafin’! Nopony follow me or I shooth her!”
For several seconds, there was only the faint mewling of the diamond dog still attached to the wall. Limerence gave him a merciful snap on the side of the head with one hoof and he sagged, unconscious.
The stallion with the gun began to back out of the room. “You’re cominth with me sthweeth hearth!” he growled.
I closed my eyes. “Taxi, would you please take that silly pea shooter from him before he hurts himself?”
“Don’t we need him conscious?” she asked as Bari’s eyes darted between us and his fear grew.
“That’s at your discretion, really. I’m sure he can regain consciousness in a timely manner.”
A feral grin spread across my driver’s face. She let the barrel of the P.E.A.C.E. drop, then used its weighty momentum to duck into a ball and roll forward, coming up with the enormous barrel of the weapon facing Bari, laying on her back. The stallion flinched away, teeth tightening on the trigger of his gun as he tried to follow Taxi.
The cannon’s blast was something akin to a squid being forced through a cheese grater at close to the speed of sound.
****
No one is completely sure why weapon designer Bouncing Betty tried to literalize weaponry with a vigor most ponies reserve for second-degree murder. Rarely do pacifists become weapons designers, but she believed quite strongly that killing was unnecessary except in very specific circumstances. To that end, she did her absolute best when producing devices for the dealing of harm and injury to be very specific as to their function.
After the death of her family at the hands of a dissatisfied client who’d requested a weapon that fired ‘smooth as butter’ and received a rifle with a firing pin made of thickened cream, rather than change professions, she came the conclusion that idiom was the source of her woes. From there on, she was determined to strike down hyperbole, idiom, and metaphor with the fury of the heavens and the complete lack of common sense that goes with being a pacifistic weapons designer.
It should be no surprise, then, that insanity soon followed, with medication on its heels, and a series of progressively stranger attempts to wipe the scourge of poorly chosen language, local color, and slang from the world of firearms.
It was not her insanity that made her unique, however. Detrot is rife with ponies both mad and ambitious.
No, what made her remarkable was that, in a few cases... she actually succeeded in developing weapons of staggering linguistic specificity and effectiveness. This ultimately culminated in her most twisted creation, the Gut Shot. It was a lovely weapon, if only because it rarely necessitated a direct hit to reduce an enemy to copious vomiting.
Later on in her illustrious career, the P.E.A.C.E. project was happy to have her, psychosis or no.
****
“Slug rounds. Funny. How do we get him off the wall?”
“If we’re taking a vote, sir, I think a really big spatula.”
“Ugh, don’t be silly. I’ve got a jar of salt here in my saddle bags. Just toss it on him when you want to get him down. Speaking of that, shouldn’t we maybe get these guys an ambulance...or maybe several? We don’t need a body count here and that fellow with the knife sticking out of him looks pretty bad...”
“I was very careful, Miss Taxi. The blade has missed any major arteries and death or permanent injury is unlikely. They will all have mild concussions and the gentlebeing with the broken knee may need minor surgery. We have time, their discomfort aside.”
“Careful or not, Sweets is right. Alright, kid, go find that big bitch with the little colt friend and see if she’ll help. We need a couple ambulances, but with luck, we’ll be out of here by the time they arrive.”
****
Swift departed, back up the tunnel. Taxi, Limerence, and I studied Reginald Bari’s plastered form as he hung from the wall directly beside the exterior office. The sticky slug rounds had left only a few inches of his muzzle, nose, and eyes exposed. The rest of him, from hocks to withers, was drenched in a thick, viscous fluid. Worse, it smelled like the back end of a dump truck. His pistol was stuck in there with him, but I doubted it would work again in this lifetime. It’d hardened in under a second, but a second was all it needed to seep into every nook and cranny of the little gun, as well as every nook and cranny of the whimpering criminal.
“Well, we could leave him up there. You know, as a piece of art nouveau. I kinda think he goes with the theme of the place upstairs.” Taxi giggled to herself. The stuck stallion’s face scrunched up and I think he tried to shake his head. It was hard to tell.
“I would like to ask him a few questions regarding that cloak he was wearing. Unless I miss my mark, it’s a most interesting piece of enchantment,” Limerence mused.
“Oh lay off it you two. We’re short of time,” I grumbled, poking my head into Taxi’s saddlebag until I found the canister of salt. Unscrewing the cap I turned sideways and did a quick swing of the head, tossing the entire bottle across the stuck earth pony. While I’m no fan of gimmicky weapons, the pony who’d invented the slug non-lethal sticky round really knew their business.
There was the noise of ice on a frozen lake cracking and Bari yelped as he was suddenly dumped off the wall by the contracting stain of chemicals, pitching onto his face. Sweets was beside him, one hoof on the back of his head, making sure he didn’t do anything stupid. Edging over, I gently tugged the pistol out of his mouth. It was, as I’d thought, gummed beyond usability.
“Phew... you’re going to need a bath, Bari, me'son. That stuff sticks in places you won’t even know you had.” I muttered, lowering myself to peer into Bari’s eyes. The fear from earlier had gone, now that it was clear we didn’t intend to kill him, and it’d been replaced with defiance and canny calculation. I intended to have that done with relatively quickly. I glanced around, then shut the door on the four diamond dogs in Bari’s office and pointed at his secretary’s desk. “I don’t believe your secretary will mind if we use her seat for this. What you think, Sweets?”
“No, I don’t think she will, Hardy,” my driver replied, coyly, as she hoisted the black-maned stallion up by the scruff and almost tossed him at the chair.
That seemed to rouse our prisoner’s tongue. “Ugh, screw you, you pissing awful twat!”
“Now, now, Bari.” I bared my teeth in something that was only loosely a smile. “The lady was very courteous the last time you met-”
“Courteous?! Bitch put me in the hospital! I am not talking to you. Might as well put a bullet in me if I did! The ponies out for you-” he snarled, but I cut him off with a light tap on the mouth. To the untrained eye, it might have looked like I smacked him, but an officer never stoops to such measures. Though, technically, I wasn't an officer anymore.
“We’ll get to the ponies out for us in a moment. As I was saying, the lady was very courteous. You’re not eating out of a tube or breathing via as machine. She could easily have cut blood flow to your crotch and then where would your lovely friend have been a few minutes ago? ...Actually… Speaking of loose civilians...where’d she go?” I realized I hadn’t seen his consort since the fighting started.
Turning, I reopened the door of his office and peered around. At first, I only heard the snores of four diamond dogs with lightly bruised brains, but after a second I could single out another sound; soft weeping. Moving into the room, I turned in a circle, then spotted a dark red tail poking out from behind Bari’s desk.
“Miss?” I asked, awkwardly. How do you talk to a mare whose lover you’ve just finished unsticking from a wall? “Miss, we’re not here to hurt you.”
Her tail twitched, curling up underneath her backside. She peered, cautiously, over the top of the desk. Her eyes were red and ringed. She might have been blue, or possibly purple. It was tough to tell in the semi-darkness.
“C-c-can I-I h-have m-my f-fix now?” she stammered, as though her tongue were several sizes too large.
My chest tightened as a cold realization set in. Her quivering shoulders and the look of extreme sleep deprivation said ‘Ace’ addict, but she couldn’t have been on the stuff for more than a little while. She still had some of her baby fat and that’s the first thing to go. Ghoulini had said Bari was trying to replace Cosmo. Replacing the King of Ace meant supplying drugs.
A slow fire started to build in my cutie-mark.
I’m sure he thought of the girl as just a side-benefit.
'No killing, Hardy. You need him alive,’ Juniper’s voice whispered in the back of my mind.
“Honey, I’m going to get you out of here. I know a place where you can get your gear and where you can sleep, but we need to get you upstairs. Can you walk?”
I don’t know what part of that she heard, but the word ‘gear’ perked her right up.
“I-I t-think so…” She grabbed onto the desk, pulling herself halfway to her hooves. I eased over to her side, doing my best not to frighten the poor filly any worse. Briefly, she jerked away from my touch, but I slid under her foreleg and she leaned heavily against my shoulder. Guiding her out of the office, I retrieved a chair, then shut the door, jamming the handle and leaving the diamond dogs to their unplanned naps.
I tilted my hat brim down, covering the half of the girl’s face where Bari sat at his secretary’s desk. I could feel three sets of eyes following me as I lead her out the second door, back into the tunnel. I beckoned in Taxi’s direction as discreetely as I could. I heard her hoofsteps and the door to the office closing. Shifting the girl’s weight against the nearest wall, I let her rest there as I moved back to Taxi’s side and pushed her checkered mane out of her face, leaning in close so we could speak discretely.
“Sweets, that bottom feeder in there has been supplying this kid.”
Taxi’s shoulder tensed. “Ace?”
“Yeah, probably. I don’t have to fill in the blanks where that relationship is concerned. ”
“I’ll break the little bastard. Hardy, give me five minutes-” she hissed, but I cut her off with one hoof on her shoulder.
“I need you to take the girl to Stella’s place. She’s crashing.” I nodded meaningfully at the shaking filly whose eyes were slowly drooping shut. “If the ambulances find her here, she’ll be taken to a hospital and they’ll detox her for a day or two, then put her back on the street. Either way, Bari will have her back here riding his desk in a few days.”
“Oh, I can make sure he never-”
“No, Sweets. No maiming. Take care of the girl. Give her to Stella. At worst, he’ll make sure she gets cleaned up and some medical attention.”
“What about you and the bookworm? Where do you want to meet?”
“We can get to the edge of diamond dog territory and call a cab. We’ll meet you at the Nest once we’re done here.”
Taxi’s breath caught and she whispered, reluctantly, “Alright. If I don’t get to kill him, you don’t either. Got me?”
“I want to get this over with as much as you do. Now go.”
My driver nibbled at her lower lip, as though she might say something more, then stepped back and went to the quivering filly, speaking in low tones like one might to a frightened animal. I straightened my coat and pulled off my hat, inspecting it for fresh damage before plunking it back on my head.
If I’m honest, I was dithering; so much rested on our interrogation of Reginald Bari. I didn’t need another disappointment to add to what’d already been a difficult day.
Gathering myself, I stepped back through the door of the outer office and shut it behind me. The lock clicked shut with terrible finality.
Bari still sat where I’d left him, his seedy brown eyes following me. A keyring and pen lay on the table, which had apparently been the contents of the fixer's pockets. Limerence stood behind him with his usual serene, unflappable expression, though it seemed a bit harder than usual, like it’d been carved into his cheeks with a chisel. Wherever the secretary might have been, she was taking her sweet time. Lim opened his eyes, saw me, and flicked his muzzle open, showing an extra key in the same style as the rest of those on the keyring. He dropped it onto one hoof, discretely, then popped it into the top drawer of the desk.
I nodded my approval to him, then I walked to the desk and put my hooves on it, leaning across to stare into the fixer’s eyes. “Mister Bari, I want some very straightforward information from you. If you give it to me, I leave here today and you get on with your wretched little life. If you don’t, we drag you to the police station and leave you tied to the fire hydrant out front. Is this a suitable arrangement?”
I knew what was coming, but there are certain conventions you have to stick to. He rolled his tongue around his teeth, then inhaled. I ducked to one side, letting the gob of spit fly over my shoulder.
Never one to disobey convention, I snaked forward and grabbed Bari by the back of the head, bringing his forehead down on the desk just hard enough to make the entire table shake. He jerked and let out a pained breath, struggling to rise. I held him there until he stopped, then released his head and he slowly sat up again, glowering at me with a slow burning fury.
“You’ve got nothing on me. My record is clean. You broke into my place of business. You set hoof within a mile of the police station and it’ll be you they’ll be dumping you in the cell first!” Bari snarled.
It wasn’t pleasant to realize that he was correct. My usual routines tended to hinge very heavily on whether or not I had the authority to put somepony in a nice, deep pit for a long, long time if they don’t tell me what I need to know. Interrogation usually depends heavily on having some type of incentive you can wave over somepony’s head and short of breaking many of his bones, I didn’t have anything off the top of my head. I knew he’d worked for Cosmo, but then, many ponies had worked for Cosmo. It did me no good if I couldn’t get him into a court. He might have dealt drugs, but I doubted he had more than a small stash in his office and, even then, I had no warrant.
I set my jaw, pulling my sleeve up over my gun and flicking the hammer back, raising the weapon and pointing it between Bari’s eyes. “I suppose I could just blow your brains all over the wall. That would work for me, honestly.”
He seemed entirely unphased by the idea, leaning back in his chair and putting his hooves behind his head. “Yeeeah, pull the other one, cop. It’s got bells on it. You didn’t come all the way down here to plug me.”
“You set up the hit on me and Cosmo!” I snapped.
“So what if I did? Think you can prove it?” Bari’s teeth flashed as he put one hoof on his secretary’s desk, stroking the wood back and forth. “You need information. It so happens I deal in information. If you’re willing to pay for it...saaay, enough to set me up nicely and a guarantee from that lizard friend of yours to leave my suppliers alone, I could maybe see my way to passing along something you might could use.” His lip curled into a sneer as he added, “I won’t even charge you extra for the trip to the emergency room that bitch of yours gave me."
I was very tempted to blow a hole in him, see how he bargained with a bullet in his lower intestine, but that wasn't likely to work... and police interrogation methods tend to rely on time. Sure, you can leave a suspect in interrogation for a few hours with a pot of coffee and no bathroom breaks, or now and then claim ‘poorly built chairs’ if somepony should get a few bruises writing out a confession. Sometimes that helps. Sometimes we acquire a few talents in between that put us in good stead, but somehow, I got the feeling Bari would hold out. Whoever bought that hit paid better money than I had on hoof and Stella’s line of credit probably didn’t extend to buying up entire streets. Besides, I didn’t feel much like negotiating with the weasely little flank stain.
Before I could start another line of questioning, however, Limerence raised his foreleg for my attention.
“Detective, I have read much about interrogation and have often wanted to try my hoof at it.”
“You’ve… never interrogated-” I began, incredulously, then shut my muzzle on the snarky comment and grabbed Limerence by the foreleg, dragging him off to one side where I could speak in a low voice. “...No. Just… No. And may I recommend, in your future career, that you don’t tell the suspect you’ve never actually performed an interrogation before?”
The librarian, thankfully, had the good sense to whisper, though he retained the urgent tone. “I have questioned subjects before and I believe your approach is likely to have us here when certain inconveniences arrive. He is banking on that. I believe I can get the information we need with some haste. Will you allow me a ‘crack’ at him?”
I closed my eyes and inhaled, slowly, then let the breath out in a rush. I’d hoped to be able to extract Bari and interrogate him at our leisure, but I doubted we’d get by an entire building worth of ponies and diamond dogs, including that fellow by the front door, without somepony raising an alarm. Carrying an unconscious body tends to do that and we needed out sooner rather than later. The fight with the body-guards didn’t help, and tying them up was going to waste more time. I wanted out before they woke up and decided to have another shot at us, or worse, dug out through the floor and found some friends to give us more flavors of Tartarus.
“You’ve got five minutes, then we’re going to have to fight our way out and you get to carry him.” I stood back and to one side. Limerence nodded and began fishing in his side pocket with his muzzle, which took at least twenty seconds. I couldn’t help a twinge of pleasure watching him have to use his teeth like everypony else without a horn. Finally, though, he found his prize and held a tiny book in his teeth that said ‘Pocket Dictionary’ on the spine, then trotted over to Bari and set the book in front of him. I plunked myself down on the concrete floor to watch.
“Mister… Bari, was it? I don’t imagine you use your ‘real’ name in your professional endeavors these days.” The librarian smiled, resting his hooves on the table.
Bari grunted, putting his legs behind his head and pretending boredom. I could see him carefully watching the other stallion through slitted eyes. “You’re gonna do what, bore me to death? I know the damn Archivists. Anypony that deals with anything magical knows the Archivists! You stink of book glue and shit. Go toodle back to your library. The pig and I have business to discuss.”
“Yes, I’m sure you do.” Limerence circled the desk, that unsettling smile still firmly in place. “The Drum Beat. Amusing title. Might I ask where it comes from? I assume something besides your cutie-mark.”
Bari pushed the chair back and lifted himself to his feet, staring hard at the library pony, his nostrils flaring. I tapped the hammer of my gun, the click echoing around the tiny room. Bari gave me a nasty look, before turning back to my companion. “If there’s a beat, I keep it, boy,” he growled, threateningly. “I hear that music that makes the world turn and I listen close. I hear you dying one of these days here reeeal soon.”
Limerence bobbed his head, as though that’d been the answer he expected. “A pony who keeps tempo with the world around them should know that wheresoever there is an upbeat, a downbeat shall soon follow.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, then continued. “Drum Beat has a certain logic to it. I, too, share more of an affinity for my nom de gare than I do for my name. You called me an Archivist. I appreciate that, though my name -- and do be clear, I feel no fear in giving you this -- is Limerence. It is a word of interesting origin. Archaic, yes, but still significant even today.”
“Is this going somewhere, boy? I’ve got places to be.” Bari, in spite of his irritation, looked vaguely uncertain of himself. He was starting to genuinely wonder just where all of this talk might be leading. He wasn't alone; I was wondering myself.
The librarian went on as though he hadn’t said a word. “You see, my mother loved me. Mightily, in fact.” A sad look crossed Lim’s face, but he covered it quickly. I was sure he was letting that on exclusively for Bari’s benefit. “You will see here…” Limerence opened the dictionary to a page that was already bookmarked and ran his hoof down it. Bari leaned forward slightly, looking down at the book. “'Limerence' is a word that, roughly speaking, means ‘obsession.' I was hers.” Easing back, he slid around the table behind Bari, who didn’t move, still studying the dictionary. “Today, Mister Bari, it is I who am obsessed. And as I’m sure you’re aware… a pony obsessed is capable of many things.”
I didn’t see the knife until he was already moving, and by then, it was too late. Limerence yanked open the front of his vest, grabbed Bari by the back of the neck with one hoof, slammed his face down on its side, and in one smooth motion snatched a five inch blade from his inner pocket with his teeth and drove it nearly to the hilt through the stallion’s ear. I don’t know how sharp that blade must have been, but my guess was ‘very’, because it went through flesh, book, and into table like a super-heated chainsaw through a bucket of double cream.
Bari jerked a little, but was so shocked he seemed momentarily uncertain as to what to do. I couldn’t blame him. I was still sitting there, open mouthed, as Limerence stood back and casually dusted a fleck of blood off of his hoof on the edge of the table.
The fixer just laid there for several seconds, his eyes wide as saucers.
He gave his free ear a little wiggle.
Then the other.
Then he screamed.
Then he tried to yank his head up from the table.
Then he screamed again.
I suppose there just isn’t much in a gangster’s repertoire of personal experience that prepares them for being… stapled… between the words ‘obsessive’ and ‘attachment’ in the dictionary definition of a disused descriptor.
“Now, then! It is rare I find myself in the position of ‘teacher’, but I find I like it.” Limerence was speaking again. “There are many words in Equestrian which are synonymous with ‘limerence’, and I have many knives remaining about my person. Shall we define a few more? If you make it necessary, I can certainly summon my thesaurus.”
Bari, who’d managed to pass himself off as the manager of a casino in the pursuit of his professional ambitions, wasn’t a stupid pony, whatever lack of wisdom might have lead him to a life of crime. His plans for extracting concessions might have been worthwhile, if I hadn’t been in a hurry or, mayhap, had I not had a very pointy librarian along. The turn of events had caught him on the wrong hoof, though.
“You can’t do this!” he howled, thumping one hoof on the table, which only jostled his head and set off another round of moaning. His eyes slid from Limerence to me. “C-cop! Stop h-him!”
You know, if he hadn’t called me ‘cop’ I might have? I don’t know why that irked me quite so badly.
Limerence slammed his toe down on the table beside Bari’s cheek, making the whole surface jump and eliciting a sound like a chicken being slow roasted alive from the trapped criminal. “For your sake, I think I am the one you speak to, Mister Bari, and I assure you, the Detective over there is not any more likely to save you than you are to save yourself. He is a creature of justice, and that filly… that child… upon whom you decided to express your prurient interests in exchange for indulging her chemical weaknesses has assured you little sympathy from that direction.” Lifting his hoof, he slid around the table and sat, poking at his cufflinks and settling his bowler back in neat order. “As to whether or not I can do this, I wish to make you aware of several significant facts.”
Bari was quaking violently, tears rolling down his nose. “W-what?”
“Firstly, the Detective over there believes in things such as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, evil and righteousness. I do not. The world is not so easily categorized. I am at peace with this. Secondly, you may feel it ‘bad’ that I’ve driven a blade through your ear’s cartilage, but I can guarantee, you would consider it a pale vision of ‘badness’ if I were to take this pencil here-” Limerence lifted a leaded pencil off the secretary’s desk, wiggling it front of Bari’s eyes before setting it down again. “-and drive it into your eardrum.”
I’m pretty sure Bari would have peed himself at this point, if his bladder had anything in it. My cutie-mark was strangely quiet. I expected it to be doing something at the sight, but now and then, I run into ponies who deserve whatever they get. I suspected, just then, this was probably the case. That or Lim was bluffing. I wasn’t sure which.
Limerence leaned in very close, whispering in Bari’s ear just loud enough for me to hear. “The third and ultimate fact you must acknowledge about whether or not I ‘can'... is that I have pinned your ear to a table. That is a truth, hard and inarguable. That I can do it twice should not require demonstration; you have another ear. That I would then feel absolutely no compunction in beginning to pin other pieces of you to the table should, therefrom, be easily extrapolated.”
The librarian moved away from the desk and settled himself beside me, crossing one hoof over the other as he went on, half turning in my direction, “So we come to an important question, which will be the first of several today. It is simply a matter of who does the asking, and how. Do you wish to parlay with the pony who may have a willingness to listen to you without inflicting trauma or do you wish to attempt it with the pony who has demonstrated the ability and inclination to impale your fleshy extremities to a lump of wood?”
He fell silent. The only sound remaining was the shuffling of Bari’s rear hooves as he tried to keep the weight off his ear and a faint *plink plink* that I soon identified as blood running down the table and dripping onto the floor.
“I...uh…” Bari stuttered and Limerence gave the table a little tap with one toe. “Alright! Alright! Dammit, you awful bastards!” he howled in agony. “I don’t know who ordered the hit! I don't! Th-they just paid me to infiltrate and tell them if Cosmo was losing it! I- I just had to call this number and tell them somepony was there! They promised me when he was out of the picture I’d have everything!”
“Who is they?” I inquired, rising and walking around the table.
“I d-dunno! I dunno! They just paid me! They were… They were looking for you, too!” he bawled. “I didn’t know they were going to try to kill you!”
“You suspected, though.” Limerence’s lip twitched as he contemplated this. “You received payments, Mister Bari. How?”
“M-my secretary picked them up! This lawfirm held them!”
Lim and I exchanged a glance. “Umbra, Animus, and Armature?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Yes! Yes! That's… That's them!” he sobbed, pressing his face against the desk. His voice was full of bitterness as he said, “Who-whoever they were working for promised half the crims in this city e-everything Cosmo had to whoever found you and the bastards stiffed me!”
“No… no, they didn’t.” I grinned at our prisoner. “I stiffed you, Bari. It might have been a dragon in lipstick who pulled the trigger, but I gave him the gun. Fair comeuppance for having me killed, especially because I intend to let you live today, if possible. How many pieces you’re in will depend on whether my friend here thinks you’re cooperating sufficiently. We’re not done here, though. Is there a hit on me still out?”
The fury in Bari’s face was tempered by the gentle reminder sticking out of his ear that said it would be unwise to act on his irritation. After a short hesitation, he answered, “N-no. There was never a hit on you. They just w-wanted you found, then whoever f-found you was supposed to call this number. I knew it... might be some kind of h-hit job, but they w-wanted to use their own c-contractors. A-after the casino there were still s-signs. Signs they were still looking for you.” he whimpered, digging at the pocket of his vest. I stepped over beside him, grabbing his hoof and moving it away, then sticking my muzzle in the pocket and retrieving his handkerchief, laying it on the table under his cheek to soak up a bit of the small puddle of blood.
“Elaborate on these ‘signs’, please?” Limerence said.
Bari’s gaze fell. “I was r-reading between the lines when they t-told m...e my ‘services were no longer required’. They called me and said th-they’re bringing in somepony from inside to...do something. Whatever it is, it’s big. They still want you. I-I’m pretty sure they want you... you alive this time!”
That was an unsettling thought. Till that moment, for some reason, I’d considered myself only a minor character in this unfortunate series of events. The confirmation that I was, in fact, a major player settled around my neck like a lead weight.
“Where are you getting these little musings, I wonder?” Limerence murmured.
Bari half-turned his head, then winced. “What are you? Stupid? These aren’t the kind of people to just… give up because some moron detective dodged a bullet! They want something f-from him or they w-wouldn’t have sp-spread his name around! Th-that first hit was just... opportunity. Cosmo was a… a wreck! He was going to spill so-something, b-but they... they didn’t want to kill him until he wasn’t useful anymore. T-that’s why I was there!”
I nodded as understanding dawned. “Ah… they may not have wanted to kill him just yet, but the two of us in one place was just too good for you to pass up, wasn’t it Bari? You called them, told them I was there and that the King of Ace was going to crack and tell me everything.” Bari shuddered and shut his eyes, but I ignored him and went on, “I wonder why they called in… whatever Grapeshot was… for that job. If they just wanted me dead, they could just call a public hit. Leaving that hanging over my head long enough would be a sure way to get it done.”
“Public hits operate on unpredictable time frames.” Limerence put in. “If a pony must die immediately, calling in a contractor is best. If they feared you might tell somepony whatever it was the King of Ace said to you, it might have been incentive enough to have you both eliminated immediately. It sounds as though Mister Bari put the fear of that in them.”
I nodded. “That still leaves the question of why hunt me down in the first place? The diary? Killing me there, specifically, makes no sense, unless there was some element we're missing. If they wanted me dead, a hit would have been plenty...unless they wanted me dead there. That or they needed me dead in some predictable way. Damn. I didn't need more puzzles." I returned my attention to our prisoner. "Alright, next question, Bari my sweet! Tell us about the cloak?” I ran my hoof over the tattered remains of the fabric still clinging to his neck. It felt smoother than silk. “That could be downright useful.”
“It was part of m-my payment. T-the ponies who p-paid for m-me to watch C-cosmo said i-if I made a w-wish, they could g-grant it. I left them a note... saying I w-wished for an inv-invisibility cloak.” His nose wrinkled. “Stupid thing only works at night, and only for a few seconds… and you… you tore it!”
“Ahhh...yes. A ‘cloak of shadows.' I remember my father telling me of these.” Limerence mused. “They are based on a piece of ancient clothing favored by Princess Luna. Sadly, the modern prototypes were less successful and the true magics behind their creation have been lost. I believe we have several in the Archive. Little more than curiosities, really.”
“Wait, they offered you a wish?” I asked, feeling a tingle in my flank.
“Yeah…” he replied. “I thought it was strange, but… but I told them what I wanted, and-and next time my payment came, the cloak was in there.”
“Mmm… That’s… I don’t know what to make of that yet, but I’ve got one more question for you. The armor of Nightmare Moon. That was your work. No, don’t bother denying. I’ve got a reliable source. Why and for who?”
The fixer half squinted out of one eye, looking slightly confused. “H-how in the... I... mean... uh…” he stuttered.
Twitching his jacket open on one side, Limerence revealed a second pocket, which had another book sticking just above the lip. “I don’t hear an answer coming in a timely manner, Mister Bari.”
“How did you e-even know about that?! It hasn’t been on the n-news!” Bari gasped, using one hoof to hold his ear against the table so it didn’t move around too much.
“I found the professor’s corpse and tracked it here,” I said, carefully keeping a neutral tone of voice.
“F-Fizzle’s... d-dead?” He sounded genuinely surprised.
“He is dead and his horn was cut off. He’d been entrusted with a cache of magical weapons which was also stolen and the armor replaced with a very expensive counterfeit.” Limerence murmured. “Mightn’t you know anything about that?”
There was a short pause, then Bari shook his head, which was another in a long line of easy to make mistakes when you’re attached to a wooden surface by something sensitive. “Oww! D… dammit! I...I didn’t kn-know. Fizzle w-wasn’t r-run through me. J-just the armor. They wanted the b-best and I had a...a pony I know...who is the best. I-it was an-another job, you know? This b-business isn’t exactly about going to your boss’s place for H-Hearth’s Warming Eve!”
“Who paid? How did they approach you? Tell me something or I swear, I’m bucking that table!” I tried to keep my voice down, but the frustration was starting to get to me.
“I-It was one of those puh… ponies in the stupid robes! I don’t know anything! I don't! They set up the escrow account!” he yelped.
My back legs wobbled, then shot out from under me, and I sat down harder than I meant to. I didn’t have the excess mental energy necessary to rise again. Re-ordering brain processes is a tough activity for those of us who’ve lost entire years in the bottoms of beer bottles. I turned to Limerence, who’d sunk back into that emotionless facade, but I detected a slight twitch in his left eye.
When I found my voice, it was to shout, “The Lunar Passage paid for the fake armor?!”
“Yee-heee-heeesss...” Bari sobbed heavily, his chest heaving as he beat one hoof on table.
“It... can’t be,” I muttered, but it didn't sound like Bari was lying. “That’s... I mean, they were still protesting when we were there. Wouldn’t they have stopped?”
Limerence pulled a second blade from his vest and lay it on the table in front of Bari. “Maybe I should slice off that ear and see if you’re feeling a little more honest-"
“Dammit, please! Please! I swear!” the fixer shrieked.
I put my hoof on Lim’s chest, holding him back.
My cutie-mark was still cold as the grave, and I was uniquely qualified to speak on that subject.
“He’s telling us the truth. It was Lunar Passage, or somepony pretending to work for them.”
The librarian’s jaw tightened and he leaned close to whisper, “Detective, that is entirely out of our batting league. He knows that. He’s just trying to put us off!”
I shook my head. “My talent is telling me he’s not.”
“I have to report this to my father now-”
“Hold on… what’s that?”
Limerence followed where I was looking up to a corner of the room behind Bari’s head.
I doubt I’d have seen it if the rational parts of my brain hadn’t been otherwise occupied with a dose of impending panic. It was a tiny red light, discretely winking on and off.
“Mister Bari,” I said, lifting my head to address our prisoner. “What, precisely, does the flashing light mean?”
Bari tried to shift his head slightly, then his eyes widened. “Is... is it flashing or is it strobing?” he asked, nervously.
I scratched the side of my head. “Um… definitely flashing.”
“Oh shit…” the criminal cursed under his breath then lifted himself a little. “Cops! Cops are busting the place!”
I leapt to my hooves. “Wait, what?!”
The glass window on the outside of the office shattered and something rolled end over end through the air, landing at my hooves. I had time for two steps back before there was a flash, a snap, and an all-encompassing darkness descended.