An Artist Among Animals

by Bandy

7: An Abundance of Bad Guys

To a member of the Equestrian Intelligence Service, your real face was your greatest disguise.

When the EQUIS was formed in the darker years of the war, its primary goal was to kill spies and crush dissidents. Their favorite technique was sending dissidents intimidating letters in the mail full of photographs of war-dead and brain surgery patients and victims of autocarriage accidents. They used this method to unsettle the dissident, and to let them know the government knew where they lived. The end goal wasn’t necessarily to turn the public against the dissident. The end goal was to make the dissident turn against the public. If the dissident they were after stopped writing to every newspaper and talking to every radio station, that was great, but it would be even better if they just melted down in public and snapped at some poor innocent waitress while they were eating lunch. You can’t beat a rebel by pushing them down when they stand up for the world--you win by convincing them the world’s not worth standing up for. When the public sees that anger turned against them, they will begin to distrust the dissident, who in turn distrusts them on a much deeper level. The public sees a paranoid pony lost in their delusion, and the dissident sees informants in their friends and spies in their waitresses.

The real spies, they usually just shot.

That was years ago. Though the existence of the Equestrian Intelligence Service had been kept a secret from all but the princesses and a few important military leaders, the agency had undergone a significant overhaul since the war ended. Now, the EQUIS solved mysteries.

Two EQUIS agents weaved their way through the crowd of reporters and police towards the bank. One looked right while the other looked left, locked in poetry. They were trained too well for this, but that was beside the point. To anypony outside the system they looked like the other plainclothes detectives who had taken to snooping around at the behest of the Ponyville PD. Only their eyes gave them away--dull like tinted plexiglass, the look of the old Scoltscilian marefiosos.

The lead stallion, McTough, found the chief of the Ponyville police and whispered a few words into his ear. As they made their way into the bank, ponies began to stream out. After a minute, the two were alone.

“So how’d your date go, Bats?” McTough asked.

“Terrible,” Bats replied. “We went to that one Scoltsilian place, the one that gives you unlimited breadsticks with whatever you ordered. I thought she was gonna think I was a cheap jerk, but it turns out she loves the place.”

“Was that the terrible part?” As he spoke, McTough meandered his way towards the rear door leading to the alley, eyes on the ground.

“No, I’m getting to the terrible part. We hit it off really well in the restaurant, right? The food wasn’t great, but I’m not the kinda pony who buys you a fifty-bit steak on a third date. The service paycheck won’t allow it. She loved her salad thing, I don’t know what it was called. It had a lot of fancy stuff in it. She loved it, that’s the point. I’m gonna get hungry if I talk any more about the food.”

As McTough reached the back door, he turned abruptly and held out his hoof like he had a gun. “I’m listening, go on.”

“So we finish up at the restaurant, and I foot the bill, and let me tell you, thank the gods that mare bought a salad. I walk her home after that--she lives in this really nice apartment near the palace. It’s got a view of the palace from one side, and the other is close enough to the edge of the city that you can see most of the way down. There’s no camps or nothing around it.”

“I thought you said she was poor,” McTough said as he drew his hoof across the lobby, then continued creeping forward. “She worked retail, didn’t she?”

“Yeah, she does, but I guess her dad’s wealthy. He bought her the apartment and then made her find her own way from there. She’s not stuck up like a rich mare would be. She was nice.”

“Respectable man.” McTough imagined a room full of screaming ponies, targets on their heads, their panic inciting fire in the chamber of his imaginary hoofgun. One by one they fell to the floor, their hysterical faces twisted and mashed in.

“Yeah. This mare, she turned out well.” Bats chuckled. “No subtext there, but you know how I feel about redheads.” More imaginary ponies crumpled under the gunfire. McTough split a smile. “So anyway, I walked her home. We were hitting it off the whole way there. It was like Victory Day, swear on my life. Sparks flying everywhere. I was halfway thinking she was gonna invite me inside.”

“Did she?”

“No. Here’s the terrible part. We get to her doorstep and she says, I’ll paraphrase, she said, Bats, you’re a really good stallion. I don’t think any stallion has ever been as nice to me as you have.”

“Good grief.”

“Bats, she says, I want to be very honest with you. I really like you. I want the two of us to be serious with each other. I want us to be a couple.”

The imaginary ponies disappeared. McTough shook his head. “Shit, I’m sorry Bats.”

Bats nodded. “I almost said yes. She was alright. She was a good one. Good ones don’t stoop to our level.”

“You would have quit to be with her?”

“I’m not saying I would have done that. We’ve only been out on three dates. I’m not saying I would’ve married the mare. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have, either.”

“So you broke it off with her?”

“No, we’re going on another date next week, but it’s over.” Bats threw a few files onto the center counter. “Anything?”

McTough shook his head. “Clean entry, clean exit. Nothing left behind. All we have to go on are the witnesses.”

“The Ponyville PD has a unicorn on staff who wants to do a sweep of the place for DNA. He did it once before we got here but came up with nothing.”

“Tell him he can have the room when we’re done. There’s too much DNA in here anyway to be conclusive. Bring in the witnesses.”

“Yes sir.”

For the next few hours, they talked to all fifteen people who had been in the bank, from the customers to the teller to the manager who had been in the bathroom when the robbery took place. Though the individual accounts varied slightly, all present agreed that there was one coltish mare with orange fur and a purple mane, and a golden-colored stallion with green eyes and a southern drawl to his voice. The stallion seemed to be in charge. He was the only one with a gun. The teller in particular was helpful with providing a more detailed description of the stallion’s mannerisms.

Once they ushered the witnesses out, they let the unicorn from the Ponyville police back in. As they left the bank, McTough said, “Bonnie and Clydesdale, it seems.”

“There are no leads in the files. This seems like an isolated incident. Maybe they’re a married couple who got in trouble with the bank.” Bats shrugged. “Without any leads, the case will go cold in a hurry.”

“Ponyville is a pretty tired place,” McTough said. “When we get back to the motel room, let’s look at the larger Ponyville file and see if there were any other investigations going on prior to this.” The two fell into step as they crossed the yellow line. The crowd had already begun to disperse. The press was packing up and going home. Concerned citizens formed a few groups, but most of them stood alone. “There aren’t a lot of criminals in this town.”

The file turned out to be disappointingly thin. Among the potential leads they had brought along in their big work trunk, Ponyville’s was only the second smallest in the lot, right after Appleoosa.

McTough and Bats settled into a pair of creaky chairs in the corner of their motel room and started digging.

What they found were connections. The last legitimate agency investigation in Ponyville had taken place eight years ago, during the final stage of the war. One of the Elements of Harmony, Rarity, had been stealing ration cards through her position in the propaganda department. The EQUIS couldn’t pin her, so they had an agent throw a small firebomb through her kitchen window just to prove a point.

As it turned out, Rarity also had mob connections.

“Pull out the file on the fur trade, would you?” McTough asked. “Look at this--Rarity has alleged connections with the Griffonian fur trade. It’s all just hearsay, but arrest me now if there are any other criminals in town willing to knock over a bank. If it’s involved, she’s shielding herself with a middleman.”

“A griffon is behind all this?” Bats asked.

McTough shook his head. “We monitor the griffons too well for that. The middleman’s got to be a pony.”

“A marefiosa.”

“Maybe. The old mobs are dead, but if there’s one still operational in Ponyville, it might have a hoof in this robbery.” He looked at Bats. “Play the devil’s advocate here.”

Bats hummed and scratched his mane slowly, moving his head but not his hoof. “The mob theory is a stretch. We have no evidence for it. Cash-strapped lovers holds water, though.” Somewhere far outside, the moon rose from beyond the horizon. “This is about Noir.”

“No it's not.”

“Starless hells, it is!”

“It's not anything about that. Don't stick your nose into that, you asshole.”

“Hey, don't call me an asshole, alright? You're the asshole.”

“Oh, I'm the asshole?”

“You're gonna get us both fired. You're the asshole.”

“I'm not gonna get you fired--”

“No, screw you, I don't want to hear it.” Bats straightened the papers on the table. “You know what the agency’ll do to you if you go vigilante?”

McTough looked at the floor and nodded.

“Then follow up on Bonnie and Clydesdale! Jeez, you're gonna get us both indicted.”

“You follow up on Bonnie and Clydesdale. I'm gonna follow my hunch.”

Bats stood up. “Gods above McTough, they're gonna put you in the Mountain if you mess up! At best you're hindering my investigation.” He pointed helplessly at the door. “Dont screw me over man.”

“It's ‘sir’. I am your--”

“Alright, sir. Dont screw me over, sir.” Bats sat back down. “This is a solid lead. Let's do our job.”

“I’m gonna do my job, okay? Don’t question my competence when I’ve been doing this years longer than you have. Don’t question me. I’m fine.” McTough pushed the chair out of his way as he strode across the room. “We’re hungry, that’s the problem. We’re at each other’s throats because we’re hungry, that’s all. I’m gonna order us some pizza.”

“Pizza isn’t what’s eating me,” Bats said from across the room as McTough picked up the telephone receiver. “If you’re gonna ignore me at least put jalapeños on it.”

The room heated up in a hurry. Bats stepped outside to clear his head and was immediately struck by the rising moon. “Shit,” he muttered. “Think the pizza place will deliver this late?”

Bats couldn’t see McTough pause over the telephone. The menu crumpled and uncrumpled in his hoof with each knock of the rusting air conditioner in the corner. His mind moved someplace else. His vision doubled as memories collided. He saw the room full of screaming ponies again, not moving this time, just screaming. McTough sat across from a gorgeous mare with a fiery red mane making moony eyes at him. Across the room, a younger version of Noir dressed in his Chicoltgo police uniform herded nineteen ponies against a wall, an automatic strapped to his hoof. Once they were all in place, he raked the line with bullets until he ran out of ammo. He stared at the bloodstained wall for a few seconds, though with his back turned McTough couldn’t see the look on his face. Then he walked outside, threw his automatic into a bush, and headed to the police station. The mare across from him giggled in delight and sipped a tall glass of water with a straw.

“Jalapeños,” McTough said. “Fine.”