The Clarity of Cold Steel

IT’S DEAD ENDS all around, a Gods-damned royal straight flush of them, all lined up nice and pretty and dripping crimson. Gortham’s family knows nothing. Nothing useful, at any rate. And I don’t have the time to scope out the Swede boy’s family. Time-sensitive, I wasn’t snarking about that. So save them for a rainy day. And I can’t exactly brace the coppers cause the ones that know anything are all dreaming in the deep. Except the one bouncing on the Cartagena, who’ll be watching for me, and expecting him to be forthcoming with a plethora of information in lieu of a swarm of bullets is a little too sunny-side-up. But that’s where I’m headed nonetheless. Trail’s end. The Cartagena. My only lifeline to this whole mess, and maybe there’s just enough rope left to hang myself by.

But the Cartagena’s in a shambles when I arrive.

“Bloody hell.”

It is a bloody hell, indeed, as I watch from my usual perch above, the crow’s nest across the way. A brawl consumes the Cartagena’s entire deck. Seagulls screech as men fly over gunwales and splash into the cold with the regularity of clockwork. Heads are cracking and men are wailing like babies as fingers are torn from the knuckle. Bodies tenderized like meat by knuckle-dusted fists pounding away. Heads caved inside out with razorwire clubs. Seems this righteous gang-war shit’s going down between one side that’s all bowler-hatted toughs and another that’s all Maori blokes sporting facial tattoos and gear of war. The carnage has spilled over onto neighboring vessels. One’s blazing away like nobody’s business. People everywhere are screaming. And with good reason.

Shit. How’d word spread so fast? I glance at my compatriot. Brooklyn’s watching the row, eyes aglow, drooling, wincing every so often. There’s nothing for it now.

Getting on the Cartagena won’t pose a problem. Remaining on deck with my skull intact will. But as luck would have it, I have an ace up my sleeve. “Hey.” Brooklyn looks over. Well, an ace or a deuce or something in between. I lower my monoscope and fix him a sturdy glare. “You ain’t shittin’ about being Zulu?”

“Huh?” Brooklyn’s dried out from his venture into the realms of Benedictine treachery. But you can dry out and still get wet again.

“You say you’re Zulu.” Men die below.

“Sure enough.” Many men.

“Well, how soon can they be here?” Loudly.

“Huh?” He raises an eyebrow. “How soon who?”

“Listen, kid, I need to get on the Cartagena.” I spark up a cig as something crashes into the mast supporting our crow’s nest. “Whoa.” I latch onto the side, fix my hat. “And I need whoever wins that donnybrook down there to take a long walk off a short pier.”

“Why not wait till it’s over?” Brooklyn asks. “Cut a deal with the winner?”

“You see anyone trustworthy looking down there?”

“How do you know who’s trustworthy?”

“We really going to stroll down this road after the Nostromo?”

He looks down.

“I need to get on there. I need to talk to Mac Heath or rifle through her stuff at the very least. And I can’t do it if the winner doesn’t like the cut of my jib. And I can guarantee they won’t.”

“You know those blokes?”

“One of them,” I say cause I do. “So I need muscle. Muscle I can trust.”

“Why not ask your bro?”

“You see him around?” I ask. “And despite my illustrious brother’s reputation for shitting gold and slaying Goliaths, he’s just one man. What I need’s an army.”

“Why would my boys want a piece of this shit-show?”

“Shit-show?” I recoil. “This is the free market playing out naked right before your eyes. Supply. Demand. Hostile takeovers. A boom town in full swing as mankind exacts its demands. There’s a master’s thesis in fascist economic theory playing out right before our eyes as the prices of deck and commercial interest are set in blood spilled.”

A blood-curdling scream pierces the sky as a man on fire dives overboard.

“Seems a high price for real estate.”

“Sure, but it’s the only currency there is.” I palm the top of his head, turn it downward. “See? That’s prime-earning turf. Cranking it out twenty-four seven, like you said. A tavern and chop-shop rolled into one. Each on its own is a fine investment, but this is as if the golden-bloody goose screwed a cash cow and they made a baby. Voilà.” A bowlered tough throttles a Maori with a cord so sharp it cuts off his grimacing head. “Whose portfolio do you favor?”

“Whose what?” Brooklyn blanches as the Maori’s head thunks on the deck.

“Forget it. Look, Mac Heath’s a tough broad, a smart broad, and if she’s still alive, she might just be grateful if we ride in on our white horses and do her a Samaritan. She might see it in her heart to smooth things over for me. Give me what I want. You dig?”

He hesitates.

“Look, if you’ve been bullshitting all this time about being Zulu, I won’t hold it against you.” I rub my throat, antsy to get rolling. “Bluster and blabber are my middle name, but if it is a lie, you need to come clean now cause I ain’t got time to burn.”

“I am Zulu.” His eyes blaze.

“Easy.” I raise my hands. “Your chief scouting for turf?”

He nods.

“Your chief like money?”

“Sure enough.”

“Good. There’s lots of it down there. You dig?”

He nods finally. “I dig.”

“And it’ll be a feather in your cap.”

“Huh?”

“Forget it,” I say. “Now, how many can you get?”

Brooklyn starts counting on his fingers, lips moving as he’s mumbling to himself. “About forty.” He glances up. “How soon you need them?”

Below, the Maori Chieftain, with arms thick as my legs, smashes the hat off one of the Bowler Boys; then he smashes everything else as he berserker-wolf howls along to the beat of bone breaking, muffled in dead flesh, a sound that sends waves of shiver running up my spine with each and every dull wet thud.

“Yesterday.”