Daggers & Steele 1 - Red Hot Steele Read online

  RED HOT STEELE

  A Daggers & Steele Mystery

  ALEX P. BERG

  BATDOG PRESS

  KNOXVILLE, TN

  Copyright © 2014 by Alex P. Berg

  All rights reserved. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away freely to others. If you are reading this book without purchasing it, please purchase a copy for your own use. Thank you for respecting this author’s hard work.

  For permission requests, contact the publisher:

  Batdog Press

  www.batdogpress.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in this novel are a product of the author’s imagination.

  Editor: Brittiany Koren

  Cover Art: Damon Za

  Book Layout: ©2013 BookDesignTemplates.com

  Red Hot Steele/ Alex P. Berg — 1st ed.

  ISBN 978-1-942274-02-5

  1

  “Gods, this place is depressing.”

  A dilapidated flophouse loomed over me. Four stories of faded brick and crumbling mortar. Four stories of blood, sweat, and tears, built on the backs of indentured half-breeds and destitute immigrants seeking refuge from their misery. Four stories of grim memories and heartbreak, smack dab in the middle of the Erming—the worst slum New Welwic had to offer.

  It was just the sort of place I expected to find a gang of murderous goblin cannibals. Sadly, I’d dealt with their ilk before.

  I dug my fingers into the crop of short, umber-colored hair that roosted upon my head and scratched. “I know we’re talking about rat-poor degenerates here,” I said to Griggs, “but you’d think the tenants could liven the place up a bit. What do you think, old man? Use the decaying bricks to jury rig some planters for flowers? Or maybe have someone spray a touch of graffiti onto the walls?”

  Griggs glanced up at me out of the corner of his eyes with a look most people reserved for mental patients. “You, uhh…sure this is the place, Jake?”

  That’s me, Jake Daggers—six feet, three inches, and 220 pounds of sausage- and donut-fueled crime fighting brilliance. Everyone else at the precinct calls me Daggers. It’s an unspoken code. No self-respecting homicide detective ever goes by anything but his surname unless it’s so damned long and complicated it ties people’s tongues into knots just thinking about it. But Griggs was a little long in the tooth, and by a little, I mean his teeth were darn near dragging on the floor. He was far past the age of caring what anyone else thought, so he called me by my given name and I let him.

  I took a step toward the battered bricks. Once upon a time they’d probably shone a deep cinnamon, but centuries of the gods’ heat and tears had turned the bricks a pale amber. A worn sign that was mostly splinters held together by grime hung from the front of the building. I gave it a wipe with the edge of my coat sleeve. Faint numbers peeked from underneath the sludge.

  301 E. 57th.

  “Yeah, this is the place,” I said. “Apartment 407.”

  Griggs grimaced, probably as he envisioned the number of stairs awaiting him inside.

  I took a look up the side of the flophouse. A set of eyeballs stared at me from between boarded up windows, and I could feel the heat of more sets of peepers burrowing into me from behind. I glanced back and spotted a couple of bearded uglies in an alley across the street. They looked none too friendly.

  Griggs noticed them, too. “I knew we shouldn’t have let our rickshaw driver run off.”

  “What, you think he would’ve stood around waiting for us?” I said. “In the Erming? Fat chance, pops.”

  Griggs glared at me. “Shouldn’t we wait for backup, at least?”

  “I sent a runner for Rodgers and Quinto before we left. They should be here any minute. In the meantime, we need to get our asses up those stairs. Every second those disgusting, degenerate greenies run free is a second too many.”

  I probably shouldn’t have said greenies, but the filthy goblins we’d been following for the past week had me seriously steamed. The word ‘greenies’ carried centuries of hateful racial overtones with it, and considering the neighborhood, if any goblins had overheard me we could’ve faced a rising tide of angry race riots. Fires, looting, the works. Captain would’ve been pissed.

  Luckily, Griggs was the only one who heard my slur. He grumbled, but I think it was only because he was still dreading the stairs.

  I pushed into the hovel and mounted the staircase with Griggs in tow. The warped boards underfoot cried out with each of our steps like banshees announcing an impending death. Hopefully it wouldn’t be Griggs. With him, natural causes were as big a threat as goblins.

  “Well, so much for the element of surprise,” I said. “If the baddies are here, they’ll know we are, too.”

  Griggs grumbled again. I was starting to think he’d come down with a debilitating case of lockjaw.

  We successfully reached the fourth floor without Griggs coughing up a lung, which I considered a victory. I sidled my way over to the seventh and final door on the left. A window unit. Nice. Apparently the goblins had splurged for the penthouse suite.

  My partner gestured toward the door. “Looks like someone beat us here.”

  The lockjaw had abated. Good. That meant Griggs wasn’t at risk for immediate death. Captain would’ve been pissed if I let the old buzzard croak while on the job, but having him pass into the spirit realm from a simple mouth spasm? That would’ve earned me a demerit for sure.

  I glanced down to see what Griggs was talking about. The door stood ajar, and a splintered hole had replaced the padlock.

  I slipped my right hand into my coat pocket and grabbed Daisy.

  Daisy is the worst kind of woman, a heartbreaker and a home wrecker, but in the literal sense not the figurative. She’s a foot and a half of steely eyes and cold shoulders, and she’s got the meanest slap in the seven boroughs. She’s my nightstick.

  Griggs pulled out his own, some poor girl who’d never been christened. I think Griggs still pined for the days when a cop could carry an executioner’s sword around and not raise any eyebrows, but nowadays the only head-knockers who were allowed blades were the army boys.

  The regulations didn’t bother me any. Daisy was my girl. My affair with her was the longest, most satisfying relationship I’d ever had with a woman, and that included the three years I spent married to my ex-wife.

  Though part of me longed to barge into the apartment foot first, discretion won out over my intrinsic desire to break things. I eased the door open and slipped into the penthouse, Daisy at the ready.

  The apartment was as well lit as a hog’s bowels and smelled just as nice. It took a few moments for my eyes and nose to adjust. Thick drapes hung over the windows, drowning out all natural light, and a pungent smell of dried blood and offal permeated the space. Most flophouse apartments, especially those as filthy and decrepit as this one, were studios, but much to my surprise this pad was a three-room affair. Not only that, but the rooms were divided by real, honest-to-goodness wooden doors. Truly this flat represented the crème de la crème of flophouse living.

  In the center of the apartment, a couple dozen waxy candles emitted a pale, flickering light. Candles that were arranged neatly, almost ritualistically, in a tight spiral. Candles that surrounded a very attractive, and very naked, young woman.

  I rushed to her side, partly to ogle, but mostly to help. Or at least that’s what I told myself. How much ogling would be involved would depend on just how dead she was. I pressed two fingers to her throat. A faint pulse pushed back against my brawny digits.

  “Get over here,” I hissed to Griggs. “She’s sti
ll alive.”

  Griggs obliged. “Gods, that’s a lot of blood.”

  Below the woman, the floorboards were stained black with the sticky stuff, whether human or goblin I couldn’t tell. Griggs was right though. There sure was a lot of it. Luckily for the girl, none of it appeared to be hers. Not yet, anyway.

  A faint creak sounded behind me, and I swung my head around in response. The doors stood tightly shut in their frames, but my ears had already uncovered the gambit. The question, however, was whether my goblin friends were hiding behind door number one or door number two.

  I stretched. I swung my arm. I gripped Daisy tight. I chose door number two.

  2

  I unleashed the full force of my foot’s gods-given talent into the flimsy door, tearing it from its hinges. The crash of wood on wood mingled with high-pitched shrieking, similar to the sound a tabby makes when it slips and falls into an ice-cold river. Two goblins—three and a half feet tall, dark green skin, mouths full of double rows of pointed yellow teeth—turned to face me. One wore a tattered red shirt and no pants, and the other wore rope-drawn cutoffs fashioned from the finest remnants of a potato sack. Though the goons had spared no expense on the swanky digs, apparently their extravagance had its limits.

  Behind me, I heard the other door thrown open, and the pitter-patter of small, clawed feet racing for the exit soon followed. I swore as I considered my options, but my new friends didn’t allow me much time for introspection.

  The goblins came at me in a hot whirlwind of crazy. I barely had enough time to belt out a strangled warning to Griggs before the first green terror hit me. The lunatic with the cutoffs ordered a sampler platter of Jake Daggers’ signature calf and thigh meats, but I introduced his face to Daisy before his chompers could do any real damage. That’s when Pants-free McGee torpedoed me in the giblets.

  Pain exploded around my nether regions. I fell back as Pants-free McGee clawed at my face with his poorly manicured paws. I barely held him off with my free arm as I sucked in air to help stop the burning. The pantsless wonder inflicted some cursory damage to my arm in the scrum, but eventually Daisy and I convinced him to take a nap.

  I stumbled back into the foyer, holding my tenders, to find Griggs writhing around on his backside next to the naked girl. I rushed over as fast as my swollen baby makers would allow.

  “Griggs! Good gods man, are you all right? How bad did they get you?”

  “It wasn’t the goblins. My damn back gave out.” Griggs groaned and waved me off. “I’ll be fine. Go catch those murdering pieces of trash.”

  I nodded, and ignoring the distinct possibility of third degree chafing, I took off. I burst out the door and raced down the stairs like a prize-winning thoroughbred. At least that’s how I envisioned myself. To the unbiased observer I probably looked more like a recently gelded draft horse. I’m thick and meaty, and I’ve never been known for my speed.

  As much as I pushed myself, I knew I chased a lost cause. Pants-free McGee and his loony bin cell-mate had held me up just long enough for the other green devils to hightail it out of there and vamoose. Griggs and I would gather the psycho brothers, of course. We’d take them back to the precinct to interrogate them, but I already knew what they’d tell us.

  A whole lot of nothing.

  Headcases like those two were invariably never more than hangers-on. The real brains behind the operation must’ve been behind the other door, and so the goblins’ murder spree would undoubtedly continue. I thought about the poor girl upstairs who’d misplaced her clothes. Well, at least we’d saved one.

  I shook my head as I reached level ground. I had to stay focused. Maybe they’d still be on the street. My eyes were sharp. I could pick them out of a crowd. I hadn’t laid eyes on them, of course, but how many maniacal, bloodthirsty goblins could there be roaming the streets at dusk? Heck, maybe some of them wouldn’t be wearing pants, either.

  I burst through the flophouse’s front door and nearly collided with a man mountain, one that happened to have two squirming goblins clutched in his massive hands.

  “You don’t look so good, Daggers,” he rumbled. “These little guys get the best of you?”

  I realized I was bent over, breathing hard and grabbing my jimmies again. I straightened as much as was feasible, given the circumstances.

  “Quinto,” I said. “Nearly perfect timing. I could’ve used your help a few minutes ago.”

  Hypothetically, if I happened to start a bar fight and could only choose one friend to have my back, I’d probably choose Quinto, all six feet and seven inches of him. He was built like the proverbial brick outhouse. His face looked like it’d been used to break rocks, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been gainfully employed in the past doing just that. The big guy had it pretty rough growing up—even rougher than me. I guess it’s to be expected when you’re part troll.

  Allegedly, I should say. Quinto had dropped some hints to that effect over the years. The grayish hue to his skin supported the notion, but no one at the precinct had ever been dumb enough to press him on the issue. Of course, some criminals had been that dumb. One brainiac once insinuated Quinto got his troll blood from his mother’s side. Quinto put the guy through a wall.

  Quinto smiled, showing off his full assortment of mismatched buckteeth. “Actually, Daggers, I think we showed up at just the right time, don’t you?” He hoisted the goblins higher as a point of emphasis.

  The ‘we’ part meant him and Rodgers, who had a third goblin pinned to the ground. Rodgers and Quinto made quite the pair. Quinto with a face ugly enough to curdle milk, and Rodgers with his sandy blonde hair, blue eyes, and boyish good looks.

  Rodgers cuffed his struggling captive and wrestled him to his feet.

  “You sure you’re all right, Daggers?” Rodgers flashed a perfect, white smile. “You’re looking greener than these guys.”

  Rodgers tried to produce a quip for every occasion, but they fell flat more often than not. I gave the guy credit for trying, but everyone at the precinct agreed I was the undisputed king of quips.

  I gave Rodgers a nod. “Yeah, I’m fine. Fertility is overrated. What took you guys so long, anyway?”

  Rodgers jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Had to call in some backup.”

  Now that Rodgers mentioned it, I noticed we weren’t alone. A good half-dozen bluecoats from downtown had shown up, and they’d brought a horse-drawn paddy wagon with them.

  Horse-drawn carriages were common in my infancy, but as the city grew, so did manure problems. High traffic areas became almost impassable to anyone without a good set of galoshes and a wicked case of nasal congestion.

  In response, the city banned horse-drawn carriages except for use by armed forces and police. Other than cleaner streets, the result was a massive boom in the rickshaw industry, which ended up creating huge numbers of jobs for the city’s less fortunate. Since poor people were cheaper and more abundant than horses, rickshaw rides became affordable. Ultimately, everybody won. Well, except for the horses—but I’m sure the black market beef business thrived for a while.

  Regardless, it was good thinking on the part of Rodgers and Quinto to request the wagon. We’d need to get all the goblins back to HQ, and I sure as heck wasn’t going to carry Pants-free McGee or No-shirt Norbert all the way back there. I had no intention of letting them attempt to turn me in a walking delicatessen again.

  Quinto’s detainees were getting feisty, so he cracked their skulls together and tossed them to the boys in blue.

  “Say…where’s Griggs?” Quinto raised his bushy eyebrows at me. “Is he still upstairs?”

  Leave it to the part-troll to subtly point out the obvious: that a detective always has his partner’s back, that a detective never leaves a partner behind, and that both of those things apply doubly when the partner’s birthday predates the known origins of the universe. Of course, Griggs had told me to go, but what if Daisy’s magic fairy dust had already worn off? Griggs wouldn’t enjoy the psycho brothe
rs’ company.

  All my internal philosophizing came out as a grunt. “Yeah, I should probably check on the old guy, shouldn’t I? I’ll be back.”

  3

  Griggs’ situation had improved. He’d progressed from writhing on the ground to writhing while sitting up. The number of curses streaming from his lips had also increased. That meant he was feeling better.

  “Hey, old man. Did I beat the Reaper?”

  Griggs gave me the fisheye. “Save your attempts at wit for someone who cares. Did you catch those damn goblins?”

  “Yes. Well, no, actually. Quinto and Rodgers did. They met me at the bottom of the stairs. Probably best for the goblins, to be honest. Daisy was itching to get hot and heavy again.”

  Griggs frowned. “So to answer my question…no, you didn’t.”

  I shrugged. “They got caught. It’s the same functional result. I don’t see why it matters.”

  “It matters because they could’ve—heck, they should’ve—gotten away. And it wouldn’t have happened if at least one of us was in decent enough shape to catch them.”

  “True,” I said. “You should hit the gym. I hate to break it to you, but you’re getting a bit flabby.”

  “I wasn’t talking about me.”

  “Hey, you don’t have to tell me twice. I’ll be right behind you, old-timer. Just let me snag a beer first.”

  Griggs sighed.

  I returned to the scene of the scrum. My friends, the wardrobe-impaired goblins, continued to saw logs. They looked so peaceful. You’d never know they’d lost a battle with an eighteen-inch piece of steel except for the lovely purple bruises blossoming across their faces.

  I tsked. The resulting color clashed horribly with their natural skin tone. The hardened fashionistas at the local poke would give them hell about it for sure.