Episode I

Klaus Metzer, courier's part.


- Two goddamn hours in this goddamn wilderness. With no-freaking-body around. No-body. Why, oh why I always have to go and drive to some distant part of this god forgotten universe? No, it just can't be 'Hey, can you just do a quick one-two to the next town and we will pay you for it'. No! Argh...

That was a second hour and counting since my bikes sidecar went its own separate direction right in the middle of the highway. Just went and did on its own. Bitch. And, for all this time, not a single soul around. If you don't count supersized seagulls as 'souls'. Man, at least in westerns they had vultures. All I get are seagulls. If that says something about your life, Metzer, it is definitely shit.

- Fuck it, burn in hell, you bitch of a bike, I never liked you in a first place!

My foot hit the kickstand, not only almost breaking my toes in the process, but also making the bike to fall over and bend the clutch.

- Sheisse! What have I ever done to you, you bastards of road gods?

To be honest, the single little things still keeping me relatively sane and discouraging from becoming another dangling accessory of this bridge was the fact that there still was something dripping from my flask. This ‘little something’ was the wild mix of moonshine, military grade aviation fuel and motor oil. Well, at least it sure did smell that way. Then, suddenly, the little cloud of dust rising over the highway caught my attention. Scavengers.

- Now, Klaus, that just may be your ticket to get away from here. So, try to remember all three forms of education you managed to sit through and get ready. 

After five to six minutes I was passable for a victim of a road crash and my bike was burning some ten meters away. Why fire? Well, everything looks better when it’s on fire. Now, lay and wait.

Arrived, looking around. Still looking. I think it’s now twenty minutes since they got here. God, I swear, ten more minutes and I am going to blow up.

- Hey, Jens, let’s jus’ go. Ther’s nuthin’ to catch hir’.

Shit, no! No no no no. Stay, Jens. You look like relatively smart one here. Go, check the bike. Check the bike, you fuck! Start looking through the packs I so neatly laid out over there, while I jack your bike and wave good-bye to this middle-of-nowhere.  

- Wait, Mark. See, huw brithl’ it bern’? You in hurry? Ima no.

I take my words back - you are an A-grade dumbass. Ten minutes? Scratch that, I will move on to administering the pain right now.

I call this tactic ‘Make the enemy shit their pants because it is so unexpected’. What’s the plan? Nothing much, just rushing on them all the while screaming some barely distinguishable mix of words and primeval growl. Kind of like that.

- AFAARGGGGGGHHHHGONNAKILLYOUBOTHYOUSHITSAAAAAAAAARGH!

That was the sound that I made while jumping up from asphalt and plunging to my guests with a spanner. Tactics seemed to work, as their square goggles seemed to round off and hands started yanking the gas. Fuck, damn, fuck, fuck! I am not going to make it. Scheisse!

- STOPRIGHTTHEREMOTHERFUCKERSYOURENOTGETTINGAWAY!

Everything else just happened. Without a reason or command on my behalf. First off, spanner left my right hand and started flying towards the head of the driver like a goddamn Indian tomahawk. Other parts of me continued movement towards the passenger, who switched the sight between driver, who collapsed after getting hit with a spanner, and me. Next second, his sight suddenly changed from horizontal to vertical, with my huffing, deformed face looming over him.

In few minutes, they were both hanging off the ledge of the bridge and my new bike was barking with its two cylinders. Nah, I didn’t kill them, what am I, a sadist? Just hanged them by their legs. On an empty highway.

Well, Klaus, that doesn’t matter. You still have a job to do. It is shitty, true, but nevertheless a job. Time to go.

- Fuck you, you seagulls!

And after showing a major middle finger to the flock I continued with my journey.

Arthur Scheutz, detective's part.

            

- We’re in for some bad times, Packit, worse than ever! – I said staring at the door and blowing smoke through my teeth – Not even a single damn jealous family man, whose wife is silently screaming under their neighbour.

I made a long inhale.

- Packit! Hey, at least you, say something! What the fuck, Packit?

My cat, it seemed, wasn’t notified that he should be able to talk. He just stared at me with his black eyes, full of interest but lacking understanding. Stared so hard that his eyes almost popped from his sockets. This was only changed when he suddenly blinked, as if winking me, with one eye.

- What’s up, Packit? – I tried to make at least some kind of conversation, all the while gulping down something from the flask that was banging the sides of my shelf for a unknown time now.  All I got back, still, were only winks. Those sure were winks, as timing couldn’t be explained by anything but that. It was pretty obvious, that by now any semblance of sense was already hanged to dry and I just moved by inertia. –For god’s sake, Packit, say something, you dickhead!

This drinking binge party with only me present was not as fun as it seemed at the start...

Whoever was the man who sold me this liquid, he sure wasn’t human. Simple plastic bottle held inside something really badly filtered, greenly-blue liquid that smelled like gasoline. This shit, though, smashed you with the speed of lighting and force enough to make your brain fly through the back of your head right into the wall. Wall, which my office, sadly, lacked

- Do you remember, Packit, the case of Miss Schultz? Yeah, yeah, the one with rocket boobs. That filthy whore dropped her wedding ring into the sewers. Heh, do you remember the face that murlock made when I stuffed the barrel of my gun inside his mouth? Yeah, those were the times, Packit. And now what? Pffff. Aaaaachu! Armstrong, damn him. The fool grows his quasi-tobacco on the hydroponic, little shit. He will once slip, I tell you. Kommissar Geiger loves little weasels like Armstrong, goddamn yankee.  Do you have anything to eat, Packit? No? Why are you staring at me?

He just winked on.

- You sure are a dick, Packit.

Somebody knocked on the door.

- Come on in.

Door opened. Behind it was a dark silhouette of a woman. First thing the light caught out from the darkness was her foot stepping in. Dark stilettos from Roberto Covalli, pre-war, rarity these days. If I still have any nose for money, and I sure do, we are in for a threat, Packit!

- You are a private detective, am I right?

- And what do you think? – I tried to regain my composure, but this was harder than I expected.

- I see you weren’t taught, that answering on a question with another question isn’t nice....

- And you apparently weren’t taught to read or you wouldn’t ask stupid questions after opening the door that reads ‘Private Detective’.

- How you dare?!

- Packit, get her!

My cat looked like his brain went highwire trying to process that turn of events.

Arthur Scheutz, me, was never brimming with courtesy, especially in his house. My house is my house, and in here everything goes by my rules. There is no place for courtesy, and if there once was some, it was long ago overtaken by bad uncle Scheutz with his big gun. Courtesy was placed 1^st in my ‘Top useless thing for a detective’ list, somewhere near clay jar, which was of more use, still.

My first client in quite a long time sat opposite me.

- I hope I was right when I decided to go specifically here, specifically to you, and not to those Geiger’s bureaucrats.  That is why I plead you to leave your ‘smart’ jokes about your cat and ask you to listen to whatever I have to say....

- I also hope so...

- Well, obviously, you also weren’t taught to not interrupt when others are speaking, but I will continue. Me and my dead husband, we had our own family business, to be more precise, we owned a little scrapheap with some old metal processing equipment. I hope you understand what I am talking about?

- Absolutely...no – I said while blowing large ring of cigarette smoke.

- To say it simpler, we were common small businessmen, processed scrap metal into plates and nails. My husband’s father left us some...

- And?...

- Whatever, that isn’t the point!

- Shouldn’t you get to the point then.... lady?

- Mary Lee, and if mister private detective lets me continue, then I ...

- Arthur Scheutz.

- ....would quickly get to the core of our talk.

- Then let us start.

- You are hopeless.

- I know.

- After the death of my husband, two years ago, I was left alone, and, logically, my husband’s part of our business became mine as inheritance. All the papers were signed by kommissar Geiger. And all would have been good and neat if not for a sudden appearance of a woman, who said that she was my husband’s wife, bitch sure has nerve, and that consequently, she also has the stake in the inheritance. As you would guess, Geiger blew it. Hard.

- So, get all the information on that woman and hand it to you, then....

- Exactly, but with on little addition. I would like to ask you of one little...favour.

- .....

- If that woman is somehow connected to my husband, then please, make it so nobody would ever know that my husband was in contact with other women.

- Good old fellow Geiger knows about it?

- Judging from my sources, no. Not yet, no. If he did knew, you could guess what I was up for. Kommissar is not from the men who over think their actions and it wouldn’t be long before I would hear his boys at my doorstep, waiting for an explanation.

- So, I make sure that this old ass knows nothing about this?

- Yes.

- Smells like an awful lot of money.

- Do not worry about this part.

Seconds later door to my ‘office’ slammed shut, and I heard from other side of the door ‘I will find you when the job is done’.

This little lady sure was hiding something behind the curtains. I never could trust women in stilettos or their facade of naivety. I inhaled the rest of tobacco, cigarette butt burning my lips. ‘Small’ business, shoes from Covalli,  ‘do not worry about this part’. Everything reeked of money. Money and difficulties, they go hand in hand. If not, why such a state of conspiracy that even Geiger is not allowed knowing about it?

First thing in the morning, when I get a little bit more sober, I should check what I can find on our dear frau Lee. And who knows more, than good old Armstrong? Might as well get me some cigs, while I am at it, I think he should have new stuff by now, taken out of the depths of his bar cellar. Dealer. Damn.

Fan over my head continued spinning arhythmically, with sudden stops and accelerations; sun was barely shining through hole in old window covers. It grew dark. My consciousness followed the suit. Soon I was out cold.