New Jersey Governor Brendan Byrne: The Man Who Couldn't Be Bought
Author: Donald Linky
Date: 2014-09-02 04:00:00+00:00
Description: Known by mobsters as "the man who couldn't be bought," Brendan Byrne led New Jersey into a new era when he won the state's gubernatorial election by a landslide in the wake of political corruption scandals. A former prosecutor and judge, Byrne was soon condemned as "one-term Byrne," the inept politician who few thought would risk the humiliation of standing for a second term. Yet Byrne surprised both friend and foe alike by pulling off the state's most remarkable political comeback, winning re-election and leaving a legacy of preserving the vast resources of the Pinelands, enacting the state's
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

THE MAN WHO COULDN’T BE BOUGHT

A MILES FRANCO SHORT STORY

Chris Strange

Copyright 2011 Chris Strange

Smashwords Edition

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

www.Chris-Strange.com

Table of Contents

The Man Who Couldn’t Be Bought

A Note From The Author

Sample of The Man Who Crossed Worlds

About The Author

THE MAN WHO COULDN’T BE BOUGHT

In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the best bar to be playing smooth jazz in. I was wearing my second-best suit and tie for the occasion, and I’d even brushed the tangles out of my mop of curls. We weren’t playing bad—not good either, mind, but not bad—but a few of the dive bar’s seedier-looking patrons looked set to start pitching bottles at us.

Salin had been the one to set up the gig; I just showed up with my old trumpet that looked like it’d been pulled from the ruins of Hiroshima. For all I knew, it had been. Now I was wishing I’d ignored Salin’s call and stayed at home watching B horror flicks. I gave the surly crowd another glance and used a rest in the music to take a step back, putting Salin and his double bass between me and the crowd.

I noticed the woman as soon as she came in off the street and took a seat at the table directly in front of the stage. The thick black coat she wore wasn’t unusual; it was only the start of autumn, but already the air had teeth. No, what drew my eye was that she was now the only Vei in a bar full of humans.

I was so busy watching her I missed the last note, but I doubted any of the louts had the cultural acumen to pick up on it. The song died an undignified death in the hostile room. Salin gave a bow, his hair falling across his lined, dark face, as if expecting applause. Surprisingly, he got some, a single clap from the Vei woman. She glanced around, and huddled back down, returning her hands to her lap. I stroked the corner of my mouth as I studied her. She was strange, all right.

Salin looked like he was going to launch into the next piece, but Bubbles seemed to have the better idea. He gave the audience a quick appraisal and unplugged his keyboard. I nodded to him and leaned my head down to Salin’s ear.

“Exit, stage left?”

Salin’s frown was a permanent affliction, so I didn’t begrudge him it. “We haven’t finished our set, Miles.”

“We’re getting paid in bar food, and the grub in this place isn’t worth getting beat to hell over.”

He frowned, looking confused. “Our set,” he repeated.

I sighed. Arguing with Salin was like arguing with a parrot. I doubted he’d even noticed the way the crowd was looking at us. “Fine. I’m going out for some air. Call me if anyone wants an encore.”

He nodded, and I returned my trumpet to its case and tucked it behind a chair at the back of the stage. I’d probably get back and find it being used as a beer funnel.

I glanced at Bubbles and jerked my head toward the door, but he shook his head, already making for the bar. He had that look in his eyes, the one that meant he was going to be blotto by the end of the night. I shrugged and shouldered my way out the back door and into the cold night air.

The alley was like most of Bluegate at night: dark, littered with cigarette butts and old newspapers, and generally not the sort of place you wanted to be unless you had a masochistic streak.

I was in the alley listening to the sirens go past and enjoying the relative quiet for less than a minute before a voice behind me spoke. “Miles Franco?”

I jumped like I had springs attached to my feet. I spun on the spot, heart rate through the stratosphere, my hands moving to my pockets of their own accord.

The Vei woman put her palms up and took a step back. “I did not want to scare you.”

Vei are an odd-looking bunch, no one could argue that. Picture a shark with a flattened nose, large eyes and pale skin, and that’d be a good approximation of the woman’s face. From the neck down she looked fairly normal, if a little small and oddly proportioned. Under her coat she wore a necklace of pearls, nearly invisible against her negligible cleavage. She had the smell of money about her, something far more alluring than any perfume. That got my interest, given my current financial state. It wouldn’t be long before I was selling kidneys to keep my landlady from evicting me at the end of a shotgun.

“You often go round sneaking up on people in alleys?” I asked, the words coming out sharper than I intended.

She cast a look over her shoulder, eyes flicking about like they were chasing fireflies. Vei tend to be flighty, prone to bouts of exaggerated emotion, and this one wasn’t much different. “You are Mr Franco, yes? The Tunneler?”

Christ. “Nah, wrong guy. I’m a plumber. Pipes, not Tunnels.”

“No, your friend, the musician, he said you are the Tunneler.”

I groaned. “Which one ratted me out?”

“The dark-skinned one with the large guitar.”

“Double bass,” I corrected.

She cast another look around as a couple of people walked past the alley and watched them until they were out of sight. It was only then that she swivelled her bulbous head back toward me. She spoke soft and fast, leaning in toward me. “Mr Franco, my name is Anja Roya. I was told I could find you here. I have had trouble. I—”

The door to the bar slammed open, making the Vei jump twice as high as I had. The first thing to come into the alley was a stiletto heel with a shapely calf attached. That was followed up by a bare thigh and an hourglass body in a silk cocktail dress with a slit right up the side. I was distracted enough by all the interesting curves that it took me a few moments to realize the body also had a woman’s head, with almost-black hair done up in a bun that was probably French or Italian or something.

I picked up my jaw and tuned in my brain just in time for her to fix the Vei woman with a sneer. “Jan, Amy,” she called back into the bar. “The bitch’s out here.”

Anja let out an alien yelp and ducked behind me, one hand with a death grip on my shoulder. Two more scantily dressed women strode out of the bar and stood staring at the two of us. I kept my eyes down. I’m not ashamed to admit it; beautiful women scare me. That’s a story for another time, but having the three of them staring at me was enough to dry my throat and turn my face into an oven.

Anja pawed at my shoulder with long, slender fingers, bringing her wide mouth uncomfortably close to my ear. “I need your—”

“—help. Yeah, I figured.”

The women winning the staring match were clearly not a bunch of ordinary gals out looking for a good time. I couldn’t be sure—there wasn’t an official handshake or anything—but I’d put what little money I had on them being Silk Dragons. As whores packing heat, the Dragons ran the east Bluegate drug and prostitution trades. They’d even been claiming territory from the Gravediggers in recent months, and the Gravediggers didn’t give up territory easy.

I tried to stay out of gang business for the most part. It was bad for my life expectancy. But in Bluegate, that’s like trying to stay dry in a swimming pool.

“Hey, handsome,” the dark-haired woman said, practically purring. She put one hand on her hip and outstretched the other to me, her finger brushing my chin. “You look strong. Fancy buying me a drink?”

Jesus, these girls didn’t play around. “Sorry, Miss, I can’t even afford my own drinks these days.”

“Mmm, I’m sure we can make a trade.” She stretched out one of her oh-so-long legs and set it down even closer to me. “How about I buy the drink, and you give up that pretty bird you got shivering behind your back?”

“She’s not mine to trade,” I said. “In fact, if you look closely, you’ll realize I’m not even here. And even if I was, I wouldn’t have seen anything. Good evening, ladies.”

The look on the Silk Dragons’ faces brought to mind that of a cat with a mouse under its paw. My stomach turned, but this wasn’t my business. I tried to take a step forward, but Anja whimpered and clutched my arm so tight I was worried it was going to fall off.

“Mr Franco,” she whispered. “Please.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. Damn it, I hated that word. For some reason, I always heard it right before I did something stupid.

The Silk Dragon lifted a hand and reached past me.

“Please,” the Vei said again.

My heart squirmed. “You said your name was Anja?” I whispered.

“Yes.”

“Reminds me of a girl I once knew.” I sighed. “Ah, to hell with it.”

I snatched the Silk Dragon’s wrist out of the air, and her face twisted into an animal snarl. Behind her, the other two Silk Dragons dropped into crouches, switchblades appearing in their hands.

“You know my rates?” I said over my shoulder.

“Yes,” Anja said.

“They just doubled.”

I shoved the Silk Dragon back into her friends, sending the shorter of them sprawling into a garbage can. The dark-haired one ran her tongue along her teeth and pulled a snub-nosed revolver from her garter.

“Anja,” I said, my hands going through my pockets. “I think it’s time for us to get lost.”

From one pocket I pulled a small silver coin, from the other, a thimble-sized bottle of silvery, viscous liquid. I’d add the cost of the Kemia onto Anja’s bill. Along with a good chunk of hazard pay.

But making Tunnels isn’t the only thing us Tunnelers are good for.

I uncorked the little bottle with my teeth and shoved Anja behind a dumpster. Not very suave, I’ll grant you, but with the Silk Dragon aiming her revolver at us, I wasn’t going to take any chances with my paycheck. Client, I mean.

“Don’t be stupid, pretty,” she said, advancing on me with the gun raised. “She’s too much trouble for you. Walk away.”

“You’ve got no idea how much I want to, lady.”

I upended the bottle of Kemia, pouring the silvery catalyst over the coin in my other hand. The fluid flowed into the lines I’d scratched into the surface of the metal, weakening the fabric of our Universe.

And then there was a pulse of something pushing against reality.

Tunneling relied on making a connection between our reality and the reality of Heaven. Not the afterlife Heaven with clouds and pearly gates. It just picked up the name from some expeditionary soldier’s half-forgotten joke. In Heaven, the laws of physics were more like rough guidelines. It was the sort of place that could drive you mad if you weren’t already a little crazy, or a native, like the Vei. But if you knew what you were doing, and you had the skill, there were ways of harnessing that strange reality.

I liked to hum while I was Tunneling. It got me into the right frame of mind. I let my mind wander into a kind of nonsensical dream state, matching time with the bizarre pulsation pushing through reality. And then I threw a dash of energy into the Kemia-soaked coin.

This wasn’t a full-sized Tunnel I was playing with. We called this one a Pin Hole, a tiny link that opened between Heaven and Earth. Each one was different, depending on how you crafted it, but they all relied on harnessing the shifting, unpredictable nature of Heaven and imposing it on our reality. This particular Pin Hole was one of my favorites.

The Silk Dragon thumbed back the hammer on her revolver, but she was far too slow. Something indescribable shifted, and there was a feeling of wrongness as the new reality took shape.

And then the air in the alley turned to smoke.

I dived to the side as the gun barked. The sound of the shot echoed around the concrete walls, damn near deafening me, but the smoke was so dense I couldn’t see more than the hint of a muzzle flash. We were invisible—or as near to it as possible—for a moment at least.

I groped through the smoke, ignoring the impressively blue language coming from the Silk Dragons. Finally, my hand found what it was looking for, and closed on the wool of Anja’s coat sleeve.

“This better be worth it, sweetheart,” I said, and hauled her to her feet. Another gunshot went off, hitting the ground a few feet from me. It would seem I’d made a few new enemies. I’d have to add them to the list.

I half-dragged Anja out of the alley, toward the back of bar. The tapping of her heels on the concrete made stealth impossible, and we only had a minute or so before the smoke dissipated, but it would be enough. Well, that’s what I kept telling myself.

“You got a car, lady?” I asked, puffing already.

“What? No. You do not?”

“Not quite. I hope you know how to hang on.”

I ride a rusted 250cc Japanese motorbike, only kept running by good engineering and a fair amount of luck. At the best of times it was a struggle to keep myself and my trumpet and whatever other crap I had with me balanced, especially given the nonexistent skills of Bluegate’s drivers. With a half-hysterical Vei on the back, it was damn near suicide.

“Sit still, goddamn it!” I yelled over my shoulder, but she didn’t take any notice. I’d let her wear my helmet, and it was a snug fit given the shape of her head. Even if her ears weren’t being crushed, she’d have trouble hearing me over the sound of her own incoherent babbling.

I was already regretting my decision to get involved in this crap. What the hell had I done? I could be playing jazz to people who didn’t care, and instead I was racing through the night with an unwanted fare on the back of my bike, praying to the Eight that a bunch of armed whores weren’t on my tail. This wasn’t the way to live a free life. Not a long one, anyway.

I’d put my money on Anja being an illegal immigrant. She probably bribed her way through Immigration at the Bore, the main channel to Heaven, or maybe she paid some seedy freelance Tunneler like myself to smuggle her in. I dealt with a lot of illegals, but usually I was smart enough to pick the ones that weren’t going to get me killed. What the hell was I doing with this one?

When Anja nearly unbalanced me for the third time, my second thoughts stopped being so secondary. I was tired, I was cranky, and I wasn’t in the mood to put up with any more of this woman’s nonsense.

I sharply turned into an abandoned construction site, taking perverse delight in Anja’s rising screams. Skeletal buildings and long-forgotten construction equipment surrounded us, cast into shadow. I brought the bike to a halt, killed the engine, and clambered off, then dragged the trembling Vei down as well.

“Listen,” I said, pulling her helmet off and holding her by the arm in case her legs decided they had better things to do than keep her upright. “You need to cool it, lady. I’ve got half a mind to slap a few stamps on you and mail you back to those crazy bitches. What the hell are you into?”

She was shaking, but she still had the fortitude to give me a look so cold my nose grew icicles. She dropped her eyes a second later, silent.

I ran a hand through my curls and forced myself to exhale. “I got better things to do than be out here. If you want my help, you’d better start telling me exactly what you want and give me some damn compelling reasons why I should be a part of it.”

“You are a Tunneler. I need a Tunneler. You do not need to know more.” Her voice had more bite than I was expecting. What happened to the flaky little Vei from the alley?

Still, I wasn’t going to let her get away that easy. “Maybe you should go find yourself another Tunneler. Me, I like to know who the hell I’m working with. Keeps me alive, you understand? So go on. There’s a phone booth around the corner. See if you can find yourself some other sap before those Dragons find you.”

She slapped me. Hard.

For a moment, there was no sound but the echoing crack and a slight ringing in my ears. My brain was still playing catch-up when her face dropped and she brought her hands to her cheeks, eyes so wide I wondered if her eyelids had withered away entirely.

And then she started babbling in Vei. It’s a harsh language, ever-changing and full of sharp consonants. I can speak it well enough, but her mouth was a blur and trying to translate it would’ve made my brain start smoking. My cheek was starting to throb, and for a moment I had a savage daydream of slapping her back just like they did in old black-and-white films before they invented women’s rights. But it’s not really my style, so I settled for grabbing her by the shoulders and giving her a quick, sharp shake.

“Knock it off,” I said.

She shut her trap and stared at me for a moment before switching back to English. “I am so sorry. The—”

“Yeah, yeah. Later. We don’t have time right now. There’s a lot of nasty people out there looking for us.” Despite my words, I set my feet and folded my arms across my chest.

She got the message. Vei didn’t cry, at least not that I’d seen, but Anja looked like she might make an exception for me. “My brother, he manages an establishment near the Avenues.”

“What kind of establishment?”

“The kind that offers jobs to illegals without asking questions. I work there, helping my brother with the accounts. We report ourselves as a bar, but most of our income comes from other sources.”

Other sources? My gut twisted. “Ink?”

She gave the briefest of nods. Hell. I stay away from drug jobs, for the most part, and Ink smuggled in from Heaven was the nastiest drug out there. There’s two ways that sort of career ends; either your box has a barred-window or it doesn’t. Still, I kept listening, though I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t just walk away right then.

“I did not want to be involved,” she said. “But it was the only place we could get work.”

“I know,” I said, and it was the truth. “So where do our lovely ladies of the night come in?”

“They came a week ago, the same one we saw tonight, demanding protection money. The owner already paid protection to the Gravediggers, and my brother told them so. They left, but they said they would be back. And this night, they returned. I was working upstairs when I heard the shots. I ran down and found my brother on the floor, bleeding. The women were still there, taking money from the register and clearing the customers out.”

Her voice trembled as she spoke, and she kept her eyes aimed at the dirt.

Christ, this woman knew how to yank on my heartstrings. She was playing me like a goddamn ukulele. “Then you ran?” I asked.

She nodded. “They chased me a while, but I lost them. Or I thought I did.”

I didn’t bother asking her why she didn’t go to the cops. Even if she found an honest one, there wasn’t much in the budget for an illegal. So I cut to the chase. “And now you want my help to leave Earth.”

“There is nothing for me here. Not anymore. I can pay.” She reached into her coat, and pulled out a wad of cash so thick it made my eyes turn into dollar signs. “I took it when I was doing the accounts, but I don’t need it. Not as much as I need to go home. Please, Mr Franco. I just want to go home.”

You could practically hear the sad violins playing. I may be an asshole, but even I couldn’t say no to a face like that.

“Christ,” I said. “Come on, then. On the bike. I need to pick some things up, then I’ll get you to Heaven. But keep the screams down this time. I’d like to not be deaf after tonight.”

Twenty minutes later we pulled up outside my apartment building, a monstrosity that was one more building code violation from being demolished. I fished in my pocket for my keys, trying to blink my eyes into focus, and wondered if I’d manage to get any sleep at all tonight.

I unlocked the front door and let us inside. It was dark and smelled vaguely of mold, but if she noticed, she didn’t complain.

“Go downstairs to the basement and get yourself ready to go.” I kept my voice low as I pointed. My landlady lived on the first floor, and waking her would be a good way to be reminded of exactly how much rent I owed, right down to the cent. “I need to get some Kemia from my apartment. I’ll be down in a minute.”

She opened her mouth, then shut it again and nodded passively. I nodded back—gentlemanly, I thought—and began the nine-story ascent to my apartment.

Like always, I was huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf by the time I got up the stairs. I fumbled with my keys again, slid the right one into the lock, and shoved against the stiff hinges.

My apartment’s not much to speak of, and I wasn’t particularly interested in seeing the mess I’d left for myself, so I didn’t bother switching the lights on. The mess was the main reason I hadn’t brought Anja up with me. Human or Vei, women tended to be highly critical of my apartment.

I tossed down my keys and tapped on the bowl I kept near the door to check my goldfish, Munsey and Frank, were still alive. When they responded I opened the fridge and started rummaging through the Chinese leftovers for a bottle of Kemia.

“Midnight snack, Mr Franco?”

For the second time that night, I jumped and jerked around. This time, I managed to slam the top of my head against the inside of the fridge, and I saw stars.

A light flicked on overhead, illuminating the dark-haired Silk Dragon standing in my living room. At another time I might’ve been drooling to have such a scantily dressed woman in my apartment, but the gun in her hand put me off a little.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Who was it sold me out this time?”

“Bubbles, I think he said his name was. He was very pliable, especially after a drink or two.”

“Son of a bitch.”

The fridge was still open, and something in the door rack caught my eye. A full bottle of Kemia, just sitting there, tempting me to reach for it and get my head blown off.

“What do you want?” I asked, mainly to take my focus off the Kemia. After my stunt in the alley, I didn’t think this bitch would be too likely to put up with more of my nonsense. Come to think of it, that summed up most of my relationships with women.

She smiled and moved toward me, her hips swinging hypnotically with each step. They made a convenient place to stare so I didn’t have to look her in the eyes. She kept her arm tight against her side and pointed the gun at me, casual, like she did this all the time. Maybe she did. “We got off to a bad start. Maybe we can get to know each other.”

“Sure. Toss the gat, pull up a chair, and we can have a good old-fashioned chin-wag.”

She let out a throaty laugh, but the gun stayed where it was. “You know why I’m here. Where is she?”

“That old thing? I dropped her off by the bus station a few minutes ago. One-way ticket out of town. You hurry, you might still catch her.”

“You’re a bad liar, Mr Franco.”

“Yeah, but at least I managed to put underwear on this morning. More than I can say for some people around here.”

She cocked her head to the side. “You noticed? How sweet. Would you like a closer look?”

“Maybe another time.” My throat had gone dry, but I refused to let her see me swallowing.

“Sad.” She pouted. “But that’s all right. I have plenty of other things I can trade.”

She reached into her handbag and pulled out a pile of cash twice as big as the one Anja had shown me. Christ, if people didn’t stop flashing money at me, I was going to have a heart attack.

I’d be lying if I said all that green wasn’t tempting. I could get a lot of people off my back with that money, not the least of them my landlady. I live pretty frugally—meals are a luxury for a man like me—and what she held in her hand would keep me going for a long time. My hand itched, and I could almost feel the grain of the bills beneath my fingers.

Still, I wasn’t quite ready to throw in with her yet. A part of me still protested, the part that had kept me out of the pockets of the gangs for years. It wasn’t going down without bruised knuckles and a bloodied nose.

“And what, exactly, would I need to do to get my hands on that stack of cash?” I asked.

“Not much,” she said, holding the cash up toward me, as if tempting me to feel the heft of it. “I wouldn’t want a pretty thing like you to get his hands dirty. You just have to come with us and show us where she is, that’s all.”

“I’m pretty snowed under right now. How about I just point you in the right direction?”

She smiled, staying silent. My eyes drifted to the stack of cash again. It was a lot of money. And what were my alternatives? Say no and get my kitchen decorated with my brains? I gotta say, being rich sounds a hell of a lot more fun. And I could afford plenty of drinks to wash away any niggling guilt. Tequila was particularly good at that, I’d found.

“I don’t have a choice, do I?” I asked.

“Of course you do, handsome. You always have a choice.”

“Sure doesn’t feel like it.”

She stepped closer, moving well inside my personal space. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the gun in her hand, metal glinting in the light of the open fridge. I shivered.

For the second time that night, I found her face inches from mine. She was a couple of inches shorter than me, but her heels pushed her up so we were almost face-to-face. She smelled of cinnamon, and she had four freckles on her face. I counted them. Somehow, despite the gun, she seemed strangely vulnerable.

There was nothing else for it. I kissed her.

She didn’t hesitate, she just parted her lips and let out a subdued porn-star moan. She had something sweet on her lips, and I ran my tongue along it. My left arm wrapped around her, sliding against the impossibly thin fabric of her dress, feeling her muscles relaxing beneath my fingers. There was a smile in her kiss, something smug, self-assured. She was a pro. She had me.

My other arm snaked out and pulled the bottle of Kemia from the fridge door. Beautiful women were always so sure of themselves.

I slipped the Kemia into my jacket pocket just as she broke the kiss. She licked her lips, eyelashes fluttering, and said, “Mmmm.”

“Okay,” I said, “looks like you’ve got a deal.”

“Looks like I do.”

“Let me go get changed. I’ve been wearing these clothes all day and it feels like I’m walking around in a goddamn sauna. Then I’ll give you what you want.”

She tugged on my tie. “Need help, handsome?”

“Maybe I’ll let you buy us a few drinks later, see how we go then.” I forced a stupid grin onto my face. Well, I didn’t have to force too hard. It had been a pretty good kiss.

She winked and stepped back. I closed the fridge door behind me and made for my bedroom, forcing myself not to break into a run. Be cool, Miles. You’ve got this.

“Don’t be long,” the Dragon said.

“I won’t.”

I gave her one last look and pulled my bedroom door closed behind me. I could still taste her lip gloss on me. I wasn’t in a hurry to scrub it off. Right now, I just wanted to get out of here alive.

I went to the window and wrenched it open as quietly as I could. By some miracle, it didn’t squeak. Maybe my luck was turning.

My building’s excuse for a fire escape was little more than a few rickety platforms connected by ladders that were more rust than metal. Still, with a homicidal prostitute staring at her watch and waiting for me to come back out, I didn’t have many options, so I stuck my leg out the window and pulled myself onto the platform.

The groan of the metal was enough to make me cringe, but I didn’t stop. The night surrounded me, a siren wailing somewhere in the distance. The cops were always a few gunshots too late in Bluegate. If you wanted to survive, you had to learn to save yourself.

I scrambled down the ladder and onto the next platform, and then the next. The whole thing rattled and threatened to come crashing down. I wiped my sleeve across my forehead and kept moving.

I was at the final ladder, maybe eight or ten feet above the alley beside my building, when the Silk Dragon’s shout came echoing out of my bedroom window. My skin prickled and I kicked the last ladder down on its sliding rail, but I have to admit, a grin spread across my lips just the same.

I hit the ground with the grace of a drunken elephant, nearly crashing right into a pile of rubbish bags, and started running. Curses rained down on me until I rounded the corner and ran back up to the front door of my building, both hands in my pockets. Where the hell had I put those goddamn keys?

“Hey, that’s him!” a voice came from behind me.

I risked a glance back and saw the other two Silk Dragons jumping out of a sleek convertible. Hell.

I went through my pockets one more time, then gave up. I must’ve left my keys lying next to my goldfish. Since I didn’t think they’d be much help running them down to me, I went for Plan B.

Stiletto heels clacked against the concrete behind me, but I put them out of my mind as I pulled out one of my coins and uncorked the bottle of Kemia I’d taken from the fridge. It was a simple Pin Hole, designed to play with the probabilities of something with only a couple of settings. In this case, a lock.

I forced energy into the coin as I splashed Kemia over it, and felt an instant reverberation of chaos in my mind. There was no noise; the door was just unlocked, as if had always been that way.

I ducked inside, trying to control my breathing. The glance I got of the two Silk Dragons before I slammed the door in their face left no doubt about what they’d do to me if they caught me. I’m pretty sure it would’ve involved a sharp knife and a few choice parts of my anatomy.

I released the Pin Hole, and it snapped shut with a mental crack of energy. The Silk Dragons hammered on the door, but it was locked again. I figured it’d hold them for about two minutes.

My forehead was sweating so much I felt like a goddamn waterfall by the time I got to the basement. No point using a Pin Hole to lock the door down here—I’d need all my focus to open the Tunnel to Heaven—so I shoved an old box of some resident’s crap up to the door and made my way through the maze of junk.

“Mr Franco?” Anja said. She stood in the corner, coat clutched tight around her, wide eyes opened even wider. “What is happening?”

“Ran into some old friends, is all.” I snatched up a set of sidewalk paint and a brush I kept stashed on a broken washing machine and gestured her over to the circle I kept in the basement. “Probably best we get moving.”

The basis for my circle is an iron ring, seven feet in diameter, bolted to the concrete floor in a damp corner of the basement. It keeps the Tunnel fairly stable, as these things go. Still, it’s not complete until I’ve marked it up specially. I unscrewed the top of the paint tube and started painting symbols within the confines of the circle. “Where do you want to go?”

“Skytown,” she said without hesitation. “My family live there.”

I nodded and kept painting. I could get us right into the city; I knew a good place to open a Tunnel there. Skytown was nice this time of year. Maybe I’d stay for a while, given the enemies I was making.

On cue, the basement door shuddered as someone tried to force it open. “Franco! I’m going to gut you, pretty.”

Anja squeaked, and I suppressed the urge to do the same. I put the finishing touches on the Tunnel and stood up. Not enough time to make the thing as well as I’d like, but it would hold. Might be a bit of a bumpy ride, though. I emptied half the bottle of Kemia onto the circle, and the symbols started shifting and swimming.

Another thump came from the door, and I heard the box scraping along the concrete.

“Time to go, lady,” I said, grabbing Anja by the elbow and pulling her back away from the circle.

I closed my eyes and let my mind flicker from thought to thought randomly, chaotically. A nonsense tune built in my throat, and I started humming as an awareness of discord pressed against my mind.

There’s as many theories on Heaven as there are people studying it. It’s a world where entropy always wins, or a quantum reflection of our own Universe, or a representation of the Devil’s twisted psyche. Truth is, that’s all posturing bullshit. Sometimes it’s all of those things, and sometimes it’s none of them. It’s chaos, pure and simple.

The thumping on the door grew louder, but I pushed my knotted stomach down and focused on getting us the hell out of Dodge. Chaos pushed against the circle, wanting to spread out in our nice clean reality. All it took was a little tear.

My legs shook as my strength left me, like I’d suddenly lost a quart of blood. I controlled the energy as best I could, focusing it, if not like a laser, then at least like a flashlight with fresh batteries.

The center of the circle pulsed once, twice, and then the Tunnel broke through. I opened my eyes to find the center of the circle being sucked into the concrete, a black pit growing until it reached the iron ring that bordered it. A sense of pure anarchy overwhelmed me for a second, nearly dropping me to my knees, before I got my head back into place and managed to bring up the wall in my mind that divided the dichotomy of chaos and order.

The Tunnel wasn’t much to look at. If you weren’t looking too closely you could mistake it for any old hole, apart from the oil-slick sheen that covered the blackness. Anja’s eyes reflected some of that gleam, or maybe it was just the light being tricksy.

“All aboard,” I said, giving Anja a nudge. “You know what to do.”

She nodded and stepped up to the Tunnel’s edge, her wide mouth formed into a line. Strange, she didn’t seem quite so scared now. I, on the other hand, was doing my best not to hear the threats coming from the basement door. Three voices came from the door now, not just the one, and when I dared to look, I could see jewelry-speckled fingers appearing around the frame.

Why was it I never had enough time?

I glanced back to see Anja extending one bony leg over the lip of the Tunnel, looking every bit like someone about to step off a building and end up a splatter on the sidewalk. But when her foot touched the slick surface of the Tunnel, her reality shifted.

She swung downward, like gravity had decided to branch into new directions. For a moment, it looked like she’d fall into the pit and plummet to wherever bottomless pits finally bottomed out, but then, with a sense of swinging that would make my stomach lurch if I hadn’t seen it so many times, she was standing inside the Tunnel, perpendicular to me, looking back through the sheen.

I offered the basement door one more look before I stepped up to the Tunnel. The Dragon I’d kissed stuck her face through the crack in the door, lipstick smeared and teeth bared. “Franco!” she screamed.

A shiver ran through me, but I forced it to stillness, tipped an imaginary hat to the Silk Dragon, and stepped out over the edge and into the Tunnel.

My frame of reference shifted in an instant, and I rotated through space like I was on some horrible carnival ride. And then I was standing again, with Anja next to me in the darkness, the Tunnel stretching endlessly into the distance. I switched the focus in my mind, gathering energy from my reserve, and did a little playing God. Light bloomed in the Tunnel, seeming to come from everywhere at once, casting no shadows. Anja blinked her big eyes.

“The hell you looking at?” I asked. “Run, goddamn it!”

I don’t know how long we ran for. The distance to Heaven is never constant, but usually it’s at least an hour of walking. From the way my legs were burning, I would’ve guessed I was running for at least a couple of decades.

The Tunnel wasn’t wide enough for us to run side-by-side, so it was Anja in front, and me bringing up the rear. The far rear. Christ, that woman could move when she needed to.

It wasn’t long before the clatter of stiletto heels came from behind us, echoing down the Tunnel walls. The Silk Dragons were wasting no breath on threats anymore; maybe they figured I’d got the picture. They’d be right.

“You let them follow us?” Anja yelled.

I was wheezing like a ninety-year-old chain smoker, but I forced myself to speak anyway. “No choice. Can’t close one end without closing the whole Tunnel.”

Anja’s annoyance showed through, but she didn’t say anything else. I doubted I had the energy to answer her anyway.

Somehow, despite their inadequate footwear, the Dragons were closing on us. But after an eternity, or maybe two, the end of the Tunnel appeared, a glimmering sheen just like the one we’d passed through. I’d never been so happy to get to Heaven before.

Anja was outpacing me by a long stretch. She paused at the end of the Tunnel and glanced back at me.

“Go!” I shouted.

She nodded and dived out of the Tunnel. She twisted and changed direction, then disappeared from my sight.

I threw a look behind me as my deadened legs carried me the last few yards. The three Silk Dragons were close enough for me to make out the rage in their eyes and the thin sheen of sweat that coated their faces.

I had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well.

I exploded through the Tunnel exit at full speed, flying through the air even as gravity rearranged itself around me. Some instinctive part of me found the ground and got my feet pointing in the right direction before I hit, saving me from getting a face-full of rock but still resulting in me stumbling wildly for a few seconds before I got my balance.

Anja looked to have landed more gracefully. Her breath came heavy, but she stood upright on the rocky ground, illuminated by a green sky. Behind her, the edges of the rock dropped away into cloud. Skytown was aptly named.

“What are you still doing here?” I asked, panting. “Get going!” I pointed past her, to where clusters of spike-like buildings reached up to the sky. Each of them was mounted on a single rock as large as a city block, and each rock was floating suspended in space. Bridges linked the bits of land, shifting as they bobbed up and down. Even from here I could make out the crowds of Vei moving back and forth, and the din of Vei chatter drifted toward us.

Anja dug into her coat and pulled out the wad of cash she’d waved at me in the abandoned construction site. It looked pitiful now, compared with all the green the Silk Dragon had offered me, but it was still more than I earned most months.

She tossed it to me, and I turned the cash over in my hands. “This is more than my fee.”

“It is a bonus.”

A shout echoed from the Tunnel, sounding like it was coming from underwater. I met Anja’s eyes. “Beat it, lady.”

She looked troubled for a moment, but then the expression vanished. “Thank you, Mr Franco.” She turned and ran, her black coat flowing behind her and casting ever-changing shadows on the ground.

I turned back to face the Tunnel and listened to the approaching footsteps. I could close the Tunnel now. It’d be easy, just switch off the chaotic part of my brain, let the energy dissipate. Or I could turn and walk away until I was too far to keep it open. The Tunnel would wobble for a moment, protesting the moving mass still inside, and then it would crack closed with no more sound than a snapping rubber band.

I’d be safe, free to hang around for a bit, count my money, then go back to Earth when I felt ready.

There wouldn’t even be any screams as the three Silk Dragons died.

I probed the edges of the Tunnel with my mind. So easy. Like ripping off a band-aid. Sweat rolled down my cheek.

“Shit,” I said to myself, balling my hands into fists. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t have a triple murder on my conscience. What with the glow I was feeling from getting Anja to safety, I was beginning to think I was a big softie.

The clatter of footsteps came closer. I stuck my hands in my pocket and waited. The warm fuzzies in my stomach were at war with the butterflies, and I wasn’t sure who would win. I wiped my sweating palms on the inside of my jacket pockets and took a deep breath. Well, Miles, you’ve really done it this time. How are you gonna talk your way out of this one?

The dark-haired Silk Dragon came out first, swivelling up as gravity reoriented itself around her. The other two appeared a moment later. None of them were packing heat by the look of it; bringing guns into a place as unstable as Heaven was a good way to shoot your own foot off without even touching the trigger. Instead, the brunette’s friends each clasped a switchblade, looking like they were eager to use them. I gulped.

The dark-haired Dragon swung one long, graceful leg out. I was still registering the movement when her kick caught me on the chin and sent me falling back on my ass.

“Ow,” I said, rubbing my jaw. It felt like she’d nearly dislocated the thing.

She grabbed me by my tie and jerked me forward, snarling. “Where is she?”

“She’s out at the moment. Can I take a message?”

She tagged me with her fist this time, sending my teeth rattling around my head. It took a few moments for my vision to clear. When it did, I found her hissing at the other two. “Split up. Find her. She can’t be far.”

The two of them gave me venomous looks and raced off across different bridges, neither of them the one Anja had taken. Despite the lightning shooting through my jaw, I found a grin stretching my cheeks.

“You think this is funny?” she said. “You’re going to pay if I don’t find her. You know how much that bitch cost me?”

“Can’t your dignity take one little runaway? She’s not gonna talk to the cops, you should know that.”

She frowned, her snarl fading. “What the fuck are you talking about, Franco?”

“You killed her brother, you got your money. You made your point. Hell, I bet you’re reputation’s even still intact. Consider it a win and go home.”

She stared at me for a few moments. Her perfectly-shaped eyebrows drifted down low over her eyes, then a slow smile spread across her face. “That’s what she told you?”

“Yeah,” I said. Something in her tone gave me pause. “Why?”

She threw back her head and laughed a mirthless laugh. Her fists tightened on my jacket. “You stupid fucking sap. We didn’t kill anyone. She ripped us off.”

“What?”

“She came in playing sweet and innocent, saying she had to buy a whole lot of Ink for her boss, or something. She was willing to pay cash up front, so I didn’t ask questions. Gave her what she wanted with a bulk-buy discount.”

It didn’t make sense. And yet, the grim smile playing on her face stopped me from casting away her claims entirely. “What did she get, then?”

“Half a million in Ink.”

My eyes must’ve bugged right out of my head. I tried to speak, but my throat had other plans.

She grinned at me and rocked back on her haunches. “Yeah. But your sweet Vei wasn’t entirely honest with us. You see, she paid us in phony bills.”

Counterfeit. No, the Dragon was playing with me. She had to be.

Aw, hell.

I stuck my hand in my pocket and pulled out the wad of money Anja had given me. At first glance it looked like normal cash, all in twenties. But come to think of it, something about the color was off.

“No,” I said, as if denying it would make a difference. The dark-haired woman simply watched as I flicked through the notes, comparing the serial numbers on each one.

They were all the same.

I pictured Anja’s big black coat, the way it rattled ever so slightly when it ran. The way she never once took it off. A coat more than big enough to hold a few hundred vials of Ink.

“Fuck me a rainbow,” I whispered. How was that for a get rich quick scheme? Sell your ill-gotten Ink, turn your dirty money into clean bills, and let some idiot Tunneler take the fall. I’d admire her if I didn’t want to rip her head off.

The Dragon leaned down over me again. “I have half a million in cash that I can’t do a thing with. The cops will jump on us if we try to launder it. That leaves me in a bind, as I’m sure you understand.”

“Tough break,” I said, thinking more about my own poor wallet. The cost of the Kemia alone…

“Yes, yes it is,” she said. “You’ve cost me a lot of money, pretty.”

My heart sank somewhere around my knees. I didn’t like where this was going. “Hey, we’ve both been played, how about we call it a—”

She loomed over me, her lips peeling back over her teeth.

I sighed. “Will you take a check?”

THE END

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

I was sitting in a boring lecture—biology, I think—doodling misshapen stick figures in the corner of my paper, when the first hint of Miles Franco came to me.

He didn’t have a name then, of course, or even an occupation. It was just an image and a feeling. A common man and yet an unusual man, as Raymond Chandler once said. He wore a suit and tie, and yet he was not dressed up. His hair was a mess, his shirt was untucked, and he didn’t have many friends, but you knew he was a good man, even if you couldn’t tell exactly how.

I couldn’t tell you where he came from. Maybe he was inspired by the dozens of pulp heroes that I’d read about or seen on TV or the movies. He was the sort of guy his world needed, even if I didn’t yet know what that world was.

And yet, I put him and his story aside. Why? Because it wasn’t serious enough. I was doing a course about poetry related to medicine and illness at the time, and my pretentious tendencies were in full swing. Never mind that when I went home I’d read comics about costumed superheroes or pop B horror flicks into my DVD player. No, I was going to learn to be a great writer, and I was going to write Literature with a capital L.

But no matter what I did, those trashy sci fi and fantasy elements kept creeping into every story I wrote. And Miles Franco, among other characters, kept developing in my head.

There was no epiphany that made things clear to me, no light bulb going on above my head. But as I began exploring online and started to come into contact with more and more geeks and nerds and people like me, I realized that I’d been going about this all wrong. There’s nothing wrong with great literature. It can be beautiful, life-changing. Some of my favorite books are literary fiction.

But it’s not what I want to write.

I want to write things that are ridiculous and fun. I want to write about fast-talking wiseguys and worlds that are a dream-like reflection of our own. I want to write about smartass characters who get the crap kicked out of them and keep on coming.

I want to tell stories that are awesome. And I want to tell them to those of you who know that a really gut-punchingly true story can’t be constrained by reality. So I went deep inside myself and let Miles Franco out of his cage.

This isn’t the freelance Tunneler’s last adventure. On the contrary; his story is just beginning. If there’s one thing Miles knows, it’s how to get himself into trouble. And I can’t wait to see if he can get himself out again.

I want to personally thank you for reading THE MAN WHO COULDN’T BE BOUGHT. I know that each and every one of you lead busy lives, and it means so much that you took time out of your day to read about this dirt-poor Tunneler and his adventures.

I’d love to hear what you thought of this short story. You’ll find my email address below, along with links for you to connect with me on Twitter or Facebook. I do my best to respond to every email or message I get, so please feel free to get in touch.

And if you want more of Miles, then fear not. Read on, and you’ll find an excerpt from the first full-length Miles Franco novel, THE MAN WHO CROSSED WORLDS. I hope you enjoy it.

Stay classy, everyone.

Chris Strange

Read on for a sample of THE MAN WHO CROSSED WORLDS

CHAPTER ONE

“Contrary to statements made by some commentators, the Tunneler’s role is not merely one of transport. He is the ambassador of all humankind…If the Tunneler is to succeed, he must be charismatic, moral, and above all, lawful.”

Interdimensional Ethics: A Guide for Tunnelers, 2nd ed.

There weren’t many things that scared me. Well, all right, a hell of a lot of things scared me. In my line of work it came with the territory, same with dismal pay and unsavory customers. But only one thing made me so nervous you could use my forehead as a swimming pool.

Beautiful women.

They looked innocent enough, sure, all warm and soft. And if you were lucky, maybe one of them would cuddle up to you real nice, purring like a kitten, and you’d think you were finally being rewarded for all those good things you did in your life.

Of course, it was around that time you realized you’d done no good things in your life, there was no way you deserved this, and before you could scream she would reach into your chest, pluck your heart out, and neatly rip it in two.

So when Detective Vivian Reed sashayed into the interrogation room on those long legs, wearing a slender pantsuit that gave me a pretty good idea how impressive all her curves were, my heart dropped somewhere into my intestines.

She let the thick manila folder drop to the table, sending a resounding bang echoing through the interrogation room. Through supreme force of will I managed to avoid flinching, instead making a show of picking the dirt from under my fingernails.

The room didn’t do much to inspire confidence. It was dark as a coffin and even less friendly. A video camera on a tripod sat in the corner of the room, switched off, while a dull fluorescent light bulb hung above my head. I could feel the heat radiating off it. It wasn’t the only thing making me sweat.

Detective Reed put her hands on the table and leaned over me, her face set in a look that suggested I was a mauled rat brought in by her dogs. Which I supposed, in a way, I had been. She had the sort of slender face you felt you should have to pay to look at, and dark hair trimmed into a neat bob cut. Her dark skin was cast into shadow, but her eyes glinted as she fixed me with a look.

“Mr. Franco,” she said, while I busied myself staring at the way her lips moved, “We’ve got some questions for you.”

It was the standard cop line. What it really meant was: “We know what you did, or we want you to think we do, and by God you’re going to tell us or you’ll be facing the hurting end of our boots.”

I swallowed. The folder she’d dropped onto the table between us had my name on it, Miles Franco, in clean black text on a white label. I couldn’t work out for the life of me how it was so thick.

A page had spilled out, showing a mug shot of me from when I was about thirteen, after an alleged theft that was almost entirely not my fault. I looked a lot more pimply in the picture than I did now, but I still had the same narrow face and the mop of dark, curly, maddeningly uncontrollable hair.

Sweat pooled in the armpits of my shirt, but I tried to play it straight. “Vivian—”

“Detective Reed.”

I shrugged as if the difference was unimportant. “I’ve been asked many questions by your fine police department over the years. But I can’t say I’ve ever come out of a Tunnel with that many officers pointing guns at me before.”

She didn’t speak. Instead, she pulled out the chair opposite and calmly sat down. Tenting her fingers, she stared at me like a lioness about to pounce. Hell, she could probably smell my fear. Since I’d been working when they hauled me in here, I was still in my old suit, and now the tie around my neck felt a hell of a lot like a noose.

“Mr. Franco, I’d advise you to take this seriously.”

I decided to do as she said. Sometimes I was smart enough to know when being a smartass would get me in trouble. The cops in Bluegate weren’t particularly worried about things like ethics. Most of them were on the take, and the rest thought police brutality was a legitimate way to extract a confession. So I sat back in my chair, resisted the urge to wipe my forehead, and forced a smile onto my face.

Detective Reed opened the folder and flicked through the pages. “This isn’t the first time you’ve been arrested for smuggling Vei, is it?”

“Vei? Those weren’t Vei. Just a few souvenirs I picked up.” All right, so I wasn’t totally done with being a smartass.

She continued to page through the folder. “All these arrests, but no serious charges. You live a charmed life, Mr. Franco.”

“What can I say? Lady Luck must have my number.”

“Not this time.” She jabbed at the table with her finger. “This time, Mr. Franco, we have you dead to rights.”

She was right, of course. It’d been a lousy damn job from start to finish. The client was the acquaintance of someone I’d helped out a few years back, a Vei woman who’d come practically begging me to bring her family to Earth. She claimed she didn’t have much money, and I was feeling stupid and generous, so I did the job pro bono. Maybe she’d spread the word, I figured, drum up more business for me. God knew I’d had barely a handful of paying jobs in the last two months. Plus, it wasn’t supposed to be difficult job; all I’d have to do was go there, pick the family up, and bring them back.

As it turned out, they weren’t the kind-hearted immigrant Vei family my client had made them out to be. It took me two days to track the entire family down. One of them took me for a human con-man and tried to stove my head in before I could calm him down. Another of them, a little girl, alternated between clinging to my leg and trying to run away.

I should’ve known. Vei were flighty and unpredictable at the best of times, and I’d never tried to transport that many of them before. I was so exhausted I could barely keep the Tunnel open on the way back, and when we finally emerged into the damp basement of my apartment building, I found half the goddamn Bluegate PD aiming pistols and shotguns at me.

As evenings went, that wasn’t one of my favorites.

There were legal ways of bringing Vei to Earth, but my way wasn’t one of them. I wasn’t a bad guy, or at least I didn’t think I was. Tunnelers took on all sorts of jobs, not all of them nice. Some smuggled booze and Ink and guns, but not me. I stuck with Vei and the occasional easily-hauled exotic metal or chemical that would’ve faced a hefty levy going through Customs.

Anyway, there wouldn’t be any need for the likes of me if it didn’t take a bribe the size of Bluegate itself to get through Immigration. Only a few were rich enough to pay that, and none of them made their money saving baby seals or caring for orphans.

But somehow I didn’t think that excuse was going to fly with the cops. Detective Reed was watching me, waiting for me to speak. I opened my mouth to demand a lawyer when the door to the interrogation room opened and a man built like a tank strode into the room.

“Miles,” he said, grinning, “I knew we’d get your ass one day.”

My mouth was already aching from all these forced smiles, but I pretended to be happy to see Detective Todd. A few years back he’d got me out of the clutches of a crooked cop who liked me for a weapons-smuggling charge, and managed to get me set loose with a rap across the knuckles for a minor Tunneling-related charge.

Walter Todd pulled out a chair from the table, spun it around, and sat on it backward with his arms folded over the chair back. With his gray-streaked hair and his faded leather jacket, he looked like something out of a 70s cop show. A cigarette dangled from his lips, filling the room with smoke and probably breaking a bunch of healthy workplace regulations, but he didn’t seem too concerned.

Detective Reed glanced at him, her face a mask, then returned her icy stare to me. I ignored her, choosing to focus on the friendlier cop. “Seems like you could find better asses than mine, Walt. I saw the hookers you guys had cuffed out in holding.”

Todd winked at me and pulled my file away from Detective Reed. “Pretty impressive pile, don’t you think, Vivian? Have you told him yet?”

“Told me what?” I asked.

Their demeanor was making me shifty. The good-cop, bad-cop thing was standard, but I still couldn’t work out what I was doing here. The time on my watch said it was just after 9 p.m., so it was probably closer to midnight. Why the hell had they bothered to bring me into the interrogation room now, instead of letting me kick up my heels in a cell for the night? Chances were the Vei family I’d smuggled in had already been deported, and it wasn’t exactly murder they were trying to get me to confess to. Vei-smugglers never did serious jail time. Why all the effort?

“We want to talk to you about Ink,” Detective Reed said.

Aw, hell. A fresh wave of sweat broke out across my forehead, and I could swear I felt my blood pressure ratchet up a few notches.

I couldn’t go to prison. It wasn’t the criminals that scared me. It was the walls. The bars. Christ, I couldn’t live in a box.

If they were going to try to pin an Ink smuggling charge on me, I was screwed. Ink was a nasty drug, as expensive as it was addictive. It was like heroin with a dash of methamphetamine, something that drowned your mind in black while making you wild as a pissed-off baboon. As the bread-and-butter of the drug trade in Bluegate, it made a lot of wallets thicker, and not just the gang members’.

“Look,” I said, cringing at the panic in my voice, “I don’t touch Ink, all right? Too many risks.”

“Does he look like a risk-taker to you, Vivian?” Todd asked.

“He sure does. You’re sweating, Mr. Franco.”

I wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, and Detective Reed smirked at me like I’d just signed my confession.

“You’ve got to be bullshitting me,” I said. “That’s why you had me brought in here? Look at my record, damn it. There’s not one Ink-smuggling charge on there. It’s not my style!”

Todd chuckled. He seemed amused by my bug-eyed stare, the bastard. “Calm down, Miles. I’ve seen pigeons that are tougher to spook than you. We’re not here to bust you.”

“You already busted me once tonight,” said. “Sorry if I don’t take you at your goddamn word.”

Detective Reed tapped her fingers on the table in an annoyed gesture. For some reason, I noted she didn’t wear a wedding ring. “Mr. Franco—”

“Just call me Miles, will you? This ‘Mr. Franco’ thing is getting annoying.”

“Mr. Franco,” she said again, with a touch of vindictiveness in the words, “Does the name Doctor Dee mean anything to you?”

“My doctor’s name is Roberts, and he got struck off for some dodgy organ trading scheme. Cheap, though.”

Nervousness was making me babble, and I wasn’t particularly keen to hurry this conversation along. It was never good when a cop asked you questions like that. It meant they wanted something. I’d seen plenty of pictures in the newspapers of police informants floating in the river, and I could almost guarantee all of them had started their snitching careers with a conversation like this.

“We got a handful of references to this Doctor Dee in drug busts we pulled off these last couple of weeks,” Todd said. He stroked his clean-shaven chin as he talked, a habit he’d had as long as I’d known him. “Seems he’s been offering jobs to a couple of the local dealers if they defect from their own gangs. The ones we got to before they were snuffed out said there’s a new product hitting the streets soon.”

“So?” I said. “There’s a new variation of Ink every few years. There’s always some chemist tweaking it.”

Todd shook his head. “This is more than a tweak, Miles.”

“Chroma, they’ve been calling it,” Reed said. “We haven’t got our hands on a sample yet, but word is it’s powerful. Really powerful. Gang violence is already up. If this thing is what they say it is, there’s going to be war in the streets over the supply and distribution.”

I didn’t know how they could tell when there was more violence in the city; it’d be like trying to find a flaming marshmallow in the middle of a forest fire. But right then, that wasn’t my main concern.

“All right, I get the idea, and I have a feeling I know where you’re going with this. I’m leaving.”

I stood up, and so did Detective Todd. “Easy, Miles. We’re offering you a chance to get out of this mess you’re in.”

“You’re the ones who got me in this mess in the first place.” I’d driven right out of nervous a few miles back and now I was accelerating into angry territory. I wouldn’t let them lock me up. “A dozen Vei come into Bluegate illegally every day and you guys have never given a damn about it before. This is a goddamn set up.”

“Calm down, Mr. Franco,” Vivian Bloody Reed said.

She probably knew saying that would just wind me up more. “To hell with that, I’m pissed, and you’d better get used to it.”

They didn’t get used to it. Todd reached across the table with an arm the size of my thigh and shoved me back down into my seat. For a second it felt like a small building had fallen on my shoulders, but then the pressure was gone, and Todd was back on his side of the table.

The rage dulled slightly as the rational part of my brain reminded me about not being a smartass. I was neither tall nor well-built, and Todd could divide me into several pieces with his bare hands if he chose. I forced myself to silence and sat still like a good little boy. Christ, there wasn’t even a window in this room.

“That’s better,” Detective Reed said. “All we want you to do is consult on the case. You do a good job, and all this…” She pushed my file to the side of the table. “…all this goes away. We’ll drop the charges from today. If you’re lucky, you might even get paid.” I scowled, but she continued anyway. “Our best chance of tracking down this Doctor Dee and find out where he’s going to bring in the Chroma is to hit his distribution network. Which means—”

“Tunnels,” I finished. Ink—and most likely this Chroma—couldn’t be made on Earth. Our reality was too stable, and Ink was just too damn crazy. It was a Vei drug, though it had hit the human drug market hard, just as alcohol had hit theirs. So that meant this Doctor Dee would be bringing his Chroma in from Heaven.

It wasn’t the actual Heaven, of course, the one with angels and pearly gates and long lists of who’d been naughty and much shorter lists of who’d been nice. The name had been coined by some wiseass soldier in the first exploratory team. Then the media got hold of it, and the name stuck.

The soldier must’ve been being sarcastic when he named it. Heaven was a truly messed up place, the kind of place that drives men mad. Reality wasn’t stable there, and everything was malleable. Entire textbooks had tried to describe Heaven, and I’d yet to read one that even came close.

Still, for me, the name fit. There was nothing like the freedom of being in a place where even the laws of physics weren’t enforced.

But why in the seven hells did the cops want me on this? They’d gone to a hell of a lot of effort to bring me in. I was surprised they didn’t go one step further and stick a dog leash round my neck. The Police Department had their own Tunnelers, upstanding men of the finest caliber, not lowly freelancers like me. Why did they feel the need to dredge me up from the gutters?

Detective Reed must have seen the look on my face. “Truth is, we’ve run into a brick wall on this, Miles. Even our informants have gone quiet. You’ve got contacts in the Vei community, and most of the freelance Tunnelers out there are no more than drug trafficking scum. Todd tells me you’re different. He vouched for you.”

“That’s the kind of gift I can do without, Walt. Next time, just send me a box of wine.”

Todd shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “Your choice, Miles. I got a nice pair of handcuffs ready for you if you don’t want the job. But I warn you, them animals tonight are a wild bunch.” He jerked his thumb toward the door, back to the cells where the drunk and stoned waited to be processed. “Someone forgot to feed them and they’re a bit cranky.”

Being backed into a corner didn’t sit well with me. My palms grew moist as I chewed over the options in my head, as if I hadn’t already made my decision. I didn’t much like getting told what to do, but being stuck in a cage, well, that’d snap my mind clean in two. Plus, I had a feeling they wouldn’t allow much Tunneling in prison.

I sighed. “Christ. Let me get some shut-eye, and we can start tomorrow.”

The detectives got to their feet, and I followed suit. Todd grinned again and slapped me on the shoulder with a hand that could pass as a bear’s paw.

“Sorry Miles, no such luck. We start tonight. Go home, get changed, and be back here in an hour. We got work to do.”

I bit my tongue to keep from yelling. I hated cops.

CHAPTER TWO

The two detectives made me wait in the interrogation room while they got my paperwork together. I brooded as I sat in the dark, claustrophobic room, then took to giving evil glares to the reflective one-way glass on the off chance one of them was watching me. I’d just taken to pacing the room when Detective Reed finally returned and allowed me to go.

The walk of shame through the police station was slightly less demeaning this time, mainly due to the lack of handcuffs. The hookers were still sitting in holding, the harsh light showcasing every wrinkle and faded bruise. They made screeching cat-calls as Detective Reed and I went past, but I didn’t respond. My job sees me walking the darker streets of Bluegate a lot, and I wasn’t keen to antagonize any more people than I had to.

Detective Reed didn’t talk to me, which suited me fine. The pantsuit she was wearing was strangely alluring, and I had to keep a tight rein on myself to keep my gaze from slipping to the hint of cleavage that appeared above her purple V-necked shirt. Sure, beautiful women scare me, but I was still a man, and one in the middle of a dry spell the size of the Sahara desert. Detective Reed didn’t appear to take any notice of my glances, which was probably for the best.

We stopped in front of an overweight uniformed cop sitting behind a plate glass window, the one who had taken my things when I’d gone through processing.

“Miles Franco,” Detective Reed said to the man. “Give him his stuff back.”

The cop swiveled around in his chair without looking at me and shuffled through several paper bags. He finally reemerged with a grunt and a bag with ‘Myles Falco’ scrawled on it in black ink. Goddamn cops. They really needed to up their admission standards.

“Wallet,” he said, pulling it from the bag and sliding it beneath his window to me. “Key ring with three keys. Cell phone. Folding knife.” I pocketed the knife before he could have second thoughts and confiscate it. It was a good knife, with a carbon steel blade about five and a half inches long. It was a tool, not a weapon, but I could see the disapproval spreading across Detective Reed’s face.

The cop started to scrunch the bag up and throw it away, but I spoke up. “I had some coins.”

The cop frowned at me as if I was deliberately trying to make trouble. “Bag’s empty. Check your wallet.”

My wallet was as empty as it always was. It was more for show than anything. “I need my coins.”

Detective Reed checked her watch and made an irritated noise. “Check the shelf again, Will. This one’s stubborn.”

The cop scowled but did as he was told, hefting his considerable weight off the office chair. He disappeared beneath the desk for a few seconds. I could hear him shuffling around, and he finally reemerged with a handful of silver coins.

He tossed them toward me then slapped a clipboard with a release form down in front of me. “Sign.”

I scrawled my name before I could make any more enemies and snatched the five coins from the desk. They settled comfortably into my pockets, and my hands stopped shaking quite so much.

“A uniform will give you a ride home,” Detective Reed said as she led me toward the front doors of the station. “You can find your own way back here?”

I nodded. Anything to not have more cops loitering outside my apartment waiting for me to get ready.

Detective Reed returned my nod and strode back the way we had come. I spent a couple of distracted seconds admiring the way her hips slid from side to side, then kicked myself out of it. Hell, I had more important things to be thinking about right now.

I shoved open the doors to the station and stepped out into the night. The cold air kept the smog smell out of it, which made breathing a little more bearable. You spend long enough in a city breathing car fumes and industrial smoke and soon enough you’re wondering where your sense of taste went.

The street was well-lit for Bluegate. Streetlights cast an orange glow onto the street and the drab concrete buildings. Occasionally, cars trundled past the station, probably containing married men off to visit their mistresses or gangsters on their way to rough up a troublesome drug dealer. Call me jaded, but some days it seemed like everyone in this city was one brand of immoral or other. Hell, I was no exception.

The police station was just to the east of the city center, in between the territories of the Gravediggers, the 23rd Street Bikers, and the Andrews Family. This was an older part of town, from back when Bluegate was called Garanade. A horrible name for a horrible town.

The cop Detective Reed had promised me was waiting at the bottom of the stone stairs leading out of the station, leaning against his squad car. He was a lanky kid who looked about thirteen, with a mop of blond hair and a uniform that was too short for him. He held up his hand in greeting as I approached and gestured to the back seat. “Can’t let you ride up front, sorry. Rules, and all that.”

I didn’t mind. At least the kid seemed friendly enough. I’d give him six months before he was as calloused as the rest of them.

My apartment was on the other side of Central Bluegate, about a fifteen-minute drive if the traffic wasn’t too bad. Most people tend to stay off the streets after dark in Bluegate, so we had the road almost to ourselves.

The young cop tried to engage me in conversation once or twice, but when I responded mostly with one-word answers, he gave up. I was still in a brooding mood, and I wasn’t going to let any cheerful conversation spoil that. I had to find a way out of this pit of snakes I’d been dropped in. Like hell I was going to trust the Bluegate PD to be looking out for my best interests. Something fishy was going on, something they weren’t telling me. Goddamn cops were like that.

I’d tried to keep out of gang business for my entire freelancing career. It wasn’t easy, when skilled Tunnelers are a key part of any good drug smuggling business. I’d been offered piles of cash for my services, and I’d been given more than a few lumps on my head as an incentive to consider taking up a career within their fine institutions. But I tend to be a stubborn son of a bitch when I get backed up against the wall. I don’t much like being told what to do. But that wasn’t why I stayed freelance. Tunnelers who threw in their loyalties with either a gang or the cops tend to have a short life span. I happened to be rather fond of living.

The cop flicked on the radio to some easy-listening jazz as we ambled through the seedier streets. Prostitutes stood smoking on the footpaths, half-hidden by the shadow, cheap decorations for the closely packed slums behind them. I caught a few glimpses of pimps and drug dealers further back in the alleys, and expensive cars pulling up then speeding away with a vial of Ink or a half-dressed woman. Strolling down these streets at night was akin to suicide unless you were in good with the gangsters, and even then you’d better hope you backed the right gangs. Most people played it safe, fixing padlocks to their doors and praying this winter wouldn’t be as cold as the last.

I leaned back in the seat and tried to take my eyes off the scenery. It was easy to get jaded in a city like this. I’d lived there most of my life, bar an unfortunate attempt at making a new start in Corton, the next city along the North River. I’m not a masochist. I didn’t stay for the fun. I stayed because it’s the only place I can Tunnel.

The cop drove the car along the top of a sweeping hill that overlooked the river and the bay to the west, and I could see the reason I stayed in glimpses between the buildings we passed. A series of huge, glowing concentric circles, 600 feet across, hovered a few inches above the surface of Tunnel River. It cast an eerie blue glow onto the platforms and buildings that had been built out around it, bright enough to be seen despite the city lights. Even at this late hour, the platforms around it were swarming with machinery and people, moving equipment and vehicles back and forth from the circles.

It was the sort of thing you couldn’t help but stare at, even after you’d seen it a million times. You told yourself you stared because it was beautiful, in an unearthly way, but really you were scared, because even after all this time you still didn’t know what it truly was.

They called them Bores when they appeared, a couple of years before I was born. Some said the twenty-four Bores around the world were the result of some government scientists with a penchant for risk-taking and an unlimited purse of taxpayers’ money. More than a couple of cults were convinced it was part of some deity’s screwed-up plan for humanity. Me, I didn’t know who to believe, and I figured there wasn’t much point thinking about it too hard.

It took all of five minutes for the government types in their black suits and their sunglasses to start poking at the Bores to see what they could make them do, or so the stories go. Turns out, the Bore only did one thing, but it did it damn well. A portal, I suppose you’d call it, a portal to another world. With the special kind of arrogance reserved especially for politicians, the government began exploring the world on the other side of the Bores.

I closed my eyes to block out the sight of the Bore. Looking at it too long stung my eyes. The Bore was the reason I could do what I could do. Tunnelers are all tied to a Bore, and this one was mine. If I went too far outside the city limits, my ability to Tunnel decreased, until I couldn’t even form a Pin Hole. True, I could have left anyway, taken up some other job, but Tunneling was the one thing I knew, the one thing I was good at.

Today, though, I was reconsidering that position.

As the car reached the crest of the hill and the radio started playing a nice saxophone solo, I opened my eyes again. I could just make out the Immigration and Customs offices at the edge of the Bore. Immigration still liked to pretend they held the only path for migrating between Earth and Heaven, as if there weren’t several hundred Tunnelers like me scattered throughout the city.

The clock on the car’s dashboard read 1:26 a.m. when we finally pulled up outside my apartment building. 2310 Marlowe Street was a building that I’m pretty sure must have been condemned about a decade back, but had never been demolished. It stood ten stories high and was constructed mostly of dry wood that would go up like a tinderbox if someone tossed a lit cigarette at it. It was packed in between a laundromat and an almost identical apartment building, with a narrow alleyway on either side that was a haven for the homeless and anyone else looking for a nice pile of cardboard to bed down on.

I tried to open the car door, but the kiddie lock seemed to be on, so Officer Lanky had to let me out. He tried the friendly chatter thing one more time before finally giving up and returning to his car. I tried to summon some guilt for ignoring him, but I couldn’t manage it. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d got some shut-eye, what with the annoying Vei family and being arrested and all. I tend to get cranky when I stay up past my bedtime.

I rammed my key into the door to the building and jiggled it for a few seconds, muttering incoherent swear words to myself, before the lock finally yielded and allowed me to shove the door open. The hinges protested with a low creak, and I slipped inside. It was dark and dusty, as usual. The light bulb had burned out about two years ago and no one had bothered to replace it. I’ll willingly admit the whole place was a shit-hole, but it had a quaint, shit-holey kind of charm about it. Also, the rent was dirt cheap.

Unfortunately, my earning capacity is less than dirt, so the last thing I wanted to see was my landlady’s sixteen-year-old daughter leaning against the handrail on the first floor, wearing a thin nightgown that could only have come from a XXX store.

“Hi Miles,” she whispered down to me, doing her best impression of a sultry temptress. “I heard you at the door.”

I groaned inwardly, expended a considerable amount of energy to avoid groaning outwardly as well, and ascended the stairs. I live on the ninth floor, and apparently the building was built before some genius thought of elevators, so I had no choice but to go past her. Tania wasn’t a bad girl. She’d just learned too much about dealing with men from her mother.

“Not this again,” I said. “I’ve had a long night. Besides, it’s past your bedtime.”

She leaned against the handrail, awkwardly thrusting her narrow hips to the side, and batted her eyelashes at me. “It’s so cold and lonely there.”

I cringed, praying that the neighbors couldn’t hear her. I was in enough trouble already.

I tried to move past her, but her hand snaked out and grabbed my tie, pulling me close. She purred.

“Knock it off, kid.” I grabbed her hand and pushed it away, trying to be gentle. “You got no interest in an old man like me.”

Her seductress act dissolved in an instant, and the transformed into something much more comforting and familiar: a pouting teenager. “Mom says you’re three weeks behind on the rent.”

I tried again to move past her. “Didn’t she get the check I slipped under the door?”

“You did no such thing, Miles.” She put her hands on her hip, blocking the narrow walkway. “You haven’t had a paying job in ages.”

I shrugged off the uncomfortable sensation of having a teenage girl monitoring my financial situation better than I was. I knew what was coming next. Tania was nothing if not predictable.

“I want you to teach me,” she said, right on cue.

“No.”

“That’s what you always say. Why not?”

“Because.”

She folded her arms and tilted her head to the side. “That’s not an answer.”

“Sure it is.”

She paused and glanced back at the door to her apartment. “Maybe we should wake my mom, see what she says.”

Aw, hell. The universe really wasn’t going to cut me a break. “Didn’t take you for a blackmailer.”

She raised a hand to her chest and put on an affronted look. “Me? How can you say such things?”

The kid had definitely been taking lessons from her mother. When the hell had she got so devious? She had me over a barrel, and the damn thing was full of splinters.

Still, I knew what she was asking, and there was no way I was going down easy. “What makes you think you’re even able to be taught?”

A grin broke across her face, and I got a sinking feeling somewhere in my intestines. “I already did it once.”

“No you didn’t.” I said, hoping that denying it would make it go away.

“I did.” Her voice rose, and I gave her apartment door another glance. She must’ve seen, because she leaned in close and whispered, “I opened a Tunnel.”

“You’re lying.”

She glanced away from me. “Well, it wasn’t a full-sized one, and it only lasted a second before it collapsed, but I did it. I really did.”

She met my eyes and held my gaze. Damn it all. She wasn’t a good enough liar to pull this off. The only reason I’d been able to avoid teaching Tania this long was because I was playing the odds. People with the ability to Tunnel were rare and most couldn’t do so without guidance. If she was telling the truth, that made my life a whole lot more difficult.

There were two types of Tunnels, although really they were just different manifestations of the same thing. A proper Tunnel was large, at least seven feet in diameter, big enough for someone to walk through.

The other type of Tunnel we called a Pin Hole. The circles were much smaller, only an inch or two across. A Pin Hole was a channel to Heaven, and it allowed us to tap some aspects of the world. Specifically, its instability.

Everything is fluid and malleable in Heaven, from the creatures that inhabit it to the land itself. If you go there unprepared, you’re likely to find the world shifting around you so fast you lose whatever trace of sanity you have left. A Pin Hole channels that instability into the real world, allowing a skilled Tunneler to transmute objects. What a thing can be transmuted into depends much more on the type of object it is, rather than what it’s made of. A fork could be turned into a pair of chopsticks, even though one is metal and one is wood. That sort of thing.

The trouble was if Tania was getting into this sort of thing without knowing what the hell she was doing, she was going to wind up turning her skull into an insect’s head, or her necklace into a noose.

As if I didn’t already have enough to worry about.

Then a thought occurred to me. “Hang on, kid. You need Kemia to make a Tunnel. Where the hell did you…?” The guilt on her face would have been comical if I wasn’t already so pissed. “You broke into my apartment?”

“It’s not breaking in if you have a key,” she said, attempting defiance but coming off petulant.

“You don’t have a key. Your mother has a key.” I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. “How much did you take?”

“I could only find one bottle—”

“I only had one bottle.”

“Then I guess I took all of it.” She grinned at me sheepishly, and I forced down another sigh. Calm down, Miles.

I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t a million times worse when I was her age. When she was old enough she might be able to get her Tunneler’s license. Her mother wouldn’t be able to afford her training, but maybe she could get in on scholarship, like I had. But I could see in her eyes that she wasn’t going to wait that long.

Hypocrite, a little voice inside me whispered. Like you weren’t stubborn and stupid as a goddamn donkey.

“All right,” I said. It felt like I had to drag the words from my mouth. “You win.”

“You’ll teach me?” Her eyes were so bright they would’ve blinded a deer.

I nodded. “I’ll teach you. But I’m in the middle of some crap right now. As soon as I get everything wrapped up, we’ll begin. Okay?”

She leaped into my arms, wrapping herself tightly around me, and I became acutely aware of how thin her nightgown was. Seriously, this would not be a good look if her mother came out right now.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she squealed in my ear.

I peeled her off me, feeling my face growing hot. “Back to bed, kid. I’ll be in touch.”

Tania nodded, beaming, then practically skipped back to her and her mom’s apartment. I ran a hand through my curls as she closed the door behind her, then started trudging up the stairs again.

I felt like shit for lying to the kid. She wouldn’t understand. Kids never did.

But now it was time to go. The cops would be expecting me back soon, and it wouldn’t take them long to start looking for me when I didn’t show. There was no way I was getting mixed up in this Chroma business. I never pretended to be an honorable man. I was a survivor.

I had to pack my bags. It was time to leave Earth.

CHAPTER THREE

My apartment was both my home and my site of business. I had an office once, back when I thought being a freelancer was like being a private eye, where long-legged dames strolled in late at night and offered you a chance at danger and glory.

The office was the size of a linen closet, and it took two months of no work before they finally kicked me out. After that I just conducted all my business from the semi-comfort of my apartment, relying on a few discreet newspaper ads to bring in work. It was only in the last few months that my old Tunneler buddy, Desmond, convinced me to take one of his old cell phones and use that as well. I didn’t see much use for the thing myself. Next thing he’d be wanting me to buy a goddamn computer.

My apartment was predictably crappy, full of used furniture I’d found on the side of the street and hauled up the stairs with the help of anyone who owed me a favor. An actual wall separated my bedroom from the rest of the apartment, which I was pretty proud of. The carpet was a horrid shade of green, faded where the sun came through the dirt-streaked windows, and full of cigarette burns. That wasn’t my fault; I’d given up smoking back when I was still a teenager, after half a dozen attempts at looking cool and rebellious.

I tossed my keys down next to a filthy goldfish bowl. Munsey and Frank drifted up to the surface of the water, and I obliged them by shaking in a good helping of fish flakes. They were ugly sons of bitches, but they were hard. I liked that. They gobbled up the food while I made my way across the apartment.

The one good thing about my apartment was the view, if looking out at Bluegate didn’t depress you too much. Most buildings in the immediate neighborhood were only three or four stories, so I sometimes pulled my tattered old armchair up to the window and stared out. The window faced north, and on a dark night I could see the glow from the Bore lighting up the buildings on the opposite side of the river.

Now, looking out at Bluegate for what could be the last time in a long while, I felt strangely nostalgic about the city. Sure, the place was a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but it wasn’t without its redeeming features. Hell, I’d been raised on these streets, and I was pretty fond of myself.

I shook my head and stepped away from the window. I wasn’t leaving anything behind, not really. Besides, I’d probably get a chance to come back when the cops got bored trying to find me and learned how to deal with their problems themselves.

I pulled open the fridge door and found Tania had been telling the truth; she’d cleaned me out of Kemia. The silver fluid acted as a catalyst when making a Tunnel. I wouldn’t be going anywhere without it.

I checked my watch. Nearly 2 a.m. If I could get to Spencer Davies’ place before the cops started snooping around, I could convince him to sell me some more Kemia. He wouldn’t need much convincing. Davies was a Vei chemist, catering to the freelancers like myself who didn’t have the access to Kemia the government-sanctioned Tunnelers did. He wouldn’t turn down the chance to earn a few hundred bucks to slip into some stripper’s thong.

I grabbed a couple of extra shirts and underpants from a pile on the floor of my bedroom and shoved them into an old messenger bag I kept at the top of my wardrobe. No time for a shave, or a shower for that matter. Likely I stunk like a wet dog, but I wasn’t trying to impress anyone. Heaven was generally pretty warm, and I wouldn’t need anything heavier than the worn suit jacket I was already wearing.

I was so busy hurrying around the place I kicked a black case on the floor and nearly went down on top of it. When I got my balance back I opened up the case and pulled out my trumpet.

It wasn’t much to look at. It was dented in a few places, and the metal had long since stopped shining, but it was a good instrument. Occasionally I played with a couple of other guys at bars around the city. We got beer bottles thrown at us more often than not, but it gave me something other than work to worry about. Sometimes the barkeeper would even take pity on us and shout us a hearty meal of fries and ketchup.

I hadn’t played it since my last gig went bad, when a Vei playing damsel in distress dragged me into a whole lot of nonsense that I should have stayed away from. Still, I kept the instrument well-maintained. Wasn’t any point letting a good trumpet go to waste. Besides, it had—what do you call it? Sentimental value. Not many people have a musical instrument that both created and destroyed a relationship. That bloody woman.

The clock on the wall kept up its constant movement, but still I put the trumpet to my lips and played a few long, mournful notes. They didn’t come out as clean as I’d like, but it was me that was rusty, not the trumpet.

Christ, I wanted to take it with me. But it was a weight I couldn’t afford. With a grunt, I returned it to its case and stashed it under my bed next to a pile of old Tunneling textbooks. It was just a trumpet. Just a trumpet.

Even if it was the only thing I had left of that bloody woman.

But that was the way it had to be. I turned to head for the door, then paused. I didn’t know when I’d be able to get back, and Heaven could be a dangerous place if you weren’t prepared. “Damn it,” I said, then went back to my wardrobe and took a long, narrow box from behind an old raincoat.

I pulled the nightstick out and tested the weight of it in my hands. It was an ugly damn thing. The thing was weapon, pure and simple, with no other purpose than to beat the shit out of someone. The knife I carried could be used to scratch a circle, but the nightstick had no such purpose.

Some Tunnelers carried guns, but I’m not that stupid. Not usually, anyway. For one thing, if you’re ever in a situation where you need to shoot someone, it’s likely that there’s more of them than there are of you. And if you’re me, they’re generally more determined to use their guns than you are. Your best bet is to play the part of a peaceful bystander and hope they don’t shoot out kneecaps.

For another thing, you have to be dumber than a chimp to take a gat to Heaven. Complicated things like a gun are likely to change at just the wrong moment, safety mechanisms suddenly disappearing and firing pins setting off the gun unexpectedly. Heaven’s just too unpredictable to go waving such a dangerous thing around. The nightstick is much simpler, of course. Swing, smash in some skulls, run for your fucking life. Easy.

With a bad taste in my mouth, I tucked the nightstick into the pocket I’d stitched into the inside of my suit jacket. It was just a precaution. Chances were I’d bring it back with little to no blood on the vile thing.

I started to make for the door and stopped again. Goddamn it. One more thing I had to do before I go.

I picked up my phone and dialed. It rang ten times before there was a click and a groan. “Guh?”

“Desmond,” I said, “I need a favor.”

There was another groan, and some rustling sounds. Then he came back on the line. “I knew it was gonna be you, guy. You’re the only one who asks for favors at two in the morning.”

“I’m going away for a few days. I need you to feed my fish.”

“You woke me at two in the goddamn morning—”

“Oh, quit your whining,” I said. “There’s something else. There’s a girl that lives in my building.”

“Congratulations. But you should know by now she ain’t going to be much interest to me.”

“Don’t be such a smartass. It’s not like that. She’s just a teenager. She opened a Pin Hole.”

He went silent for a moment. “On her own?”

“Well, it sure as hell wasn’t me helping her.”

“Is she…?”

“Yeah, she’s fine. Kids are hard these days.”

“She needs someone to teach her,” Desmond said.

“Yeah.”

He paused again, and I could practically hear his sleepy brain connecting the dots. “You bastard. You’re not getting me to do your work that easy.”

“I’m out the door, Des. If I’m not back in a few days, you might want to drop by, make sure she hasn’t blown her own head off.”

“You son of a—”

“Her name’s Tania. Got to go.”

“Don’t you dare hang up that fucking—”

I slapped the mouthpiece back on the cradle, slung my bag over my shoulder and took a deep breath. Everything was done. All the loose ends of my life tied up in under twenty minutes. Now that was efficiency.

There was nothing else for it. I cast one more look around the apartment and threw open the front door.

I found myself staring at a chest that looked like it had been built for pulverizing buildings. I looked up, and up, and finally found the head that was attached.

Detective Todd glanced at the bag slung over my shoulder, then looked me hard in the eyes. “Going somewhere, Miles?”

I had to admit, it looked bad. My brain spun, trying to devise a good lie, but Todd didn’t stop to wait. He strode into the apartment, forcing me backward lest I be crushed under his bulk, and shut the door behind him.

Confused and overloaded, my brain reverted to its backup setting: being an asshole. “You’re a lot uglier than the last hooker I ordered.”

Todd stared at me for a second, then tilted his head back and burst out laughing.

I glanced at the front door again and pondered making a run for it. No. Todd was big, but I had a sneaking suspicion he’d catch me and pound me into the ground before I made it halfway down the stairs. It’s hard to stay fit when you’re surviving mostly on a diet of instant noodles.

Finally, his laughter subsided, and he returned his attention to me. His face had been well-worn over the years, with deep wrinkles across his face. I’d never asked his age, but I would put him in his mid-40s, even though he looked much older. The silver streaks in his hair didn’t give him the dignified look they were supposed to, they just made him look aged.

When the last of his laughs faded, he pointed me to the dark brown couch that smelled of mothballs. “Hell of a night, huh? Supposed to be my time with my son.”

“Yeah?” I said, barely listening. “How’s that working out for you?”

“It’s three in the a.m. and I’m hanging around with you. What do you think?” He gestured to the couch again. “Come on. We got to talk.”

I glanced at the door once more, then went and took a seat. I rested my bag at my side, leaving my arms free. The nightstick rested against my ribs, hidden inside my jacket, but I didn’t let myself think too much about it.

Todd dragged my armchair around so it was directly opposite the couch and dropped into it, the springs creaking violently under his weight. “I saw the look on your face back at the station. Didn’t take no genius to work out you’d try to bolt.”

I tried not to let the guilt show on my face. Apparently, I didn’t do a very good job, because Todd fixed me with a stern look. It’s pretty easy to pull off a stern look when it’s backed up by 240 pounds of muscle.

Lying wasn’t going to work. I’d have to try honesty for a change. “I don’t think I’m right for this job.”

Todd shrugged. “Of course you’re not. You’re a bloody civilian, with a criminal record at that.”

“Why the hell you dragging me into your mess, then?”

“You’ve seen what the department’s like at the moment. How many of those cops do you think are in the pocket of one gang or another? Sixty per cent? Seventy? How many of them stand to benefit if Chroma hits the streets? Everyone’s gonna try get their hands on a piece of the pie, and none of them will give a fuck if it’s so hot it burns them.”

It wasn’t exactly breaking news that the police in Bluegate had long since stopped being an instrument of the state. But that didn’t make this my problem. “I’m just a Tunneler. I’m not the department’s dog.”

Todd reached into his front jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of smokes. He offered me one, and I shook my head.

“I’ve been watching you since that weapons smuggling case,” he said as he lit up. “You ain’t got one gang-related blotch on your record. That’s almost unheard of for Tunnelers in this town, you know that. Vivian ain’t so keen on having you on board. It was me that swung it.”

“Gee, thanks, Walt.”

“There’s something else.” He reached into his pocket, and as he did so the pistol in his shoulder harness became visible beneath his jacket. I tensed, but he didn’t seem to notice. He pulled out a folded bit of paper with a photograph paperclipped to it, and passed it to me. “You know her?”

The photograph was a poor quality picture of a round-faced lady, middle aged, with her hair in a pixie cut that didn’t suit her. She stared directly at the camera, unsmiling, reminding me of a foster mother I once had. “I know of her. She graduated a few years ahead of me. Shirley O’Neil. She’s a Tunneler.”

Todd nodded and leaned forward in the armchair, resting his elbows on his knees. “Our info has her working for John Andrews these days. Pulls in a nice six-figure income, so I hear, all off the books, of course.” He threw a glance around my cramped apartment. “We got a lead that suggests she might be connected to Doctor Dee. If it’s Andrews behind this new drug, we can expect him to move fast and hard against his competitors when it hits the streets.”

I chewed my lip. I thought I was out of my depth before, now I’d been thrown into the river with concrete blocks tied to my feet. John Andrews was a Vei gangster that controlled most of the northern side of Bluegate, and he didn’t do it by shaking hands and kissing babies. That wasn’t his real name, of course, but Vei names tended to be unpronounceable at the best of times, even when you knew a bit of the language.

“I got a good idea what you’re thinking, Miles. But we’ll be with you all the way on this, me and Vivian. We ain’t gonna hang you out for John Andrews and his cronies to tear apart. But you can give us a street-level view we can’t get from our department.”

“Walt—”

“It’s our best bet for stopping this before it gets any innocent folks hurt.”

The bastard was really pushing the hard sell. It was easy to make promises, but John Andrews’ reach was long. I didn’t trust a thin blue line to hold him back. “I don’t know O’Neil personally. She’s just a face and a reputation to me.”

“I know. But she’s got herself a personal assistant, a Vei by the name of Lance Peterson.”

It took me a second to place the name. “I smuggled him and his brother into Bluegate last year,” I said slowly. “I thought he was a good kid.”

Detective Todd shrugged. “Maybe he got mixed up with the wrong bunch. It’s easy enough to do in this city.”

“You want me to talk to him.”

“We need an angle, Miles. We can keep him out of trouble if he helps us on this. If he doesn’t…” Todd shrugged.

Goddamn it. This was what I got for not taking one of those nice salaries and working for a gang. Being the good guy is a son of a bitch.

Todd grinned at me. “I knew you’d come around.”

“I haven’t said I’ll do it yet.”

He slapped me on the shoulder, and it felt like one of my lungs collapsed. “It’s written all over your face.” He pulled another slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to me. “Meet you back at the station in twenty, then we’ll head out. It ain’t too late to go visit him now. People are so much more cooperative when they’re sleep-deprived.” He winked at me, stood up, and made for the door.

“You’re a real bastard, you know that, Walt?” I said.

He lifted his hand above his head, waving without turning back, and walked out the door.

I went to the fridge, got a beer, and popped the top. I stood over the sink and slugged it back, barely tasting it. I’d been so looking forward to a little peace.

“Fuck it.”

All right. I’d play their game if it would get them off my back. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t cheat a little. I tossed the empty into the sink, returned my getaway bag to my bedroom, and grabbed my address book and my motorbike helmet.

I’d go see Peterson. But not with any goddamn cops holding my leash. If I was going to do this, I was doing it my way.

I slammed the door behind me.

THE MAN WHO CROSSED WORLDS

Available Now

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Strange is a speculative fiction author who writes urban fantasy with a distinct noir influence. Inspired by the likes of Jim Butcher’s THE DRESDEN FILES and Mike Carey’s FELIX CASTOR series, he aims to deliver intense, humorous and sometimes dark stories to his readers.

In his spare time, Chris is an unapologetic geek, spending far too long wrapped up in speculative fiction books, watching old zombie movies and playing computer games. He lives in the far away land of New Zealand, and occasionally he goes to university like he’s supposed to.

He doesn’t plan on growing up any time soon.

Contact Chris at: chrisstrangeauthor@gmail.com
www.Chris-Strange.com

Table of Contents

- THE MAN WHO COULDN’T BE
- Table of Contents
- The Man Who Couldn’t Be Bought
- A Note From The Author

- Sample of The Man Who Crossed Worlds

- CHAPTER ONE
- CHAPTER TWO
- CHAPTER THREE

- About The Author