Cutlerine
Gone. May or may not return.
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- 15
- Years
- The Misspelled Cyrpt
- Seen Mar 15, 2014
My first fanfic. I rate it 15 to be safe, since it contains a moderate amount of graphic violence and death, a few drug references and some 'suggestive themes', as the DVD cases like to say.
It's a parody of three things: Pokémon Red, the Pokémon Special manga and the classic 1950s American detective genre, with a touch of noir thrown in. If you haven't experienced any one of these things, I suggest you do so before reading, as the story will be considerably improved for you. I think.
OK, without further ado:
Chapter One
The client's chair is the most important part of the detective's office. You haven't got a chair, you haven't got clients: simple as that. And then, it has to be a good chair – no damage, no stains. If it isn't a good clean chair, no self-respecting client's going to sit in it – and then, like I say, you don't get any clients.
My client's chair was a beauty. It sat, as ever, on the opposite side of the desk from me, and was upholstered in shiny black leather – real Miltank hide, not some cheap plastic stuff like they use in the Game Corner – worn with the friction from a thousand restless legs and oiled with a million teardrops. It wasn't new, but it was clean, comfortable, and inviting – about as close to good as you could get in this town.
However, the person sitting there right now was in no position to appreciate this. He wasn't even a client.
He was about eleven years old and slumped, sullen, in the chair, his red baseball cap low over his downturned face. Behind him, a massive, dark blue figure stood, all rippling muscles and huge, aggressive eyes. This figure, I knew for a fact, was named Poli – a name so hopelessly diminutive and applied to such a huge creature that it was almost enough to make me laugh.
The silence had been going for about five minutes now, and I was beginning to get impatient.
"Kid," I said at length, "basically, you've got two options. One, I can send you back home now, or two, I hand you over to the police."
That got his attention. His hands clenched tighter on the edges of the seat and his shoulders tensed; he wasn't stupid and he knew that the chief of police didn't like him. He also knew what happened to those people that the chief of police didn't like: they slipped and fell on the notoriously slippery tiled floor of the station.
"I came here for a reason," he said, voice quiet. He still didn't look at me. "The Rockets―"
"Are none of your business," I finished for him, a note of anger beginning to rise in my voice. "Red, it doesn't matter what the Rockets do! I don't give a damn and neither should you – that's someone else's business. Unless someone pays me to look into it."
"But―" He looked up for the first time, some emotion appearing in his voice. He felt passionately about what he was talking about, that was for sure.
"But nothing! Your idealism might work back in Pallet Town, but here in Saffron?" I made a dismissive noise. "Kid, in this city there is no black and white. There isn't even any yellow, really. Just endless shades of grey. Rockets, Sabrina, the police – all of them, none of them good guys or bad guys. Just grey guys. Like everyone else in this city."
"What about you?" Red replied defiantly, looking at me in the eyes for the first time. "What about you, Russell? What colour are you?"
I hesitated, then answered.
"Grey," I said. "Grey, just like everybody else." I stood up and called for Mardek. He stalked in from the other room moments later. "I'm going out," I told him. "Wesley said he'd be here at some point today. If he comes, keep him here for me, yeah? I won't be long."
He blinked once, slowly, with dark, shrewd eyes, then inclined his head in something that might have been a nod.
"Are you taking me to the station?" asked Red. Behind him, Poli tensed, massive muscles tightening beneath his dark blue skin. Mardek traded glances with the Poliwrath, and I knew what he was saying. Don't bother, he said; if it's the police you don't stand a chance anyway.
"No," I said. "God knows I should. I'm taking you home."
Red looked relieved. Like most people in Saffron, he'd slipped on that tiled floor at least once before, and like everyone else he had not enjoyed it. I had seen the scars.
I walked him down to the Magnet Train station, through the night-scarred streets of Saffron. The moon was nothing but a sliver, as if turned away because it couldn't bring itself to look upon the city. I couldn't blame it. I knew this city better than most, and more than anyone wanted to: I knew the dark grey nightmares that polluted the original yellow dream; I knew the gamblers and the harlots at the Game Corner and Club Rocket; I knew the milk addicts and the smugglers; the swindlers and the strongmen; the men at the Silph company where they sell you stolen dreams that fade on the morning air like childhood memories in the dank air of Saffron's back roads. I looked at the moon and I saw all that spread out beneath it, a patchwork quilt of sleepless nights and wishful thinking that men call a city. I shook my head and went inside.
I bought Red a one-way ticket to Pallet from a bored-looking youth behind a tiny glass window. It seemed I spent a lot of time doing that these days. We stood together on the platform as the train glided in, almost silent as it passed between the magnetic rings.
"Don't come back here," I told him, as I did every time. "There's a lot of stuff in this city that can harm a eleven-year-old kid."
And, as he did every time, Red replied: "I'm not like other kids."
"A Poliwrath, a Bulbasaur and a Pikachu are not adequate defence against Saffron, kid. Stay with your mother. She worries about you."
Red was silent, then he turned and got on the train without another word. He always left like that: not so much as a goodbye, or even a thank you for the ticket.
I watched it go for the three seconds it took for it to pass out of sight, then left the station and walked back to the office. When I got back, Wesley was in the client's chair.
The client's chair. What kind of people come to sit in it? Whether you're in New York or London, Berlin or Paris, Lilycove or Saffron, they're all the same. Mostly they just want me to confirm the suspicions growing in their hearts that cast a shadow over their eyes, the ones that end up with me spending long nights in a cold car looking for the twitch in the bedroom curtains. However, sometimes they aren't. Sometimes, they're people like Wesley.
He was thirty, or forty – it was hard to tell beneath the grime and the week-old beard. His eyebrows burst forth like twin hairy caterpillars writhing in agony on his forehead, and the eyes beneath them receded as if stomped into his face by their thrashing. He wore a battered old coat and smelled strongly of whisky.
"Wesley," I said, and sat down. "To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?"
He was silent for a moment, then spoke.
"I've got a problem, Russell."
"What kind of a problem?" I took a bottle of whisky out of the desk drawer and poured him a glass. He gulped it and continued, fortified.
"Some guys came to my house last night and stole Charla."
I said nothing yet. Pokémon theft was traditionally the Rockets' racket, although they hadn't dabbled in that since they had taken over the gambling scene. If this was the Rockets' work, getting involved would result in a bite from a rabid Zubat and a painful convalescence in hospital – and that was a best-case scenario.
"You remember Charla?" Wesley asked. I did. Four, five feet tall and loyal as only an immature Ponyta, bursting with fiery pride undimmed by the city's cynical atmosphere, can be.
"Yeah," I answered at last. "You want me to find her?"
Wesley nodded, his sunken grey eyes watering. I understood; in this world, about the only person who you could count on not to betray you was your Pokémon, and friends like that aren't two a penny. I sighed. Wesley's request was dangerous, but... Old friends are there to be helped, and not, unfortunately, for monetary reward.
"I'll do it," I told him. "I'll find Charla for you."
As soon as he'd left, aglow with thanks, I pulled on my coat and hat and walked out again, this time taking Mardek with me. If the Rockets were behind this, I knew where I would find them.
Chapter Two
The Club was a building like any other, a dreary grey door in a stone wall that was once yellow but was tarnished now, as much by the people who came and went there as by the ravages of passing time. The manager, Donatello, knew his stuff and the clients knew Petrel: there was no need for advertising or flashy exteriors. I waited in line and went inside.
I could describe the inside, but what would be the point? The most famous nightclub in all of Kanto, a heady mixture of liquor and neon and strippers, swirling in the fug of cigarette smoke, half lit by disco lights that served only to pick out the curves of the Rocket girls who served here. The stage had a group of dancers on it, some women and some Jynx, and all could be found later at the back for extra entertainment that would last all night. I didn't even care anymore. This was Saffron, after all, that cure-all number of the soul and muddier of morals; if there was anyone here who really cared about it they were in the minority.
I pushed my way over to the bar, Mardek helping me clear a path, pushing people out of the way with an ease born of long practice. I asked if Marcia was in, and the girl, one I didn't know and who didn't know me, refused to tell me; after some pleading, I managed to get her to promise that she would tell Marcia that I would be waiting at one of the tables.
I worked my way back across the floor, skirting the dance floor and sinking into a hard-backed chair that faced the shadowy table on a raised dais at the back. Idly, I glanced across there and saw a group of men and women in black smoking and talking animatedly, a Hypno with the muscles of a Machamp standing nearby, looking menacing in dark glasses and whirling its pendulum around its finger in a way that suggested it wouldn't hesitate to use it. I looked away before it sensed me; I had seen what happened to people who fell afoul of the Rocket Hypno and it wasn't pretty. You just had to look away from the Rocket table and ignore whatever was going on there.
"Russell?" came a silvery voice, and a vision in the curiously revealing uniform of Team Rocket slid into the chair beside me. A heart-shaped face turned to face mine, wide blue eyes framed by long locks of wavy, dark brown hair that poured down onto her bare shoulders. Marcia had arrived.
"Good to see you," I said, leaning back.
"Russell, when you come here you don't come for the show," Marcia replied. "You want something from me, right?"
"Yeah." I let a silence grow for a moment or two, then continued. "How's the Pokémon kidnapping business nowadays?"
Marcia frantically shushed me, eyes whirling around to the Hypno and back again.
"Shut up!" she hissed. "You don't discuss Rocket business here!" She jerked her head towards the impassive, yellow-skinned creature, whose pendulum had started to sway in our direction.
"Oh, right, I forgot. More than the job of a simple Rocket girl is worth." I smiled a cold smile. You might think I was being hard on her, but Marcia wasn't at all as soft as she liked to pretend. She was one of the few people I knew who carried a Remoraid – and as non-lethal, non-marking weapons go, those things were pretty damn powerful.
"Meet me in ten minutes," Marcia told me. She glanced back at the Hypno, which appeared to have calmed down somewhat. "At the Slowpoke Cart."
She left me without a word. I lingered only a few more seconds in the greasy, smoke-ridden air of the Rocket Club before departing, Mardek at my side.
The Slowpoke Cart: that eternal symbol of the city. It's always there, on every street corner, and always operated by the same man. I don't know how he does it – no one does – but wherever you are, there too will you find the purveyor of Slowpoketail. His cart is white and battered, with a parasol to keep off the nonexistent sun, and a basin of sizzling fat in which the bloated pink tails wriggle and bounce on the hotplate. The man is short and sturdy, with an eye patch and a round face, forever frozen into that customer trap he calls a smile. The man is Baku, the eater of dreams. His trade is just that.
The Slowpoketail: all it consists of is the severed tail of a Slowpoke, cut from them fresh in the farms. They grow back within a month, though never quite as long or succulent, in accordance with the law of diminishing returns. It's just a fatty lump of meat with lumps of cartilage and bone in the middle, and yet – when fried, it becomes the nation's favourite treat.
"Evening, Russell," said Baku cheerily. He knew me – he knew everyone, just as I knew everyone. We were both denizens of the night, people who had spent too long walking the streets of Saffron in the dark with nought but the occasional flicker of a streetlamp for company.
"Evening," I replied, and bought a Slowpoketail, grease staining my fingers through the paper it was wrapped in. I took up a plastic knife and half-cut, half-ripped it in half, then threw the tail end to Mardek, who caught it deftly, one-handed, and nipped pieces from it with the tiny teeth within his bill.
"It's a cold night," observed Baku. Not that he would feel it, of course; he had his brazier to warm his hands on, for he would be open all night and would wander the streets of the city like a ghoul, vending his grisly wares.
"Yes," I agreed. Silence. Then: "How's business?"
"Oh, not bad, not bad." I knew, and he knew that I knew, that he was lying. Business was always good for the purveyor of Slowpoketail; everyone always wants a Slowpoketail. I'd seen his house – it was positively palatial. But, like the Medici disguising their power, Baku preferred to disguise his success and wealth.
At that point, Marcia showed up, and I gave her my half of the Slowpoketail. She tore a chunk out of it with her teeth, like a hungry wolf, and chewed it ravenously.
"'Sgood," she mumbled through a mouthful of meat. "Haven't eaten since this morning."
"OK," I said, glancing around for Zubat watchers. The Rockets often employed them to spy on people; their speed and acute hearing made for good eavesdroppers, though their blindness was a slight drawback. I waited until she had finished, then offered her the napkin that came with it, to dab the fatty slime from her chin. When she was entirely done, she spoke.
"The Rockets haven't gone in for that sort of theft in years," she said. "But recently... I don't know. It's starting up again. I don't hear much, I'm just a bar girl" – I suppressed a snort; she heard a hell of a lot more than she let on – "but it seems there's some kind of experiment going on."
"Experiment?" I asked. Marcia's eyes widened slightly.
"Something they were doing with Silph Co. technology," she told me. "I don't know what... I only know because of this scientist who came back from the project. He said he refused to do it, whatever it was – the guy was shaking, terrified."
"Can I speak to him?" I asked. Marcia looked grim.
"You'll need a good medium," she said. "He turned up dead two days ago. The Rockets don't let loose ends dangle."
Chapter Three
I stood in the sun of the early morning, looking into the slate-grey waters from the pier. This was Vermilion, a city that wore its government colour with pride, as evidenced by the line of coloured umbrellas along the beach. According to Marcia, this was where they found the scientist's corpse, bloated with corpse gas and washed up on the sand like a beached whale.
Private detectives don't do murder. That's the police's job. If a murder turns up in a case, I'm legally obliged by Kanto national law to inform the police and get my head out fast. But this was Wesley, and I'd promised – so I was going to continue.
The reason we'd come here was simple. Marcia had told us where the dead guy had been found, and since he was the only lead, we were following him. Now, all we needed was to find where he was now, and that meant talking to the police. Which was not going to work.
I turned from the restless waves and walked back down the wooden aisle, walled in by gently bobbing pleasure boats. At the end, I got back in the car and drove to Vermilion's police station.
It was, like all buildings in Vermilion, a bright shade of red, painted freshly every month during the summer when the tourists came. Now that winter was underway, the walls were faded and looked more brown than red; as I made my way up the steps to the door, I reflected on how sad a seaside town is when viewed out of season. For a few months each year, Vermilion was the place to be; then it lapsed back into a slow decline until the spring came around again, and a frenzied effort raised it back to its former glory. Oh, sure, the ships brought in trade and wealth – but that was all saved up for the summer, because nothing was so important to the town as tourism.
Ernst Cooper, fire-breather and amateur watchmaker, stood in front of the desk and faced the officer on duty. He was a tall man, a little worn around the edges, bearing the tell-tale soot-stains on his lips that were the badge of his profession. His eyes were kind and grey, and he wore a battered old suit under a tan mackintosh. Behind him paced a Magmar, crooked eyes flicking left and right in the shady manner of those creatures.
I hoped to God my disguise would stand up.
The officer agreed to let me through as the brother-in-law of the deceased; any elation I felt at deceiving him was momentary, melting away as soon as I walked into the morgue.
Thyme was there too.
Stefano Thyme, the Saffron chief of police, and self-confessed nemesis of all private eyes. Six foot four and broad with it, a slab of muscle in a dark blue uniform. No cop likes a gumshoe, but this guy went way past the force minimum of 'contemptuous dislike'. He was more of a 'kill on sight' kind of guy, and he did not look pleased to see me.
"What the hell are you doing in here?" he asked angrily, seeing me enter. His voice growled like a threatened Kanghaskan and boomed like an anti-social drum. I swivelled around without breaking stride and walked out again, but he was fast as well as strong and I felt his hand grip my arm before I could make good my escape. "Well? I'm waiting for an answer, shamus."
"I was taking the air and thought I'd drop by for a cup of tea."
The hand tightened and I felt my forearm go numb. Thyme yanked me back into the morgue and slammed the door shut, spinning me around to face him. He had an ugly face that looked like it had been chiselled with hard lines from a cube of meat.
"Don't play your stupid games with me, shamus," he growled. "Why are you here?"
Client confidentiality would be the excuse many would spout now, but I knew better. That's the thing that policemen really hate about us, you see – the refusal to tell them anything we know under the banner of 'client confidentiality'. Saying this to Thyme would have just as certain a consequence as pointing a shotgun at my face and pulling the trigger.
"I was reading a book the other night about Burke and Hare, and wanted to see the goods for myself." I might as well have said that I couldn't tell him on grounds of client confidentiality. Thyme's face twisted and I slipped over and landed painfully on the floor. Several times.
It was either half an hour later or twelve hours later by my watch when I regained full consciousness, and sat up to have a look around the cell. As usual, Mardek had slipped quietly off somewhere; I just hoped he remembered where the emergency bail money was, or I could be here for some time.
The cells were full of tramps, since this was Vermilion. Not that there were any more tramps here than anywhere else, but this city was so image-conscious, so desperate to defend the mirage of holiday allure that cloaked it, that vagrancy was the worst crime anyone could commit here, and those on the streets could count on being arrested very, very quickly. Sitting across from me was a man with a hat that looked like someone had taken a tin-opener to it, the top falling away at an angle like a half-peeled tin lid. Noticing me looking, he gave a pleasant smile.
"Stray Meowth," he explained, flicking his eyes upwards. "I was looking for food in a bin and found an angry cat. Woulda used Slash on my eyes if I hadn't moved – and now me hat's gone."
"Did you get any food in the end?"
"Found a dead Pidgey in the next bin, had that instead." He held out a hand. "Me name's Jacob."
I shook the proffered hand. "I'm Russell."
"Why're you here?"
"Thyme doesn't like me."
He didn't ask why Thyme didn't like me. There were so many possible reasons why Thyme might dislike a person that it was best to just accept that Thyme didn't like you, and leave it at that.
"You hear about that dead guy washed up on the beach?"
"Yeah, that was interesting." I might have smiled enigmatically at that – I know some people who would – but I have professional standards to maintain, so I didn't.
A moment later, a haggard-looking policeman came to tell me my bail had been paid, and I walked out to find Mardek waiting for me at the desk, looking distinctly unimpressed. From the sunlight coming in through the window, I judged that I had indeed been out for only half an hour. I thanked the policeman for his time and left.
Mardek looked up at me. From our long years together I could tell what he was trying to communicate.
Russell, getting arrested was stupid.
"Yes," I said, without looking down. "Yes it was. But I got what I wanted, didn't I?"
We could get the bail money back if you return to the station at the right time.
"I'm not going to do that."
I know. The Magmar sighed, which is quite unnerving when done through a beak. He tapped my watch with one claw, signifying: Is she back yet?
"I said we'd meet her by the pier."
I stood on the waterfront street, near the entrance to the pier, and looked out at the sea of forlorn boats, anxiously awaiting the return of the summer when they would once more have purpose in their existence. A few moments later, the sea breeze reversed to blow from inland, and grew much colder; a vague shiver ran down my spine, and I seemed to hear soft voices whispering around me. I smiled and turned around. Priscilla was here.
She materialised with that unmistakeable, jingling cry that all Gastly make, the one that haunts the dreams of small children. All savage eyes and grinning mouth, she was a repulsive sight, a nightmare reproduced in a cloud of toxic gas. She shifted in and out of definition almost continually as the purple-black gas that made up her body fluctuated in the wind. Breathing in a Gastly wouldn't kill you, but it would definitely lay you out of action for a few weeks. That was why they were illegal to keep, along with most other Poison types. After all, a Muk is the one of the nastiest weapons you can use on a human, and a Victreebel doesn't come far behind.
"Anything?" I asked. In the morgue, I had released Priscilla from her Pokéball before Thyme had taken his fists to me. It was the only way to get anything from a corpse – if they were fresh, a Ghost like Gastly stood a good chance of getting inside them and reading the imprint of their last moments.
Priscilla floated upwards slightly and then down again. Mardek opened the bag he was carrying and tapped the piece of cardboard in there. I understood; this would take a while and would best be conducted back at the office. I recalled Priscilla and drove back to River Street in Saffron, where my agency is based.
It's part of a long row of terraced houses, many of which still fulfil that function. Several of them – including my office – have been converted into buildings of dentistry, or a veterinary surgeon's. Mine is the only private detection agency – the only one in Saffron, actually. The name on the frosted glass door that all detectives have in their offices is 'The Babylon Detection Agency', but the man sitting behind the desk is just plain old Russell Curtis.
Mardek took out the piece of cardboard and placed it on the desk, pushing the phone and lamp out of the way. He would have pushed the whisky, too, but I grabbed it before any harm could come to the bottle of client lubricant and put it away in the desk drawer. Mardek then placed an upturned glass on the centre of the board, and I let Priscilla out again.
She flickered in and out of focus for a moment, and a couple of millilitres of her went up my nose; coughing, I berated her and she firmed up, becoming as tangible as possible. When she caught sight of the Ouija board, she floated up and down rapidly, as if bouncing with excitement, and immediately dived down towards the glass before disappearing into thin air. A moment later, the glass began to move, and I began to take notes of what Priscilla was spelling out.
"H," I said, "I, S, N..."
His name was Johann Nielsson. He was investigating a Pokémon in a laboratory. The stolen Pokémon were part of it.
I'd drawn the 'é' on the board specially. It always pays to represent every letter, even those with accents.
"Do you know where this was?" I asked. The glass slipped down to 'N', short for 'no'. "OK, go on."
Something to do with recombinant DNA.
I was surprised that Priscilla knew how to spell 'recombinant', but wrote it down nevertheless.
I have one more thing.
"Go on."
The name of one fellow scientist: Professor Blaine.
"What?!" The point snapped off my pencil and flew away over the surface of the paper. "Blaine? The Blaine? Gym Leader of Cinnabar Island Blaine?"
I didn't believe there was anyone in Saffron who wasn't pond scum underneath their exterior, but Cinnabar's Professor Blaine was a different matter. The man was a genius – and there was no reason to suspect he was anything other than a good man. Mardek had even been a gift from Blaine; in my youth, like most people in Kanto, I collected a few Gym Badges before settling down to set up my detective business. I hadn't taken the Saffron challenge (Sabrina didn't hold it often anymore) but I'd gone to Pewter and beaten Brock, and to Cerulean to beat Misty. After that, I'd thought Cinnabar would be a good idea, and caught the fast ship there. I'd lost to Blaine, of course – he had a reputation for incredible power, though his quizzes were easy enough. But after the battle, when his Rapidash was nuzzling my then partner, a Sandslash by the name of Warren, he'd taken me aside and spoken to me with genuine respect, telling me that my battle style was something quite new and extraordinary, and he'd be honoured to challenge me to a rematch. He gave me Mardek then, as a tiny slip of a thing at Level 12, and told me not to forget to come back and fight again.
I never did, of course. The money ran out and I had to come back to Saffron to work. But sometimes I wonder what might have been, if I'd come back with Warren and Mardek, and we'd won; if we might have earned a place among the eight Gym Leaders of the towns, or if we'd even managed to make it to the Indigo Plateau where the greatest of the great went, the hotshot kids with their Machamps and their Alakazam.
Something sharp tapped me on the arm, and I flicked back to reality with a jerk. Priscilla and Mardek regarded me with worried eyes, and the Ouija board quickly flicked out: Are you OK?
"Yes," I replied. "Just a memory. But Blaine?"
Yes. Definitely.
"OK. Thanks, Priscilla." I recalled her and leaned back, wondering what to do next. Since I couldn't think of anything, I told Mardek to keep an eye on the office and went out for a walk.
Chapter Four
It was pushing noon when my wanderings took me past the Slowpoke Cart, and the smell was too tempting to resist: I went with my stomach and bought one. I leaned on a bollard and discussed with Baku, as two men of late hours and hard trouble will do when given the chance.
"You look like you've slipped on the police station floor," observed Baku as he handed me the greasy paper package.
"I did and all," I replied. "I came damn near to falling off my chair and even taking a tumble down the front steps, too."
"Hard day?"
"It's been a hard week." I took a bite of tail, found a lump of gristle and spat it into the gutter. "Red ran away from home again."
"Your nephew? From Pallet town?"
"Yeah." I looked at the cloudy sky, framed by grey buildings without a trace of yellow left on them. They still had yellow buildings, down at Sunflower Heights, where the rich folk lived. But here...
"What was it this time?"
"I'm sorry?"
"What was it this time? Why did he run away?"
"Ah, the kid's a would-be vigilante. Can't think where he gets it from."
Baku permitted himself a small chuckle.
"What, he's after the Rockets?"
I paused, Slowpoketail halfway to my mouth. "How'd you know that?"
"The rumours are going round, Russell. I'm surprised you haven't heard yet, it's the sort of thing you usually know about first."
"What rumours?"
"That the Rockets are activating again," Baku told me in a conspiratorial whisper. "That all this time they've been running that club and the Game Corner was just a cover, a rest period while they attempt something bigger."
"What something is that?"
He straightened up and shrugged.
"Well, that's the thing, isn't it? No one knows. But... does the name Giovanni mean anything to you?"
I gave a violent start, and the remaining part of my Slowpoketail fell into a puddle. "Giovanni?"
Oh, I knew Giovanni all right. I remembered it like it was yesterday. It was one of my first cases, and simple enough on the surface: some woman asking after some man, wanting me to confirm he was having an affair so that she had grounds for divorce – you know, the bread-and-butter stuff, the kind of work that pays my bills. But it had led nowhere fast, every effort on my part thwarted by the then-active Rockets – until an unexpected breakthrough had resulted in me figuring out that the beloved Gym Leader of Viridian, Giovanni Malatesta, was none other than the leader of the so-called Pokémon Mafia. Because I was young, stupid and a private eye, I didn't tell the police and almost died as a result. I still remembered that monster that served him and came close to killing me, the Nidoking who, it turned out, knew new and illegal moves taught it via the notorious Black TMs...
I shook my head and tried again to make my sentence coherent.
"Yeah, I knew him."
"He broke out of prison a week ago," Baku said. I blinked.
"They kept that quiet."
"They had to. If the papers print a high-profile story like that about Team Rocket, the editor'll be looking down an Arbok's throat."
He was right; no one could challenge the Rockets openly, just like no one could challenge Sabrina or Silph. Between the three of them, they essentially owned the city. But still... why hadn't I been told this? My contact at the Gym was a handler for the Rockets, too – he would definitely have been privy to knowledge like this.
"Thanks, Baku," I said, wiping my fingers and throwing the napkin in a bin. "You think I'm a bit skinny?"
He cast the critical eye of one who knows his cuts of meat over me.
"You could use some muscle," he admitted at length. He knew why I'd asked, but asked the question anyway: "Why?"
"Because I'm thinking of going to the Gym."
It was a huge building, built back in the last century when these things had really mattered; the original structure was at least as large as the fabled Indigo Plateau building, and every Gym Leader since the first had added parts to it. I still remembered some from an ancient school project: the ivy-covered west wing was an addition by Clement; the central spire the legacy of Fausto; the crenulated walls and tower from Maxie Kamen. I passed through the gates rebuilt by Arianrhod IV and walked through the car park. Once, it was a verdant lawn with a trained Nurse Joy in a gatehouse, but it had long since been asphalted over to provide lodging for the modern man's donkey, the car. I shook my head. In my day, Pokémon Trainers started at the age of ten, first at the Trainers' School and then through the Gym system; it was, along with the monkhood, the highest calling a kid could have, and one that, if they were good enough, would see them set for life. Now, they all seemed to be twenty-somethings with Volvos and some hippy crap about battles being about love for one's Pokémon. There's no denying friendship strengthens you, but still, one of Sabrina's Alakazam would flatten a low-level Jigglypuff in less than a second. The answer was training, pure and simple; Pokémon who fought for love would fight to the death for their Trainer even when they could no longer stand. It was crueller, in the long run. But then, the whole city was crueller nowadays.
Most of the cars in the park weren't Trainer cars anyway; I knew there'd only be one or two Trainers in the Gym, even on a good day. Kids today wanted money, and they wanted it fast; the Trainer road is a long one, and the instant-gratification culture more or less put paid to it as soon as it started.
Dragging myself from my gloomy reverie, I entered the Gym and showed my Trainer Card to the receptionist. It was thirty years out of date and I still owned only one of the Pokémon whose faces were printed on it, but it didn't matter, since most Cards were just poor forgeries nowadays anyway. She waved me through and I went into the next room, where I was confronted by two warp panels, each with a sign above it: 'Staff Only' and 'Gym Area'. There would be no one in the Gym Area; I doubted they even still cleaned it. It was a huge wooden area, I remembered from a school trip, peppered with warp panels and mazes made of intricately-carved wooden railings. They'd got some monks down to carve those; it was a beautiful place back then, a test of the mind and spirit as well as the body. Solve the puzzles to get to the tournament at the end, and beat everyone in the tournament to face Sabrina. It was a beautiful place.
I sighed and stepped on the panel labelled 'Staff Only'; my next step took me out into a cavernous space, far bigger than any single room in the Gym, with walls of uncovered breezeblocks, full of shipping containers. A makeshift counter had been set up on a few upturned crates nearby. You could be forgiven for thinking you were in a warehouse here – because you were. The warp panel was an illegal one that crossed the city borders and came out in Vermilion. This was Sabrina's business.
A warm, heady smoke wafted from the counter; there were a couple of stoned youths sitting there, smoking cigarettes rolled with Oddish leaves. Near me, there was a basket of the creatures, twitching slowly and helplessly, leafless. Without their leaves, they couldn't photosynthesise and would be dead within the hour. I walked past them, and past a cage with a couple of more powerfully psychotropic Gloom inside. They didn't die when you smoked their harvest; you just took the powder from inside their petals. Only a couple of grams, of course, or you would die. I had heard of someone smoking Vileplume powders once, but I was certain it was nothing but an urban myth: Vileplume, like members of the Gastly line, were illegal, because just a sniff of them could kill you.
There was a short line before the counter; a man was engaged in buying a brown package that I presumed contained Miltank milk. You can always spot a milk addict – they just look so damn healthy.
I strode up to the counter. For a moment, Harri didn't notice me, busy as he was with the leaves, fluids and powders that covered the crates, and spoke to me as to any ordinary customer:
"Whatcha after?"
"The truth would be nice, as a start," I said, and he looked up sharply and swore. "I think you might have some explaining to do," I continued.
Harri looked worried, but he called over someone marginally less drugged up than the rest of the clientele – a co-worker, apparently – and got them to man the counter while he took me to his cubby hole in the back of one of the storage containers.
It was cold and dark, until a Bellsprout in a cage used Flash; then, the chamber was evenly illuminated in a way so harsh and artificial that it hurt the eyes. Harri didn't seem to mind; I doubted he ever touched fresh air or saw natural light. He was fat and pasty-faced, acne scarring his cheeks and cheap unwashed clothes hanging grotesquely from his body. He dealt in unsavoury goods, mostly for Sabrina, but also for the Rockets, who bought their storage space from the Gym Leader. As far as I knew, he actually lived here, even sleeping in the malodorous futon I spotted in one corner.
He sat down and offered me the privilege of doing likewise, but I declined, as the chairs were covered several years' worth of gritty black grime that came from God-knows-what, a mixture of Oddish joint ash and some indefinable muck that accumulates when youths are confined in a small space for extended periods of time.
"I guess ya found out about Giovanni, then," he said, reaching for a half-drunk glass of something dark that had been in place for so long it took considerable effort to remove from the table, and left a ring of thick mould in its wake.
"Yeah, I did," I answered, resisting the urge to vomit. "Got anything to say for yourself?"
Harri looked up at me calmly; the fat boy had recovered his cool, and would likely be calculating how much he could make from this exchange.
"I might," he said. "But my tongue is damn stiff this time of year. The autumn damp gets in, ya know?"
"I suppose you need to buy some medicine for it?"
"Probably," he agreed. "I oughta see a doctor or somethin'."
I took out a couple of thousand-dollar coins and rolled them around in the palm of my hand, letting them chase each other around the wrinkles in the skin. Harri's eyes locked onto them and did not let go. After a couple of seconds of silence, I prompted him:
"These Pokédollars are yours when you speak, Harri. That's the way this game works, see? You're the one who set it up."
A thousand Pokédollars wasn't that much, but it was enough. If you were a Trainer, you could buy a few Potions or Pokéballs; for the average guy on the street, it would pay for a cheap meal. When you added a couple more coins to the pile, you started getting serious. Harri licked his bloated lips nervously, and started to talk.
"This was too important. Giovanni's been plannin' this crazy stunt the whole time since he wound up in jail. The Rockets were waitin' for him to break out – that's why they've been so tame the last ten years. But no one except the executives know what that plan is."
Executives. I knew several Rocket agents – if I hadn't been under the scrutiny of the Hypno, I probably could have identified the grunts in the Club last night – but no executives. No one knew who they were, not even other Rockets.
"Anything else?" Harri pretended to think, and I put a five hundred dollar coin on the pile.
"The Rocket weren't the only ones keepin' this quiet. Sabrina is, too."
"Sabrina?"
Harri looked around furtively, then beckoned me close and whispered into my ear, foetid breath washing over and around my head in vile waves.
"Between you an' me, Sabrina looks like she's in on this, whatever it is."
I straightened up. The melodrama was needless, and it had exposed me to Harri's breath, something I'd have preferred to go without.
"Can you think of anything else at all?" I put another five hundred dollar coin in my hand without bothering to wait for him to act the amnesiac.
"You wanna buy this?" Harri asked, holding up a tiny red metal cube. "We don't know what it is."
I took it from him and told him not to change the subject. Perhaps there was something of my contempt for him and his business, and how much I wanted to punch him, showing in my eyes, because he immediately became serious.
"Yeah, one more thing." Harri looked me dead in the eyes, and the look was grave. "When Giovanni got out, he didn't leave alone. Jessie and James went with him."
Chapter Five
"This is how it stands so far," I said, leaning against the desk and addressing the staff of the Babylon Detection Agency. "Item one: Wesley's Ponyta is stolen. Item two: the Rockets are apparently leaning back to their old ways, as a direct result of item three: Giovanni is released from prison. Item four: they're apparently working on some sort of Pokémon research, with the help of Leader Blaine" – here I indicated Priscilla, who attempted something that might, in a human, have been called a curtsy – "that was so bad the dead guy Johann Nielsson had to run away from it, and wound up dead on a slab in the Vermilion station." I hesitated, and ploughed on. "Item five: Jessie and James are back out too."
Everyone in the room flinched a little: Priscilla drew in on herself, shuddering as her gases contracted; En, an illegally smuggled Natu, opened his eyes slightly wider than usual, and even the normally staunch Mardek narrowed his eyes and folded his arms.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; Burke and Hare; every country has its notorious criminal pair. In Kanto we had Jessie and James. They started out as two-bit thieves for the Rockets, specialising in the theft of Pokémon, but somewhere along the way their psychotic nature got ahead of them and they started to kill. After that, they were no longer snatchers, but assassins: when the Rockets wanted someone dead, and in the most painful way imaginable, they'd send in Jessie and James. The two were powerful Trainers in their own right, using two of the most highly illegal Pokémon in Kanto: Jessie had an Arbok, and James used a Weezing. Arbok, with its massive size, crushing coils and powerful poison, was a Class II; and Weezing was one of the Class Is: easy to transport, leaving a trail of deadly neurotoxin behind it wherever it moved – and, in a tough situation, it could explode in a ferocious burst of fire and toxic fluid. These were the Pokémon used by Jessie and James, and between them they'd racked up an impressive list of 164 murders – only one of which could be proved, hence their abnormally short prison sentence.
But of course, Jessie and James were brute force; the brains behind the pair was an unknown figure. It wasn't Giovanni – the man had enough trouble containing the warring Rocket Executives – but some sinister figure who held almost as much power in the Rocket organisation as the leader: Giovanni's second-in-command. Alone of the top-tier Rocket leaders of yesteryear, that person had evaded prison, and no one even knew what he looked like. If he had been waiting too, with the Rockets, then it seemed likely that Jessie and James would be resuming active service.
That wasn't the worst of it, either. I had been heavily involved in the Black TM case, as I mentioned before, the investigation that had put Giovanni, Jessie and James behind bars. It was due in no small part to my efforts that it had been accomplished. If Jessie and James were out, then it was probable that we could expect a visit from one or both of them at some point.
Mardek gave me a look that said, What do we do?
"I don't know what it is that we're going to do now," I told the assembled company. "It seems to me that we've ended up in a fairly dangerous situation."
En looked into my eyes, and I heard a thin, wise voice inside my head.
Do we continue with the investigation into Charla's whereabouts?
"I think the investigation has morphed into something bigger," I admitted. "I somehow doubt—" I stopped suddenly. "Someone's coming up the stairs," I said. "Priscilla, En, return!"
Twin red flashes of light occurred and I stuffed the two illegal Pokémon, now in their Pokéballs, into my pockets just before there came a knock at the door and someone came in.
If he was a client, he was the strangest I'd seen for quite some time. He was about six feet tall, and moved in an oddly stiff manner, as if iron bars were tied to his limbs. Swaddled in a huge, thick greatcoat and an equally thick scarf, with a broad-brimmed hat pulled down low over his eyes, I could see only a few square inches of his face. In retrospect, it wasn't so unusual, since many clients wanted to obscure their identity in those days – but at the time it was certainly a surprise. I even went as far as to raise my eyebrows slightly at his entrance.
"Good afternoon," he said, in an American accent. I've never been to America, and most Americans don't come here, so I wasn't familiar with what part of America that voice was from. Since it was a clue nevertheless, I mentally filed it away. "You are Russell Curtis?"
I nodded. "That's me. How can I help?"
If it was a simple request, I could solve it at the same time as working on finding Charla – and I would actually get paid to do this.
"I have a case for you," the mysterious figure said. "I'd like you to find a missing person for me."
Piece of cake – usually. Technically, that's the police's job, but it's one of those archetypal cases that private eyes just couldn't get by without.
"What person? Where did you see them last?"
The client bowed his head, and when he spoke there was a hint of steel in his voice.
"A man called Tomás Vitruvio," he said. "He owes me a large amount of money, and I want it back from him."
"OK," I agreed. I knew Vitruvio. He was a deliveryman from the Spanish Quarter, the sort of man who carried messages and packages around the city. Sometimes his clients were legitimate – but often they'd be someone like Silph Co. or the Rockets. "I can do that for you."
The man looked, as far as I could tell, pleased.
"I can pay you seventy thousand Pokédollars up front," he told me, "and another seventy afterwards. I'll contact you in a couple of days' time to see how you're getting on."
Americans. Their money was worth so much out here that when they did turn up, they invariably spent far more than they meant to. I wasn't going to refuse an offer like that, and accepted gracefully. The strange man thanked me profusely and took out a bulging wallet. From this, he peeled three two-thousand-dollar notes and one-thousand-dollar one. On his way out, he bumped into the door before his hand managed to find the handle and let himself out. I could tell he was an amateur at disguise – no one bundles themselves up so much that they couldn't see properly if they know what they're doing.
"Weird guy," I muttered. "But money is money. Mardek!"
He came in from the kitchenette, clutching a mug of boiling water. Magmars are chronically thirsty – it's the duck blood in them, I think – but they can't tolerate cold stuff. He drank so much that I had had to buy him his own kettle.
"Come on," I said. "We've got another case. Missing person. Should be easier than finding Charla, so we'll do both."
The Magmar nodded, gulped the remaining water and set down the mug. A moment later, we'd locked up and left.
The Spanish Quarter. An ever-present reminder of the dreams and aspirations of two nations, dashed to pieces against the grey slates of Saffron. They had come here in the thirties, when there was nothing here but a small, peaceful town centred around the colour yellow and the Pokémon Abra, still the city's official emblem. To us, they seemed like gods; they brought the miracles of the Western world to our sleepy Eastern land. Foods and cloths never before seen; varieties of Pokémon completely new to our knowledge; and technology: roads and railways and all the pleasures of modern life. Then they brought bullets, and guns, and pollution; ecosystem collapse and a generation of blighted crops that withered under the chemical fertilisers. Our forebears tried to make them leave – in those days, I always think, they still had sense – but then the war began: Kanto, what they call back in Spain the Spanish Vietnam.
It was bloody and it ravaged the land. Bullets and fire, thunder and tidal waves wracked the region for ten long years. And then we won, under the leadership of Manila Torrence, the man they dubbed Kanto's Kongming, a master of strategy and a warrior of, they said, great prowess. We won and the Spaniards, broken, variously left to find rejection in their homeland, or stayed to live in the squalid encampments that became the Spanish Quarter. Two dreams were ruined in that conflict: the hope of a promised land for Spain, and the hope that our land could remain peaceful for us Kantans.
They taught it in every school; we all sat at our desks and learned how Torrence had ridden into that last battle in Timber Gulch, his Rapidash's eyes wide with fear, and how it had been a trap to kill him, for it was the Spanish headquarters and bristling with soldiers and weaponry – and how he had, at the last moment, leaped from his Rapidash and told it to run free, before, bleeding from seven bullet wounds and badly burned from a Thunderbolt, he ordered his Electrode to use Explosion. It was Level 100, or so they say. The most powerful Pokémon that ever lived, and it blew itself and its master to smithereens in a valiant last stand to preserve our freedom.
The Spanish army never really recovered from the destruction of their HQ, and left dispirited a few years later. Now, our two countries linked by the blood of a generation and of Kanto's greatest hero, some of them were still here. There was no love lost on either side; the murder of a Spaniard, while technically illegal, would never be investigated by the Saffron police, though a Kantan murdered by an immigrant would result in mass arrest in the Spanish Quarter.
This was the secret, blood-soaked past of the Kanto region, and it was into that past that I walked now. Normally, no one would go there who wasn't a resident, but in my line of work, I had had to come here reasonably often. There was a strong underworld current here, but disjointed, unconnected to any of the main powers: a mess of two-bit strongmen and low-grade thieves, cut-price criminals of a distinctly lower calibre than you would find in Saffron proper.
I went on foot, making sure Mardek was beside me. He was around Level 36, roughly my own age, and would be a sufficient deterrent to any would-be muggers or murderers.
The streets here were filthier even than in the parts of Saffron I hung around in, covered in scraps of paper, mud and excrement. Oddish joint stubs were everywhere, and I even saw a broken Gloom pipe lying against a wall. The place was also oddly silent; everyone seemed to go into hiding at the approach of a Kantan. Maybe the fact that I'd been here before was what caused the surprise: if a Kantan came here, they didn't usually come back.
The few people I passed were either drunk or high, and presented no threat; on one occasion, a man reeking of tequila blundered into me, howling about the oppressors, but a weak Fire Punch from Mardek shoved him away and singed his shirt.
I knew the way to Vitruvio's well enough. On one of my previous trips to the Spanish Quarter, it had been to his house that I'd come.
It was small, even by the standards of the area, and the upper floor was falling in, the roof crumpled in places as if a giant had poked it. The bare bricks of the walls were chipped and battered, and in places you could see wooden planks that had been used to block up gaps.
The door was unlocked, which was the first unsettling thing – in the Spanish Quarter, not locking your doors was a warm invitation to thieves. I paused on the step, motioned for Mardek. Understanding, he went to the bay window to the left of the door and silently melted the jagged edges of a broken pane of glass, so it would be safe to crawl through. If there was anyone with hostile intent in here, which seemed likely, I sure as hell didn't want to just walk straight into them. I at least wanted the element of surprise.
I clambered through the hole, followed by Mardek, and we found ourselves on the wrong side of a pair of thick damask-print curtains. I heard voices, and immediately froze.
"... Scyther, return," I heard. I almost could not make out the words; they were spoken very softly indeed. Footsteps across the room, which seemed to be coming closer and closer towards me... A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. A Scyther is not a friendly sort of Pokémon.
The footsteps became fainter. They were just walking towards the door. I breathed out a silent sigh of relief, and, as I heard the door shut, quickly darted through the curtains and held them straight so they wouldn't twitch, just in case the mystery person looked back. I don't think they did, and I made out the words, "Use Fly," though I couldn't have said what Pokémon was ordered to do it.
I turned around, relieved, and froze.
Vitruvio lay dead in the centre of the floor, blood running from a massive network of deep slashes all over his body. The bare floorboards around him were slick with viscera, and his face was twisted up in an expression of pain and horror. He hadn't died peacefully. I bent down to examine him and saw there were far too many wounds for the killing move to be the old favourite, Slash; their quantity suggested a Fury Cutter or X-Scissor attack. I wondered why Vitruvio had been killed. Perhaps he'd found something out, opened a delivery that he wasn't meant to see. Either way, it seemed I'd solved the case of his whereabouts.
I sat down on Vitruvio's lone chair and thought.
"It doesn't make sense, Mardek," I said. "This guy's in his own home. Yet that guy wanted me to find him. Surely he must have known where he lived?"
He shrugged, indicating he couldn't figure it out.
"I don't know... something doesn't add up here. Is this linked to the Team Rocket resurgence? I just can't figure it out."
Mardek, meanwhile, was going through the dead man's pockets. He made a small noise of surprise, and held up what he'd found. It was a small data disk, a square of plastic and metal that held some sort of information.
"Now that's interesting," I murmured, getting up and taking it from him. I realised with a start that I was still holding Harri's red cube, and I gave it to Mardek to hold while I examined the disk. "What would an impoverished Hispanic deliveryman be doing with this?"
You think that was what he was killed for?
"It's possible. But if so, why didn't they take it with them?" I paused. "No, he wasn't killed so someone could steal the disk. They left it here to be found when someone came around."
But anyone could have come here, Mardek's look seemed to say. Anyone could have ended up with the disk.
"No, I don't think so," I said. "What would be the point of that? Someone knew I would be coming here. Someone wanted me to find the disk."
Mardek gave me a look that questioned my sanity.
"I know, I know, it doesn't seem likely. But I can't think of any other way to explain it. The real problem with the theory is that it would mean that the person who killed Vitruvio has to be someone who knew I would come here. Which would mean that it has to be the guy who paid me to find him."
This doesn't make any sense.
"Ah, I know it doesn't. Why go to all that trouble when he could just give me the disk? I guess the thing to do is just to look and see what's on it. Maybe we can figure something out from that."
We left Vitruvio's house gladly, and half an hour later had the Spanish Quarter at our backs. The strange feeling of relief that washes over a Kantan when they leave the district rose up within me, a reminder of the deep rift between our peoples. A rift that, paradoxically, bound us together as much as it pushed us apart.
I went back to the office. I didn't actually have a computer – they weren't easy to come by back in those days, especially on a PI's meagre income – but I knew someone who did. I wrote a letter to him, stuck the disk in the envelope, and went out to post it. As I waited in line to buy a stamp, I wondered what kind of man my client was, to send me in search of a man who could be found in his own home – and possibly to kill that man just to give me a floppy disk. I shook my head; I wouldn't get any further with this until I got a reply from my friend up at Cerulean Cape. I knew him from our time at school together, a guy by the name of Bill, who, I think, now did something big in the computing industry. I didn't know much about computers, but I did know that whatever he did, he was good enough that Silph tried to poach him, only he refused to work with them.
I posted the letter, picked up Mardek from the office, and drove home. I'd had enough for today; Bill wouldn't reply for a few days at least, which meant any progress in figuring out what the deal was with Vitruvio, the disk and the strange client, and I needed a sleep before heading out and investigating the Charla case again.
When I got home, someone had left a message on the phone. I listened to it carefully, twice, then rubbed my temples and sighed. It looked like I wasn't getting any sleep any time soon; I got back into the car and drove out again.
Chapter Six
I pulled up outside the street closest to the Club Rocket entrance and went inside. Marcia was waiting near the door, and took me over to a table near the back. She looked very agitated; her eyes flicked left and right as if searching for watchers, and she kept rolling the tips of her hair between her fingers.
"This had better be good," I said. "I've had a long day and I wanted to get some sleep."
"I was with a Rocket executive," she said in a low voice, then broke off. "I shouldn't be telling you this, especially not here—"
"Let's go outside." I stood up, but she pulled me back down again.
"No, I'll tell you," she said, but she didn't sound decisive. "I was with an executive – a guy called Archer. And I overheard him speaking on the phone, when I was leaving—"
Marcia lapsed into silence; she couldn't seem to get the words out. I waited; eventually, she started again.
"Oh, it's awful," she whispered fiercely, tears in her eyes. "What they're doing – the thing they're making – I can't..."
She stopped again, but this time forever. She toppled forwards, landing face-first in my lap, something dark matting the hair on the back of her head. I leaped up, staring around wildly, but I didn't see who had fired. I hadn't even heard the shot; maybe it had been the work of a Pokémon.
Then I heard a scream, and I realised with a jolt that Marcia was dead, an innocent life cut off forever, and I realised that there was blood on my shirt and a dead Rocket girl at my feet.
I don't remember exactly what happened next. I have a vague memory of fleeing, running out of Club Rocket, but it's all kind of blurry, because I had barely got to the door when my way was blocked by the Hypno in the dark glasses, whirling his pendulum like a bolas...
...then I was sitting somewhere dark, and someone was shouting at me, demanding to know what I knew, words, words, over and over again, until another person started remonstrating with them...
...then I was lying in an alleyway somewhere in the back districts, with filthy liquid seeping through my clothes and a headache the size of Jupiter.
Sometimes, I wonder why there aren't more gumshoes in Saffron. The city is perfect for them: a high crime rate, cheap liquor, and reasonable rent on dingy offices. There are enough worried minds and broken hearts to keep a whole legion of private eyes in work for years.
But then I remember the jaded eyes that cast their gazes down the streets, the cynical expressions on the faces of the citizens, and I realise why. We just don't care any more. It's a sad state of affairs, really; the great capital of Kanto, reduced to nothing more than a series of interlocking lives, all grey and tattered, all trying their best to live through the day without looking back again. After a few years of that life, you don't care any longer, though of course I was harder hit by cynicism than most, being a true veteran of the city's harsh, unforgiving nature. It's to be expected: a man who skulks around in the shadows for a living will eventually be tainted by those shadows.
That's why I'm the only private detective in Saffron. No one else cares, no one sympathises; no one gives a damn if a Rocket girl is shot in the head or a Spanish deliveryman slashed to pieces. I don't either, not really, but I can't let go of that faint hope that I can still feel sorrow at the loss of a life. It's a weakness, or a strength – a sort of deluded heroism, if you will. And because of that, I'm a private eye.
I staggered into the office, unsure of what had just happened. Either I had had a hell of a lot to drink last night, or a Ghost or Psychic type had got inside my brain. The Ouija board was laid out on the table, and the glass began to move swiftly.
Russell! Are you OK?
"Priscilla?" I mumbled. "Where... where have I been?"
We don't know. Where's Mardek?
"I don't know..." I tried hard to recall what had happened last night, but it was a blur of nightmarish fog.
You've got blood on you!
"I have?" I looked down and saw a huge patch of dried blood on my midriff. With a sickening jolt, a large part of the previous evening slotted back into place: a shot, a falling head, what was the name, I almost had it—
"Marcia's dead," I said tonelessly, then realised what I'd said. "Marcia's dead!" I slammed my fist down onto the table. "Damn it, Marcia's dead!"
I had seen a lot of death in my time in Saffron, but rarely was I so affected by it: it was usually just part of the scenery. She had been my contact at Club Rocket, one of the few people I was certain I could trust in this city; maybe I had loved her a little, but then, who could resist a woman of her charms? It was her job to be appealing. I had been cold to her all these years, purely because I had some stupid sense that I was better than her, and what had it led to? She had helped me, for no reason other than she thought it was the right thing to do – and she had wound up dead.
En's voice resounded in my head; sometimes it's inconvenient that Natu are telepathic.
It is not your fault, Russell.
"I know," I muttered. "I know. But..."
Priscilla flowed out of the glass and coalesced somewhere near my shoulder. I think she might have been trying to comfort me – but if she'd touched me, she'd have burned my skin.
Russell. What precisely happened last night? Try to remember.
"Can't you drag it out of my mind?"
The seal is too strong. I cannot overcome it.
"OK." I sighed and sat on the desk, head bowed. I tried hard to recall. What had happened next, after Marcia had been killed? I concentrated as hard as I could, but to no avail; the memories were sealed off completely. "I can't."
Do you know where Mardek is?
"Yes," I said, suddenly realising that I did. "Yes, I do. He's at home; I didn't take him to Club Rocket. I went home last night, then went to Club Rocket because Marcia said she had something to tell me. But she didn't get to say much, because she was... shot, I suppose, or it could have been a modified Pin Missile or Icicle Spear. After that, I don't remember." I got up and went over to the door. "I'll go pick Mardek up. Wait here; we'll see if we can make any sense of this when I get back."
I stepped out into the street and became acutely aware that I didn't know where my car was; I presumed it was at the Club, so I walked there first. Thankfully, it was still in one piece, so I got in and drove home, brooding all the way. What had happened last night? I must have been worked over by the Rocket Hypno; that was the only way to explain my memory loss. The Rockets had, presumably, figured out that I was on a path they didn't approve of, and so killed Marcia before she could tell me what she'd found out.
I pulled up at my house and found Mardek pacing in the hall. When he saw me, he froze, then rushed over and held up a piece of paper on which was scrawled in nearly illegible handwriting: "Where the hell have you been?"
"Sorry," I replied, raising my hands in a placating gesture, "I don't know either. But believe me, I'd like to."
Mardek gave me a quizzical look, and I explained what had happened – or what I remembered of it, anyway. When I was done, he gave a low whistle, something he'd spent years perfecting, since it's hard to do it through a beak.
"I know," I said. "Come on, I told the others we'd get back soon to try and work something out."
Mardek shook his head and mimed.
"That is the best idea I've heard all day," I told him. "Wait for me, I won't take too long."
Then, smeared with blood and garbage, I went off to wash and change.
It's a parody of three things: Pokémon Red, the Pokémon Special manga and the classic 1950s American detective genre, with a touch of noir thrown in. If you haven't experienced any one of these things, I suggest you do so before reading, as the story will be considerably improved for you. I think.
OK, without further ado:
Chapter One
The client's chair is the most important part of the detective's office. You haven't got a chair, you haven't got clients: simple as that. And then, it has to be a good chair – no damage, no stains. If it isn't a good clean chair, no self-respecting client's going to sit in it – and then, like I say, you don't get any clients.
My client's chair was a beauty. It sat, as ever, on the opposite side of the desk from me, and was upholstered in shiny black leather – real Miltank hide, not some cheap plastic stuff like they use in the Game Corner – worn with the friction from a thousand restless legs and oiled with a million teardrops. It wasn't new, but it was clean, comfortable, and inviting – about as close to good as you could get in this town.
However, the person sitting there right now was in no position to appreciate this. He wasn't even a client.
He was about eleven years old and slumped, sullen, in the chair, his red baseball cap low over his downturned face. Behind him, a massive, dark blue figure stood, all rippling muscles and huge, aggressive eyes. This figure, I knew for a fact, was named Poli – a name so hopelessly diminutive and applied to such a huge creature that it was almost enough to make me laugh.
The silence had been going for about five minutes now, and I was beginning to get impatient.
"Kid," I said at length, "basically, you've got two options. One, I can send you back home now, or two, I hand you over to the police."
That got his attention. His hands clenched tighter on the edges of the seat and his shoulders tensed; he wasn't stupid and he knew that the chief of police didn't like him. He also knew what happened to those people that the chief of police didn't like: they slipped and fell on the notoriously slippery tiled floor of the station.
"I came here for a reason," he said, voice quiet. He still didn't look at me. "The Rockets―"
"Are none of your business," I finished for him, a note of anger beginning to rise in my voice. "Red, it doesn't matter what the Rockets do! I don't give a damn and neither should you – that's someone else's business. Unless someone pays me to look into it."
"But―" He looked up for the first time, some emotion appearing in his voice. He felt passionately about what he was talking about, that was for sure.
"But nothing! Your idealism might work back in Pallet Town, but here in Saffron?" I made a dismissive noise. "Kid, in this city there is no black and white. There isn't even any yellow, really. Just endless shades of grey. Rockets, Sabrina, the police – all of them, none of them good guys or bad guys. Just grey guys. Like everyone else in this city."
"What about you?" Red replied defiantly, looking at me in the eyes for the first time. "What about you, Russell? What colour are you?"
I hesitated, then answered.
"Grey," I said. "Grey, just like everybody else." I stood up and called for Mardek. He stalked in from the other room moments later. "I'm going out," I told him. "Wesley said he'd be here at some point today. If he comes, keep him here for me, yeah? I won't be long."
He blinked once, slowly, with dark, shrewd eyes, then inclined his head in something that might have been a nod.
"Are you taking me to the station?" asked Red. Behind him, Poli tensed, massive muscles tightening beneath his dark blue skin. Mardek traded glances with the Poliwrath, and I knew what he was saying. Don't bother, he said; if it's the police you don't stand a chance anyway.
"No," I said. "God knows I should. I'm taking you home."
Red looked relieved. Like most people in Saffron, he'd slipped on that tiled floor at least once before, and like everyone else he had not enjoyed it. I had seen the scars.
I walked him down to the Magnet Train station, through the night-scarred streets of Saffron. The moon was nothing but a sliver, as if turned away because it couldn't bring itself to look upon the city. I couldn't blame it. I knew this city better than most, and more than anyone wanted to: I knew the dark grey nightmares that polluted the original yellow dream; I knew the gamblers and the harlots at the Game Corner and Club Rocket; I knew the milk addicts and the smugglers; the swindlers and the strongmen; the men at the Silph company where they sell you stolen dreams that fade on the morning air like childhood memories in the dank air of Saffron's back roads. I looked at the moon and I saw all that spread out beneath it, a patchwork quilt of sleepless nights and wishful thinking that men call a city. I shook my head and went inside.
I bought Red a one-way ticket to Pallet from a bored-looking youth behind a tiny glass window. It seemed I spent a lot of time doing that these days. We stood together on the platform as the train glided in, almost silent as it passed between the magnetic rings.
"Don't come back here," I told him, as I did every time. "There's a lot of stuff in this city that can harm a eleven-year-old kid."
And, as he did every time, Red replied: "I'm not like other kids."
"A Poliwrath, a Bulbasaur and a Pikachu are not adequate defence against Saffron, kid. Stay with your mother. She worries about you."
Red was silent, then he turned and got on the train without another word. He always left like that: not so much as a goodbye, or even a thank you for the ticket.
I watched it go for the three seconds it took for it to pass out of sight, then left the station and walked back to the office. When I got back, Wesley was in the client's chair.
The client's chair. What kind of people come to sit in it? Whether you're in New York or London, Berlin or Paris, Lilycove or Saffron, they're all the same. Mostly they just want me to confirm the suspicions growing in their hearts that cast a shadow over their eyes, the ones that end up with me spending long nights in a cold car looking for the twitch in the bedroom curtains. However, sometimes they aren't. Sometimes, they're people like Wesley.
He was thirty, or forty – it was hard to tell beneath the grime and the week-old beard. His eyebrows burst forth like twin hairy caterpillars writhing in agony on his forehead, and the eyes beneath them receded as if stomped into his face by their thrashing. He wore a battered old coat and smelled strongly of whisky.
"Wesley," I said, and sat down. "To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?"
He was silent for a moment, then spoke.
"I've got a problem, Russell."
"What kind of a problem?" I took a bottle of whisky out of the desk drawer and poured him a glass. He gulped it and continued, fortified.
"Some guys came to my house last night and stole Charla."
I said nothing yet. Pokémon theft was traditionally the Rockets' racket, although they hadn't dabbled in that since they had taken over the gambling scene. If this was the Rockets' work, getting involved would result in a bite from a rabid Zubat and a painful convalescence in hospital – and that was a best-case scenario.
"You remember Charla?" Wesley asked. I did. Four, five feet tall and loyal as only an immature Ponyta, bursting with fiery pride undimmed by the city's cynical atmosphere, can be.
"Yeah," I answered at last. "You want me to find her?"
Wesley nodded, his sunken grey eyes watering. I understood; in this world, about the only person who you could count on not to betray you was your Pokémon, and friends like that aren't two a penny. I sighed. Wesley's request was dangerous, but... Old friends are there to be helped, and not, unfortunately, for monetary reward.
"I'll do it," I told him. "I'll find Charla for you."
As soon as he'd left, aglow with thanks, I pulled on my coat and hat and walked out again, this time taking Mardek with me. If the Rockets were behind this, I knew where I would find them.
Chapter Two
The Club was a building like any other, a dreary grey door in a stone wall that was once yellow but was tarnished now, as much by the people who came and went there as by the ravages of passing time. The manager, Donatello, knew his stuff and the clients knew Petrel: there was no need for advertising or flashy exteriors. I waited in line and went inside.
I could describe the inside, but what would be the point? The most famous nightclub in all of Kanto, a heady mixture of liquor and neon and strippers, swirling in the fug of cigarette smoke, half lit by disco lights that served only to pick out the curves of the Rocket girls who served here. The stage had a group of dancers on it, some women and some Jynx, and all could be found later at the back for extra entertainment that would last all night. I didn't even care anymore. This was Saffron, after all, that cure-all number of the soul and muddier of morals; if there was anyone here who really cared about it they were in the minority.
I pushed my way over to the bar, Mardek helping me clear a path, pushing people out of the way with an ease born of long practice. I asked if Marcia was in, and the girl, one I didn't know and who didn't know me, refused to tell me; after some pleading, I managed to get her to promise that she would tell Marcia that I would be waiting at one of the tables.
I worked my way back across the floor, skirting the dance floor and sinking into a hard-backed chair that faced the shadowy table on a raised dais at the back. Idly, I glanced across there and saw a group of men and women in black smoking and talking animatedly, a Hypno with the muscles of a Machamp standing nearby, looking menacing in dark glasses and whirling its pendulum around its finger in a way that suggested it wouldn't hesitate to use it. I looked away before it sensed me; I had seen what happened to people who fell afoul of the Rocket Hypno and it wasn't pretty. You just had to look away from the Rocket table and ignore whatever was going on there.
"Russell?" came a silvery voice, and a vision in the curiously revealing uniform of Team Rocket slid into the chair beside me. A heart-shaped face turned to face mine, wide blue eyes framed by long locks of wavy, dark brown hair that poured down onto her bare shoulders. Marcia had arrived.
"Good to see you," I said, leaning back.
"Russell, when you come here you don't come for the show," Marcia replied. "You want something from me, right?"
"Yeah." I let a silence grow for a moment or two, then continued. "How's the Pokémon kidnapping business nowadays?"
Marcia frantically shushed me, eyes whirling around to the Hypno and back again.
"Shut up!" she hissed. "You don't discuss Rocket business here!" She jerked her head towards the impassive, yellow-skinned creature, whose pendulum had started to sway in our direction.
"Oh, right, I forgot. More than the job of a simple Rocket girl is worth." I smiled a cold smile. You might think I was being hard on her, but Marcia wasn't at all as soft as she liked to pretend. She was one of the few people I knew who carried a Remoraid – and as non-lethal, non-marking weapons go, those things were pretty damn powerful.
"Meet me in ten minutes," Marcia told me. She glanced back at the Hypno, which appeared to have calmed down somewhat. "At the Slowpoke Cart."
She left me without a word. I lingered only a few more seconds in the greasy, smoke-ridden air of the Rocket Club before departing, Mardek at my side.
The Slowpoke Cart: that eternal symbol of the city. It's always there, on every street corner, and always operated by the same man. I don't know how he does it – no one does – but wherever you are, there too will you find the purveyor of Slowpoketail. His cart is white and battered, with a parasol to keep off the nonexistent sun, and a basin of sizzling fat in which the bloated pink tails wriggle and bounce on the hotplate. The man is short and sturdy, with an eye patch and a round face, forever frozen into that customer trap he calls a smile. The man is Baku, the eater of dreams. His trade is just that.
The Slowpoketail: all it consists of is the severed tail of a Slowpoke, cut from them fresh in the farms. They grow back within a month, though never quite as long or succulent, in accordance with the law of diminishing returns. It's just a fatty lump of meat with lumps of cartilage and bone in the middle, and yet – when fried, it becomes the nation's favourite treat.
"Evening, Russell," said Baku cheerily. He knew me – he knew everyone, just as I knew everyone. We were both denizens of the night, people who had spent too long walking the streets of Saffron in the dark with nought but the occasional flicker of a streetlamp for company.
"Evening," I replied, and bought a Slowpoketail, grease staining my fingers through the paper it was wrapped in. I took up a plastic knife and half-cut, half-ripped it in half, then threw the tail end to Mardek, who caught it deftly, one-handed, and nipped pieces from it with the tiny teeth within his bill.
"It's a cold night," observed Baku. Not that he would feel it, of course; he had his brazier to warm his hands on, for he would be open all night and would wander the streets of the city like a ghoul, vending his grisly wares.
"Yes," I agreed. Silence. Then: "How's business?"
"Oh, not bad, not bad." I knew, and he knew that I knew, that he was lying. Business was always good for the purveyor of Slowpoketail; everyone always wants a Slowpoketail. I'd seen his house – it was positively palatial. But, like the Medici disguising their power, Baku preferred to disguise his success and wealth.
At that point, Marcia showed up, and I gave her my half of the Slowpoketail. She tore a chunk out of it with her teeth, like a hungry wolf, and chewed it ravenously.
"'Sgood," she mumbled through a mouthful of meat. "Haven't eaten since this morning."
"OK," I said, glancing around for Zubat watchers. The Rockets often employed them to spy on people; their speed and acute hearing made for good eavesdroppers, though their blindness was a slight drawback. I waited until she had finished, then offered her the napkin that came with it, to dab the fatty slime from her chin. When she was entirely done, she spoke.
"The Rockets haven't gone in for that sort of theft in years," she said. "But recently... I don't know. It's starting up again. I don't hear much, I'm just a bar girl" – I suppressed a snort; she heard a hell of a lot more than she let on – "but it seems there's some kind of experiment going on."
"Experiment?" I asked. Marcia's eyes widened slightly.
"Something they were doing with Silph Co. technology," she told me. "I don't know what... I only know because of this scientist who came back from the project. He said he refused to do it, whatever it was – the guy was shaking, terrified."
"Can I speak to him?" I asked. Marcia looked grim.
"You'll need a good medium," she said. "He turned up dead two days ago. The Rockets don't let loose ends dangle."
Chapter Three
I stood in the sun of the early morning, looking into the slate-grey waters from the pier. This was Vermilion, a city that wore its government colour with pride, as evidenced by the line of coloured umbrellas along the beach. According to Marcia, this was where they found the scientist's corpse, bloated with corpse gas and washed up on the sand like a beached whale.
Private detectives don't do murder. That's the police's job. If a murder turns up in a case, I'm legally obliged by Kanto national law to inform the police and get my head out fast. But this was Wesley, and I'd promised – so I was going to continue.
The reason we'd come here was simple. Marcia had told us where the dead guy had been found, and since he was the only lead, we were following him. Now, all we needed was to find where he was now, and that meant talking to the police. Which was not going to work.
I turned from the restless waves and walked back down the wooden aisle, walled in by gently bobbing pleasure boats. At the end, I got back in the car and drove to Vermilion's police station.
It was, like all buildings in Vermilion, a bright shade of red, painted freshly every month during the summer when the tourists came. Now that winter was underway, the walls were faded and looked more brown than red; as I made my way up the steps to the door, I reflected on how sad a seaside town is when viewed out of season. For a few months each year, Vermilion was the place to be; then it lapsed back into a slow decline until the spring came around again, and a frenzied effort raised it back to its former glory. Oh, sure, the ships brought in trade and wealth – but that was all saved up for the summer, because nothing was so important to the town as tourism.
Ernst Cooper, fire-breather and amateur watchmaker, stood in front of the desk and faced the officer on duty. He was a tall man, a little worn around the edges, bearing the tell-tale soot-stains on his lips that were the badge of his profession. His eyes were kind and grey, and he wore a battered old suit under a tan mackintosh. Behind him paced a Magmar, crooked eyes flicking left and right in the shady manner of those creatures.
I hoped to God my disguise would stand up.
The officer agreed to let me through as the brother-in-law of the deceased; any elation I felt at deceiving him was momentary, melting away as soon as I walked into the morgue.
Thyme was there too.
Stefano Thyme, the Saffron chief of police, and self-confessed nemesis of all private eyes. Six foot four and broad with it, a slab of muscle in a dark blue uniform. No cop likes a gumshoe, but this guy went way past the force minimum of 'contemptuous dislike'. He was more of a 'kill on sight' kind of guy, and he did not look pleased to see me.
"What the hell are you doing in here?" he asked angrily, seeing me enter. His voice growled like a threatened Kanghaskan and boomed like an anti-social drum. I swivelled around without breaking stride and walked out again, but he was fast as well as strong and I felt his hand grip my arm before I could make good my escape. "Well? I'm waiting for an answer, shamus."
"I was taking the air and thought I'd drop by for a cup of tea."
The hand tightened and I felt my forearm go numb. Thyme yanked me back into the morgue and slammed the door shut, spinning me around to face him. He had an ugly face that looked like it had been chiselled with hard lines from a cube of meat.
"Don't play your stupid games with me, shamus," he growled. "Why are you here?"
Client confidentiality would be the excuse many would spout now, but I knew better. That's the thing that policemen really hate about us, you see – the refusal to tell them anything we know under the banner of 'client confidentiality'. Saying this to Thyme would have just as certain a consequence as pointing a shotgun at my face and pulling the trigger.
"I was reading a book the other night about Burke and Hare, and wanted to see the goods for myself." I might as well have said that I couldn't tell him on grounds of client confidentiality. Thyme's face twisted and I slipped over and landed painfully on the floor. Several times.
It was either half an hour later or twelve hours later by my watch when I regained full consciousness, and sat up to have a look around the cell. As usual, Mardek had slipped quietly off somewhere; I just hoped he remembered where the emergency bail money was, or I could be here for some time.
The cells were full of tramps, since this was Vermilion. Not that there were any more tramps here than anywhere else, but this city was so image-conscious, so desperate to defend the mirage of holiday allure that cloaked it, that vagrancy was the worst crime anyone could commit here, and those on the streets could count on being arrested very, very quickly. Sitting across from me was a man with a hat that looked like someone had taken a tin-opener to it, the top falling away at an angle like a half-peeled tin lid. Noticing me looking, he gave a pleasant smile.
"Stray Meowth," he explained, flicking his eyes upwards. "I was looking for food in a bin and found an angry cat. Woulda used Slash on my eyes if I hadn't moved – and now me hat's gone."
"Did you get any food in the end?"
"Found a dead Pidgey in the next bin, had that instead." He held out a hand. "Me name's Jacob."
I shook the proffered hand. "I'm Russell."
"Why're you here?"
"Thyme doesn't like me."
He didn't ask why Thyme didn't like me. There were so many possible reasons why Thyme might dislike a person that it was best to just accept that Thyme didn't like you, and leave it at that.
"You hear about that dead guy washed up on the beach?"
"Yeah, that was interesting." I might have smiled enigmatically at that – I know some people who would – but I have professional standards to maintain, so I didn't.
A moment later, a haggard-looking policeman came to tell me my bail had been paid, and I walked out to find Mardek waiting for me at the desk, looking distinctly unimpressed. From the sunlight coming in through the window, I judged that I had indeed been out for only half an hour. I thanked the policeman for his time and left.
Mardek looked up at me. From our long years together I could tell what he was trying to communicate.
Russell, getting arrested was stupid.
"Yes," I said, without looking down. "Yes it was. But I got what I wanted, didn't I?"
We could get the bail money back if you return to the station at the right time.
"I'm not going to do that."
I know. The Magmar sighed, which is quite unnerving when done through a beak. He tapped my watch with one claw, signifying: Is she back yet?
"I said we'd meet her by the pier."
I stood on the waterfront street, near the entrance to the pier, and looked out at the sea of forlorn boats, anxiously awaiting the return of the summer when they would once more have purpose in their existence. A few moments later, the sea breeze reversed to blow from inland, and grew much colder; a vague shiver ran down my spine, and I seemed to hear soft voices whispering around me. I smiled and turned around. Priscilla was here.
She materialised with that unmistakeable, jingling cry that all Gastly make, the one that haunts the dreams of small children. All savage eyes and grinning mouth, she was a repulsive sight, a nightmare reproduced in a cloud of toxic gas. She shifted in and out of definition almost continually as the purple-black gas that made up her body fluctuated in the wind. Breathing in a Gastly wouldn't kill you, but it would definitely lay you out of action for a few weeks. That was why they were illegal to keep, along with most other Poison types. After all, a Muk is the one of the nastiest weapons you can use on a human, and a Victreebel doesn't come far behind.
"Anything?" I asked. In the morgue, I had released Priscilla from her Pokéball before Thyme had taken his fists to me. It was the only way to get anything from a corpse – if they were fresh, a Ghost like Gastly stood a good chance of getting inside them and reading the imprint of their last moments.
Priscilla floated upwards slightly and then down again. Mardek opened the bag he was carrying and tapped the piece of cardboard in there. I understood; this would take a while and would best be conducted back at the office. I recalled Priscilla and drove back to River Street in Saffron, where my agency is based.
It's part of a long row of terraced houses, many of which still fulfil that function. Several of them – including my office – have been converted into buildings of dentistry, or a veterinary surgeon's. Mine is the only private detection agency – the only one in Saffron, actually. The name on the frosted glass door that all detectives have in their offices is 'The Babylon Detection Agency', but the man sitting behind the desk is just plain old Russell Curtis.
Mardek took out the piece of cardboard and placed it on the desk, pushing the phone and lamp out of the way. He would have pushed the whisky, too, but I grabbed it before any harm could come to the bottle of client lubricant and put it away in the desk drawer. Mardek then placed an upturned glass on the centre of the board, and I let Priscilla out again.
She flickered in and out of focus for a moment, and a couple of millilitres of her went up my nose; coughing, I berated her and she firmed up, becoming as tangible as possible. When she caught sight of the Ouija board, she floated up and down rapidly, as if bouncing with excitement, and immediately dived down towards the glass before disappearing into thin air. A moment later, the glass began to move, and I began to take notes of what Priscilla was spelling out.
"H," I said, "I, S, N..."
His name was Johann Nielsson. He was investigating a Pokémon in a laboratory. The stolen Pokémon were part of it.
I'd drawn the 'é' on the board specially. It always pays to represent every letter, even those with accents.
"Do you know where this was?" I asked. The glass slipped down to 'N', short for 'no'. "OK, go on."
Something to do with recombinant DNA.
I was surprised that Priscilla knew how to spell 'recombinant', but wrote it down nevertheless.
I have one more thing.
"Go on."
The name of one fellow scientist: Professor Blaine.
"What?!" The point snapped off my pencil and flew away over the surface of the paper. "Blaine? The Blaine? Gym Leader of Cinnabar Island Blaine?"
I didn't believe there was anyone in Saffron who wasn't pond scum underneath their exterior, but Cinnabar's Professor Blaine was a different matter. The man was a genius – and there was no reason to suspect he was anything other than a good man. Mardek had even been a gift from Blaine; in my youth, like most people in Kanto, I collected a few Gym Badges before settling down to set up my detective business. I hadn't taken the Saffron challenge (Sabrina didn't hold it often anymore) but I'd gone to Pewter and beaten Brock, and to Cerulean to beat Misty. After that, I'd thought Cinnabar would be a good idea, and caught the fast ship there. I'd lost to Blaine, of course – he had a reputation for incredible power, though his quizzes were easy enough. But after the battle, when his Rapidash was nuzzling my then partner, a Sandslash by the name of Warren, he'd taken me aside and spoken to me with genuine respect, telling me that my battle style was something quite new and extraordinary, and he'd be honoured to challenge me to a rematch. He gave me Mardek then, as a tiny slip of a thing at Level 12, and told me not to forget to come back and fight again.
I never did, of course. The money ran out and I had to come back to Saffron to work. But sometimes I wonder what might have been, if I'd come back with Warren and Mardek, and we'd won; if we might have earned a place among the eight Gym Leaders of the towns, or if we'd even managed to make it to the Indigo Plateau where the greatest of the great went, the hotshot kids with their Machamps and their Alakazam.
Something sharp tapped me on the arm, and I flicked back to reality with a jerk. Priscilla and Mardek regarded me with worried eyes, and the Ouija board quickly flicked out: Are you OK?
"Yes," I replied. "Just a memory. But Blaine?"
Yes. Definitely.
"OK. Thanks, Priscilla." I recalled her and leaned back, wondering what to do next. Since I couldn't think of anything, I told Mardek to keep an eye on the office and went out for a walk.
Chapter Four
It was pushing noon when my wanderings took me past the Slowpoke Cart, and the smell was too tempting to resist: I went with my stomach and bought one. I leaned on a bollard and discussed with Baku, as two men of late hours and hard trouble will do when given the chance.
"You look like you've slipped on the police station floor," observed Baku as he handed me the greasy paper package.
"I did and all," I replied. "I came damn near to falling off my chair and even taking a tumble down the front steps, too."
"Hard day?"
"It's been a hard week." I took a bite of tail, found a lump of gristle and spat it into the gutter. "Red ran away from home again."
"Your nephew? From Pallet town?"
"Yeah." I looked at the cloudy sky, framed by grey buildings without a trace of yellow left on them. They still had yellow buildings, down at Sunflower Heights, where the rich folk lived. But here...
"What was it this time?"
"I'm sorry?"
"What was it this time? Why did he run away?"
"Ah, the kid's a would-be vigilante. Can't think where he gets it from."
Baku permitted himself a small chuckle.
"What, he's after the Rockets?"
I paused, Slowpoketail halfway to my mouth. "How'd you know that?"
"The rumours are going round, Russell. I'm surprised you haven't heard yet, it's the sort of thing you usually know about first."
"What rumours?"
"That the Rockets are activating again," Baku told me in a conspiratorial whisper. "That all this time they've been running that club and the Game Corner was just a cover, a rest period while they attempt something bigger."
"What something is that?"
He straightened up and shrugged.
"Well, that's the thing, isn't it? No one knows. But... does the name Giovanni mean anything to you?"
I gave a violent start, and the remaining part of my Slowpoketail fell into a puddle. "Giovanni?"
Oh, I knew Giovanni all right. I remembered it like it was yesterday. It was one of my first cases, and simple enough on the surface: some woman asking after some man, wanting me to confirm he was having an affair so that she had grounds for divorce – you know, the bread-and-butter stuff, the kind of work that pays my bills. But it had led nowhere fast, every effort on my part thwarted by the then-active Rockets – until an unexpected breakthrough had resulted in me figuring out that the beloved Gym Leader of Viridian, Giovanni Malatesta, was none other than the leader of the so-called Pokémon Mafia. Because I was young, stupid and a private eye, I didn't tell the police and almost died as a result. I still remembered that monster that served him and came close to killing me, the Nidoking who, it turned out, knew new and illegal moves taught it via the notorious Black TMs...
I shook my head and tried again to make my sentence coherent.
"Yeah, I knew him."
"He broke out of prison a week ago," Baku said. I blinked.
"They kept that quiet."
"They had to. If the papers print a high-profile story like that about Team Rocket, the editor'll be looking down an Arbok's throat."
He was right; no one could challenge the Rockets openly, just like no one could challenge Sabrina or Silph. Between the three of them, they essentially owned the city. But still... why hadn't I been told this? My contact at the Gym was a handler for the Rockets, too – he would definitely have been privy to knowledge like this.
"Thanks, Baku," I said, wiping my fingers and throwing the napkin in a bin. "You think I'm a bit skinny?"
He cast the critical eye of one who knows his cuts of meat over me.
"You could use some muscle," he admitted at length. He knew why I'd asked, but asked the question anyway: "Why?"
"Because I'm thinking of going to the Gym."
It was a huge building, built back in the last century when these things had really mattered; the original structure was at least as large as the fabled Indigo Plateau building, and every Gym Leader since the first had added parts to it. I still remembered some from an ancient school project: the ivy-covered west wing was an addition by Clement; the central spire the legacy of Fausto; the crenulated walls and tower from Maxie Kamen. I passed through the gates rebuilt by Arianrhod IV and walked through the car park. Once, it was a verdant lawn with a trained Nurse Joy in a gatehouse, but it had long since been asphalted over to provide lodging for the modern man's donkey, the car. I shook my head. In my day, Pokémon Trainers started at the age of ten, first at the Trainers' School and then through the Gym system; it was, along with the monkhood, the highest calling a kid could have, and one that, if they were good enough, would see them set for life. Now, they all seemed to be twenty-somethings with Volvos and some hippy crap about battles being about love for one's Pokémon. There's no denying friendship strengthens you, but still, one of Sabrina's Alakazam would flatten a low-level Jigglypuff in less than a second. The answer was training, pure and simple; Pokémon who fought for love would fight to the death for their Trainer even when they could no longer stand. It was crueller, in the long run. But then, the whole city was crueller nowadays.
Most of the cars in the park weren't Trainer cars anyway; I knew there'd only be one or two Trainers in the Gym, even on a good day. Kids today wanted money, and they wanted it fast; the Trainer road is a long one, and the instant-gratification culture more or less put paid to it as soon as it started.
Dragging myself from my gloomy reverie, I entered the Gym and showed my Trainer Card to the receptionist. It was thirty years out of date and I still owned only one of the Pokémon whose faces were printed on it, but it didn't matter, since most Cards were just poor forgeries nowadays anyway. She waved me through and I went into the next room, where I was confronted by two warp panels, each with a sign above it: 'Staff Only' and 'Gym Area'. There would be no one in the Gym Area; I doubted they even still cleaned it. It was a huge wooden area, I remembered from a school trip, peppered with warp panels and mazes made of intricately-carved wooden railings. They'd got some monks down to carve those; it was a beautiful place back then, a test of the mind and spirit as well as the body. Solve the puzzles to get to the tournament at the end, and beat everyone in the tournament to face Sabrina. It was a beautiful place.
I sighed and stepped on the panel labelled 'Staff Only'; my next step took me out into a cavernous space, far bigger than any single room in the Gym, with walls of uncovered breezeblocks, full of shipping containers. A makeshift counter had been set up on a few upturned crates nearby. You could be forgiven for thinking you were in a warehouse here – because you were. The warp panel was an illegal one that crossed the city borders and came out in Vermilion. This was Sabrina's business.
A warm, heady smoke wafted from the counter; there were a couple of stoned youths sitting there, smoking cigarettes rolled with Oddish leaves. Near me, there was a basket of the creatures, twitching slowly and helplessly, leafless. Without their leaves, they couldn't photosynthesise and would be dead within the hour. I walked past them, and past a cage with a couple of more powerfully psychotropic Gloom inside. They didn't die when you smoked their harvest; you just took the powder from inside their petals. Only a couple of grams, of course, or you would die. I had heard of someone smoking Vileplume powders once, but I was certain it was nothing but an urban myth: Vileplume, like members of the Gastly line, were illegal, because just a sniff of them could kill you.
There was a short line before the counter; a man was engaged in buying a brown package that I presumed contained Miltank milk. You can always spot a milk addict – they just look so damn healthy.
I strode up to the counter. For a moment, Harri didn't notice me, busy as he was with the leaves, fluids and powders that covered the crates, and spoke to me as to any ordinary customer:
"Whatcha after?"
"The truth would be nice, as a start," I said, and he looked up sharply and swore. "I think you might have some explaining to do," I continued.
Harri looked worried, but he called over someone marginally less drugged up than the rest of the clientele – a co-worker, apparently – and got them to man the counter while he took me to his cubby hole in the back of one of the storage containers.
It was cold and dark, until a Bellsprout in a cage used Flash; then, the chamber was evenly illuminated in a way so harsh and artificial that it hurt the eyes. Harri didn't seem to mind; I doubted he ever touched fresh air or saw natural light. He was fat and pasty-faced, acne scarring his cheeks and cheap unwashed clothes hanging grotesquely from his body. He dealt in unsavoury goods, mostly for Sabrina, but also for the Rockets, who bought their storage space from the Gym Leader. As far as I knew, he actually lived here, even sleeping in the malodorous futon I spotted in one corner.
He sat down and offered me the privilege of doing likewise, but I declined, as the chairs were covered several years' worth of gritty black grime that came from God-knows-what, a mixture of Oddish joint ash and some indefinable muck that accumulates when youths are confined in a small space for extended periods of time.
"I guess ya found out about Giovanni, then," he said, reaching for a half-drunk glass of something dark that had been in place for so long it took considerable effort to remove from the table, and left a ring of thick mould in its wake.
"Yeah, I did," I answered, resisting the urge to vomit. "Got anything to say for yourself?"
Harri looked up at me calmly; the fat boy had recovered his cool, and would likely be calculating how much he could make from this exchange.
"I might," he said. "But my tongue is damn stiff this time of year. The autumn damp gets in, ya know?"
"I suppose you need to buy some medicine for it?"
"Probably," he agreed. "I oughta see a doctor or somethin'."
I took out a couple of thousand-dollar coins and rolled them around in the palm of my hand, letting them chase each other around the wrinkles in the skin. Harri's eyes locked onto them and did not let go. After a couple of seconds of silence, I prompted him:
"These Pokédollars are yours when you speak, Harri. That's the way this game works, see? You're the one who set it up."
A thousand Pokédollars wasn't that much, but it was enough. If you were a Trainer, you could buy a few Potions or Pokéballs; for the average guy on the street, it would pay for a cheap meal. When you added a couple more coins to the pile, you started getting serious. Harri licked his bloated lips nervously, and started to talk.
"This was too important. Giovanni's been plannin' this crazy stunt the whole time since he wound up in jail. The Rockets were waitin' for him to break out – that's why they've been so tame the last ten years. But no one except the executives know what that plan is."
Executives. I knew several Rocket agents – if I hadn't been under the scrutiny of the Hypno, I probably could have identified the grunts in the Club last night – but no executives. No one knew who they were, not even other Rockets.
"Anything else?" Harri pretended to think, and I put a five hundred dollar coin on the pile.
"The Rocket weren't the only ones keepin' this quiet. Sabrina is, too."
"Sabrina?"
Harri looked around furtively, then beckoned me close and whispered into my ear, foetid breath washing over and around my head in vile waves.
"Between you an' me, Sabrina looks like she's in on this, whatever it is."
I straightened up. The melodrama was needless, and it had exposed me to Harri's breath, something I'd have preferred to go without.
"Can you think of anything else at all?" I put another five hundred dollar coin in my hand without bothering to wait for him to act the amnesiac.
"You wanna buy this?" Harri asked, holding up a tiny red metal cube. "We don't know what it is."
I took it from him and told him not to change the subject. Perhaps there was something of my contempt for him and his business, and how much I wanted to punch him, showing in my eyes, because he immediately became serious.
"Yeah, one more thing." Harri looked me dead in the eyes, and the look was grave. "When Giovanni got out, he didn't leave alone. Jessie and James went with him."
Chapter Five
"This is how it stands so far," I said, leaning against the desk and addressing the staff of the Babylon Detection Agency. "Item one: Wesley's Ponyta is stolen. Item two: the Rockets are apparently leaning back to their old ways, as a direct result of item three: Giovanni is released from prison. Item four: they're apparently working on some sort of Pokémon research, with the help of Leader Blaine" – here I indicated Priscilla, who attempted something that might, in a human, have been called a curtsy – "that was so bad the dead guy Johann Nielsson had to run away from it, and wound up dead on a slab in the Vermilion station." I hesitated, and ploughed on. "Item five: Jessie and James are back out too."
Everyone in the room flinched a little: Priscilla drew in on herself, shuddering as her gases contracted; En, an illegally smuggled Natu, opened his eyes slightly wider than usual, and even the normally staunch Mardek narrowed his eyes and folded his arms.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; Burke and Hare; every country has its notorious criminal pair. In Kanto we had Jessie and James. They started out as two-bit thieves for the Rockets, specialising in the theft of Pokémon, but somewhere along the way their psychotic nature got ahead of them and they started to kill. After that, they were no longer snatchers, but assassins: when the Rockets wanted someone dead, and in the most painful way imaginable, they'd send in Jessie and James. The two were powerful Trainers in their own right, using two of the most highly illegal Pokémon in Kanto: Jessie had an Arbok, and James used a Weezing. Arbok, with its massive size, crushing coils and powerful poison, was a Class II; and Weezing was one of the Class Is: easy to transport, leaving a trail of deadly neurotoxin behind it wherever it moved – and, in a tough situation, it could explode in a ferocious burst of fire and toxic fluid. These were the Pokémon used by Jessie and James, and between them they'd racked up an impressive list of 164 murders – only one of which could be proved, hence their abnormally short prison sentence.
But of course, Jessie and James were brute force; the brains behind the pair was an unknown figure. It wasn't Giovanni – the man had enough trouble containing the warring Rocket Executives – but some sinister figure who held almost as much power in the Rocket organisation as the leader: Giovanni's second-in-command. Alone of the top-tier Rocket leaders of yesteryear, that person had evaded prison, and no one even knew what he looked like. If he had been waiting too, with the Rockets, then it seemed likely that Jessie and James would be resuming active service.
That wasn't the worst of it, either. I had been heavily involved in the Black TM case, as I mentioned before, the investigation that had put Giovanni, Jessie and James behind bars. It was due in no small part to my efforts that it had been accomplished. If Jessie and James were out, then it was probable that we could expect a visit from one or both of them at some point.
Mardek gave me a look that said, What do we do?
"I don't know what it is that we're going to do now," I told the assembled company. "It seems to me that we've ended up in a fairly dangerous situation."
En looked into my eyes, and I heard a thin, wise voice inside my head.
Do we continue with the investigation into Charla's whereabouts?
"I think the investigation has morphed into something bigger," I admitted. "I somehow doubt—" I stopped suddenly. "Someone's coming up the stairs," I said. "Priscilla, En, return!"
Twin red flashes of light occurred and I stuffed the two illegal Pokémon, now in their Pokéballs, into my pockets just before there came a knock at the door and someone came in.
If he was a client, he was the strangest I'd seen for quite some time. He was about six feet tall, and moved in an oddly stiff manner, as if iron bars were tied to his limbs. Swaddled in a huge, thick greatcoat and an equally thick scarf, with a broad-brimmed hat pulled down low over his eyes, I could see only a few square inches of his face. In retrospect, it wasn't so unusual, since many clients wanted to obscure their identity in those days – but at the time it was certainly a surprise. I even went as far as to raise my eyebrows slightly at his entrance.
"Good afternoon," he said, in an American accent. I've never been to America, and most Americans don't come here, so I wasn't familiar with what part of America that voice was from. Since it was a clue nevertheless, I mentally filed it away. "You are Russell Curtis?"
I nodded. "That's me. How can I help?"
If it was a simple request, I could solve it at the same time as working on finding Charla – and I would actually get paid to do this.
"I have a case for you," the mysterious figure said. "I'd like you to find a missing person for me."
Piece of cake – usually. Technically, that's the police's job, but it's one of those archetypal cases that private eyes just couldn't get by without.
"What person? Where did you see them last?"
The client bowed his head, and when he spoke there was a hint of steel in his voice.
"A man called Tomás Vitruvio," he said. "He owes me a large amount of money, and I want it back from him."
"OK," I agreed. I knew Vitruvio. He was a deliveryman from the Spanish Quarter, the sort of man who carried messages and packages around the city. Sometimes his clients were legitimate – but often they'd be someone like Silph Co. or the Rockets. "I can do that for you."
The man looked, as far as I could tell, pleased.
"I can pay you seventy thousand Pokédollars up front," he told me, "and another seventy afterwards. I'll contact you in a couple of days' time to see how you're getting on."
Americans. Their money was worth so much out here that when they did turn up, they invariably spent far more than they meant to. I wasn't going to refuse an offer like that, and accepted gracefully. The strange man thanked me profusely and took out a bulging wallet. From this, he peeled three two-thousand-dollar notes and one-thousand-dollar one. On his way out, he bumped into the door before his hand managed to find the handle and let himself out. I could tell he was an amateur at disguise – no one bundles themselves up so much that they couldn't see properly if they know what they're doing.
"Weird guy," I muttered. "But money is money. Mardek!"
He came in from the kitchenette, clutching a mug of boiling water. Magmars are chronically thirsty – it's the duck blood in them, I think – but they can't tolerate cold stuff. He drank so much that I had had to buy him his own kettle.
"Come on," I said. "We've got another case. Missing person. Should be easier than finding Charla, so we'll do both."
The Magmar nodded, gulped the remaining water and set down the mug. A moment later, we'd locked up and left.
The Spanish Quarter. An ever-present reminder of the dreams and aspirations of two nations, dashed to pieces against the grey slates of Saffron. They had come here in the thirties, when there was nothing here but a small, peaceful town centred around the colour yellow and the Pokémon Abra, still the city's official emblem. To us, they seemed like gods; they brought the miracles of the Western world to our sleepy Eastern land. Foods and cloths never before seen; varieties of Pokémon completely new to our knowledge; and technology: roads and railways and all the pleasures of modern life. Then they brought bullets, and guns, and pollution; ecosystem collapse and a generation of blighted crops that withered under the chemical fertilisers. Our forebears tried to make them leave – in those days, I always think, they still had sense – but then the war began: Kanto, what they call back in Spain the Spanish Vietnam.
It was bloody and it ravaged the land. Bullets and fire, thunder and tidal waves wracked the region for ten long years. And then we won, under the leadership of Manila Torrence, the man they dubbed Kanto's Kongming, a master of strategy and a warrior of, they said, great prowess. We won and the Spaniards, broken, variously left to find rejection in their homeland, or stayed to live in the squalid encampments that became the Spanish Quarter. Two dreams were ruined in that conflict: the hope of a promised land for Spain, and the hope that our land could remain peaceful for us Kantans.
They taught it in every school; we all sat at our desks and learned how Torrence had ridden into that last battle in Timber Gulch, his Rapidash's eyes wide with fear, and how it had been a trap to kill him, for it was the Spanish headquarters and bristling with soldiers and weaponry – and how he had, at the last moment, leaped from his Rapidash and told it to run free, before, bleeding from seven bullet wounds and badly burned from a Thunderbolt, he ordered his Electrode to use Explosion. It was Level 100, or so they say. The most powerful Pokémon that ever lived, and it blew itself and its master to smithereens in a valiant last stand to preserve our freedom.
The Spanish army never really recovered from the destruction of their HQ, and left dispirited a few years later. Now, our two countries linked by the blood of a generation and of Kanto's greatest hero, some of them were still here. There was no love lost on either side; the murder of a Spaniard, while technically illegal, would never be investigated by the Saffron police, though a Kantan murdered by an immigrant would result in mass arrest in the Spanish Quarter.
This was the secret, blood-soaked past of the Kanto region, and it was into that past that I walked now. Normally, no one would go there who wasn't a resident, but in my line of work, I had had to come here reasonably often. There was a strong underworld current here, but disjointed, unconnected to any of the main powers: a mess of two-bit strongmen and low-grade thieves, cut-price criminals of a distinctly lower calibre than you would find in Saffron proper.
I went on foot, making sure Mardek was beside me. He was around Level 36, roughly my own age, and would be a sufficient deterrent to any would-be muggers or murderers.
The streets here were filthier even than in the parts of Saffron I hung around in, covered in scraps of paper, mud and excrement. Oddish joint stubs were everywhere, and I even saw a broken Gloom pipe lying against a wall. The place was also oddly silent; everyone seemed to go into hiding at the approach of a Kantan. Maybe the fact that I'd been here before was what caused the surprise: if a Kantan came here, they didn't usually come back.
The few people I passed were either drunk or high, and presented no threat; on one occasion, a man reeking of tequila blundered into me, howling about the oppressors, but a weak Fire Punch from Mardek shoved him away and singed his shirt.
I knew the way to Vitruvio's well enough. On one of my previous trips to the Spanish Quarter, it had been to his house that I'd come.
It was small, even by the standards of the area, and the upper floor was falling in, the roof crumpled in places as if a giant had poked it. The bare bricks of the walls were chipped and battered, and in places you could see wooden planks that had been used to block up gaps.
The door was unlocked, which was the first unsettling thing – in the Spanish Quarter, not locking your doors was a warm invitation to thieves. I paused on the step, motioned for Mardek. Understanding, he went to the bay window to the left of the door and silently melted the jagged edges of a broken pane of glass, so it would be safe to crawl through. If there was anyone with hostile intent in here, which seemed likely, I sure as hell didn't want to just walk straight into them. I at least wanted the element of surprise.
I clambered through the hole, followed by Mardek, and we found ourselves on the wrong side of a pair of thick damask-print curtains. I heard voices, and immediately froze.
"... Scyther, return," I heard. I almost could not make out the words; they were spoken very softly indeed. Footsteps across the room, which seemed to be coming closer and closer towards me... A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. A Scyther is not a friendly sort of Pokémon.
The footsteps became fainter. They were just walking towards the door. I breathed out a silent sigh of relief, and, as I heard the door shut, quickly darted through the curtains and held them straight so they wouldn't twitch, just in case the mystery person looked back. I don't think they did, and I made out the words, "Use Fly," though I couldn't have said what Pokémon was ordered to do it.
I turned around, relieved, and froze.
Vitruvio lay dead in the centre of the floor, blood running from a massive network of deep slashes all over his body. The bare floorboards around him were slick with viscera, and his face was twisted up in an expression of pain and horror. He hadn't died peacefully. I bent down to examine him and saw there were far too many wounds for the killing move to be the old favourite, Slash; their quantity suggested a Fury Cutter or X-Scissor attack. I wondered why Vitruvio had been killed. Perhaps he'd found something out, opened a delivery that he wasn't meant to see. Either way, it seemed I'd solved the case of his whereabouts.
I sat down on Vitruvio's lone chair and thought.
"It doesn't make sense, Mardek," I said. "This guy's in his own home. Yet that guy wanted me to find him. Surely he must have known where he lived?"
He shrugged, indicating he couldn't figure it out.
"I don't know... something doesn't add up here. Is this linked to the Team Rocket resurgence? I just can't figure it out."
Mardek, meanwhile, was going through the dead man's pockets. He made a small noise of surprise, and held up what he'd found. It was a small data disk, a square of plastic and metal that held some sort of information.
"Now that's interesting," I murmured, getting up and taking it from him. I realised with a start that I was still holding Harri's red cube, and I gave it to Mardek to hold while I examined the disk. "What would an impoverished Hispanic deliveryman be doing with this?"
You think that was what he was killed for?
"It's possible. But if so, why didn't they take it with them?" I paused. "No, he wasn't killed so someone could steal the disk. They left it here to be found when someone came around."
But anyone could have come here, Mardek's look seemed to say. Anyone could have ended up with the disk.
"No, I don't think so," I said. "What would be the point of that? Someone knew I would be coming here. Someone wanted me to find the disk."
Mardek gave me a look that questioned my sanity.
"I know, I know, it doesn't seem likely. But I can't think of any other way to explain it. The real problem with the theory is that it would mean that the person who killed Vitruvio has to be someone who knew I would come here. Which would mean that it has to be the guy who paid me to find him."
This doesn't make any sense.
"Ah, I know it doesn't. Why go to all that trouble when he could just give me the disk? I guess the thing to do is just to look and see what's on it. Maybe we can figure something out from that."
We left Vitruvio's house gladly, and half an hour later had the Spanish Quarter at our backs. The strange feeling of relief that washes over a Kantan when they leave the district rose up within me, a reminder of the deep rift between our peoples. A rift that, paradoxically, bound us together as much as it pushed us apart.
I went back to the office. I didn't actually have a computer – they weren't easy to come by back in those days, especially on a PI's meagre income – but I knew someone who did. I wrote a letter to him, stuck the disk in the envelope, and went out to post it. As I waited in line to buy a stamp, I wondered what kind of man my client was, to send me in search of a man who could be found in his own home – and possibly to kill that man just to give me a floppy disk. I shook my head; I wouldn't get any further with this until I got a reply from my friend up at Cerulean Cape. I knew him from our time at school together, a guy by the name of Bill, who, I think, now did something big in the computing industry. I didn't know much about computers, but I did know that whatever he did, he was good enough that Silph tried to poach him, only he refused to work with them.
I posted the letter, picked up Mardek from the office, and drove home. I'd had enough for today; Bill wouldn't reply for a few days at least, which meant any progress in figuring out what the deal was with Vitruvio, the disk and the strange client, and I needed a sleep before heading out and investigating the Charla case again.
When I got home, someone had left a message on the phone. I listened to it carefully, twice, then rubbed my temples and sighed. It looked like I wasn't getting any sleep any time soon; I got back into the car and drove out again.
Chapter Six
I pulled up outside the street closest to the Club Rocket entrance and went inside. Marcia was waiting near the door, and took me over to a table near the back. She looked very agitated; her eyes flicked left and right as if searching for watchers, and she kept rolling the tips of her hair between her fingers.
"This had better be good," I said. "I've had a long day and I wanted to get some sleep."
"I was with a Rocket executive," she said in a low voice, then broke off. "I shouldn't be telling you this, especially not here—"
"Let's go outside." I stood up, but she pulled me back down again.
"No, I'll tell you," she said, but she didn't sound decisive. "I was with an executive – a guy called Archer. And I overheard him speaking on the phone, when I was leaving—"
Marcia lapsed into silence; she couldn't seem to get the words out. I waited; eventually, she started again.
"Oh, it's awful," she whispered fiercely, tears in her eyes. "What they're doing – the thing they're making – I can't..."
She stopped again, but this time forever. She toppled forwards, landing face-first in my lap, something dark matting the hair on the back of her head. I leaped up, staring around wildly, but I didn't see who had fired. I hadn't even heard the shot; maybe it had been the work of a Pokémon.
Then I heard a scream, and I realised with a jolt that Marcia was dead, an innocent life cut off forever, and I realised that there was blood on my shirt and a dead Rocket girl at my feet.
I don't remember exactly what happened next. I have a vague memory of fleeing, running out of Club Rocket, but it's all kind of blurry, because I had barely got to the door when my way was blocked by the Hypno in the dark glasses, whirling his pendulum like a bolas...
...then I was sitting somewhere dark, and someone was shouting at me, demanding to know what I knew, words, words, over and over again, until another person started remonstrating with them...
...then I was lying in an alleyway somewhere in the back districts, with filthy liquid seeping through my clothes and a headache the size of Jupiter.
Sometimes, I wonder why there aren't more gumshoes in Saffron. The city is perfect for them: a high crime rate, cheap liquor, and reasonable rent on dingy offices. There are enough worried minds and broken hearts to keep a whole legion of private eyes in work for years.
But then I remember the jaded eyes that cast their gazes down the streets, the cynical expressions on the faces of the citizens, and I realise why. We just don't care any more. It's a sad state of affairs, really; the great capital of Kanto, reduced to nothing more than a series of interlocking lives, all grey and tattered, all trying their best to live through the day without looking back again. After a few years of that life, you don't care any longer, though of course I was harder hit by cynicism than most, being a true veteran of the city's harsh, unforgiving nature. It's to be expected: a man who skulks around in the shadows for a living will eventually be tainted by those shadows.
That's why I'm the only private detective in Saffron. No one else cares, no one sympathises; no one gives a damn if a Rocket girl is shot in the head or a Spanish deliveryman slashed to pieces. I don't either, not really, but I can't let go of that faint hope that I can still feel sorrow at the loss of a life. It's a weakness, or a strength – a sort of deluded heroism, if you will. And because of that, I'm a private eye.
I staggered into the office, unsure of what had just happened. Either I had had a hell of a lot to drink last night, or a Ghost or Psychic type had got inside my brain. The Ouija board was laid out on the table, and the glass began to move swiftly.
Russell! Are you OK?
"Priscilla?" I mumbled. "Where... where have I been?"
We don't know. Where's Mardek?
"I don't know..." I tried hard to recall what had happened last night, but it was a blur of nightmarish fog.
You've got blood on you!
"I have?" I looked down and saw a huge patch of dried blood on my midriff. With a sickening jolt, a large part of the previous evening slotted back into place: a shot, a falling head, what was the name, I almost had it—
"Marcia's dead," I said tonelessly, then realised what I'd said. "Marcia's dead!" I slammed my fist down onto the table. "Damn it, Marcia's dead!"
I had seen a lot of death in my time in Saffron, but rarely was I so affected by it: it was usually just part of the scenery. She had been my contact at Club Rocket, one of the few people I was certain I could trust in this city; maybe I had loved her a little, but then, who could resist a woman of her charms? It was her job to be appealing. I had been cold to her all these years, purely because I had some stupid sense that I was better than her, and what had it led to? She had helped me, for no reason other than she thought it was the right thing to do – and she had wound up dead.
En's voice resounded in my head; sometimes it's inconvenient that Natu are telepathic.
It is not your fault, Russell.
"I know," I muttered. "I know. But..."
Priscilla flowed out of the glass and coalesced somewhere near my shoulder. I think she might have been trying to comfort me – but if she'd touched me, she'd have burned my skin.
Russell. What precisely happened last night? Try to remember.
"Can't you drag it out of my mind?"
The seal is too strong. I cannot overcome it.
"OK." I sighed and sat on the desk, head bowed. I tried hard to recall. What had happened next, after Marcia had been killed? I concentrated as hard as I could, but to no avail; the memories were sealed off completely. "I can't."
Do you know where Mardek is?
"Yes," I said, suddenly realising that I did. "Yes, I do. He's at home; I didn't take him to Club Rocket. I went home last night, then went to Club Rocket because Marcia said she had something to tell me. But she didn't get to say much, because she was... shot, I suppose, or it could have been a modified Pin Missile or Icicle Spear. After that, I don't remember." I got up and went over to the door. "I'll go pick Mardek up. Wait here; we'll see if we can make any sense of this when I get back."
I stepped out into the street and became acutely aware that I didn't know where my car was; I presumed it was at the Club, so I walked there first. Thankfully, it was still in one piece, so I got in and drove home, brooding all the way. What had happened last night? I must have been worked over by the Rocket Hypno; that was the only way to explain my memory loss. The Rockets had, presumably, figured out that I was on a path they didn't approve of, and so killed Marcia before she could tell me what she'd found out.
I pulled up at my house and found Mardek pacing in the hall. When he saw me, he froze, then rushed over and held up a piece of paper on which was scrawled in nearly illegible handwriting: "Where the hell have you been?"
"Sorry," I replied, raising my hands in a placating gesture, "I don't know either. But believe me, I'd like to."
Mardek gave me a quizzical look, and I explained what had happened – or what I remembered of it, anyway. When I was done, he gave a low whistle, something he'd spent years perfecting, since it's hard to do it through a beak.
"I know," I said. "Come on, I told the others we'd get back soon to try and work something out."
Mardek shook his head and mimed.
"That is the best idea I've heard all day," I told him. "Wait for me, I won't take too long."
Then, smeared with blood and garbage, I went off to wash and change.
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