Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He stepped out of the prison gates with a deep breath of relief, a suitcase in his hands and a “hope you’ve learned your lesson” from the warden behind him. His grip on the case grew tighter as he tried his hardest to keep himself from turning on his heels and landing a left hook on the guy. Didn’t want to go back in.

He hadn’t learned it, not really.

Well, in his mind there was no lesson to be learned. The story’s that someone had came into his office with the reports from last week, and with them came an officer, with his regular official ways; making unfunny jokes, letting out laughs that hung over in the heavy and unventilated air of the archive, staring down at him in that cocky way only those in black uniforms and fancy caps would. It drove him insane .

The bookie didn’t hesitate pulling out his pocket knife and jumping over the desk, shanking the cop on the gut. He was arrested on the spot, obviously; you don’t commit attempted murder inside a police department. He pleaded innocent, said that the cop was asking for it, but alas, he was just a bookkeeper for the Midnight City Police fine department, and couldn’t afford a lawyer good enough to solve his pickle.

He served his sentence, and now had a mission. The town took his freedom. He was gonna take everything it had.

Of course, he wouldn’t be able to do it on his own. What would he even do? Littering? Shoplifting? Scare a baby on a stroller? Nah. Cohorts, is what he needed.

The first he managed to contact was met in a run-down cabaret. He’s been there for a couple of weeks, and it was so quiet and under-visited that there was no way it was ending the months with a profit. Questioned about it, the owner talked about an angel investor.

Great. Where there’s an angel, there’s also a devil laundering his money. Perfect. He requested a meeting with this angel investor, and was surprised to learn from the owner he was actually there tonight. His inquire was met with directions to the back, where a girl performed a private dance to a tall, polished man, close enough for him to examine every single curve and turn of her body, but daring not to touch her.

“I wonder what sorta thing you do to afford burning your money investing in a shitty club like this.”

Slit eyes were directed to him, and a puff of smoke with a laugh as its +1 hit his face.

“Ya got a name, hunchback?”

The gentleman sat down received a growl before the carefully crafted answer. Damnit, it wasn’t a hunchback, he just liked to sulk! Is it too much to ask people to mind their own business?

“Slick. Spades Slick.”

“Diamonds Droog, from Droog Accounting & Asset Managing.” He reached for a handshake, which was met sharply, “at your service.”

“Answer my question.”

“You didn’t ask me one.”

“You know what I mean!” He barked back at Droog, and the figurative angel/demon took a pause. Put out his cigarette on the ashtray next to him. Told the hooker to disappear with a wave of his hand, which she did without any sort of protest or lingering. God, this took ages.

“You sound like a man who needs an angel or a cook. Luckily for you, mr. Slick, I am both. How can I help you tonight?” His voice was clean cut, polished and sober, much like everything else about him.

Slick explained his plan of revenge, and Droog delighted himself in it, lighting up another cigarette. It was quaint, how this hard-headed, barely eloquent ex-convict thought himself good enough to ask the best money launderer and tax evader in town to work for him. Just outright cute.

It was with a sketched smile that Droog agreed, after discussing a payment complicated enough for Slick not to get the accountant was getting the better part of their profits. Understand, it’s not for the money. Droog doesn’t really need that. He just wanted to see how far he could go without being caught, what would happen when that hot-headed sucker found out. The face he would make. Droog bet it would be priceless.

Now, Slick had a leader --himself-- and a cook. He now needed a muscle. Hopping into Droog’s (very nice) car, the soon-to-be mobster directed him on just where to go to find one of those.

“The docks?” Droog inquired, stopping at a light, “you plan to hire a sailor?”

“Nah. This is just the place to find ‘im. The Cockpit.”

“Cock fighting?” The accountant rose an amused eyebrow, a cigarette on the tip of two fingers rested idly against the wheel, “you plan to get a rooster?”

“No! That-” Slick seemed to stop to retrace his train of thought and composure, “it’s just the name they give it, it- it’s street fighting. I dunno why they call the place a cockpit. Take a left.”

The left was took. At a run down abandoned storage, or factory, or whatever it was, men gathered around to either earn some scraps fighting others for the title of champion, or to earn big time betting on the champion. And what a champion that was. Big, burly and brutal, just the kind of guy that was doing this for a couple of extra bucks and would be delighted to get a chance to move up in life. They told the announcer to say to the hegemonic brute they wanted to have a word with him at a nearby deli; Droog sat Slick down once they were there and explained how much he would offer to the guy for his loyalty and brutality.

“We can afford that?” Was the almost worried, albeit completely monotone answer.

“Provided everything runs well, this’ll be barely a dent in the profits.”

“What if we get in trouble?”

Chuckle.

“Mr. Slick, I’m sure you’re aware, as much as I am, that in order to get in trouble one needs to get caught. That’s the thing; I don’t. Get caught. There he is.”

The brute just then arrived, now properly dressed in a button-up long-sleeved shirt, and not covered in blood, sweat and victory spoils. He nodded to them, and Droog proceeded to ask his name.

“They call me Hearts Boxcars.” The reply was low, unemotional, a statement of the fact.

“We saw the way you fought down there in that piss-covered rat den you call a fight club. Quite imp-”

“Quit the schmoozing, bourgeois.” Boxcars interrupted him in the same tone as before. Droog paused, halfway between shocked and impressed, and extended his arms to touch the table’s surface with his fingers delicately.

“Fine then. Me and my associate-”

“Boss,” corrected Slick, turning next to face Boxcars, “I’m the boss.”

“...and my boss. Have a proposal to you. Such as any other, it requires loyalty and sacrifice, but comes accompanied by some pretty interesting sum of pay, should you accept it. I believe you’d enjoy it.”

“How much?”

“I’m glad you asked.” He pulled a card and a pen from his suit’s internal breast pocket, and scribbled something on the back. The card was put face up on the table, and slid across, the engraved “Droog Accounting & Asset Managing” shining with the ceiling light. Two of his fingers lingered on the card, as if to reassure the seriousness of the numbers covered up, and then they were retrieved. Boxcars picked up the card and flipped it, raising his eyebrow as he read the amount in Droog’s fancy white collar handwriting.

“You pulling my leg?”

“I wouldn’t even if I wanted to. It’s not… My thing.”

There was silence for quite some time after that. Boxcars read and reread the offering; Slick played with his pocket knife away from sight, below the table, to pass the time; Droog tapped his feet a couple of times, and deemed his wait long enough.

“Well,” he started, standing up, “let us know when you make up your mind.”

Out in the car, Slick voiced his concern, while Droog lit another --well deserved, in his opinion --smoke.

“He’s not gonna take it.”

“He will.”

“He thought you were messin’ with him, he’s not gonna take it.”

“Mr. Slick, I need you to trust me. That offer is enough to make him consider, but not too high to make him think it’s unthinkable. Believe me when I say he’s ours, because I don’t think you can nail this kind of offer on your own. And even if I’m wrong,” he blew the smoke out through the window, “there’s always another poor goon who’s willing to die to get his hands in a wage like this.”

It didn’t take long for Boxcars to show up to what Slick had called their headquarters, a mansion in an upstanding residential area, which Droog insisted on acquiring for ‘legal reasons’, and not much longer than that they were already fully operational.

The grind to the top was slow. Much slower than what Slick had projected. He thought the mob life was all about dancing around the edges of the barely legal and spilling the blood of their enemies off in the streets. There was a lot of the first, as Droog would tell you in seemingly infinite tangents on the matter, and not many of the latter. Actually, none at all, so far, and it was making Slick impatient, sitting around the living room, gobbling down licorice scottie dogs as if his life depended on their sugar, polishing pocket knifes and playing blackjack with Boxcars as the accountant crafted the books.

“Don’t let yourself be taken by the glorious and glamourized mob drama you see in newspapers and on the radio,” Droog would reply to Slick’s grumbles of impatience, while taking off his reading glasses and leaning backwards on the chair to release tension off his shoulders, “in order to battle anyone for your position on top you must actually be on top. It takes time, boss. The Sistine Chapel’s ceiling wasn’t painted in a day.”

Slick chose to say nothing, either because he didn’t know how to lash back, or he deemed the answer satisfactory; the accountant continued, sipping his coffee.

“Y’know, we could use a mole. Someone to go out in the field and gather intelligence. Neither of you would do,” he sighed, pointing at Slick, and then at Boxcars, with his mug, “you flash a knife around to solve your problems and Boxcars looks like he’s about to rob you even when he’s not asking inquisitive questions and lingering on crucially secretive details.”

They looked back at the goon, who raised his head from his crossword magazine at the mention of his name. He sure was menacing.

“What about you?” Slick barked back at Droog.

“Oh no. I. Cook the books. You. Hire someone else to do field work.”

Slick was already boiling with the need to bicker about this, when, coincidentally, the doorbell rang. Almost too good to be true, something out of a radio drama. It was a door salesman, a short, cheery little fella who was just trying to earn an honest living selling insurances or girl scout cookies or whatever the hell it was.

“We’re not interested.” Slick said as he opened the door, and closed it on the poor guy’s face.

Ring.

“I said we’re not interested!”

…

…

…

Ring.

Slick opened up the door again with a moan. It was too early for that shit.

“What.”

“Okay, uhm, two things?” The salesman started, frantically looking from up to Slick’s scowling, to his feet, to the movement out on the road, and back at the almost-mobster, “one is that you have a lovely garden, actually!”

“Thanks I don’t water it.”

“...and two is… you look like a guy who could use some help!”

Slick stopped on his tracks. How did he know that?

“How did you know that?”

“Oh, people say I’m good at reading faces, and that just sorta seemed like what your face looked like to me. I’m in-between jobs, so if there’s anything you want done or gotten rid of or brought to you I’ll... Try my best to learn the trade!”

Slick pondered for a few moments, staring back at the other, that waited with the biggest customer service smile you’d see in a long time. Finally, he pointed back with a thumb.

“Get in.”

“Oh, excuse me!” The short man stepped in, taking off his hat and waving at the two others inside, “hello! Good morning!”

God, how it was early for that. Slick needed a questionably-obtained drink.

They sat him down, and he started babbling. And how he babbled ; about how he was known in the field as Clubs Deuce, about his morning, about his wife, his previous jobs, the war, his experience with explosives.

Wait, what?

“Yeah, I know my way around ‘em,” he claimed, kicking his legs while sat on the couch, “I could probably look at a building and tell how much TNT would take to level it. Kinda creepy now that I say it out loud. But oh well! That’s one of these weird things you pick up sooner or later in life!”

And he kept going, with the same high-pitched, fast-paced parakeet-like voice, though he had already guaranteed his sale, judging by the short look Droog gave Slick that was retributed with a scowl of confirmation.

Deuce was adorable. Absolutely harmless. Nobody could suspect foul play from someone that friendly. Plus, they get a free explosives expert.

“Okay, shut up.” Slick spat out at him, and he obeyed, “Deuce, do you have any cop friends?”

“No, not that I know of.”

“Good. You’re hired.”

“Yay!” Deuce shot up, clapping his hands in excitement, “...What do I do?”

“I’m glad you asked that.” Droog leaned back on his seat, looking over the short stubby guy as if he had plans for him. So many plans he’d make that little egghead execute.

Thus was formed the Midnight Crew. Slick wasn’t as creative with names as he was with torturing, yet the name had a nice ring to it. Dominating a city already ridden with disorganized crime and an inefficient task force was easy enough, even if it was just the four of them. Organizing the disorganized into just one head (or rather, four heads) was something that seemed much harder than it actually was.

Just picture, four mobsters, walking down the street bathed in moonlight, making hooligans hide in the shadows of the alleyways and upstanding citizens to look down as they walked and rush to the safety of their homes. This was just what Slick expected, and he delighted himself on it.

And that was just their night off!

Chapter Text

“Alright, so to start today’s program I’ve got with me chief Staedler, prohibition agent for the city’s police department, here to explain more about the Prohibition Bureau’s goal here in Midnight City. Tell us, chief.”

“Well, first of all thanks for having me--”

“Thank you for coming.”

“--I’ve first been appointed as head of this department when we’ve apprehended a dozen or so gallons of illicit beverages on a speakeasy downtown.”

“So you mean alcohol?”

“Yes, and what first caught our attention --which I thought was mighty interesting, actually --was not only that it was some very high quality liquor, y’know, something you won’t find in a homemade bathtub gin operation, not only that but it was also branded.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, with a symbol on ‘em, an-an ace of spades, right? So I go to the higher-ups and I tell ‘em that we’ve some sort of organized group doing this. The quantity, the quality and the branding make this quite the professional operation, so we’re looking into it as deep as we can, as fast as we can. Ain’t gonna let outlaws think they can do whatever they want, y’know.”

“Well, thank you for…” Slick dialed down the radio’s volume, and the host and his companion both vanished along with the faint static. The mobster looked up to his cohorts, all sat around the table where they arranged their legal, illegal and secret affairs.

“Can any of you tell me what’s wrong with what we heard?” Slick’s voice sounded uncharacteristically clear as he glanced around the table, with his usual snear. There was silence, out of either indifference towards the question, expectation for the answer or utter disregard of being told to get down to the mansion at that specific time.

Deuce raised his hand.

“Yeah?”

“He said ‘ain’t’ instead of ‘are not’?”

“No.”

“Alright, but that is a grammatical error, boss,” Droog expressed himself sipping his coffee, wishing he’d be doing better things with his time, “or… Do you not know that?”

Slick growled back that that was not what he meant, before moving on with his point.

“The thing is the police’s onto us. It’s not gonna take long for any of these pub owners we supply to rat us out.”

“Especially because now the police is vocal about it.” The accountant swirled his mug trying to get the best out of the sugar in it, and his boss turned to him.

“Droog, didn’t you hear about the shipment?”

“I received a telegram earlier this morning. They stole the shipment, arrested the owner, and guess what? Your stupid spade is all over the barrels like an unbelievably silly fingerprint.”

“I told you the branding was a bad idea, boss.” Boxcars threw in his two cents on the matter, and in response Slick planted his elbow on the table, pinching the bridge of his nose with a hiss of frustration.

“We gotta find a solution to this, stat.”

Again, Deuce raised his hand, after a moment of tension and hesitation. Slick ogled him with an expression that probably meant for him to think better on his request, or to reconsider it, but the little guy didn’t let himself get phased by that. Not many things made him reconsider his decisions. After giving up on staring his cohort into submission, Slick flicked his chin upwards towards Deuce and quickly raised the eyebrows, in a universally understood motion of ‘please, give us your word’.

“Can we have lunch first?”

The clock on the wall showed 12:20. It was about time, and Slick hadn’t had any breakfast.

“Yeah, yeah, naturally,” he answered, and the other two cohorts agreed either silently or laconically. Lunch it was, then. No one can think on an empty stomach, and revenge could wait until they had a meal.

And now, after it, the four of them accommodated themselves in the mansion’s smoking room, a sitting area just after the entrance hall, with a big center table where they kept their much beloved candy supply (a bowl full of assorted licorice animals), plenty of couch and armchair space, and a desk where Droog usually sat down by the phone, doing the only actual smoking in the room. Today, however, he sat on one of the couches, skimming through the morning paper he hadn’t had the chance to read earlier, while Deuce and Boxcars played cards on the center table.

Slick, sat on an armchair with his feet up on the table, picked his teeth absentmindedly with his pocket knife, and the whole crew shared that lazy motionless state one achieves after eating on a somewhat warm afternoon. The thought of ‘we should go back to work’ went around their heads at least once, but if Slick wasn’t hurrying them, then what was the point of worrying. The moment was just being enjoyed, the cards were played, the cigarettes were lit, the flour circle around the pot of candy was being stared at. Deuce read somewhere ants were repelled by flour and they didn’t want an infestation in their precious sugar supply.

A grandfather clock ringed somewhere. Now was the best time to break the inertia.

“Any ideas?” Slick’s harsh voice echoed through the room.

…

…

“Bribes?” Droog suggested, closing the newspaper he had in hand, “everyone has their price, and prohibition agents? ...Let’s say they’re actually kind of cheap.”

“Nah. Might work with regular agents but I don’t think the Chief would fall on it so easy.”

“You thinkin’ something harsher, boss?” Boxcars leaned back on the couch, and Deuce lifted his head up.

“Yeah,” Slick straightened himself up on the armchair, gesticulating with the knife, “som’thing that says… If you fuck with us… You’ll… End up in a grave or something.”

“Oh, I know!” Deuce perked up, “what if we actually put him in a grave?”

“Okay, too harsh, but… What’s second best?”

“I say,” Droog started, “we get him where it hurts.”

“The pinky toe?” Deuce shrugged.

“No, but that’s a good guess. To coerce a man and put your word above his, you have to get him where it hurts the most, the emotional Achilles’ tendon.”

Slick then rose up, with a plan sketching itself up on his head. He’d made his mind.

“We’ll get the wife.”

It didn’t take long for Deuce to find a home address for Chief Staedler, not only because everyone instantly trusted his friendly mug, but also because he was determined to receive validation from his boss; for a simple man such as himself, a ‘good job Deuce, you adorable little bastard’ goes a long way, and he delighted himself on the concept of being told his work was decent.

An upstanding anonymous citizen called in to report on a cabaret that served alcohol, one fateful night. That gentleman now sat on his car, blowing smoke out the window, waiting for Boxcars to break into the apartment and Slick to execute his deed, to stage his message. Had the officer not answered the phone call to action that night, had he decided to stay home enjoying a nice record and the company of his beloved, maybe it would’ve played out differently. Nevertheless, a crowbar cracked open a window with minimal noise, and a slender, slouched body slid through.

Slick sent his message, and then left.

Chapter Text

The camera went out with a sonorous click as the short, stout man who operated it glanced around to see the rest of the scene; the woman laid in the bathtub, both wrists open as if she couldn’t take it anymore, the blood soaking the now cold water. In the apartment’s living room, the man’s colleague -- a Problem Sleuth of sorts -- chatted up with a forensics officer who seemed like he’d seen better days.

“So, get me through the story again?”

“Prohibition agent comes home after a false alarm, finds the wife’s body on the tub. We suspected suicide at first but something doesn’t add up.”

The Sleuth vocalized a tone of understanding, and the third of the private investigators, a tall, bug-eyed and small-voiced agent, cleared his throat to grab the officer’s attention.

“Could you, uh… Let us inspect any documents she could have? Uhm… Testaments, letters, journals, anything that could tell she was in some sort of-of pickle?”

“You can go through that pile there,” the expert pointed to about three paper-filled boxes stacked on the corner, and turned back to Sleuth, “by the morning, though, the boys found something, a message.”

Sleuth perked up. The officer led him to a tiny box sat on the study table.

“A deck of cards?” Sleuth took it on his hands, opened it up, and surprisingly enough there weren’t 52 cards inside, but actually 48 less than that. The four aces looked almost villanesque displayed on the private eye’s hands, and, when turned around, revealed a message. He set them on the table, message up, and his colleagues approached, either leaving important papers scattered on top of boxes or cameras resting in chairs, and the team bunched around to read it.

“DTNO?” The short one inquired, “what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I dunno, Dick,” Sleuth shrugged, “Maybe some sort of signature. Killers tend to sign their ‘work’.”

“M-may I?” The Inspector inched forwards, and placed two fingers of each hand on two of the cards, and, after a moment of introspective abstract thinking hesitation, switched their places.

DONT .

“That makes a lot more o’ sense.”

“We’re taking this up to the office then, Inspector, Dick, grab what you need, we got a case on our hands.”

“Uh, sir?” An intern-looking investigator interjected in their exit, prompting Sleuth to turn his head, and pointed to the bathroom, “about the blood on the bathroom’s floor?”

“Eww gross, mop it up!”

“It’d be really nice if someday we could find more information about these kinds of things from a victim’s blood…” The Inspector dreamed out loud, to which the team leader scoffed mockingly.

“Oh, you’re always dreaming up about stuff, it would take decades before something like that exists. C’mon, team!” They posed dramatically as a team for cinematographic reasons, “to the Sleuthmobile!”

Team Sleuth’s office, located in a large commercial building downtown, was packed with evidence, files, timelines, maps, secret passages, plaster busts for some reason, candy corn, and of course, three investigators trying their hardest to make sense of a pile of journals, a few detailed pictures and a cryptic message.

“So, what did you guys find?” Sleuth glanced over to his colleagues, after an hour or so of thorough examination. The Inspector tapped his fingers nervously on the table and shrugged, exasperated.

“She didn’t seem to have a pickle, as far as I saw. Sh-She wanted to go to Trinidad, but I don’t think that has to do with any possible motive.” Sleuth nodded, munching on some candy.

“Yeah, I was thinking about the message. ‘DON’T’. It sounds like a warning, like-like a ‘stop’, right?” Who’d want her to stop, and why?”

“About that, uhm… I thought maybe the husband--”

“The prohibition agent?”

“Yes, and how he, uh, recently spoke up on the radio about the job? I thought mayb--”

Sleuth snapped his fingers.

“Crazy theory time! What if.”

“Yeah?”

“She wasn’t the target? What if it was the husband?”

“Then the message would make sense.” Ace Dick, who was analyzing the message, took a blow of his cigar, and continued, “so they killed the wife to make the husband back off from the investigation.”

“Correct.”

“About the message -- you’re gonna like this, Sleuth --” he approached the four cards on the table, pointing to the various details as he spoke, “Suspect broke a jar of ink and dipped his finger on it to paint.”

“Yeah, made such a mess.”

“And the letters are smooth, no texture to the links between strokes, see. So he probably wore gloves to hide the fingerprints.”

“Those criminals think of everything these days.”

“See the dots and smudges on the corner? That’s the knuckles, and best thing -- they’re on the left of the cards. Our guy’s left-handed.”

“Great!”

“Then… I dunno, the letters are very soft. Like if he painted them with a paintbrush or som’thing. Even if we know he didn’t.”

Sleuth smiled with a satisfied nod.

“So, we’re looking for a mob-related leftie with a kitten mitten.”

Slick’s hand went over his own name as he etched his signature on a legal document he had no intention to read, presented to his face without much context at all. All he wanted this morning was to take a break and go on some patrols around his turf, and maybe curb some unsuspecting criminals who were pretending to mind their own business.

“Why did I need to sign that?” He asked to an exasperated Droog, who collected documents and notes around his desk.

“In case we need a lawyer,” was the answer, “and I’m not sure if we actually don’t need one at the moment.”

“What you mean?”

“Remember that fat ass who ordered a turducken in one of our restaurant fronts and then kicked the bucket?”

“...Yes.” Slick lied, “... That happened and was a thing I was notified of.”

“The widow is threatening to sue, and I’m reviewing our options. See if we have a pickle to deal or not.”

“And how’s that my problem?”

“Well if you’re not, you should be concerned!” Droog’s voice let out a bit of anxiety he fought to contain next, “if they ask for the assets for evidence, they’re gonna look through the books and go ‘hm, why do you spend so much on accounting fees’, ‘who are those suppliers ’, ‘why do you own so many cash-based businesses ’, do you see where I’m going with this?”

Slick lifted his hand, and waved it sideways, in a clear sign of halfway understanding. Droog decided he wouldn’t be able to drill his point through his boss’ thick skull without getting a few years older and let a groan. He could do better things with his time. He could watch the stock ticker go, could have his maid brew him some coffee, could roll up some more cigarettes. Instead he was there, in a mansion he did not own, with a superior who did not know how any of his own business worked. He thought better; he was already getting older just from sitting there.

“Just trust me. I’m gonna find a lawyer to consult on the matter. Until then, we have to lay low for a while.”

“Huh. Better call off the fender-bender then.” Slick reached for his suit’s internal pocket and took his walkie talkie, ready to contact another of his cohorts.

Droog stopped his arm’s midair motion to connect his cigarette with his lips.

“What fender-bender?”

“Uuh.”

“ What fender-bender, boss?”

“There’s a new supplier in town. We gotta fuck ‘em up so I told Deuce and Boxcars to beat up one of the pub owners they stole from us and find out who they are.”

“...Definitely put a pin on that.”

Sleuth flicked on the only light in the office’s interrogation room, making the gentle lady sat right in the middle, on a lone chair, squint her eyes with the brightness. They had this room in their office just to make their interrogations seem more legit, and, for the most part, it worked wonders. Sleuth flashed his identification to the woman and quickly retrieved it as he spoke.

“Problem Sleuth, investigative agent, me and my colleagues need to ask you a question.”

“Sorry, may I see that again?” She pointed to the wallet, that Sleuth was already trying to hide. He let out a laugh and retorted, with a charming smile.

“I’m sorry ma’am, but I can’t. I have to show you my badge, sure, but you won’t find anywhere in our legal apparatus something that forces me to show it to you again in case you miss it.” No way he was gonna let her realize that wasn’t a police badge but a bistro fidelity card ( earn 10 stamps and get a free sub! ), and she appeared to buy the lie, mumbling how one never really goes through the stuff.

Dick, steaming up his cigar a few steps behind, called their attention.

“We’re not with the police, ma’am. We’re private investigators and whatever sketchy shit you have won’t leave these walls. We’re not gonna get you in trouble, we’re just looking for a guy.”

“Yeah, about that,” Sleuth stretched out and rolled his shoulders, ready to exercise his usual pulchritude, “we know you serve alcohol in your shop, and just between you and I… And Dick and the Inspector, I am quite a lover of liquor myself, y’know?” She didn’t know, and she didn’t care, and seemed quite concerned. Ace Dick scoffed.

“You kidding, right?” An accusatory cigar was pointed to the detective up front, denouncing him to the lady, “he gets drunk on two pints of beer, liquor lover my ass. And that one?” It was the Inspector’s turn to be exposed, and he put on an awkward smile, “passes out from liquor-filled bonbons. These boys are as dry as they get. But go off, I guess.”

“Well, the point is… We’re not after your business, ma’am. We’re after your supplier. I’m sure you heard of the murder of Mrs. Staedler?”

“The prohi’s wife, I heard it on the radio, yes.”

“We have our reasons to think it was some group that works with the stuff. So tell us, ma’am. Who gets you your distilleds?”

“Why would I rat them out if they’re my only supplier?”

“Ma’am, please cooperate with us,” Inspector’s tiny voice came from the other side of the room, as he fiddled his fingers together, “we’ve had quite a long day.”

“I feel fine, are you tired, Dick?” Sleuth turned to the shorter one, who shrugged in a noncommital answer. The Inspector reiterated himself, definitely in a lower voice, “...well, I had a long day…”

The woman hesitated, playing with the strap of her bag, wondering if it was a good idea or not. She glanced to the amicable detective right in front of her, his well-tailored suit, his wide-brimmed fedora, his assured smile. She looked back to the short, slightly overweight muscle next to him, his smoking cigar clenched in his hand, the hard-boiled expression. She stared to the corner of the room, reciprocating the ogle the tall, emotionally tired lawyer gave her, his nervous hands, his cautiously waxed pencil moustache. At the end, she took a deep breath, and went on with their wishes.

“The Midnight Crew. They have a good price and offer good protection. Robbers haven’t sacked my store nearly as much as they used to. Not at all, actually.”

“Midnight Crew, huh?” Sleuth parroted, “there’s our boys. Midnight Crew. It just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?”

Ace Dick agreed, more by habit than anything else, and so did the Inspector.

The hunt was on.

Chapter Text

The piñata was put up, his face swollen from the beating, as he struggled to keep himself balanced on his feet. He glanced upwards, towards his captors, towards the slit of morning sun coming from the small sliver of space between the closed drapes, and his voice came out in a desperate breath.

“Why are you doing this?”

The largely-built shadow holding him up answered in a matter-of-fact tone, keeping his voice down so to not alert any passerbys walking about the alleyway behind, and after it, the air seemed to settle with the gravity of what it meant.

“It’s on the contract, Mr. Devlin. Nobody asked you to breach it.”

“I wanna ask you a question,” Deuce’s shrill voice interrupted the settling silence as he stepped closer, beaming his friendly smile at the beat-up speakeasy manager, “who did you cuck us with?”

“Uuuh…” He couldn’t speak. His head hurt with spikes of sharp, sharp pain, enough to get thoughts mixed up. Deuce exhaled with a theatrical and probably rehearsed flourish, turning to his companion for a request spoken with the most clear and pleasant of voices, but, in this context, sounded much more menacing even than being held at gunpoint.

“Boxcars?” The owner of that name looked up. “Maybe if you strike the piñata it’ll drop us some candy.”

The muscle readied himself, and blew a punch on poor Mr. Devlin’s stomach. The man was lucky he didn’t have any breakfast yet. The wind was knocked out of him and, as he coughed and wheezed, the two mobsters waited patiently, Boxcars barely moving, making sure the man stood up straight, Deuce tugging on his waistcoat, then fumbling with his pockets.

“Well?” The short one hurried him up, after a brief pause.

“...Th-the Felt.”

Deuce nodded, absorbing the information, and rubbed his palms against each other as a sign of a job well done, but barely started; Boxcards picked up on that gesture, and grabbed the desk’s chair to put it forwards and accommodate the man on it. His short companion found a little footrest and pulled it forwards, being now figuratively eye-level with Mr. Devlin.

“...That’s all you’re gonna say?”

The manager glanced from the giant right next to him to the leprechaun three or four feet away waiting for an answer, and knew that there was no going back. He dreaded getting out of bed that morning.

“You can’t do this to me.”

“It’s in the contract.” It was now Boxcars who spoke, gravely. “We can show it to you if you want. You signed it, you gotta pay for it. Now spill.”

“...I-I don’t know much about ‘em.” Deuce lifted his eyebrows, unimpressed, holding his chin and resting his elbow on his knee. “I swear! T-they have better prices, is all. Fella in a green tailcoat came up offering a bargain.”

Deuce nodded understandingly, and stood up.

“Welp, we’ve got everything we came for. Hope you’ve learned your lesson, Mr. Devlin, ‘cuz let’s say…” He produced a menacing-looking package from his pocket, something small enough to fit in one’s hand, but similar enough to a bomb to keep someone on their toes, “you won’t get a second chance. C’mon Boxcars! Let’s leave him to the consequences of his poor decisions!”

Deuce lit the package’s little wick, and the two mobsters left the back room, closing the door on the defeated, broken, soon-to-be demised manager, and, right as they finished climbing up the stairs to the sun-bathed street, his walkie-talkie went on.

“Deuce!” Slick’s rough voice came through, “forget the fender-bender, get back to headquarters. Now!”

“Uh, about that…”

“... What. ”

An explosion. Not too big to compromise the store front’s structure, but enough to get picked up to the other side of the apparatus.

“Deuce.”

“Yeah, boss?”

“Did you blow ‘im up.”

“...Maybe.” Was the high-pitched, tiny little answer, and the response was not unlike an explosion itself.

“Deuce you STUPID LITTLE FUCK, WHY DID YOU DO THAT FOR I’M GONNA MONOGRAM YOUR FACE YOU FUCKING little…”

As Slick kept spilling his deal of threats, his cohort on the other side slowly lowered the speaker’s volume until nothing could be heard, somewhat regretful for doing the wrong thing.

“Whoopsie.”

“Y’know,” Boxcars started, as they walked down the street, “I think that was overkill.”

“Yeah, maybe so. But I think we sent our message to whoever sees this and was thinking about ever double-crossing us. We’re a good team, you and I, Boxcars!”

“Sure.”

“Hey, can we stop for ice cream before we go back?”

“It’s like, midday, we’re probably gonna head out for lunch. It’s gonna ruin your appetite, ‘s what I mean.”

“Yeah but Slick’s gonna monogram my face ‘n’ I wanna taste it one last time before I can never walk out in daylight again .”

Boxcars cracked up a hearty laugh, bumping Deuce’s shoulder with his elbow. Even if Slick was only bark, that was good enough of an excuse.

Slick answered the door to the sound of the doorbell, being introduced to a tall, bug-eyed and overworked smile who held his briefcase like he didn’t know much what to do with his hands.

“Hi, uhm, you’ve called me…”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m the, uh… Pickle Inspector. I’m here to… To inspect your… Pickle?” The inspector seemed to retract himself, intimidated by the mobster’s look. Slick let out a faint growl and shouted back towards the office.

“Droog!”

“What?” Was the far away answer.

“Did you call for the Pickle Inspector?”

“Yes.”

“What the fuck?! ”

“Do you want to know if we have a pickle or not?!”

Slick looked back to the expecting lawyer in front of him, and, with a sigh, pointed back with a thumb.

“Get in.”

He didn’t let the Inspector look at much, besides greeting Boxcars and Deuce sat around at the smoking room, slurping some ice cream, a sight that was quite out of place in a house that, the nervous man observed, was soberly furnished and didn’t have any sign of being an actual living ambient. It seemed like the tables, the sculptures, the rugs, were only there for show, as if someone were to walk in, they wouldn’t think it was anything but a fancy home, but it felt like that only in a surface level. It seemed obvious it was there for show, and, for whatever reason the Inspector couldn’t point out--

“You’re the lawyer, I presume.” Droog called the attention of the man standing in front of him staring at the walls and the ceiling like if he was in deep thought about something, and he quickly jumped back to reality, with a nod. The accountant indicated a seat in front of the desk with a cigarette-holding hand; “sit down. Let’s see what you can do for me.”

He walked the newcomer through a story with details enough for the Inspector to answer his questions, but not enough to raise eyebrows (or to incite him to raise eyebrows). The Inspector examined the documents, took off his reading glasses and gave off his verdict.

“Well I-I don’t think it’s a pickle, personally. Doesn’t look like one, I mean, most people are… Just bark, right? But in case it is…” He took a card from his pocket, gave it to the mobster, “could you call my number? Just-just tell my secretary you have a pickle, she’ll know what to do. Uhm…” He glanced around, to the fur rug, the shelved walls full of books, statues and suspicious bottles, and to Slick, standing behind him next to the door as if he wanted to attack him on his way out as a toll, and cleared his throat, to get his point across better. “ Any. Sort of pickle.”

Droog nodded in acknowledgement.

“Thank you. I need to have a word with my ass-” Droog looked through the Inspector, to a Slick who just switched supporting legs in his stance and seemed to strengthen his grip to a knife hidden in his pocket, “...with my boss. If you excuse us.”

“You can stay up front with the two tots.” Slick’s dry grumbles encouraged the lawyer to leave the room as soon as possible, and so he did, sitting down on one of the couches on the smoking room and striking up a conversation with the two others who casually sat there like it was their lunch break.

“So, he said it’s not a pickle.” Droog stood up, stepping closer to his boss as they discussed with hushed voices.

“You can’t invite people in here without consulting me, what the fuck, Droog?”

“I did tell you.” He put out his cigarette on the ashtray and turned back, “I guess it didn’t patch through.” With two mocking taps to Slick’s forehead, the accountant headed out, being growled back and followed. “This is exactly why I didn’t want the office to be in the same room as the armory or the tactics,” he continued, as they went down the corridor and approached the smoking room, watching the conversation the guest and the cohorts had from behind, “I wanna be able to invite over specialists without fearing to blow out our entire operation. So, in fact, you can thank me. That’s one thing sorted.”

“Fine. So --what-” Slick stopped, catching a few context-free words and sentences, “what the hell are they talking about?”

A quick glance to the couches would show Deuce and Boxcars paying intense attention to a story the Inspector told, either with excitement or polite neutrality. The guest, with his suitcase resting on his lap, gesticulated broadly and talked with the whimsical voice only someone who had years of dedication for a project could.

“Then, the newly ascended God stared down at his own creation, perplexed by how intricate and delicate everything was. But his nemesis were having none of that!”

“Woah!” Deuce took a slurp of his ice cream, fully entertained.

“Alright, I’m gonna stop this.” Slick started, taking a step forward, but Droog held his arm with a raised eyebrow.

“No, no, wait, I’m invested now, I wanna see where this is going.”

“Really? ”

“I mean, he’s a lawyer. I didn’t take him for someone with that much creativity.”

“Alright, alright, storytime is over!” The boss barked out loud, getting closer to the Inspector and forcing him out of the mansion with rushed pushes. Following Deuce’s disappointment, the guest tried to set up a future meeting to continue with the tale, but not much after he was pushed out, the door was slammed in his face, and, adjusting his glasses and sweeping the dust off his suit, the Inspector turned on his heels, walking towards a car suspiciously parked across the street.

“So, what did you find?” Sleuth inquired from the back seat once his colleague joined him and Ace Dick in the car.

“N-nothing much.” The Inspector white-lied, “I guess they’re clean.”

“Huh. We better keep looking then.”

The car went away, as did their suspicions. Just another red herring in a big town.

Chapter Text

Slick rolled around a cue ball side to side, like an entertained cat, on the table of their super-secret strategy quarters (conveniently located at the end of the mansion’s hallway, of course). That cue ball had been tormenting his life for quite a few days, ever since it was found shoved on the mouth of yet another unfortunate soul, the result of a casino raid.

Not just a regular raid either. No small, down-in-his-luck, nothing-to-lose criminal would muster up the courage to break in and cause a confusion in any of the Crew’s establishments; this was orchestrated, fine-tuned, arranged to do enough damage, get what they wanted, send their message.

The ‘ Hello. ’ scratched onto the ball’s surface reflected the ceiling light as it ran upwards and disappeared below itself. That wasn’t just a message. The raid wasn’t just to cause a distraction so the green-suited goons could steal the casino’s vault with the scripture, and Slick knew exactly what it was, besides that.

It was a formal introduction . That was the Felt. That was their mission statement: to get on Slick’s nerves, to give him headaches and make him dread their existence.

At least that's how Slick imagined it. For the rest of the crew though, it was a nuisance to deal with, something that was part of the job, and for Droog specially something he felt the need to account for.

The tall, slender mobster put up their strategic map with a couple of tacks, letting the black circles indicating their businesses make themselves present and exhibit their force in numbers. Casinos, speakeasies, pubs, restaurants, forming an ever-expanding blob swallowing up half the town. Then, he grabbed a big red marker on the table and cleared up his throat to catch everybody’s attention. Slick stopped rolling his despised toy and looked upwards.

“I’ve had Deuce go around town and get a list of Felt establishments. Do you have it?” The accountant turned to the short little man, who rose up from his chair and started feeling around his suit, eventually producing a piece of paper he handed to Droog with a beaming smile. Droog nodded in a thank you, as he opened the list of establishment names and addresses, and Deuce went back to his seat.

The marker started scribbling, making rude, squeaky noises against the glazed surface of the map, and, slowly, a dozen or so red Xes popped up around the map. Surprisingly, not scattered, like a slowly-strengthening infestation, but as if building up a well-defined territory, going around the black circles here and there like fingers trying to grasp onto something better-established. Slick knew then, as the last X was drawn over his casino, that that was about him.

“I ran past the casino on the way here this morning,” Droog started, putting the cap back on the marker and placing it on the table, “they had this big sign put up. ‘Closed for refurbishing’, it said. What kind of refurbishing they would have to do?”

“I have no idea,” Slick started, “and, really, I don’t care.”

He rolled the cue ball forwards, making it run across the table, and Boxcars stopped it with a palm.

“You wanna take it back, boss?”

“...Nah.” The boss shrugged, now pointing at the map, “we have to find where these green suits come from. Cut the-cut the weed by its roots.”

“I think we should spend some more time on patrols,” Droog finally sat down at the end of the table, across from Slick, “we can’t risk any more losses.” He then took another map, smaller and simpler, stretching it open on the table; “let's revise the routes, then.”

As Droog scribbled on the map and filled it with ink and continuously complicating lines, somehow the ball rolled back to Slick, a way to open up space on the table for either Deuce accidentally climbing up to point his favorite milkshake spot, or Droog using extra paper for schedules and rerouting; the cue ball’s message taunted the mobster once more, as he reminisced about what happened -- and what went wrong .

It looked like an ordinary evening, he swore it did. They were in to have a couple drinks and gamble some money away, like they’d usually do once or twice a month. To keep the morale up, Slick told himself as an excuse. Green suits didn’t draw much attention in the swirl of different evening suits and dresses frolicking around the salon, but, as the clock stroke around nine or so, someone kicked up a table, shot a few bullets up in the air, and the green suits popped up like moles in a plowed field.

Slick stopped his sip midway, ducked and pulled up his knife, skimming through the salon full of distressed people for his cohorts. Boxcars was behind a table taking cover, shooting back at one particularly feisty Felt, Deuce seemed to be distracting two of the enemies with a card trick, and Droog…?

“Boss, come up here.” Came from the walkie talkie.

“Did they get up?”

“The shootout is a distraction, I have a hunch. I’m tailin’ someone up here but I might need backup.”

“Comin’.”

Avoiding the fight with two rather large goons, Slick climbed up the stairs and met with a pistol-reloading Droog. They exchanged glances and turned around to face the corridor, divided in half right at the stairway. They split on the boss’ command, and the accountant went down one side of the hallway straight to the archive. Not many things of importance were kept there --accounting books, employee contracts --but there was one thing he could not let be taken.

The scripture. Locked inside the vault along with some other important documents and the manager’s pistol. Slick stroke a very sweet deal buying that casino for a third of the price and a flash of a knife and by God Droog could not let that all go down the drain like that. It wasn’t a surprise, then, when he kicked open the archive door and found three Felt, a crowbar, and a pried open window.

The goon trying to bust the safe open with his tool froze in his tracks as Droog came in, and quickly released the vault, approaching the accountant like he wanted to make friends.

“Hi, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced before. I’m Crowbar, these are Fin and Trace,” he pointed back to the two shark-looking fellows by the window who seemed to be oddly surprised by being mentioned, “it’s nice to meet you.”

Droog was stupefied.

“...I’m sorry??”

“I personally wanted to do this after the place’s closed but, y’know, SOMEONE ,” he shouted at the wall, hoping whoever he wanted to hear heard it, playing with the crowbar in his hands, “had other plans for the night. So we had to improvise.”

“Yes, I don’t care -and -I don’t know why am I even asking this, but could you… Stop?”

“Nah, no way pal. We set up all that stuff down there, it’d be awful to see it go to waste.”

“Oh, that, d’you have any idea how much property damage you just caused? I swear to God if there is even a drop of blood on that carpet I’m gonna find you and I’m gonna get the bill straight to your doorstep.”

“I told you I wanted to do this after it’s closed. But y’know how’s like to be second in command. Nobody listens to you.”

Droog lowered his pistol, released tension from his shoulders.

“Right?! Urgh, I feel like I might as well not even be there sometimes.”

“Such a waste of time. Speaking of, we gotta run.”

Crowbar stepped backwards and the two others had already carried the safe to the windowsill. If they couldn’t pry it open, they might as well just take it whole. Droog, more so for being made a moron out of than from seeing the vault getting stolen, pulled down the gun’s hammer, ready to shoot.

“Hey now.” Was Crowbar’s quick reaction, and, as hastily as he said it, Droog was down on the floor, with a precise strike from the tool right on the jaw; the gun went off as he tensed up in reflex and hit a nearby cabinet. “We can’t let that happen.”

Slick walked down the other half of the hallway as silently as he could. With a ready knife, he headed towards the office. He knew the manager was there, counting up his cash -- Slick’s cash, the month’s protection pay. If someone went up and stole that, he’d be pretty pissed. He twisted the doorknob, got in, and saw not some thief counting up his new-found wealth, not the manager safe and sound, but a butchered corpse with a cue ball, of all things, in his mouth like a pig with an apple, and the slight shimmer of a blade being cleaned in the shadows on the corner.

What a blade , he thought, and then what a woman , as he glanced upwards from the knife to its owner, a black velvet coat which shone iridescently green in the desk lamp’s light, with a crimson lipstick and a large hat on top. But his mind quickly came back to the task at hand, how his loyal manager was now humiliatingly dead and she owed him a wash for the bloody carpet below his chair.

“What did you do that for?” Was all he was able to growl at her.

She turned her head back to face him, unphased by his sudden appearance.

“He didn’t want a deal with us. But it doesn’t matter to me. I’m just doing my job.”

“ Your job is messing up my scheme.”

She chuckled.

“W-what, what’s funny, I don’t get it.”

“It’s odd of you to ask a mobster to play fair. Especially when you yourself has done similar things, haven’t you?” She clicked a cap back on the blade, and just like that, it became quite similar to a cigarette holder. Truly a fancy way to keep a blade out of sight.

“That-that doesn’t have to do with this.” He tightened his grip on his own knife, “you owe me a manager. Also your cut sucks, look at that,” he pointed at the gored up man in front of him, “not clean at all. You slice like a butcher.”

She crossed her arms, getting closer to the open window; his spiel was getting old really fast.

“I don’t really care.”

“You should! It’s-it’s gonna-gonna cost you a carpet wash someday. That stuff ain’t cheap.”

“You’re really starting to get on my nerves.”

“You killed off my manager, you huge bitch! ” Slick rose his voice, stepping menacingly closer to her. She deemed that exchange enough.

“Alright, time to go.” Grabbing a rope outside the window, probably the same way she got in, she glanced back at him once more, “I feel we’ll have the misfortune of meeting each other again, so, if we ever do, you can call me Snowman. Ta-ta.”

She jumped out, and Slick froze in his place for a while before rushing to the window and screaming fruitless profanity at her.

“Boss?”

Droog’s voice brought Slick back to the present, and he took his stare out of the cue ball.

“Huh, what?”

“Will you take the morning route?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Don’t ‘yeah, whatever’ me, were you even paying attention to what we were discussing?”

“ Yes! God, why’re you so pissy today?!”

“Aww, are you upset because a fancypants in a tail and a cone-lookin’ hat outsmarted you?” Deuce butted in, kicking his feet sat on his own chair, “don’t worry, it happens to the best of us!”

“I’m gonna pretend you’re not here anymore.” Droog turned his back to the shorter one, and continued, “anyway, stick to your schedules, and don’t d--”

The doorbell rang. The four of them stood in silence, as if they wanted to have a heated argument about who was going to answer the door, but were all too polite to actually bring it up, hoping that the man to their side would be the better person and just take one for the team; after that bit of glance exchange, Deuce threw his arms up on the air.

“Stop looking at me, I went last time!”

“Alright, I go.” Boxcars stood up, disappearing towards the hallway, and, sooner than expected, came back with a completely white envelope, giving it to Slick.

“What’s this?”

“Your guess’s as good as mine. There’s no return address.”

Curious, Slick pulled out his knife and cut open the envelope in one quick slice. The other two cohorts pulled their chairs closer, to get a better vision of the… Rather brown-looking thing Slick pulled out of it.

“Is-is that parchment?” Droog enquired, with a puzzled face, and the intention of such an oddball material became apparent as soon as Slick unfolded the letter.

White ink on parchment paper. A formal apology for not introducing themselves formally sooner, an invitation to iron out differences over a nice chat, and an address.

I hope you enjoy your visit.

Cordially,

Doctor Scratch.

“What is it, boss?” Deuce perked up.

“I… I think they just gave us the location of their hideout.”

Boxcars peeked at the letter’s contents over Slick’s shoulder, and spoke up.

“I know where that is. It’s the Green Mansion. Like two years ago some kooky rich guy bought it and covered it in green, everything. It’s a landmark of the nice part of town now.”

“If that’s a branding stunt,” Droog spoke between his teeth as he held a cigarette in his mouth, lighting it, “it’s not very good if he’s doing the same kinda business we do. I give ‘em two months before they’re all arrested for trafficking.”

“So, what do you say?” Slick glanced over at all of his cohorts, “should we pay ‘em a visit?”

“Does the pope shit on the woods?” Droog mocked, with a smile, reeling back on his chair and putting his feet up on the table.

“I dunno, does he?”

…

…

…

“Does he?!”

Chapter Text

The opulent mansion’s windows reflected the sunlight outside, some with intricate abstract mosaics, some just plain and simple. Boxcars wasn’t joking when he said the place was green; from the outer walls to the roof tiles, the front garden bushes to the tinted glass on the mosaic windows. Green tiles, green doors, green postbox.

“I wonder if it’s some sort of complex.” Droog said as he pulled the car over, next to the (green) open gate, and winced, “God, the world looks pink just glancing at this place.”

“This is gonna be quick.” Slick said as they grabbed their bearings off the car and got themselves ready by the front door, “just get in, see the surroundings, meet this Scratch guy and leave. Do some property damage if you can, I don’t know.”

Weapons were loaded, knives sharpened, explosives set up and knuckles cracked. Slick asked one more time if everyone was ready before they kicked the door open.

“Uhm…” Deuce started with an uncertain smile, “a kiss for good luck?”

Slick scowled back at him, as if asking if he was dead serious. Of course he was. Deuce rarely said something and didn’t mean it, and Slick knew that very well. With a sigh, he kissed his index and middle finger, pressing them quickly against the shorter one’s forehead, who beamed a smile in retribution.

“Alright, let’s go!” Deuce gave the final words before Boxcars kicked open the door and they got in, in formation, ready to tackle whatever they found inside.

“So I tells her, ain’t no way--” The Crew had interrupted some rather uninspired tale coming from a felt, sat on a chair by the corner, told to about six or so of other green suits who gathered around a pool table for a game, a chat and a drink. Cue sticks were lifted up, drinks were put down. The Crew stood still waiting for retaliation. It was like a renaissance painting.

“...Whose idea was it to get in by the front door?” Droog said slowly, almost incredule at their imprudence.

Some of the felt smiled mischievously, taking their cue sticks as improvised weapons and walking closer menacingly. The Crew figured it was gonna be one hell of a fight. However, from the depths of the room, a voice interrupted them. A voice Droog was more than familiar with.

“Hey, wait a minute. Doc’s expecting the stabby one.”

Crowbar pointed to Slick with his namesake tool, walking forwards into the light, and proceeded with a motion for him to approach and follow. As Slick cautiously separated himself from his crew and walked up to him, scowling side to side to the various bloodthirsty green coats, someone else asked:

“What about them three?”

“Those three?” Crowbar parroted, for dramatic effect, with a smile, “dispose them.”

Before any action could take place, however, the goon pulled up Slick’s arm with the bend of his tool, to hurry him up, and lead him through a bunch of rooms, towards what Slick imagined would be Doc Scratch’s office or whatever.

A black and white floor seemed to cover most of the room in the first floor, and was replaced by wood when reaching the second. Surprisingly, there was little to no green inside the house, apart from a rug here and there, a painting, a vase. But lots and lots of clocks -- why? And lots and lots of empty bedrooms -- for whom?

Slick noticed all those things, as he walked down the hallway towards the very last door, following the tail of his captor. Crowbar finally knocked on the door and opened it, gesturing for the mobster to go inside before him.

There. There was the green. On the carpet, on the drapes, on the clocks and sculptures on the desk, the drawers on the sides of the office, the well-stocked bar. So the white bowl resting on the table full of licorice drops popped up quite vividly. Behind the desk, the man himself -- the Doctor -- who rose from his chair to greet the visitor.

“There you are.” His voice was clear, low, and polite, like an estranged uncle or a private school principal, “I have been expecting you all day. Please, have a seat.”

Doc Scratch pointed to the armchair in front of the desk with an open palm, and then shifted to Crowbar, who stood next to the door frame waiting without the most comfortable of expressions. You were only allowed inside Scratch’s office if you were invited, after all.

“That is all, Crowbar,” the doctor said, with a nod, “you may go back to your pool game.” And, with a turn of his heels, the goon was off, more than relieved to get away from there.

Slick scowled at the older gentleman still standing before him, waiting for him to sit, and hesitated as long as he could before giving in and throwing himself against the surprisingly soft velvety green cushions.

“Confrontational, are we?” Scratch teased, after Slick accomodated himself, “please, be at home. I insist that my guests feel comfortable during their visit, I pride myself on being an excellent host.” He put his hands together, as if waiting for his rival’s input. Slick was silent and didn’t buy into his nice host bullshit, but did stretch forwards to grab a licorice or two. That was great stuff. The action seemed to be the input Scratch was waiting for.

“Would you accept a beverage?”

“...Okay.”

The host took a tiny little bell resting on the desk and rung it for a second, and a tiny little maid showed up in the office’s door frame shortly after. She was completely silent, and waited for her task with a face that looked like she had places to be.

“Ms. Paint, would you please give Mr. Slick a glass of whisky? On the rocks, I presume.” He glanced back to Slick for a brief moment, pretending to be silently asking for confirmation, and his sentence did strike as odd for the mobster.

Of all the flags this guy raised, that was by far the reddest, Slick thought while gobbling down the licorice, how the hell did Scratch know his name?! It wasn’t like they introduced themselves or anything. The maid, silent as always, stepped into the office and started serving the glass on the bar, close enough that Slick could scent the alcoholic flowery smell from her work clothes.

The office’s little bar was a meter away from where Scratch sat, and yet he’d sent his maid to fix Slick a drink. As she turned to give him the glass, he glanced upwards at her, and quickly at Scratch, on the opposite side of the desk, watching like he dared her to deviate from what she was asked. The guy was all about control, Slick figured, and he accepted the drink with a ‘thanks’ mumbled under his breath.

“Thank you, Ms. Paint. Off you go, then.” Scratch shoo’d her off with a wave of his hand, and, as she left, Slick’s mind wandered back to his original red flag. There were a lot of them there, he was bound to be confused about which one to inquire first.

“How do you know my name?” He finally asked Scratch, in a low, soft growl.

“I know a lot of things. You would be surprised how easy it is to get information if you know where to look.”

The rival squinted in confusion, but Scratch wasn’t phased by that, and continued on his monologue without further explanation, swinging slowly on his swivel chair.

“Imagine my superior’s surprise, and mine as well, when we found our operation had some competition to face. You are quite the competitor, Mr. Slick.”

“What’re you talkin’ about? I was here first. Midnight City’s my turf.”

“Have your mother never taught you to share, Mr. Slick? In this economy, you have to be open to compete with others.”

“There’s no competition, Scratch.” Slick inched forwards, leaning his weight on his arm pressed against the chair’s armrest, “you get in my turf and mess with my business, I blow your brains out. Got it?”

“Those cheap intimidation tricks will not work with me as they do with your street hooligans and establishment administrators, my friend. I took my time to know you. If that was your intention, you could end it right now, with that knife of yours, as well as I could, since you are alone and with your guard down in the heart of my operation. But alas, here you are, taking in what I say with pupil-like attention.”

Slick sipped his drink silently, because he had no comebacks, and he hated it. He wasn’t a fast talker at all.

“But we both know we are not inclined to do that. That is one thing you have in common with me, Mr. Slick. It is not about winning. What matters is not becoming the ultimate kingpin, no. What matters is warfare . So it is only fair I have been courteous so far and have not taken all the tricks off my sleeve. I invited you to a game of chess, Mr. Slick, and you accepted it. So let’s see how long you can keep yourself on the lead.”

…

“This has been a nice chat. We should do this more often. But I believe your friends need your help, Mr. Slick. We shall see each other very soon.”

That said, Slick gulped down the rest of his drink, and stood up, following Scratch’s lead. This was awful, and Slick retaliated by taking a fistfull of licorice and filling his pocket with it before coming back to his cohorts. Scratch not so much as blinked for that; he couldn’t expect cordiality from everyone, after all. The bowl was set up specially for the mobster, and it was only fair he enjoyed himself with it, even if he thought he’d be upsetting the doctor with some kind of backwards petty behavior.

Slick paced from side to side in the Crew’s headquarter’s smoking room, an hour or so after they’ve arrived from their visit. Utterly insulted and outwitted, he seeked for something, anything, to have the upper hand on the situation. His cohorts were sore, defeated, beaten up, but otherwise seemed to have clocked down for the day, chatting idly and sitting around.

“All in all,” Deuce concluded his thoughts, “it could’ve gone a lot worse. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m still feeling splinters in places I shouldn’t feel anything at all.” He stopped himself, suddenly fighting something in his tongue, and pulled out a tiny piece of wood from his mouth, glancing around puzzled.

“I think that’s on me,” Droog shrugged, one hand holding a bag of ice against his head, the other firmly grasping a cue stick, which he used for additional support, hunched forwards on his seat, “I hit a lot of things I didn’t mean to with the stick I stole from that coffee-smelling prick.”

Boxcars glanced up from his spot taking over the entire couch across the coffee table, one foot up, the other on the floor, and rose his eyebrows, staring at Droog’s makeshift cane, “you still have that?”

“Huh, I guess I do. Never realized I took it with me.”

“It always means they have one less cue stick to play with,” Deuce shrugged, trying to keep himself optimistic, “we gotta take every advantage we get, even if it’s just like minorly inconvenience them.”

“Well, Slick, I hope you found it worth it, to have us getting beat up for an hour while you get drinks with Sc-” Droog was suddenly interrupted by the boss finally letting out his thoughts.

“Y’know what?! No I didn’t ! Do they think they can just show up and take my stuff? Get in my turf ? I want every single one of these guys dead. Not just-just dead, I want them to stay dying for a while, suffer a lot… I want you,” he pointed to his three cohorts, that paid attention to his rant with mixed faces, from unimpressed, to concerned, to mildly tired, “to find everything there is to know about them, all of them, their-their-their names, home address, fucking chat up with their mother-in-law, I don’t fucking know--”

“And how do you expect us to find all-” Droog once again spoke out of turn.

“I DON’T KNOW. AND I DON’T CARE. I pay you for a reason, Droog, so you have one week to show up with what I ask you--”

“Boss.”

“--or else I’m going on a fuckin’ RAMPAGE and murder-suiciding every single one of you--”

“Boss!”

“--do you think I have anything, anything at all to lose? So you better do as I say ‘cuz--”

“ Boss! ”

“WHAT?”

Boxcars, now inches from Slick’s screaming, hysterical face, took it upon himself to slap him out of it.

“...WHAT THE FUCK?!”

“Boss, you’re flipping the fuck out, calm down.” The taller mobster held his shoulders firmly, “take a deep breath.”

Slick narrowed his eyes, following Boxcars instructions.

“Just because you fell off ya horse doesn’t mean you can throw a tantrum and shoot up the hippodrome. You climb back on, and you slap that mare’s ass until you hit the finish line. We all had a long day. Don’t go barkin’ nasty stuff for those who don’t deserve it.”

The boss let go the tension off his shoulders with an exasperated growl, glancing back and forth between Boxcars and his other two cohorts watching the scene from the couches, and would continue on his point, had Deuce not perked up and suggested they all went out for dinner before heading home.

At that time of night, at that point in the day, dinner sounded like a capital idea.

Chapter Text

Tatatap. Tatatap. Tatatap. Slick’s fingertips made rithmic wavy noises against the table’s glazed wooden surface. It had been a week, and he waited for results. Droog was there, reading his newspaper like he was pretending not to care about today probably being the day he would be skinned, and thinking about where in his house would Slick put his new Droog-skin rug. Not the living room, he hoped, that’d be just tacky.

Boxcars was there, with his daily crosswords. He didn’t seem any more fazed than he’d ever been, and to Slick that sounded like a challenge. How dared he not be scared of not being able to show enough results. Slick was gonna show him.

For a difference, Deuce wasn’t there. Slick made sure to check under the table and inside the cabinet drawers, and there was no sign of that little chatterbox anywhere. So this is it, the first desertion. He didn’t think it would be Deuce, though, but as long as it was he was almost glad the little fella didn’t show up today. He couldn’t bear the thought of making one more widow for the world. Slick repositioned himself in his seat, ready to pry the words out of his cohorts, and then the room’s door was opened.

“Sorry, I had to run back home for a minute!” The short mobster trotted past Slick, putting his little hat hastily on the table, with his other arm wrapped around a rolled-up poster, “did you guys start?”

“As these two don’t have their throats cut, obviously not.” The boss answered, and Droog lowered his newspaper, finally mustering up the mental energy to say something.

“Do you seriously think we just sat in our asses the entire time? There’s a pile of files right in front of you.” He pointed with his chin to the, indeed, pile of documents across the table from Slick. The boss’ eyes narrowed.

“If I wanted to read I’d go down to the library. Spit the info out already.”

“You’ve been pissy all week, Slick, just let that go. Scratch wanted to get in your head and guess what, he succeeded. That’s another point for the Felt thanks to you.”

“Alright now listen here--” Slick stood up to start a fight, but Deuce hit his rolled-up poster on the table in a nervous attempt to calm their nerves.

“I spent all morning finishing up a poster with pictures and stuff, I can present it to you! It’s got sequins !”

“ Deuce… ”

“ And glitter !” The short cohort’s sing-songy voice finally made the boss cool off.

“...Fine.” Slick sat back down, “indulge me.”

Deuce beamed a smile and bounced in place to show his excitement. Finally he was going to show the project he’s been working on all week! He climbed onto one of the swivel chairs, pushing it away from the table with his feet and stopping at the wall, so he could get enough height to put up his poster. No sequins or glitter fell out of the project, something that demanded quite a skilled arts-and-craftsman, Slick admitted to himself. He accommodated himself better on his chair, and so did his fellow cohorts, to pay attention to what the little guy had to say.

He cleared his throat and started pointing at the pictures.

“Itchy! He exchanged alcohol for caffeine some good years ago and spends his days haunting the Felt Mansion hallways looking for freshly brewed coffee and playing pranks on his peers. Doze, Droog got a hand on his medical files,” Deuce lowered his voice to deliver the next bit, “he’s super lethargic.”

“Easy to capture, easier to interrogate.” The accountant added, and gave his companion the chance to continue.

“Trace and Fin, they're brothers. They're good at tailing people, I think, forwards and backwards.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Slick interrupted, and to that Droog replied, with a lick of distaste in his voice:

“It means we have to watch out for them. You don't want these assholes finding out where our headquarters are.”

The reunion continued more or less like that. Deuce exposing what relevant information they had collected, Slick commenting on how fucking awful they all were, a few interjections here and there from Droog and Boxcars to deliver better clarifying information.

On the other side of town, though, a trio of detectives bunched around a poster with several newspaper and confidential file excerpts, photos and strings connecting people together. The poster was being given a funeral, as it was another dead lead, and they were watching it solemnly as it got sliced by the paper shredder, sequins flying everywhere. Sleuth was a terrible arts-and-craftsman, he admitted.

“What do we do now?” The Inspector asked, after the due respects were given.

“Just… I don’t know, buddy,” Sleuth started, taking his hat off and running his fingers through his hair, “this thing just looks like dead herring after dead herring. Okay, let’s just take a step back and think. Was there any lead we had that we didn’t investigate?”

“What about that consulting work ya did, Inspector?” Ace Dick blew some cigar smoke out the window, “you said you didn’t find anything, right?”

“N-no, not really, I mean…” The lawyer started, with an exasperated breath, “it looked like a legitimate business to me, I guess. A restaurant…” He stopped. The connection was pretty obvious, now that he thought about it. “...That stays open from eight to midnight.”

“What's up with that?”

“Eight to midnight,” Dick caught the train of thought, “it only stays open for dinner. Y’know what that smells like?”

“Yes, it also was very specific about the kind of payment it accepted. It's a very suspicious smell.”

“What smell? You two are scaring me.”

“It's a front, Sleuth.” Dick put his cigar off, “it launders money.”

Something clicked in the detective’s head. Like a lamp suddenly turning on. How obvious was that?! And he missed it completely!

“Of course! Inspector, what were they like?”

“Uhm… A short fella, a big muscle, the most snobbish accountant I've ever met and a very bad-company looking one.”

“Were any of them left handed?”

“How's he supposed to know that?” Dick interrupted, “he hardly ever remembers to look both ways to cross the street, how's he gonna pay attention to something so minimal that happened like two weeks ago?”

“...S-sorry, Sleuth.”

Sleuth shook his head, meaning for the Inspector to not worry, and leaned back on his chair, putting his feet up on his desk, in deep thought.

“Dick, d’we still have that picture you took of these fellas before the Inspector went in?”

Ace Dick rummaged through his desk drawer’s contents, and pulled up a photo. A rising morning, four silhouettes walking towards the horizon; a short one a bit forwards from the rest of them, rose up on a lamp post, like he was ready to dance, a big one, a bit backwards, making sure they were all there, a snobbish one, with a fine newspaper in hand, still warm from the press, and a hunched over, the kind you wouldn’t want to be friends with. Sleuth examined the photo, with a satisfied smile, and put it up on the cork board.

“That’s our new lead, boys. Let’s see if it takes us anywhere. I wonder… What sorta vile things d’you think these guys are doing right now? The absolutely despicable, villainous things those people do for a living in this town?”

“What do you mean, I’m not cool enough?!” Slick spat back to Droog in response to an unfortunate comment.

“I mean that Crowbar pulls the stance off,” Droog continued, defending himself, “and when you do it, it looks like you have vertical escoliosis.”

“What d’you mean, it’s the same fucking thing!”

“Oh, absolutely not.”

“I caught you red-handed you goddamn muck. You can’t not-not-can’t like it in him and not like it in me!”

“ Yes , I can. Here’s me, not liking it.”

“Say you like me, Droog.” Slick leaned sideways on his chair to get menacingly closer to his cohort, “ say it! ”

“No!”

Deuce watched them throw their stupid, pointless bickering back and forth like a tennis match, eager to continue his exposition; he’d swing on his feet if he wasn’t standing up in a swivel chair because those kinds of sitting apparatus tended to be very wobbly and definitely not safe for patient heel-swinging. He clapped once, and continued back in a tiny voice.

“Anyway, that’s Crowbar.” A short cough, to clear up his throat, and Slick’s finger left Droog’s face, now giving him the full attention; the short mobster spoke up. “Next is Snowman. Y’know, the ex-governor’s ex-wife, that guy that was extradited for extorting exotic exhibitions from a zoo?”

“Exquisite.” Droog mocked, and Boxcars followed.

“She’s quite a sight.”

“A huge bitch, is what she is,” Slick interrupted, sulking in his own chair, “owes me a carpet wash.”

“Was she the one you were cursing at back at the casino?” To that, Slick nodded with a grumble, and continued.

“If we ever put ‘em all in a hit list, I got dibs on ‘er.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, boss.” Boxcars started, “killin’ her, that is.”

“Why not?”

“Well,” Droog interjected, with a blow of his cigarette, “she’s the ex-wife of a fucking ex-governor who got extra-whatever for ex-who cares, she’s a public figure. As much as you’d love to slit her throat, someone like her showing up dead or vanishing would draw some eyes. I’d say to wait on her.”

Slick started grumbling in protest, but eventually quieted down. The meeting proceeded, and the boss took mental note of the following goons.

Stitch Face. Fatty. Fireman. Biscuits and Other Biscuits. Big Guy. Bigger Guy.

“Well, Doctor Scratch. He’s… Something.” Deuce inhaled, “the gang’s second in command, he owns the Felt Mansion. Not someone I’d befriend in a speakeasy.”

“You three watch out for him,” Slick bounced his leg with impatience. This meeting was taking longer than he thought. “Asshole is one of these knowy types.”

“What d’you mean, ‘knowy’?”

“He likes to do these mind games and then watch you from the top of his pedestal. I hate that guy. Fuck him.”

“Yes, we’re aware. We’re suffering through one of these as we speak.”

“Droog, I swear to God if you keep cheeky like this I’m-I’ll-I’ll fuckin’ make sure you don’t open your mouth ever-- wait, Deuce?” Slick lifted his head to the short one, his mind suddenly giving the right detail the attention it deserved, “did you say ‘second in command’? Who the fuck runs it then?”

“Yeah, I was getting to it. Lord English, they call him.” Deuce pointed to a black photograph with a couple of question marks around it, his voice a tad bit unsure, “nobody knows what he looks like, so I took a picture of my backyard at night and it’s pitch black. Just... Imagine what he looks like, I guess? Maybe someone… British-y?”

“Deuce, tell me how can someone be ‘british-y’.” Droog started with his usual pettiness.

“Oh, y’know, like… A mustache, maybe? A monocle? I guess, I don’t really know.”

“That sounds a bit stereotypical.”

“Oh, you’re the one to talk, Mr. Spades ‘I’m a loose cannon bad guy, can’t you tell’ Slick.”

“What the fuck, Droog, I’m just saying that a british man doesn’t have like a specific look!”

“Well I just find it curious because you behave like a stereotypical children’s book villain.”

“I don’t!”

“Yes you do.”

“No.”

“Yes.”
“No.”

“Yes.”

“No!”

“No.”

“Yes -- FUCK! ”

Droog laughed at how easily tricked his boss was, flicking ash off his cigarette on the ashtray on the table. It was so easy, like picking on his three-year-old nephew, complete with a screaming explosion after the fact. Deuce sighed, and crouched on his chair, sitting down, and pulled it forwards towards the table with the tips of his feet. This meeting wasn’t progressing any time soon.

The sun was setting down, and, after two or three weeks of investigating, Team Sleuth was certain they finally got a promising lead. As usual, they were screening the police radio frequency, parked on a fairly calm street. Who knows when those criminals might strike, Sleuth would tell his colleagues, it’s better to be ready to strike back and investigate than to go back home and snooze and only hear about it on next morning’s paper. His colleagues thought nothing of it; it was a boring job, but it wasn’t an inconvenience. Ace Dick could smoke his cigars out the window on the driver’s seat and the Inspector could daydream staring at the rooftops on the other side of the street nibbling on a donut. The now empty box sat on Problem Sleuth’s torso, laying down on the back seat, regretting his decision of eating five out of the six donuts in the box they bought.

“Attention all units,” started the radio, and at this point, Sleuth rushed upwards, sending the box flying to the car’s floor, and the whole team watched the radio intently, “we’re in need of backup, there’s been shots fired on the Marinated Goose, y’know that one pub on the basement of the tobacco corner shop, it looks like a gang confrontation.”

Sleuth glanced from one of his colleagues to the other, with a beaming smile.

“This is it boys, this is what we were waiting for!”

Dick held his smoke between his teeth, and pushed down the hand brake, and the team’s leader let out a yap of excitement, as the car ventured off into the evening. His enthusiasm was contagious, the other two should admit, and they also shrugged off the monotony of the early evening for the confront ahead of them.

Chapter Text

Slick and Droog held the speakeasy’s staff at gunpoint, while ordering the other two mobsters to check the premises for interesting goods. They knew this was a Felt business, if the green wallpaper on the walls was any indication (and Deuce’s talk with one of the bartenders a few nights before was right), so backup to stop their heist would arrive soon. Those green suits could swarm in places like ants going after a licorice bowl, which meant they needed to act swift and quickly.

Boxcars laid down the duffel bag next to the safe solidly lodged in the wall, and straightened up his back, with Deuce by his side.

“I guess I gotta open up this thing, huh?” The shorter one started, opening up the bag and searching for the explosive parts to craft a bomb. It was somewhat of a boring job, for the muscle, just watch there as his companion measured out liquids and powders and put parts together with tape, but for Deuce it was fascinating . He loved bombs, and everything about them. Just thinking about nitroglycerin made his heart pound. What a joy it was for him to earn his living with them!

Just as expected, the Felt kicked down the establishment’s door, the giant presence that was Quarters, Clover, their little quick gremlin, right on his tail, and Crowbar, who the Crew now realized was around for most of the Felt’s missions, after a few weeks of gang confrontations, all scattered around the salon and into the staff-only area to get back at their rival gang. Shots were fired, and Droog ran to meet his other companions, upset at the lack of heavy armament at his hands, while Slick ran upstairs to hide around the tobacco shop.

“Hurry up, you two, backup just arrived.” Droog put his handgun back on his holster and reached for the duffel bag, where his trusty machine gun waited. Why Slick insisted they got in without it in hands was beyond the accountant. “Can this safe-cracking get any slower?”

“Gee, Droog, I’m getting to it,” Deuce said, kneeled in front of bottles and devices, “what’s that thing you always say, the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling wasn’t painted in a day?”

“Michelangelo didn’t have a wardrobe of a man chasing him down with an automatic gun now, had he?” With his gun finally mounted and loaded, Droog opened the door slightly and peeked down the corridor, suppressing fire as needed. Boxcars deemed that enough time to wait.

Grabbing a crowbar from the bag, he lodged it not in the crack of the safe’s door, but the rim surrounding it, and pressed down. “If you can’t open it, might as well take it whole,” was how the saying went, and, as an expert safe-cracker, Boxcars knew that sometimes that just meant prying the whole thing from the wall and leaving. Now to carry it to the safety of their car.

Droog went in front to escort them, Deuce behind to hit any felt that had the funny idea of trying to ambush them; and it was there, in a crowded staff room, that they got surrounded.

“You stay right where you are, sugar face!” Clover pointed his handgun at Droog, Quarters firmly holding them from reaching the window, and Crowbar at the other side blocking the final exit. Droog slumped his shoulders for a brief second.

“Are you talking to me?!”

“Who else would it be?” The little gremlin winked at him, with a little ‘tsk’ of the tongue, “but we can catch up later.”

“You boys better drop the safe,” Crowbar started, “then we might consider leaving you alive.”

They stayed at that impasse for what felt like hours, until a heavy noise of a door being broken down and a loud “police, hands up!” from the other room made them lower their weapons. Still in silence, still in their places, figuring maybe the police wouldn’t get to them if they couldn’t hear them. Finally, Deuce spoke up.

“So we’re all standing here waiting for the police to bust us, is that what’s happening?”

“Yeah, we better be going,” Droog started, stepping forwards towards the back exit, and Crowbar perked up, to make it very clear he wouldn’t allow them to pass.

“Drop the safe first.”

“Well then I guess we’re gonna stand here until the police busts us both. Now, I don’t know how Scratch handles it when any of you bozos get yourselves arrested, but I’d like to keep my torso from a stab from a very angry boss for the short term.”

“Speaking of which, where is that maniac anyway? I figured you four always had each other glued on your waists, like a weird kind of hydra.”

“I could radio him and find out, but I guess that’d be kind of noisy, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t want someone else that’s out there to find us.”

Silence. Crowbar bit his lip, impatient and worried about the shadows creeping closer to them from below the door, and shifted his weight from one leg to the other.

“Fine. But we’re getting that back later, mark my words.”

With that, he opened the back door towards the alleyway on the back, and the six of them skedaddled out of there. Frankly it was a weird decision for them to have at that time, Droog thought while changing gears and turning to the right at the next crossroad, after watching the Felt’s green convertible turning left. He imagined Crowbar didn’t mind much if his missions failed or succeeded. Guess whether he got his paycheck at the end of the month wasn’t tied to that. In either case, they should brace themselves for a confrontation on their headquarters pretty soon.

Slick burst into the tobacco shop through the speakeasy’s entrance, and was there ambushed by Snowman, with a pistol already pointing at the door. This wasn’t their second encounter, and it wouldn’t be their last, so the woman decided to open up with a greeting.

“We meet again, Mr. Slick.”

The mobster hissed back at her in mutual animosity, and ducked behind the counter, avoiding her immediate shot. Their chase continued down the hall towards the back, and inevitably stopped as Slick cornered himself on the diminutive employee bathroom. Looking to the small window above the toilet, and turning around to face her, he pulled out his knife, deciding to tackle her to avoid her next shot, that pierced the window behind him.

Snowman deemed her pistol not worthy of a hands-on combat like that, and let go of it, letting it fall in the sink with a ‘clink’, and pulled her own knife disguised as a cigarette holder. Arm against arm while they fought for the advantage, any slip of the wrist would leave one stabbed and the other free to leave. His other hand grasped her shoulder plate, her own clawed at his bicep. A frustrated growl here, an interjection of anger there. It was too much.

Wrists slipped away as they clinged together in a violent, rage-induced kiss, with deep, desperate lashing breaths. Neither of them knew where this was coming from, and neither of them cared. Knives were forgotten, dropped on the floor, as fingers crawled closer and closer to the inside of a suit jacket, or the brim of a long overcoat, tingling at the thought of tearing the fabric apart, of putting together more than just lips and arms. And it was there, in the heat of the moment, that Snowman, as much as Slick, knew that they fucking despised each other.

And yet, couldn’t get away.

Team Sleuth reached the place not much longer than the police did, and at the shop’s basement staircase, split up; Sleuth and the Inspector would take the upstairs, Dick would search the downstairs with the cops.

“You see, Inspector,” Sleuth continued on a conversation they were having (or better put, his own monologue), wandering down the corridor behind the counter, “you gotta feel the clues, think like they think.” He reached for the bathroom’s doorknob, and hesitated, still finishing his train of thought, “think, ‘if I was a lead, where would I hide myself?’ And to that I think --probably in a small, enclosed space, right?”

The detective twisted the knob, opened up the door.

“So in the end it’s a pretty much straight-forward -- OH MY GOD I’M SORRY I’M SO VERY SORRY!!”

And immediately closed it back.

“What’s uh… What’s in there, Sleuth?” His tall coworker approached, pointing at the currently closed door. The reply was brief, and fast-paced, with a tint of flushed embarrassment on his face.

“ Nothing! Nothing at all! Did we check the end of the hallway yet, let’s get there!” Sleuth pulled the Inspector by the arm towards the back room ahead of them, and wasn’t met with retaliation or any further questions regarding the bathroom nor the intimate scene he walked in accidentally and hoped to forget.

“I wonder if Ace Dick found anything downstairs…” The Inspector glanced around the room, focusing his eyesight at the documentation on the dusty desk on the corner, and was almost immediately answered with a nervous laugh and a check of the road outside around the curtains.

“Haha, let’s not think about who found what about whoever’s downstairs now--”

“What?!”

“What?”

“What’d you…”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You sure?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I must’ve daydreamed then…”

“Yeah, you do that.”

Slick clipped on his suspenders and reached for his back pocket to grab his handkerchief, which he dipped in the faucet’s running water and rubbed on his face to get the lipstick stains out of the corner of his mouth, squinting at himself in the mirror. Snowman smoked a cigarette on a real cigarette holder, sat on the closed toilet lid and looking up towards the sliver of light coming from the alleyway lights behind the store, through the window. They couldn’t look at each other, let alone lock eyes, and would rather pretend nothing happened.

The mobster grabbed his suit jacket forgotten on the floor, folding it over his arm, but before he could turn and leave, he thought it would be better to let things clear between them. Slick cleared his throat to grab Snowman’s attention, staring at the floor tiles.

“So uh… This never happened.”

She blew some smoke out the window, trying to hit the bullet hole she had done an hour or two before, and glanced back.

“What did?”

“Smart girl.” He turned, but stopped himself again and looked back, with a raised eyebrow, “did-did someone walk in on us?”

She shrugged. She didn’t care one bit, and it’s not like she actually noticed anything. She’d rather put on her overcoat, leave discreetly, and get a cab back to the felt mansion to think of something to say to explain her absence besides ‘fucking the enemy’, and wrap her head around it to actually believe it, and maybe stop thinking altogether about what she’d just done. Lord knows Scratch would ask, if he didn’t just downright assume things that would make her confess to stuff she might or might not have done.

God, what a horrible life decision.

The smell of grease and baked goods hit the mobster as he walked into the headquarters, and he followed it to the mansion’s kitchen to find three cohorts sitting around a pizza resting on top of paper, and a safe laying on one of the other chairs around the table. Slick furrowed his brow.

“You stopped for pizza on the way back?”

“We never do groceries, there’s never any food around the mansion,” Droog answered, sitting sideways on his chair and with his legs stretched out. Deuce sat across him at the table, fiddling with a scrunched up napkin, while Boxcars leaned against the counter, chowing down on a slice. Slick let go of whatever bickering tendency he was getting and leaned forwards towards the food, grabbing a slice as well.

“Whatever, I’m fucking starving.”

“Where did you wander off to, anyway?” Droog asked him, checking his watch, “you’ve been gone for... A reasonable amount of time.”

“I was, uh…” Slick tried to come up with a lie on the spot. He wasn’t very good at it. “Doing a thing.”

“Very specific, Slick. Anyway, good news is, the heist was successful,” the accountant pointed at the safe at the other side of the table, “bad news is they’re probably coming here for it.”

His debriefing dissipated in the air, as the Crew remained silent, either eating or just all around tired; heists could get tiresome, and whenever they got this quiet, just absorbing each other’s company like four symbiotic organisms, it could be very hard to break the inertia. If nothing was done, they’d probably go back to the smoking room, sit around the table and stare at random spots in the room; Deuce would eventually mumble something about not being able to arrive home too late, and leave, and others would follow, closing up shop for the day without much productivity.

It was to avoid that, then, that Droog spoke up once more.

“We should have some sort of bunker to store away these kinds of things. Plan new schemes, brace for fighting, y’know?”

From his words, all four eyesights fluttered up in the air and landed on the walk-in pantry, where the trapdoor to the basement hid. Like the four symbiotic organisms they were after a day’s work, they were all thinking the same thing.

“D’you guys have any plans for tomorrow?” Slick started, without taking his eyes from the door between them and the staircase towards the dark soon-to-be hideout, “‘cuz we have a job to do.”

Chapter Text

Deuce wiped the sweat off his brow, taking a short break to rest his back, using the shovel as support. Why did Slick have to insist they didn’t hire any workers to make this bunker for them? It’s not like they’d ever gonna know what it’s for really. In any case they could say they’re just crazy doomsday preppers. Right now, Slick and Boxcars were working on the tunnel connecting the hideout to the sewers, and Deuce and Droog would meet them halfway, from the house’s basement.

It just now came to him how fucking super illegal was the operation. And what a mistake it was to let his wife come with him today to serve as help for the mansion’s ‘fixer-upper’ (his own words); you see, it seemed like a good idea when he thought of it, yesterday night! Boy, with judgement as stupid as his, Deuce was surprised he was still alive.

His waistcoat and blazer forgotten on the corner, the short guy turned around to check on his assigned partner, who at this moment, sat on a fold-out chair, drinking an almost empty tall glass of lemonade noisily with a straw.

“Why’d you stop?” Droog asked, shifting in his seat to uncross his legs at Deuce’s lack of work.

“W-where did you get that?” Deuce pointed at his now definitely empty glass, with a short breath and a note of displeasement on his voice.

“Your wife made us lemonade.”

“Can you ask her to get some for me?”

“There’s none left.” Droog rested his glass on the floor near him and reclined back on his chair, crossing his arms, with the same deadpan expression he’d deliver their accounting books to the IRS and say that all that’s in them is true. Deuce let out a tired sigh, and continued:

“Why aren’t you in here digging with me again?”

“Deuce,” the accountant opened up his arms, showing his companion his well-tailored apparel, “do I look like I’m dressed for the occasion?”

Deuce stared him up and down with a certain twist of the lips, but picked up his shovel again and got back to work. “I guess not.” Bickering wasn’t in his nature.

On the other side of an ever so thinning wall, a small explosion sent dirt and rubble to the ground, crumbling to pieces as the tunnel got closer to completion. Slick let out a yap of joy, watching the explosives Deuce taught them to use do their bidding. Boxcars waited a bit further back, sitting on a stool and resting his elbow on a wheelbarrow, with the dumb smile boys get on their faces when they blow up their neighbor’s postbox with firecrackers.

“I gotta tell ya, Boxcars,” Slick wiped his hands on his wife-beater and took his shovel, and almost by instinct his cohort stood up and inched the barrow forwards, to be filled with rubble, “I get why Deuce gets all hard for these things.”

“Yup,” Boxcars dumped the cartful of debris into the sewer water behind him, “kinda wish this place wouldn’t stink up so much.”

“Eh, we’ll get one ‘a’ those burning sticks then.”

“Burning sticks?”

“Yeah, like…” Slick fought the words out, supporting his weight on the shovel, “one of these little sticks that smell nice and you burn em… And they leave a completely different smell, but it’s still nice?”

“An incense, boss?”

“Yeah, that. We’ll get that.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It’s gonna be. You mark my words, Boxcars, this’ll be the best hideout to ever be hidden!”

As the sun started to set, the hideout’s infrastructure was good as done, and the crew went upstairs to rest for the day; Deuce’s wife finished cleaning up the kitchen after making them dinner, and stood behind her husband, hands resting on the back of the chair he sat on:

“Did you guys enjoy the lemonade?”

“There was lemonade?” Slick asked between bites, a drop of annoyance starting to tint his voice.

“Yes, your friend, uh, what’s his name --Droog brought the jar downstairs to you. Didn’t he?”

Just then, as coincidentally comic as it may have been, the accountant joined them on the kitchen, holding the day’s share of the mail, flipping through the letters. He looked up for a second, in-between a motion to flip to the next one, glancing from disappointed face to angered face around the table, and frowned.

“What?”

“Where’s the lemonade, Droog?” Slick scowled at him, and earned a scoff in retribution.

“Is this what the long faces are about? I’ll cover you all next time we’re out, how about that?”

“Droog, I swear to g-” the boss lifted up from his chair, ready to go down on fisticuffs if he had to, the air tensing up around the table, but caught glance of a familiarly dreadful shade of off-white between the bills and junk mail in his cohort’s hands. “is-is that a summons?”

Droog glanced back down, and replied, “how did you even recognize it?” But Slick was already in his own train of thought about those pieces of official postage.

“I had to fill up like a hundred ‘a’ those a day when I worked in the office, it’s fuckin’ torture writing up to some random ass person tellin’ ‘im to come down to court because ‘oh, they were on 51 miles per hour in a 50 zone’, who the fuck cares about that? It’s a cheap tactic to fuckin’ get money off of…”

He keeps on, for some solid five minutes. His rant wasn’t particularly interesting, and he wasn’t speaking to anyone but himself, but his cohorts knew that it would be better to let him speak his mind; he was the boss, after all. Whenever Slick went on these pointless rants they would better pretend to listen, or find the best time to interrupt; while he fought a weirdly worded phrase from coming out the wrong way from his mouth, his shortest cohort spoke up.

“Uhm, boss? What’s the summons for?”

Slick stopped dead on his tracks, and looked from Deuce to Droog, with a face that conveyed both incredulity and some sort of boiling rage ready to erupt. The accountant answered for him.

“The pickle.”

Even lowering his shoulders to appear smaller and non-threatening, the Pickle Inspector towered over Slick like an apartment building. God, it should be illegal to be this tall and lanky and preoccupied. They walked up the stairs to court, Inspector on one side, grasping his hat nervously, Droog on the other, lighting up a cigarette just for the habit of it; he knew he would have to put it out mere moments after. Slick just put on an intimidating face, and took their lead in the center.

“I’m so very sorry to have caused you this sort of trouble, I--”

“Save your fuckin’ excuses for someone who’s buying ‘em, Inspector.” The mobster cut him off, while they walked in.

Details of court procedures are to be spared; that’s not in the least important. What was important, to Slick, was when he could get out of there and take off that stupid tie. Sat on a row at the table in the courtroom, the Inspector inched sideways to Slick, to whisper him his two cents:

“I believe you’ll have to settle on this.”

Slick nodded, and passed the message along to Droog.

“We’ll have to settle.”

“Great . How much?” Droog shrugged back, and Slick, as the good messenger he was, passed it on.

“Uh, how much?” The boss leaned back to the lawyer.

“That depends on what you can offer.”

Slick turns to his accountant. “What can we offer?”

“What’s she gonna ask for?”

“What’s she gonna ask for?” This was incredibly silly.

“Depends on what you’ll offer.”

“Dep-”

“I heard the Inspector, Slick.”

“Alright then,” Slick stood up, patting the others in the back, “you two eggheads solve this on your own, I’m goin’ out for a smoke.”

Slick stepped down the courtroom stairs, taking a smokey breath and watching the street buzz in front of him; he decided to lean on one of the pompous mother Justice (or whatever her name was, Slick didn’t care) statues as he looked at the cars. Now, he wasn’t very good at the ‘paying attention to what people say’ department, but if there was something he was good at, it was watching the street. When the same car passed by the courthouse way below the speed limit by the third time, he lifted up his chin, narrowed his eyes. Something was up.

The car pulled over at the other side of the street. He threw one of his city-wide famous dagger glares in the direction of the driver’s seat, of which he could see nothing because the passenger one had a white-fedora-wearing asshole blocking his view. Luckily the two guys would take the tip and ride off without starting up anything, or come up and fight like men.

Or they were just waiting for his colleague to leave the courthouse.

“Mr. Slick!” The Inspector called, trotting down the steps hastily, “it’s all settled, you truly have nothing to worry about now. I’m so terribly sorry I made you go through all this, I-“

“Shut up. Bye.” Slick saw Droog approaching behind the lawyer with a much calmer stride, and gave back a borrowed lighter, while spitting out the words with some bitterness to them.

“Uh… Okay! I’ll…” The Inspector glanced around and quickly noticed Ace Dick’s car, and gave his two clients a short bow, “I’ll call you to settle honorariums an—“

“Nope.” It was time for Droog to speak, between his teeth, as he lit up a smoke of his own, “we call you.”

The lawyer nodded, mouthing back the accountant’s words to keep them in mind, and waved his goodbyes. Slick watched as he entered the suspicious car and it left unceremoniously.

Pickle Inspector had to be honest with himself; he didn’t like working for the Crew’s leader to gather intel for their investigation. Not at all, no, he’d rather just collect his paycheck and get home to feed his weasel. Oh, the poor little fella must be so sad to have his father leave him alone at home all day! But even then, the Inspector wasn’t getting much information out of this case. He only confirmed what they already knew: they had a bunch of store fronts, and they can spare a lot of money. If only they could get their hands on some of their documents, any of them, maybe they could—

“Inspector! For God’s sake stop daydreaming and listen to us!” Problem Sleuth increased the volume of his voice to catch his colleague’s attention, turning back from the passenger seat to glance at him.

“Oh, sorry.”

“Did you learn anything new?” Ace Dick asked, in a voice considerably lower and calmer.

“Not really, but… I was thinking… Maybe…”

“Yes?”

“How good of a lockpick are you, Sleuth?”