Ok, so I lied when I said no more updates until next week,
got this
chapter off really fast and really well, considerably better than
the
first chapter, really. Again, I state, I don't own anything except
the
plot, Woody, Jordan, Garret, Nigel, and Harry all belong to Tim
Kring,
and Steele and Laura and Mildred all belong to, well, who DOES
own the
rights to them anyway? (Fox is it?) So this is chapter two, chapter
three is on it's way, enjoy!
***
Harry Macy stood at the gate to where flight 717 direct from Los
Angeles to Boston was supposed to land. As the first passengers
began
to disembark he slid off to the side, waiting for the one he wanted.
He sized up everyone coming off the plane before grimacing at
the
force of habit. Eventually he saw him-he was hard to miss, tall
dark
and handsome would be the only fitting description and all the
women
on the plane seemed to have noticed that quite well.
"Harry!" The young man exclaimed when he saw his
friend. "How are you!
You're looking well."
"As well as an eighty year old grifter can look Mick.
Or Remington. Or
whatever the hell you call yourselves these days."
"Remington will do just fine mate."
"So you're a bigwig now. A fancy schmancy PI. A mover
and shaker it
looks like. You know how many California newspapers have at least
three articles about you?" Steele grinned.
"Probably most of them."
"Right in one." They walked a ways until they reached
the parking lot
where Harry hailed them both a cab. He gave the cabbie an address
and
leaned back, staring out the window.
"You're awfully quiet mate. Something wrong?"
"Try I'm out a quarter of a million and I'm in a town
I have a
particular dislike for." Steele gave him a questioning glance.
"I thought you grew up here?" The old man shrugged.
"I did."
"You always used to rave about it. The city, the-Red Sox
are they? The
clam chowder. And if I recall correctly, you most commonly raved
about
this little Chinese place you used to visit every Tuesday-"
"Dim Sung. I know. But hey, people change, and so do their
tastes."
The taxi pulled to a halt outside of a seedier looking area of
Boston,
and Harry quickly paid off the cabbie before leading Steele up
the
stairs.
They paused at one of the doors. "Just go in, and back
me up on this.
Look like a detective, threaten to arrest him. Make it look like
you
have some real power, and tell him all will be good if I get my
money." Steele nodded, and Harry knocked on the door, frowning
when
the first rap sent it inwards. "That's never a good sign."
He said,
peeking in the doorway. "Bart?" He called to an empty
apartment.
They both cautiously entered, and looked around. Harry cautiously
looked around the small kitchenette before he was alerted by Steele
calling out from the bedroom. "Harry, I don't think you're
going to be
getting your money. Not from Bart here anyway." Harry cautiously
trod
over, careful not to touch anything that might tie him to the
place.
He found Steele crouched over Bart's body, standing just outside
a
pool of blood.
"My god. What happened?"
"It looks like someone had a grudge against Bart here
and decided to
shoot him for it."
"We should call the police. You should call the police."
"Why me?" Steele questioned turning around to look
at the old man.
"Don't tell me you're in trouble with the law again. Is that
why you
don't want to be here?"
"No, no, no, nothing of the sort." He replied, backing
towards the
door. "Not with the cops, no trouble with them, but I still
would
prefer to be far far away from a dead body when you call them.
Tell
you what, you mentioned Dim Sung, it's two blocks away, I'll meet
you
there in, oh, about half an hour?" With that the old man
was out the
door, leaving Steele alone to call the police.
He searched around the small apartment until he found the phone,
picked it up, and dialed 911. If Harry's story checked out, there
was
nothing he needed to worry about, and he knew that he was clean,
he
had his plane ticket to prove it, he couldn't just leave a dead
man
lying there to rot.
His thoughts about what he was going to say were interrupted
by a
young man who looked like he should still be in high school barging
in, flashing a badge. "Detective Woody Hoyt, Boston PD."
"R-" He started to say his name, but quickly changed
it at the last
second. "Richard Blaine." He said simply.
"You the one the called the cops?" Hoyt asked him,
and he nodded. The
young detective walked into the bedroom where the body lay. "You
touch
him at all?"
"Only to see if he was still alive." Steele contemplated
making a run
for it. His instinct told him he should but something made him
want to
say-a sense of wanting to do the right thing for a poor man who
wound
up murdered.
Hoyt came back after checking the body. "How did you know the deceased?"
"We uh-" Steele searched for something to say. "Were
business
associates." He finally came up with after far too long of
a pause for
his liking.
"Well Mr. Blaine, we're going to need a contact number
in case we need
your help, maybe you saw something that could give us a hand."
"I just landed, I was just stopping by to see Bart to ask
if he had
any recommendations on hotels." He gestured to the overnight
bag still
in the doorway. "Tell you what, I'll call you as soon as
I find a
place to say. Or even better yet, you can suggest a hotel to me."
"Well, I stayed in the Marriott when I first came here,
it's a nice
place." He admitted.
"Great, that's where I'll be then, I'll give you a call
as soon as I
check in. What did you say your name was? Hoyt?"
"Woody Hoyt." the baby faced detective said, handing
him a card with
his name and number.
Steele picked up his bag and beat a hasty retreat. He was interrupted
however by almost running into two men. Steele glanced at them
quickly, and immediately felt his hackles rise looking at one
of them,
and he saw the other man do the same. He stared into the young
man's
brown eyes.
They were about the same age, although the other man had a
good three
inches on Steele, and both had dark black hair, although Steele's
carefully cropped coiffure was no match for the other man's limp
almost greasy looking long mane, and there was something about
him
that put Steele on his guard-something that he recognized, that
sent
off a faint alarm in the back of his head. He knew this man from
somewhere, but he couldn't think of where, and wherever it was,
he
knew that this man spelled trouble for him.
The other man, perhaps, surprised Steele even more than the
first-not
because he put Steele on his guard, but because he bared a striking
resemblance to the man who had just hightailed it out of the apartment
moments earlier. He flashed a badge to the officer at the door
that
read County Coroner and he had the sudden idea of just why his
friend
was so anxious to not be seen around any dead bodies.