The Billy Club Bastard Case Files: The Case of the Candy-Coated Dynamite, Part 1 of 6

Mickey Malloy finds himself getting the short end of the stick, once again. Having rejected the offer to join the Office after his encounter with the Smiling Smuggler, he has been adrift. And Mickey adrift can never lead to anything good. Now, indebted to a killer and with nowhere else to turn, he’s had to a take a case that just keeps going from bad to worse.

This story is featured in the anthology Bourbon, Bullets, Broads, and Bourbon, which is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, or as a DRM-free ePub.

This is Part 1 of The Case of the Candy-Coated Dynamite. If you’re just starting out, you can learn more about Mickey in The Case of the Smiling Smuggler.

Content Warnings: Mild Swearing, Alcohol Use, Tobacco Use, Creeps

SATURDAY AFTERNOON, FEBRUARY 21, 1942
THE ELYSIAN EMPRESS RIVERBOAT CASINO
LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

Mickey Malloy hated boats. He hated politicians. He hated cigar smoke, fake smiles, and the kind of folks who talked real loud to the person bringing them drinks but never looked in their eyes. And more than all that, he hated having his arm twisted. With that being said, he wasn't having so bad a time aboard the Elysian Empress.

For a decommissioned paddle-wheeler packed to the roof with senators, governors, lackeys, and lobbyists, the shin-dig he'd been forced to attend wasn't all bad. The bar was open, the cards were generous, and the views were better than he often had occasion to take in.

“Mind if I get a fresh one?” Mick asked one of those passing views.

“Sure thing, sugar. Another bourbon, rocks?” she asked. He nodded. She flashed a smile, took the empty tumbler from his hand, and headed to bar in a swirl of crimson curls. Mick smirked. He didn't have the features or the billfold to typically elicit anywhere near as amiable a response, so he had to take advantage while he could. As far as she knew, he was some deep-pocketed fat cat prowling in his element. He'd snagged himself a legitimate invite, so his bona fides were all in order. Maybe he should become a politician: there were all old, ugly, and liked to tip back their booze. He'd fit right in.

Mick placed another couple chips on the felt, just enough to keep him in his seat, and continued his surveillance. A whisper of lavender brushed across his nose and he looked down to find a fresh drink by his elbow and his gratuity gone, the only evidence that the cocktail waitress had come and gone. She was smooth, and quiet, and despite having a smile that could light up a room, she could just as easily evaporate.

Being invisible was a trained skill, and it was one that gave Mick the willies. He was a lumbering oil drum of a man and couldn't much lay low, so he kept his head on a swivel. Anyone that could get close enough to slip him a shiv before he noticed, like that waitress, was someone worth keeping an eye on. He twisted in his seat to spot her but she was gone, whisked away by hot air and clinging smoke.

Nearby he recognized too many faces from the front page of the paper, sloshing drinks and slapping their waitresses on the rear. One man, maybe a senator, ground out his cigar on the table felt while another pissed his pants. One splashed his drink on a woman's lap while she did her best to remain composed, clearly well practiced.

It was barely two in the afternoon. Respectable drunks would never fall out this early. These people were amateurs at best, degenerates at worst. They stuck their toes in the deep end for the thrill of it but floundered once they hit the water.

If Micky had been here on one of his usual investigations for one of his usual clients, it would have been a gold mine. He watched envelopes get passed, hands get shook, backs get slapped and scratched. Men with names behind them were rubbing on themselves, their mistresses, distressed cocktail waitresses, each other.

Here, behind closed doors and among their own, they regressed. They didn't care. Politicians did their little dance in public, but unmasked they were animals. Mick didn't know if the strange antics, abuses, and addictions these folks got themselves into was a symptom of having power, or if it was the other way around.

Luckily for these men on this day, Mickey wasn't here for them. His work had brought him here in search of a different kind of low-life. He was hunting a ghost for a killer.

Since Pearl Harbor, P.I. work in Tampa had been slim pickings. Jobs were hard to come by. All the unattended folks were overseas, and the rest weren't causing trouble. Even his Bastard work had dried up. Then the bolito boards went bad. For months, Mickey's number would never come up. The bookie never minded running him a tab. After a while though, the bill got too high, and Mick got kicked up the food chain. His little losses here and there had stacked up and gotten him shoved into the wolf's den.

He'd heard of Lobo Losa before, it was impossible not to have in his profession. The Cuban had worked his way up out of the gutters to have a piece of every illegitimate dollar made between Jacksonville and the Keys. Losa was as infamous for using his influence as his blades. He always knew just the right arm to twist to get what he wanted. He hardly ever had to carve anyone to pieces himself these days.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON, FEBRUARY 11, 1942
MALLOY INVESTIGATIONS
YBOR CITY, TAMPA, FLORIDA

Losa himself would never travel so far as Tampa, his time was far too valuable. Even sending this one goon put Mickey far higher on the Cuban's list than he'd ever wanted to be. He settled into his battered office chair and stared at the waiting phone, eager and horrified for it to finally ring.

The thug, who'd only identified himself as 'Suero,' leaned against the wall, watching him. The white-suited man was no older than thirty, a damn kid by Mickey's standards, and had turned down Mick's offering of warm desk booze. Mickey didn't trust Suero. He had a stabby look about him.

Mick had nearly finished cooking up something smart to say to the stuck-up gangster when the phone rang. Instead of mouthing off, he nearly lost his ass by tipping out of his chair. He recovered in under a second, but not quick enough for Suero to miss.

“Malloy Investigations,” Mick grunted, trying too hard to sound like he hadn't just been shocked out of his seat.

“Mister Malloy,” Lobo Losa said. His voice cut like a velvet razor. He made no attempt to soften his accent for white ears.

“Who, may I ask, is calling?” Mick asked. Suero's eyes went wide and he froze in place.

“They said you were a comedian,” Losa chuckled. “That must be why my boys have let your tab run so big for so long without one of them ever taking a bat to you.”

“What can I say? I'm a people person,” Mick said. He grinned and leaned back in his chair, resting his bourbon bottle on his knee.

Confident Mick wasn't about to say anything that called for an immediate knifing, Suero shoved a pile of Mickey's papers aside and placed his briefcase on the side table. He flipped its latches open and began pulling out all of the individual ingredients for a mojito.

“You're wondering why I am calling,” Losa said over the phone.

“I got a lot of questions,” Mick replied while he watched Suero select and pluck individual mint leaves of a tiny potted sprig. Once he had picked about a dozen, the gangster placed them in a faceted crystal glass and began working on them with a teak muddler. Mick shook his head and put his bottle to his lips and took a deep slug.

“Dynamite,” Losa said. The shot caught in Mick's throat. He fought with it silently, finally forcing it down with a grimace. Its warmth was dagger-edged as it spider-crawled through his chest cavity. When he was finally sure he heard Losa say the word he said, he spoke.

“Dynamite?” he wheezed around the alcohol burn.

“A pallet of it, from a warehouse in Davie about a week ago,” Losa confirmed. “Don't work yourself up, Malloy, I didn't buy it to use it. It was more of an... investment.”

“And you lost it?” Mick asked. He watched Suero pull a brick-sized block of perfectly clear ice from the case, set it on a folded white towel that he'd also brought, then cut it into a exact cube with a fine-toothed saw. He plunked this into the glass with the crushed mint.

“It had some help getting lost,” Losa said. His voice rumbled like a puma's purr. “You know me, Malloy. Everyone knows me. That means the person stealing from me has either been living under a boulder the size of my house, or they got a set of brass cajones even larger than that.”

“Sounds like you got an idea who,” Mick inferred. He slurped on his bourbon again.

“My boys got led down a rabbit hole that I need you to dig out,” Losa explained. Across the room, Suero crushed a sugar crystal the size of a marble and sprinkled it onto his ice. He followed this with a squirt of soda from a tiny seltzer bottle.

“I'll need to talk to them,” Mick said. “The guys at your warehouse.”

“Nobody's going to be talking to them,” Losa said.

“Jesus,” Mick said. His throat went dry and his eyes darted from Suero to the wardrobe in the corner, where the Bastard's gear was stashed.

“What?” Losa started. “No, you drama queen. My business is growing faster than I can hire people. I'm not going to kill anyone for getting got. Not on the first occasion anyway. The two gringos that were in charge are on a boat to Cuba right now, hauling gasoline, a real shit job. Folks from that far north on the peninsula can get uppity taking orders from Cubans. This'll be good for them, knock them down a peg. But Suero talked to them before they left. He has everything they saw.”

“He's got, what, a file open?” Mick asked.

On cue, Suero opened his coat, letting Mick get a glimpse of a holstered Colt automatic and a sheathed knife. He pulled a few folded sheets out of an inner pocket and placed them in front of Mickey, smoothing them on his desktop. Suero stepped back and extracted a corked bottle from his briefcase, brown glass with a pasted label that featured exactly zero words in English. Luckily, Mick was a polyglot of a lush, and he knew rum no matter what name it went by. A splash of the clear liquor went into Suero's glass.

“You think you're my first stop, Malloy? A burned-out cop that can't pick a bolito number to save his life?” Losa snapped.

“What are you saying?” Mick asked him. 'Life' got him up in his seat. Across the room, Suero slid his knife out of its sheath. Its blade was short and serrated and would leave nasty scars.

“Killing you isn't on the table, Malloy, settle down. I can hear your jowls rattling through the phone.”

Mickey snorted and composed himself, but didn't take his eyes off Suero. Losa continued:

“I have more use for people alive than dead. If you can't help me today, no problem. Just give Suero the money you owe me and we'll be done, no trouble,” Losa offered. Mick only grunted. Both he and Losa knew he didn't have anywhere close to that kind of scratch on hand, or anywhere to get it from. He'd have to snuggle up and get comfortable in Losa's pocket.

Suero flipped the knife in his hand like a showman, then produced a lime out of his jacket pocket. He sliced the perfect wedge out of it. With a wink, he squeezed it into his drink.

“Your guy here is a real character,” Mick told Losa. His picked up the files Suero had produced and squinted.

“Suero has been with me for many years. He has earned his eccentricities.”

“Yeah, 'eccentricities,'” Mick muttered. He glanced at the enforcer who was sampling his drink. Suero's face screwed up at the taste, revealing narrow scars that his poker face usually concealed. Mick said: “'Scuse me.”

He slid his desk open, prompting Suero's eyes to go wide and his to hand dart for his holster, but he smirked when Mick emerged from the drawer with a set of tiny reading glasses. The detective perched them on the end of his lumpy, oft-broken nose and skimmed the typed-out papers. He sniffed the page.

“This ain't a mimeo,” he said after a moment. “You got more of these?”

“Locked up, in case I need to follow up myself,” Suero answered. He sprinkled a pinch of sugar into his drink, swirled it, and sipped it again. He grinned, revealing his facial scars once more. They were symmetrical, thin, and deep. They were torture injuries, not combat. Mick filed that away and nestled the phone in the crook of his neck while he looked over the reports.

“Hey, descriptions of what, five robbers, one a dame even, plus the make, model, and year of their vehicle. That's more than enough for me,” Mick told Losa after a moment. “It would've been enough for pretty boy here, too. Why drag me in?”

Suero looked like he was about to have something smart to say, but Mick held up one crooked finger so he could listen to Losa's answer.

“The conclusion my boys came to seems... implausible. And the places we'd have to go to rectify the situation would stir up more trouble than I'm looking to get in right now. We sell sugar cane, and up there is tomato country.”

Mick knew exactly what Losa was saying. A swatch of the Gulf Coast was run by a two-bit New Orleans hood with New York backing who fancied himself a mafioso.

“My daily rate for inter-state work is double,” Mick said.

“Then it'll only take you three years to pay off what you owe me instead of six,” Losa said. “You dug yourself a hole in the parlors, amigo. It would be a shame if we filled that dirt in on top of your head. Find my dynamite, we'll call it even.”

Mick had had a crap run, and the vig ran him deeper every day. He sighed

“You'd need to cover incidentals,” he said.

“Bring me your receipts,” Suero grunted.

“We'll help you fill your gas tank. I'm sure you'll need to grease a palm or two as well. Suero has some petty cash,” Losa said.

Mick looked up at Losa's soldier with a mischievous gleam in his eye. He held out his hand, rubbing his forefingers and thumb together. 'Pay me,' he mouthed.

Suero sneered and dug into the opposite side of his coat from his heater and retrieved a thick roll of cash. He leaned over and set it on the edge of Mikey's desk.

Mick rolled his eyes. He could see more money bulging in Suero's pocket.

“Your boy's holding out on me,” Mickey told Losa.

“He knows what good work costs,” Losa said.

“You know that's the only kind of work I do, boss,” Mick replied.

“Receipts, Malloy,” Losa warned him. “Give Suero the phone.”

“Here you go, bud,” Mick said. He held out the receiver and the gangster took it.

Mick could hear Losa rattling away in Spanish. A scowl flickered across Suero's face faster than he could conceal it, but he coughed up a second money roll. That had to make two grand sitting in front of Mick. That was half-a-year's earnings when there was good P.I. work to be found.

Suero listened for a moment, only replying with the occasional 'sí,' then hung it up without offering it back to Mickey.

“Mister Losa says you have two weeks. If you do not have his dynamite, you will have the money you owe him,” Suero said. His accent rolled his R's was a near-lupine snarl. His picked up one of the cash rolls and held it in Mickey's face. “Plus this money. That is why Mister Losa has taken out insurance policies on this building, your car, and your mother out there. Do you understand?”

“That is not my mother,” Mick said, pointing at through his office door at Marge.

“Your wife, then. I do not care who that is. But you do,” Suero said.

Marge Queen was probably out there half-soused already, trying decide if now was the time to pull that shotgun he'd given her for Christmas. He really hoped she wouldn't.

“Do you understand?” Suero repeated.

Mickey looked at his office window. Marge's desk was on the other side. He'd closed the blinds when Suero had come through, but he could see her shadow. He sighed, then looked back at the menacing gangster. Suero had burn scars on both of his hands. He was no stranger to an arson here or there.

“Yeah, crystal clear,” Mick said.

“Good.”

Suero stood back and leaned up against the wall and took a hummingbird sip of his mojito. Mick sat back and stared at him. Suero stared back.

“What are you doing?” Suero asked after a moment of watching Mick frozen like a deer in headlights.

“What am I doing?” Mick demanded.

“You do not have long, Mister Malloy,” Suero pointed out. He took another sip of his cocktail.

“Are you just going to stand there?”

“I would like to finish my drink,” Suero said. “You are not my only stop today. In this job, you need to make your own moments to decompress. Please, don't mind me, get to work.”

“What the hell,” Mick muttered. He flipped through the papers Suero had given him, skimming each one in a second without retaining a single word of any.

“Look at the truck's registration,” Suero suggested.

“The truck's...” Mickey started. His eyes went wide and he shoved the papers aside and lurched to his feet. “You just threatened to burn down my building and kill my secretary, and now you want to chit-chat?”

“Mister Malloy. I do this all day, and you do not seem a stranger to being threatened. Sit down and consider your luck. My next appointment is with the racing commissioner in Port Charlotte. Mister Losa offered him a deal, and he declined.”

“So now you get to burn down a dog track?” Mick asked.

“Oh, I wish. Mister Losa was more creative with his threat to that gentleman. Usually he'd offer to feed someone to alligators, but when there are so many dogs available, he got more specific. Now I have to figure out how to get greyhounds to eat a whole man,” Suero said. He sighed with exasperation and took another slurp from his cocktail.

It took Suero another fifteen minutes of leisurely sipping to finish his mojito. Mickey pretended to read the whole time. When the gangster packed up and left, Mick peered out the window to make sure he had gotten in his car and actually gone. Sure enough, Suero had a rain coat and a crate of Spam in his back seat. He was going to rile some dogs up, and he was planning for it to get messy.

“Marge!” Mick called out. He knew the old bird had been listening in on the whole phone call. He wanted to know exactly what Losa had told Suero, and she knew exactly what he was about to ask her and cut him off at the pass:

“Michael, you know I don't speak Spanish,” she called back from the outer office.

WEDNESDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 18, 1942
HÔTEL AIGLE ET LAPIN
ALGIERS POINT, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

Three days of glad-handing his former colleagues at the Tampa Police Department and buying soda pops for gas station attendants ended with Mickey Malloy in New Orleans, sweating through his good suit.

Outside Tampa, his currency of choice was fresh hand-rolled cigars. He hated them, but they were easier to come by than toilet paper in his neighborhood. It took three boxes to get him lodging and unlimited phone calls. One to a desk clerk secured him a quiet room in a small hotel, another to the house detective that let him check in under the name 'Patrick India,' and the third buttered up the switchboard operator and gave him free reign over the long-distance lines. Those calls were coming in handy. Mick stubbed out his cigarette, took a slug of rye, and flipped through his journal, hunting down a phone number.

“There you are,” he muttered when he found it. He sat up in bed and swung his feet over the side and snatched the phone off its cradle. He dialed a '0' and waited for the operator to pick up.

“Operator,” a husky-voiced woman said.

“Hey, Janine, how are those stogies?” Mick asked. The woman on the other end of the line groaned.

“Mister India, if I knew you'd be this much trouble, I'd have asked for cash,” she croaked. “More calls?”

“Just a load of family business to take care of,” Mick said.

“What are your people, clowns?” she asked.

“What's that?” Mick started.

“Your family business seems a lot like funny business is all,” Janine replied. Mick could hear her take a long crackling drag off a fresh cigar before she said: “How can I connect you, Mister India?”

Mick suppressed a grumble then read off the phone number written on the business card he'd kept stashed for over a year. He'd used every connection he'd made during his years behind and beside the badge to track the goods to New Orleans, but he'd been stonewalled when he'd gotten there. He didn't have the money or clout to crack anyone in the Crescent City, but he knew someone who might..

“Connecting to Baltimore,” Janine said after a moment.

“Thanks, doll,” Mick said.

“Doll my ass,” she grunted.

“This is the last call, I swear,” Mick told her, “For today. I think.”

The phone trilled twice before someone picked up. The receiver clicked a couple times before he could hear anything, then the man on the other end came through clear as sunshine.

“Baltimore Central Diocese, Paul speaking,” a young man said, his voice so cheerful that Mick could hear his grin.

“Ah hell, I gave her the wrong number,” Mick muttered. Janine must have gotten her wires crossed.

“We're here to help, sir,” Paul chirped. The man's jovial tone turned the screws in Mickey's skull once around. He may have tied a few extra on the night before. Between the humidity and Paul's jarring exuberance, it took all Mickey had not to hang up then and there. Paul piped up again: “What number were you trying to reach?”

Mick sighed a repeated the calling code again.

“That's us, sir,” Paul confirmed. “Who were you looking for?”

“A guy named Earp. Daniel Earp,” Mick replied.

“The name is not familiar, but I can always check our registry,” Paul replied. “The seminary has so many students, instructors, and guests, it's so hard to keep up with everyone. May I ask who's calling?”

“India, Patrick.”

Mick wasn't about to give out his real name. For all he knew, Janine had connected him directly to the Italians just to spite him.

“Patrick India, got it,” Paul said. “Just a moment, please.”

Mick bit his tongue and waited. Paul had set the phone down, and Mick could hear excited conversations nearly out of the phone's earshot. He fumbled with a cigarette, but hadn't found his matches before Paul got back on the horn.

“Mister India, I'm afraid Mister Earp is unavailable. I'll be connecting you to Mister Keaton,” Paul reported, out of breath. He added: “It has been an absolute honor talking to you, sir.”

“A what?” Mick mumbled. He looked around the dingey room, with its smoked out curtains, half-bottles of rye, stained rug, and drooping wallpaper. Nothing honorable here. The phone clicked, and another man spoke.

“George Keaton, how may I help you?” he asked. His voice was slow and level, not giving away anything. Mick might have heard a twinge of New England in Keaton's O's and R's, but he wouldn't bet on it.

“This is Patrick, Patrick India,” Mick said, repeating the alias to help himself remember it. “Somebody named Earp gave me this number a while back, told me to call if I need anything.”

“There's no Mister Earp here. Did you tell Paul you were from Jacksonville, sir?” Keaton wondered.

“Jacksonville?” Mick said, taken aback. He hadn't told anyone jack, much less that he hailed from anywhere in the Sunshine State. He paused, unsure of whether to rail at Keaton or hang up right then and there. Before he could make up his mind, he heard his own recorded voice coming back through the receiver.

“Jacksonville?” he asked. The sound distorted, then began looping. “Jacksonville? Jacksonville? Jacksonville?”

“What?” Mick asked again. As a detective, he was used to asking questions, but so far he hadn't gotten a single answer.

A ding sounded on the other end of the line.

“Full match. Mister Malloy, is it?” Keaton asked.

“What? Yes. How?” Mick stammered. He really had no idea what was going on now.

“We ran a voice match from a recording of our last encounter with you, that's how,” Keaton answered. “Besides, 'P.I.' isn't as clever an alias as you think it is.”

“Pretty damn clever,” Mick muttered to himself. He thought on it. The last time he'd run into anyone from Earp's crew was almost a year back. The officials had to have been recording his every word, then saved it for a special occasion.

“Signals says this call is routed through the New Orleans switchboards. That's a bit of a drive from... Tampa, it?” Keaton wondered, like he was reading off a rap sheet.

“Yeah, it is,” Mick said. He didn't like being on this end of an interrogation. He had to spin it back his way: “Where's Earp?”

“Following up on a case,” Keaton replied, really telling Mick nothing at all. “But I work closely with the Inspector. How can I help?”

“Well, Keaton, you said? Earp owes me one. I'm calling to cash in,” Mick said.

“As a matter of fact, it seems as if everyone at the Office might owe you one for that uranium business, and another far older than that,” Keaton replied.

“As a matter of fact, you're right,” Mick told him. “But if you're trying to call in that marker, the News Orleans mafia ain't going to come close to cutting it.”

“I agree,” Keaton said. “With everything you did in France, and with the Vampire - !”

“I know what I did,” Mick snapped. He'd spent too many nights draining too many bottles trying to forget all the shit he'd trudged through in the last war for some paper pusher to dredge it all up over the phone. “You going to help me out here or what?”

“Of course, sir,” Keaton replied. Mick could hear a pencil scratching paper through the phone. “You said you might be having an issue with an organized crime group based in Louisiana?”

“Yeah, an issue.”

“One moment,” Keaton said. Keaton gave someone muffled instructions, and shoes squeaked against tile. “What do you want with these gentleman? Are they threatening you? Committing treason? Colluding with Nazis or other fascist groups?”

“None of the above, that I know of, yet,” Mick said. “I just might make some noise while I'm in town here, and I don't want to step on anyone's toes.”

It was the same reason Lobo Losa couldn't send his boys to New Orleans. If one dog got too close to another's yard, they'd have to scrap. That's just how it was. And scraps between big dogs ended up with bodies in the morgue and buildings in flames. In the scale of these kind of dog fights, Mick wasn't much more than a flea. Yeah, the Italians might not even notice him, but if they did, it'd be as easy as scratching an itch to get him gone, permanently.

The shoes squeaked on floor again, followed by more hissed orders. Keaton cleared his throat, then rustled a stack of papers.

“The New Orleans mafia, formerly known as the Black Hand, currently under the leadership of one Silvestro Carollo. They are bootleggers turned entrepreneurs. They associate with the Five Families and former Governor Huey Long, with connections to New York City.”

“Yeah,” Mick said dryly, “That sounds like them.”

“We don't associate with them directly, but we have contacts that may have some influence over them,” Keaton answered.

“I just need a free pass for a couple days, nothing else,” Mick said. He knew where Keaton was going to go next, and he didn't need a swarm of secret agents blowing whatever cover he had. Boys from the Hoover school loved to come crashing through skylights whenever they thought there was a bad guy and newspaper reporter nearby.

“We could round up the whole lot of them,” Keaton offered.

“No!” Mick said too quickly. “I don't want to waste your time. The Italians aren't even who I'm looking for. I just want to make sure they know that.”

“So you're looking for someone,” Keaton considered. Damn it, he was just throwing out lines and Mickey was biting at every hook.

“A thief. No smugglers, no spies, no assassins,” Mick said. “Swear on my mother.”

“I've read your file, Malloy, front to back,” Keaton said dryly.

“Fine, then I swear on my hat.”

“Okay, I'll trust that one. What did this miscreant steal?” Keaton asked.

“Nothing important,” Mick offered. He knew that wouldn't land. No one sends a P.I. across state lines when nothing important was in play. And if the Office had the inkling that there was a ton of dynamite loose in the wild, they would not let Mickey Malloy take it anywhere, much less back home to Lobo Losa.

“I bet it isn't,” Keaton considered. The word choice made Mickey wonder exactly how much the Office's files said. If they knew about his deadbeat mom that ran out forty years ago, they would certainly know about his current financial woes, and their origins.

“Listen, I need that cover from the Italians, and I need to get the lay of the land,” Mick insisted. “You got anyone in town I can talk to? Preferably someone who can be discrete.”

“I've heard discretion is your forte these days, Malloy,” Keaton said. Mick snorted. The official continued: “Let me make a call or two, I'm sure there's someone out there that wouldn't mind being a tour guide.”

“Thanks,” Mickey grunted.

“And Malloy?” Keaton asked.

“What?”

“Are you sure you don't have anything to tell me about why you're in that city, right now?”

“Just following the leads, you know how that goes. What's going on?” Mick asked.

“Like I said, I can make some calls,” Keaton said. He issued muffled orders away from the phone, then told Mickey: “I'll call you back shortly.”

“You can reach me at - !” Mick started, but Keaton cut him off.

“We know exactly where you are, Mister Malloy. Keep an ear out. I'll be asking for Mister India.”

---

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Copyright © 2022 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Tyrelle Smith.