The way back was always busy at the end of the shift. It was even busier since it was still quite light. The half-shift on the plains had put everyone's routine out, it seemed. There were spuds laying about here and there, wondering just what to do with the rest of the tide.
When you don't have time, managing it is easy. You always hear the griping that they get worked too hard and now that they were actually getting time off, they were stumped.
Naturally, after that brief period of indecision, they gravitated to the bars. I followed for lack of something better to do and to give my mind a break. My brain had worked itself into a knot and I need to un-knot it before it tried it again.
“Jellies are coming in,” said Jack, a solid guy if you ever get a chance to meet him. “Harvey says so.”
“Harvey wouldn't know his bulb from his tube,” said Warren, less solid.
I never bothered with him. He's the kind of guy who's right all the time and when he's wrong, it turns out he's right.
“And so what if there are jellies?”
“That could be what's hurting the silvers,” said Ross, a quiet guy who only spoke when had something to say. “If they're swarming.”
Warren had an answer, “Naw! Harvey's just causing worry where there ain't none.”
“What if they reach the plains?”
“They hardly ever hit the plains and, even when they do, they get smashed to bits on the barriers before. You only get chunks of 'em.”
“The stingers still sting, you know,” Jack said.
Warren sneered, “Then avoid the stings!”
“We can, but what about the silvers?”
“What about them?”
“Ah, phooey,” Jack dismissed him with a wave of his arm. “Don't know why I'm talking to you, Warren. You having a brew, Ted?”
“Yeah, I'll -”
I thought about the limited clams weighing in my membrane. I had to make them last. And while I could easily have polished off a pod, if I stuck around I'd more likely than not end up going home with an empty pouch.
“Actually, no, I'll split. I got stuff to do.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Like, I dunno, stuff.”
“I heard a rumour there was a girl heading over to your place,” said Warren.
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Yeah. I heard it from Max and he said he heard it from that Sepiant you're always hanging around with.”
“Hey, he hangs around with me,” I said, “and if he's been yapping then he'll be hanging around the Hammers.”
“So it's true? You got a lady-friend?”
That did it. There were two options here. Put up or shut up.
“I gotta go. See ya, fellas.”
Warren grinned and got stuck into his pod.
Jack nodded, “Suit yourself. See you tomorrow?”
“Yeah, see you guys tomorrow. Hopefully we get a full shift, eh?”
There were grunts and nods and I exited gracefully.
I decided to go for a swim about, nowhere in particular, just to keep my thoughts going. Clouding my brain with darkwater wasn't going to help make a decision. Of course, if I decided that what I wanted was to forget about the whole affair, about that beautiful creature and her offer, I'd head back to the bar and drop all my clams.
Sure, that was one option. Before I went to that, I wanted to explore the others.
Since it was still bright, I went round the back way, past the byssus weavers spinning those fine, beardy threads into sparkling bands for jewellery. I sat and watched, admiring their skill. Theirs is a skill passed on from generation to generation. You're born a byssus weaver and your children are as well, and their children and so on.
That's just how it is down here. Everyone and everything has a place.
If you're smart, you'll know your place and enjoy it, content with the knowledge that there's nothing more or less you can do than what you're doing and if you do it well, trouble won't find you.
That's a trait I admire, you know, the ability to be content. And that's just what I had been working on myself before that silly maid came along and blew my mind open again.
“Oh, did you hear,” said a weaver, gossiping in a loud whisper. “They've found another body.”
Her neighbour, in an equally audible whisper, replied, “No, I didn't! Do tell!”
“Well, I didn't see it meself, see, but I did hear it from Fontana. And she said that it was a Sepiant, you know.”
“Oh, really? What a shame.”
“What a shame, I know.”
She fed in another thread. Her friend waited patiently. The thing about gossip is that you can't spend it all at once. If you're doing a shift, then it has to last the entire shift, otherwise you're left rehashing the old stuff.
“You know, they say he was up to no good when he died.”
“Oh, really? That's no good.”
“I know. Doesn't make it right that he was killed though.”
“Oh, no. That's no good.”
“I know. Makes you wonder, though, what the Reef is coming to.”
“Oh, yes, what is the Reef coming to?”
Another thread and another pregnant pause.
“Fontana said that the police said that he was found in open water, just beyond the barrier.”
“Open water! You don't say.”
“Open water, yes. And she said that they said he was Tommy Two-Tone's fella.”
I'd be surprised if you've never heard of Tommy Two-Tone, but if you're one of the fortunate ones, let me fill you in.
He's a Sepiant, came from a poor family somewhere out in the middle of who-knows-where. Some say as a youngster he survived some kind of environmental trauma. Others say his egg was poisoned by a puffer. Others still say he was born between the light of the Gold and Silver Pearls. Either way, he was born wrong, wrong physically and wrong in the sense that he lacked that basic compassion one living creature has for another.
It must have been a tough life for him. Not that I'm making excuses or anything, but you see, unlike other Sepiants – or Pusses for that matter – he can't change his skin to match his surroundings. The only two shades he had in his arsenal were black and white. He wouldn't have been able to play hide-and-seek with the other kids. He'd be the first to get picked on when the tougher guys came around. I'm not a psychologist but I know that that kind of thing has an effect on squirts, and little squirts grow into big spuds, carrying with them all the things they picked up.
Some kids grow into delinquency, some are thrust into it. By the time Tommy – that's his Puss name, mind – by the time his peak developed, he was a delinquent through and through. While those around him realised that crime came with legal ramifications, Tommy figured out ways to get around all of that and make it pay dividends. Smart spud.
He made crime pay.
I don't mind saying it. He's the kind of guy that leans on his reputation and I'd be looking over my shoulder if I was careless enough to mention that he was a decent fella.
Because he couldn't camouflage himself, not really – black or white can only get you so far – he quickly learnt how to stand up, then stand over. Anyone crossing his path was fair game, and there were tales of how he took on two Collosi in a back alley and won. Maybe it was talk, maybe it was truth. Doesn't matter, really.
As with most things, the truth is irrelevant, the impression is what matters.
Still, one Sepiant against a community can't get far. Sooner or later, sooner in Tommy's case, society pushes back. The locals got wise to his antics. It was either face a lynch mob or disappear for real.
News proceeded him all the way across the open water.
I remember, when I was still a young spud, when he came to Borobo Reef. There was a stir among the folk. Rumours were running hot that some import was taking over the town. The rumours weren't far from the truth.
Borobo Reef was, back then, under the watchful eye of the Midera family. They had shady dealings themselves, only natural when you have a corrupt family in charge, but they knew business and they knew how to keep a reef ticking along. What they didn't know was how ruthless Tommy could be. They may have stood a chance if they'd watched the bubbles blistering from below, but history says that they were blind-sided.
Facts are facts and the facts are that while they were busy pressing down on the small fry and doing the tide-to-tide, Tommy was busy mustering up a damn army of big-fellas, octopuses and cuttlefish alike, and arming them with stinger-barbs, clubs and urchin-spears. Real nasty stuff.
The Midera had a fortress, supposedly impregnable since it sat inside the Aparro Depression. Any advancing force had to cross the plateau in plain sight. What they didn't reckon on was Tommy's brilliance as a tactician.
He stormed in at the evening high. I wasn't around because I was working on the late shift, but I have it on good authority that he sent spies to infiltrate the fortress and force the main entrance from the inside.
Then he split up his crew and harassed the guards from the windows, keeping them occupied while his main force swarmed in from beneath. They were absolutely gutted.
It was all so fast that he had his entourage pin down the guards and came on the Midera family as they were sleeping.
He tore apart old Hadro Midera in front of everyone, arm by arm, and stuck his head at the front of the rock for everyone to see. By the time Hadro's brothers heard about the news, it was all over but for the screaming. They were rounded up, put in a row and demonstratively killed, one by one, in front of a gobsmacked public. Hadro's daughters were sold off to some foreign reef and his youngsters became fodder for the Hammers.
Utter obliteration. The Midera line was wiped out in one bloody tide.
Tommy took up where the Midera left off, letting the Reef know, in no uncertain terms, that there was a new guy in town and that he meant business. Anyone who disagreed either changed his mind or had his mind changed for him.
That was so long ago, it's practically history. The thing is, Tommy did it all in such a way that the whole economy of the Reef barely felt a ripple.
After that, Tommy Two-Tone did what most guys in his position wouldn't dream of doing. He went legit. He bought up stakes in land, operated an inter-reef courier service and had vast gardens growing anemones and sea-grass.
That doesn't mean he was legit. Didn't I say that it's the impression that matters? It's widely known, but not provable, that he had dealings with illegal darkwater, keelsticks, weapons, prostitution and gambling. Everyone knows it, but who can stand up to a guy that has a bunch of weapon-wielding cuttles along with an army of lawyers on his side?
Anyway, that's the abridged story of the rise of Tommy and the fall of the Midera clan.
After the sand settled, life went on pretty much as usual, only there was a different boss and a different set of goons stomping about the place. That's the Reef. If you keep your head down and stay close to the rocks, you're likely to make it to the next day.
Now you can see why I didn't want to have dealings with following any weed what might have Tommy hanging on the end. I've only ever dealt with him once before, and that ended with me being this close to getting my arms detached and re-inserted into my tube.
Details, nothing major, just learnt my lesson. That's all so don't ask.
Don't get me wrong, now, Borobo Reef ain't a world of crime, only crime is one part of the many intertwining facets of the Reef.
From the surface it looks all colourful and bright, with as many fish as you like, of different shapes and sizes, and flourishing grasses and kelp as far as the eye can see. It has coral of every colour, some smooth, some rough. It's, well, it's built up in layers. You dig through one layer and you'll find another and under that there's another one.
What you've got to learn, if you want to live here, is that you've got a place and that's where you'll stay. If you're a shark, you're a shark. If you're a worm, you're a worm.
If you are an ex-investigator, stung one too many times from under-paying clients, and beaten one too many times from tripping up, then your place is sifting sand for an under-paying boss and trying not to trip up in case you cop a beating – if you catch my drift.
This is me. This is where I live. The Reef is a lot of things to a lot of fellas, but to me, it's home.
I've lived here long enough to know how things work and if something's working, making good clams, guys like Tommy or powerful families like the Medici or the Harrows have an arm's length of suckers in it.
And if they don't, it ain't going to be working for long.
After that reminder of Tommy, I kept away from the outer alleys. While muggings most often happen at night, the crims don't work to any kind of schedule.
The thing about sticking to the main routes is that you're more exposed, more likely to get seen, more likely to have some nosy cuttlefish come and hound you and start yapping at you.
“Oh. Hey, Dewey,” I groaned as he wiggled his fringe to propel himself into my path. “How's tricks?”
“Good! Good! The Gold Pearl is shining, the water is warm, the fish are swimming...”
“Yeah, yeah. Life's a treat. Shouldn't you be working or sleeping or annoying someone else?”
“Sure, but who's got time for that? I've clocked off. So have you it seems.”
“What do you even do?”
He avoided my question, “Wanna grab a drink?”
“No thanks. I think I'd rather just go home and rest.”
“Aw, come on, brother! You can rest when you're dead. Let's get a brewski, eh? Come on. My shout. Eh? Eh?”
“Your shout?” I clarified. “You on a solid wage?”
“My clams are as good as the next spud's. What's all this? You don't care for a freebie?”
Well, I couldn't really pass that up. I decided that I could put up with him in exchange for a pod or two.
The Craw's Claws Inn was close by. I would have preferred somewhere nicer, especially since he was paying, only heading to Robinson's would have meant more Dewey than I could bear. We squeezed our way to an unoccupied rock, somewhere away from the talentless spud hammering out a half-baked tune on an old congalong.
Dewey produced a deck of flints and, with a round between us, we got stuck into a game. I should have had my guard up, but that hyped-up tube of tentacles knew what he was doing.
“Hard day at work?”
“Not really. Practically stopped before I started,” I said. “Half shift is better than nothing. I'll take it.”
He nodded, “Yeah. I hear ya, brother, I hear ya. When the clams are tight, there's no fun in life, right? A spud needs clams. Without clams, there's no life, right? So you thought any more about that offer? Don't tell me you haven't because you have, I know it.”
“Yeah. I have.”
“So what are you still doing here? You're playing flints when you should be playing that gal!” he cried. “You ought to pay a visit to Doc Damshell, brother, because you got rocks in that bulb of yours. The chance of a lifetime comes and visits your rock and you're sitting in a bar with your mitts up your tube, too scared to make a decision.”
“I ain't scared. I've decided. The answer is no.”
He smirked. Oh, man I hated that smirk.
“You ain't decided. If you had, you wouldn't be sitting here. You'd be moping at home.”
“Good idea,” I said, putting my flints down and getting up to leave. “See you round, Dewey.”
“Wait, wait, wait! Sit down! Finish your pod. Finish the round,” he said, ushering me back down. “Clearly you're still mixed up about the whole affair and that's fine, see, I get it. I get it.”
Reluctantly, I sat back down, “You don't get it. You wouldn't be hassling me if you did.”
“I'm hassling you because I can't stand to see someone like you get washed out with the tide like yesterday's buff. The girl needs a snoop and let's face it, you're the most qualified octopus on the Reef.”
“Dewey,” I said, looking at him over my pod of blackwater and tossing out two flints. “You overestimate my abilities.”
“Naw, see, now you're selling yourself cheap. You've got brains in that bulb of yours.”
I said, “If you had any you'd quit with this kind of yap, pal.”
“And you've got experience. Real experience. You can't buy that.”
“The dame seemed to think she could,” I said. “You know how many private detectives there are on the Reef? None. You know why? Because they either got smart or got dead.”
“Is that a fact?” he dropped his flint cautiously, eyeing my reaction. “Which one are you?”
“The latter then the former. I got a second chance,” I said, “and I ain't risking asking for a third!”
“So you got walloped, big deal. You're still alive, ain't ya?”
“Yeah, I am and I'd like to keep it that way, if you don't mind.”
He winked his eye and said, “You're alive, but you ain't really living, are ya?”
Ooh, he kept on driving at me. Why I didn't clock him one there and then I don't know. Actually, I do. I had clams on the table and a decent stack and I couldn't leave the pot without seeing it through – the urchin had talked me into laying down clams!
So, through gritted beak I said, “I'm living just fine. I got a rock. I got enough clams to keep me in the black, so long as I don't listen to you, and I got all my limbs. Draw.”
He drew a single flint. He always flushed when he was on a win. That's why I didn't mind playing Poose with him. His flesh rippled pink and white before settling back down, though I pretended to be looking elsewhere.
“You know, I remember you used to say that so long as you were breathing and had all your mitts, you were in with a chance.”
“That was a long time ago. I'm lucky just to be here. I can appreciate that. Why can't you?”
He said, “Don't kid yourself. I heard the news about the plains. Lay-offs and half-shifts, right?”
“We'll get through it.”
“And your pad. That rock ain't fit to bring a lady, certainly no place for eggs.”
I nearly dropped my hand, “Eggs? Who said anything about kids?”
“Don't you want a family? Don't you want little squirts swimming about carrying on your name?”
“What's to carry? My name is Mud.”
“Feeling sorry for yourself ain't gonna change nothing. Ted, pal, come on. Open up your eyes! You're a smart guy. You can't go sifting sand rest of your life.”
“Suits me fine.”
He dropped half a clam on the table. I dropped my flints.
“I fold.”
“And there you go,” he said, taking the pot. “You've been bitten and now you won't take a risk to get what you want.”
“What did you have?” I asked.
“Does it matter?” he said, “You wouldn't have played against it anyway.”
“You bluffed!”
“Nothing in the rules against it.”
“You're a swindler!”
“I took a chance, Ted. That's all I did,” he said, waving his tentacles easily, “I took a chance and it paid off.”
I threw back the rest of my blackwater, “I'm through with taking chances. It only gets me beat.”
“Look around you. Is this what you want? Go on, look!”
I turned and obliged, taking in my surrounds. The Craw's Claws was a dive in every sense of the word. The lowest joint on the Reef before the dropoff, it was dark, it was dirty. Crap flows downhill and Arjay Masserbeak, the disgruntled keep, ran the catch-all, a last chance for anything that might roll off into the Abyss.
Hey, he didn't mind if they did, so long as they left their clams on his bar first.
There was the usual talent, parked on a bench, offering up her voice for a bit of shell, and then you had the usual drunks offering her a bit of shell for something more than her voice.
Every face was a case of tired loneliness. You could spend your day in here watching them, listening to their tale, but what's the point? It would all be the same in the end. Each story may have had its own start, the ending was the same.
And that ending was a few lengths that-a-way, into the ever-patient Abyss.
Dewey lowered his voice, “You're better than this, Ted. You ain't a washout. Not yet.”
I slapped a quarter shell on the bar and nodded to Arjay. His mitt shot out and grabbed it, even though he wasn't looking at me, and two more pods of blackwater appeared in its place.
“I'm done, alright?” I said. “Leave off.”
I ruminated over my pod, ignoring the new stack of flints Dewey had dealt. He ignored me back and pretended to be interested in the burbling song emanating from the back.
I couldn't help but sneak another peek around me. He was right. I wasn't a washout. I was still young. My hearts were still beating. My noggin was a good one.
“I can't just up and go,” I said.
“I know! I know!” he turned to me. “That's why you need this job! If you pull it off, you can move to the Lee, set yourself up on a nice pad, raise a family.”
“Why don't you take the job?”
“I don't got the smarts. Not like you.”
“You mean I'm a patsy.”
“Look, I'm not going to stroke your ego no more. Just take the damn job!”
“If I don't pull it off, I could wind up getting cut to pieces and scattered over the edge of the dropoff to feed the Hammers.”
“Look outside, brother. You're only a jet away from Abyss and you're edging closer and closer every day.”
I did as he suggested, looking out the crevice. Out there the water was black, and it got blacker the further down you went. I had never been further than a few feet in my whole life. Not consciously. There's nothing living down there.
Nothing good, anyway.
Every now and then you hear stories of the demons of the deep, tales to scare young polyps, but when you look down at the Abyss, and it looks back at you, you know that all tales have an origin.
Dewey pressed me, “Come on, brother! I know you think that Tommy might be behind it but look at it this way, it may have nothing at all to do with Tommy. It could be any number of underworld shmucks.”
“That's a relief.”
“She said the guy's missing, OK. Missing ain't dead. Missing ain't murdered. You don't know. Do you? Eh? Listen, take the case and if it gets too hot, drop it.”
“Can't. If I take a case, I see it through,” I drained my pod and swam to the exit. “Let me think about it.”
“Naw.”
“What?”
“Don't think. That'll only get you into trouble,” he said, looking the most serious that I have ever seen him. “Throw yourself into it and see where you end up. Hey, you could do worse.”
“Yeah. I could be stuck in a brownbuff bar listening to the inane prattle of a broad-beaked Sepiant.”