The rest was a rout. Thanks to Gus, we managed to round up the eels and attack them individually, ending their stay on the Reef permanently. Weren't no room for eels, trained or otherwise.
Tommy Two-Tone didn't make it. It was said that when the eels got into the fortress, he was right up there at the front, stabbing and thrusting. Depending on who you ask, he killed seven of them before the eighth got to him.
Don't know about that. They only found one dead eel inside the fortress among the mangled bodies, but who's going to let the facts get in the way of a good story, eh?
As for Ferdinand, he suffered pretty much the same fate. I don't know how many eels he brought down before he was killed, but I know he didn't go down without a fight.
We found Sassam's guys easy enough. Without the brains behind their outfit, they were like seaweed, drifting about aimlessly, burying themselves in sand or tucking into corners. Officer Barnes got to make a few arrests and I was allowed to do an interrogation, so long as I didn't make too much of a mess.
Wouldn't you know it? My candidate was none other than that Unome.
When I had him sitting comfortable, I said, “I don't like you, and you don't like me, but I'm not here to make friends. I have one question that I need answering and you're going to answer it. Where is Belvedere Medici?”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Sure you do. Belvedere Medici. Your boss kidnapped him. Remember? You escorted us from that dungeon to be eaten by eels?”
“Ah, yes. That does ring a bell. How is your arm, by the way?”
The Unome sat with a satisfied smirk on his face.
“Bill, please wipe the smirk of his face.”
Bill obliged. He had a big, proud grin on his face. He was getting the hang of being a big spud.
He obliged again and again.
“OK. Hey, hey! Relax big guy. We need to give him a chance to cooperate.”
“Oh, right! Hey, you! Co'prate!” Bill said, wiping the blood off his mitts.
The Unome grumbled, “This ain't justice. When my lawyer hears of this...”
Bill began obliging again.
By the time he finished, I could practically see the silvers swimming around his head.
“OK. Now, before you're completely senseless, let me tell it to you straight. There were a lot of people hurt that day. A lot of people went missing. One more won't be looked on as anything strange and your lawyer won't give two hoots whether you're here or not. I think he's got enough clients to keep him in clams for a good while yet.”
“Ugh...”
“Uh-huh. You're hurting. Bill can make you hurt more if you don't come clean. Tell us where Belvedere is and he doesn't rip your arms off,” I said, moving to my reasonable-spud voice. “Come on, it's over. Sassam's gone. The gang is locked up.”
He remained silent. Bill was about to have another go, but I held up my mitt. I leaned in.
“You tell me where he is, I won't point you out as the guy who chopped up the punters.”
That got his limited attention, “You... ain't got... proof.”
“The families of those spuds you killed won't need proof, bud. And good luck getting them to listen to your lawyer.”
The Unome blinked to clear his dark, swollen eyes and said, “He's in... the dungeon.”
“Now we're getting somewhere. Where is it?”
“Under... Plyssus Rock. There's... a...”
“Yes?”
“A door. Under the... three crosses. Tunnel. Stick to... the left.”
“Well there you go, hot off the press. OK, Bill, hand him back to Barnes for the legal stuff,” I said, remembering suddenly. “Oh, hey, before you go, what is your name?”
But it was too late. He'd passed out in Bill's arms.
“Sorry, boss. I guess I hit him too hard. Like in that time when Cap'n Bartram dropped a rock on Gomer the Great, and he had to find some mash to make him wake up, only the mash was in the cave of the evil Turtle...”
“Yeah, yeah. Not your fault, Bill. Some guys just can't take a beating. Look, we'd better move. If Belvedere is caught up in that dungeon, who knows how long he's been down there for,” I said, waving at Barnes. “Hey, you want to get your face in front of the reporters as the spud who found Belvedere?”
I filled him in and the three of us, plus another guy, Russell, from the squad, headed over to Plyssus Rock. It's a little ways out of town, in the general direction of Lost, across a rocky crop of undersized mussels and spindly strangleweed.
The rock itself ain't anything spectacular, just the most obvious landmark in the area.
“Here it is!” Barnes called after some searching. “That's got to be it.”
The coral had been scrubbed in spots to reveal the substrate, marking out three rough crosses. Underneath, behind a sheet of drape-kelp, was a large tunnel.
I said, “Who wants to go first?”
Bill, by now getting used to the idea of bravery, led the way down into the tunnel. The darker spots were lit by pods of that glowing green algae. As that Unome had instructed, we stuck to the left and soon we came out into an atrium.
“Keep your eyes peeled. We don't know if this place is trapped, or if any of his guys are still here,” I whispered. “Just go slow.”
“Hey, I'm the officer here!”
“And I'm the detective,” I said. “When it comes to making an arrest, it's your show. Until then, follow my lead. Go slow!”
“What about Belvedere?” Barnes said. “What if he's suffering?”
“Then he'll have to wait a little more, stop... stop!”
I hushed them. Something had made a noise further on. A clatter of something hard on something equally as hard. I skulked, albeit awkwardly due to my missing arm, out from the tunnel and into the atrium proper.
Deeper in, I could hear murmuring, like someone talking in a low voice. Skulking further, I made out what was being said.
“... in the interest of the family. I have always done so. You, on the other hand, have only ever done what is right for you!”
I knew that voice. I waved to the others to come forward and they did so, and together we crept up and hid behind a low wall. Keeping in the shadows, we popped our eyes over and watched as Coraline Medici, that gorgeous dame herself, perched over the dungeon floor.
Barnes was about to call out, but I stopped him. I tapped my noggin and pointed with my mitt, beckoning them to listen.
“You are a selfish one, Belvedere. You always have been. The only thing you see is you and the only person you care about is you.”
“That's not true,” coughed Belvedere from underneath the floor. “That's not true.”
“No? Really? Please, tell me, when the stocks fell during the cold snap, who was it that was holidaying in Cramosa while I was holding the place together? And when we had raiders harassing the farms, who was it that paid them off rather than send in some muscle?”
“That worked.”
“Paying off raiders doesn't work! It placates them until the next time, when they will come back for double with twice the men!”
“At least I did something.”
“You don't do anything but burn our fortune. My fortune!”
“Dad left it to me!”
She slammed the floor with a stinger barb, “This antiquated ideal that men must inherit their father's fortune is insane. The Medici empire is alive for one reason and one reason only, and that reason is me! I am smarter than you. I have more business sense than you. I command more respect and make better decisions than you.”
“For yourself, of course.”
“Yes, I do it for me and for my empire.”
“My empire!”
“Not for long!” she said. “You blithering idiot. You have no idea how many times you have slipped through my plans. If it wasn't for that little whore, you'd be dead, Ferdinand would be alive and none of this would have happened!”
“What... what whore?”
“Don't play dumb. That useless scrag was supposed to have you paralysed!”
Belvedere's voice sounded more than angry, “What... you! You murdered her?”
“Ha ha ha, don't be silly. I wouldn't stoop so low to get a whore's blood on my suckers. I had Ferdinand do it,” she snarled, gloating at her own evilness. “Oh, don't look at me like that. It was a matter of necessity, something you know nothing about. She was about to spill the whole thing to that idiot detective...”
Idiot. How do you like that?
“... even after I paid her more than what her life was even worth.”
“You're a monster.”
“A monster? No! See, that's the difference between you and me, Belvedere. I'm prudent. I do what has to be done, when it has to be done. You? You're an oaf. A do-little oaf who has let our dynasty rot!” she said. “And so, I shall let you rot.”
“You can't. Let me out of here!” he said.
“You are in no position to make demands.”
“Don't just leave me in here.”
“Oh, I won't. I only need you to be gone for another set of tides, and then you will be officially missing. By then you will have starved to death, of course...”
He cried, “You can't!”
“... Unless you want to make it easier on me. The detective, you see, he gave me an excellent idea to speed things up. All I need is to have you die by misadventure. A venture in open-water would be easy enough...”
“Please!”
“... but I'd need to take your arm, the one with the tattoo, as a souvenir. We need something for the lawyers, you know.”
“Stop it, stop it! Coraline, we're family!”
She shook her bulb, “We stopped being family when you usurped what was rightfully mine. I was heir! I was running the business while you were still bouncing around inside an egg!”
“I couldn't help being born!”
“But you can help who you are. You can help what you do. And what do you do, Belvedere? You loaf and you whore and chew keelsticks. You are a parasite!”
“No,” he sobbed. “Give me a chance.”
“You've had your chances, Belvedere. You blew them all.”
“I'll do anything. Please! Please!”
“Will you sign over your control of all assets?” she asked. “And banish yourself off the Reef, never to return?”
Would you believe it? That idiot actually hesitated! There's something to be said about a rich guy and his value of money over his own life.
Anyway, that was all the justification she needed.
“I knew it!”
“Wait! Yes, I will!”
“I am tired of waiting. I already told you that I do what has to be done, when it has to be done. That has been your problem from the start. You don't know how to make a decision.”
She clasped her mitts and spoke clearly, “Let me show you how to make a decision. First, you assess the situation as you see it. Next, you define what outcome needs to occur. Then, after you gather all immediately available information, you think of how to use that information to arrive at the outcome.”
She adjusted her grip on the barb. Even in the dim, green glow of the algae pods, her eyes were dark, darker than the Abyss. There was nothing behind them, no emotion, no feeling, only calm, dedicated revenge.
“Having weighed up the options, this is the clear solution. Clearly I was a fool to trust anyone but myself, and for that I am sorry. Never mind, though, this will make up for it.”
“You don't have to do this, Coraline. We can work together.”
“History says we can't.”
“If you had just talked to me...”
“Talk? Talk? I don't know how many times you countermanded my orders! You went to Tommy Two-Tone, of all the low-lives to trust, and agreed to bootleg darkwater,” she cried. “That was the last fleck, Belvedere, that's what drove me to have you killed! Remember, as you wallow in the Abyss for eternity, you did this to yourself!”
“I'll sign power over to you, I promise! I'll exile myself. I'll make something up... er, I'll say that I was caught up in, er...”
“Enough talk, Belvedere. Despite what you think, I am not a monster. I am merciful. I will grant you what you don't deserve, a swift death.”
She raised the pike, eyeing him through the holes.
“I'll sign! I'll sign!”
I could hear him thumping and bumping about under the flooring, frantically searching for a way out.
“I'll sign, please let me sign!”
“No need,” she said. “I shall have enough for the lawyers. I will scrub your portrait from the wall. You'll be nothing more than a blemish in our history, Belvedere, because that's all you ever were.”
That was all Barnes needed as motivation.
Up and over the wall he zoomed, quick as a flash! He knocked the shaft as she thrust it down and the pike clattered uselessly on the floor. She screamed blue murder, vowing by all the pearls in the ocean to have her revenge. She cussed and cried and howled like a stuck squid.
It was no use. She was caught and, not only that, she had made a full confession in front of several witnesses, two of whom were sworn police officers.
“There you go, Barnes,” I said. “You wanted an arrest, you got a big one. Murder of Wyra. Conspiracy to Murder D'Arouge. Would've been Fratricide if you were any slower, and you get to save Belvedere Medici to boot.”
“Naw, that's all you, pal,” he said, wrestling at Coraline's arms. “Please stop struggling, Ma'am, or I'll have to add Resisting Arrest to the list of charges.”
“You've got nothing! It's all hearsay! My lawyers will eat you alive!” she screamed. “I am Coraline Medici! You don't know who you're messing with! I'll have your badge! I'll have your eyes!”
“Add Threatening an Officer of the Law to the list. Going to be one heck of a write up. Now come on, move.”
“Help me out here, Bill,” I said.
Together we found the release to the prison and pulled Belvedere out. He looked as bad as I did that day I emerged from the Abyss. Starved and tortured, Sassam had worked Belvedere over to the point of insanity.
He gibbered and talked nonsense for a while after, until we got a solid pod of blackwater into him and a hasty meal of cockles. Not much, I know, but better than starvation.
“How're you feeling now?” I asked.
“I – I don't know how I feel.”
“Well you're probably going to need to give a statement to the police, you know, sooner rather than later. That's how they like it.”
“Thanks, Tedrick. Thanks for everything you've done.”
“Ah, don't mention it,” I said. “On second thoughts, do mention it. I could use the publicity.”
I spent the night and the next day recuperating in my hole. My stump had stopped its annoying spontaneous bleeding, although it was still sore as heck, and I applied ointment to my cuts, welts, bruises, abrasions, scrapes, knocks and bumps.
Doc gave up giving me lectures and settled down to acknowledge the fact that I was still alive and that I was going to continue my career as a private investigator.
Belvedere hooked me up with some of his personal attendants, real professionals, and they prescribed a whole bunch of medications and therapies but for the most part I spent the time alone.
That suited me just fine.
After all the excitement and eels and rough-nuts, a little downtime was what I needed. I checked in on Bill after that, asked him what he made of it all and if he was still up for being a private-eye's assist-kick.
It took him all of a blink to make up his mind.
I can still remember his exact words, “Oh, you betcha! A real-life good guy assist-kick! Say, what about Reg?”
And you know what? Reg, without a gang to lead him astray, signed up with me, too. Him and Bill work together like a sonomore and a congalong and I'm proud of them both.
Barnes did get that promotion. After all, it's not every day you can say you were instrumental in securing the life of the richest spud in town. That, and a little persuasion from Belvedere saw him off the beat and into the role of Captain.
Coraline was tried. Despite all the evidence against her, including testimony from Barnes, Russell, Bill, Belvedere and yours truly, and an audit on her accounts indicating payments made to persons unknown – Wyra and Dewey would be among them – her lawyers gave her her money's worth.
That's not much of a restitution for Wyra, I know, but what else could I do? I'm no lawyer. Besides, I don't think it really matters. Not because Wyra is dead, but because, wherever she is she knows that I kept my promise I made to her on Meemberk Ridge.
I guess what she'd want is for someone to give a damn. The technicalities and details weren't important.
With Ferdinand dead, it was easy to pin the murders on him as a wayward, rogue underling. He wasn't there to say anything to the contrary, was he?
The major charges were downgraded from Murder to Conspiracy to Murder, and a host of minor offences, which saved her skin from the chopping block. Instead she got an undisclosed period in the slammer – which means that her lawyers are going to appeal.
Ah, that's the judicial system hard at work.
It wouldn't do, anyway, to have a Medici killed. Not over a lowly prostitute or an exotic cuttle. Belvedere accepted the reduced charges without question. He had a duty to Pierce, and to Wyra for that matter, but blood is thicker than water.
Speaking of Belvedere, you know what? It turned out that getting roughed up and slammed in a dungeon for tides was the best thing to happen to him. Being so close to death, that was a wake-up call for him. I'd never seen a spud so motivated. Insanity will do that.
When he returned to his tower, he rooted out all the conspirators and demoted them or fired them and replaced their numbers with fresh, willing workers from the sand-plains.
He set up regular patrols around his territories and discovered a shell-full of shonky dealings that had gone on unnoticed. In a bid to ease tensions between Sepiants and Pusses, he even offered jobs to the remnants of Tommy's crew, tending the gardens and anemones. Not sure how they feel about that, working for an octopus, but that's up to them and they're taking the clams so it must be working out.
The next few tides saw the effect of knocking out the top monkeys. There was a power vacuum reaching right across Borobo. Though the Medici empire was solidifying, the lower portions of the Reef were affected. Not that anyone would say so, but you could feel it, a palpable tension as you swam about.
Tommy's fortress was occupied by the scant remains of his guys, only they were temporary hosts until another heavy decided to move in. Reports were that guys over there were disappearing at an alarming rate.
Sassam's hold on the racecourse was blown wide open and there was a mad scramble for power. He'd left a void, a big one if you'll pardon the pun, and none of the lowly bookies were individually big enough to fill it. A collective was established between three of the major guys and that seems to have plugged that hole.
With all the strife and unrest, news spread that there was money and guys up for the fastest talkers and the hardest hitters and Captain Barnes had his mitts full just keeping up with the daily squabbles and street battles between sparring gangs.
I kept my feelers out during, you know, just to get at the politics of it all. There were rivals joining forces to beat bigger clans, underhanded plots involving land grabs and heists, murders, kidnappings, muggings, extortion, you name it.
All of it low level, of course, scattered throughout with no discernible aim. That's what happens when you take the head off a squid – the arms get their own ideas.
Some might say that the Reef was back to normal, normal being before Tommy Two-Tone's days. I don't agree.
The kidnapping and muggings will continue until the gangs fuse together, or wipe each other out, or fight until one comes out on top like Tommy did. That's how it works.
That's Borobo Reef.
News spread about me, too. What with all the spuds disappearing and getting murdered and what have you, I was up to the top of my bulb in cases. Guess I made a whole lot more work, enough to keep Bill, Reg and me run ragged for tides to come.
Me? Still got my mitts. Most of them, anyway. I'm still breathing and, heck, while I'm still breathing, I ain't licked.
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