Ch. 38 – It Was You?!

Peering through the peephole, Derrick saw a somewhat familiar skinny man with a shaved head was standing at the door and scratching his arm.

Xavier . . . ah, right. Xavier Williams, the guy with the dick mod, whose ability to maintain an erection and climax had been stolen by a cybercriminal. Yesterday seemed like an eternity ago after all Derrick and Tony had been through, but this chump was probably still worried about his prosthetic stiffies. The problem was, Xavier didn’t have any money, that’s why he had left Hack Alley with his mod still broken in the first place.

“Can I help you?” Derrick shouted through the door, still keeping it closed.

“Uh, yeah. Can we talk inside?” Xavier said, glancing from side to side at either end of the alley.

“Mr. Williams, right?” Derrick said. “You came in previously to have us look at your, uh, sensitive mod situation, right?”

Xavier shushed, much too loudly, and nodded his head.

“Do you have the payment we quoted you for?” Derrick asked.

“Hell yeah I do.” A grin spread across Xavier’s face.

Derrick sighed, both relieved that he’d be bringing some money in, and resigned to dealing with an annoying customer again. “Hold on a second, please.”

He put the bag full of Tony’s bling back into Tony’s room, and locked the door. There would be time to pawn the bling off later; and if everything went well with Xavier’s job, maybe Derrick could save a few pieces from the pawnshop.

“Alright then, come on in.” He unlocked the door, and Xavier stepped inside. “So, did you end up going to Revolute Prosthetics’ shop to get your mod checked out?”

“Yeah, I did. And I had to run the fuck outta there since their security was gonna choke me out! They kept saying I wasn’t the original owner, and they were gonna call the cops on me. They’re some crazy motherfuckers.”

“Well, that’s not a big surprise I guess.” Mod manufacturers like Revolute often hired security personnel who acted like quasi-police inside the domain of their shops. They couldn’t service stolen mods without getting into trouble with the police, but they also didn’t want to have the police parading around their shops all the time, or their VIP customers, who valued discretion, would feel uncomfortable. “And have you still been having issues with your mod?”

“Damn, man. Would I be here if I wasn’t having issues?”

“Okay, just wanted to make sure,” Derrick said. “Well, then. Would you like to go forward with the investigation to find out who’s using your account to control your mod?”

Xavier narrowed his eyes, and tugged at his wifebeater. “Let’s get him. I need to get back to my life, and I’m sick of having to deal with this”—he gestured at his pants—“all the damn time. I want my life back!”

‘So do I,’ Derrick thought. “Okay, that’s great. I’ll take your payment of five hundred dollars now, which will cover the investigation expenses and consultation fee, and we can go ahead and get started. Keep in mind, depending on what we find from the investigation, there might be additional charges moving forward.” The money was just more than enough to hire a hacker for the preliminary reconnaissance, leaving little profit for Hack Alley—maybe Derrick should’ve quoted Xavier a higher price.

But. There was one hacker who would give Derrick a much cheaper rate, and still get the job done. The only problem was, she preferred to meet in dangerous places, and Derrick had just barely escaped with his life not long ago. Derrick dry-swallowed at the thought of it. Maybe a different hacker would be willing to give a discount . . .

Xavier pulled a wad of cash from his pants pocket, and fanned it out in front of Derrick. A heap of worn twenty dollar bills, some ones, fives, and a few pristine benjamins. “Where’d you get those from?” Derrick asked, frowning. The bills looked a little too new, and most people in their right mind wouldn’t take one hundred dollar bills for payment in the first place, due to the higher chance of getting scammed with counterfeits.

Xavier looked around, and leaned in, breathing his stale and alcohol-tinged breath into Derrick’s face. “They’re real. Stole this cash from the Hermanos, and they were going to use it to pay for something too.”

Stole it from the Hermanos? During this whole gang war? “How’d you manage to do that? They should’ve shot your face off the moment you looked at them funny.”

Xavier winced a bit at Derrick’s insistence, which bordered on shouting, but shook his head. “No, man. This was before all that shit went down. They didn’t see me coming, I just snuck through their warehouse. Shit, if I ain’t wrong, I might’ve even started the whole thing.”

“What do you mean by ‘started the whole thing’ . . . ?” Derrick asked

“I stole some shit from them—way more cash than this, and other shit too—and they thought it was the White Leopards who did it. I heard them talking about it the day after.”

“You . . . You!” Derrick clenched his fist and grit his teeth. This little fucker caused the big shootout between the gangs? “Do you have any idea what happened after they started fighting?”

“Yeah,” Xavier said, the whites of his eyes growing bigger. “I heard the gunshots all through the night. I woke up the next morning with like, three hours of sleep, it was so loud.”

Derrick paced back and forth in the shop, and each glimpse of Xavier in the corner of his eye made him angrier. “And what do you think happens when there’s all those gunshots? People get hurt! Did you ever think of that?”

“. . . People get hurt every day, man,” Xavier shrunk back and shrugged his shoulders. “What’s the big deal?”

“Yeah, but people probably got hurt more than usual! And then the White Leopards make that into everyone’s problem!” Derrick said.

Xavier looked to either side and backed up, and Derrick realized he had been looming over the smaller man. He took a few steps back, and then eased himself down onto a chair at the work bench. The spinning in his head, and the buzzing in his nose, weakened with each breath. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long few days for me. Please give me a moment, and I’ll be right with you.” He gestured at the other small chair across the shop. “Go ahead and have a seat there if you’d like.”

So the Chinatown wide gang-fight was started by a small-time crook stealing five hundred dollars? The very idea was savage and ludicrous, but it fit this town all too well.

Derrick closed his eyes, and breathed deep, only to grit his teeth as Xavier started fidgeting in the chair, the squeaking of which pierced Derrick’s eardrums. “Okay, never mind. I’m ready; let’s get started.” Derrick could sleep through Tony’s antics, but there was no way to ignore a noisy customer who was acting all restless in the shop. There would be time for reprieve after he worked on Xavier’s case.

“I’ll take your payment now,” Derrick said.

Xavier held the cash out, and then pulled it back and paused. “You’re really gonna fix my shit, right?”

“I’ll try my absolute best, but no promises. This payment is to cover some up front costs that are crucial to the investigation.”

“Fuck, man. You better give me more than that,” Xavier said, but he handed the cash over regardless.

Derrick pocketed the money, and had Xavier use the restroom while he put it away.

He sat in front of the shop’s laptop, and opened the spreadsheet file with the shop’s list of contacts. Suppliers . . . clients . . . hackers. Derrick was looking for a hacker: preferably one who had boots on the ground in New Shore City, and who would be willing to give a discount on their services.

If there wasn’t another hacker like that . . . well, Derrick could always ask Maxine.

#

Derrick glanced at the opposing lanes; the road was clear behind him. Seizing the lull in traffic, he turned left, taking the shop’s car off the asphalt and onto the gravel road leading down to the seawall. He would’ve taken a bus, to avoid taking the car off-road and wasting gas, but there was no bus stop along the long stretch of highway that ran parallel to the seawall.

Xavier grunted as the car bumped up and down on the rough path, its suspension complaining the whole way.

The seawall was tall and thick. Some other cities had built boardwalks on their seawalls, or otherwise blended them in with the city more naturally, but New Shore City’s seawall was just a wall—covered in the characteristic Old New York City scaffolding. Its construction was an emergency, after all, and everyone was just relieved it had been built at all. Having it double as a boardwalk would’ve been a luxury.

Derrick pulled up on a patch of mud and grass, next to the bright red sign that read: “WARNING, BURIED POWER LINES.” He had no idea where they were, but luckily, they wouldn’t need to tunnel under the wall. He almost slipped back as he opened the door and stepped out in the mud, but caught himself on the seat of the car.

“Follow me, please,” Derrick said, gesturing toward the small path, covered in weeds, that led to the ‘Chunk.’

The followed the path down, the sounds of traffic muffled behind the vegetation, and ended up at a ladder, which was bolted into the wall.

“Oh, hell, you telling me we have to climb that thing?” Xavier asked, mouth agape.

“We’re going to climb the ladder, and then go down the other side to get on a boat. Don’t worry, it’ll be safe. The waves don’t get too rough here.”

“What do you mean, it’ll be safe! It’s not safe out there! Do you know the crazy motherfuckers that go diving into the old city? Leopards, Hermanos, Dixies: none of them go onto the water city unless they gotta.”

Derrick nodded. The salvagers and smugglers had free reign past the seawall, living and working in shanty towns built among the ruins of Old New York City. The criminals were left mostly unbothered by the New Shore City police, because who wanted to police a swath of flooded ruins? Especially when a submerged steel rod, or chunk of concrete, could penetrate your boat and sink the whole crew.

“I know. But the girl we need is one of those crazy motherfuckers.” She would also save Hack Alley a good bit of money: maybe enough to save a few pieces of bling from the pawnshop, or at least catch up on rent payments.

They went up the ladder, and the ‘Chunk’ came into view. It was a chunk of a large office building, which had been blown over to the seawall during one of the smaller storms that followed the disastrous one which had probably torn it off the building in the first place. The wind whipped at his hair, as the two of them crossed the length of the thick wall.

Reaching the wall’s edge, Derrick braced himself as he looked dozens of feet down, where the tide lapped at the bottom of another ladder on the outside of the seawall, which led down into the water, presumably to help with inspecting and maintaining the seawall. It was just as useful for fastening Derrick’s canoe to, which was also hidden from sight, and shielded from the worst of the waves, by the ‘Chunk.’

“Come on, let’s go,” Derrick said, gripping the railing of the ladder with both hands, as he turned around and tested his weight on the first few rungs. Good, still sturdy.

“Goddamn, are you sure we have to do this?”

“Yes,” Derrick lied. He could’ve picked another hacker and taken less profit, but Hack Alley didn’t have the luxury to slowly build up their earnings anymore.

Xavier groaned, but also gripped the ladder, and descended after Derrick.

As his pants grew damp with sea spray, Derrick hung off one side of the ladder, and held the canoe down with his legs. “Alright, go ahead and get in,” he said loudly to Xavier, over the sound of the wind.”

Once they were both in, Derrick unclipped the canoe from the ladder, and got his paddle out.

“Man, my pants are soaked,” Xavier complained, rocking the boat as he got on.

Derrick pulled the boat as close to the ladder as possibly with his legs, and then hopped in himself. His pants were also soaked at that point, and the wind chilled him to the core.

Timing their exit with the waves, he paddled them out from behind the ‘Chunk,’ and the sunken skyline emerged. Towers, parking complexes, the rusted remains of cars: they were all sitting in the water, glistening in the sunlight.

“Let’s go,” Derrick said. “She’s somewhere in the old city.”