Johnny Jigsup was a conman, a swindler. A young guy, age 21. Poor. Lived in the slums and was last seen in the slums. A real piece of work, this guy. And by piece of work, I mean he was a piece of shit. Probably.

We headed back over to the slums to ask around. This punk was worth five grand, so I really wanted to put in the legwork. Once we got to the corner of the city, back toward the black market, we found the shacks and shanties of the poor people.

Homes build of rusty sheet metal of different shapes and color, others built with whatever rubbish they could find. Bricks, concrete slabs, even clay. The lack of space shoved the houses together, and they even appeared to be squished, taking on shapes that houses never had any right to try to take.

Luckily, there were plenty of narrow little alleys for us to trudge through. Short enough that we had to duck under the clotheslines filled with rags, sometimes bumping our heads on windchimes and doorframes, and just wide enough for dirty children to sprint through under the legs of passerby--like Vil and me.

The first few random people, of course, had never heard of the guy. We needed to penetrate deeper into the urban jungle of the slums. When we got deeper, no longer using paths or walkways--there weren't any--we now walked through people's homes as it seemed to be what the people just did around here.

We passed through an old lady's living room. She had a couch made of dirt and an old mattress, and she cooked in what--I guess--was her kitchen. Really just a corner in the room. Vil asked her if she had ever heard of the guy.

She said he was "a nice young man, a swindler, and that's where he got his name. The Jig-is-Up Johnny. Johnny Jigsup." She didn't know anything else. Nothing we could use. But at least we were getting close.

The next person we talked to was an older guy. Stern face, permanent pissed-off expression. "He was an orphan child," the older guy said. "Always getting into trouble. No parents. The slums were his parents. His mom and dad. Or his dad and dad. Depends on how gay you see the slums."

"Are the slums gay?" I asked.

"Nah," he said back. "Not really. Hard to pin down the semantics of it, honestly. Besides that, he's a good kid. Got a good heart, that one. Wanted to be an adventurer, but couldn't afford it." He shook his head. "Slums really eats up the good ones. Maybe it really was both his fathers."

The older guy then went on a tangent about some strange allegory between urban socio-economic environments and--somehow--sexuality, but Vil and I escaped before it turned into an argument.

We continued on, finding more and more people who had known Johnny. Most had good things to say.

"He takes care of the elderly."

"He brought clothes for the orphans."

"Stole medicine for a sick single father."

Very rarely, someone had something bad to say.

"Stole my panties," one said.

"And my bra," said the next (in the same room).

"Never came back."

"A hit and run kind of guy."

"A liar and a cheat."

"Too confident."

"Too shy."

"Too hairy.

"Not enough hair."

And that was enough. Most of these were young women, so we got the point. Also, I should mention it was a brothel. Didn't realize it until we had passed through most of it on our walk out, and I started to ask why there were just so many... you know... brothel-type activities going on.

Although addresses were apparently not a thing in the slums, the people here knew only just enough about Johnny that, with enough asking, we could triangulate his home well enough to search for it. And so we did. And we found it, but we didn't find Johnny. We found the next best thing.

His girlfriend.

"What do you want?" she demanded from the cracked-open door.

We stood just outside. "Johnny," said Vil.

Her eyes were red and swollen. Her hair was a mess. I could tell she was pretty, roughly his age, and had an air of sweet innocence about her. Her eyes, though. I recognized something in them. But what?

"I'm sorry," she said. "Johnny isn't here. He hasn't been home in days."

"Did something happen?" Vil asked.

She shook her head and tried to shut the door.

Vil blocked it with his foot. "We need to make sure Johnny is okay," he said. A lie, of course, since our entire purpose was to kidnap him and bring him to the church so that he could be burned for heresy, but telling her that wouldn't really get us anywhere.

"Why do you need him?" she asked. "Who are you working for?"

Vil glanced back at me, then back to her. "I owe him money. I made a bad gamble, and I need to settle my debt with him."

She narrowed her eyes. "You owe him money? Not the other way around?"

Vil sighed. "I got 200 gold with his name on it."

She dropped her eyes to the floor, then after a moment, opened the door.

It was a studio apartment. A shredded carpet, a couch that looked stolen and re-stolen at least three times, and a twin-sized bed.

Johnny wasn't home.

Vil said, "Did he owe a lot of people money?"

She nodded. "He did. He's a great guy, he really is, but you know he's terrible with money."

With her now in full view, I could tell she was short, petite, and she had a taste for floral sleeveless dresses. A classy outfit, if a bit stained here and there. Her eyes told me she deserved better.

"Where do you think he could be?" Vil asked. "I can't settle my debts unless I find him."

She looked away and toward the window. The blinds were in pieces, but ample sunlight poured in. The windows were too smudged to see outside, but it diffused the light just enough to make the place glow. She looked outside as she spoke. "He told me he wanted to do one last job. If he did it right, he could make enough money that we'd leave this place." She smiled--a beautiful smile--but she was tearing up. "We'd run away together, out West where the water is warm. Just this one last job..."

I felt an ache hearing that story. This poor, stupid, naive girl fell for the wrong guy. He might not have been as bad as I thought, but he was still a swindling conman.

"What was the job?" Vil asked.

She chuckled darkly and looked back at Vil. "It was the mob this time. At least, I think so. They wanted him to swindle a foreigner. He didn't tell me exactly, but that's the gist of it, I think."

"No other ideas where he is?" Vil asked.

She shook her head. "I've been searching ever since the first night he didn't come back home. He wasn't taken by the police, and not even the people he owes money to knows where he is. They're hunting him just as I am. Just as you are."

"Do you have a picture of him? Maybe a sketch or a painting?"

She pulled a stack of cards out of her pocket, peeled off the first one, and handed it over. "It's the best one I have of him." It was a police sketch of a charismatic young man with short, spikey hair and a five-thousand-gold smile. There was a scar over his nose and left cheek, and he had these vivid blue eyes that seemed to glow at you.

Vil looked it over with a vague interest.

"If you find him," she said with her hands on her heart as if to calm it, "please bring him back to me."

Vil stowed the picture in his pocket. "We'll do what we can."