Interview with Chiaroscuro Gray
Takes Place Before the Events of Case 327
Takes Place Before the Events of Case 327
ARE YOU A MORNING PERSON OR MORE OF A NIGHT OWL?
They say it’s always night in Atramentum, even when it’s morning. But I haven’t seen enough mornings to be sure, or at least not sober. Most nights I need answers more than I need sleep, and consequentially most mornings I need sleep almost more than I need to make rent - but I do need to make rent, so I settle for coffee. WHAT'S THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT A PERSON WHEN YOU MEET THEM?
There’s a lot of things to notice if you want to get a half-rate report down later on, but luckily most of the important ones are easy enough to spot from the other side of the rooftops: Charlie or dame, goon or flatfoot, up in the market or down on their luck. Alla that being said, if you wanna keep making it to the next lighter-grey sky, you pretty quick learn to make the first thing you hone in on whether or not they’re packing heat, and whether they look like they came here to settle a score. The kind of people I meet, it’s usually at least one of the two. YOU SEE A HUGE SPIDER IN YOUR ROOM, WHAT DO YOU DO?
Wouldn’t be the first huge creature waiting for me where they think I’ll have my guard down, and even on a hot streak I wouldn’t be dumb enough to bet a wooden nickle that it’d be the last. Only difference is I expect I don’t have to get rough-and-tumble with the spider, and hell, I know as well as the next Charlie how hard it is to make rent around here. I ain’t a Jack to throw a no-harm little fella out on his lug just for showin’ a few too many legs. Maybe I should thank the guy; ain’t been much legs getting shown in a bedroom of mine for longer than I’d care to admit, so in a just world - which this one isn’t - a new set of eight’d be softening the blow to my reputation. IF YOU COULD GO BACK AND CHANGE ONE DECISION YOU MADE IN THE PAST, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
The Sableton Case. Grayjoy Investigations and the Seven Pieces of Silver. Technically we solved it all right, put a finger on the perp right in front of the clubhouse, and sure enough the city gave him the chair. Doesn’t mean much when I lost a partner and a 12-year straight streak, the city lost one of the few genuine right flames it had left to illuminate it, and just to top the sundae it all turned out we were playing someone else’s game the whole time, and because of us it was a game he won. You can send a guy to the chair all you like; it can’t undo what he did, and it can’t even guarantee for sure that he won’t one day do it again. I should stop dwelling in couldas and maybes here; we got an interview to finish. What’s next? TELL ME ABOUT YOUR FIRST KISS.
Look, mack, we’ve all made mistakes when we’re young, and I’m not proud of a lot of what I did before I moved to the city. You get involved with a lot of hoodlums when they let you grow up all the way over on the wrong side of the tracks, and some of them are no less dangerous for being dames. Do I remember my first? Yeah. It’s hard to forget a dame who sets you up to the flats to save her own skin. We stopped dating after that. I wrote to her from the slammer but she never wrote back. Funny how that works. DO YOU GIVE PEOPLE SECOND CHANCES?
Frankly, I couldn’t tell ya. Folks don’t tend to get tangled up with a guy like me until they’ve already used up more than two. Most of the flatheads I get crossed by have made it pretty clear they already made the most of whatever chances they had and by now they ain’t looking for any more. Either way that ain’t for me to judge: if I’m being paid to find ‘em and bring ‘em home, that’s what I do, and if they got the curse on someone who needs protection - be that a literal curse or otherwise - then it’s my job to see them dropped either in the cooler or on the pavement. Anything in between I get to use my discretion, and most of the time my discretion tells me I have more than enough enemies to be keeping count of and I’m already out of fingers to count on; no sense giving myself a reason to have to take off my shoes. Still, you’ve probably heard there’s been a lucky kid or two who managed to run into me before they’d fully graduated Palooka Class with honours, and yeah, on those remarkable days I’d rather spend a dime on a peace offering in a breakfast bagel than see another goomba with a gun out there racking up a few more points for the black hats. ARE YOU A CAT PERSON OR A DOG PERSON?
Heh. Did Nine Lives put you up to asking that one? Tell her I plead the Fifth until she goes straight. Besides, everyone says I’m a bloodhound, usually in not too friendly a tone of voice, and who am I to argue? DO YOU THINK YOU'RE ATTRACTIVE?
I got a solid lantern jaw that’s only a little crooked from the fisticuffs, and all but one of my own teeth. The hair’s a little grey these days, but then so’s the rest of me. Personally if a guy like me came onto me, I’d give myself the icy mitt, but maybe that’s just cos I can smell a Jack that’s killed before and I know they’re always trouble. Ask me another one. WHAT'S YOUR WORST HABIT?
Ah, I’m a man of many vices, it feels mean to pick a favourite. The craps-shooting? The gaspers? Getting a little too out on the roof on the scotch? Nah, who am I kidding - ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you it’s sticking my nose in where it ain’t wanted and where everyone says it don’t belong. But here’s a little secret intel for free: if you ask me, it’s not the nose that gets me into the most trouble. It’s the jaw that sets behind it and refuses to admit when it’s beat. That’s what got me on the wrong side of 60% of the city. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
That’s a real ferret of a question, pal, but fortunately you caught me in a good mood. Truth is it used to sneak up on me every couple of weeks, when I’d bought one too many glasses of scotch. I’m a romantic, but only when I’m drunk. These days, the old open wounds are a little more scarred over, and it takes a little more than Monty’s cheap bug-juice to fix up the waterworks. I don’t keep it on the calendar, but I’d put up a bet I’m down to a little under once a month these past six years. The week around my old partner’s birthday pulls up the average more than a little. ARE YOU A GOOD LIAR?
Lies are cheap in this city, and truth is expensive. You learn to play the game if you want to pick up the chips, so to speak. And it’s my job to pick up other people’s chips. WHAT'S YOUR BIGGEST PET PEEVE?
I swear to all the gods there has to be a knack to hailing a simple cab in this town and whatever it is no-one ever remembered to give me the lowdown. I’ve had so many hacks speed past me while I’m waving them down, giving me a complimentary cold-puddle shower in the process, you’d think the cab rink must have something nefarious to hide, except that somehow they get on with me just fine when I take the Webb kid with me and let him do the hailing. Maybe cab drivers are actually a class of demon this whole time; that’d explain a lot. HAVE YOU EVER HAD YOUR HEART BROKEN?
It’s a real lucky fella in this city that hasn’t, Jack. If you ain’t very rich or very careful, these mean old streets’ll chew up your heart like gum and leave it stuck to the underside of some park bench somewhere. And I’ll let you in on this one for free - I’ve never been very rich, and I’ve never been very careful. ARE YOU MORE LIKELY TO USE YOUR FISTS OR YOUR WORDS IN AN ARGUMENT?
I’m a fast talker, but I’m a faster hitter and an even faster runner. If I think I can lay a guy out before he gets a chance to pull his gat, or at least put him on the back foot long enough for me to put three doors and a pool table between me and him, I’m not gonna feel too cut up about neglecting to offer him a fair debate in the marketplace of ideas. WHAT'S SOMETHING YOU'RE NATURALLY GOOD AT?
Like I said, I got a nose for trouble that don’t know how to quit. If there’s a case to be closed and a brand new enemy to be made in the process, it’s only a matter of time before I weasel out both, even if more often than I’d like it takes me a couple of trips to the sawbones in between. I’ve been put in the hospital and I’ve been put in the slammer, but if you want me out of your hair for good I’d place a bet that you’re gonna need to put me in the morgue. And it looks like so far I’ve been consistently a pretty hard stiff to put in the morgue. WHAT'S SOMETHING YOU HAD TO WORK HARD TO BE GOOD AT?
I know my onions on a lot of different dogs that used to be at least three kitchens outside of my wheelhouse - chess strategy, foreign heraldry, anatomy of a giant creepy-crawly… just-about anything you might try to catch me out on, so long as it ain’t magic shit. I don’t do occult work if I can help it. At the very least, not alone. None of that came overnight, except insofar as it is, in Atramentum, more or less always overnight no matter what time of day. I had to read a lot of dangerously thick books, and listen to a lot of dangerously non-thick people, to get those particular onions cooked. CAN YOU TELL WHEN SOMEONE IS FLIRTING WITH YOU?
It might not be my best skill, on account of far more often when someone’s talking to me it’s because they want to shut me up or shut me out - mind you, a whole lot of the time the one is just a cover for the other. Fact is, though, a gink doesn’t get too far in my line of work without learning a thing or two about reading between the lines. At least, not without ending up dead in a gutter, which isn’t always guaranteed mutually incompatible with getting far in my line of work but definitely moves the odds real far down the board. DO YOU THINK MONEY CAN BUY HAPPINESS?
I’ve seen too many rich bigwigs with a real trainwreck under their shiny-gilded surface to consider it any kind of guarantee. And I’ll admit, the happiest I’ve ever been was a time when I can’t say I had much more in the way of mazuma than I do now. But I’ve seen what the absence of money does to people, too, and lemme tell ya if I had to be a trainwreck I’d still rather be a trainwreck with a dining car. DO YOU BELIEVE IN DESTINY?
Do I think a man can change his footsteps and veer off the road to ruin mapped out for him, or are we all just two-bit actors playing out the scenes of a tragedy the Gods already scripted? Is a bum always destined to be a bum, or is it just the harsh heels of crueller men that keep him there? Is the craps table of the cosmos rigged, and are we the dice or the players that roll them? These are questions for folks with a lot more education, a lot more moolah and a lot more time than I have. I’m just a cheap-souled gumshoe, and the questions I’m paid to ask are a lot simpler and more immediate: where’s this dame’s husband; who killed this dead patsy; and how do I punch this guy hard enough that he doesn’t try to put me in a boxy wooden overcoat? I’ll tell you one thing I do know, though: if it looks to me like you got a choice and you chose to cement the shoes of some other guy that wasn’t himself in the concrete footwear business, I for one am gonna stick it to you until it don’t come off. Call it destiny, free will, justice; call it me being a noble-minded bum with a bag for pissing people off. I don’t pretend to have a right to tell you what you call it. What I do have is a private dick licence, and a reinforced trenchcoat, and a chip on my shoulder, and a gun. For right now, that’s enough for me. ARE YOU A GOOD COOK?
Not a drop of it, much to the profit of Ikey Poggle who runs the coffee-and-bagel shop nearest my apartment. More than a slice of the reason I hired Sal was that after 43 years I still can’t make a cup of coffee half as good as the ones it seems she’s been making since… well, since she was 43, I guess. In fact, since we picked up an acquaintanceship with the Axel kid, I think Sal might just have been cooking most of the meals either of us eat that don’t come from Ikey. There’s a reason she’s the biggest column on my expenses ledger, even above bullets and smokes. WHAT DO YOU THINK HAPPENS AFTER YOU DIE?
Dollars to nickels some hatchetman makes a dishonest buck off your absence and some schmuck like me gets hired to prove that wasn’t an accident. But if you’re talking about souls, that’s a mystery beyond my standard of clientele. The kid says there’s a gambler’s dozen of places a soul can go to when you write your longest goodbye, including nine or ten different Hells, and I’ve seen enough demons in the world to believe that part at least, but personally more than half the goons I meet in this city already sold their soul long ago and so presumably don’t have anything left for a God to save or the Devil to claim. Personally I’m betting on going to whatever cosmic gutter the Great Hereafter’s runoff collects in when nowhere else had them on the guest list. It’ll probably be lonely without Sal or the kid, but if by some miracle there’s justice in the world after all then my guess is they’ll get to the same place my old partner got to - and if there’s anyone anywhere out there who can follow a trail from there back to wherever I end up, that’s Joy. DID YOU HAVE TO GROW UP FAST?
I may have spent a night or two in the slammer as a teen, which teaches you a few lessons the schoolmistress doesn’t. But I had a roof, and a place to bite an egg, and about two-thirds of a family. I’ve seen more than a kid or two that had it rougher. Then again, maybe I’m just looking for excuses not to extend any sympathies to my older brother who grew up in the same pot but somehow came out even grimier than I did. WHO DO YOU LOOK UP TO?
I’m too old and too cynical to put anyone on a pedestal any more. It only gives them further to fall when they fall. Then again, I’ll always give Sal the time of day, only I don’t know if it counts as looking up when they work for you and you’re twice and a bit their height. I certainly wish I could learn her cup of coffee, though. WHEN YOU GO TO A TAVERN, WHAT DO YOU ORDER?
Depends how grey the sky is, and who else is sniffing around. Pale steel to ocean mist, or if there’s a cop on my tail, I’m a good law-abiding coffee boy. Anything closer to jet black, and so long as there’s no fuzz around, I’m here for a neat scotch, served room temperature like it’s been sitting in a desk since before they passed Prohibition, with a twist of lemon if I’m feelin’ fancy. WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT YOURSELF?
I got a record of 326 cases in the dossier, and not a one I didn’t close to the client’s satisfaction except in cases where the client was either a real wrong number trying to pull a fast one or, in a couple of cases, already dead - and even then, I saw the mystery through to the end one way or another. A man trades on his reputation in this city, and my reputation is that I might just be the best there is at what I do, only what I do happens to be something nobody wants done to them. WHAT DO YOU LIKE LEAST ABOUT YOURSELF?
I don’t know if I’m a good man. I’ve gotten a lot of people rubbed out that might not have gotten rubbed out if I hadn’t stuck my nose in, even if a lot of them had it coming and even if there’s other places where a lot of other people woulda been rubbed out without me. Not to mention, between the booze, the chips and the gaspers I’m certainly making it pretty hard on myself to keep my head above the rainwater in this crummy town. But a rat has to keep swimming, and if I’m not a good man I still make a pretty good rat. DO YOU WANT KIDS SOMEDAY?
This ain’t no life for a Jack with kids, kid. Maybe I once woulda thought differently, when I was a whole lot younger, but ugly fate and a real bad number with a .44 already took the option off the table back then, and I ain’t in a hurry to sign up for round two. ARE YOU A PLANNER OR MORE SPONTANEOUS?
I’ve meticulously planned every single encounter I’ve ever walked into, and in every single case I only resorted to improvising after the first twelve seconds, which in my experience is how long a meticulous plan takes to go all the way south like an escaped penguin with an all-season rail ticket. Sal has a collection of sketches of all the windows I’ve jumped through. CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?
I can do, buddy, but if you have any sense rattling around in that skull of yours then I’m not the man you’d ask to. Dirty laundry has a habit of getting taken publicly to the cleaners around me, if you catch my drift, and if you want to tell me your laundry isn’t dirty then I’m naturally gonna have some questions about why you don’t want to wear it. DO YOU LIKE BEING THE CENTRE OF ATTENTION?
Somehow or other whenever I’m the centre of anyone’s attention it’s always a gang of mooks whose attention is particularly being paid to how best to bring me down with a nasty case of hot lead poisoning. Makes it tough to consider it the kind of thing you’d want to write a thankyou card about. IF YOU KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO DIE TOMORROW, WHAT WOULD YOU DO TODAY?
You’re telling me I’d finally have a guarantee I wasn’t going to die today? Well, then I got a laundry list of unlikely ways to make a real difference in this city and settle a few overdue scores that up til now I only haven’t touched because even at my lowest and dumbest I’ve never been suicidal. DO YOU ENJOY GETTING ALL DRESSED UP FOR A SPECIAL OCCASION?
I have a darker suit in the back of the dresser for those rare occasions where someone makes the mistake of letting me into a black tie event, but it’s not my favourite. The label says dry-clean only, and the dry cleaning lady always has questions about the bloodstains. WHERE DO YOU FEEL SAFE?
I got a safehouse that nobody’s been found in yet, which is about as close as it comes in this city. Atramentum ain’t a city for people who want to feel safe, unless you got the mazuma to hide yourself in Howard Gatz’s gala ballroom and drown out the constant sound of the lead outside with the constant sound of bootlegged champagne getting uncorked. DO YOU LOVE OR HATE BEING ALONE?
Alone? Well, hot damn, that means nobody here to take a plug at me for once - and wouldn’t that be a real sockdollager. I’ll take it. WHAT'S THE LAST NIGHTMARE YOU REMEMBER HAVING?
I saw my partner snuffed out in an alley fifteen years ago for getting between the wrong magic crook and his serial murder ritual. That’s the kind of thing that stays with you. I get other nightmares, from time to time, but like a weighted clockwork they always give way again to the big one after a cycle or two. DO YOU ADMIT TO MISTAKES WHEN YOU MAKE THEM?
Sure I do, mack, usually in the form of “Blouse it, this was a setup!”. Those are the kinds of mistakes where if you don’t cop to it in a hurry you can very well end up down an ally or a witness or a client, and the job doesn’t let you make one of those mistakes twice. Not unless you change your name and your face and the colour of your suit. DO YOU WANT TO GROW UP TO BE LIKE YOUR PARENTS?
I never knew my own folks long enough to get a proper read on their character, this being a little before I really learned how to read people, but I do know where they both ended up. My mother got whacked by some Kytons for speaking the wrong piece of truth about the wrong piece of work. My old man drank himself into an early grave without the firm hand of his Lost Lenore to keep him out of the gutter. Can’t say I specifically planned on ending up like either of them, but all the smart dough in fuckin’ Ice Chips Evan’s Obol would say I’m heading full speed for one or other outcome. HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH BEING SICK? ARE YOU STOIC OR SUPER WHINEY?
I’ve been known to handle anything less serious than a broken limb with a self-prescribed treatment of my own invention consisting of warm scotch, black coffee, and a wide enough hat brim to keep people from seeing the bloodshot in your eyes. If it gets bad enough to get between me and a case, that’s when I pour myself an even stiffer drink and risk getting something magical. Got a preacher man with an apparent knack for potioneering who shares some of the same haunts and a few of the same vices as me, and still owes me a pocket full of favours from over the years. WHAT DID YOUR PARENTS EXPECT FROM YOU WHEN YOU WERE BORN?
Difficult to say, mack. I never thought to ask them at the time, and both of them have moved on since. I think Axel has a way of talking to stiffs but personally I’d rather not have any part of that if I can help it - gives me a real cold chill and Fetchlings don’t usually feel cold. DO YOU HAVE A STRONG SENSE OF STYLE?
I got twelve identical pinstripe suits and two identical hats. The system works for me, kid. Grey goes with everything, and Gray goes everywhere. WOULD YOU RATHER CAMP OUTDOORS OR STAY THE NIGHT IN AN INN?
Depends how broke I am. I’ve slept on the street before, and not always consensually or even with my own knowledge, but I’d generally prefer to require at least a token level of gumption for anyone that wants to take a shot at me while I’m asleep. IS THERE A FOOD THAT MOST PEOPLE LIKE BUT YOU ABSOLUTELY HATE?
Not a salami guy. Couldn’t tell you why. Pastrami, sure. Corned beef even, if the wallet’s tight. Never touch salami if I can help it. ARE YOU MORE OF A HOARDER ON A MINIMALIST?
Most nights my joint’s as clean as a copper’s whistle on parade day and as neat as the scotch I order while the cops are busy parading. Sal can always tell when I’ve reached a tough spot in a case, because it’s the only time you can’t see more than half of the top of my desk. ARE YOU SUPERSTITIOUS?
I know just enough about magic shit to know I don’t know a damn thing about magic shit. Under those circumstances, it’d be foolish of me to even guess at what kind of opaque cosmic ritual could or could not bring someone good or bad luck. I prefer to put my faith less in luck and more in a reinforced trenchcoat and a dangerous amount of chutzpah. ARE YOU THE KIND OF PERSON WHO REMEMBERS PEOPLE'S BIRTHDAYS AND PET'S NAMES AND STUFF?
I remember all sorts, mack, it’s my job. Birthdays and pet’s names might not be top of the list, but they’re on there. A mook’s birthday is when there’s most likely to be a risk of some goons getting smuggled into his party in a giant cake. Oldest trick in the book. WHAT DO YOU DO TO FEEL BETTER WHEN YOU'RE SAD?
If it’s a talkative kinda sad then chances are you’ll find me spending the night with Monty Rocksmacker, with whom I go back a ways even more than most of his regulars. If I’m on that ‘being alone’ kind of melancholy, then I instead have a long conversation with my very good old buddy Scotch Oldlaw, who lives in a bottle in my desk. IS IT HARD FOR YOU TO TRUST SOMEONE?
I trust Sal, the kid when he’s not summoning forth some nightmare or other, and my gun. And sometimes I side-eye the gun. ARE YOU SUSCEPTIBLE TO PEER PRESSURE?
It ain’t my job to make other people comfortable. In fact, it’s pretty neatly about the opposite. Chief Casey Blonx couldn’t convince me to knock it off with a night or two in the slammer, so it doesn’t seem likely any of my peers will. IF YOU DECIDED TO STOP ADVENTURING AND SETTLE DOWN, WHAT KIND OF JOB WOULD YOU TAKE?
Already burned all of my bridges with most of the industries in this town - nobody likes a smartass that keeps rifling through your secrets, certainly not enough to give him a job in the kind of market this city’s teetering on the edge of. If I wasn’t a dick or a triggerman, I’d probably just be a bum, which Sal affectionately concurs is the other skill I have. I guess I could try my hand as something like a jeweller; I do have a pretty keen eye for a forgery, and to my knowledge they don’t have a cartel up and running yet to keep me out. AS A KID, WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GREW UP?
I had big dreams once of being a champion fencer. The big bugs in the shadow city held tournaments, and most weeks it wasn’t too hard to sneak in to watch a match. Of course, it’s a whole lot different when you only have two arms, but I wasn’t the kind to let that stop me. One time I caught a swashbuckler flick at the theatre and practically turned technicolour. As a young workie I got booked for a handful of fights in the amateur circuit - even won a couple of ‘em - but discovering that half the fights are rigged for the sake of a betting racket took the shine off the sport for me, and they did their best to drop me like a poisonous spider as soon as it became clear I wasn’t the type to leave well enough alone when I found out about something like a fight being rigged for the sake of a betting racket. Needless to say, it didn’t work out how any of us planned, and in the end I wound up exposing the racket in front of a very ungracious audience, my manager got sent to the big house, and my coach woulda skewered me then and there if my partner Joy hadn’t had the foresight to bring a gun to a sword fight. You can imagine how that about wrapped it up for that career, although it did work wonders for the reputation of our mystery-solving gig, and now here I am more than twenty years later, still hot poison to any fencing manager with any sense, still not the type to leave well alone, and still getting into the occasional swordfight with a displeased racketeer. If my younger self could see me now… more than anything he’d probably hate how old I look.
They say it’s always night in Atramentum, even when it’s morning. But I haven’t seen enough mornings to be sure, or at least not sober. Most nights I need answers more than I need sleep, and consequentially most mornings I need sleep almost more than I need to make rent - but I do need to make rent, so I settle for coffee. WHAT'S THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT A PERSON WHEN YOU MEET THEM?
There’s a lot of things to notice if you want to get a half-rate report down later on, but luckily most of the important ones are easy enough to spot from the other side of the rooftops: Charlie or dame, goon or flatfoot, up in the market or down on their luck. Alla that being said, if you wanna keep making it to the next lighter-grey sky, you pretty quick learn to make the first thing you hone in on whether or not they’re packing heat, and whether they look like they came here to settle a score. The kind of people I meet, it’s usually at least one of the two. YOU SEE A HUGE SPIDER IN YOUR ROOM, WHAT DO YOU DO?
Wouldn’t be the first huge creature waiting for me where they think I’ll have my guard down, and even on a hot streak I wouldn’t be dumb enough to bet a wooden nickle that it’d be the last. Only difference is I expect I don’t have to get rough-and-tumble with the spider, and hell, I know as well as the next Charlie how hard it is to make rent around here. I ain’t a Jack to throw a no-harm little fella out on his lug just for showin’ a few too many legs. Maybe I should thank the guy; ain’t been much legs getting shown in a bedroom of mine for longer than I’d care to admit, so in a just world - which this one isn’t - a new set of eight’d be softening the blow to my reputation. IF YOU COULD GO BACK AND CHANGE ONE DECISION YOU MADE IN THE PAST, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
The Sableton Case. Grayjoy Investigations and the Seven Pieces of Silver. Technically we solved it all right, put a finger on the perp right in front of the clubhouse, and sure enough the city gave him the chair. Doesn’t mean much when I lost a partner and a 12-year straight streak, the city lost one of the few genuine right flames it had left to illuminate it, and just to top the sundae it all turned out we were playing someone else’s game the whole time, and because of us it was a game he won. You can send a guy to the chair all you like; it can’t undo what he did, and it can’t even guarantee for sure that he won’t one day do it again. I should stop dwelling in couldas and maybes here; we got an interview to finish. What’s next? TELL ME ABOUT YOUR FIRST KISS.
Look, mack, we’ve all made mistakes when we’re young, and I’m not proud of a lot of what I did before I moved to the city. You get involved with a lot of hoodlums when they let you grow up all the way over on the wrong side of the tracks, and some of them are no less dangerous for being dames. Do I remember my first? Yeah. It’s hard to forget a dame who sets you up to the flats to save her own skin. We stopped dating after that. I wrote to her from the slammer but she never wrote back. Funny how that works. DO YOU GIVE PEOPLE SECOND CHANCES?
Frankly, I couldn’t tell ya. Folks don’t tend to get tangled up with a guy like me until they’ve already used up more than two. Most of the flatheads I get crossed by have made it pretty clear they already made the most of whatever chances they had and by now they ain’t looking for any more. Either way that ain’t for me to judge: if I’m being paid to find ‘em and bring ‘em home, that’s what I do, and if they got the curse on someone who needs protection - be that a literal curse or otherwise - then it’s my job to see them dropped either in the cooler or on the pavement. Anything in between I get to use my discretion, and most of the time my discretion tells me I have more than enough enemies to be keeping count of and I’m already out of fingers to count on; no sense giving myself a reason to have to take off my shoes. Still, you’ve probably heard there’s been a lucky kid or two who managed to run into me before they’d fully graduated Palooka Class with honours, and yeah, on those remarkable days I’d rather spend a dime on a peace offering in a breakfast bagel than see another goomba with a gun out there racking up a few more points for the black hats. ARE YOU A CAT PERSON OR A DOG PERSON?
Heh. Did Nine Lives put you up to asking that one? Tell her I plead the Fifth until she goes straight. Besides, everyone says I’m a bloodhound, usually in not too friendly a tone of voice, and who am I to argue? DO YOU THINK YOU'RE ATTRACTIVE?
I got a solid lantern jaw that’s only a little crooked from the fisticuffs, and all but one of my own teeth. The hair’s a little grey these days, but then so’s the rest of me. Personally if a guy like me came onto me, I’d give myself the icy mitt, but maybe that’s just cos I can smell a Jack that’s killed before and I know they’re always trouble. Ask me another one. WHAT'S YOUR WORST HABIT?
Ah, I’m a man of many vices, it feels mean to pick a favourite. The craps-shooting? The gaspers? Getting a little too out on the roof on the scotch? Nah, who am I kidding - ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you it’s sticking my nose in where it ain’t wanted and where everyone says it don’t belong. But here’s a little secret intel for free: if you ask me, it’s not the nose that gets me into the most trouble. It’s the jaw that sets behind it and refuses to admit when it’s beat. That’s what got me on the wrong side of 60% of the city. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
That’s a real ferret of a question, pal, but fortunately you caught me in a good mood. Truth is it used to sneak up on me every couple of weeks, when I’d bought one too many glasses of scotch. I’m a romantic, but only when I’m drunk. These days, the old open wounds are a little more scarred over, and it takes a little more than Monty’s cheap bug-juice to fix up the waterworks. I don’t keep it on the calendar, but I’d put up a bet I’m down to a little under once a month these past six years. The week around my old partner’s birthday pulls up the average more than a little. ARE YOU A GOOD LIAR?
Lies are cheap in this city, and truth is expensive. You learn to play the game if you want to pick up the chips, so to speak. And it’s my job to pick up other people’s chips. WHAT'S YOUR BIGGEST PET PEEVE?
I swear to all the gods there has to be a knack to hailing a simple cab in this town and whatever it is no-one ever remembered to give me the lowdown. I’ve had so many hacks speed past me while I’m waving them down, giving me a complimentary cold-puddle shower in the process, you’d think the cab rink must have something nefarious to hide, except that somehow they get on with me just fine when I take the Webb kid with me and let him do the hailing. Maybe cab drivers are actually a class of demon this whole time; that’d explain a lot. HAVE YOU EVER HAD YOUR HEART BROKEN?
It’s a real lucky fella in this city that hasn’t, Jack. If you ain’t very rich or very careful, these mean old streets’ll chew up your heart like gum and leave it stuck to the underside of some park bench somewhere. And I’ll let you in on this one for free - I’ve never been very rich, and I’ve never been very careful. ARE YOU MORE LIKELY TO USE YOUR FISTS OR YOUR WORDS IN AN ARGUMENT?
I’m a fast talker, but I’m a faster hitter and an even faster runner. If I think I can lay a guy out before he gets a chance to pull his gat, or at least put him on the back foot long enough for me to put three doors and a pool table between me and him, I’m not gonna feel too cut up about neglecting to offer him a fair debate in the marketplace of ideas. WHAT'S SOMETHING YOU'RE NATURALLY GOOD AT?
Like I said, I got a nose for trouble that don’t know how to quit. If there’s a case to be closed and a brand new enemy to be made in the process, it’s only a matter of time before I weasel out both, even if more often than I’d like it takes me a couple of trips to the sawbones in between. I’ve been put in the hospital and I’ve been put in the slammer, but if you want me out of your hair for good I’d place a bet that you’re gonna need to put me in the morgue. And it looks like so far I’ve been consistently a pretty hard stiff to put in the morgue. WHAT'S SOMETHING YOU HAD TO WORK HARD TO BE GOOD AT?
I know my onions on a lot of different dogs that used to be at least three kitchens outside of my wheelhouse - chess strategy, foreign heraldry, anatomy of a giant creepy-crawly… just-about anything you might try to catch me out on, so long as it ain’t magic shit. I don’t do occult work if I can help it. At the very least, not alone. None of that came overnight, except insofar as it is, in Atramentum, more or less always overnight no matter what time of day. I had to read a lot of dangerously thick books, and listen to a lot of dangerously non-thick people, to get those particular onions cooked. CAN YOU TELL WHEN SOMEONE IS FLIRTING WITH YOU?
It might not be my best skill, on account of far more often when someone’s talking to me it’s because they want to shut me up or shut me out - mind you, a whole lot of the time the one is just a cover for the other. Fact is, though, a gink doesn’t get too far in my line of work without learning a thing or two about reading between the lines. At least, not without ending up dead in a gutter, which isn’t always guaranteed mutually incompatible with getting far in my line of work but definitely moves the odds real far down the board. DO YOU THINK MONEY CAN BUY HAPPINESS?
I’ve seen too many rich bigwigs with a real trainwreck under their shiny-gilded surface to consider it any kind of guarantee. And I’ll admit, the happiest I’ve ever been was a time when I can’t say I had much more in the way of mazuma than I do now. But I’ve seen what the absence of money does to people, too, and lemme tell ya if I had to be a trainwreck I’d still rather be a trainwreck with a dining car. DO YOU BELIEVE IN DESTINY?
Do I think a man can change his footsteps and veer off the road to ruin mapped out for him, or are we all just two-bit actors playing out the scenes of a tragedy the Gods already scripted? Is a bum always destined to be a bum, or is it just the harsh heels of crueller men that keep him there? Is the craps table of the cosmos rigged, and are we the dice or the players that roll them? These are questions for folks with a lot more education, a lot more moolah and a lot more time than I have. I’m just a cheap-souled gumshoe, and the questions I’m paid to ask are a lot simpler and more immediate: where’s this dame’s husband; who killed this dead patsy; and how do I punch this guy hard enough that he doesn’t try to put me in a boxy wooden overcoat? I’ll tell you one thing I do know, though: if it looks to me like you got a choice and you chose to cement the shoes of some other guy that wasn’t himself in the concrete footwear business, I for one am gonna stick it to you until it don’t come off. Call it destiny, free will, justice; call it me being a noble-minded bum with a bag for pissing people off. I don’t pretend to have a right to tell you what you call it. What I do have is a private dick licence, and a reinforced trenchcoat, and a chip on my shoulder, and a gun. For right now, that’s enough for me. ARE YOU A GOOD COOK?
Not a drop of it, much to the profit of Ikey Poggle who runs the coffee-and-bagel shop nearest my apartment. More than a slice of the reason I hired Sal was that after 43 years I still can’t make a cup of coffee half as good as the ones it seems she’s been making since… well, since she was 43, I guess. In fact, since we picked up an acquaintanceship with the Axel kid, I think Sal might just have been cooking most of the meals either of us eat that don’t come from Ikey. There’s a reason she’s the biggest column on my expenses ledger, even above bullets and smokes. WHAT DO YOU THINK HAPPENS AFTER YOU DIE?
Dollars to nickels some hatchetman makes a dishonest buck off your absence and some schmuck like me gets hired to prove that wasn’t an accident. But if you’re talking about souls, that’s a mystery beyond my standard of clientele. The kid says there’s a gambler’s dozen of places a soul can go to when you write your longest goodbye, including nine or ten different Hells, and I’ve seen enough demons in the world to believe that part at least, but personally more than half the goons I meet in this city already sold their soul long ago and so presumably don’t have anything left for a God to save or the Devil to claim. Personally I’m betting on going to whatever cosmic gutter the Great Hereafter’s runoff collects in when nowhere else had them on the guest list. It’ll probably be lonely without Sal or the kid, but if by some miracle there’s justice in the world after all then my guess is they’ll get to the same place my old partner got to - and if there’s anyone anywhere out there who can follow a trail from there back to wherever I end up, that’s Joy. DID YOU HAVE TO GROW UP FAST?
I may have spent a night or two in the slammer as a teen, which teaches you a few lessons the schoolmistress doesn’t. But I had a roof, and a place to bite an egg, and about two-thirds of a family. I’ve seen more than a kid or two that had it rougher. Then again, maybe I’m just looking for excuses not to extend any sympathies to my older brother who grew up in the same pot but somehow came out even grimier than I did. WHO DO YOU LOOK UP TO?
I’m too old and too cynical to put anyone on a pedestal any more. It only gives them further to fall when they fall. Then again, I’ll always give Sal the time of day, only I don’t know if it counts as looking up when they work for you and you’re twice and a bit their height. I certainly wish I could learn her cup of coffee, though. WHEN YOU GO TO A TAVERN, WHAT DO YOU ORDER?
Depends how grey the sky is, and who else is sniffing around. Pale steel to ocean mist, or if there’s a cop on my tail, I’m a good law-abiding coffee boy. Anything closer to jet black, and so long as there’s no fuzz around, I’m here for a neat scotch, served room temperature like it’s been sitting in a desk since before they passed Prohibition, with a twist of lemon if I’m feelin’ fancy. WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT YOURSELF?
I got a record of 326 cases in the dossier, and not a one I didn’t close to the client’s satisfaction except in cases where the client was either a real wrong number trying to pull a fast one or, in a couple of cases, already dead - and even then, I saw the mystery through to the end one way or another. A man trades on his reputation in this city, and my reputation is that I might just be the best there is at what I do, only what I do happens to be something nobody wants done to them. WHAT DO YOU LIKE LEAST ABOUT YOURSELF?
I don’t know if I’m a good man. I’ve gotten a lot of people rubbed out that might not have gotten rubbed out if I hadn’t stuck my nose in, even if a lot of them had it coming and even if there’s other places where a lot of other people woulda been rubbed out without me. Not to mention, between the booze, the chips and the gaspers I’m certainly making it pretty hard on myself to keep my head above the rainwater in this crummy town. But a rat has to keep swimming, and if I’m not a good man I still make a pretty good rat. DO YOU WANT KIDS SOMEDAY?
This ain’t no life for a Jack with kids, kid. Maybe I once woulda thought differently, when I was a whole lot younger, but ugly fate and a real bad number with a .44 already took the option off the table back then, and I ain’t in a hurry to sign up for round two. ARE YOU A PLANNER OR MORE SPONTANEOUS?
I’ve meticulously planned every single encounter I’ve ever walked into, and in every single case I only resorted to improvising after the first twelve seconds, which in my experience is how long a meticulous plan takes to go all the way south like an escaped penguin with an all-season rail ticket. Sal has a collection of sketches of all the windows I’ve jumped through. CAN YOU KEEP A SECRET?
I can do, buddy, but if you have any sense rattling around in that skull of yours then I’m not the man you’d ask to. Dirty laundry has a habit of getting taken publicly to the cleaners around me, if you catch my drift, and if you want to tell me your laundry isn’t dirty then I’m naturally gonna have some questions about why you don’t want to wear it. DO YOU LIKE BEING THE CENTRE OF ATTENTION?
Somehow or other whenever I’m the centre of anyone’s attention it’s always a gang of mooks whose attention is particularly being paid to how best to bring me down with a nasty case of hot lead poisoning. Makes it tough to consider it the kind of thing you’d want to write a thankyou card about. IF YOU KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO DIE TOMORROW, WHAT WOULD YOU DO TODAY?
You’re telling me I’d finally have a guarantee I wasn’t going to die today? Well, then I got a laundry list of unlikely ways to make a real difference in this city and settle a few overdue scores that up til now I only haven’t touched because even at my lowest and dumbest I’ve never been suicidal. DO YOU ENJOY GETTING ALL DRESSED UP FOR A SPECIAL OCCASION?
I have a darker suit in the back of the dresser for those rare occasions where someone makes the mistake of letting me into a black tie event, but it’s not my favourite. The label says dry-clean only, and the dry cleaning lady always has questions about the bloodstains. WHERE DO YOU FEEL SAFE?
I got a safehouse that nobody’s been found in yet, which is about as close as it comes in this city. Atramentum ain’t a city for people who want to feel safe, unless you got the mazuma to hide yourself in Howard Gatz’s gala ballroom and drown out the constant sound of the lead outside with the constant sound of bootlegged champagne getting uncorked. DO YOU LOVE OR HATE BEING ALONE?
Alone? Well, hot damn, that means nobody here to take a plug at me for once - and wouldn’t that be a real sockdollager. I’ll take it. WHAT'S THE LAST NIGHTMARE YOU REMEMBER HAVING?
I saw my partner snuffed out in an alley fifteen years ago for getting between the wrong magic crook and his serial murder ritual. That’s the kind of thing that stays with you. I get other nightmares, from time to time, but like a weighted clockwork they always give way again to the big one after a cycle or two. DO YOU ADMIT TO MISTAKES WHEN YOU MAKE THEM?
Sure I do, mack, usually in the form of “Blouse it, this was a setup!”. Those are the kinds of mistakes where if you don’t cop to it in a hurry you can very well end up down an ally or a witness or a client, and the job doesn’t let you make one of those mistakes twice. Not unless you change your name and your face and the colour of your suit. DO YOU WANT TO GROW UP TO BE LIKE YOUR PARENTS?
I never knew my own folks long enough to get a proper read on their character, this being a little before I really learned how to read people, but I do know where they both ended up. My mother got whacked by some Kytons for speaking the wrong piece of truth about the wrong piece of work. My old man drank himself into an early grave without the firm hand of his Lost Lenore to keep him out of the gutter. Can’t say I specifically planned on ending up like either of them, but all the smart dough in fuckin’ Ice Chips Evan’s Obol would say I’m heading full speed for one or other outcome. HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH BEING SICK? ARE YOU STOIC OR SUPER WHINEY?
I’ve been known to handle anything less serious than a broken limb with a self-prescribed treatment of my own invention consisting of warm scotch, black coffee, and a wide enough hat brim to keep people from seeing the bloodshot in your eyes. If it gets bad enough to get between me and a case, that’s when I pour myself an even stiffer drink and risk getting something magical. Got a preacher man with an apparent knack for potioneering who shares some of the same haunts and a few of the same vices as me, and still owes me a pocket full of favours from over the years. WHAT DID YOUR PARENTS EXPECT FROM YOU WHEN YOU WERE BORN?
Difficult to say, mack. I never thought to ask them at the time, and both of them have moved on since. I think Axel has a way of talking to stiffs but personally I’d rather not have any part of that if I can help it - gives me a real cold chill and Fetchlings don’t usually feel cold. DO YOU HAVE A STRONG SENSE OF STYLE?
I got twelve identical pinstripe suits and two identical hats. The system works for me, kid. Grey goes with everything, and Gray goes everywhere. WOULD YOU RATHER CAMP OUTDOORS OR STAY THE NIGHT IN AN INN?
Depends how broke I am. I’ve slept on the street before, and not always consensually or even with my own knowledge, but I’d generally prefer to require at least a token level of gumption for anyone that wants to take a shot at me while I’m asleep. IS THERE A FOOD THAT MOST PEOPLE LIKE BUT YOU ABSOLUTELY HATE?
Not a salami guy. Couldn’t tell you why. Pastrami, sure. Corned beef even, if the wallet’s tight. Never touch salami if I can help it. ARE YOU MORE OF A HOARDER ON A MINIMALIST?
Most nights my joint’s as clean as a copper’s whistle on parade day and as neat as the scotch I order while the cops are busy parading. Sal can always tell when I’ve reached a tough spot in a case, because it’s the only time you can’t see more than half of the top of my desk. ARE YOU SUPERSTITIOUS?
I know just enough about magic shit to know I don’t know a damn thing about magic shit. Under those circumstances, it’d be foolish of me to even guess at what kind of opaque cosmic ritual could or could not bring someone good or bad luck. I prefer to put my faith less in luck and more in a reinforced trenchcoat and a dangerous amount of chutzpah. ARE YOU THE KIND OF PERSON WHO REMEMBERS PEOPLE'S BIRTHDAYS AND PET'S NAMES AND STUFF?
I remember all sorts, mack, it’s my job. Birthdays and pet’s names might not be top of the list, but they’re on there. A mook’s birthday is when there’s most likely to be a risk of some goons getting smuggled into his party in a giant cake. Oldest trick in the book. WHAT DO YOU DO TO FEEL BETTER WHEN YOU'RE SAD?
If it’s a talkative kinda sad then chances are you’ll find me spending the night with Monty Rocksmacker, with whom I go back a ways even more than most of his regulars. If I’m on that ‘being alone’ kind of melancholy, then I instead have a long conversation with my very good old buddy Scotch Oldlaw, who lives in a bottle in my desk. IS IT HARD FOR YOU TO TRUST SOMEONE?
I trust Sal, the kid when he’s not summoning forth some nightmare or other, and my gun. And sometimes I side-eye the gun. ARE YOU SUSCEPTIBLE TO PEER PRESSURE?
It ain’t my job to make other people comfortable. In fact, it’s pretty neatly about the opposite. Chief Casey Blonx couldn’t convince me to knock it off with a night or two in the slammer, so it doesn’t seem likely any of my peers will. IF YOU DECIDED TO STOP ADVENTURING AND SETTLE DOWN, WHAT KIND OF JOB WOULD YOU TAKE?
Already burned all of my bridges with most of the industries in this town - nobody likes a smartass that keeps rifling through your secrets, certainly not enough to give him a job in the kind of market this city’s teetering on the edge of. If I wasn’t a dick or a triggerman, I’d probably just be a bum, which Sal affectionately concurs is the other skill I have. I guess I could try my hand as something like a jeweller; I do have a pretty keen eye for a forgery, and to my knowledge they don’t have a cartel up and running yet to keep me out. AS A KID, WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GREW UP?
I had big dreams once of being a champion fencer. The big bugs in the shadow city held tournaments, and most weeks it wasn’t too hard to sneak in to watch a match. Of course, it’s a whole lot different when you only have two arms, but I wasn’t the kind to let that stop me. One time I caught a swashbuckler flick at the theatre and practically turned technicolour. As a young workie I got booked for a handful of fights in the amateur circuit - even won a couple of ‘em - but discovering that half the fights are rigged for the sake of a betting racket took the shine off the sport for me, and they did their best to drop me like a poisonous spider as soon as it became clear I wasn’t the type to leave well enough alone when I found out about something like a fight being rigged for the sake of a betting racket. Needless to say, it didn’t work out how any of us planned, and in the end I wound up exposing the racket in front of a very ungracious audience, my manager got sent to the big house, and my coach woulda skewered me then and there if my partner Joy hadn’t had the foresight to bring a gun to a sword fight. You can imagine how that about wrapped it up for that career, although it did work wonders for the reputation of our mystery-solving gig, and now here I am more than twenty years later, still hot poison to any fencing manager with any sense, still not the type to leave well alone, and still getting into the occasional swordfight with a displeased racketeer. If my younger self could see me now… more than anything he’d probably hate how old I look.
