One Eyed Jacks

Chapter One : Death Comes to Midtown

The body lay sprawled across a blood-dappled marble floor, like a forgotten marionette with its strings cut; white silk robe and pajama pants a stark contrast to the ebony flesh. The corpse's bare chest was draped in gold and marred by twin holes torn in soft flesh by the kinetic energy of hot lead. He looked every inch the mahogany god, a dead god, but a god nonetheless.

"We got an ID on the victim?" Renee Montoya asked with a casual ease born of too many such scenes.

"You're kiddin', right?" the uniform at the door, Barrett, she knew him from around, responded, incredulous. The officer had been here for awhile.

"Humor me." Renee studied the body intently.

"The vic's name is Forest Jacks, a.k.a. Double Deuce," Barrett stated. "This is his apartment."

"The rapper?" Montoya questioned.

"Rapper, pimp, gang-banger, all around nice guy," Barrett quipped. Renee shot him a glance that ended his editorial.

She stepped back from the body, which lay just inside the foyer of the high-rise apartment, to allow the Crime Scene Unit to make their initial survey of the scene. The Medical Examiner conducted her field exam. The meat thermometer pressed into the victim's liver filled Renee with the usual mix of dread and mirth. She didn't need to be any closer to see the stippling pattern around the gunshot wounds; the victim was shot at close range.

"Any sign of forced entry?" Renee asked. The uniform shook his head. Close range, no forced entry, shot at his own front door… the victim had likely opened that door for his killer. That indicated that the odds were better than average that the victim knew his killer. It shortened the list of suspects, but only slightly.

"Who found the victim?" She wouldn't let herself think of him as Forest, Mr. Jacks, or anything else so familiar. Whatever he had been before, he was just another dead body in Gotham now.

"His business manager, a Mr. Denton Bright," the officer replied. "Mr. Bright stated that he'd made several attempts to contact the victim during the course of the evening without reaching him. Eventually he decided to check in on him, " Barrett read from the notes he'd been taking diligently since his arrival on the scene. "Says he found the victim, then went back into the hall and called 911 on his cellphone."

"Where's Mr. Bright now?" Renee asked absently, her attention still on the view.

"He's in the living room with my partner," Barrett replied, closing the notepad and tucking it away. "He seems pretty shook up".

"Keep him there." Renee shifted her attention to the crime scene technician approaching.

"Detective Bullock said you'd be interested in these." The technician, she thought his name was Gatschall, sidled up beside her with casual disregard for the dead man not ten feet away. He held an oversized playing card between the thumb and forefinger of each hand; presenting them for Renee's review. She studied them for a moment; the jack of spades and the jack of hearts. Each was heavy with coagulated blood.

"Second set of these I've seen this month." Renee's frown reached her voice. "Bullock still around?"

Gatschall shook his head, lips pressed together in knowing disapproval.

"Bastard," she mumbled as she handed the bags back to him.

"Found them on the victim's chest," Gatschall tossed out as he moved to tuck the cards into separate brown paper envelops.

"One-eyed jacks." Renee took a couple of anxious steps toward the living room.

"You think this is a freak case?" Barrett asked from the door.

"Bullock does," Renee snapped before she could restrain herself. "It's hard to tell, though; can't see the pattern yet, if there is one."

"Think he's gonna turn up?" the uniform asked eagerly.

"Who?" Gatshall asked.

"The Batman." Barrett couldn't help but smile when he said the name.

"Doesn't matter," Renee's attention drifted to the polished floor. "We're the ones the people of Gotham are paying to catch this guy. We have to do our job with or without him."

The sickly-wet sound of the Medical Examiner drawing the thermometer from the victim's abdomen pulled Renee's attention back to the body.

"Liver temp puts the time of death at about three to four hours ago." The M.E. tossed the fact out like a crumb to a pigeon.

"Between midnight and one a.m.," Renee did the math out loud. "What time'd the call come in?"

"911 dispatched us at 2:45 on the dot." Barrett didn't need his notepad for that answer. Renee raised a questioning eyebrow at him. "We were at the bodega over on 24th, Reggie's got this huge digital clock behind the register, can't miss it."

Montoya knew the place.

Renee tucked her hands into the pockets of her overcoat and moved from the foyer into the living room. The high ceiling and the view out of the ceiling-to-floor expanse of glass that made up the outer wall of the luxury high-rise took her by surprise. From her vantage point on the twenty-seventh floor, the Gotham skyline spread out, painted in neon hues of iridescent splendor. Rap had been good to the victim. That view had cost him a pretty penny. The drapes that framed it probably cost more than her car.

The second uniformed officer stood just inside the room, close enough to observe Denton Bright, but far enough away to maintain a dignified respect for the loss of his friend. Denton Bright, on the other hand, sat in a recessed pit ringed by overstuffed couches that framed a massive fireplace. Inside it, a fire glowed brightly.

"Has he talked to anyone?" Renee asked, pausing in the doorway.

The uniform shook his head. "His cellphone's rung half a dozen times. He hasn't answered it."

Renee nodded and crossed the room. Bright paid little attention as she stepped down into the pit.

"Mr. Bright, I'm Detective Renee Montoya. I need to ask you a few questions about your friend's death." She quoted the textbook line with practiced ease. Bright didn't look away from the fire, he just grunted as he nodded slightly. She took that as permission to proceed.

"Mr. Bright, why were you checking on the victim?" she asked, still standing over him.

"He wuz my friend." Bright's tone was flat and smooth.

"You said you'd made several calls this evening. Was there a problem?" Renee took a pen and notepad from her inside jacket pocket.

Bright nodded, his gaze fixed on the fire. "We wuz supposed to meet up at a club with some ladies. Forest never showed. I got concerned."

"Why were you concerned, sir?"

"Wuddint like him, to not show up like that. Not like him a'tall."

"Where were you meeting him?" Renee asked patiently.

"I done told that other cop all this," his tone was still flat, but his demeanor showed clear agitation.

"I'm sorry, sir, but I have to ask again." No need to mention what a useless, crooked bastard Harvey Bullock was. "The name of the club, sir?"

"The Iceberg Lounge."

"Cobblepot's place?"

"What of it? Brother can't see and be seen?"

"Just checking, that's all."

"Double-Deuce liked da cred he got from being seen wid a man like Cobblepot. He thought da fat bastard actually liked him." Denton's gaze stayed fixed on the fire.

"You don't?"

"Da Penguin liked da money Deuce brought intah the club."

"Their relationship was strictly social?" Renee watched Bright closely as she asked that question.

"What you mean?"

"Your friend wasn't an angel, Mr. Bright." Renee paused. "It's not a stretch to think he and the Penguin might have had some deals off the books."

Bright huffed, smirking and shaking his head, "Hell no, they didn't have no business like that. Weren't for ah lack of sniffing after table scraps on Deuce's parts, though. Penguin was too good for the likes of us."

"So they discussed it?"

"Deuce went beggin' tah massah's table, got told 'no' every time, if that's what you call 'discussing' it."

"The deceased employed a bodyguard, didn't he?"

"Yeah," Bright answered flatly.

"Did he have the night off?"

"Don't know, but rest assured that I aim ta find out."

"When was the last time you spoke to the deceased, sir?"

"This afternoon. We were… inspecting some of his holdings..."

Interlude

Renee watched the sun rise over Cape Carmine from the high-speed lane of the Sprang Bridge. An accident on the north side of the bridge had traffic slowed to a crawl-a very old, arthritic crawl. Being trapped in the northbound lane had given her a half hour she hadn't expected, which she used to replay her interview of Denton Bright. Their twenty minutes together had convinced her that Bright was nothing more than an unlucky man, one who had lost his friend and his meal ticket. There was still a lot of work to be done with respect to his relationship with Forest Jacks, his only client. Despite that, years on the job were already telling her he wasn't her perp. Some people just weren't killers.

The hollow stillness of her third floor walk up reminded her that there hadn't been any rush to get home. She'd been coming home to silence since Labor Day, though she did her best not to notice. It was easy to forget sometimes; she and Daria had been together for nearly three years. She knew she had missed signs of the other woman's unhappiness, of her worry and concern, but then she was very good at ignoring what she didn't want to see. Pushing the door closed behind her, she tossed her keys onto the breakfront. They hit the dark wood with a heavy finality. The small wicker basket that had been there to collect the accumulated contents of her pockets was gone; a victim of blind sorrow and one scotch too many. There had been a lot of those. She reached for the light-switch, hesitated, and then opted for the golden sunlight –iced with dust- that streamed in through the slats of the shuttered windows.

Across the room, next to the broken down sofa, the answering machine offered nothing new. She hit 'play' anyway, just in case. The chance to hear Daria's voice on the greeting wasn't unwelcome. The lack of a message light hadn't misled her: nothing. She shrugged free of her overcoat, tossed it at the sofa, and watched as it landed askew across the arm before it slid to the floor. She left it there. The bare floor, between the living room and the small dining area, mocked her as she crossed the place where the rug had been, the rug they'd bought at the street market over on Coastline. She undid the straps of her shoulder holster, leaving it to hang loosely from her shoulders as she entered the kitchen. The refrigerator was empty, again. The cabinet above the sink wasn't. A half-empty bottle of Maker's Mark and a water glass in hand, she sulked back to the sofa and collapsed into the worn cushions.

With practiced ease, she opened the bottle of whiskey and splashed three fingers into the glass before setting the bottle on the end-table. Her attention lingered on the answering machine. She stared at the message counter as if she could will the zero away. She tossed the whiskey back hard, swallowed angrily, and then snatched the bottle back up. She filled the glass again, three fingers worth, no more, and set the bottle aside. A sob choked her throat. Draining the second course of her liquid dinner, she set the glass aside while absently kicking her shoes off. She twisted on the sofa, pulled the heavy afghan from the back down, and wrapped it around herself. The warmth of hard liquor on her empty stomach gently enfolded her in its arms as she sunk into the sofa where she'd been living. Reminded of the weapon in her holster, she drew it out from under the afghan. She looked at it for a long moment, felt the weight of it in her hand, and finally dropped it onto the floor beside the sofa. Drawing her arm back under the afghan, she hugged the blanket tightly to her. Heavy eyes closed, heavy sorrow pulled her into darkness, until sleep put it all behind her.