Hello Readers, thanks for checking out my story. If you can find the time, please review. I truly appreciate every review I get, and I hope you all enjoy this story
P.S. This is my first "Sin City" Story, and using such a vivid world like "Basin City" for a fiction is a huge task, but I will try to do justice to Mr. Millers amazing work. Also, I don't own any of the "Sin City" properties, but some of the characters in this story are my creation. A main character in the story is Hartigan, and a few other favorites might pop up.
Chapter one
The warm, dry darkness of Basin city would take a while to get used to...then again, everything here does. Seems like everyone in this city has something to fight for, something to love...something to die for. Everyone but me, Benjamin Tinsley. Twenty-five year old kid in way over his head. The Basin City police building was in the middle of the entire city. Conviently located near old-town...that place is one big time bomb, just waiting for the timer to stop.
Hartigan...he says his name is John Hartigan. He's an intimidating man, yet he has a kindness to him...something I haven't seen from anyone in this city since my first day here. He's gonna take me around the city...well, that's what was supposed to happen. First day in the city...Hell of a day it would be.
"What's your name kid?" Hartigan said to me while leading me to a police car, then peeling out of the driveway.
"Ben...Ben Tinsley...How long have you been a cop?" I asked while adjusting to the high speed at which he drived. The man could have been a millionare in any racing circuit in the state...Nah, Johnny was made to be a cop.
"Bout' twenty years, give or take...you?" Hartigan said with a little hesitation...he seemed like the kinda guy who didn't enjoy small talk, but hell, I'm a stubborn kid...I'll keep talkin'.
"Three years... I was the best shot in my town by the age of ten...figured I'd put it to good use, help some people out..."
"This is a good city to use the skills in... plenty of people need help." Hartigan replied with the thick, and hearty voice that I imagined my father always had...I never knew my dad...maybe that's why the chip on my shoulder can double as an anchor. "You got any family kid? Wife, kids?" Hartigan said with geniune interest.
"Nope...no family...My Mom died last year, and my Dad left when I was three. How bout' you Mr. Hartigan?" As much as I thought I was getting on his last nerve, he seemed to enjoy talking to me...Maybe because I was at the right place at the right time, or maybe because I hadn't been corrupted by the city...which I could tell had happened to nearly everyone I'd encountered in my brief stay.
"I got a wife..Eileen. No kids yet. One day though...my wife always wanted kids...Call me John, or just Hartigan...no use getting all formal. Look at our surroundings." Hartigan was as close as I had to a friend in a long time...sad really. A man I had known for five minutes had become a friend.
"John, yeah, we just got a tip from a witness saying there's shooting going on in Kadie's. Some brute of a man beat a man to a near death, then shooting began." Hartigan's partner Bob said over the radio."
"I'm on it Bob" John said with a voice almost as warm, and deep as the humidity in the air. "Listen kid, sorry we didn't get to take the grand tour, but I'm gonna drop you off at a motel."
"No...Let me tag along...plenty of people need help in this city." I said with a smirk.
"Yeah...plenty of people need help." John said with an identical smirk...I like this guy.
We pull up to a seedie joint named "Kadies" Trashy little place really. The kinda place drunk guys come to drink more, and check out the dame du jour.
We walked into the club, and see some perky young ladies girating their hips for dollar bills. "These your kinda girls Johnny?" I said with an almost juvenile sense of humor.
"Me? Yeah right. The day I fall in love with a dancer is the day I die." John said with the dry wit of every single comedian I've ever heard, and never found funny.
The brute Bob had described in his radio call was easy to find. Maybe forty-odd years old, muscles in places you didn't think could sustain muscles, and a mug that looked like old, worn out leather with beady eyes, and a mouth. The thought of getting on this guy's bad side would make any man get into a fetal position.
"Excuse me, would you happen to be Marv?" Hartigan said in the hearty voice that you would imagine god would have.
"What's it too ya?" The man said while downing a shot of jack. This guy could drink straight diesel fuel and stand upright.
"My name is John Hartigan, Basin City police, we got word of shots being fired here not to long ago, as well as assault, you know anything of it?" John said while giving the beast of a man the benefit of a doubt. This guy must be the last honest man in the city.
"A guy got outta line, tried to get a little touchy with some of the girls, I took care of it Mr...Hartigan." Marv said while reading John's badge. Marv never looked at me...good thing to...The guy scared the holy hell outta me.
"I believe that's my job sir...Who fired the shots?" Hartigan asked while putting his badge away.
"Shots? I didn't know about any shots...The only shots I've participated in are the shots of whiskey I've been drinkin'." Marv said with the crooked smile of a man who either A) finds his own jokes funny, or B) is about to fall off his barstool.
"Thanks for the honesty Marv...go easy on the brews ok?"
"Hell boy, you spend a good hour in my shoes, you'll be beggin for a drop of the good stuff." Marv said while saluting John, turning back towards the bar, and signaling for another round.
Hartigan and I walked out of the sleazy shit-hole, and made our way back to the car.
"Well...Either that man is too plastered to remember anything, or we got ourselves a problem rookie."
"Hell, from what I've seen of this city so far...problems seem to run in packs."
"What do you think... Should we call it a night, and head back to the station?" John said while stretching the tree trunks that doubled as his arms.
"The night is young, maybe something will pop up."
"If I've learned one thing in this town, it's this. If you walk down the right alley in Sin City...you can find anything." John said before peeling away from the club.
Back at the station, John, Bob, and I sat around a desk discussing the problem, or problems at hand.
"The guy said he didn't hear any shots fired... but hell, the guy looked like he had downed enough alcohol to keep us all tipsy for the rest of the month." John said while drinking a cup of coffee. "Has there been any other accounts of a shooting tonight?" John asked bob, who paged through a large stack of files.
"Nothin' John. This don't seem right. This city is full of people just walkin' the streets. Someone had to see something." Bob said while running his hand through his thick, spikey black, and gray hair, and cleaning his coke-bottle width glasses.
"You're right... We have no clues, no leads, no witnesses. No god damn witnesses in a city full of people willing to put themselves in danger just to make the paper, and get their ugly mugs on the five o' clock news."
"It could be a diversion...Keep us focused on this so someone can go on a rampage without us even lifting a finger." I said while drinking a tall glass of milk. I wonder what the older guys are thinking. Some new kid drinking milk? I'll be lucky if I'm not called a pussy by someone in the next week or so.
"Are you kidding? Criminals in this town don't take the time to cover up their fingerprints. Most of this assholes don't have an I.Q above 30. A diversion? Fat chance." Bob said while putting the files back in a cabinet. Tubby bastard.
"Hold on Bob...the kid could be right about this one." John said while looking out the large window in the office, almost as if he expected a suspect to jump out with a bullseye on his head.
"Whatever Hartigan, I'm staying out of this one...just seems fishy." Bob said before walking into his secluded office.
"Tell you what kid, go get some sleep, we'll handle this in the morning." John said as he put his coat on, and patted me on the back. He walked out of the building, and I could hear the tires on his cadillac squealing as he took off. I knew right then that my time here, would be one hell of a ride.
Ok, that's the first chapter! It may have been a little on the boring side (I hope not!) but that's only because I wanted to really flesh out the base story, and the instant friendship between Ben, and Hartigan. I'll work on another chapter soon. PLEASE REVIEW.