Please read Disclaimer in Chapter One.
Title: Farewell, Mr. Groovy (C2: I Cover the Waterfront)
Author: JaganshiKenshin
Genre: Action/Adventure, Humor
Rating: K+/PG-13 (for anime-style fight scenes/language)
Summary: Hiei can't understand why EVERYBODY didn't kill Mr. Groovy.
A/N: Those who are curious as to how the 'Flying Shadow' ended up in show biz might want to read Firebird Sweet.
I appreciate your reviews/faves and thank you for reading this tale!
There's more than one bottle with Hiei's name on it.
Farewell, Mr. Groovy (2: I Cover The Waterfront)
by
Kenshin
Adjusting his collar, Hiei stepped into trench-coat weather. Luckily he was equipped with a black, single-breasted military-sleek number by London Fog.
He looked like a B-movie spy working for the wrong side. Way to blend in, he thought.
And then there was the car.
The 1963 Nissan Viper prototype. Low-slung, flame-red, with an engine like a lion's roar, and about as invisible as the Batmobile at high noon.
Couldn't help that. An effusively grateful client had pressed it upon Hiei just last week.
Though parked a few blocks north of the Agency building, Hiei headed on foot three doors down to Cafe Suave, a tie-and-jacket coffee shop frequented by agents and businessmen alike.
Given the hour, around eight AM, and the miserable weather, the place was all but deserted. Nevertheless Hiei sat in a secluded back booth.
Fortified with a double espresso, Hiei opened the Mr. Groovy dossier.
Even knowing that with his eidetic memory, a mere glance would burn the dossier into his brain, Hiei nevertheless read it twice, for good measure. There was little to read. He wasn't even done with his espresso by the time he slipped the papers back into their envelope and the envelope into his trench coat next to N's spending cash.
No espionage. Nothing to suggest foul play in the demise of the TV star. Hiei thought the chief was chasing a dream of justice, a doomed mission soaked in as much potential failure as the streets were soaked in rain.
But at least the pay was good.
Mr. Groovy. A rubber-faced man of about 40 with button-black eyes, crow's-wing pompadour, a blaring brash voice and a toothy grin.
Mr. Groovy had started out hosting a cheerful and popular variety show, which ran for several years, but some time before his decline and death, the show had degraded into Mr. G seeking out and embarrassing people in their native habitat.
Given the guy's obnoxious on-air persona, Hiei was surprised that everyone hadn't already killed him.
But Mr. Groovy had his fan base. Kuwabara, naturally. Also, at one point, Hiei recalled, Romantic Soldier had been slated to appear on the show, but a scheduling conflict prevented this. 'Mr. Groovy' was the only program that Koenma, the brat who ran the Reikai Bureau, and Joruju Saotome, his big blue oni of an assistant, watched together.
Since Hiei couldn't decide which of those two he held in greater contempt, he would not be calling on them.
Cafe Suave had windows even in the back. With bitter black espresso warming his throat, Hiei gazed out the window at soggy passersby, planning his next move.
Due to the unofficial nature of the job, conventional routes of investigation were out. But he could hardly tap people at random, asking, "Which of you did in Mr. Groovy?"
There were, however, a couple of people in mind-prime sources to tap.
The first source was a passing acquaintance with no permanent address and zero class. The second was in a class by himself, living for the moment at a temporary abode.
The neighborhoods of each potential source were as different as the people themselves.
Worst first. Which might prove more fun.
Hiei went out into the sullen rain to find the Corpse and Bucket.
The Corpse and Bucket was in a dangerous district on the waterfront, but Hiei was unlikely to get his throat slit.
Sometimes it was good to have a bad reputation.
Though the residents of that district may have feared and respected Hiei, they would have no such qualms about his vintage car. He drove to the nearest neighborhood where his wheels would remain intact, and greased the palm of a cab driver, who took him as far as a cross-street.
With the cab fleeing behind him and clouds like rotten cauliflower above, Hiei approached the Corpse and Bucket.
The bar crouched like a venomous toad in an alley redolent of old socks and yesterday's sake.
Where the name came from, no one knew, and Hiei wasn't asking. Maybe it was due to the leaky roof, calling for the strategic placement of tin buckets around the floor.
Today was a five-bucket day.
The interior was long and narrow, with occupied rickety tables on one side, and the bar on the other. There was just enough light to see.
His tough-guy persona was firmly in place, Hiei listened to rain clattering into tin buckets and the low grumble of bar flies. No music, no television. The TV over the bar took a bullet through its picture tube two years ago, and no one had bothered replacing it. The radio had been eaten last year.
When Hiei stepped inside, all chatter ceased. The tinny ballad of rain continued, unimpressed with Hiei's reputation.
The bar itself reeked of stale sweat, but there was an undertone of tar, probably from the wood-plank flooring torn off a shipwreck moments before the ship itself actually sank.
The bartender looked like a first cousin of the abominable snowman. Hiei's quarry, Futoi Junior, was draped over the bar, brown-bagging it, gnawing something that Hiei did not care to look at.
Futoi Junior, gambler, runner of numbers, petty thief and occasional strong-arm.
His family name, Futoi, meant 'thick.' It was well-placed. Junior resembled a cartoon bulldog stuffed into human skin, for all that he was a youkai. Sartorially splendid with undersized derby hat teetering on a cannonball head, Junior sported a five-o-clock shadow at nine in the morning. His yellowed undershirt revealed that same five-o-clock shadow all over lumpy shoulders. Small hairy ears came to backward points. Clamped in his undershot jaw was a dead cigar stump.
Hiei grinned and stepped forward. The pirated planks creaked a warning. Junior's face did not light up when he spotted Hiei.
"Ahh, crap," he muttered, in a voice like an oil slick. "It's you."
"Nothing gets past Mamma Futoi's eldest." Hiei slid into the rickety seat next to Junior.
"Ahhhh, crap."
"You shouldn't call yourself such names," said Hiei. "It's bad for your self-esteem."
"You're a humorous guy."
"And you don't have a Green Card, as I recall. Which means A: I turn you in, or B: I drag you into the nearest alley and bounce you on a few walls just to work off some steam."
Junior stroked his bristly jaw. "I ain't done nothin' steam-worthy," he said at length.
"Who says it's you I'm steamed at? What's that you're drinking? Spit in a snail shell?"
"Nectar of the gods. What'm I supposed to have did dis time? Strickly in a speculative sense."
"Depends." Hiei peeled a bill off N's bankroll and laid it on the bar, signaling for the yeti bartender to buy Junior another round of nectar.
The yeti uncorked a tall brown bottle stinking of furniture polish. The scent briefly did battle with the smell of creosote as he dribbled liquor into Junior's glass.
The furniture polish won.
"You are a gennleman and a scholar," said Junior, grabbing his drink. With lifted pinky, he downed it at a shot and coughed, "Here's to ya."
"Well?" pressed Hiei.
Junior's powerful jaws ruminated on something. "Depends on what like?"
The barkeep laid a thick shot glass filled with thumbprints and varnish in front of Hiei for his trouble. Hiei leaned away from it to give the flies a chance.
"On whether you offed Mr. Groovy all by your lonesome," Hiei said, "or if you needed to call in an army."
"Don't even make light of such a thing!" Junior's tobacco-juice eyes watered. "That Mr. Groovy-he wuz da best!"
"Who'd want to kill him?"
"No one I knew. Guy was a real card and a half."
Hiei gave Junior the benefit of his deathglare.
It was Futoi who, years ago, had steered Hiei in Kurama's direction, implying that Kurama had something to do with the disappearance of Hiei's sister Yukina.
Of course, Kurama had done no such thing. It was a miracle that Hiei and Kurama had not slain one another due to that little misunderstanding, but instead became allies.
Hiei had to conclude that this time, Junior was telling the truth. Junior might have been selling a mistake when he tipped Hiei to Kurama all those years ago, but he was really a decent of sort thug, and Hiei was fond of him, in a way that did not preclude roughing him up in an alley should that prove necessary.
Besides, Junior claimed to be a fan, and was far too dense to fabricate such an act and keep it up for the time it took to gulp two drinks.
"Lookin' for clues?" Junior scratched his beetling brow. "Why don'cha ax them jockeys you usually get yer info from?"
"They don't come out in this weather." Jaki, as was their correct name, are small youkai used as messengers and spies. Though some are humanoid in form, many resemble rats or squirrels, and can easily pass among humans without raising suspicion. For whatever complicated reasons, some of which included the generous application of rice crackers and other edible bribes, jaki looked upon Hiei with awe. "And that better not be one you were eating just now."
"'Course not." The big grinding jaws worked furiously. Junior gulped the lump down. "Wait a minnit! You ain't suggestin' that no one's offed him? Not Mr. Groovy?"
"You're quick on the draw, aren't you?"
"You're serious!"
"I'm not even here," amended Hiei. "Enjoy your fruit fly a la mode."
"'Cause if someone did off Mr. Groovy," growled Junior, "there'd be plenty of us boys waitin' to clean his clock."
"Thanks for the tip, Junior."
"Not that I am into the clock-cleanin' business myself any more, but I would personally write such a miscreant my very own perzen pen letter."
Junior's remark about the letter served to galvanize an idea with which Hiei had been toying. Skinning off another bill, he thrust it at Junior along with his own glass of thumbprints, and left Junior scratching his head in puzzlement.
0-0-0-0-0
His car was still there, not a hubcap missing, and Hiei was more than grateful to drive into the good part of the harbor district, where his car wasn't likely to be disassembled, nor would he discover a shiv sticking from the middle of his back.
His destination was a small pen boutique.
Taisen Shop was clean and cool and, after the Corpse and Bucket, it smelled wonderfully of air conditioning and ink.
The pleasant young clerk was more than happy to sell Hiei a bottle of ink shaped like a shoe, allowing him to dip-test the ink with a loaner pen, explaining why the admittedly peculiar shape of the bottle made sense: so the user could tilt it and access the last few drops of ink.
It only remained to select a color. The clerk lined up bottles, naming the colors, explaining the virtues of each.
They had black. It was what Hiei himself might have chosen, or that deep midnight blue. Certainly not the red, or the suspicious lavender, or the burgundy. However, this ink was not for him.
Hiei hovered over the bottles. As though the ink was made of liquid magnets and himself steel, his hand dropped itself on one with such force that he was lucky it didn't break.
Shaking off an eerie feeling, he said, "I'll take it."
He also chose a pen to go with the bottle. The clerk wrapped both, and placed them a gold-foil gift bag.
Hiei departed the boutique into dirty, clotted rainclouds to find his next quarry.
(To Be Continued: An almost-empty house and a surprise guest deepens the mystery.)
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