FOUR

38. THE KING'S COUNCIL.

When the lion had been elected king, he made a fine speech before all his people, saying: "Sirs, it is your will that I be king. Now you all must know that the position of king is a very dangerous one, and very difficult... I therefore beg all of you gathered here together to give me councilors to help and counsel me in such a way that both I and my people may be saved. And I pray the that the councilors you give me be wise, loyal, and such as are worthy of being councilors and in the company of a king."

All the barons and others of the assembly were pleased with what the king had said… It was agreed that the bear, the leopard, the lynx, the snake, and the wolf would be councilors of the king. All of them swore in presence of the court that they would give the king loyal counsel to the best of their abilities.

Dame Reynard, however, was unhappy at not having been elected king's councilor, and before the assembly she said the following words: "According to the Gospel, Jesus Christ, who is king of heaven and earth, preferred, in this world, the friendship and company of simple and humble men... in order that He might exalt them through their virtue, thus increasing their humility. Subject to the approval of all present, it would seem to me that the king should have in his council simple, humble beasts, so that they should have pride neither of power nor of lineage, nor want to be equals of the king, but rather give an example of hope and humility to the simpler beasts who live off grass."

...And they all advised the king to take Dame Reynard, who spoke well and had great wisdom, into his council.

- Ramon Llull, The Book of the Beasts

The call came in at 2:49, while Nick was busy using Officer Francine Pennington's rather impressive bulk as a makeshift shelter against the rain. They had set up the roadblock at the intersection of Fog and Ivy, using their twin cruisers to block off traffic. Now McHorn was standing in the intersection, rerouting incoming cars as best he could, while Nick did his best to look like he was contributing something to the situation beyond being wet and miserable.

He wasn't, really. McHorn and Pennington were more than twice his size. They didn't need his assistance with directing traffic, and the phone in his hand was still playing light muzak while he waited for someone on the other end to actually pick up. So, for the moment, he was reduced to standing in a sort of half-crouch behind Pennington and wondering bitterly about how a rain poncho that was so big on him he could have used it as a tent could still leave him soaked to the skin.

He shot a glower through the window of the police cruiser, where Judy sat with her feet up on the dashboard, idly picking over the remains of her lunch salad and grinning from ear to ear. She waved cheerily to him, and then made a great show of stretching luxuriously and leaned back in her seat.

A few minutes later, he sighed heavily and shoved the phone back into his pocket. "Road crews won't be here for another half-hour, at least," he said heavily. "We've got flooding all over Rainforest, and the Canals are basically underwater. Meadows look like they might go next, so they're prioritizing that."

"Wonderful," said Pennington. She pretended not to notice as he surreptitiously shifted a bit closer to her side. "So… what's your bet? Two hours?"

"At least three," said Nick. "I'm guessing we'll have more closures before too long. Doesn't look like it's about to let up, does it?"

He jerked a thumb towards the sky. It was past noon, but the storm overhead left the city cast in grays and blacks and blues so deep they were almost violet. Occasionally, a crack of thunder shook the asphalt under his paws.

"You sure the weather wasn't forecasting hurricanes with a light chance of apocalypse or something?" he said. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the drumming of the rain. Pennington snorted - something to see, when an elephant did it - but before she could answer, Judy's voice echoed out of the air behind him.

"Hey, Slick!" she shouted. "Get your fluffy tail in here! We're off traffic!"

Pennington raised an eyebrow at him, but Nick just shrugged before turning to make a mad dash for the cruiser.

"Gaah! Nick, come on. At least try not to get it everywhere," said Judy. "I was nice and dry, for a few minutes." She recoiled from the impromptu shower that had resulted from Nick trying to shrug out of his poncho and pressed herself against the driver's side door.

"Oh, please," Nick huffed, as he shoved the worthless plastic thing under the dashboard and sank into his seat. "I felt like a drowned rat out there. Pretty sure I saw a couple drifting by, too." He ran a paw through the fur on top of his head, trying to slick some of the water out, and shook his head rapidly for a moment. "Pfffabhl. Right. Okay. Where are we going?"

"One-oh-two-four Shady," said Judy promptly, as she settled back into her seat and the cruiser rumbled to life under them.

Nick blinked. "Wait," he said. "We actually got a call from Shady Place?"

Judy cast him a sidelong look. Outside, Pennington stepped out into the intersection, making room for them to pull away. "Yyyeah, we did. Why wouldn't we?"

Nick stared at her for a moment. "Hoo boy. Sometimes I forget how new you are." He shook his head again and settled back into his seat. "That's the Marches, Carrots. They don't like cops down there. The only time cops turn up on Shady is when there's a body to wheel off."

"Well, there's no body this time," said Judy, seemingly unimpressed by this. She still had the same self-satisfied smile on that she always did when they got sent somewhere. He could almost hear her thinking "Yeah. Real cops. Doin' real cop work. That's us."

"So what is it, then?" he said, as he dripped onto the seat.

"A lost kid, apparently," said Judy. The cruiser's tires hissed, and she frowned for a moment as they slid through a puddle that turned out to be hiding a rather nasty pothole, but continued, "In one of the apartment buildings. They don't know the parents' phone number or anything."

"Huh," said Nick. "Well, at least they were smart enough to call the cops."

"They didn't," said Judy. One of her ears twitched. "Somebody else found them and made the call. I think it was the apartment manager."

Nick grunted and shut his eyes as he settled back into his seat. It was as wet as he was now, but at least he couldn't actually feel the rain on his fur any more. Besides, it saved him from having to watch Judy's driving, which always felt as though it were deliberately calculated to give him as severe a heart attack as possible.

And it wasn't as though he needed to actually have his eyes open to know how close they were getting, anyway. He could when they were crossing the Fog Street bridge by the sound the tires made - and even if that weren't the case, you could tell when you were in the Marches by lighting alone.

Elsewhere in Zootopia, particularly in the parts of downtown that Precinct One usually patrolled, the lights were bright, clean, and white, with maybe the barest hint of yellow around the edges. In the Marches, though, they still used the older, cheaper sodium street lamps, which lined the roads in harsh orange.

And then there was the neon. Cheap stuff, usually made from pieces of old signs that more upscale parts of the city had tossed. There was no real unity to it, and it tended to hiss and crackle and flash on and off in the rain, but when you were poor enough to have to salvage scraps, you learned not to complain too much about that.

Because that was what the Marches were. The poor place. Where you went when you didn't have enough cash to do anything but live off the scraps from the rest of the city.

The Marches themselves were a consequence of Zootopia's unique construction. They were what happened when you shoved the swampiest end of the Canal District right up against the Rainforest District, then threw in a good chunk of Savannah Central for flavor, and then routed the runoff from Tundratown's rivers right down the center of the whole thing. What you ended up with was a long slice of the city, right in the shadow of downtown, where everything was humid and hot and built over half-exposed rivers and bogs.

There were only two kinds of people who lived in the Marches: people who couldn't afford better and people who wanted to avoid attention. It was not, on the whole, a place where cops were welcome.

1024 Shady Place turned out to be one of the nameless, dilapidated apartment complexes that the Marches were basically built out of. Eight stories of shoebox rooms and broken windows with a scenic view of… well, nothing much, at the moment. Buildings in the Marches were tall, with a tendency towards crazed leanings. They choked the light from the sky even on the brightest days. With the storm overhead, it may as well have been night.

Outside the windows of the cruiser, the Marches were a sea of black, dotted with islands of brilliant, flickering neon. If you slitted your eyes right, they looked almost like technicolor stars.

Nick heaved a great sigh as Judy parked them outside the apartment, then turned his head to grimace at her. "Do we really have to go?" he said. "I was just starting to get dry."

A few minutes later, the two of them were standing in the lobby, dripping all over everything. Against that downpour, umbrellas were worth less than the useless department ponchos.

"And so much for that," Nick muttered darkly. Judy ignored him, wrung out one ear, and strode up to the counter. A little brass bell was sitting on the tile. She tapped it. The ring was surprisingly bright and cheerful, in a place like this.

It had obviously been a hotel, once. Probably back before the real estate agency had figured out that investing in the Marches was like trying to bail out a sinking cruise liner with a sieve. There was still the little old-fashioned rack behind the desk that had probably held room keys once upon a time, and a few fluted pillars around the edge of the room hinted that someone had once tried to make this a nice place to live.

Time and lack of money had won out in the end. The carpet was moth-eaten and covered in mysterious stains. The countertop was scratched. Almost half of the overhead lights had burnt out and had never been replaced. The entire place stank of cigarettes and alcohol, and was silent except for the rain drumming on the door outside.

And, slowly approaching, a loud wheezing sound.

It went on for a surprisingly long time - long enough that Judy turned and raised an eyebrow at Nick, who simply shrugged and went back to trying to squeeze the rainwater out of his tail - before she rang the bell again. This time, she was met with a distant, high-pitched, out-of-breath "Yes, yes, I'm coming!" before a little door behind the counter creaked open.

The wheezy speaker turned out to be an ancient and slate-gray armadillo with a pair of coke-bottle glasses and a spindly little cane that wobbled almost as precariously as he did. It took him almost twenty seconds to cross the yard or so to the counter, whereupon he seated himself delicately on a stool and squinted across the countertop at Judy.

"Two beds," he said, in a voice that was sounded something like a tea kettle in an earthquake, "kitchenette, no television. Rent-"

"Oh, sorry," said Judy. "That's not what we're here for."

The armadillo squinted at her, and his rheumy eyes flickered towards Nick. "We don't do hourlies," he said coldly.

Nick choked. Judy just tapped her paw on the countertop and said, "Officers Hopps and Wilde, ZPD. We got a call about a lost child."

"Oh." The armadillo straightened up, expression lightening somewhat. "The Berenger boy. Right, yes. Sorry. My eyes aren't what they used to be." He coughed and scratched his throat. "Poor thing. It's lucky Mister Savage came by when he did. Apparently his parents have been out for days, and didn't leave him much in the way of food. Horrible. I'd never have guessed it of them, but the Mrs. Luckson had some eggs to spare, and I understand that Mister Emerly had some fish-"

"Sorry," Judy said sharply. She had pulled her little notebook out of a pocket and flipped it open. The familiar carrot pen was in her hand. Nick grinned to himself - she hadn't noticed yet that the notebook was completely soaked through. "You said 'Mister Savage'. That would be…?"

"Mister Jack Savage," said the armadillo. "He stops by from time to time. Private detective, you know. Can't say I'm a fan of his line of work - whenever he turns up, it means someone's hired him, which usually means it's unsavory business - but, in this case, he did some good. I believe he was the one who put in the call. He's with the boy now. Oh, yes - floor three, room eleven."

Judy shot a questioning look over her shoulder at Nick, who just shrugged.

"Thank you, Mister… ah…" Judy looked back to the armadillo.

"Amity," said Mister Amity. "Julius Amity."

"And no one else noticed that the boy was left alone before now?" she asked.

"I'm afraid not." Amity sniffed. "I don't go upstairs much myself - stairs give me too much trouble, I only send up the help when a call comes - and he was apparently a very quiet child. You'd have to ask him yourself, if you want anything more."

"So," said Judy, as they wound their way up the rickety staircase towards the third floor, "Savage again."

"Savage again," said Nick. "No clue why, but Savage again."

"He was asking for access to police records?" Judy took the stairs two at a time, pausing at each landing to wait for Nick to catch up. "And he didn't say why?"

"Nope," said Nick, as he sauntered up behind her. "Benjy seemed to be expecting him to have court approval to access the records, but he didn't. And he was asking about somebody, too."

She took off again, and stopped on the next landing with her back to him, hands on her hips and staring at the wall. Nick was very proud of the way he was able to keep his eyes off of her tail. "He's turned up twice in the same day," she said. "And if this kid has been alone for that long… we may be looking at a missing mammals case."

"Wouldn't surprise me," said Nick darkly. "The kid's folks probably overdosed on something. It's that kind of neighborhood."

"Maybe," said Judy. Her ears were twitching back and forth above her head. Nick couldn't stop himself from half-grinning at the sight. "But I smell a case."

"Really?" Nick stepped past her and pushed open the door. "Because I smell fish. Room eleven, Officer Cottontail."

She just snorted and bounced past him into the hallway. A moment later, she was knocking on the gray door marked "11". "Hello?" she said, as she pushed it open. "Officer Hopps, ZPD. You called?"

The apartment turned out to be pretty much exactly what Nick had expected - which wasn't much of anything, really. Barely more than a shoebox, with decaying carpeting, rickety furniture, and a greasy little kitchenette connected to a tiny bedroom and a tinier bathroom. The second bed promised by Mister Amity turned out to be a pull-out couch, which had obviously been serving as a bed for so long that its original purpose had been all but forgotten.

There were only two other people in the apartment. A small, scraggly-looking leopard boy of about five or six, whom Nick assumed to be the Berenger kid, was seated at the tiny table in the kitchenette, wrapped in a blanket and staring owlishly at them as they entered. A few feet away, standing over the stove, was Jack Savage.

The rabbit had hung his long coat over the back of the pull-out, and left the jacket of his old-fashioned suit draped over a chair. That left him in a white button-up and suspenders over his pinstripe trousers, and left the strange tiger stripes in his white-gray fur on full display.

There was a shoulder holster visible under his left arm. Nick only glanced at it long enough to verify that, yeah, there was actually an old-fashioned revolver in it, packing heat was hardly unusual in a place like this - but he could sense Judy tensing beside him.

Savage only spared them a brief glance as they stepped inside. He looked as blank and stonefaced as ever. "Officers," he said flatly. "I'll be with you in a minute. Just finishing up some food for the kid." He waved the spatula in his right hand by way of demonstration, and his left shifted the skillet on the stovetop a few inches. "His name's Tom, by the way."

"Hello, Tom," said Judy. The brightness in her voice was a bit forced, but she did put on her warmest smile as she bounced across the room towards the leopard. "It's very nice to meet you. I'm Judy. I'm here to make sure you're doing okay."

The boy didn't say anything. He simply shrank back into his chair and pulled the blanket tighter around himself, blinking slowly up at Judy. Her expression flickered a bit.

"Tom's not much of a talker," said Savage. He sounded almost disinterested. There was a hiss, and a surge of scent that made Nick's stomach rumble embarrassingly, as he flipped over something golden in the skillet. "Especially when it comes to cops. No offense." He pressed down on the omelette with the spatula. "His parents just aren't the type to trust the boys in blue."

Nick laid a hand on Judy's shoulder, just for a moment, as he stepped up behind her. The rabbit gave him a slightly nonplussed look, but he kept his eyes on Savage. "You know his parents?"

"I was hired to do some work on them a ways back," answered the rabbit, still in that same, barely-interested tone of voice. "And before you start asking questions, Sam and Tessa Berenger. She worked in the dime store down the street. He did odd jobs." He looked up from the stove to raise an eyebrow at Nick, who simply nodded. Odd jobs. Right.

"And no," Savage added, as he scooped the omelette out of the skillet and onto a plate, "I don't know where they are. Couldn't even begin to guess. Tom says it's been a couple days, but that's all I've got."

He set the plate down in front of Tom, who immediately tore his gaze away from Nick and Judy in order to start wolfing it down in great, hungry bites. Savage just leaned back against the counter, arms folded across his chest, and watched the two of them levelly. "Anything else you need to know?"

Judy lifted a hand to her pocket, remembered as she was doing so that the notebook was too soggy to write in, and lowered it again. "Actually, Mister Savage," she said, "we do have to ask what it is you're doing here."

Savage shrugged. "Looking for a mutual acquaintance."

"Who?"

"It's personal, Officer Hopps." Savage's expression remained carefully, perfectly blank. "An ex. And I'm not getting any more into it than that."

Judy cast a glance at Nick over her shoulder. When she looked back to Savage, she was frowning very slightly. "I'm afraid we're going to have to ask you to."

"My personal life is mine, Officer Hopps," said Savage. "And it's going to stay that way. The Berengers have been gone for days. I'm here for entirely unrelated reasons. I called it in because I'm not going to leave the kid on his own, but I'm not going to stand here and be interrogated over something I've got nothing to do with."

One of his ears twitched as he stared, unblinking, at Judy. "We done here, or do you have any other questions?"

"Yes, actually," said Nick, before Judy could open her mouth again. He pointed towards the plate in front of Tom, who stopped eating and stared at the finger as if afraid it might go off. "Where'd a rabbit learn to cook eggs?"

Savage raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, come on," said Nick, slipping another crooked smile onto his face. "That's barely personal. I'm just curious."

Even Judy was staring at him now. He winked at her.

Savage sighed. "I cook," he said flatly. "And I used to be close to a dame who appreciated it. Anything else?"

"Yes, actually," said Nick again. He kept the smile fixed, despite Judy's expression at the other rabbit's use of the word "dame". He was taking shots in the dark, he knew, but Savage's ear was still twitching. The rabbit was wound tight. He practically hear the clockwork pinging under stress. "This dame - what was her name?"

Savage's eyes narrowed, and his gaze flickered over to Judy for a moment before he said, "I don't see how that's relevant."

"Well, neither do I, yet," said Nick airily. He lifted his radio up from his belt and let the receiver dangle by its cord, held between two fingers. "But, like you said earlier, I've got a different kind of rep now than I used to. Used to be a con man. Now I'm a cop. And that means I've got to ask awkward questions." He whistled between his teeth for a moment, letting the radio swing. Watching Savage's ear twitch.

"Right now," he continued slowly, still in that same airy, casual tone, "I'm wondering what good old Ben Clawhauser would say if I were to call him up and ask if he knew about any of your old ex-dames. Ones named 'Reynard', for example. I'm pretty sure he'd know. Loves to gossip, our Ben. And you two seemed pretty chummy back at the station. And then-" one of Savage's feet started tapping on the tiling of the kitchenette "-I'm wondering what he would say if I were to ask him to rattle off some names from that list of records you asked him about earlier. I'm particularly wondering if the name 'Berenger' would turn up on there."

He flicked his wrist, swung the radio up and around, and caught it in one paw, grinning hugely. "What d'you think, Carrots?" he asked, without looking away from Savage. "What'd you put the odds at?"

Judy matched his grin, folded her arms across her chest, and bumped her hip against his. "Well, this probably counts as cheating, but judging by the look on your face, Mister Savage-" the other rabbit's jaw clenched "-I'd call those pretty good odds, myself."

Savage wasn't blank any more. He glared openly at Judy, breathing slowly and evenly, for almost ten seconds. Then he inhaled sharply and pushed away from the counter. "Finish up, kid," he said to Tom, as he limped around to the chair that he had left his suit jacket hanging on. "Looks like you and me are both goin' for a ride."

Five minutes later, as Nick watched Savage limp slowly down the stairs, Tom Berenger just ahead, Judy hip-checked him again on one of the landings. "Pretty slick back there," she whispered. "I knew you'd come in handy some day."

A lot of thoughts flashed through his head in response - it was easy, it was luck, he'd heard enough to connect the dots back at the station, Savage basically had a flashing sign over his head saying "ASK ME ABOUT REYNARD" - but the little smile she gave him before setting off down the stairs again made his stomach do backflips, and every one of them went unsaid.