Chapter Nine, "You'll Never Walk Alone"
He wanted to be happy that things seemed to be looking in the right direction. He really did. But much like how it's not useful to dwell on the past, it is similarly unhelpful to occupy one's mind with a future that has not yet occurred. All we have is the present, and Howard Lotor presently found himself still sitting in his car, which was the closest thing he had to a home in this town, having nothing better to do besides twiddle his thumbs and wait for his new business partner to call him and say what his next idea for legitimizing their business would be.
The raccoon was resisting the urge to start imbibing at eleven in the morning - yes, he was a night owl, but he'd gone to bed early last night for lack of anything else to do, and now he had an itch to to get some alcohol purely for the same time-killing purposes. He didn't like that he was spending his morning sitting on his ass and waiting for someone to come and hold his hand to help him move his life forward, but Howard simply didn't know what he could do right here, right now to tangibly improve his situation.
Plus, you know, same as yesterday: the second he started doing something else, Nick would probably call him. I swear, the worst boredom is the kind where you know exactly what you want to do, but you just don't have the time or resources to actually do it. Hence why this boredom had once again morphed into existential dread; he wanted to do something, anything, but couldn't.
Well, hell, one way to ward off the desire for drink was for Howard to remind himself exactly how short on cash he was. That was another thing, he was going to have to see whether that fox could work his magic to get him an American bank account so he could actually survive in this cashless town. And then when that was sorted out, try to find a place to stay…
Hey, you know what? Fine, let the new guy with no clue take the reins of this detective operation; Howard needed to use his mental energy to focus on his personal needs. He barely had food and shelter, now what was he gonna do for food and -
"Oh, why are you acting so goddamn rash!?"
"Because you REFUSE to come to mature and socially-conscious decisions on your own! It's BAD for the ENVIRONMENT!"
- water.
A pair of pronghorns (don't call 'em antelopes) who were presumably a couple stormed out the back door of the apartment building Howard was parked next to. One of them was carrying a 24-pack of bottled water, and wasn't looking very happy about it.
"So, what, you're just gonna throw them away!?"
"YES!"
"And what the fuck will that accomplish!?"
"It'll drill it into your fucking head that ignorance won't be tolerated!" This one tossed the case of water into a dumpster hardly a few yards from Howard's parked car.
"And now you're just wasting clean water! How is that helping the environment!? You aren't even giving it away to, like, a food bank or something!? Explain to me how this makes you a good mammal!"
"The last thing the mammals at the bottom of our society need is to give more fortunate mammals a valid reason to hate them - like using plastic," this one said with a hoof to the other pronghorn's face as they went back in the building. "Even the lowliest deserve to be reminded that change starts with all of us making better choices."
"It's not up to us, it's up to corporations to stop…!" But their conversation was extinguished as the door closed behind them.
Well… that was… an occurrence.
The raccoon took a good look at the apartment building the pronghorns had just come out of. Yeah, these two probably weren't struggling for money, they could probably put their ethics before their wallet. Howard, however, had no such luxury. He could seriously go for some clean, free water - and after the water was gone, some new bottles to relieve himself in so he didn't have to risk a public indecency charge quite as often. The soda bottle he'd been keeping under the seat since Seattle was starting to get pretty grody.
Trouble was, it was broad daylight, and people - mammals? In any case, strangers - strangers were walking by all up and down the street. Now, as an individual with a striped tail, Howard had been conditioned to stay far away from any garbage receptical unless he wanted to be personally responsible for exacerbating somebody's bigotry against raccoons. But he took a moment to think about Nick's insider wisdom from yesterday: the denizens of Zootopia absolutely had issues with raccoons, but none related to, shall we say, trashy stereotypes (rimshot!). And who could forget the old adage: you'll stop worrying about what people think about you when you realize how rarely they do. In all likelihood, nothing negative would happen as a result of him retrieving this wasted water.
Fully getting in the spirit of not giving a fuck, he pulled a backpack out of the back seat and immediately doffed his nice white shirt in favor of something junkier, and if somebody decided to invade his privacy and peek into his car window to judge him for getting half-naked where they could see him, then screw it, that said more about them than it did about him. He'd have to be resourceful if he wanted to cut it in this strange metropolis, and there was a dumpster full of resources right there. Now donning a ratty old t-shirt and a dark-orange hoodie he rarely wore, he jumped out of his car and bravely made his way to the trash, not caring what stereotypes he may or may not be upholding.
First obstacle: he was a real raccoon, not a cartoon character who was magically drawn five or six feet tall; climbing into this gigantic bin would be a challenge. The lip was far above his head and it was a sheer surface he'd have to scale. And this might seem like a good thing otherwise, but this alley was unusually clean, so there wasn't any other debris he could use for an impromptu platforming adventure.
But he had options. Fire escape! He'd used a fire escape for purposes other than escaping fire before. And because this was such a size-diverse city, it was easy to reach the bottom rung of the ladder (begging the question about why the dumpster was inaccessible to smaller species, but if we broke down all the ways this town failed to be as inclusive as it sought to be, we'd be here all day). Up to the landing and across to the edge closest to the dumpster, up on the railing and clinging to the wall to get the best jump he could…
...Yeah, no, at the risk of sounding like a pussy, a basic understanding of physics would tell anybody that he wouldn't make that jump. He'd save playing Action Hero for when he thought he actually stood a chance.
Okay, so back down the ladder, right back to square one. Alright, what else could he do? It's a shame he couldn't just climb the brick wall like his primitive ancestors probably could and wait.
...Time to go native. He slipped his shoes and socks off. Maybe these nutty Zootopians were onto something when it came to going around barefoot (barepaw?) everywhere. And he'd lost his nail clippers somewhere along the journey, so his claws were ready for this.
He probably couldn't climb the vertical surface all the way up, that would be absurd, but he didn't need to. He just had to climb high enough to grab the rim of the dumpster. Backing up to get a running start, taking off, jump, clamber clamber clamber clamber, scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch, JUMP…
...Made it. He still wasn't an athlete, so pulling himself up just by his arms wouldn't be the easiest thing in the world, but he had just enough traction from the sides of the bin for his feet to give him a boost. Kick kick kick kick, up and over…
He'd found that which he coveted, though landing on top of it wasn't the most comfortable for his damaged back. But it wasn't anything crippling, and after getting a few groans out of his system, he rolled over and put his paws on his loot. He'd won it.
...Now to actually get out of here.
It took probably five entire minutes, but he rearranged the bags full of trash until they formed a slope he could climb while pushing a treasure chest almost as big as he was. Now this was murder on his back; he knew that you were supposed to exert with your legs, but that wasn't the easiest thing when your ground was unsteady. And with every step he felt the hill disintegrate beneath him as he crushed it underfoot, feeling like he was in an action movie running across a bridge as it crumbled behind him. But he got the case of water up and over the edge, and when it fell down out of his line of sight, his vision was filled with the splendid light of day…
He hooked himself over, dropped himself down, tried to land on his feet but tumbled over onto his tail, and when he found himself laying on his back and staring at the sky, he was in no rush to get up. That was way too much of a bitch just for some dumpster-diving and now he wanted a second to rest. But hey, now nobody could say he didn't fight for his survival. Nobody worth a damn could criticize what he'd just done.
"Hey!" someone hollered from somewhere, "you can't go digging through the trash!"
Howard looked up and saw a ram glaring at him from a window in the opposite building.
"Why's it matter?" he asked meekly, not afraid, just confused. Seriously, where did this busybody get off telling off a desperate guy to not get life-giving water out of the trash?
...Oh yeah, it's because nobody in this city behaved like a normal person, he remembered now.
"You're probably looking for the flies on the bags, aren't ya!?" the ram accused. "Or fish carcasses or… or half-eaten rotisserie chickens, you disgusting necrophage!"
"WHAT'D YOU CALL ME!?" asked the shocked raccoon. (To be fair, it sounded like the ram had said something else.)
"I'm calling the police!"
Howard did not yet know whether this was the type of city where the cops would find it worth their time to harass dumpster-divers, but it wasn't worth his own time to stick around and find out. It was all coming back to him, Nick's warning that Zootopians didn't hate Howard's Kind for hanging around garbage bins, they hated them for what they thought his Kind were looking in the garbage bins for. The raccoon strained his poor back to pick up the case of water and scurried out of the alley.
"Hey!" the stranger hollered after him. "Don't steal that water! Someone else might need it!"
Howard shoved the water bottles into his car and high-tailed it out of there, driving a few blocks before pulling over and changing out of his filthy clothes. And while he was trying to discreetly slip on a fresh pair of pants, at the most inconvenient conceivable moment…
You have three guesses what happened, my friend.
Riii-iii-iii-iii-iii-iii-iiing!
"...Uh, hey Nick, what's up?" (All winning players, collect your prize at Guest Services.)
"Goooood morrrrrniiiiing, Suuuuunshiiiiine…!" his new partner in anti-crime sang over the phone. "...Is… is that a song? I swear I've heard someone sing that line before, but I have no idea how the rest of the song would go. Is this what the kids call the Manedela Effect?"
"Uh, Nick, I don't wanna be short with you or anything, but… you kinda caught me with my pants down here…" Howard didn't want to keep sounding stutter-y and nervous around this guy, but Nick just had a penchant for finding him at the worst moments. "...Literally."
"Aw, are you nakie?"
"Can I call you back in literally sixty seconds?" he groaned as he tried to slide his pants on with one hand while sitting in his car seat.
"I'll make this quick then. I got us our first client!"
Howard stopped his struggling for a moment. "You… you did!?"
"I wouldn't tease you about something this big, pally."
For a moment, the detective was so distracted by the good news that he stopped caring that passersby could see him in his undies if they wanted to. "That's… holy shit, that's great! How'd you get a lead so fast!?"
"Same way I get everything in life: I've got connections," the fox explained. "Posted it on social media and got a bite immediately. One drawback, though… this guy was desperate, and I… kinda-sorta accepted the job for a payment of five dollars. Sorry, man, I had to, he was begging."
...Your reaction to that probably wasn't much different than Howard's was.
"Um… well… hey, hey, I'm glad that… it's good that you gave him a discount if he was desperate, it's good that you're compassionate enough to do that, but… five dollars? What's the point of doing it for five dollars? Why not just do it for free at that point?"
Nick had an answer ready: "And I honestly considered making it on the house, but I got the feeling that this guy would really appreciate us accepting some payment from him and treating him like a big boy."
Howard had achieved levels of confusion he had never thought possible.
-IllI-
The PIs looked up at the eighteen-foot apartment door in anticipation of the footsteps - hoofsteps - drawing closer. It opened and they were greeted by a face glaring down at them.
"So you're the 'detectives' my son PM'd from my Facebook account without my permission," said the giraffe.
"Nice to see you again, too, Sidney," Nick greeted with his trademark smirk, "though I wish it were under better circumstances. This here is my investigative partner, Howard-"
"Did you not get my message from the same account telling you to disregard the case? And that Everett lost his iPad privileges?"
But there was no time for a snappy comeback.
"The detectives are here, the detectives are here!" Six-year-old Everett ran up alongside his mother in the doorway, beaming as he smiled down at the strange adults who couldn't have been even half his stature.
"Everett, get back inside…" his mom grumbled under her breath.
"Nice to meet you, Everett," greeted Nick, surprisingly sincerely to this calf. "My name's Mister Nick, and this is my friend, Mister Howard; what's this we hear that some meanie is trying to frame you?"
"EVERETT, GET BACK iN THE HOUSE BEFORE I BEAT YOUR ASS!" hollered a distinctly male voice from deep inside the apartment.
"DARREN!" Sidney screamed back. "Stop making us look trashy in front of strangers!"
"WHAT ARE THEY, A FOX AND A RAC!? WHO THE FUCK ARE THEY TO CALL US TRASHY!?"
"Oh my fucking God…" the mother said as she squeezed her eyes shut and put a hoof over her face.
This opened the door for the son to explain his situation: "Somebody stole a cookie and blamed it on me and now my parents are saying I can't have any more cookies because I lied about stealing one but I didn't steal one!"
"Oh, yes you did!" said Sidney sternly. "And the more you insist that you didn't, the longer you're going without cookies!"
But Detective Wilde paid her no heed; she was not his client. "Ah, a tale as old as time: who stole the cookie from the cookie jar!?" he pondered with a cunning grin and a stroke of the chin. "The Crunchy Cookie Caper! This sounds like a job for the Wilde and Friends Detective Agency, LLC! ...Or… whatever I named us, I'm forgetting already…"
But as he pulled out the papers legitimizing their enterprise to refresh his memory, Sidney cut him off. "You know what I'm forgetting? The part where I gave you permission to come into my home."
"Oh, could it be that you're the culprit and this is your way of throwing us off your tracks?" the fox asked slyly.
Tense silence for a beat before the giraffe mother pointed down the hallway. "Get outta my building."
"Mommy, don't make them leave!" Everett pleaded. "They can prove I'm not lying about the cookie!"
"Everett, go to your room or I'll-!"
"What if we proved him wrong?"
Everyone was surprised as Howard spoke up for the first time.
"I mean… he seems dead-set on us investigating," he continued. "If you know he's wrong, then let us prove it and teach him not to expect strangers to back up his fibs."
"But I'm not fibbing!" Everett cried.
Sidney, however, seemed annoyed to have been convinced. "You have five minutes," she said sharply as she welcomed the men in.
"Yay!"
As the detectives entered the towering tenement, the fox gave the raccoon a nudge. "Sunshine, for real, nice one with the assist there," Nick whispered as he offered a discreet low-five, which Howard reciprocated.
"You let them into our fucking house!?" Darren bellowed from somewhere.
"They're here to teach Everett a lesson about lying, Darren! Don't question my parenting skills!" After yelling at her husband, Sidney put on an obnoxiously fake smile as she turned to her guests. "So as you can see, the only ones here are me, Everett, and his father. There were only five cookies left in here, easy number to remember…" She held up a Ziploc bag of four tree-bud cookies. "...I told Everett he couldn't have one before dessert after dinner, but now one's gone. His father and I didn't take one, so it must've been him. Make sense?"
"But I didn't!" Everett insisted.
"But tell me, Sidney," said Nick, looking as clever and confident as Sherlock Hound, "could you prove that beyond the shadow of a doubt? Do you want to teach your son to believe things that could never hold up in court?"
"What are you, a fuckin' judge!?" Well, the sub-mystery of how Darren knew the guests' species without them seeing him had been solved: he craned his long neck around to see out a doorway from his den before swinging back in.
"Did he ever actually say he didn't take it?" asked Howard, who was trying desperately not to be distracted by the enormous scale of the abode. There weren't a lot of giraffes in Vancouver and he'd certainly never been in a home designed for one, so in his head, he might as well have been in some surreal carnival mystery house.
"That's a good point, Howard!" said Nick.
Sidney huffed. "I'd like to imagine my husband wouldn't overhear me falsely punishing our son and just sit there without saying anything."
"That's… honestly not very reassuring," said Howard. He'd usually try to be less charmlessly blunt, but they were on the clock here.
"And Howard…" Nick said, still playing the part of the eccentric private eye, "if I may be so bold, I think I feel a clue coming upon me…" He craned his neck up at Sidney. "Isn't it suspicious that two grown adults are both home this early on a Thursday?"
"Excuse me!?" asked the offended giraffe mother. "My husband and I are teachers!"
"My mom and dad get a summer break just like me!" Everett explained.
The fox was wearing a knowing grin, but he wouldn't reveal what exactly he knew. "Ah, but what level of school do you two teach? Could it be… elementary, my dear? Elementary?"
A moment of silence passed before a chorus of dissent:
"You're enjoying this, aren't you, Nick?" asked Howard.
"Mommy, I don't get it," said Everett.
"You have three minutes left," stated Sidney.
"What the fuck kinda weirdo did you bring into my house!?" demanded Darren.
"I had already made up my mind that I wanted to say that line in some capacity where it made some semblance of sense; I am not sorry," Nick said sternly. "As they say, never explain, never apologize. And furthermore, I'd argue that my crime against comedy-"
"That was supposed to be FUNNY!?"
"-is far from the most repugnant thing done in this dwelling today." The fox tapped the mind-warped raccoon as a signal to follow him into the room the father giraffe was inhabiting. "Darren, just the man I wanted to see."
"GET OUT OF MY DEN!"
"The scene paints itself…" Nick mused as he waltzed in and blocked the television playing old sitcom reruns, "you just spent the past nine, ten months trying to be a good educator to other people's five-to-twelve-year-olds, but these undisciplined little shits are misbehaving in ways they they simply didn't when you were a lad and you cannot for the life of you figure out an effective strategy to get these kits, cubs, and calves to stop assaulting each other or destroying school property. Now you finally just started your vacation and you need to unwind hard, and after all that time being inevitably exposed to juvenile foodstuffs, all you really want right now… is a goddamn cookie. That all sound right?"
But the giant was unmoved. "We teach college, ya fuckin' idiot! This is the last of our three weeks off before the summer semester! Do we look like we're living in poverty like a couple of elementary-school teachers!?"
The rookie detective kept his pondering stare for a moment before breaking character. "...Dammit. Sorry, Boss, I tried my best. Really thought I was on to something there," he said to his experienced partner, only to find that Howard was giving something a horrified look. "...What's with you?"
Darren saw what he was staring at. "You got a problem with my hooves, striper?"
Howard addressed Nick without taking his eyes off the giraffe's hands. "I… I know you warned me about this, but… it still doesn't look right."
"You never seen a pair a' hooves before!?"
"How do you open… jars?"
"He actually probably hasn't seen hooves like yours," Nick explained helpfully to the giraffe. "He's from out of town - Canada, specifically! I'd bet up there the government pays for the surgery!"
"How do you… dial a phone!?" the shocked foreigner kept stammering. "H-how do you undo your pants to go to the bathroom!?"
"Hey, just because I don't have pliable claws like you doesn't mean I'm a fucking invalid!" Darren protested, and to drive his point home, he put his hands right in front of the raccoon's face. "You wanna see what these hooves can do to you!?"
Howard was understandably put on edge by the direct threat, but Nick's eyes lit up at the sight.
"Oh, Howie… you clever little sneak, you!" the fox applauded.
"Hm?" Darren didn't get what was so praiseworthy until he turned to look at his hooves himself and remembered there were a bunch of crumbs stuck in the crevices running down their middles. "...Oh, God dammit!"
"You see!?" Everett cheered from the doorway. "It wasn't me that took the cookie!"
"DARREN!" Sidney yelled. "Were you going to say something to stop me from blaming your son for something you did before it took an impartial fucking arbiter to figure it out!?"
"WOMAN, WILL YOU LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!?" Darren retorted. (The detectives didn't even know giraffes could scream that loud.) "MAYBE I'D BE MORE WILLING TO COMMUNICATE IF YOU DIDN'T SKIP STRAIGHT TO BITCHING YOUR HEAD OFF AT EVERY LITTLE INCONVENIENCE!"
Everett smiled down at the detectives. "My parents told me that for my birthday they were gonna go to a doctor who's gonna teach them how to stop fighting!"
"When's your birthday?" asked Howard.
"December 7th!" the boy beamed.
A quick glance at the digital clock on the wall confirmed it was June 10th.
"Well, Mister Everett," Nick said warmly as he wrapped an arm around his partner's shoulders to address their client together, "since McDonald's isn't using this slogan anymore, Mister Howard and I are happy to say… we love to see you smile."
"Uh… yeah, glad we could help, Everett," said the raccoon who was well aware that he'd hardly done anything, still not sure where he was or what had just happened - nor what was continuing to happen.
"I'M A FUCKING ADULT," Darren carried on behind them, "I CAN LIE IF I FUCKING WANT TO!"
"Oh, my fucking…" Sidney grumbled under her breath before turning to the private eyes. "Uh, thanks for, uh, clearing things up, boys," she said, forcing a faint smile, "but I think we'd be better off sorting out the rest of this by ourselves… ahem."
"And we cracked the case in the allotted five minutes!" Nick pointed out. "If we could ask a small favor of you, ma'am, could you give our business a boost by spreading the word about our services?"
"Uh, if it comes up in conversation…" she muttered disinterestedly before starting to shoo them away. "But - seriously, I need to have a conversation with this idiot."
"Wait!" Everett wailed, coming to the door before the detectives he'd hired could leave. "I still have to give you this!"
Upon seeing the calf hold out a crumpled Lincoln, the PIs realized they'd forgotten all about the special pricing they'd offered their young client.
Howard put his paws up and looked disgusted by the sheer idea of taking this child's money. "Oh- no, don't worry about it, kid, we can't accept that. It's on the house. Use that money to… I dunno, start saving for college… no, seriously, if I understand the situation down here, start saving now."
"Oh, forget that!" Nick scoffed with a chuckle. "If you really wanna get ahead in this world, use that as capital to start a business! Look how far Mister Nick's gotten without even graduating high school!"
"I beg your pardon?" the boy's mother glared from up on high. "Do you want me to say good things about your company or not?"
A beat, and then Nick clapped his paws together. "On second thought, stay in school, bud! Mister Howard and I are gonna see ourselves out!"
And so they did, their first case together now in the books.
-IllI-
"And they just threw away a bunch of water bottles because they were bad for the environment!? Are they sure they understand the concept of waste?"
"Well, they lived in a luxury apartment building," Howard said matter-of-factly as he ashed his cigarette out the open window.
"Pfft. Ya gotta love limousine liberals," Nick quipped from the passenger seat, "making a show of caring about all the progressive issues… except class justice. Then they suddenly start clamming up…" He suddenly shook his head as if to jostle intrusive thoughts out. "Sorry if I'm being obnoxious, this is just a personal pet peeve of mine."
"Aw, not a problem," the raccoon murmured. "Besides, not all bad. Their ignorance is my benefit." Just to make conversation.
The fox winced. "How do you figure?"
Oh. Hell. Howard hadn't even considered that he might have to explain that remark. He'd perhaps gotten too comfortable around this guy. "Well… free water for me."
The fox winced harder. "You grabbed the water out of the dumpster?"
The raccoon didn't have the guts to look at him. "It's in my backseat as we speak." His idea was to say it as confidently as possible and maybe Nick wouldn't seek to mock him for it.
Whether his strategy worked or if Nick just didn't feel like belittling this guy in particular, we may never know. "Hm… so it is," the rookie said flatly as he looked into the back of the sedan, then turned back around and shrugged. "Hey, no judgment, I was digging stuff out of the junkyard and flipping it when I started my career in the streets."
Howard just nodded, and then they were silent for a time.
"So… where ya livin' these days, anyway?" Nick suddenly spoke up again.
…Did Nick know? And was this absolutely a leading question? Only one way to find out. The raccoon had wanted to try to appear less neurotic and unconfident in front of this fox, so if there were ever a time to play an awkward moment cool, it might as well have been this one.
"Well… you're looking at it!" Howard said with an obviously-fake pride as he gestured around the cabin of his old budget sedan. "...El Casa Lotor."
However would Nick respond to such an embarrassing revelation?
With a smirk and a little nasal chuckle. "I think you mean La Casa Lotor there, hombre."
…Not even remotely the response Howard had in mind, but he was flexible.
"Well…" he began, forcing an awkward chuckle of his own, "remember, up there, they teach us French in schools, not Spanish."
"Aw, I get it. En actualidad, tomé clases de italiano en la escuela para encantar las señoritas, y se me olvidó mucho porque nunca lo he usado, pero me ayuda aprender el español en las calles de ciudades a través de este país. Ahora hablo español - como un gringo tonto, ¡pero yo lo hablo! ¡Es muy útil en el negocio de las calles!"
The Canadian was quiet for a moment. "...No comprende."
"I knew you wouldn't," the ex-hustler quipped.
But wait, the issue here wasn't resolved yet. "So… you're not weirded out that I've been living out of my car?"
"You kidding!?" Nick laughed. "You're not the first homeless person I've hung out with… hell, you're not even the first homeless person I've been in business with! And yours truly also lived the transient lifestyle for a while when I zigzagging the country tryna seek my fortune, and even after I settled here, I may or may not have had a reputation for hanging out under bridges until relatively recently."
Howard wasn't disturbed by this information or anything, he just found it jarring that this fox seemed to know exactly what he was currently going through. What improbable fortune. "Really?"
Nick scoffed. "Sunshine. My friend. C'mon. Why do you think my everyday clothes are a collared shirt and a tie? Because for the longest time, I didn't have a lot of clothes, so I had to make sure what I did have was presentable! When you live like I did, ya gotta treat every moment as a potential business meeting!"
…Okay, Howard couldn't bite his tongue that much longer. "I wouldn't exactly call a Hawaiian vacation shirt 'business casual'-"
"It was seven bucks at Goodwill, and it's served me well for so long that it's a mystery of modern science how the colors have barely faded in the wash after all this time. I'll defer to you on detective shit, Howie, but if I tell you something's a good purchase, you take my word for it, m'kay, hon?" But after getting oddly stern for a moment there, Nick relaxed in his seat, crossed his leg over his knee, and went back to his usual mellow self. "But speaking of money…" he mused anew as he absentmindedly started wrapping the seat belt around his finger and claw, "...I guess the question that remains is… do you want to live in your car?"
The vagabond raccoon winced again. "...No? What- why do you ask?"
"Well, hey," shrugged the resident businessmammal, "as the resident businessmammal, I can't say it'd be the worst financial decision, rent in this town makes San Francisco look like Timbuktu. But if you don't wanna live that 'brush your teeth in a Walmart bathroom' life…" He trailed off as he seemed to weigh his options. "...I probably can't get you your own place directly, but I can probably get you close. You want me to ask around my network to see if any randos need a roommate? Or do you want me to help you look for a place to call your own?"
As much as Howard wanted to see what other tricks this fox had up his sleeve, he felt the need to bring up the reality of the situation. "Well, I don't know how much of an option either one of these are because…" He blew some air out of his mouth before continuing. "...I have to somehow stabilize my money situation first, because my Canadian bank doesn't exist down here, so I can't deposit cash into my account, and this city apparently hates paper currency, and… I've tried just walking into a local bank and asking if they can deposit money into my account back home, but they said 'no, that's how mammals do fraud, we can't do that for you,' so-"
"Okay, hold up, hold that thought," Nick said flatly, holding up a finger and staring out the windshield before turning to his driver. "...Why didn't you bring this up yesterday when I went and got Nicky Wilde's Mystery Gang Incorporated legally incorporated?"
The raccoon didn't know what to say. "...Because it… didn't… seem… relevant?"
Nick smirked, scoffed, and rolled his eyes. "Okay, round two of getting you some quickie documents!"
-IllI-
Forty-seven minutes later
When Nick got back to the car for the second time, having come from one of the most bland-looking buildings in Zootopia with hardly any sign of what business was done inside, Howard had been busy reading the sheets of paper in his hands, confirming that he and Nick had been approved for a joint business account at a national bank and that his physical debit card would be in the mail to Nick's address the next day. Nick had put his own money in as the security deposit and at no point had Howard entered the bank or provided any personal information or documents towards the end of opening this account. (And Howard and Nick are both electing not to tell me which bank it was lest the powers-that-be find out the account was opened under conditions that may have been less than legitimate, and considering the circumstances, I get it.)
"I feel like I ought to be asking you more questions about how you're able to get all these things so fast," said the raccoon as the fox reentered the passenger's side.
Nick just gave him that trademark smirk of his. "Ah, but a magician never reveals his secrets!" he chuckled, but quickly readopted a more sardonic tone. "But for real, though, Sunshine, nobody twisted your arm to make you take your smoke break while I went inside the bank. You coulda seen me in action, you just had different priorities!"
"Hey, in my defense, I didn't think you would get me a bank account opened up in the time it took me to smoke one cigarette!"
"You also didn't need to sit in the car reading the terms and conditions of the account while I went inside here, now did ya?" he snickered grimly. "Fucking nerd."
"What is this place, anyway?" the raccoon asked, pointing at the plain brick low-rise office building.
"That's not important! But this…" the fox held up a colorful plastic rectangle. "…This is important! Here ya go!"
The Canadian accepted it and observed it, looking in particular at the picture of his own face staring back at him, a picture Nick had snapped of him on his phone ten seconds before going into the building alone. This snapshot was off to the left below the banner:
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA | EMPLOYMENT AUTHORIZATION CARD
"...There's… there's no way a photo you took of me on your phone can be allowed on this card."
"Howard. Chill," Nick instructed. "Nobody's gonna look that closely. I guarantee it. Nobody cares that much." Then he broke out into a wide smile and threw his paws up. "Congratulations! You're legal! You're allowed to stay here as my employee and nobody can throw your poutine-eating ass back across the border!"
Howard's eyelids were getting great exercise from all the squinting in confusion he was doing. "Uh… poutine's more of a… Quebec, Ontario sort of thing-"
"Sweetheart, you're in America, we don't know that and we don't care," Nick beamed. "And now… you're in the holy land of blissful ignorance in a way that's right with God. Congrats, compadre."
The fox extended a paw for a handshake, which the raccoon accepted; Howard was shaking from how strongly Nick was shaking, but just told himself to go along for the ride. For one reason or another, this guy seemed to like him and was genuinely helping him out, so he would be slow to protest. So instead he just started the engine, threw the car in drive, and decided to ask why this was:
"I know you said you were desperate for a good opportunity, Nick, but… you're really going above and beyond for me. Like… really above and beyond. I can't help but think a lot of people in this world-"
"Mammals."
"-a lot of mammals in this world would tell me to be suspicious of this excessive kindness."
A chuckle came in reply. "Don't thank me too much. I'm absolutely gaining by helping you, possibly more than you are! I learned my lesson the first time, it behooves me not to have a business partner whose head isn't in the game because he's distracted thinking about how he's gonna pay his bills. I'm doing this for entirely selfish reasons, I am a horrible individual!" He looked pretty self-satisfied for a moment before his face sank and he rubbed his chin. "'Behoove,' hell, I shoulda used that word at the giraffes' house! Sunshine, remind me next time we meet some cloven critters to obnoxiously shoehorn that word into conversation and make everyone feel embarrassed. Remember, forcing an awkward moment and making yourself look cool by being the only one who isn't uncomfortable can be a very effective social power-move if you know how to do it right! But that's a big if! If it backfires, everyone's just gonna think you're weird."
Howard hadn't retained the second half of this monologue; he was trying to decipher whether the first half was genuine or not. He knew the old saying, when someone shows you who they are, believe them… but he just hasn't been around Nick long enough to be able to tell when he was fucking around or not.
"Oh… I get it," said the raccoon, "... you put your own money in the bank account for me… so that way I'd be indebted to you." He said this with an uncertain half-joking tone that matched how he still had no clue whether the fox was joking either.
"Perhaps," replied Nick, "and perhaps I did that to indebt myself and force myself to see this business venture through instead of bailing on it and wasting even more of my life. Y'know, light a fire under my tail."
Howard forced some air out his nose along with a fraudulent smile, not sure how to respond to that. "Well then! Um… yeah, I guess that explains why you're doing all this nice stuff for me when, uh… it… otherwise wouldn't be in your best interest… um…" He trailed off as he slowed down to stop at a red light at an empty intersection.
The fox was still smirking, and it didn't look fake. "Yeah… and maybe-just-maybe I've realized that the way I embody the 'guy who knows everybody but who's close with few' archetype hasn't been the most personally fulfilling, and combined with the fact that I've recently lost a bunch of those casual acquaintances due to, shall we say, differences in personal politics, it could be that I've had a - what's the word? - an epiphany that maybe I shouldn't pass on the chance to have actual, legitimate friends when I have the chance to make them, buuut because of the shame I associate with vulnerability, I can't be straightforward about wanting to be tight with someone who isn't a chick I wanna fuck, and even that's a challenge sometimes!" With that, he folded his arms behind his head and reclined into the pillow he'd made for himself. "But that can't be right, right? The first rule of business is don't go into it with your friends, I'm too good of a businessmammal to make a rookie mistake like that, ain't I?"
…So says the guy who said just yesterday he thought we'd make good friends, the raccoon answered in the privacy of his head. Yeah, this was the moment that Howard realized that thinly-veiled over-the-top sarcasm was the closest thing he was gonna get to Nick plainly stating that he needed to expand his support network while he was going through some ambiguous shit and that he got good enough vibes off this raccoon and was willing to do nice things for him unconditionally in hopes to fast-track him onto the highly-selective People/Mammals Nick Genuinely Trusts list. Well, Nick was showing who he really was; now it was Howard's obligation to believe him.
The fox spoke again to break the silence. "Uh, by the way," he said coolly, pointing out the windshield with his arm still behind his head, "...you can go through this."
…Now, if these two did wind up becoming good friends, Howard was seriously hoping his role in their dynamic wouldn't be as the guy who was constantly confused by the words falling out of Nick's head as he was now once again. "I'm… going straight, though, I'm not turning."
"Yeah, I know, just… y'know, look both ways first, and you're good."
"...The light is red, though."
"Which interestingly enough, some in this city think is problematic since us canids have a very high rate of colorblindness, specifically the red-green kind - as my excellent taste in fashion shows you, though, I lucked out of that gene - but nobody cares to do anything about it. There's more anti-predator sentiment for ya! But yeah, you're good to go ahead."
…Should Howard have even wanted to be friends with a madmammal like this? "...Nick, it's a red light-"
"Which stays red for four entire minutes." Nick's smirk seemed to be straining. "I've counted. It's in your best interest just to go."
"But-"
"Howard, we're alone."
"Nick-"
"There's nobody here."
"But you're not addressing the fact that-!"
"Nobody can see us here, Sunshine."
"Do they not have red light cameras-!?"
"Howie."
"I probably shouldn't even be in this country right now-"
"Howard, calm down."
"Please don't talk to me like I'm freaking out over nothing when I have valid grievances-"
"Look me in the eye."
"I shouldn't be gambling like this, Nick, the last thing I need is to get deported over a red light ticket-"
"Look me in the eye, Howie."
…He did.
"Which one of us is an ex-cop?" Nick asked, mostly calm but a little agitation poking through.
Howard stayed quiet.
"Which one of us knows this city like the back of his hand? Which one of us has a mental map of all the red light cameras in the county?"
The raccoon just nodded.
And the fox lightened up. "There's no camera here, I guarantee it. And you are in this country legally," he said, sounding stern again as he picked up Howard's work authorization card from the dirty little divot in the center console that constituted an ashtray. "I made sure of that, because on the rare occasion I truly trust somebody, I take care of them." He tucked the card back into the grubby little hole. "I just ask that you extend that trust in return."
Howard didn't know what to say, so he just nodded again. "Yeah, you're… probably right. My bad."
Nick blew some air out his mouth and seemed to stop clenching his face muscles. "Thank you… a-and I'm sorry about going off on you like that, I've just been… really not feeling myself lately."
"It's alright, man, you already mentioned that, um… and besides, you had a point."
The fox relaxed in his seat, but he was still turned facing his business partner. After a moment, he tapped the clock on the dashboard. "And even after all that, we still have a minute and a half until the light turns green. You're fine, Howie. Nobody's gonna stop you. Gun it. Don't let the lawman stop you! Become ungovernable!"
The detective looked both ways and pressed the accelerator shortly afterwards, and as much as I'm tempted to gaslight you and tell you they got t-boned just to get a reaction out of you… I'm not that unreliable of a narrator. They got through the intersection just fine.
But then both occupants of the car saw a flash of light in the sedan's three rearview mirrors. While the raccoon froze like he'd seen a phantom, the fox turned as far around as he could to look out the rear window.
"...What the fuck was that, Nick?" asked Howard, nervous for real this time.
"Uh… well, shit, I guess they just put that one in recently," Nick murmured as he turned back around in his seat. "I'll, uh… I'll cover the ticket when it comes. And I'll… understand if this takes a bite out of your trust in my wisdom."
Howard just kept driving with a blank expression.
But then Nick realized something. "Wait, your car has British Columbia plates, can they even send a ticket internationally?"
"Uh…"
"DOUBLE WAIT! You're homeless! You don't have an address! Ha ha!" the fox cackled as he clapped his paws together and gave Howard a shoulder side-hug with a pat on the chest. "They can't get you! The system works!"
The detective was skeptical. "Is that… actually how it works?"
"Eh, probably," Nick shrugged, his famous smirk back.
"...Where are we driving, anyway?"
Nick stopped smirking. "Hm… leave it to the detective to ask the important questions. Um…" He looked around as though the answer was written on a billboard outside. "...Actually, if you could take me home, I think it's about that time. I love hanging out with you, Howie, but I gotta show my girlfriend some love eventually."
"No, I get that," Howard replied, unoffended. "...How's she feel about your new line of work?"
The fox was staring straight ahead down the street, smirking again but rather faintly. "Haven't told her yet… waiting for the right moment. I tried to get her in a good mood last night, but, uh… didn't work out."
Now Howard was worried he'd ventured where he ought not have. "Are you waiting to surprise her with good news? Or… do you think she wouldn't approve?"
Nick faked a laugh. "I guess a little bit of both… I don't think she'd, uh… I don't think she'd see it as legitimate work, let's put it that way."
"...I thought you said she was a cop?"
The fox nodded slowly with his tired smile, still not looking at his coworker. "My point exactly."
…And then Howard got it.
"Oh-! Nick, man, if this job is gonna disrupt your personal life, don't worry about me, you don't have to stick with this-"
But the fox just put up a paw. "Sunshine. I remind you that I just dropped three hundred bucks into a business bank account for us. I'm committed to this, don't you worry."
"I'm worried about you, though."
"And I appreciate it, but I insist you back off the gas on this. I'll make it work, I've changed her mind on bigger issues than this." Nick sighed out his nose as he seemed to be losing the strength to keep smiling. "...She'll come around on it eventually."