I experiment every so often, playing around with narrative voice and such, and if I had to point at one thing that's come up more often than any other, it's using present-tense to add tension. I don't know why it works, but it's always been a habit of mine. This chapter is one of those; I didn't just do it to add some tension, though, because honestly I'm not sure if that's what it did. But what it did manage, I think, is differentiate it from previous chapters. I feel like that's important.

After all, there had to be a primary conflict, didn't there?


Allo's Bar & Grill has never been the most illustrious of restaurants. It's in a neighborhood the locals like to call "Backfire Gulch." Not the best set of streets and alleys by a long shot. Broken-down cars settle down in front yards like exhausted dogs, and gunfire serenades the night-haunts with the frequency of hammer-strikes on a hot forge. The people there don't ask questions. They don't raise their heads too much. They go about their business, they make their deals and work their streets, and they get along as best they can.

The rent's cheap . . . considering.

The grill is a popular spot for all sorts of miscreants. Lucky Allo Hammersmark don't discriminate. In exchange for his open doors and his welcome hospitality (and his long-heralded Dollar Wing Night, of course; can't forget that), he and his establishment are left out of the turf wars. It's unspoken law. Anyone brazen enough to rob, vandalize, or otherwise molest the grill meets with retribution from all sides.

Hammersmark has nothing to do with any of that, of course. Which is why he's not saying anything. He knows his loyalties, and he's never been interested in cooperating with law enforcement. The gangsters and robbers and street artists and dealers are his children. They rally around Lucky Allo, and he protects them in return.

Detective McKinley sometimes thinks there's a kind of crass nobility at work here, but it never ceases to be infuriating. He would literally get more worthwhile answers out of a brick wall. At least when you found a scratch or a stain on a brick wall, the wall didn't look you straight in the face and insist there's something wrong with your eyes 'cuz well, by God, there ain't nothin' there but brick. Good, solid, American brick. You got a problem with American brick, son?

The detective keeps his image modern. He spikes up his hair, keeps his facial hair clean and sporty; he would still have a stud earring, if the department didn't have policies against that kind of thing. Usually, he can use this image to his advantage. People trust him easily, because he doesn't seem old and intimidating. He looks young and open. Handsome. He's got charisma.

But with this one, the young cop image isn't helping. Lucky Allo is big, broad, bearded; he's what Santa Claus would look like if he traded his sleigh in for a Harley and his jolly old soul for a good, old-fashioned chip on his shoulder.

"All I'm interested in," Lucky Allo tells Darren as he steps inside the place today, "is when you'll be done scaring away my livelihood. You'll forgive me, sir, if I don't have any more questions to answer."

Truth be told, Darren doesn't expect any answers. Normally, he wouldn't have bothered coming back again. Indeed, he has just as much information as he's liable to get out of pretty much everybody involved. All the information is on the long table of his imagination, where he sits at night and ponders; he really sees himself standing over a table sometimes, a hand-rolled cigarette clutched in his teeth on one side of his mouth, shirtsleeves rolled up and a studious furrow to his brow. Sometimes it's in black-and-white for that bit of old-fashioned noir flair; which, incidentally, is probably the reason for the cigarette, too, considering Darren doesn't smoke.

Yeah, usually he'd have moved on to that stage. But this one . . . something about this one, has him coming back again and again, convinced he's going to find something. Some piece that he's missed, some piece that would fill in that crucial blind spot that's wriggling in the back of his head like some parasitic itch.

There has to be something else.

Seriously. Cases like this aren't cut-and-dry; they aren't the sort of practical, easily categorized things you'd use in textbooks to teach greenhorns. Not to say Darren's been involved in many things that would fit that sort of criteria. Still, this is . . . well, there isn't any kosher, good-old-Christian-boy way of saying it.

This is fucked up.

I mean Jesus. Who tosses a mummified corpse into a dumpster?


I know this is short. The next chapter will be up soon. But I think this was a necessary evil, because while there wasn't necessarily much to say, I think it was important to say it this way.