The Most Dangerous Dame

Bard Constantine The Most Dangerous Dame

After the Cataclysm nearly wiped out humanity, the remnants of mankind survived in Havens: city-sized constructs built to reboot society and usher in a new age of mankind.

However the new age was not the type the architects envisioned. The same greed and lust for power that existed before the Cataclysm resurfaced, and the Havens quickly became quagmires of political and economic conflict that threatened to destroy the future envisioned by the Haven’s founders.

This is the world of Mick Trubble, a man without a past. A man with nothing to lose. But when your luck is down and no one else can help you, he can. He takes the cases no one else will touch. The type of trouble no one else can handle.

Mick Trubble is…

The Troubleshooter.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks always goes to Mark Krajnak and Stefan Prohaczka for their selfless contributions to the visuals of the Troubleshooter. Some people I forget to mention in the last novel: Dawn Kilby, Poddar Kushal, Thomas Washington, and Angela Arno among others who allowed me to name characters after them at Gather.com where this story was originally born. Congrats to Ben ‘the Bear’ Mastrogiovanni and Brian Johnson at Johnson Arms for entering Troubleshooter lore by having characters named after them in this installment. If I forgot anyone this time around, I’ll try to catch you the next time.

Chapter 1: Staccato

I heard the staccato of her heels down the hall…

Smoggy days, rainy nights. The windshield wept under the glow of tacky neon lights.

The good thing about being depressed in New Haven is you can always take a field trip out to a joint where you can feel even worse.

Like the Gaiden, a high-pillow nightclub in the midst of celebrating its reopening. Course, the irony of me being there was I was the one who burned it down in the first place. In a roundabout way, of course. Kinda the story of my life.

Everything I touched went up in smoke.

I was on a case back when it got torched. Along the way I’d gotten into a heap of trouble, but by the end I was out of a heap of debt. A bit wiser, too — though that was more of an accident. I learned some hard facts about my past I didn’t expect, or really like for that matter.

I still don’t know if the exchange was worth the cost. ‘Course if I had to do it again, I probably wouldn’t change a thing. It’s not as if me and trouble haven’t been chummy for the longest. In the city of New Haven I’m known as the Troubleshooter. The name strongly implies what it is I do.

When I was on the job, that is. At the particular moment I took on an entirely different type of shot. The kind that came in a tiny glass and packed a wallop. I’d been at the bar so long Ed the barkeep came over to check up on me.

“Mick Trubble. If you keep living at my bar I’ll have to charge you rent.”

For a synthetic humanoid, Ed was a real wise guy. Synoids must have gotten sarcasm upgrades lately. The Gaiden had a human barkeep named Vinny before it went up in smoke, but he’d gotten a bad case of dental work and had to seek employment elsewhere.

A tap of the holoband around my wrist opened an interactive screen. I mumbled something far less eloquent in reply as I slid over to my slush account. Dibs exchanged, clearing up my tab. Another whiskey floated to my spot, making Ed and me friends again.

The Gaiden was a cozy little nightclub on the outskirts of Downtown. The style and décor was elegantly Eastern: Chinese motifs, curving dragons, samurai armor, statues of mythic creatures and failed deities. The remodel had been particular with the painstaking details, so even the floating lanterns looked authentic. The spot had long been used as common ground where buttons rubbed shoulders with ordinary crumbs, smooth criminals mingled with off-duty coppers, and a regular Joe might find himself sitting across from a legendary movie starlet.

Just the kind of place for a guy like me.

The joint was set just right for my state of mind. Dim lights combined with heavy gasper smoke created a haze that made it easy to fade into the background. Slick cats and cool dames made coy exchanges between martini sips in quiet, private booths. A spotlight lit up the stage as Fats the Jazzman made his saxophone weep while a skinny songbird in a slinky red dress poured her soul into the microphone, crooning of lost love and broken spirits.

The only thing missing was a complimentary handgun to blow your own brains out. But that was ok. Me and depression were old friends. Couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t around to sucker punch me in the gut.

She walked in around the time when sane people sleep and ghosts wake up yawning. I saw her silhouette in the grainy light and recognized her instantly. The recollection sliced through the alcoholic fog like a razor through wrists, bleeding memories on the floor.