Night Life Read online

  Night

  Life

  The Night Trilogy: Book Two

  by

  B.K. Bass

  Published in the U.S. by B.K. Bass, 2021

  Second Edition

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Night Life (The Night Trilogy, #2)

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  About the Author

  Harold’s story concludes in Night SHADOW!

  COPYRIGHT © 2021, 2020 BY B.K. BASS

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Second Edition, 2021

  Published by B.K. Bass in the United States of America

  First published by Kyanite Publishing, 2020

  Cover art licensed from Dreamstime.com

  Interior art used under Creative Commons license

  B.K. Bass can be reached at https://bkbass.com/contact/

  For behind-the-scenes access and the latest news, subscribe to B.K.’s newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/dpaU6f

  Visit the author’s website at https://bkbass.com

  Books by B.K. Bass

  The Ravencrest Chronicles

  Seahaven

  The Hunter’s Apprentice

  The Giant and the Fishes

  Tales from the Lusty Mermaid, a Ravencrest Chronicles Anthology

  The Ravencrest Chronicles: Omnibus One

  Curse of the Pirate King (The Pirate King Duology: Book One)

  Shadow of the Pirate King (The Pirate King Duology: Book Two)

  The Night Trilogy

  Night Shift

  Night Life

  Night Shadow

  The Tales of Durgan Stoutheart

  Warriors of Understone

  Companions of the Stone Road (forthcoming)

  The Burning Sands

  Blood of the Desert

  Into the Red Wastes (forthcoming)

  Beyond the Veil

  Parting the Veil

  Standalone Novels

  What Once Was Home

  CHAPTER ONE

  I opened my eyes to the dirty orange glow of sunlight diffusing through the shroud of smog covering New Angeles. Every part of my body hurt, and I wasn’t sure how much was from being roughed up by the Russian mob or from sleeping it off in the alley. I rolled over on the cardboard box that had been my mattress. The homeless man who also slept here last night was already awake. The disheveled figure ran his fingers through a long beard, examined what he excavated from the tangled weave, and apparently decided that some finds were edible.

  Suppressing my revulsion at the sight, I struggled to my feet. My tan suit and white shirt were stained with everything from desert dust to sewage filth and blood. The last two days were a roller-coaster ride, and yesterday especially had been a nightmare. After showing up at a routine crime scene in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, my partner and I discovered we had a Jane Doe on our hands. This was rare since everyone had an identification bar code tattooed on their wrist. But someone sliced hers off.

  After a meeting with our not-so-inspiring leader at the police station—Captain Halsing—he gave us a three-day ultimatum to track down not only the perp on Jane Doe’s murder, but also the supplier for Kristoff Tomlinson’s drug habit. Kristoff was the mayor’s son, and after he got into some trouble with the law, she wanted to cut off his supply at the top.

  I leaned back against the brick walls lining the alley and rubbed the bridge of my nose as my brain worked on remembering how all the dots connected. The real twist of the knife was my primary lead, a titanium paint chip found at the crime scene. This high-cost automotive paint was used in bulletproofing limos and the such. Because of this, my suspect for the murder ended up being the mayor herself or her brother—one business mogul by the name of James Talbot.

  It turned out Talbot was making regular payments to a flesh bar in Berdino called Dreamworks, where I suspected his nephew might have been a regular guest. The establishment was missing an employee named Evie Simms, one of their mainframe jack-ins. Our Jane Doe had a cyberjack in the back of her skull, and it became obvious she was our victim when I showed up at Evie’s apartment to find it tossed and bloody. It was there I ran into a professional cleaner sent by the notorious Fixer Vic.

  So yesterday, Frank and I went out to have a chat with Vic. We found out an enforcer for the Russian mob named Boris hired Vic to arrange the cleaning. And Boris was not the sort you say no to when he asks a favor. Evie wasn’t somebody you’d expect to be the victim of a mob cover-up, so the payments from Talbot had to have something to do with it. Many suspected Talbot had ties to the Russian mob, but so did Kristoff, the former as a business partner and the latter as a customer of their drug trade.

  Evie must have gotten mixed up in all of this somehow, and someone took her out of the equation. Figuring the mayor’s son was in the middle of it all, Frank and I headed to a hospital where Kristoff was lying low to make sure the mob didn’t decide to eliminate another variable.

  I patted the pockets of my coat, searching for my smokes. Some sort of divine influence must have been looking out for me, because I found a crumpled pack with a half-dozen mangled—yet unbroken—cigarettes inside. My badge was still on me as well, although my sidearm was missing. I pulled out a cigarette, along with a lighter I had tucked inside the pack, and took a deep draw as I lit it up. I held my breath for a moment with my head leaned up against the cold bricks, then released a cloud of tension along with the contents of my lungs. I shambled weakly down the alley towards the main street and noticed one of the larger-than-life holovids on the side of a building was lighting up with the morning news.

  As I gazed up at the broadcast, I couldn’t believe what the news anchor was saying. “According to New Angeles Police Department officials, Kristoff Tomlinson—the mayor’s son—is dead. He was abducted from his hospital room at St. Mary’s Hospital late yesterday, where he was recovering from injuries inflicted by homicide detective Harold Jacobson last week. Hospital staff say Jacobson was seen removing Kristoff from the premises at gunpoint. Detective Jacobson has a history of police brutality, but it is unclear what his motive for assaulting and later abducting the mayor’s son was.”

  Well, they got it half right at least. I had given the young man a thrashing, but when a hyped-up addict resists arrest, that’s typically what’s going to happen. They missed the part where Boris and his cronies had come along and abducted the both of us, along with my partner Frank.

  The news anchor continued. “According to an eyewitness statement given by a local vagrant, Jacobson took Kristoff to a utility maintenance facility in the sewers beneath the city. There, his long-time partner—Frank Jones—confronted him. The witness reports that Detective Jones attempted to arrest Jacobson, but in the ensuing argument, the rogue officer shot and killed him. Kristoff Tomlinson attempted to escape during the scuffle, but Jacobson pursued and gunned him down in cold blood. Investigators say the cause of death was four gunshot wounds to the back, corroborating this claim.”

  “Shit,
” I swore under my breath and looked around. The people on the street were drudging about as they always did, most of them with downcast eyes and likely more concerned with their own problems than what the news had to say. Still, plenty would see this; and once the media had found you guilty, there wasn’t much anybody could do to change things. After the word spread, nobody would believe it had been Boris that had squeezed the trigger on both men after he tied me to a chair.

  The news vid wasn’t done yet. “Police officials report overwhelming evidence to support the eyewitness statement, including Detective Jacobson’s fingerprints on the murder weapon—which was found nearby. He should be considered armed and dangerous. If seen, citizens are urged to avoid contact and report his whereabouts to authorities immediately.”

  Shit. They were even fabricating evidence. Somebody with their hands on the strings were pulling them hard to make me disappear. The weapon in question was still stashed behind some palettes next to where I slept in the alley. My weapon was still unaccounted for, so maybe that’s what they found. Either way, I was without a sidearm, since there was no way I could walk around with a hot piece.

  I ducked back into the alley, wishing I had a hat to pull down over my face. That same face was plastered on the skyline for the entire city to see, and surely there was a holovid projection of the story on every block from here to the outskirts. The sad part of it was that Evie’s death hadn’t made the news. Nobody in this city cared if a hooker or a flesh bar jack-in like Evie died; hell, there were a dozen of those cases every day. Even Frank wouldn’t have made the news if he hadn’t been in that sewer tunnel with Kristoff.

  I heard a shuffling sound and looked over my shoulder to see the homeless man I had shared the alley with the night before walking towards me. “Hey bud, can I get one of those smokes?” The man looked up at the holovid and then back to me. “Uh... never mind,” he said as he spun about and headed back into the alley.

  “Great,” I muttered. I needed to lie low, but I had work to do. Now not only was my best lead in Evie’s murder case dead, but I was being pinned as the perp in his murder. To top it all off, I was also wanted as a cop killer now, and my only backup was the vic. Nobody was going to believe my word against the smear campaign already running the holovids—which was probably orchestrated by the same people turning the gears on the Evie Simms cover-up—so I was going to have to clear my name. I only needed to figure out how Evie got mixed up in all this, what her connection to the now-deceased Kristoff was, how his uncle James Talbot tied to it, whether the mayor was involved, and find proof that the Bratva—the Russian mob—was running the show; all while being hunted down by the law myself.

  I pulled the pack of cigarettes from my pocket and gave it a shake. Five left. I was going to need more smokes, and I was going to need a lot of coffee.

  I PULLED THE HOOD OF the threadbare brown jacket low over my face as I walked through the bustling crowds of the city sidewalk. I was right in the middle of downtown, and the Friday morning rush was in full swing. The swarm of humanity pressed in on me from all sides. Drab business suits walked shoulder to shoulder with garishly colored casual clothes. Conservative haircuts bobbed up and down next to mohawks and dreadlocks. The city was home to all kinds of cultures, and nowhere was this more apparent than in the bustling business district which laid in the center of it all.

  Bits of discarded trash stuck to my bare feet as I made my way. One would have thought a nice suit would have been a fair trade for the homeless man’s rags, but the old codger had driven a hard bargain and insisted on taking my shoes as well. He saw the news holovid and knew it was a seller’s market, so I was forced to take the deal. Still, walking through the city barefoot was better than being arrested for a double homicide.

  I would have loved nothing more than to head back to my apartment for some fresh clothes and to replace my lost sidearm, but it would have been swarming with cops by then. I needed to go underground, and fortunately I knew just the person to help me out.

  Unfortunately, I would have to hoof it all the way to The Dale—a part of the city known as Glendale back before the big quake sent the coast of California sliding into the Pacific. The area was a hotbed of criminal activity even before the quake. After the region was rebuilt and became the megalopolis of New Angeles, The Dale quickly returned to its roots and was once again a haven for the criminal underground. Most likely this was because the area was planned as a ghetto from the outset and crammed full of tenements housing some of the poorest citizens of the city—many who were driven to crime in a desperate struggle for survival.

  By mid-afternoon, the monolithic office and residential towers of downtown gave way to mid-size apartment buildings and scattered parks in Griffithsville, one of the few wealthy parts of the city. The neighborhood housed business tycoons who worked downtown but choose not to live in the towers. I stumbled into one of the parks—an expanse of green space compared to the rest of the city, but little more than a back-yard garden outside the sprawl—and plopped down on an iron bench along the flagstone path.

  My feet were raw and bleeding, and my chest was pounding from the exertion of walking all morning. I pulled the cigarette pack out and peered inside. Two left. These probably weren’t helping with my breathing problems, but today was not the day to decide suddenly to get healthy. I almost smoked another, but given the ground left to travel, I opted to ration them out and wait a while. Deciding on a brief rest in lieu of the scarce chemical stimulation, I laid down on the bench and shut my eyes for a few moments.

  I must have fallen asleep, because it was nearly dark when I something hard striking my shoulder woke me. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and held my hand up to block the blinding light somebody was shining in my face.

  “You can’t sleep here, dirtbag,” a gravelly voice said.

  The light moved aside, and the dull glow of the park’s lamps lit a patrol officer standing over me with a flashlight in one hand and a baton in the other. My heart almost leaped from my chest and ran away as the morning’s memories flooded back into my mind. I was a wanted man, a supposed cop-killer, and here was some hot-under-the-collar beat cop staring me down.

  I ruffled my hair and pulled the hood of the jacket down as low as I could as I sat up. “Sorry, officer. Didn’t mean to fall asleep.”

  “Looks like you’re in the wrong part of town, too. You better get out of here before you get dragged in for vagrancy. What are you doing here, anyway?”

  “Just passing through on my way to The Glen,” I said as I stood. Pain shot through my feet as I put my weight on them, but I did my best to hide any reaction. Any good vagrant would be used to going bare-shod.

  “Well, see you get there before you decide to take another nap. And for God’s sake, man, find a bar of soap. You smell like a sewer.” With that, the officer turned and walked back to the squad car perched on the side of the street. He climbed in, pulled the door down behind him, and drove off without another word.

  I must have some luck left, I thought. I’d been more likely to be fleeced for anything of value and beaten than given a warning. And if he had recognized me, I would have been in store for a far worse fate. He was right, though. I needed to get out of Griffithsville before another beat cop with a less charitable demeanor came along.

  I hustled out of the park and set into an even pace along the sidewalk before pulling out a smoke and lighting it up. The warmth felt good as it filled my lungs, and my still-racing heart calmed down as the nicotine went to work. I glanced at the barcode on my wrist after taking another drag. There was a pile of cash behind that simple tattoo. Not a big one, but enough for what I needed. But I knew the second I scanned it, every computer in every patrol car in the city would light up with my location. Before I could get more smokes, or get to work, I needed to get my money transferred to a clean account and replace my ink. Unfortunately, that was also going to cost me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was dark and the night had come aliv
e by the time I shambled into The Dale. Boxy tenements rose all around, looking like clones of each other stamped along San Fernando Avenue. There were more people in the streets than there had been downtown, and I easily blended into the sea of desperation and filth. Pushers and prostitutes hawked their wares in the open, with little fear of the police showing up. Gangbangers patrolled the streets, armed with everything from iron pipes to assault rifles. This was their turf, and most cops knew better than to invade it without a squad of enforcement bots to back them up. Mountains of trash filled the back alleys, some of it predating the sanitation strike. Even the flies ignored the fact the sun had long since fled below the horizon, happily buzzing along with the neon lights.

  The last time I’d been here, Frank and I had been chasing down a lead on a missing person; some corporate hotshot in the mayor’s pocket. We knew somebody had the suit’s barcode after his assets started getting withdrawn through several shell accounts and some nobody started spending like a high roller. We caught him with a bogus code freshly spliced onto his wrist, which had come from some other nobody that had gone missing. Frank and I paid a visit to a skin trader named Gregory, who specialized in making high-profile criminals disappear and redistributing access to high-value bank accounts. I had history with the man, having roughed him up a few times back when I was on the beat and before he came into favor with the Bratva. I was sure Gregory was the man to slice the suit’s barcode, but we could find no proof—or any sign of the body, for that matter. Gregory was good, and that was why I found myself standing on his doorstep.

  A burly guard in a dark suit stood before the nondescript basement door, something you’d miss behind the piles of trash if you weren’t looking for it. He was a head taller than me and as broad-chested as a gorilla. He squinted as he looked me over, then his nose wrinkled and he took a step back. “You smell like shit,” he said in a thick Russian accent.