Rogues Gallery (3 page)

The current merchant defection wouldn’t help his ability to buy such things. Compiled with the new Guild policies, piracy was on the rise. Another ship taken, another huge grip of supplies ripped off and plundered, stolen by Lurenz. The infamous buccaneer was back to his old mode of operation. It happened a lot more many years ago. Becket remembered the time before Castellan became Guild Master. Piracy was a fact of life back then.

They dealt with it well enough, counting the loss as part of doing business on that side of the continent. The king never got involved. That was the main area of contention for the higher ranking members of the Guild, but there was nothing they could’ve done about it. That was the attitude.

Castellan changed all that. With his charisma and charm and strength of personality, he swooped in control of the organization and made them all wealthy. Very wealthy. He had also brokered a deal with the pirates, and they stayed away from their shipments. Goods arrived on their shores as they were supposed to, and everyone was happy. All that changed when he was taken away in chains for a myriad of crimes against this Sea Haven, and their neighbor Janisberg to the south.

The issue at the moment was that no one knew the exact details of that deal with the pirate Lurenz. Becket had only been a Dock Master a couple of years when Castellan came in and was not senior enough to be privy to that information. At the time it seemed trivial. He, Crocker, Dollenger, another man named Coleson, and Beauregard, Lawson’s predecessor, were too satisfied by the money coming in to question anything Castellan did.

Beauregard died a few months after Castellan took office under mysterious circumstances. He had been a middle aged man and was found dead one morning in his bed, not a mark on him. There was nothing too unusual about that. Men died that way, but once his replacement, Gunnar Lawson, took over Piers Four, Five, and Six at the Southern Docks, people began to talk. The man was under qualified, and there were those that claimed easy to control and thus why Castellan appointed him. With everything happening so fast and the money pouring in, no one questioned it much at the time, Becket included.

After the recent change in personnel and the shakeup of their cadre, Becket believed it worthy of thought. What really happened to Beauregard? It was almost a decade ago and Lawson must know something about it since he stood the most to gain. Becket made a mental note to question the man if possible.

That was not what garnered the majority of his anxiety at the moment. Dealing with the merchants abandoning their memberships, and the theft of their goods was paramount. Becket was also put in charge of recruiting new Dock Masters and was in the process of choosing men to place in positions of great influence and wealth.

There were a lot of good people, including his highest ranking Pier Supervisor, Pierce Johnson. But Becket liked the man where he was and had some other candidates in mind instead.

It was strange being in Dollenger’s office. He had moved forward along the Western Dock’s scale into the first position while Crocker moved up behind him in second. Dollenger’s tastes were rather pedestrian, and thus Becket kept rearranging the space. Dead men left behind a trail of problems that never ended.

His old office was better. So was the former position; less wok, less responsibility, and less stress. How easy it was to pass along problems to the persons above him in the chain of command. Now there was only Muldor above him, and the man was too stubborn to deal with.

Becket knew what the Guild Master would have told him. “You’re the senior Dock Master now. Deal with it.” If Becket were to question him, Muldor would not answer except with a stare from those dead fish eyes.

Becket sighed. He began rearranging the paintings and sculptures in the foyer in his mind. This one, with its rolling hills and gentle river in the background, would anchor the right side below his stairs, the center of a trio of paintings in his home. Similar rivers ran through them all, and that might’ve been a nice idea to string three together in the same space next to each other. That would tie that wall together well.

Another set of images ran through his mind as well, one of numbers, money bags, and his bank vault growing sparser as his profits shrank. He would find no more sanctuary behind his walls in the wealthy section then. Nothing would protect him from the vile scum of Sea Haven’s dank bottom dwellers then.

Becket shivered and set about thinking of a way to stop it from happening.

* * * * *

During most nights at the arena, the sheer volume of noise and mass of people was almost overwhelming. The spectators stomped so hard, it threatened to break the wooden bleachers upon which they stood. Nobody sat. They screamed and cursed so loud it would make sailors blush. The fighters fought and bled so much on the wide open floor it looked like an abattoir’s lair.

The punishing force of violence surrounded them all. Every single living soul in the cramped space added their heat and energy to create a miasma of chaos. The regular, beaten down citizens of what outsiders referred to as “Murder” Haven, yelled for blood and mayhem, and none were disappointed. And it happened every night.

The only ones who went home dispirited were those that lost money on their bets. Yet they came back as often as they could. Zandor knew repeat business was the key to success in any venture of this nature. Sure, the place was loud and drunks got obnoxious and annoying, but they couldn’t get enough of it. He stood near the lower reaches of the south side bleachers and crossed his arms, watching, trying to filter out much of the hubbub.

After years of practice, the foreign provocateur was able to cut away the nonsense and listen to scraps and pieces of information that might have proved valuable. People spoke on things when they were drunk when they might not otherwise. Every so often he would catch a bit of a rumor or even a slid fact. It took time, but the shifty man was patient enough to wait.

Dark garbed and always with his maroon hood hovering over his eyes, he stood with practiced patience. The multitude of knives strapped to his tight waist spoke of his deadly intentions, and the compact nature of his wiry frame brokered no argument to his physical readiness.

Something happened on the floor, which was out of his sight for the moment because the platform was raised. The crowd shook with excitement. He marveled at the feat of engineering involved in keeping such a rackety looking set of bleachers from falling apart.

The arena’s proprietors, Derek and Desmond, assured him it was all very simple, but he knew it was more complicated than they claimed. There was magic involved, had to be, to keep the structure from collapsing. The crisscrossing network of simple boards nailed together could have never kept the weight and mass of it all without failure. He made a mental note to dive in deeper to investigate at a later date. Not yet, though. There was too much money and fun to be had.

The arena security men,
his
men, filtered in and out of the crowd, keeping things under control. There was never total control that was an illusion because that was the nature of the world. Zandor liked to think of it as controlled chaos. And with his particular skills, he could harness and aim the powers that ebbed and flowed around him pretty much the way he wanted.

His men were long time members of his cabal. Trusted, well trained men whom he treated well. None of Jerrod’s black shirted goons were operating in an official capacity any longer. Zandor had seen to that.

The arena was his operation and his alone. The owners were… different. Zandor wanted to investigate them further, but there was no need at the moment. They let him do what he wanted and paid him well. Plus, with his control of the back end tribute, they continued to pay to Tanner McDowell, and Zandor got more gold on top of that.

McDowell had retired up the coast to a secluded mansion several years before, but unbeknownst to Derek, Desmond, and the people that ran the betting tents, McDowell had died some years ago. When Zandor and Jerrod went up to broker a deal with him, they discovered this secret and strong armed the men who kept it going into dealing with them instead. They took the vast majority of the profits.

A group of three toughs walked by him. They came in most nights and bet. He hadn’t taken away that privilege yet and saw no reason to. If they wanted to waste money like everyone else then so be it. They strolled by and went towards the latrines.

They eyed him, and he eyed them back. They looked smug. Jerrod was pumping them up with foolish notions to cause trouble, no doubt.

The owners didn’t even know what was going on, and Zandor preferred it that way. They kept out of his business, and if he wanted to switch up the security forces, it was possible to. The toughs had been great at it, though. Strong and capable of following orders, but a lot of men could do that. They were chattel. And replaceable.

One of his men walked through the crowd, and Zandor whistled. “Hey! Donny! C’mere a sec, would ya?”

Tall and lanky, young Donny glanced over at Zandor with bright, alert eyes. He weaved his way through the common spectators. Zandor cracked a smile because the boy was smart and more than a simple big body used to push people around. That was something Jerrod would never learn about people.

“What can I do for you, Zee?”

Zandor put his arm on his shoulder. “You doin’ okay, kid? How is everything?”

Donny shrugged. “Good crowd tonight, everyone is behaving so far.”

“Good, good. Listen, take a couple more guys and go to the latrine. I think we got some problem there.”

Zandor stopped. He smelled smoke. Donny looked at him askance.

“Everything okay, Zee? What’s wrong?”

“Stupid, stupid bastards. Hey, get some more guys now. We got some fools to deal with right now. C’mon.”

Donny looked confused, but Zandor didn’t give him enough time to think on it, grabbing his shoulder to rush off towards the latrines. A couple more of his men were close by, and he flicked a hand at them to say “come with us.” They followed.

The latrines were located to the back and below the south side bleachers. The walls were the same boarded complex of wood and nails, crisscrossed and flimsy looking. There were two open doorways to the right and left, one for males, the other for females. Zandor and company went right to where men did their business.

The entrance was crowded with men standing and talking though it didn’t appear to Zandor any of them were anxious about pissing. He shoved through them. One man was peeing right there, only five feet from the entranceway, and Zandor sucked in his teeth.

One of his men shoved the slob away from the wall and ordered him to use the proper facilities, but Zandor didn’t bother waiting to see how that turned out. The smoke was growing stronger.

The room consisted of shit holes to the right, perhaps a dozen of them; little more than simple hollow seats where a man could squat and defecate. The left side housed the piss trough, a long rectangular construction designed to collect and dispense hundreds of men’s worth of waste product. It all ran underground.

Zandor weaved through the crowd. The source of the smoke was near. A drunken jackass smashed into Zandor as he moved around another lug, and the man had not yet pulled up his pants. He bellowed, and some stray piss struck Zandor on the hand. He cursed under his breath and dodged by him, forcing his hand away from one of his knives before he could pull one out and stab the fool in the throat. Too much else was going on.

The three toughs stood at the far right side of the trough smoking cigarettes. His men rolled up behind him, but Zandor held up a hand.

“Easy now, lads. Let’s try to talk this out first.”

He stepped closer and made sure the toughs saw him, smiling. “Hey there, fellas. Listen, we got a strict policy on smoking around here; for obvious reasons. See, it’s real dangerous ‘cuz of all this wood and whatnot all over the place. The whole place is wood, right?”

They kept smoking. One of them smirked and dropped his lighted cigarette on the ground where it continued to burn.

“Yeah, well, that’s a good start,” Zandor said. “Go ahead and stomp that out, and we got something nice going on here.”

The tough looked at him and then kicked the butt across the floor towards him. “You do it then if it’s so important to you.”

His three men tensed, but Zandor kept smiling. He stepped on the burning brand and held his arms out.

“It’s important to all of us,” he said. “This place goes up in smoke, we all got problems.”

The other two looked at each other, scoffed, and kept smoking. They all stared at each other. The crowd nearby was getting annoyed at the extra space they were taking up in the room, but they would have to wait.

The toughs looked at each other and then started moving off. They passed Zandor and his men, almost daring them to grab the cigs from their hands. Zandor didn’t. He let them go but followed close enough behind. It was easier to move through the crowd because the toughs were strong and practiced enough to create a large space around and behind them.

Outside the latrine they started moving away, still trailing smoke from their cigarettes. Zandor slowed and watched them walk, suspecting something. It wouldn’t have been this easy.

“Well, that takes care of them,” Donny said and shook his head. “You want us to follow them, Zee?”