CHAPTER 1: PAUPER'S CRATE

  SOUTH END—OCTOBER 16th, 1992 | EVENING

  ?

  She was a sack of skin and bone and Cameron hated the way she looked.

  Wrinkles in excess, with a big wart on her nose and thinning hair. He’d told her three times already that she was under new protection, and that the South End Sables would be making collections every third Friday on the dot. She was either deaf or stupid. Maybe both. Or maybe, she was ignoring him. She dared not to look at him—a small act of resistance that made his blood boil. He glanced at the tinctures and vials on her side of the wooden counter in some small effort to calm himself. Around him were odds and ends, dried leaves, imported candies, and so-called potions which lined the shelves.

  “Did you hear me?” Cameron asked, slamming a hand on the table. It was hard. Loud.

  “Yes,” she croaked, sorting through her trinkets. “You’ve been here before, you know.”

  Cameron furrowed his brows. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Yes, Cameron, you have,” she insisted.

  Ms. Stelshare looked up at him with a warmth on her face—a sincerity that a younger version of him remembered.

  It made him forget, if only for a moment, that he hated the way she looked, and how age had turned her into something helpless and small. She wore circular glasses in dire need of replacement, and Cameron could see how he must look in her eyes by way of the reflection. Raven-black hair cut short, hugging his scalp as a buzz cut. Steely and jittery gray eyes, a scar along the side of his cheek. A black hoodie, a denim vest. He was not tall, nor short, but had a wolfish stature to him, chiseled and lean and hungry with a gauntness to his gaze. She saw a thug in him and he looked the part. It was a far cry from what she must have remembered of him. He didn't shy from it.

  “You were younger then, happier. Your mother and you—"

  Cameron stepped back from the counter, eyeing the nearby display cases. He raised a foot and kicked in the glass, haphazardly grabbed some of the tinctures, and threw them at the wall behind her. The old woman flinched, but did not move from her chair. Good; he had her attention.

  “Every third friday. If it isn’t me, it’ll be someone else," Cameron said.

  His worn boots stepped on the shards of glass as he exited the shop. He stared at the words plastered on the storefront's door:

  SOUTH END SALVES

  Cameron stared absently at Ms. Stelshare through the windows and watched her waddle out from behind her counter, broom and tray in hand, making an effort to tend to the broken glass.

  She was right. He did remember.

  He remembered his skinny hand and the way his mother held it while inside, the smell of incense and dehydrated flora, the stacks of books and stray papers. He must have been ten or twelve at that point. Younger, dumber, and not yet aware of why his mother and him were always there. Being so young, he figured it was for those imported candies. He remembered the taste; sour and salty. But that was never the real reason they went to Ms. Stelshare's. And it was only in those later, teenage years, basked in the scent of strange leaves and the glow of the shop's faulty lights, that Cameron learned why those trips were so frequent. No. He never forgot; he merely decided it was better to not remember such things.

  Right as he stepped outside, a familiar whistle reached his ears, one Cameron knew all too well. A man leaned against the street pole just outside of the storefront, broad-shouldered, husky, with a full beard and a grizzly mess of brown hair and thick eyebrows to match.

  "The hell are you whistling at me for, David?" Cameron muttered.

  David St. James liked to wear a striped tee and unzipped leather coat, and he always reeked of cigarettes. He held one in his gloved hand and it was half smoked. He raised it towards Cameron, and Cameron eyed the leather glove on his hand. David’s most prized possession—Pauper, he called it—that he stole from the one artificer foolish enough to try to open up a business in the South End several years back. Cameron never did find out what happened to its maker.

  “Just to keep you on your toes, I guess. What’s the word?” David asked.

  “Every third Friday,” Cameron said plainly, taking the cigarette. He finished it off with a few drags and threw it onto the pavement.

  David leered over Cameron’s shoulder, taking note of Ms. Stelshare. “Atta’ boy. Look, ah, Cam. You remember Rosco, right?”

  “Crazy Rosco, out of Oldport?”

  “That’s the guy. Walk with me,” David said, stepping away from the street lamp and pacing down the causeways. Cameron followed suit.

  The handful of pedestrians walking through South Ends cluttered causeways kept to themselves, looking the other way as David and Cameron proceeded. If there were witnesses, they’d never say anything. No one in the South End ever said anything. Not to anyone—not unless it was beaten out of them, and the grime soaked rows of black brick and concrete buildings were good at keeping secrets. Exterior piping and retrofitted ironclad beams connected every lopsided and compromised apartment complex, and as they twisted and turned out from the alleys, their surroundings grew more clustered, more chaotic, and more dangerous, like an endless industrial park and steel mill repurposed into one third of an entire city.

  It was dark out, and made darker still by way of fog. The street lights, half of which were derelict, offered only a passing relief from the shadows, staining South End locals in an ugly yellow sheen. Cameron and David turned into an alley not far from the one they’d left, veering off the main thoroughfare and beneath an archway where a black van waited for them.

  Posted up outside of it was a woman with long, curly hair, adorned in a ushanka hat, a black, oversized long sleeve shirt, and a pair of military-green capris. She had a large bowie knife at her hip, sheathed, and a small cage hanging from her belt. Trapped inside was a pink flame, little and angry. If one looked hard enough, they’d see it had a plasmatic eye.

  “How’d it go?” she asked.

  “Just fine, Mercedes,” answered Cameron.

  “Ah-huh. She cry?”

  “What?” Cameron asked.

  “Ms. Stelshare,” Mercedes clarified.

  David crossed to the van, leaning up against it. He awaited an answer, a knowing smile on his face.

  “No, she didn’t,” Cameron said. “What the fuck kind of question is that?"

  “You made the last one cry. Ms. Stelshare doesn’t deserve that,” she said sincerely, opening the door of the van and stepping into the driver’s side.

  Cameron circled around to the back and opened up the doors, finding a seat next to a crate that wasn't there before. David situated himself in the passenger seat, and Mercedes made a three-point turn to veer onto the main thoroughfare.

  “Some people aren’t good at listening. Ms. Stelshare, she’s always been a sweetheart,” David chimed. “Last guy wasn’t. Our boy Cam did what he had to, got results. That’s more money in all our pockets, Mercedes. Ain’t that right, Cam?”

  Cameron was more interested in the contraband. The crate. He removed a switchblade from his pocket to pry at its edges.

  Mercedes glared at him from the rear-view mirror, brown eyes warning him. “Don’t. It was a bitch and a half to re-nail that thing after we opened it.”

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  He continued, finding a nook along the edge of the crate to jam the blade into. “Seems David kept you busy while I was running collections.”

  David nodded. “That’s what I wanted to get to, Cam. See, Rosco—”

  “.. out of Oldport,” Cameron interrupted.

  “That's the one. He ran into us along the thoroughfare, on our usual route, not long before I set you out to run your collections,” David continued, glancing over his shoulder and nodding to the crate.

  Cameron breached it. Inside were rows of semi-automatic handguns: Reign 18s. Each was marked with serial numbers and the industrial seal that read ACL. Alistair Company Limited. They were sleek and well-assembled, and Cameron was quick to pick one up, inspecting it with raised brows.

  “Put that down,” cautioned Mercedes, observing him through the rearview mirror. The car took another turn. For the moment, they were stuck in traffic, and Mercedes turned the radio on, leaning along the inside of the door.

  “Where’d he find this?” Cameron asked.

  “Said it washed up just outside of Oldport,” David explained. “Rosco was making his usual rounds, you know, looking for copper wire to rip out of those old damn buildings, seeing what passed out junkies he could rob in those shaky port authority warehouses. Saw a ship, some kind of smaller cargo vessel, pulling up out of the water.”

  “From the Gulf of Maine,” Mercedes clarified. She reached over to the radio and changed the station. R&B to garage rock. Cameron preferred it, but the music lost its footing and static was quick to take over.

  “Not often you see that,” Cameron noted.

  David, still glancing over his shoulder, flashed a half-smile at Cameron. “You don’t ever see that. Not since Booker Import and Export got its sea legs in Dockside. Everything that comes into the damn Commonwealth goes there, never to Oldport.”

  Cameron leaned back in his seat, and held the handgun up, examining it more thoroughly under the dim lights along the van’s inside roof. “These are prime, David. Above our pay grade. Take a look,” he said, handing the gun to David, barrel pointed away from him, but David shook his head.

  “Already seen em’. Look, I got a buyer lined up, Cam. Willing to pay us good damn money for the whole crate, more than we’d make in a month doing our rackets.”

  “What happened?”

  “What?” David asked.

  “You said Rosco saw the ship pull up, a cargo vessel or something,” Cameron said.

  “Ah-huh. He doesn’t know how it sank, especially with all the damn fog rolling in, you know, as it does, but it did—the ship, I mean—and within the hour, crates were washing up along the crags. Rosco said there were more, but the ones that hadn’t sunk were filled with sea salt and brine by the time he opened them. Unserviceable, or something. Anyway. The buyer. We’re gonna’ sell it to Elizabeth Hausser.”

  Cameron's eyes widened ever so slightly, and as he turned to lean closer to David, he saw Mercedes struggling to hide something. Her face was always placid and hard to place. Rough, but pretty, like stone that had been carved over thirty-something years by water hitting a shore. Cameron couldn't tell what she was thinking, only that the name Elizabeth Hausser caused her features to shift, if only for a split second.

  “The real deal,” David said, shit-eating grin and all.

  Owner of Hausser Waste Company. It made sense, with all of the thugs and opportunists that snuck past her warehouse and loading bay. Rats in human form. People like Rosco, who could ignore the smell of rotting food, used diapers, and bloodied tampons if he could find something half useful.

  Someone like Elizabeth could use guns. If she didn't have guns already, more guns would make a difference. At least for as long as she had bullets.

  “Ammo?” Cameron asked.

  “Mags are pre-loaded, but that’s it,” said David.

  Cameron glanced towards Mercedes through the rearview mirror. Traffic was easing up, and Mercedes made a left run.

  “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger," Mercedes said, "we're lucky Rosco tipped us off to begin with, and luckier still that there’s even bullets in the damn things.”

  “What does he get out of this, David?” Rosco wouldn’t do this for free. Not a guy like that, always grunging around for pocket change and the next best thing. Didn’t matter who he fucked over if he got something for it.

  “I lied and told him I’d keep one of the guns just for him,” David said, smiling.

  Cameron scoffed. “He’s got at least two or three of them already, most likely. You’re selling him on something he already has.”

  “None were missing, as far as we could tell when he tipped us off about it,” David said.

  “Don’t think we should sell them, David.” Cameron said plainly. It stabbed a hole in subtle excitement that David wore on his face.

  “The fuck you on about?” David asked, as if offended.

  Cameron held the handgun tight in his grasp. “Think. We could use this. All of this.”

  Mercedes stopped the car, parking it along the side of the road. Cameron glanced out the windshield and saw that they were parked a block away from the tall patchwork fences that separated the Hausser Waste Company’s lot from the sprawl of the South End. Even from this distance, he saw idle garbage trucks anchored in the loading depot.

  Cameron had gone nose blind years ago, but beyond the Hausser compound was the Mounds; where the four boroughs—Garland Heights, Caulton, Dockside, and the South End—sent their trash to rot until it was burned away, and the remaining cinder was put into manholes and munds.

  “None of us need guns. Now come on, get out,” David instructed.

  Cameron waited for him and Mercedes to exit the van, pocketed the handgun behind his pants, and waited for them to open the back doors. When they opened, he helped David move the crate out onto the ground. “Everyone needs a gun. Even people like us, and even people better than us. And there’s always someone better than me. Better than you. And we’d be better off, the whole lot of us, carrying pieces like this for a rainy day.”

  Mercedes closed the doors to the van and stepped out.

  David ran his hand through his grizzly, brown hair. “Look. We need to really sell this, okay?

  Cameron felt his blood boil. “The fuck do you mean, really sell this? Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

  Mercedes stared at David for a brief moment. “He means he didn’t tell Elizabeth Hausser that we were coming.”

  Without thinking, Cameron grabbed David by the collar. He couldn't lift him. He wasn't strong enough, or tall enough, to really lift someone like David. He thought about hitting him. Or trying to. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  David tossed him to the side, quickly, boorishly, and adjusted his leather jacket before pointing his gloved hand at Cameron, the symbols and arrays of Pauper lighting up in their silvery-white glow, only for them to dim as David’s growing anger cooled.

  "She's not going to take the deal if we spring it on her like that," Cameron hissed. "Here I thought you'd done the impossible and arranged a deal with her. I should've known better."

  “No need to get rabid, Cam. She’ll take them, alright? I’m fuckin’ sure of it. And you should be too. Now, I’m gonna’ carry this crate. You and Mercedes are going to walk me to the gates, open them for me, and we’re going to sell these guns.”

  There was nothing else to be said. No further acts of protest that Cameron could muster, nothing that he could do to challenge David’s ruling, not without inviting more than just a throw.

  Cameron shot Mercedes a sidelong glance, and she shrugged, double-checking the small cage fastened to her belt. She eyed the ball of trapped, purple-pink flame, and Cameron stared at it.

  He saw its plasmatic eye. It hadn't blinked. Not yet.

  They made their way towards the gates of the Hausser Waste Company’s lot, leaving the van behind them.

  CAMERON KESSLER

  DAVID ST. JAMES

  MERCEDES GARCIA

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