Chapter Twenty-Nine – Harald

Harald was a simple kind of guy. He got up in the morning, ate his Orn Lakes with a bit of milk, went to the bathroom and showered just like anyone else.

He even lived in a perfectly ordinary sort of place. A little apartment on the top floor of a tenement building. It was a nice place. The water was warm enough ever since they replaced the heater and it was nice and insulated from the snow in winter. He even had a little parking spot for his Ivic out back.

If anyone asked, he worked the night shift at a grocers, sometimes the morning shift too. Nice, respectable but boring work. He was even on the payroll if anyone looked.

That was all a lie, of course.

An elaborate ruse set up by his boss.

He wasn’t spending the night shoving cans into neat rows just for some Karen to come in an hour after opening and mess everything up. Not that he hadn’t done that kind of work in a past life.

Nah. Harald was a boss. He was a cool cat. A playa. Not the top dog, but real close.

He had mad girls after him all the time, and his nights were spent at the Garter Belt, a little joint tucked in the most interesting part of town where the music could be played real loud without bothering anyone.

It wasn’t all fun and game though. Sure, he had his Try Hards to impress. A bit of cash changing hands, some substances of questionable legality being tossed around and snorted off the backs of cute college girls who’d gotten tired of daddy telling them how to live, maybe a bit of planning on where to place the coolest tags.

It was all in good fun until the boss called in.

The last time was two days back. The boss had wanted him to hit up some guy out in a hidden bar somewhere. He’d rolled in with a few boys, knocked him around and, as the boss asked, took a machine off the guy.

It was sitting in front of him now.

The Garter Belt had a nice little basement. All bare cement walls and piping, but clean. It’s where he had his office. Just a desk and a chair and a PC that hummed in the corner. Sometimes a guy needed a nice quiet spot away from all the music and noise.

He, of all people, could understand finding a place to call his own.

He didn’t sit. He didn’t like sitting down. Instead he walked around the room. There were shelves with bits of stationery and printers and a few knick-knacks. As he moved, he picked each one up in turn and set it back down. A stack of papers here, a book there, a stapler next to that.

It was just how he destressed as he waited for the boss to call.

He needed a bit of destressing. He’d lost one of his own subordinates the day before. A big takedown. It made the damned evening news. Oily Cheeks getting smacked down by a god forsaken bear of all things.

Harald had plans for that boy! He was supposed to add some legitimacy to their entire operations. Oily Cheeks wouldn’t stay behind bars forever. Oh, sure, he was a bit grey, but the kid was clean. His worst infraction was a bit of fooling around in highschool.

But now he was tainted. He’d be watched, and they’d have his name and address and the moment someone showed up looking a bit too sweaty or like they hadn’t showered in a bit they’d finger Cheeks in no time.

Harald kept on moving things around. He had a little cloth in his back pocket that he’d use to rub the dust off of stuff. Dust always bothered him because he knew exactly where it was, no matter what he did.

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He turned towards his desk. The phone rang.

Harald reached a hand over to the cordless and it snapped across the room and into his hand, the device turning on with the same motion. “Yo.”

The voice over the line was muffled and grating, the kind of voice that made it just a bit hard to understand. There was no doubting who it was. “Hello, H.”

“Hey, big S, how are you?” Homie asked. Not Harald. He wasn’t Harald when talking to the boss.

He winced a bit at the sound of cement rubbing against cement across the line. “Let’s cover things one at a time. Do you still have the drive?”

Homie looked over to his desk where the computer he’d taken was sitting. The drive was in there. As much as he knew about computers from his power-granted osmosis, he still didn’t want to risk popping it out and breaking it.

“Good,” the boss said before he had time to say anything. “Then we can move on to the next step. I’ll need you to bring the drive over to a specific address tonight. You’ll be meeting a contractor I hired. I’ll text you if it’s the right person.”

“Cool, cool,” Homie said. “I can do that much.”

“You’ve been dependable so far,” the boss agreed. “This will almost certainly give us a leg up over the Cabal.”

Homie nodded, and the boss, of course, saw that.

“Very well. The address should be on your burner phone. You know what to do.”

“Yeah yeah, no worries.”

There was some shifting over the phone. “Now, what happened to your recruit? That is, if you can tell me anything more than what I saw on the news already.”

Homie winced. “I really don’t know. Or, well, I can guess. Cheeks went out and got himself caught. I don’t know how they tracked him down though. Might have shown off to some of the girls here. You know how women can be.”

There was a groaning sigh. “Amateurish.”

“He was new. Plenty of potential, but a bit of a pushover. Not a bad thing, but… yeah. His power wasn’t all that great, at least. So no big loss there.”

“I’ve yet to hear of an entirely useless power,” the boss said. “It’s a lost opportunity, but these are times of opportunity. We’ll make back the loss.”

“You think this was the Cabal?” Homie asked. He wanted a definitive no. The boss was, surprisingly, an honest guy. If he said it wasn’t the shadowy freaks then it was probably just some fluke.

“I can’t say either way,” the boss said. “Get me that drive and we’ll know better.”

Homie nodded again. “Can do. And, uh, you got anything on that Melaton woman? I looked through her Ikia profile, but it’s not much. If she comes knocking, I want to be ready.”

“I’ll send you what I have. I’m afraid it’s not much,” the boss said. “I have far less on the other two accompanying her.”

“They looked like sidekicks or something,” Homie said. “Nothing to worry about, right?”

“I suppose not. Good evening, H. Stay safe, and keep an ear open for my next message.”

“Will do, big S.”

The line went dead. A moment later, the inside of his desk buzzed. Homie’s eyes unfocused as he read the text. Just an address, one that he memorized by repeating a few times while he flicked his phone over and had it land in its recharging cradle.

The drawer popped open and the phone within flew up and into his back pocket as he picked up the laptop with the drive and shoved it into a carrying bag.

He’d get the boss’ work done, then he could put some of his smaller worries behind him for a time.

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