Sam Marlowe's Arc

Chapter 6 of 14

The shooting stopped an hour before dawn. Sam waited in a doorway and watched the cannery. When the smoke thinned, one truck rolled out. Knuckles Malone sat behind the wheel, alone, the wooden harbor model on the seat beside him. Mister Big's crew had lost. Malone had won, and he still blamed Sam for the double-cross that started it all. As long as the ogre walked free, Sam couldn't show his face on the street. Every corner held a gun with his name on it. Sam had one card left. He crossed town to the police station and found Lieutenant McSnork at his desk, cigar clamped in his teeth. The squat Ork looked up with yellow eyes and did not smile. McSnork had helped Sam once before, and he'd regretted it. He trusted Sam about as far as he could throw the building. "You again," McSnork said. "Last time cost me paperwork." "Knuckles Malone is driving a truck across the city right now," Sam said. "He's got a gun and a grudge. He shot up the docks and just shot up a cannery. Bodies in there, Lieutenant. Yours to count." McSnork chewed the cigar. "And you know this how?" "I watched it," Sam said. "Pick him up and you close two shootings tonight. Leave him loose and he kills someone by morning." The Ork studied him a long moment. He didn't like Sam. But he liked killers on his streets even less. He stood, grabbed his fedora, and barked orders at two officers. "Get the truck. Alive if you can." Sam rode along and pointed the way. They caught Malone at a stalled light. The ogre saw the badges and reached for his holster, but three barrels through the window changed his mind. Cuffs wouldn't fit his wrists, so they used chain. The wooden model sat on the seat where he'd left it. McSnork bagged it as evidence and never asked what it was. "He's off the street," McSnork told Sam. "For a while. Don't make me sorry." Sam found a phone and called his office. Dolly answered on the first ring. Her voice was flat, the way it got when she'd been scared and wouldn't say so. "You're alive," Dolly said. "I hoped. I didn't count on it." "Malone's in a cell," Sam said. "I can walk again." "Good. Lysander called twice." A pause. "The relic's in a police evidence bag now, Sam. You handed it to the one place you can't just walk into and take it." Sam looked back at the station. McSnork carried the wooden model inside under his arm. The ogre was caged. The street was safe. But the relic he'd chased across the city now sat locked in a building run by a cop who didn't trust him, guarded by law instead of guns. "I'll figure it out," Sam said. "You always say that," Dolly said, and hung up.