Salt-Powered Investments, LLC

For those who want to know what comes next–or those new to the adventure of $20,000 Under the Sea, this is a draft of the first chapter of the sequel.

$20,000 Under the Sea will be available for purchase in digital and physical formats on 7/4. Preorder the ebook on Amazon here!

Vincent McFlinn was feeling pretty unimpressed with New York.  Some of the boys back in the Chicago Outfit had talked it up in their way.  They were from Jersey, if he recalled, so they weren’t fans or anything, but those fuckers still gassed the place up: the big time, greatest worst city on earth, largest wormy apple you ever did see.  Made it sound like a crazy, fourth-circle hellscape where everything was different.  Like it was kinda different: buildings were a little taller.  Mostly, the people were just fuckin’ twits.

Vincent–Drip, to his acquaintances–was certainly not accustomed to decorum, but this was somethin’ else.  Bums struttin’ around the sidewalk like some kinda aristocracy, an idiot on every goddamn street corner fuckin’ yellin’ their lungs out in that stupid, incomprehensible New York accent, and the Lethal Chamber…just…seriously?  You need the fuckin’ government to subsidize your suicide attempt?  And they were mean to the pigeons, which was never a good sign–though, as Vasco reminded him, the pigeons were generally dicks.

Maybe there were extenuating circumstances.  The city did seem to be on a kind of high alert, though pulling the reasoning thereof outta these citizens was a task.  After maybe four conversations of the form of “hey, what’s with all the coppers, ya need five on every street, seems like a lot?” “Hey buddy wassa matta wit you, missin’ ya ears or somethin’?” Drip finally managed to squeeze a red-eyed businessman for the big picture summary that the local constabulary was embroiled in a hot fight with some sorta cult.  This, combined with a far less social–but far more physically detailed–account Vasco had obtained from the local crows, yielded a more complete story: A few days ago, New York’s mayor had been assassinated by members of a cult.  A manhunt ensued, and at some point, the cops had surrounded a group of the cultists in an office building in Midtown.  And then a couple random citizens dove onto the cops’ perimeter, double-fisting live grenades.

Also, apparently, the better part of the harbor had been obliterated by a spring storm, which Drip didn’t think was related, but he did find it odd that neither the people nor the birds of the city seemed even to acknowledge the damage except under duress.

Anyway, fuck the cops and all that, but Drip really did have to hand it to this cult for making the most of their time together.  He’d been downtown for all of three hours now, and these lunatics were already chafing his dick.  Not that they even knew who he was, but with all the nest kicking, they’d gotten their enemies out in force with no evidence to go on but a mandate to be fuckin’ everywhere looking for “suspicious characters”.  Unfortunately, by any reasonable definition, Drip was a suspicious character.

Because he wasn’t a dirty plebeian, he put effort into his appearance.  Hair slicked, clean shaven, fashionable dark red suit tailored and pressed, matching Stetson worn at this season’s calculated tilt.  He stood out in a fuckin’ crowd even without Vasco there–with the crow perched on his shoulder he was just about a beacon of salience, and he clocked more than a few significant looks and gestures from the patrols, prompting him to maneuver off down sidestreets and stations to avoid whatever questions they were brewin’ up for him.

Not so different from Chicago, really.

At this point, Drip felt like he’d spent half his life on the outs in one way or another.  He grew up in a tenement in Fuller Park before the fire, along with the rest of the Irish portion of the city’s scum.  His father was a pickpocket, which, in lieu of the real job the bastard was never gonna hold down, made enough money for beer and shitty soup.  No mother was present–though Drip’s social understanding was so fucked that he didn’t even notice he was supposed to have a mother until he was eleven.  When he asked Dad what was up with that, he just scowled, walked out the door, and didn’t come back until one in the morning.  Drip didn’t ask again.

Otherwise, he and his old man got on alright, until the sap got caught red handed and beaten to death by a copper two blocks away from their house.  Most of his memory of it was less painful than just fuckin’ numb.  Hazy.  The part that stuck out was the other cop–a different one, he was sure–that showed up at his door to let him know his dad was concussed and bleeding out over thataway.  Fucker was wearing sunglasses at eight o’clock and smiling.  It hurt to look at him.  The cop that killed his father took a trip to the bottom of the river for Drip’s twenty second birthday–one of the rare cases he saw of Boss Nepoca’s sweet side before things went sideways–but the guy with the shades?  Drip never saw him again.

Drip had a rough few years after that.  He couldn’t keep up rent, but he scraped enough together between his neighbors’ charity and his own pickpocketing and petty theft to keep himself mostly fed and mostly off the streets.  His streak ran out, though, when a couple of stiffs in the North Side Gang caught him nickin’ a box from their car.  Things kinda went red after that, and he woke up in an alley with four stab wounds, his own knife white-knuckled in his hand, and the two stiffs dead on the ground next to him.  Since it was December at the time, and “dead” was only slightly less alive than he was then, he probably wouldn’t have made it if not for the men who pulled up, dragged him into their car, and took him to the hospital.

Turned out that even though he’d stolen from the wrong people, those North Siders were causin’ trouble in Outfit territory, and Al Nepoca appreciated Drip’s sacrifice in keepin’ his streets clean.  About a year later, Drip was made muscle for the Chicago Outfit, and that might’ve been history if he could’ve just kept it in his pants.

Puberty had been pretty disastrous for Drip, less for his adaptation to his body or appearance than for the Irish Catholic neighborhood’s reaction to the appearances and bodies he found himself attracted to.  Refreshingly, the Outfit’s attitudes were practically progressive in comparison.  They didn’t like that he was a fag, but they didn’t mind so long as his romantic proclivities didn’t intersect with gang business.  Problem was, six years on, he found himself a crush.  A reciprocated crush: Sal Biggs.  Roman statue jawline, eyes like emeralds, those shoulders.  And he was Nepoca’s nephew.  They managed to keep their relationship secret for a year and a half before the big man found out, but then Drip got a no-nonsense, knuckle-accented nastygram indicating he better get the fuck outta Chicago, we don’t wanna see you around here no more, got it?

That one hurt.  Probably more than his dad dying, to be honest.  It probably didn’t help that before leaving, he jumped Nepoca’s messenger, sawed off his right hand to teach him to use some professional courtesy in his communications, but he wouldn’t’ve pulled that stun if he hadn’t been handed an out: a letter under his apartment door from someone named “J.B.”, offering timely employment far away from Chicago.  Accordingly, he packed light, and after disarming Nepoca’s impolite associate, he got into a black car at the corner of Canal and Jackson driven by an annoyingly chatty man named Bluesummer.  About forty-eight hours later, he was deposited on the steps of the Claridge Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, with a prepaid reservation and another note from J.B.–this one with a wad of cash–telling him to sit tight and await further instructions.  Normally, he’d bristle, but he had to admit he might’ve gone overboard.  Nepoca had told him to get gone, yeah, but hitting back at his guys might’ve given him reason to call up some friends in New York if he caught wind of where Drip was headed.  Better to lie low for now.  Stick to this swanky hotel in this little mob bubble, just him and Vasco.

It did, however, put into sharp relief that Drip’s life up to now had been extremely unapologetic.  It was fortunate that for a time, anyway, the Chicago Outfit had accepted him as he was, because he’d done fuck all to fit in.  During those months he spent in Atlantic City, he wondered how reasonable that was, every day looking at his reflection in the mirror of the hotel bathroom: him, his red suit, his pet crow.  That was kind of a weird thing, wasn’t it?  Gangsters didn’t really walk around with birds on their shoulders, they weren’t pirates or some shit.  This was real life.  More to the point, people didn’t talk to birds, or rather, as Vasco confirmed, people did, but it was in the same way they talked to walls.  But somewhere in those years of stealing and stabbing in Chicago, Drip started talking to birds–on the street, feeding ‘em in the park, wherever–and at some point, he began to understand what they were saying back.

Most of them were pretty stupid, in an endearing sort of way, but the crows were alright for conversation.  And then Vasco stuck around after the rest of the flock flew off.  After a few times tailing him to the bar after dark, he just started sleeping at Drip’s apartment.  The way he put it, Drip’s life was just more interesting, whatever that meant.  Vasco had good enough sense to make himself scarce around the other gangsters–didn’t trust ’em; probably wise–but Sal was nice enough to him.  Yet another reason leaving Chicago had been painful.  Still, Drip found it pathetically comforting that Vasco had been so willing to leave with him.

At this point, though, the possibility that he would never see Sal again was significant, and he had burned the shit out of just about every other uneasy companionship he’d gathered up to this point in his life.  Drip had always been kind of a loner, but this was a distressing severity of alone.  He found himself relieved that Bluesummer had been willing to take Vasco’s attendance on their journey in stride.  Saved him from from wondering what sort of violence or self-sabotage he might’ve lashed out with otherwise.

In any case, Atlantic City went, Drip assumed, pretty much according to plan.  Two and a half months lying low, sleeping, eating, lightly gambling, and drinking himself into a stupor as the weather warmed up, as he steeled himself for a humid summer of his discontent.  Then in April, some arms dealer’s pleasure cruise out of New York turned into a national fucking incident, and scarcely two weeks later, another letter appeared on his hotel bed.  It was terse, just an address on the north side of Long Island, a date, and a time: tomorrow, 4 PM.

He took the train up north, but things got screwy pretty much just as he reached the city.  Whatever hand-of-god storm had wrecked the harbor had also taken out the bridge to Brooklyn, so he was forced to sidetrack through Manhattan.  Between getting lost and the business with the stupid cult, he was only now zeroing in on the subway station a distracted drug store clerk had told him would get him to Queens where he could catch an aboveground line out to Long Island.  It was nearly 1 PM, and Drip was beginning to realize that his chances of traversing 70 more miles east within the next three hours were closing in on zero.  Before he could conclude that punctuality was impossible, though, the strident blast of a car horn beside him scrambled his calculations beyond recovery.  His gaze snapped murderously to the vehicle, pulled up to the curbside.  The young man at the wheel called out:

“Mr. McFlinn!”

Drip’s response was a crooked grimace and a raised eyebrow.  He was careful not to offer any more positive acknowledgement than that: If this guy was Nepoca’s, there was about to be a tommy gun aimed through that window.  Better to leave him with some doubt that he might be shooting an innocent.  Hitmen didn’t like collateral damage.  That was the sort of shit that made ‘em a liability to the boss.

The driver leaned toward the passenger door and pushed it open.

“Get in,” he said.  “You’re going to be late!”

Drip let his annoyance and relief annihilate each other as he obliged.

Some fifteen minutes of adroit but chaotic swerving later, the driver broke the uneasy silence.

“You certainly took a circuitous route,” he said.  “What on earth prompted you to go through Manhattan?”

“Couldn’t get over to Brooklyn,” Drip muttered.  “You know somethin’ I don’t?”

“Couldn’t get over to…”  The driver whipped suddenly around a milk wagon stopped in front of them.  “Ah, of course, the bridge, right?”  Drip blinked.

“Yeah, wise guy.  The bridge.”

“You can see it, then?”

“What?”  Drip’s turn to look at the driver head-on jostled Vasco enough that the bird jumped to the dashboard with a rustling, surprised caw.  “The fuck kind of a–”

“I can’t see it,” the driver added, cheerfully.  “Very few in the city can.”

“What?!” Drip blurted, though neither his nor Vasco’s outsize reactions seemed to faze the driver–which was surprising.  He was young, maybe even younger than Drip.  Clean cut, spectacles, smart blazer and tie.  He looked like an assistant to an advertising executive–notably not like the type to maintain his nerve in traffic while gaslighting an alarmed gangster.

“It’s called memetic disavowal, I’m told,” the driver explained.  “When the Architects take direct action on society, society just refuses to perceive it–depending on the individual’s proximity to the Architect itself, that is.  But otherwise they’ll react as normal–like I wouldn’t try to take the bridge today and just fall into the bay.  Hell, construction’ll get funded, and crews’ll get out there to fix it, but none of us–me, the bureaucrats, the workers–register that anything happened or anything’s missing.”

“Is this the setup for some kinda joke?” Drip asked dryly.

“Not at all.  Just a personal observation of a phenomenon I find interesting–one which you evidently do not find at all.  Hence the discussion of the bridge which you no doubt found lacking among the citizenry this morning.  Heck, I only know about it because I was told about it by someone who, like you, is unaffected by said memetic disavowal.”

“Oh, so I’m special because I can see your Illuminati or whatever?”

“You’re special because of what allows you to see things I can’t,” the driver said.  “Which is the same as what allows you to speak to animals–I trust you accept this isn’t a joke now, yes?”

“You think I can talk to animals?” Drip probed, attempting a façade of incredulity.

“I know why you can talk to animals, though the way you are clutching your seat suggests you may not be ready to hear that explanation just yet.  Suffice it to say that my employer has had you under surveillance since before your specialness even manifested in that particular way.  So can we please table the skepticism at the notion that I know who you are?”

“Sure,” Drip muttered, rolling his eyes.  “Fine, whatever.  Who the fuck are you, then?”

“Jonathan Banks,” the driver replied smugly.  “I’ve been arranging your transportation, supervision, and lodging since slightly before your falling out in Chicago, and I daresay it is a pleasure to finally meet you in person.

Drip sighed, forcing himself to soften his posture and turn back to the road.

“J.B.?” he asked.

“The very same.”

“And your employer?”

“That’s a nosy question for a career criminal,” Jonathan said, “though I suppose it need not be a secret or anything.  Jonathan Banks is my real name after all.”

“Banks?”  Drip frowned, glancing back at him, trying to piece together where he might’ve heard that name before.  “Wait–like Milo Banks?  The M&M Corporation?”

“Alas, my father,” Jonathan replied resignedly.

Though Drip couldn’t quite tell what the M&M Corporation did, its owner, American-exceptionalist entrepreneur Milo Banks, was something like a celebrity.  He had played a recurrent supporting role in the news-drama of the Great War, aiding–and then seizing and turbo-charging–the Allies’ supply chains, the movement of materiel behind and to the battle lines, and, of course, the valiant postwar relief efforts in Germany.  By all accounts, every enterprise he touched became fabulously successful, and it had all made him fabulously rich.  More recently, Banks had relocated his corporate headquarters to Chicago, quietly purchasing the rebuilt skyline’s tallest building and loudly renaming it the stupidest thing ever.  Drip didn’t know whether the gesture was mistaken or facetious–he was not aware of any connection between the M&M Corporation and anyone named “Willis”–but he found the outrage around the city funny nonetheless.

“I’d heard he and Al Nepoca met last year,” Drip said.  “Was that about me, then?”  Jonathan shrugged.

“I can’t say for sure,” he replied.  “But I doubt it.  Rather, I don’t think it was about you yet.  I suppose you spent the morning downtown–have you become familiar with the King in Yellow?”

“Those cultists that killed the mayor?”

“Right.  My father has had issues with what they’ve been doing to cotton prices in Chicago for some time.  I think he asked Nepoca to help him do something about it.”

“Can’t imagine that went well,” Drip muttered.  “But wait, cotton?”  Jonathan shook his head.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.  “What you’re here for is not about cotton, but it is about the King in Yellow.”

“You want me to do something with this cult?”

“To be clear about our terms, the King in Yellow is a person, and he is competing with my employer–our employer, assuming your cooperation–for control over some key resources.

“Key resources?” Drip snorted.  “The businessy-fuck does that mean?”

“To be frank with you, I don’t have the whole picture,” Jonathan said, grimacing as another automobile cut them off.  “My understanding is that we are meant to put some pressure on the King.  In order to do that, we need to find him.  In order to do that, we’re best off collaborating with some other interested parties, hence the agenda today.”

“Long Island?”

“Long Island.”

The drive to Long Island, it turned out, was longer than Drip had anticipated, even knowing the distance, and Jonathan seemed reluctant to share any more material details about the job.  The conversation devolved to weather, traffic, observations about New York City–Jonathan’s outlook on the place was much more positive–and Vasco’s anomalous inability to form an opinion on their erstwhile “handler”.  Jonathan was personable, Drip conceded.  Rather, he was disarming, which he decided that he wouldn’t trust, even if it was pleasant for conversation.  Jonathan, for his part, noted the crow’s communication with a raised brow, but did not otherwise comment.

Eventually, they arrived in the driveway of a picturesque estate backed up against Smithtown Bay.  Jonathan stopped the car and got out, beckoning Drip to join him.

“I do want to warn you,” he said, rummaging through his blazer pocket before producing a key.  “I think it’s likely there will be a gun pointed at us as soon as we open that door.  Please remain calm.  I’ll introduce us.”

Without further elaboration, he approached the entrance stairs.  Vasco, expressing his distaste for firearms, told Drip to find him when all that was done, which was discouraging but entirely the crow’s prerogative.  Drip took a deep breath, concerned–admittedly more for the lack of details than the threat of violence–and followed.  Calmly, Jonathan unlocked the door, opened it, and stepped inside.

Crossing the threshold behind him, Drip was dismayed to find that Jonathan’s prediction had been quite prescient: Awaiting them in the foyer were three men, one clean shaven in a crisp, gray suit, the other two disheveled and sunken-eyed, in filthy military uniforms.  The gray-suit man and one of the others, a familiar-looking face with a bloodthirsty snarl, were both brandishing pistols.

“You,” the bloodthirsty man growled.  Seemingly oblivious to the danger, Jonathan smiled.

“Mr. Sterling!” he said.  “Hello again!”