Meltdown XXI & Fallout 021 (Nov '22).

She didn't really remember saying goodbye to Gerald, which she must have done after the tag team championship defence, or boarding the boat, which she also must have done considering she was waking up in an unfamiliar cabin that was unquestionably below deck. By this stage, she was well-versed in the art of autopilot, and had the uncanny ability to guide herself to where she needed to be regardless of how many kilometres (or, in this case, seas) lay between her and her destination and how few of her wits remained available to her. Last night was one of those occasions. She had crossed the North Sea and now - when she emerged onto the main deck through a narrow, spiral staircase - was docked in the Port of Copenhagen. The sun was just showing its face, casting its light upon the Øserund Bridge and the city of Malmö across the bay. The deck seemed deserted, and it was only when she disembarked onto the harbour itself that she noticed a young-ish sailor busy securing the boat to its moorings.

"Morning," he said, with a cigarette perched between his pursed lips. His accent was German and thick. "You seem a little more with it this morning. A good sleep?"

She nodded, stretched, and looked at her boat for the first time, unless you counted the photographs she'd seen when exchanging emails with its captain. It wasn't as large as some in the harbour, but given that she was the only quarry it was more than enough. It was to be her home for the next three months, and therefore needed to be small enough to negotiate the Main Canal in Central Germany whilst being swift enough to span the seas at the beginning and end of her journey. Its sails were furled and its steam engine, which would remain dormant but for the passages upon the open seas, was powered down, the only soundtrack to the scene the gentle rolling of the wind and the intermittent whistling of birds.

"Have you seen the captain?" Michelle asked the sailor, who was still engaged in winding a thick length of rope around a bollard.

"Whenever I see my reflection in the water," he answered, before flicking his cigarette end over the edge and onto the jetee. Michelle stamped it out for him. "Welcome aboard, Frau von Horrowitz."

She nodded absently at the banal greeting whilst her eyes traced over the inscription on the bow: S.S. Sisyphus.

“What does it mean?” she asked, nodding at the ship’s name. The captain stopped in his work for a moment to regard his own vessel.

“Not one for Greek mythology?” he replied, with a smile.

“Something Roman would’ve been more appropriate,” Michelle said. The captain pulled a face that suggested he didn’t understand her thread. She was pleased with this: he clearly had no real idea as to her business on the ship, given that he didn’t understand her reference to Caesar, and she would endeavour to keep it that way.

“Aren’t we finishing in Athens?” he asked. She got a sense that he enjoyed answering questions with questions. “Sisyphus will do fine.”

“Who was Sisyphus?” she went on with her enquiries whilst retrieving a pack of Camels from her pocket. She'd slept in her clothes on the passage from London, and the packet had become crumpled in the process. She straightened one out and tapped it against the box to level it off.

"He was the trickster," he answered. She found him to be elusive, and wasn't sure if she thought much of that. "The master thief."

"But what did he do?"

"Lots of things," the captain said, whilst returning to his ropes and the process of mooring. "Fathered Odysseus, by some accounts. You've heard of him, I assume? Good. And fathered some more sprogs with his niece whilst plotting to steal his brother's kingdom. That scheme didn't work out too well for him, though. The best laid plans, et cetera. He's probably most famous for cheating Death, though."

"Cheating Death?" she repeated. It seemed appropriate that she'd chanced upon the most literary-minded seafarer in Northern Europe. "How?"

"Thought that might interest you," the captain said, with a knowing chuckle. "When Thanatos came for him and put him in chains, Sisyphus asked how the herald's bonds worked. Thanatos granted him his wish, given that he'd been instructed to take the poor soul so early, but Sisyphus tricked him. He chained Thanatos himself up and returned to the Overworld, where he continued to live to a ripe old age."

"Happily ever after," Michelle mused, in-between drags of her cigarette.

"Not quite," the seaman went on, with a knowing smile. "With Thanatos in bonds, nobody in the World could pass to Hades. Ares grew bored of his endless battles, judging his wars less fun if none of his enemies died. He found Thanatos and broke his chains, and then Sisyphus was taken to Hades for real. And there he was punished, by being forced to push a boulder to the top of a mountain. When he would approach the peak, the rock would roll back to the bottom again, and his toil re-started."

Michelle said nothing for a moment. She didn't know this story, but she had read about Orpheus, who sang for Hades and Persephone to win back his wife's soul from the Underworld. In this story, whilst Orpheus sang, another man - ostensibly Sisyphus, she now knew - paused in his endless toil, sat on his rock, and listened, moved by the beauty of the song. She wondered how many times Sisyphus had approached the peak in the centuries since he was first punished, and if at this moment - as she stood on the dock and learned about him from her captain - he was closer to the base or the summit.

"Going to the city?" the captain asked. Michelle nodded. "Be back by midnight. We'll have to lift anchor in the early hours, if you want to reach Rotterdam by dawn. That's still your plan?"

"That's still my plan," she confirmed, and then took her leave.

Copenhagen was one of the few major cities in Europe that Michelle had never been to before, and she was unsurprised to find it choked with people. Most major cities were unbearable for this reason. An unreasonable proportion of them seemed to be riding bicycles, and an equally unreasonable proportion of this subset were intent on mowing Michelle down on them (or at least barraging her with incessant, pre-emptive bell ringing). She had been in Copenhagen for around half an hour before deciding that she didn't care for Copenhagen.

She was pushed along by a steady stream of people in the general direction of a pedestrianised area that ran along the seafront, and before long she found herself sitting a few metres away from the Little Mermaid, upon a bench that was positioned at the top of a staircase. She looked down at the statue and the steadily revolving crowds that approached, took a photograph, and then departed. This didn't hold her interest for very long. She was mainly curious about the flock of geese assembling around the base of the statue and a solitary osprey perched in an adjacent maple tree. She lit a cigarette, opened a beer, and longed to be a bird.

“Du kan ikke drikke her.”

A male voice interrupted her malaise before she could really get invested in it. She took a sip from her beer and placed it down next to her, before glancing up at the patrolling policeman addressing her in a language that she didn’t understand. She shrugged in response.

“Français? English? Deutsch?”

“Any is fine,” she said, in English. “Just not Danish.”

“You can’t drink here,” he said, nodding at the tin in her hand. Then, he just loomed.

“Okay, I’ll just finish this one,” she responded. It was a statement rather than a request. The cop continued to loom, casting a short and stubby shadow over Michelle. “Is there anything else?”

“Don’t open another; there are children here,” he said, before walking on down the path. She looked around and observed that there were children here. Perhaps that was an unrelated statement. She watched him plod away, finished her drink, and dropped the cigarette into the empty tin. Then, she opened a second can.

The solitary osprey, who seemed to be alone but not lonely, had begun to fly in wide circles above their heads, and for a while Michelle thought it was preparing to swoop towards the sea in search of its lunch. The thought of it made her hungry, and she couldn't put her finger on how long exactly it had been since she'd last eaten. Eventually, though, the hawk decided to instead fly towards the group of tourists assembled on the walkway and perch upon the railing that separated them from the Mermaid. She surmised that he'd found nothing worth lunging for during his orbit above the water, and had decided to test his luck with the people. Some of them greeted him with intrigue and curiosity, particularly a young Spanish boy, who hesitantly walked towards the bird and held out an empty hand. His attempts at ingratiating himself with the bird were cut short by an American couple, who shooed the creature away with fat, uninterested digits.

"Can't be too careful with hawks," she heard the American man saying to his equally grotesque partner as they waddled past towards the statue.

Her Aunt Maude had told her Hans Christian Andersen's story when she was a young girl. She hadn't been particularly enamoured with it the bulk of it, but certain elements - particularly the themes of envy and unrequited love - she felt a natural connection to in spite of her tender count of years. Age and experience would later validate a lot of the thoughts she already had on such concepts, even if they were developed through abstracted observations of her family and her peers. She would later learn that Andersen wrote the story - where a mermaid gives up her voice to trade her tail for legs in a fruitless attempt to ensnare the prince she loves - in reference to his own love for a friend who was about to marry a girl he deemed unworthy. Michelle could empathise with this: her own life had eventually become a series of hunts, each more futile than the last. Even those that could objectively be deemed successes by the time of their conclusions, like the dalliances with Bell Connelly, Chris Kennedy, and Mike Parr, quickly became utterly pointless when a new trail presented itself, leading to a new hunt. The fruits of her labour were invariably spoiled.

But her empathy was stayed when she considered the tame, tepid reaction, of both writer and character, towards the reciprocation (or lack thereof) of their passion. Andersen decided to write a story, and ended up alone, unfulfilled and unhappy when Thanatos presented himself. His mermaid refused the knife, offered to her by her sisters, and delivered her love - who treated her as though she were little more than a pet and a plaything - into the arms of another. Then, she would burst into seafoam, to be carried away on the back of the wind.

Despite her own insufficiencies and the long list of disappointment that still clung on to the edges of her mind, at least she'd never pathetically acquiesced when her quarry expressed disinterest in being caught. Never had, never would. Her disappointment in herself was outmatched only by her disappointment in others.

The hawk was circling again. Circling, not howling. At first, it hovered close to the surface of the water, but always at the westernmost point of its circle it would hover above the land, its eyes fixed upon the smattering of people still (rather flippantly) regarding the Mermaid’s statue. The geese were less interested, going about their business in the bay, drifting further and further from the shore. She identified with both species: the geese for their gently increasing and self-imposed abstraction from the shore and the tourists, and the hawk for its intriguing inability to remain entirely aloof from them despite it being entirely within its power to do so.

After a half-dozen more wide and high circles, the hawk eventually came to rest on the Mermaid’s shoulder. The tourists stopped taking photographs, and some of them seemed perturbed by the imposition upon their shot. It escaped them that this variant would make their photograph infinitely more unique and interesting than the millions of replications taken before they reached this perch. This current cohort stared with passive eyes at this unwanted interloper until the most daring amongst threw a handful of M&M's (may have been skittles - difficult to say) in the bird's direction. The osprey wasn't hungry enough, and flew away from the dispute.

As she neared the end of her third can she noticed her policeman friend on the seafront pathway. She threw her empties into her rucksack, lit a cigarette, and then took her leave.

Some of the old, dilapidated buildings that surrounded the central square in the Freetown were cordoned off for the use of the Fantasy Wrestling Alliance, and Michelle changed and prepared (as best as one with a frazzled mind and a black heart can) in the room specified for her. Afterwards she took a quick walk around the commune itself, and was pleased to find a small part of Copenhagen that didn't make her feel physically sick or overawed. It was teeming with people, just like the city itself, but somehow she felt more affinity towards the locals there than the armies of tourists existing around it. And most people she saw were locals, save for the few dozen that had come as guests of Russnow or Jean-Luc. This second group of people stuck out like sore thumbs, clear anomalies amongst people who seemed like they belonged. Michelle wondered what that was like.

She walked down an alleyway and perched on the curb at the side of the pedestrianised and cobbled road, where she lit a cigarette and stared back towards the square. She could see the ring, around which a number of crew members were hurrying and scurrying in preparation for the show. Her alleyway was quieter, and she felt happiness in her abstraction. The only other occupants of her sanctum were a pair of young men, both bearded, one with long hair and the other bald, who were passing a joint back and forth between themselves whilst they spoke in their alien, frantic tongue.

Dreamer was hardly even bothered when these two men instigated a conversation with her. Dialogue with strangers was quite common in her rather mundane life, but she made a point of not conversing with those who would call themselves fans. The men - Michael and Lars, she learned during the conversation and forgot promptly afterwards - were here to see the show, and they inevitably knew who she was. But she found herself willing to forgive them thanks to the peculiar feeling that had gripped her whilst wandering around the Freetown.

“When do you fight tonight?” the bald one, Lars, asked, as he passed her the joint.

“I don’t know,” she said, truthfully, and with a shrug. She knew that she wasn’t in the main event or the opener, and the matches in between those were difficult to differentiate.

“And you’re prepared?” Michael asked, whilst staring up the alley towards the ring. “You’ve figured him out?”

“I’ve been able to think about little else all week,” she replied. This time, she wasn’t being anything close to truthful. Her mind had done its best to think about almost anything but Cornelius Aurelius Caesar, a man she’d had little contact with throughout his short time in the FWA. There was, of course, that time when she’d agreed to postpone her tag team title shot so that the Roman and his Giant friend could deal with Stocke, Lynch, and Hughes, but this wasn’t done out of a favour to the then-newly crowned champions. Michelle had her own concerns: namely dethroning Nova Diamond and winning her second FWA World Championship. Gerald should have had the same priority, but - as her decisions generally did - that choice only served to force another schism between them. They were only just recovering now, and even the belts themselves didn't convince her that they'd fully succeeded in these reparations.

The only time that she'd contemplated Caesar since leaving New Orleans was when she'd stood on the docks in Copenhagen for a brief conversation with the captain that morning. Their dialogue on Sisyphus had brought to mind the Roman's toil, as well as her own, over the past handful of years. At first, she'd considered whether Caesar was the man or the rock: whether he had been pushed up the mountain by his giant of a tag team partner and, after they had reached the precipice, promptly rolled to the bottom again. Reincarnation itself, she thought, was something resembling Sisyphean punishment, in that one must suffer through the ordeals of life ad infinitum rather than only once. She imagined dying and being returned to the same world in a different body, thousands of years in the future, and shuddered at the thought. She found that she understood very little in this world, her world, and the thought of losing even her fragile grip on its edge was too much for her.

In reality, Caesar was neither Sisyphus or his bouder, and neither was she. Real life refused to be neatly boxed into such a restrictive, ancient metaphor. The Roman’s toil - as well as her own - had been spawned out of ambition, which was also true of the Greek, but the parallels were thin thereafter. If anything, her own journey featured more of the darkly comedic tedium that plagued Sispyhus in Hades: her life was a series of similar movements, each looping towards the same disappointing end point like an osprey creating concentric circles overhead, repetitions and variations upon the same uninspiring theme. She greeted her failures with a pig-headed stubbornness, as if this time the boulder was hers to tame, the peak was hers to reach.

The Roman, on the other hand, was ready to walk away from the climb completely, after his own personal boulder had slid out of his grasp for only the first time. He was brought back for other reasons than his own ambition. Loyalty to his deceased friend, who - through nothing more than his colossal scale and his own tale of woe - felt like something straight out of mythology himself. Perhaps it was revenge: a far purer and unadulterated motive. But, either way, Michelle was unsure if the same ambition that had first caused Caesar to lay his hands on the rock and start pushing was truly there. She considered the fact that, at this current moment in time, her own ego was larger and wilder than a man who claimed to be the reincarnation of Julius Caesar himself. This thought made her smile.

"You always smoke before a match?" Lars asked, as he reached over and took the joint from between her fingers. She had retreated into a malaise, and wondered how long she'd been silent and lost within her thoughts. Not long, she imagined.

"Never," she said, with a shrug, and then took her leave.

Michelle returned to the S.S. Sisyphus at a little after midnight, bruised and battered and maybe beaten, but with a much better opinion of the city now that she'd seen the best part of it. Of course, the Freetown wasn't really part of Copenhagen at all, but the fact that it was allowed to exist via an uncomfortable and unsteady agreement was something that made her smile. Or would've done, if her aching muscles were capable of anything other than climbing into bed and laying down on top of her covers. She remembered to take her half-packet of Camels from her pocket and threw them down onto the bedside table next to her. Then, she closed her eyes, the world already a blur, giving up on her as she gave up on it.

The last thing she saw was a small, curved crack directly above her on the ceiling of the cabin. It was a little longer than a banana and roughly the same shape. She tried to reach towards it, so as to feel the rough edges of wood on either side of the chasm against her fingers, but she was too tired.

She took her leave.

GERALD GRAYSON and MICHELLE von HORROWITZ
are
[CTHULHU'S NEPHEWS]
in
"THE BANDIT QUEEN.”
part three: drunken master.
previously: part one || part two.
music.

*****

*****



ONE.

Autumn had taken hold of Lonehill. The orange and brown leaves were falling from the trees and cluttered the town’s narrow streets, through which Meg steadily trotted, the echoes of her iron hooves against the cobbled stone whistling in the Sheriff’s ears. There were times when such a sound would be like birdsong to him, but today it only served to amplify the busy nature of the million and one thoughts already echoing in his frantic mind. Meg was concerned, too. She let out a short, shrill whinny as the Sheriff tugged gently on her reins to turn her towards the right, the horse registering her dissatisfaction with the day before acquiescing to his command. The Sheriff stroked her neck as a symbol of his gratitude.

Meg was grateful to be left in the stables, where she cantered towards Gate and joined him at the water trough. The Sheriff watched the mare nuzzle the stallion, content now that the day was finally over. When he sensed that he was dangerously close to envying the horses, he had to turn away.

The stack of paperwork remained where he’d left it on his desk before his evening sojourn to Montgomery's Saloon. He didn’t recognise the woman behind the bar there. It seemed to be someone different each time he went in, nowadays. Gone were the days when Ms. Montgomery served the ale, even if her name still remained above the entrance. It was said she’d moved north, and had shacked up with a few bandits near Deathpool. But that was just rumour. Lonehill was full of rumour.

Much of the paperwork related to the men he’d seen in the Saloon tonight. They were all known faces to the law, which Gerald was the meagre town’s meagre representation of. He couldn’t remember if they’d already descended upon the tavern when Ms. Montgomery finally took off, or if they'd set about defiling it once she'd left. The railway line she’d once dreamed of was built three years ago, but the only custom it brought through were profiteers and even shadier types. The Saloon was a hotbed for bandits, now. Gerald knew it. But in most cases he was a long way from proving it.

He poured himself a glass of lemonade from a jug that Harry, his Deputy, had left for him on his desk, and picked up the first document in the pile. It related to a well-known philanthropist who had gone missing from the town a couple of months ago. Gerald was no closer to finding the cause for his disappearance, but the sudden elevation of Triple B - who’d been the philanthropist’s right hand man, despite a well-documented past within the shade - was unmistakable. B’ was at the Saloon tonight, like he was most nights. The Sheriff fancied his own ambitions were B’s primary concern for now, and old habits die hard.

The lemonade was good, but the news was bad. The Old Man was back in Lonehill, too, and although he was no longer the force he was when he’d first held pull in town, he’d recently come into some unexplained gold and was - by all accounts - setting his sights on more. The lawman had been keeping a close eye on Peacock, too. Four years ago, the Dancer had been an entertainer in the Saloon, but since Ms. Montgomery left town and Randy was drowned he’d put himself in the middle of every story. Gerald sensed he was on the verge of something real, and he didn’t much like that thought. Verdad, too, had grown in prominence since Michelle left town. She had his number, but each day that she was away the elder statesman grew bolder, his fear of Dreamer increasingly remote.

And then there was Liz. Gerald had heard stories about who she was in the north. The wife of some working stiff, but with ties to some bandits there, some of whom were tied up with Dreamer. His Dreamer. The thought of the name stirred something in him. He reached into the top drawer of his desk and groped for the gold Sheriff’s badge that lay amongst the rest of her belongings. She’d left lots behind. Even her horse. Gate still waited patiently for her, unsaddled and unused. One of the townsfolk sold her a mule that she’d been seen riding north on. He’d taken her responsibilities, but not the badge. That still waited for her.

Gerald picked up the pile of documents from his desk and placed them in the second drawer, before returning the badge to the first. All except for one document, which had eluded his hands when he’d grasped for the pile. It concerned a man who hadn’t been at the Saloon when the Sheriff visited earlier that night, unlike the rest of the town’s petty bandits who sipped ales there whilst planning their next scores. A newcomer to Lonehill, even with the town’s relative notoriety for transients.

Nobody lived in Lonehill for long. Except for Gerald.

The man in question went by Mr. Vega, the owner of the local bank. The Sheriff didn’t know much about him, other than his reputation for ruthlessness, particularly with those who spent invariably short periods of time in his employ. There were also whispers about an anonymous Gunslinger, and suggestions that his involvement in recent skullduggery was somehow linked to Mr. Vega’s sudden wealth.

It was too much for one mind to wrestle with.

He looked down at the Sheriff’s badge in the still-open top drawer, which was placed next to a half-finished bottle of bourbon. Also Michelle’s. He was sure she wouldn’t resent him a couple of swigs. God knew he’d earned it. He closed his eyes, shook his head. Reached for his lemonade.

When the glass was empty, he collected an adjacent inkpot and a piece of paper. A single letter had already been scrawled at the top:



It was the start of a letter that he’d been shaping up to write for a few weeks already, but he’d got no further than this one-character address. But tonight felt different. He was too loaded with hopelessness and fear to remain idle. Surely.



He paused, the words not easy for him to find. He was unsure of himself, as he always was.



He would ask Quiet to set out and find her that night, feeding him a whispered name of a rumoured town, and then retiring to a restless sleep.

*****



TWO.

Deathpool was named for the narrow but deep pond just to the north of the town, where the water was black and viscous, and where a half-dozen people and half a hundred animals had lost their lives since the first tavern opened up there. That’s what Deathpool was known for: booze and sleaze and debauchery and death. And for the bandits, who were of course drawn to such a place, devoted as it was to revelry. They came in large numbers, and a lot of the time they stayed.

It was here, so they say, where the man they called West first but his fist through Dreamer’s chest, before taking the coveted green-gold jewels from her person and then promptly losing them to the handsome man. He’d held them ever since, and after a foray into the west a couple of years prior he’d come back to Deathpool to settle, a loose band of ruffians answering his call and helping to establish him here. They included Ms. Montgomery and the Three-Fingered Bandit, both of whom were known to Dreamer from her time back in Lonehill. She’d often see them and a fourth who remained unfamiliar to her, either drinking in one of Deathpool’s many bars or riding at speed through the city gates to cause whatever mischief they’d set their minds on. Not that it had anything to do with Michelle. She’d given up the badge. Wasn’t her job to go chasing rumours anymore.

They weren't here now, she noticed, as she ordered herself another drink from the old, balding man behind the bar in 'the Snake Hole’. He nodded his acquiescence to her order and busied himself in pouring another bourbon. She took another scan of the faces in the bar.

Many of them were known to her, even if the handsome man's unmerry band of bandidos were nowhere to be found tonight. Their absence explained the Man in Black's presence. He'd tried twice to remove the jewels from Mr. Toner's possession, and twice he'd come back from the Corral with nothing but blood in his hands and shame in his heart. It was well known around the town - both amongst the bandidos and the honest folk, whose numbers were dwindling by the day - that the Man in Black was avoiding his handsome bane. He drank alone, and Dreamer reasoned he was either plotting a revenge he'd never take or picking through mistakes he'd never fix. The Cowboy was here, too. She'd been here when he arrived, and watched him march to the bar with swagger beyond his years. He demanded to see Toner, his hand already on the pistol at his side. The Cowboy wasn't scared, for better or for worse. Fear came with age.

The barman placed the bourbon down in front of Michelle, and as she reached for the glass she noticed blood on her sleeve. The Roman's blood, or her own. She couldn't really be sure. The only thing she knew was that her duel with the Roman wouldn't be her last here. Deathpool was wild. A frontier.

As she sipped her bourbon, the heavy saloon doors swung open and a familiar face emerged. Familiar to her, but not to the rest of the patrons inhabiting the place. He wore his black hat low, and a bandana covered everything beneath the bridge of his nose, meaning only his eyes were visible through a narrow slit. They were black, too. The newcomer scanned the bar, clocked Dreamer, and made his approach.

Michelle kicked out a chair for him. He sat down and signalled to bartender for another bourbon.

"How long has it been?" she asked.

"..... …..?" the man replied. "....?"

"That long?" Michelle mused, wistfully. The Quiet Man took off his heavy coat and placed it on the back of his chair. The barkeep arrived with his bourbon. He clinked his glass against Michelle's and took a long, satisfied sip: the first after a long journey. Michelle regarded him carefully. Although she was pleased to see what she could of his face, he was an unexpected relic of her past, which usually she sought to keep at arm's length. "You're not here only to share a drink with me?"

The Quiet Man reached into his inside pocket and handed over the envelope that Gerald gave him. Michelle's eyes looked over the seal, noticing that it was one she'd used many times in this aforementioned, neglected past. It belonged to the offices of the Lonehill Sheriff. She carefully ripped through the navy blue wax and removed the letter from the envelope, immediately recognising Gerald's tidy scrawl.

"You can wait until tomorrow?" she asked, after reading the text and carefully folding the letter away into her pocket.

". … ….," the Quiet Man said. A lengthy silence followed, during which Michelle pondered returning to Lonehill. Four years was a long time. She'd changed, just as Gerald said the town she'd left behind had. She doubted many more besides her former Deputy longed for her return.

As Michelle considered the implications of such a journey, the Quiet Man spied the Cowboy in the corner. He was surrounded by a handful of whores and a half-dozen slick types that must have migrated here from the city. Even the Quiet Man, who'd only arrived in Deathpool that afternoon, had heard about the huge rancher who would march into the taverns and ask for Toner by name. He'd also heard that Toner wouldn't come.

He'd heard other things, too.

"... … …. … …… ?" he asked.

"I heard," she said, with a nod. "I won't believe it until I see the body, or the jewels in someone else's hands."

"..... …….?" the Quiet Man asked.

"Still chasing," Michelle repeated.

Just then, her eyes were drawn towards the Cowboy, too. The Cowboy and the scene that was brewing in his peripheries. One of his whores had slapped one of his slicks, deeming him too handsy before the proper sums were settled. The Cowboy roared with laughter, attracting the attention of every patron in the room.

"Come on," Michelle instructed. "Let's go somewhere quieter."

*****



THREE.

From the outside, the hotel looked quite obviously unfinished. The bottom three storeys had been completed, but more were evidently intended that hadn't quite yet come to fruition, and as a result the upper half of the building resembled a construction site (for, of course, that was exactly what it was). The function, though, was taking place in the grand ballroom on the incomplete hotel's completed first floor, and when inside one had no real idea that the building as a whole was as yet only a shell.

The Sheriff was inside of the shell, but - as his eyes scanned the lavish room and took in the people, most of whom he recognised as the rich, the corrupt, or the rich and corrupt - he felt like he had no place being so. The rest of them were assembled there to raise money for some political party. Gerald wasn't much one for politics, but scanning the room left him under no uncertain terms that this probably wasn't the party for him, political or literal.

So, how did he come to be here?

The morning after the Sheriff sent his letter with the Quiet Man into the North, he climbed onto Meg's back and left at a trot in the direction of the Bank. A trot was all that the old mare could manage, nowadays. He arrived at a little before midday, and an unpleasant but somewhat expected scene was taking place in front of the building as he did.

It began with Mr. Vega accusing one of his workers, who now lay flat on his back in a heap in front of the building, of tardiness and a lack of energy. The underling wasn't remonstrating or defending himself in the slightest, allowing the boss's assertions to grow larger and bolder. Soon enough, the employee (or former employee, as it transpired) was guilty of all sorts of skullduggery, as Mr. Vega let him have it for theft, extortion, and perceived low levels of moral fibre.

The livid businessman disappeared back into his Bank, but re-emerged a moment later with the underling's hat, coat, and briefcase, which he hurled onto the ground next to him.

"Don't let me see you around here again, thief!" Mr. Vega instructed, whilst frothing at the mouth. His rage was unbecoming, and reminded the Sheriff of a basterd he'd seen in the town from time to time. "I have friends, boy! Friends whose names you wouldn't even want to know!"

The berated and brow-beaten victim scrambled to his feet, collected his belongings, and then scurried off down the street. Mr. Vega spat on the floor. Gerald climbed down from Meg and removed his gloves, clearing his throat in the process to garner the businessman's attention.

"I think we're closed for the day, Sheriff," Mr. Vega said, with a smile. He knew who Gerald was, at least. That was a start. "Suddenly short-staffed. Perhaps you'd like to come back tomorrow?"