A clever idea formed inside his head, suggesting he disguise his voice. But what voice? he asked himself silently. There was no answer. No time to be picky! Remembering a grade-school production of Shakespeare in which he had acted, his mouth somehow chose the sonorous, slightly British voice he used for that.

“Nice night, isn’t it, captain?” he heard himself say.

“Who the hell are you? Show yourself!” the captain demanded. Richard looked around his immediate area; he was still blissfully covered in darkness, the nearest streetlights too far away to have much effect.

Richard felt giddy as he watched the captain panic. “Oh, you’ve been a naughty boy, haven’t you…Yuguti?” He winced as he listened to the internal playback of his own accent; he sounded less like Laurence Olivier and more like John Oliver.

“What?!” the captain exploded. “I swear, if you tell anyone, so help me, I’ll…”

“I saw you make the trade inside the club,” Richard boomed. “You didn’t make much effort to hide it.”

“So what?!” Ulysses snarled. “It was just w⁠–” He suddenly stopped speaking.

“What were you going to say?” Richard added. “Weed? Why ‘just’ weed? Do you usually sell harder stuff?”

“Who the hell are you?! Tell me!” the captain insisted strenuously. He began striding in Richard’s direction.

A dim memory suddenly surfaced in Richard’s mind; in a TV documentary he once saw as a teen, he recalled the Army had a simple way to reduce visibility of their camps at night. Paradoxically, they did it with bright lights, facing outward from the perimeter. Anyone approaching the camp couldn’t see anything in the darkness past the bright lights, and they also served to reveal anyone in the area. Could it work with a black light? He didn’t have time to think about it. He quickly switched it on and held it at arm’s length away from him. The captain stopped where he was.

Richard grinned; his next line came to him easily. “Do you know about black lights? How they can reveal hidden details?” He waved it menacingly. “What will we find on your clothes if we look? Perhaps…traces of fentanyl?”

“Really? That can show up?”

Richard tried to contain his joy. “So you don’t deny there’s a possibility it will? Pinching from evidence storage, are we?” He winced; in his excitement, his accent on the final sentence had faltered.

“Wait a minute,” the captain growled ominously. “I know that voice.” He strode forward confidently; Richard felt a great pain erupt from his chest.

He pushed the black light out of the way and gaped. “Is that you, Dick?” Ulysses mocked. “You think you can stop me? As if. You’re beneath me. Hell, you’re so beneath me, you went straight through the earth and ended up in Madagascar.”

Richard’s confidence returned for a second wind. “Don’t think you can bluff your way out of this,” he declared. “It’s too late for that. You’re caught dead to rights.”

“Yeah? So what are you going to do about it?” Ulysses sneered, his eyes burning with more rage than an insecure debutante being denied cosmetic surgery. “Do you really think you can stop me? I knew you were dumb, but damn!” A blade flew into his hand, seemingly out of nowhere. His grin turned diabolical. “I’m gonna cut me a bitch!”

Richard backed away, feeling more inadequate than an onion bagel in a pink cardboard box surrounded by Boston creme-filled donuts.

Richard slowly became aware of a small flock of red lights erupting from the junk near the walls, like the embers of a wildfire blown by the wind. Ulysses noticed it at about the same time. “What the hell’s that?” he demanded. His face went rigid as members of the Pelf Punks stepped out of the shadows, holding their cell phones before them, the video-recording functions all active. Quickly, they were joined by several of Harmony’s cadres, doing the same thing. Richard heard a noise above him; looking up, he saw a smattering of people on nearby rooftops, all sporting the same blinking red light. He smiled as he turned his head back to Ulysses.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

“We’ve got your confession on video,” Richard declared. “Several redundant copies, even. All recorded by people that you’ve sold drugs to in the past. We know what you’ve been doing.” He paused before adding his denouement. “It’s over, captain.”

Ulysses stood there fuming, the pressure in his skull visible on the outside, the fury making an erupting volcano look like the baking-soda variety. No one moved for several uncomfortable moments. Finally, his shoulders slumped, and he let out a long, pained breath before he sullenly put away his knife. “Damn it,” he growled.

Richard’s mind boggled. Had he really defused the situation? Confidence surged inside him, far more than he was used to feeling, quite possibly more than his system could handle. “Thank you for standing down, sir,” he crooned, feeling every bit the dashing hero. “It was the right thing to do.”

Ulysses fixed Richard with a glum look. “How the hell can that black light reveal what’s on my clothes?”

“It can’t,” the heedless swashbuckler in Richard’s head belted. “But it did convince you to tell the truth. And all it took was something we picked up in a head shop.”

Ulysses seethed wordlessly; the veins in his head bulged like a slow-motion bomb. He moved towards Richard, not looking at him, staring somewhere past him. It suddenly occurred to Richard that discretion was the better part of valor. He gracefully moved to the side and let Ulysses stomp past him. He smiled as he watched the defeated double-crosser vanish into the dark.

“Maybe I’m a better private detective than you give me credit for?”

Ulysses steamed. “You’ll never get me to admit that.”

Richard felt the lease on his adrenaline expire; his knees buckled, and he stumbled toward the nearest wall, childishly grateful for its support. A cheer erupted from the assembled throng. “We did it!” someone yelled. Before long, Richard found himself inundated by congratulations and heartfelt expressions of gratitude.

“That was great!” Kelly gushed. “Finally, we helped take down a bent cop. So much better than just protesting! Thanks for that, Richard!”

“My pleasure,” he managed to mumble, his head swimming with sudden fatigue.

“Totally righteous, dude,” George commended. “You would have made Abbie Hoffman proud.”

“Thanks,” Richard answered. “I think,” he quietly added as George walked away.

Fabian shook his hand. “I’ve never been prouder to be in Harmony!”

“Oh…fantastic,” Richard grumbled as Fabian walked out of earshot.

Richard turned to find himself facing Racer X. He stood there, wordlessly. Then, in a quick motion, he raised his hand and gave Richard a thumb’s-up.

“Thanks, man,” Richard returned, looking Racer X in the eyes. What he saw stopped him cold. Through the holes in the ski mask, at this close distance, Racer X’s eyes shone bright red. There was no apparent separation between blood vessel and the normally white sclera; the colors had merged to resemble something akin to coral. His pupils were so constricted, they may as well not have been there.

Then, without a word, Racer X turned away and chased after Kelly. Richard looked at him as he left; the experience had left him shaken, and he was already on the verge of collapse.

“Hey there, pal, you all right?” he heard as someone grabbed his arm. It was Russell. Only then did Richard realize he had come close to slumping down the wall.

Richard stumbled as he fought to stand. “Thanks. I needed that.”

“You look like hell, brother,” Russell assured. “Why don’t you let me buy you dinner?”

“That sounds great,” Richard concurred. “Suddenly I realize I’m starving.”

Russell led Richard back to the bustling street. “How did you guys know where he would go?” Richard asked. “I mean, he could have gone anywhere after leaving the club.”

“Not Yuguti,” Russell laughed. “He always parks behind the same building on rap-battle nights.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I think it’s a welfare office. Cops probably have free parking privileges.”

“That would explain a lot,” Richard snickered.

Russell gave Richard a deeply approving look. “That was a hell of a thing you did. I can hardly believe it.”

“Me either,” Richard agreed. “I was there, and I still can’t believe it.”

“I wish I could tell the whole world what you did tonight,” Russell cheered. “But it’ll embarrass the police, so they’ll probably keep it quiet.” He looked wistful. “But you deserve a public commendation. If only there was some way to tell your story.”

“If only,” Richard responded weakly, a vision of printed pages racing through his mind.

He began to feel better about the time they reached the busy thoroughfare. He scanned the perimeter of the nightclub; poignantly, he realized the teenage runaway was nowhere to be found. Richard hoped she got home safely. He followed Russell as they walked a few more blocks.

“OK, here we are,” Russell announced, rubbing his hands with glee. “This is one of my favorite places!”

“Where?” Richard looked around for a restaurant, finding none. Russell didn’t answer; he was standing next in line at the nearest street-food vendor. A cloud of greasy smoke bludgeoned Richard’s nostrils, and his eyes bolted to the dirty griddle, containing a small herd of bacon-wrapped hot dogs, jumping around from the sizzling fat, wallowing in their own filth.

His stomach felt tighter than the Gordian knot, and he could sense Alexander The Great’s blade inching ever closer.

“I think I’ll pass,” he wheezed.