Jelly Hock lived in a crumblin’ buildin’ with a Condemned sign on it even though there were no plans to knock it down and never would be. Jelly owned it and lent the various rooms out to his low-level thugs who peddled our product exclusively in the neighbourhood. He’d grown up poor and didn’t like to spend any’a the money he made on upgradin’ his life. Instead, he had a weird habit’a buryin’ it in Burnaby and Langley, in random locations he said he kept coordinates of only in his head.
But the man did like to eat, and when we entered the apartment, I expected to find him sittin’ at his kitchen table with a plethora’a of take-out containers and a mouth slick with sticky sauce residue.
Instead, I found the door to the apartment blown open, and Jelly Hock slumped over the table, pale cheek pressed to a rank dish’a days-old crab rangoon.
“Fuck,” I cursed, pushing the door wide open so the men behind me could see the situation. “Pigeon, stay on the door.”
“We go in, we could be cornered,” King argued as I stepped into the mess of an apartment.
“There’s a fire escape out the kitchen window, but if someone laid this as a trap, you’d think the meat would be fresher.” I moved to Jelly, grabbed a pair’a disposable plastic gloves from my pocket, and snapped them on one hand before checkin’ hispulse. His skin was hard and cold, a wavy texture I could feel even through the latex. “He’s been dead a minute.”
“Fuck,” Carson echoed, and not ’cause’a the dead body. He was at the fridge, readin’ the colourful alphabet letters arranged into a sentence.
White Raiders are coming.
“Poetic,” King scoffed, takin’ a photo with his phone before muddlin’ the letters up with his leather-covered elbow. “How the fuck did they know Jelly was one’a ours?”
“It wouldn’t be that hard to find out.” I closed Jelly’s eyes outta respect and moved away from the stank’a the crab and days-old body. “What’s strange to me is that no one fuckin’ noticed him in here before us.”
“Uh, Boner? King?” Pigeon called from the hall.
A moment later, the sound of sirens, growin’ louder fast.
“Fuck,” we cursed together before gettin’ the fuck in motion.
King and Carson went for the door, but I knew Jelly, and he hid valuable intel in the mini-fridge in his bedroom behind a fake panel, so I headed there.
“Boner!” King yelled.
“Go on, I’ll meet you by the bikes,” I replied, already racin’ into the bedroom and droppin’ to my knees in front’a the fridge. I flinched at the odour of rotten food inside when I swung it open, holdin’ my breath as I worked my fingers in the panel to pry its icy walls away. Food and beer bottles rolled out onto the floor at my knees, but I ignored it to collect the elastic band-wrapped roll’a papers and another’a cash in a small cubbyhole.
The sirens were piercin’ now, comin’ down the street a block or two out if I had to guess.
I shoved the papers into the back pocket’a my jeans opposite the fuckin’ candy ropes and sprinted through the apartment to the kitchen. The window was swollen in the frame from age and water damaged, firmly closed despite my gruntin’ efforts.
The sirens stopped.
“Fuck,” I cursed again, usin’ the barrel’a my gun to knock out the glass so I could carefully bend myself through the openin’.
The fire escape groaned and hissed under my weight, rusted and missin’ a few slats at my feet. So it wasn’t any surprise when the fuckin’ ladder wouldn’t descend more than two feet.
Inside, voices called loudly over the stomp of feet.
I dropped through the small square, grabbin’ the handle’a the ladder in both hands to use my momentum to pull it farther down. It dropped another foot and stuck with a screech.
Below me was a pile’a garbage waitin’ for pick up includin’ a dumpster’a cardboard and plastic to the right’a my feet.
“Fuck, this is gonna hurt,” I muttered.
The crackle of radio feedback sounded in the apartment above me, and someone hollered to another cop about a dead body.
I dropped.
Hopin’ I wouldn’t be joinin’ Jelly in the afterlife.
It was only two stories, but hittin’ plastics and cardboard was not a soft landin’, and the breath whooshed outta me like I’d been sucker punched. I lay there for a moment to catalogue my aches––nothin’ life threatenin’ and no broken bones saved a potentially bruised rib or two––and then scrambled to the edge of the metal bin to climb over.
“Hey!” a cop above me yelled, leanin’ over the fire escape. “Stop right there.”
