Dirty McNasty

Dirty McNasty

Written by, Joseph Palmer

Copyright © 2003 & 2011 by Joseph E. Palmer

Smashwords Edition

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Disclaimer - This book is a work of fiction and contains adult subject matter. Places, events and situations in this story are purely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Other Joseph Palmer Titles

The Island Court Series

The First King Trilogy

The Bottle of Saint Tucke

*The Pick of Vo

*The Wield of Vaperwyron

Saga of the Dragon Stones

Dragon Stones

The Dirty McNasty Chronicles

Dirty McNasty

*The Russian Rebuilding

*Pending Final revisions

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my friends and family for giving me encouragement and support. Without them, I doubt this endeavor would ever have seen the light of day.

Table of Contents

The Introduction

1. Hired

2. Stirrings

3. Wisp

4. The Struggle

5. Pleasure and Pain

6. A pleasant Distraction

7. A Painful Showing

8. Opportunistic Escapade

9. Set Up

10. Seeds of Chaos

11. Shudders

12. Searches

13. Discoveries

14. Walking into the Trap

15. The Return & the Breaking Point

16. Dirty McNasty

17. A Disappearing World of Madness

Part I

Part II

18. Back at the Beginning

The Introduction

A Flash Forward with Joshua

I sat in my chair at the head of the conference table in the dilapidated warehouse near the docks that served as the base of operations for the covert information network overseen by Wisp, the mysterious leader of the largest information gathering and selling network in New Rogue City. The number running operation that served as cover for the information network required me to spend my nights in the warehouse receiving pouches from my runners. The pouches contained money and information slips I would pass on to Wisp's personal couriers at dawn. I had been the head of the operation for almost five years.

Before heading up the number running operation for Wisp, I was hired muscle in the free rackets, anything from braking arms to working clubs. In these times it was considered honest work for honest pay. Luckily I never stuck my nose where it didn't belong. In New Rogue, it was easy enough to end up dead, or as good as if you stepped on the wrong toes.

In New Rogue City, the Yakuza, Mafia, united Arab factions, Irish and other smaller mob organizations were the concern of every independent businessman in the city. The Free rackets as they were called, existed between the mob territories in what were called Neutral territories or Free zones. Most of the free zone citizens were mixed breeds, or minority races. Only full bloods or perceived full bloods could be members of the racially inspired large organizations. The irony was that there were far more racially mixed people than pure bloods, yet the mobs controlled most everything in the city from the department stores to the production of steel eye beams.

After the mobs rose to power, information became one of the most valuable commodities in New Rogue. Information operations were tricky businesses and only the most brave and savvy souls survived. With greater value came greater danger because your last customer could be your next victim. Mob organizations weren't very tight lipped about info.-brokers they dealt with. Some liked to sell out independent information brokers to other mobs after they'd gotten what they wanted. Staying on your toes was a prerequisite, and now I wasn't far from the Cloak and dagger in the back game.

Though Wisp hadn't promised to protect the operation if one of the mobs decided they wanted our numbers business or stumbled upon our information gathering efforts, he had a reputation for protecting his operatives. Wisp would most likely know about the hit before it went down. In the case of a mob attack, I knew Wisp had numerous other concerns. There were a lot more lives at stake besides mine and the lives of my three guards outside. If any of the mobs found out the truth about the operation, the contacts he'd spent five years building up might be lost, figuratively and/or literally. Either way, it would be a major setback for Wisp. This venture had yielded far more than he ever expected.

With cultivation, the clubs and bars in the free zones had become profitable sources of information and gambling income. It wasn't that our contacts knew a lot of solid information except what an occasional freelance tech. hacker or street skulker came to sell them, but they saw things. Combining those observations often led somewhere. Wisp was just the right man to make sense of the riddles.

Nobody knew Wisp's real name, but the name Wisp was known by all the mobs and freelancers. Freelancers tended to do business with Wisp when they had a piece of information too hot to sell themselves.

Though he was only in his late thirties (a guess on my part), Wisp knew his business. Wisp was not untouchable, but being in the information business had it's advantages. No one yet had managed to successfully infiltrate his network, and no assassination plot had gone uncovered. For his own sake, Wisp did not let such efforts go unpunished. Respect was earned in this day in age, so he made them pay for it. He hurt their organizations by passing important information to their competitors. It taught people to deal straightly with him. In turn, Wisp sold a quality product.

In Wisp's network there was some honor among thieves. The Principle that kept the operation sound was No one crossed Wisp. Crossing Wisp was worse than crossing the mobs. Wisp was surrounded by a zealous crew of trusted agents. Men and women of the most dangerous sort who enforced his edicts and took care of trouble. The mobs might not find you, but you could be sure as hell that Wisp would.

No one except Wisp saw all the information memos changing hands in his network, so no one except Wisp had a clear view or understanding of the information gathered by his agents or the expanse of his network. It provided a measure of security and safety to everyone involved. One could not say what one did not know.

I swiveled in my chair when I heard the door at the far end of the warehouse open. One figure strolled through the dim light. I hadn't heard gunshots, so I assumed the guards let him pass. As the man crossed the thirty yards between us, the dim lighting prevented me from seeing his face clearly. The figure did not seem familiar, yet there was something about the way he moved . . .

He wore a black trench coat, worn blue jeans and white sneakers. The jacket was cinched tight at the waist and there was a red bandanna tied around his left arm. When he entered the circle of light around the table, I saw a blue bandanna covering the top of his head and brown hair spilling out the back. The man was different, but I knew him. I knew the Yakuza sword handle that protruded over his right shoulder.

My eyes locked onto his. For a moment I wasn't sure whether I should grab for my pistol, dive for cover, or smile. He'd threatened to kill me the last time I'd seen him. Rather, . . . part of him had threatened to kill me. It wasn't easy to explain. He was one of my runners once, a nice kid, but then I hadn't known the whole truth.

At the same time I told myself I had nothing to fear, I knew I had everything to fear. As he approached, I clung to the hope that Wisp wouldn't have released him if he were dangerous.

Josh. The youth hailed excitedly extending his hand.

Though caution demanded I restrain myself, his smile reflected some of the boy I used to know. My hand extended with subtle apprehension. He appeared to be friendly, but he had eyes like a hawk and the face of a wolf, a dangerous young man. We clasped hands. I tried to say hi in return, but was too shocked to return the greeting. I never expected to see Joe again.

How are you ? I responded when my wits returned.

Good. He replied.

I . . . I never thought I'd see you again. I stammered.

I wouldn't have if I were in your place. He replied.

Joe, I began.

I go by Dirty now. He interrupted.

The named stirred chilling memories. A time when I was witness to true madness. I wondered how much of Dirty McNasty remained within the young man who stood before me, and asked myself, how much did the world have to fear from the new man he had become ?

Chapter 1

Hired

One warm summer night Joe followed some of the boys who worked as regular runners for Joshua to the warehouse. They had come across him on the street. One of the boys knew him from their old neighborhood on the south side of the city where there had once been some old style family neighborhoods. Now such neighborhoods were becoming just a memory.

Joshua employed street kids, and there were more than enough to fill out the ranks of his operation. Homeless and deserted, they generally proved street wise and loyal. In a way, he felt like a foster home of sorts. Like a family, they looked out for each other, and the boys and girls tended to stay until they were old enough to find better paying work.

Joshua was always grateful for character references. Joe was a young but large fifteen. He had been living on the streets for some time, an added bonus to Joshua. It meant Joe would know some hiding places and sewer tunnels around the city which would help in this line of work.

Even though Joshua armed the younger boys with twenty-two pistols and the older youths with larger weapons, they were still in danger from the riff-raff around the city. On the streets it was no secret that boys were used to run numbers, carrying cash back and forth across the city. It was not well known however, that his boys often carried information slips in their cash pouches.

In the years Joshua had run the operation, he had a good track record. The only time an information dispatch was stolen, he tracked down the thief and retrieved it the same night. The corpses of both the courier and killer were burned side by side in the incinerator. Sometimes good kids like Jaquim weren't meant to get old. In the absence of a priest, Joshua tried to say the right things. He wasn’t good at it, but his crew read between the lines and mourned with him.

Joshua was a curious sort and enjoyed interviewing fresh recruits. Joshua tapped his pen on the first line of the fact sheet for some time as Joe sat in front of him. Joe's last name sounded familiar. When Joshua came to the conclusion he couldn't remember where he'd heard it before, he continued on with the interview. Though he knew there was something he was missing, he didn't ask the boy about his family. If the boy was meant to be a plant or spy of some kind, he could find out through his own sources. Names and reputations lived longer than their bearers in this business.

The boy's appearance was relatively normal, blue jeans, faded red T-shirt, sneakers, denim vest, a blue bandanna around his head and a red bandanna around his neck. There was however, one object that caused Joshua to be wary. Joshua had been around the rackets too long not to recognize the special markings on the sword the boy had strapped to his back. At a distance, he had written off his suspicions. It was not unusual to carry a blade when one lived on the street. Up close, however, Joshua couldn't help but recognize the special Yakuza markings on the hilt.

Joe was white, so there was no way he was a Yakuza trainee, and you didn't randomly come across Yakuza blades unless you were the unluckiest of souls. Carrying a Yak sword wasn't a healthy proposition unless you were one of their soldiers. It was a good way to get yourself killed. For the Yakuza, a sword was a symbol of inclusion and honor. To possess it otherwise was to invite the worst kind of trouble. Why a Yakuza agent hadn't relieved Joe of it was the kind of thing that could keep Joshua awake at night wondering, . . . if he didn’t work nights already anyway.

He had known men in the mobs over the years, and they had talked about the Yakuza sword code. Even members of rival mobs left behind the swords of the Yak dead. Such a souvenir was the beginning of a long death sentence, sooner or later they’d find you to reclaim it.

Joshua gave Joe a job to keep track of him till he could get word back from Wisp. Joshua was overjoyed when the answer showed up the next night after he'd sent the boys out. The boy's past was a tragedy, and reminded Joshua why the name had seemed familiar.

Joe's father, Denizen Palken, had been one of the most successful independent hackers in the city. Wisp had tried to enlist him several times, but the man liked to work alone. His death was talked about on the street for some time. It was a horrific assassination. The Arabs surrounded Palken’s house, riddled it with gun fire, tossed in grenades, and then leveled it with shoulder missiles.

Ironically, the deal that got the Arabs so stirred up was brokered by Wisp. Denizen had stumbled upon an assassination plot concocted by the Arabs to kill the head of the Yakuza in New Rogue. Unfortunately, the Arabs had discovered the intrusion. Denizen had no warning.

It took some reading to find how the sword fit into the sad affair. There was no substantial cash settlement listed for Denizen, which seemed implausible to Joshua. Assassination information of that magnitude was worth at least a million on the open market (if the information was reliable). Joshua had almost given up when he found a hand scribbled note at the bottom of the pile.

Ahhh. He murmured as he read the note.

The sword represented an undecided upon debt to be repaid upon the return of the sword. Joshua could guess how the debt would be returned if the sword did not come back to the Yaks in the right hands. This favor was now Joe's alone.

Joshua leaned back and laughed. He wondered if Joe even knew about the favor. Denizen Palken had traded away valuable information for the kind of favor that could have saved his family. How tragic it all seemed. Instead, he gives the sword to his kid to carry around and he gets nuked.

And what was left ? A kid on his own wandering the city with a sword symbolizing a debt large enough to start a mob war.

Joshua remembered his own childhood. His father died when he was six in a tavern brawl, stabbed by some other low life. Even at six, he was well aware his father was a no good drunk. It was just too bad he had to know it. Nowadays, even a child found it hard to dream.

His mother on the other hand had worked her fingers to the bone doing what she could to earn money without compromising her values, which wasn't easy in this city. She could have made money in the prostitution rackets, but she wasn't that kind.

She died when he was sixteen from some kind of the flu. He had done his best to nurse her. He spent the last of their money on black market drugs. Unfortunately, there was never any guarantee black market drugs were what they claimed to be, and the real stuff was rare and expensive to those without connections.

In retrospect, the drugs had probably been a waste of time. They were probably worthless junk. She eventually just became too tired to fight on anymore. She'd been born into the wrong era of existence. She was a nurturer, not a survivalist.

After that, Joshua had bounced around on the streets. He'd done his time as a petty thief in one of the small outfits and found his skills inadequate. Luckily, after that career stint, he stumbled into a fist fight outside a club. His showing was impressive enough to earn him a job from the on looking club manager, who was also kind enough to let him live in the back room until he had enough money for an apartment of his own. The place he rented was a rat infested cockroach motel room in a decrepit, run down, falling apart building just outside the nicer areas of the Free zone where the clubs were located, but it was shelter.

Later, he found he had a knack for the trade, both muscle and management. He knew good business when he saw it, and learned to spot trouble in men and situations from a mile away. Others noticed too, and he switched clubs several times when he received offers he couldn't refuse. Now, as he looked back, he regretted not starting up his own club. Of course he was still young, but now he worked for Wisp. You didn't just work for Wisp and walk away. Working for Wisp was like working for the mobs, once in, never really out, it was a possibility Wisp might consider letting him out when the time came if he was a good boy.

Joshua wasn't too concerned with his way out just yet. People died in New Rogue City. In these times natural causes usually caught up with you before you got old anyway. Even the casual nick or scrape if not attended could kill you in less than a week. If Joshua ever thought he had enough to retire, he was sure there was a way.

Sometimes he thought the boys who worked for him were lucky. They got food, money, shelter, and someone to watch their back. If they were out on the streets alone, there was no need to debate their future. The high-tech bio-labs were always looking for fresh meat and didn't care how it came to them. Who was going to stop it, the cops ?

Even if their ranks weren’t riddled by corruption, they did not have the manpower to police the streets, let alone fight the power brokers and their friends. The police hadn't been a force in this town for decades. Nowadays, the police were practically hired muscle. There were a few honest, true cops. They did their best to help out the average guy when they could, but they kept their noses out of the serious business on the street.

Joshua was forced to laugh. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen a cop within five blocks of the docks. Out near the old north docks, where the warehouse was located, it was close to a free for all. Since the building of the new piers, the north docks had fallen out of favor and into disrepair. The large central and south piers were another matter entirely, a Union matter.

The newer central and south piers were controlled by The Union. One and all could trade with the outside world, but one had to remember to insure their shipment. Otherwise it was not uncommon for the merchandise to disappear. You couldn't blame The Union if you didn't pay the extra fee for guards etc. The Union had a sweet deal and effectively defended their territory from the mobs. The shipping trade of the city had never been more popular or prosperous. Unlike the rails or roads where the federal forces strictly monitored commerce, they could not control the oceans and Union dominated port.

At one point he'd thought about joining The Union, but it wasn't simple. It was a brief thought that ended when some asshole, who he learned later was a Union man, tried to slip a card out of his sleeve at a poker game in the Hustlescut (the club where Joshua worked at the time). One thing led to another. The guy was drunk and pulled a hopped up taser pistol when confronted. Joshua immediately stepped up from behind and snapped his neck before he shot anybody.

Most people knew better than to pull a weapon in the Hustlescut. The regulars checked their weapons at the door. They knew the club owner didn't mess around. Nobody drew in Kyle's place. He maintained a brisk business because he didn't tolerate any kind of trouble.

The Union put up a stink, but Kyle told them to take a hike. The man had gotten himself killed, drawing at the table like he was in the old west. Even stupider, he'd been trying to cheat against an android dealer. Android dealers had infra red, x-ray, and all the toys. They provided an honest game for the patrons, and too honest for some. If the guy had wanted a dishonest game he could have gone to half a dozen other clubs down the street. Why he had to ruin Joshua's chance of getting a job with The Union, Joshua couldn't say. In the end, Joshua was probably the better for it. The Union life had it's drawbacks.

Joshua was well paid for the work he did now. He was relatively happy too, though he hadn't had a woman in his life for too long. Working nights didn't help his search for a new one. Night clubbing was the best way to look for a woman, or at least a lay. But in this day and age, it was tough to tell what was real and what wasn't. The Mobs bankrolled the lucrative plastic surgery market and Joshua couldn't think of a prostitute who hadn't had something done over the years. Anything from simple face lifts, to the horrifying skeletal adjustments that could narrow the hips or give you the extra two inches in height you always wanted. Not all the operations were successful, but nothing was a hundred percent guaranteed.

Not even the personalities of people on the street were guaranteed to be authentic. The more recently adopted methods of the Psycho-med-clinics allowed them to alter personalities through all kinds of therapies. Whatever was needed was employed these days, but the methods were not only for true Psychos. Services could be bought by anyone who didn't like something about themselves. If you thought you were too timid, they could fix it. If you were too nice, they could fix it. It wasn't cheap, but if you thought it important enough you'd raise the money somehow.

Regretfully and gratefully, the night went by without mishap. Though his job was boring most of the time, he did like some action every now and then to keep him on his toes. This night, the boys came in with the usual money. One had been tailed as he left one club but had lost the two men in the sewers off Turbin St. near Shack Town.

Shack Town was a loathsome place. Some fifteen years back, a five block radius was leveled when one of the mobs (a strong Russian faction, now extinct) had tried to take something that wasn't theirs. Needless to say, more than one of the other mobs objected to the expansion. In the end, the Russians just weren't strong enough to defend themselves against the combined forces of the enemy. Shack Town grew from the ruins and rubble left after the mobs were done destroying every last safety bunker.

Shack Town contained all kinds. Not all it's residents began their lives there, but once you lived in Shack Town you rarely got out alive. The poor of the poor couldn't afford the trappings of subsistence. The Feds threw the people of Shack Town bones and scraps from time to time, but they were too few and far between for the majority to make any use of them. If disease and starvation didn't kill you, the gangs did, the gruesome fountain of aimless youthful exuberance.

Joshua visited there occasionally for Wisp. Sometimes the worst dives were the most informative places. One time he took two of the older boys with him, armed with a special set of body mounted, fully automatic, belt fed, recoilless thirty-eight caliber rifles over semi-automatic ''Deep Load" nine gauge shotguns. He purchased the guns with some of the operating profits from his division of the conglomerate.

The thirty-eight casings propelled armor piercing slugs guaranteed to bore through all fibrous body armor. The nine gauges were loaded with a locally produced shell called the Hard Load, which was factory guaranteed to throw a man 10 from 5, ten feet back at a distance of five feet. This system successfully sold the concept of zero retaliation for the mobile cosmopolitan.

He was grateful he took the boys and rifles. The mission turned bloody before they made it to their destination. A couple of Street-savvy punks thought they knew how to ambush visitors to Shack Town.

Joshua and the boys were two blocks in on the east side of the dung heap looking for the hovel where Wisp's contact was supposed to be waiting when the shit hit the fan. The place smelled foul and the boys liked it even less than Joshua, which was saying a lot for the sewer rats they were. In the rest of the city, the boys kept their guns hidden under overcoats, but here he ordered them to be carried in plain sight. Normally, they served as an effective deterrent for foolish jokers and street punks. But this time the fools were truly foolish. Hiding at the end of street behind garbage cans were six of them. There were lots of little hiding places on the roofs and in the back alleys, but these jokers waited out on the street like bold lambs who couldn't conceive a slaughter.

To the scags credit, they had one man on a roof, but their prime mistake was thinking Joshua would be intimidated by two to one odds. Hell, Joshua's boys were used to being undermanned. These two boys had been running numbers and info on the streets for years. The scags thought their prey would just turn over whatever they carried in the face of superior numbers. But no sooner had the first two ambushers stood up from behind the debris in the street with their shotguns, the boys let loose with their thirty-eights.

Joshua's sleeve concealed twenty-five caliber popped into his left hand while his right went for the nine millimeter he carried inside his trench coat. The first two men who sought to confront Joshua's party flew back from the force of multiple thirty-eight slugs as Joshua spun around to cover their back-trail. Somehow, while spinning, Joshua hit their only roof sentry with a lucky shot from his twenty-five. The man's face distorted in unbelievable pain as the dum-dum ripped it's way through his gut and exited, tearing a two inch hole out the man's back. Any kind of bullet wound was likely to be fatal for a resident of Shack town, so a fatal hit was better than a casual wound. Joshua was willing to oblige any attacker that mercy.

The blazing sound of the fully auto thirty-eights was mesmerizing. The boys stood their ground, shredding not only the men who tried to fire back, but anything large enough to hide someone. Shrapnel flew all over as the slugs blew through trash cans and the sheet metal walls of the shanties.

Joshua spun back around without seeing anyone except the man on the roof. When his eyes focused on the ambushers ahead, he was sad he had turned back around at all. The crap in the road partially obstructed Joshua's view of the bodies, but the pools of blood, scraps of flesh and bloody heaps were unsettling. Joshua never got used to that part of his business.

He heard the mutters and grunts as the boys took it all in. Joshua could see their faces twinge at the landscape they created. Joshua had become apathetic to killing over the years, it was a fact of life, but he never did like the gore. Before the boys could dwell on the sight, Joshua walked on.

Come on boys, we still have a job to do. Let's get it over with before dark. . . . I don't feel like running into their friends. They might be smarter.

His two companions snickered under their breath as they followed. Joshua was glad they found his comment humorous, because he didn’t. He was serious.

Cries and moans continued for minutes behind them. That seemed to dim their initial good humor. He thought that was probably just as well. Shack Town was no place to find amusement. One never knew what to expect around the next corner.

By the time they found the right man, got the information, and headed for home, what was left of the bodies had already been picked clean by the scavenger inhabitants of the area. Even some of the bloody clothes and body parts were missing, a gross indication of how bad things were in the poorest area of the city. It was Shack Town after all, and at that moment, Joshua was more concerned with getting out than worrying about what happened to dead men.

Joshua had considered grabbing the scabs' weapons, but the weapons would only have slowed them down. Besides, how good had those weapons been against them. He hoped the next owners would use them more wisely.

None of his other trips to Shack town were quite as bloody. The boys who had been with him then had moved up into other rackets with his highest recommendations. He wasn't sure those of his present crew would be as quick on the triggers as those two, but Joshua wouldn't know until something like it happened again.

Was a rush, luck, and a hair trigger all someone needed to survive ? . . . Maybe.

Joshua waited patiently for all the expected pouches to come in, and was slightly relieved to see Joe and Sam arrive back without mishap. Despite all his years in the rackets and all the men he had beaten or killed, Joshua always feared a new boy's first run. Rarely did anything ever happened, but sending them out on their first run seemed to make him nervous. Though he'd never admit it, he felt like a worried parent.

The night's haul was by no means a fortune, but it was a good one. Business in general had been good the last few months. With business the way it was, there might possibly be bonuses to go around in a month or two.

The boys hung around to be paid at the end of the night, which gave Joe the opportunity to meet his peers. The motley crew they were. In every group there were a few bad apples. It was unavoidable. Even more so considering all the kids in his employ. Tough was the only way to get around on the streets.

When Joshua paid them, the pack thinned until only Joe was left. Since Joe was sleeping in the warehouse for the time being, Joshua had time to get to know him.

Joe. Joshua called.

Yes, sir ?

A respectful but meek response, Joshua noted.

Call me Joshua

O. K.

How did your night go ? Joshua asked.

Good

No problems ?

No, although Sam took the long way back. Joe replied.

Did he say why ?

No

Well, he probably just wanted to show you an alternate route. You never know when you are going to have to give someone the slip.

There was an awkward pause until Joshua went on.

You carry a very rare sword.

The boy shrugged, then looked around before answering timidly,

Yeah, I guess it is. I mean, I have only seen a few.

And I doubt you will see too many in the Free Zones. It would be like wearing a death sentence. Joshua stated. Do you know where the sword came from ?

My father gave it to me.

Do you know where he got it ? Joshua prodded gently.

I don't like to talk about the past. Joe said with a slight cringe, which caused Joshua to pause.

If the youth knew about the favor, he would be wise not to spread it around. In some quarters, any affiliation to the Yaks could prove unhealthy. Though it was against his better judgment, he liked the boy, and the boy should know about the favor. It could save his life one day if he knew enough to use it.

Joe, I know about the favor.

Joe's eyes began scanning the floor, his feet shuffled and his body swayed from side to side. So Joshua continued,

Since you now carry the sword, the favor is yours.

The youth looked unsettled.

You have nothing to fear from me. I don't want anything from you. In fact, I'm sure you're going to like it here. Joshua said with a smile.

Joshua didn't know quite what to make of the timid kid who stood in front of him. For a kid who had been living on the street for over a year, Joe was still soft spoken, shy, and nice. He was sure the boy would eventually come around to the way everyone else on the streets lived with callous contempt. There was more hardship to go around than any reasonable person could handle sanely.

When Joshua couldn't stand the sight of the youth watching dust settle on the floor anymore, he told him to get some sleep. Joshua stayed up till dawn when Wisp’s courier came to collect the money and information slips.

Joshua watched and listened with subtle amusement as the roaches scurried to get back into hiding before the sun came through the windows. Outside he could hear the boys on guard warding off the early morning scavengers trying to get first pick of treasures left out in the junk yard surrounding the warehouse. Trucks added to the debris about once a week. Some of it would be hauled away by scrap metal dealers and other businesses. The rest hung around a while. They had inherited the junk business with the warehouse.

Joshua sighed and folded up the morning paper. What newspapers there were in the city were always quick to report deaths from the police blotter. Joshua always read the obituaries to see if he knew any of the people. He had gotten used to