Chicago Wildlife - 2. The Fall of the Condiment Baron

Okay, the Field Museum of Natural History is still several miles away. My gold-bedazzled Lamborghini is still in the shop getting its tired rotated, so I guess cruising down the S. Lake Shore Drive in style is out of the question. Shame. Guess I’m going to have to hoof it the old fashioned way …with a grappling hook. I take that baby out of its holster and fire it at the nearest building ledge, wait for it to connect, pull on the rope to make sure it’s taut, and then I’m swinging like a circus acrobat. A mile or two could be shaved off my travel time if I’m avoiding corners, street lights, traffic, the speeding limit, and the law, and stick to a straight line all the way to the First National Bank of Payday.

As soon as I get to the Lake Michigan dock area, I hear a shot ring out. Sounded like it came from the area where all those storage crates are kept.

“Crazy bitch!” I hear.

Yeah, that about confirms it. I find myself a cozy little spot with a view on top of a particular pile of crates (not the tallest, mind you; I still need another crate behind me to block my appearance from showing up against the night sky in case anyone were to look up), and I hunch down to watch whatever’s about to transpire here in a moment.

A man is running for his life. He looks older, probably in his forties, buzz cut hair, stocky build. Definitely not a supervillain (the lack of a costume gives that away), and definitely not a master genius out for a lakeside stroll (who would choose such an obvious cut and not make any attempts to hide their identity? Not even a hat? Really?). Of course, I wouldn’t need to know any of that info to figure out who this poor sap is. The trademark pumpkin orange scarf clued me in immediately. Jacques Hein, nincompoop for hire. Gave out his real, full name to the criminal underworld and didn’t expect anyone to take advantage of it. Good for small, indirect jobs and that’s about it. I think I had him run out to get me a club sandwich once …and he came back with a hot dog and apple slices. Now he was bleeding all over the floor and limping. Guess that gunshot was aimed for his leg, so whoever it was that was after him didn’t want him dead. Great, now I don’t feel like I have to intervene. What did poor old Jacques do wrong now?

Someone else saunters up to him. I internally wince. Girl was massive, had strapped across her back at least two swords, an axe, a shotgun, a crossbow, and a rapier, a pistol saddled on each leg with a strap, a rather bulky utility belt, no doubt loaded with poisons, flash pellets, daggers, fist cuffs, popcorn chicken, and bandage wraps. Crisscrossed over her chest were indeed daggers and small pouches filled with bullets. I’ve seen her use them before. She had a set of balls on her for being able to wear long, lilac-colored hair like that and still be alive and kicking. Literal kicking. The spikes on her steel-toed boots kind of hinted at that. She was a perfect hunter. I should know. She’s told me several times. She can’t stop saying it, like I’m too old to remember. The various mob families call her the Monster Hunter. She’s their enforcer when they need to send someone to deal with individuals who’ve slighted them somehow. She has a reputation for being rather brutal in her methods.

“A message must be sent,” she says.

“I-I-I don’t even know what I did wrong!” he replies.

“To atone for one’s mistakes, one must acknowledge one has made a mistake,” she says. She loves being cryptic like that. “You, the smelly manchild, have made grave mistake with previous employer. The shipment, yes? You did not send shipment to where it was supposed to go.”

“Th-the ketchup?” he stamm…

The ketchup?

“Yes, the ketchup laced with opium you were supposed to ship to Russia. You ship instead to China. This makes Morozov family very angry. They send me to send you message.”

She reaches into one of her utility pouches and brandishes a pair of fist cuffs.

“They tell me to ‘deal with smelly manchild.’ I say okay. You get wonderful deal, manchild. Fifty percent off. I only break fifty percent of your bones.”

“No! No!!!”

She starts wailing on him, but by that point, I was already considering the case of the drug-enhanced ketchup to be below my time and sneaking away from the future crime scene. He’ll live, and maybe not forget my order next time.

I swing by the Glocko’s territory. It’s a lovely place, really. Full of gang violence, random shootings, stabbings galore, drug deals every half an hour, a mob mentality that would make Hitler blush, and maybe a pickpocket or two. Really gives off that “white picket fence” mentality, you know? Anyway, I skirt just outside of their territory, oh so helpfully marked by a chain link fence with the barbed wire finish on top, which circles all the way around what they consider to be their turf. The last thing I want tonight is to have to pick a fight with those bozos and make myself late for my appointment. Thankfully, I manage to get by them without incident, and I land on a safe building, getting ready to swing to the next, when I hear the telltale sound of someone performing a superhero landing on a flat roof. I turn around to see who it is I have to fight off this time, and I get a face full of …complications.