Street Magic

color, posters on the walls curling up at the edges and exposing mildew.
    Jack went straight to the counter and slapped his hand on it, waking the snoring clerk so abruptly he slid off his stool. "Oi!"
    "Mmph?" said the clerk. "Wotcha want?" He had a ponytail, sad and greasy like a rat's and, if it were possible, was even skinnier than Jack.
    "Where's Mr. Towne?" Jack said. "I know he still owns the place so don't bother to lie."
    "T-Towne?" said the clerk nervously.
    "Towne, Melvin," Jack snapped. "Manky Mel, the sultan of snuff, wizard of wanking, whatever bloody silly thing he calls himself."
    "L-look," said the clerk. "I don't want any trouble with the coppers…"
    Jack grabbed the clerk by the ponytail and jerked him down to eye level. "I'm not a copper."
    "
She
is," the clerk squeaked, pointing at Pete. "And
you're
probably just here for the money Mr. Towne owes to Left-handed Dick."
    Pete cocked her head at Jack. "This friend of yours got in with a gangster who calls himself Left-handed Dick?"
    "Trust me," said Jack, tightening his hold on the clerk's ponytail. "If you knew him you wouldn't be the least bit surprised. Now where is he, you sodding little piece of wormshit?"
    The clerk sighed in an almost resigned manner. "He's on the set, in the back."
    Jack released him with a little push. "Obliged."
    "What's gotten into you?" Pete muttered as she followed Jack through the musty rows of dirty books and bins of toys. "Is your sight channeling Guy Ritchie?"
    "You'll see," Jack murmured. His eyes glinted like winter sun on a glacier. "Now if you value your dignity, keep your mouth shut and stay close to me in here. And for the sake of whatever god you believe in, don't try to be Miss Detective Inspector Caldecott of the Metropolitan Police. It'll just get us both beat to shit and dumped in some gutter."
    Pete started to ask what, exactly, the history between Jack and Towne entailed, but Jack banged through a fire door and shouted, "Melvin! Look who's back from the dead!"
    A heavyset redhead in ill-fitting PVC squealed and covered herself with a sheet, and a voice from Pete's left shouted, "Fuck! Cut!"
    Melvin Towne was nearing Pete's height, which put his eyes roughly even with Jack's chin. He had run to fat but his hands were large and soft, arms straining the pristine white T-shirt he wore. At one time, Pete would have hesitated to attempt an arrest on him by herself—Towne was powerful still and the creases on his brow and at the edge of his expressive hazel eyes leaked violence like a ruptured chemical drum. "Jack Winter," he rasped. "Don't you ever stay dead?"
    "Not as of yet, you great cumstain," Jack replied genially. "I've come for the limb."
    Towne crossed his twin hams of forearm. "Threw the sodding thing away."
    "You're a liar, Melvin," Jack said easily. "Not only a liar, but a filthy liar, a dog-fucking liar even."
    Melvin sniffed, deep and wet like he had a bad cold, or put roughly a gram of coke up his nose on a regular basis. Pete bet firmly on the latter.
    "I don't have your bloody limb," he said again. He walked over to the redhead and jerked the sheet away from her. "I don't fucking pay you to sit on your fat arse with your legs crossed." The girl obligingly resumed the pose she'd been in when Pete and Jack interrupted, wrapping a silk noose hanging from the sprinkler pipes above around her neck and posing on a battered metal dinette chair.
    "Choke," Melvin directed. "I want to see the eyes popping out of your fat head when you come, bitch."
    Pete would have hesitated, alone, but she wasn't alone now.
    She walked over to Towne, picked up his high-end digital camera, and dropped it hard on the cement floor. "Jack asked you a question," she said calmly, making herself look Towne in his pockmarked moon face.
    "You fucking cunt!" he exclaimed. "I ought to ram that camera up your arse until I've shot three grand worth of video, because that's what it'll cost to replace!"
    Pete pulled out the Dead Man's Snare and wrapped it around Towne's neck, less gracefully than Grinchley had managed, but the effect was the same. "You are wasting our time," she snarled. "Give Jack his fucking limb before I use my other hand to tear your bollocks off,
cunt
."
    "She'll do it, mate," Jack said, fishing a packet of Parliaments out of his jacket. He offered one to the plump girl, who silently shook her head.
    "Bad for your health."
    "Speaking of which." Pete grinned at Towne and dug her nails into his sweaty chin,