Couverture de The Onus Construct - Part I

The Onus Construct - Part I

The Onus Construct - Part I

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 It all started on a dreary Friday afternoon. It had been over a month since my last case, and twice as long since I’d heard from Magnus. They say idle hands are the devil’s workshop; if that’s true, my devil was either on vacation or one lazy son of a bitch. I must have looked a sorry sight–a lone, courageous dribble of saliva fought its way through five days worth of stubble on its way down my chin as I leaned back in my chair, feet up on the desk, with a fat stogie in one hand and a bottle of Johnnie Walker in the other. The rain crashed in hypnotic waves against the rickety window at my back. I’d been drifting in and out of sleep all afternoon–dreaming that I was on the deck of some ancient wooden barge, swaying back and forth on its creaky deck, staring out at an endless dark ocean. The clock on the wall was broken, but the dimness of the sun fighting its way through the rain clouds told me it was about time to quit drinking at the office and pick it back up at my apartment. I deposited my long-since expired cigar into my ash tray and placed the bottle of scotch next to it. The scattered envelopes, unpaid bills, and old case files that littered my desk were marred by stains. Magnus used to joke that my desk aged like a tree–you could tell how long it’d been since our last case by counting the overlapping rings of spilt booze and coffee. I glanced sidelong at his abandoned desk next to mine, glistening and pristine as always. The only thing on it was the plastic tray at its corner where he kept active case files–it was empty except for the handful of envelopes that had arrived for him in the weeks since his disappearance. I’d wrestled with the idea of opening them, curious if any bore some clue to his whereabouts, but thought better of it. His last words to me, spoken in hushed tones over the phone, were that he needed to lay low for a while and I should make no attempt to find or contact him. I had reluctantly agreed, and though I may not be much else, I am at least a man of my word. As I stood, bracing myself against the desk while grasping at booze-hazy memories of how my legs worked, I heard the front door in the lobby burst open. The wild hissing sound of the rainstorm flooded my office for a moment before the door slammed shut, drowning it out again. I collapsed back in my chair, leaning forward with my eyes fixed on the frosted glass window that looked out on the hallway from the lobby. Magnus always boasted that he could predict everything he needed to know about a case from the client’s silhouette as they passed by that window. He made a game of it–whispering his prognosis for each new client as they walked past. “Bad luck,” he’d say; “Memory loss;” Or, one of his favorites, “unwanted impure thoughts.” He was wrong more often than right, but every now and then he’d get lucky–the client would finish explaining and Magnus would catch my eye and give a self-satisfied nod. It usually irritated me, but now that he was gone it surprised me how much I missed that little ritual. In Magnus’s absence I was left to formulate my own preconceptions about this new potential client. From the shape of the silhouette and the sound of the heeled footsteps clicking across the hallway, the best I could come up with was “probably female.” As to the nature of her visit, I didn’t venture a guess. Nothing I could have imagined, naive as I was at the time, could have landed even remotely near the mark. The silhouette rounded the corner, confirming my initial impressions. The woman stood tall in the office doorway, wearing a dark blue trench coat with the collar pulled up and a matching wide-brimmed hat. Remnants of the storm dripped steadily onto the hardwood floor at her feet. The woman’s face was pale and gaunt, looking almost skeletal in the dim light. She glanced around the room and spotted the coat rack in the corner, then walked to it and hung her hat, revealing her shoulder-length black hair. After she hung her coat, I could tell her body was as lean as her face. The white buttoned shirt and blue jeans she wore should have been form-fitting on a woman as tall as she was, but on her they hung loose, like a deflated parachute. She turned toward me, continuing to look around the room as she approached. The woman paused when she saw the bottle on my desk. She looked at me with an expression of distaste. “Are you Magnus Vitale?” she asked. I shook my head. “Magnus is… indisposed, presently. I’m his partner, Sylvester Bullet.” I gestured toward one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs pushed up against my desk. “How can I help you, Mrs…” The woman remained silent for a moment. She looked down at the battered chair I had offered, then back at me. She let out a resigned sigh as she pulled the chair out and sat down delicately, placing a small black purse on her lap. “Miss Tanaka,” the woman said. “Chinami Tanaka. I need help tracking someone ...
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