[center][b]Part I Billyland[/b] [i]“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” -- Ernest Hemingway[/i][/center] Unincorporated Gotham. They called it Billyland. Rednecks and peckerwoods from all over Appalachia flocked to the city during and after WW2 to work the industry jobs all the upstanding crackers left behind when they went to war. The Hillbillies, Billies to those in the know, made unincorporated Gotham a hicktown haven and had been there ever since. Billyland was a running joke through the city. You going through Billyland and hear banjo music? Roll up those windows and drive faster, boy. How do you castrate a Billy? Kick his sister in the mouth. What do you call a Billy girl who can run faster than her brothers? A virgin. Billyland: 10,000 people and only six teeth. Slam drove down streets in his heap. He nursed a flask of gin and kept his eyes peeled for Peter Dubose. THE JOB: Peter Dubose has a huge crush on Glenda Glitter, feature dancer at the Gold Rush Strip Club. Dig Gorgeous Glenda grind on the floor. Guys go gaga over Gyrating Glenda. See Pete pop his peepers at that sight. Pervert Pete likes to watch Glenda glide around the Gold Rush. Paramour Pete's heart pumped passion for Glenda. Purser Pete won't take a pass. Persistent Pete paws at Glenda and takes no prisoners. Pugnacious Pete gets violent. Glamourous Glenda gets a shiner. Enter Slammin' Sammy. Slam gets six bills and lapdances gratis for putting the fear of god into Pesky Peter. A straight up muscle job, just the way Scary Slam liked it. Slam cruised through Billyland for two hours and took in the sights. Dig those trucks and big ass tires. Dig that Billy music. Fat girls in tight jean shorts and tighter tops. Muffin tops abound. Tweaker sores abound as well. Teenage mothers pushing babies, rebel yells, motorcycles, more jacked up trucks. Confederate Flags and "Heritage, Not Hate" signs as far as the eye can see. Slam hit the gin and sang country songs under his breath. "Sun's coming up... something-something griddle, blah blah blah fiddle, thank God I'm a country boy!" FEATURE: Peter Dubose coming out of a bar. Pudgy Pete looks like he's three hundred easy. Pimply Pete picks acne and pops zits. Slam cruised sloooow and watched Pete climb into a shitbox of a truck and speed off, blowing exhaust behind him. Slam counted seconds, got to twenty, and went. The exhaust smoke gave him a beacon to follow. He gave Pete a long leash and cruised, polishing the gin off and kept singing. "Let's go to Luckenbach, Texas, with Waylon and Willie and the boys. This... something-something feuding like the Hatfields and McCoys." Slam caught up with Pete when he was leaving his shitbox parked outside a grocery store. "Peter Dubose?" Slam asked. "Yeah. And you are?" "I'm a friend of Glenda Glitter." Pete's eyes went wide just before Slam laid into him. He had big hands. Once upon a time the hands pulverized light heavyweights and cruiserweights without prejudice. Not so long ago they worked over murderers and robbers in the GPCD interrogation pen with beaucoup prejudice. Now they turned Peter Dubose's sides into shredded beef and sent his teeth flying across the parking lot. A three combo sent Pervy Pete flying against the side of his truck. He slid down the side and spat teeth. Slam rubbed his knuckles and watched Pathetic Pete sob. "You touch Glenda again, you're dead. You get within ten miles of her, you're dead. You even step one foot back in that strip club and you're dead." Slam took the driver's side mirror and ripped it off. He cradled the mirror in the palm of one hand before smashing it into the ground. "Get what I'm saying, boy?" -- Door pounding woke Slam up. The hangover pounding his temples was even worse. He reached across the bed to find a bottle that wasn't empty. No dice. He stumbled through bottles and cans towards the front door. He still wore last night's clothes: an unknotted tie and rumpled shirt with pants that had just a hint of puke on them. "Samuel Bradley?" Two men at the door. Meatheads in black Armani suits and Ray-Bans. Très goon chic. Slam cut odds he could take them. Not even a chump like him would take that bet. Instead, he nodded and lit up a smoke. "We need you to come with us, Mr. Bradley." "Why is it these things always start with two dickheads in suits wanting me to come with them?" One of them meatheads cracked his knuckles. The other popped his neck. Flexing and posturing was a punk move. Slam knew the way to scare a man wasn't by cracking your knuckles, it was by cracking his bones. "If you two gorillas can get me a stiff drink then I'll go wherever you want me to go." -- Slam sipped Thunderbird out of a paper bag covered bottle. The T-Bird was cut-rate, but there was enough booze to stop the headache. He sat in a study filled with books. Slam thought of a book he read in school once, it had a rich guy and a big study filled with books that were never read. "Mr. Bradley." An old man shuffled in. Stooped shoulders and Wrinkled skin and blue veins and white hair. Thick glasses made his eyes look huge. He wheezed and collapsed onto a chair beside Slam. "James Doheny, at your service." The name clicked. Doheny Oil. One of the titans of industry in Gotham. Nix, [i]former[/i] titan of industry. Somebody bought the old company out years ago. "What's so urgent that you need to get me up at the crack of dawn--" "--It's three in the afternoon, sir--" "--And force me here to talk?" "You're a hard man to get in touch with, Mr. Bradley. I've been calling your number for the past three days." Slam swigged the T-Bird and shrugged. "I've got problems with bill collectors. I don't want them to know I'm home." "You're speaking of the ruthless looking Russians my men saw stop by your house repeatedly over the past two days?" "The people I owe money to have... aggressive debt collection tactics." "Indeed," the old man wheezed. "Which is why you should be eager for employment opportunities." Slam chugged the rest of the T-Bird and wiped booze from his mouth. The cut-rate warmed his chest and worked its way upward until he got that familiar fuzziness back into his brain. The buzzed state of existence he called life for the past twelve years. "What can I do for you, Mr. Doheny, that the two pet apes that brought me here can't?" "You have a reputation for finding the dark places in this city not many others can. I'm afraid my two bodyguards are only adept at making people hurt. I need someone of your affections." "Affectations." Meaning a stumblebum drunk fits in better than meatheads in designer threads. "What's the job?" The old man pushed his glasses up his nose with Shaky hands and wheezed. "My granddaughter. She's... she's my daughter, you might say. I raised her from a pup and now she... betrayed me. She's out there, messing with a boy she shouldn't be. They ran away from the house three days ago. She's over the age where I can issue an amber alert, and the cops they tell me they can't intervene because she wasn't kidnaped." The old man shook in something that seemed half sob and wheeze. "I have all this money, but nothing I can do with it. Back in the day, I could snap my fingers and the mayor himself would be here to wipe my ass. And now..." Slam inferred: "All I can rate these days is a single smokehound former cop who makes for a shit PI." Slam felt kinship with the geezer. Doheny was a used up, wrinkled husk that was soon to board the night train to the big adios. He looked on the outside like Slam felt on the inside. Slam cut odds he would live as long as Doheny. He gave up and set odds he could make it to fifty. Both were sucker bets. Instead, he tucked the empty bottle of T-Bird into his jacket and pulled out the pen and pad he kept on him. "Tell me everything about your granddaughter that may help me find her."