THE CITY BENEATH THE LAW by GIC
Chapter 1: THE MOURNING AND THE MISSION
Nova Loncastre, January 1925
A faint shuffle of footsteps dragged Harvey Turpin from the depths of his bourbon-soaked slumber, each step cutting through the fog in his skull like a dull knife. His head pounded like the aftermath of a bad deal.
Harvey Turpin embodies the quintessential hardboiled detective of the 1920s, one who drinks and smokes too much but still manages to solve the case. He lives and dies by his mantra: Drink. Investigate. Solve. Rinse and repeat. And I’m the omniscient narrator. The one who sets this story apart from all worn-out noirs. On with the show!
“Goddammit, Harlow,” Harvey growled, his voice like a gravel over sandpaper. “Stop pacing around like a first-time bride, will ya? If this is how my year’s gonna go, send me back to ’24.”
Read THE GHOSTS BENEATH THE STREETS to see how Harvey ended up here.
Harlow froze mid-step, his hollowed eyes darting to Harvey. The man looked like a ghost dragged from the gutter.
“Harvey,” Harlow rasped, “you promised to save me today. The bosses are tearing the city apart, looking for me—looking for us. Midnight’s the deadline, Harvey. They need the money!” His voice cracked, a tremor of desperation cutting through the fatigue.
Harvey ignored him, reaching for the pack of cigarettes. The first drag hit his lungs like an old friend.
The pacing resumed. Harlow’s words kept coming, spilling like a dam about to burst. Harvey let it wash over him, unmoved. He finished the cigarette, flicked the stub into an ashtray, and lit another before finally speaking.
“They won’t find us,” Harvey said, his tone carrying the weight of certainty. “Not today, not tomorrow, not this year. They’ve had decades to figure out these tunnels, and they never did.”
“You don’t know that,” Harlow snapped. “They’ve never had to search the tunnels before. Now, they’re motivated. You don’t get it, Harvey—they’ll tear this city apart brick by brick to find me.”
Harvey’s lips curled into a faint, humourless smile. “Harlow, you think you understand the bosses because you shuffled their money around. You don’t. Ironclad’s the sharpest of the lot, and even he thinks these tunnels were the bosses’ idea. They’ve got no clue they were Kearns’ puppets all alone.”
Harlow’s pacing slowed, but disbelief still shadowed his face.
“What we need now,” Harvey said, “is mourning.”
“Mourning?” Harlow spat, incredulous. “No! You drank yourself stupid because you were mourning the end of the case. Now it’s time to investigate. That’s your mantra, ain’t it? Drink. Investigate. Solve. Rinse and repeat.”
A low chuckle rumbled from Harvey’s chest. “You’re almost right,” he said, his gravelly voice lightened by a hint of amusement. He walked to the makeshift kitchen, pulling a battered tin mug from a shelf. “Yesterday, I mourned the case. Today, I mourn a man.”
He raised the empty mug. His expression hardened, lines of grief and anger carving deeper into his face. “To O’Keeffe.”
The room fell silent. Harlow stared, words caught somewhere between his throat and his tongue.
“Harvey,” Harlow finally said, “we’ve got to get out of Nova Loncastre. Not sit around drinking ourselves into the grave.”
Harvey lowered the mug, his gaze steady as the corners of his mouth curled into a faint smirk. “You’re right.”
“I am?”
“It’s not time to drink.” Harvey turned toward the little stove tucked into the corner of the hideout.
The words hung in the air. Harlow watched Harvey rummaging through the makeshift kitchen, pulling out cans of beans and a battered coffee pot. The tiny space wasn’t much to look at—just a few shelves and a stove that looked older than Harvey and Harlow combined—but it had enough supplies to last for years. Kearns must’ve planned for someone to lie low here.
Harvey dumped the beans into a pot, set it on the flame, and started the coffee.
“They have until midnight,” Harvey said, stirring the beans like he was discussing the weather. “But they don’t, actually. So calm yourself.”
Harlow stared at him. “What the hell does that mean?”
Harvey leaned against the counter, letting the aroma of coffee fill the space between them. “The bosses need the money to go legit,” he began. “But Mayor Langston and Judge Hawthorne? They can’t afford for the bosses not to go legit. They’re banking on the city being first in line for legalization. They want Nova Loncastre to shine when Prohibition ends.”
He picked up the pot, poured the coffee, and continued. “The only way to pull that off is by playing nice with the bosses. Langston and Hawthorne are putting on a show, setting deadlines and making threats, but it’s all smoke. They’ll bend.”
Harlow shifted, the tension in his shoulders loosening just slightly.
“Needle, Ledger and even the Runaway are losing sleep over the money,” Harvey said. “They don’t have the brains or the guts to play the long game. But Ironclase and the Rat?” He let out a low chuckle. “They know the score. Nobody’s bringing liquor into this city without their say-so, and the mayor and the judge know it, too. Even if they can’t pay tonight, they’ll go legit. They’re the only ones who can.”
Harlow stared at him, the weight of Harvey’s words sinking in. The bosses weren’t scrambling to survive—they were consolidating power for the moment Prohibition crumbled.
Harvey poured the coffee into two mugs, sliding one across the table to Harlow. “The president’s not ending anything today,” he added. “Langston and Hawthorne can play tough, but they have no choice. Not really.”
The tension in Harlow’s chest eased, replaced by a different kind of exhaustion. He sank into a chair, the world slowing for the first time in hours. “So we’ve got time,” he said, more to himself than to Harvey.
Harvey gave him a lopsided grin. “The bosses? They’re still betting I’ll come through. After all,” he said, leaning forward with a glint in his eyes, “I never fail. And I always”—he paused, letting the word hanging between them—“always solve the case.”
Harlow couldn’t help but smile, the knot in his chest finally unravelling. The weight of the last two days melted into the chair beneath him. For the first time in days, he wasn’t running or hiding—he was just sitting.
“So eat. And repeat after me: to O’Keeffe.”
Harlow raised the mug, the warmth seeping into his fingers as he echoed the toast. “To O’Keeffe.”
The silence that followed was the kind Harlow hadn’t known in a long time. As they ate, he felt the strength creeping back into his limps, the ache of fear giving way to something simpler. Hope, maybe.
Harvey leaned back, his voice soft, his gaze drifting toward the ceiling. “They’ve got their deadlines, their power plays. But me? I’ve got a case. And the difference between them and me, Harlow?” He smirked while leaning toward Harlow, the cigarette dangling from his lips. “I finish what I start.”
Harvey leaned back again. His plate sat empty, pushed to the side like an afterthought. A cigarette dangled between his fingers.
“This city,” he began, his voice low and measured, like a preacher delivering bad news. “It used to have rules. An order. Maybe not a pretty order, but one that made sense.” He took a long drag, the smoke curling around him like the ghosts of his words. “O’Keeffe understood it. Kearns, too. And me?” His lips quirked in a bitter half-smile. “I just played along. Observed the game. Followed the rules. Maybe that’s where it all went wrong—we knew the city too well. Moulded it, shaped it… No, I was never that important.”
Actually, he is. Without Harvey, there’s no Nova Loncastre.
“Those who came before us laid the table and set the rules. If you wanted a good life, you could have it. And if you wanted to be a bastard?” Harvey chuckled darkly. “Plenty of room for that, too. But the trick was, those lives didn’t touch. They stayed in their lanes. Good people went to church, bad people ran speakeasies, and Nova Loncastre kept ticking.”
Harlow shifted uncomfortably in his seat, the weight of Harvey’s words pressing down on him. “Harvey…” he started, but Harvey didn’t seem to hear or chose not to.
“O’Keeffe,” Harvey said. “Now, he was clean. I don’t know how, but he was. We waded through the same filth, but he never let it stick. Everyone else got tangled, caught in the muck, but not him. A good man, that one,” Harvey’s chuckle returned. Harsher this time, as if it scraped his throat on the way out. “Except when it came to me.”
The chuckle deepened, rolling into something almost joyous. “Did you know I was the only poor bastard on the wrong end of his baton after he became chief of police? Just me!” He laughed, a laugh that seemed to mock the very memory it conjured.
In the very first Harvey Turpin story, HARVEY TURPIN: PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. Read what else O’Keeffe did to Harvey and judge if he was a good man or only good in Harvey’s eyes.
Then, Harvey’s face grew hard, the lines around his mouth and eyes sharpening as if they’d been carved by the weight of everything he’d seen. “Now he’s dead. Kearns is dead. Prohibition’s dying, too. And the bosses? They’re going legit.” He took another drag. “Everything’s gonna get muddy now. No more rules, no more order. The good and the bad’ll mix. Nova Loncastre as we knew it? Already gone.”
The silence that followed was heavy, stretched taut between them like an unspoken truth. Harlow watched as Harvey sat there, the cigarette burning down to the filter, his gaze fixed on something that only Harvey could see.
Finally, Harvey spoke again, “To O’Keeffe.”
“To O’Keeffe,” Harlow murmured.
Harvey took a long, deliberate drag, letting it fill his lungs before exhaling with purpose. The cigarette butt hit the ashtray with a soft hiss. “Mourning’s over,” he said, his tone sharpening like a blade being drawn from its sheath. “Time to investigate.”
Harlow recognized the shift before Harvey even moved. The slumped shoulders, the grief that had hung around him like a shroud—it was all gone now, replaced by something steely and determined.
“How will you save us?” Harlow asked, his voice uncertain.
Harvey’s lips curled into a sardonic grin. “By solving the case.”
Harlow blinked, incredulous. “Solve the case? You’ve already solved the case. That doesn’t help us.”
Harvey shook his head. “Tsk-tsk,” he said, shaking his head like a disappointed schoolteacher. “And here I thought you had brains.” He let the words hang briefly before continuing, his voice sharp enough to cut glass. “Knowing what happened isn’t the same as solving the case. Solving it means evidence. It means proof. And that’s what I’ll do—find what I need to save your sorry neck and hang this city’s dirty laundry for everyone to see.”
Harlow bristled. “O’Keeffe tried that,” he shot back, the words bitter in his mouth. It was a cheap jab, and he knew it. “Look where it got him.”
The insult landed, but if Harvey felt it, he didn’t show it. Whatever man had mourned O’Keeffe was long gone, buried deep beneath the gumshoe sitting across the table. “O’Keeffe didn’t have the whole picture,” Harvey said. “Didn’t have the time, either. I’ve got both. I know what I need to prove, too, and I know who the players are. More importantly,” he leaned in, his grin growing sharper, “I know what they’re capable of.”
The confidence in his voice was unsheathed, but Harlow wasn’t convinced. He folded his arms, leaning against the table. “No one’s going to believe you. Langston and Hawthorne killing Kearns and O’Keeffe?” He snorted. “That’s the kind of thing you read in dime novels, not real life.”
Harvey didn’t answer right away. Instead, he lit a cigarette. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, steady. “I have my methods.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“To a point,” Harvey said.
Harlow straightened in his chair, the statement’s weight pressing on him. “My life’s in your hands,” he said, his tone sharp with offence. “Why would I betray you?”
Harvey’s lips curved into a half-smirk that could unsettle a man faster than a drawn gun. “Trust isn’t free, Harlow. You’ve got to earn it. And we’re still getting acquainted.” He leaned forward slightly. “Besides, you’re hiding something. I can smell it.”
The accusation hung in the air like a thundercloud. Harlow’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t say a word.
“Come clean,” Harvey said, his voice dropping. “Maybe then I’ll learn to trust you.”
Harlow’s face went pale, his mouth opening slightly, but no sound came out.
Harvey didn’t wait. He stubbed out the cigarette, grabbed his coat and hat, and headed for the door. “I’m good, Harlow,” he said as he shrugged on the coat. “The best there is. Don’t think you can hide anything from me.” His tone carried the weight of a warning.
When Harvey reached the door, Harlow shouted: “Wait! “Just tell me this, then: why would they believe you?” He begged.
“Because I’m Harvey Turpin.”
And with that, he stepped out, leaving Harlow alone in the silence of the hideout, his words hanging in the air like a promise of a storm.
That would be a superb way to end this chapter. Yet, there’s more to tell. Think of this as the end and the following as the epilogue.
Harvey didn’t look back as he stepped out, his footsteps echoing faintly in the tunnel. The cold, damp, underground air wrapped around him as he moved. The tunnels stretched before him like veins in a dying city, carrying secrets he wanted to uncover.
Stepping out into the streets of Nova Loncastre, Harvey squinted against the brightness. The sun was high and warm, bathing the city in a golden light that felt at odds with its shadows.
Harvey was thankful for the daylight. It forced the bosses to tread carefully and temper their violence with discretion. But being thankful didn’t mean trusting it. He moved cautiously, using every trick he learned in the war to stay invisible. The streets were a web, and he was a spider slipping through the strands unnoticed.
Carefully, he reached his destination: a nondescript building with a door that had seen better days. He knocked. Twice.
From inside, a gruff voice answered, thick with sleep and irritation. “Whoever’s knockin’ better have a damn good reason, or they’ll be eatin’ lead for breakfast.”
Harvey knocked again, ignoring the threat.
The door swung open, and the first thing Harvey saw was the business end of a revolver. The second was a glass eye, staring him down with an unblinking intensity.
Harvey smiled, slow and deliberate, like a man who knew he was exactly where he needed to be.
“Bill…”