THE CITY BENEATH THE LAW by GIC
Chapter 6: THE HEAT TURNS UP
Chapter 1: THE MOURNING AND THE MISSION | Chapter 2: THE HIDDEN AGENDA | Chapter 3: THE RETURN OF THE GHOST | Chapter 4: THE SINS OF THE JUDGE | Chapter 5: THE GALA OF SHADOWS
Nova Loncastre, June 1925
The knock came softly, not timidly, but hollow, like knuckles tapping against a coffin lid. Harvey froze. No one knocked like that unless they had already lost more than they had to give.
Chapter 5 recap: At Mayor Langston’s lavish gala, Harvey Turpin crashed the party with style and steel, strolling past a greenhorn doorkeeper and into a ballroom thick with silence and suspicion. His arrival turned heads and silenced conversations, at least until Edward “Ironclad” Malone demanded answers. Harvey offered them, half in jest, half in warning, while the city’s power players circled like sharks. In Langston’s private study, Jack O’Keeffe — disguised as a waiter — unearthed damning letters from Judge Hawthorne and scandalous notes from the mayor himself. But the vault remained hidden. When tensions erupted downstairs, with Louis “Ledger” Ferelli drawing a gun on Danielle “Runaway” Totti, Harvey put them both down with practiced ease, and O’Keeffe lent a hand, all part of a play too smooth to be improvised. Beneath the chandeliers and champagne, the real show had just begun.
Harvey swung the door open.
One-Eyed Bill stood in the frame, or what was left of him. His face looked like someone had tried to paint it with fists — all reds and purples, smeared with the dark gloss of dried blood.
Harvey caught him. Teeth clenched so hard they could have cracked molars. He did not say a word, but the way he held Bill made it clear that something ugly had shifted within him.
O’Keeffe moved fast, clamping a hand on Harvey’s arm.
“First,” he said, steady but sharp, “we save Bill. Then, we burn the Rat.”
They did not ask who had done it. They did not have to.
The Blind Tiger had a name in Nova Loncastre, and everyone knew whose paw print it bore. Frankie “The Rat” Rossi owned the place and the staff. One-Eyed Bill was his bartender. No one else would have dared.
“Harvey...” Bill whispered. “Runaway wants out...”
That was all he had left. The words emptied him. He let the pain go after that, let his eyes close like he had been holding them open just long enough to get the message across.
Harvey laid him down on the floor.
“Harlow!” he barked. “Find anything that looks like first aid.”
The kid was already halfway to fainting.
“And Harlow — don’t you dare faint on me.”
The accountant swallowed whatever was climbing up his throat and nodded. He blinked, turned, and ran.
“Is he alive?” O’Keeffe asked.
Harvey leaned close, two fingers on the throat, eyes on the ribcage. “For now.”
“Can we save him?”
“If the Rat wanted him dead, he’d be dead,” he said. “This ain’t murder. It’s a message.”
O’Keeffe looked down at Bill, then back up. “Do you think he knows?”
“He saw Bill and Runaway together. Then Bill didn’t report it. That’s enough. This...” Harvey gestured to the wreckage of his friend, “...this is how the Rat says ‘I know.’ And ‘you’re next.’”
Harlow came stumbling back, holding the square, brown leather case as if it might explode. Harvey took it without a word.
He did not need to open it to know what was inside. He could list it blind: pair of silver metal tweezers, two round tins of Boracic ointment, one small round box of ribbon plaster adhesive, one packet of absorbent wool, one white open wove bandage, one bottle of Bismuth Magnesium tablets, one bottle of Aspirin tablets, one Hospital No. 2 absorbent bandage, one bandage wrapped in plain blue paper and two packets of Boric Lint.
Old war habits. You did not forget what kept men alive.
O’Keeffe stared at the leather case like it had just crawled out of a trench in Belgium.
Harlow just hovered behind them, watching the two men watch the kit.
“Brings you back,” O‘Keefe said after a moment, voice dry.
“We’re fightin’ a war, ain’t we?” Harvey replied.
Whatever ghosts lived in that case, they did not have time to dance with them. They pushed them aside, and the work began.
It was no operation. Just two men who had once patched up bleeding boys with shaking hands in mud-wet ditches. They cleaned the cuts, bound what would not stop bleeding and tried not to think about the damage underneath.
Twenty minutes later, they sat back, their sleeves rolled, their fingers red.
Harlow had not moved. Had not spoken. Had not helped. Had not fainted.
“Will he live?” he asked, voice quiet.
Harvey glanced at O’Keeffe, who gave the slightest shrug.
“He should,” Harvey said.
“Should?”
Harvey leaned back, fished a cigarette from his coat and struck a match off the table’s edge.
“None of us are doctors. We only know what the war and life taught us,” he said between drags.
“The kit’s the same kind we had overseas,” O’Keeffe added, wiping his hands on a rag. “Kept both of us breathing more than once.”
“Then he’ll survive,” Harlow said.
Harvey exhaled slowly. “That’s the spirit.”
The room went quiet, the kind of quiet that does not last.
O’Keeffe broke it. “What did he say to you?”
Harvey did not look away from the smoke. “Runaway wants out.”
O’Keeffe snorted. “That so?”
“Why come to us?” Harlow asked. “And what good does that do to us?”
Harvey’s grin was faint. “Because Runaway knows I’m the only son of a bitch in this city who can disappear someone. I’ve been dodging the bosses for six months now. That means Runaway know I can get him out.”
“And that’s good for us,” Harvey went on, “because it means leverage. Could be intel. Could be cash. Could be anything.”
“What kind of intel?” Harlow asked.
“The kind we already half know,” O’Keeffe said.
“If we already know...” Harlow started.
“Half know,” Harvey cut in. “And half don’t hold up in court. Knowing for sure means we can end things.”
“But if he wants out so badly,” Harlow asked, eyes narrowing, “why stick around long enough to pay anything?”
That stopped the room. Harvey looked at O’Keeffe. O’Keeffe looked back. Neither smiled.
Harlow was learning. That was good. And sad.
“Because he doesn’t get a choice,” Harvey said.
O’Keeffe followed. “Only one ticket out of Nova Loncastre. The Harvey Turpin Express. If Runaway wants a seat, he does what the conductor says.”
Something crooked slid into Harlow’s grin. It was not innocent. Not anymore.
Harvey saw it. So did O’Keefe. And they both felt the same tug in their guts — half pride, half pity.
“And what’s the first thing we tell him to do?” Harlow asked.
Harvey’s face hardened, voice all business. “First, we get the lay of the land. We need to know how the bosses took the story I sold ‘em.”
“We also need eyes on the money,” O’Keeffe said, leaning against the edge of the desk like it owed him rent. “Renovating the speakeasies didn’t come cheap. And coughing up for a second shipment to keep the ‘pubs,’ that would’ve stung. Especially with the liquor coming in hours, not weeks.”
Harvey nodded. “So, are the bosses bleeding dry? And what about the whispers someone’s been skimmin’ from the pool?” he continued from where O’Keeffe stopped.
“We pinned that on the Runaway, didn’t we?” Harlow questioned.
“We did,” Harvey said. “Might’ve been a misstep. Or the best damn move we made all year.”
“How?”
“The others thinking Runaway is dirty complicates things. Makes meetin’ him riskier. Makes movin’ him damn near suicidal,” Harvey began. “But maybe that pressure’s what cracked him open. Maybe it’s what made him want to run in the first place.”
Harlow was beginning to see the gears turning.
“But there’s more,” Harvey said, flicking ash into a chipped ashtray.
Even O’Keeffe raised a brow.
“We know Ledger and Needle hate each other. Try to play civil, but no one’s buyin’ it. And we can twist that.”
“Make it look like they’re skimming off each other?” Harlow offered, cautiously.
Harvey blinked — not at the idea, at the source.
“You’re learnin’, kiddo,” he said, the compliment coming out more like a warning. “But yeah,” Harvey continued, tapping ash again. “We plant the seed. Let ‘em pick up where they left off. With any luck, we don’t even have to touch the dynamite. Just wait for the spark.”
“And who lights it?” O’Keeffe asked.
“I’d love it to be Ironclad,” Harvey admitted. “But he’s no fool. Likes to see blood, sure — but never on his hands.”
“Then the Rat?” O’Keeffe’s voice turned brittle.
Harvey gave a dark little laugh. “He’s gotta think Needle and Ledger lost their heads all on their own. Through Runaway, we leave crumbs. Make each one think the other’s holdin’ the knife.”
Harlow frowned. “Still don’t get why the Rat would bother.”
“You’re an accountant,” O’Keeffe said, folding his arms. “So think like one.”
Harlow paused.
He looked at both men, then shut his eyes. He was shifting something behind them. Peeling off the skin of the scared kid Judge Kearns had plucked from a desk job and dropping it on the floor.
Now he was trying to see the city the way these two did — as a machine built on lies and money.
A few moments passed.
Then his eyes snapped open, the answer was right there on his face, written in cold arithmetic.
“If they kill each other,” Harlow said, eyes lit like the marquee outside of the Capitol Theatre, “they split the pot three ways, not five.”
Harvey cracked a grin, smoke curling from his lips. “You’re learnin’, kiddo.”
“So, you’re heading out?” Harlow asked.
“I am,” Harvey said, already reaching for his coat. “O’Keeffe, hold the fort. Watch Bill. And take the kid for a walk, he’s earned some fresh air.”
Harlow blinked. Once, then twice. No protest, no interrogation. No “absolutely not” from the hard cases who usually guarded the exits like jailers in a church basement. No chess match of logic and pleading. Just… permission.
He wanted to ask why. Was Harvey finally trusting him? Going soft? Or maybe the gumshoe saw the endgame on the horizon, figured the last pawn could stretch its legs. Whatever it was, Harlow told his doubts to shut up and decided to enjoy the sun while it lasted.
O’Keeffe, for all his griping, did not fight. He saw the kid full of hope and figured that was enough. The former chief of police had joined the force to protect and serve, after all. And for a minute, the badge glimmered somewhere behind his eyes.
When they stepped out of the hideout, Harvey lit a cigarette and glanced back at them both.
“Don’t get used to it.”
Then he turned on his heel and vanished into the tunnels and the city’s waiting mouth, leaving behind a smile and a shrug.
I could end the chapter here, but I still haven’t reached my 2,500-word goal. Consider the following as an epilogue.
He moved through Nova Loncastre like a shadow with a sense of direction — not invisible, just unbothered. The bosses watched him, sure. Waited for him to stumble. He knew that. Hell, he counted on it.
But they would be waiting a long time.
The trick part was leaving the tunnels. He had never breathed a word to the bosses about them. Let them think they had something only for themselves — their secret veins under the city’s skin. Harvey did not correct them. Did not have to. Knowing more than they thought he did was his edge. His last unplayed card.
But walking those tunnels — ducking low, watching the dark for sudden movement — it still felt like the war. Back in the mud, the blood, the crawl between foxholes. He moved through them like a soldier through enemy lines. Careful. Silent. Each step weighed for traps — real or imagined.
Also, that’s the moment he most felt the urge to drink. Almost as if the war had traumatized him, and instead of dealing with it, he simply drank his traumas away… But hey, who am I to know what’s going on with Harvey’s psyche?
When he surfaced, the city opened up like a book he had already read. He did not walk it like he owned it.
No.
He walked like it owned him.
Not long after, he was back on familiar stairs. Each step creaked in its special way, like it remembered every time he came home too drunk, too bloody, or both.
His office door waited at the top, just slightly ajar.
He paused.
Listened.
Then went in.
The office was not how he had left it.
He had come back a dozen times since officially resurfacing. But something was off. Not something.
Someone.
Langston stood by the window, coat folded over one arm, as if he had been caught mid-departure. The air stank of politics — cheap cologne and cheaper intentions.
“Mr. Mayor,” Harvey said, stepping inside. “Is this a campaign stop? Did you drop by to court my vote?”
Langston did not turn. His voice slithered out with the same warmth as a morgue drawer. “Turpin.”
The mayor looked around the office as if it were something foul he had stepped in. “Let’s be brief. I’ve already wasted five minutes of my life in this dump.”
Harvey tossed his hat onto the desk, lit a cigarette and leaned back into the smoke.
“Wherever you walk, problems grow.”
“Yeah,” Harvey said, exhaling toward the mayor’s head. “That’s what makes me so employable.”
Langston finally turned. Slowly. Like a man inspecting a stain. “The city has its way of handling problems.”
Harvey grinned around his cigarette. “Yeah. Me.”
Langston did not flinch. He smiled — not the way men smile. The way snakes do. “No, Harvey. That ship has sailed when you walked off the job.”
“Oh, you mean the law?” Harvey chuckle. “You had one good chief of police, and you got him killed for his trouble.”
The grin widened. And something behind Langston’s eyes flickered — something cold. The kind of cold you do not recover from.
“O’Keeffe was a good man. Loyal. Smart. But even good men make mistakes,” Langston said smoothly. “It was a tragedy, sure. Nova Loncastre is worse for it.”
He stepped closer now, voice dripping like venom from a snake’s fang.
“The good thing is,” he added, slow and sharp, “Nova Loncastre still has a few great waiters.”
The words did not land like a punch. They landed like a verdict. And Harvey took a step back without meaning to.
Langston did not linger.
“Have a good day, Mr. Turpin.”
The latch clicked behind him like the end of a chapter.
Harvey stood frozen, eyes fixed on the door as if expecting it to reopen. It did not.
He poured a drink he had not planned on pouring. Took a swallow that burned too long.
Drink. Investigate. Solve. Rinse and repeat. Except this time, Harvey didn’t solve anything.