The day I played detective at Little Quarry (part I)

The house was simple but still cozy. It had a large room with several doors to the other rooms, and this large room had a soft sofa that was my favorite. The only thing that made the environment unfriendly here was the light. Do you know when the light is "dark"? When it doesn't light up much and leaves the room a bit, you know... too dark? It sorts a kinda moody atmosphere? Dismal? It was something like this. It was Craig's house.

I was sitting on the soft couch. Craig was standing finishing to dress up: sometimes he straightened his hair looking in the mirror, sometimes stuffed his belongings in his pockets. He's that typical brute who looks like a gym instructor or something. He used to go for a tank top to show off his manly biceps covered in random tattoos unnecessarily. One of those was the Dragon tattoo.

Whenever he was going to talk to the Dragon I would come to his house a little while before for a chat.

In the house live only him and Marcelle, who is a girl he cares for. Marcelle is blind and handicapped, she doesn't do anything on her own. So Craig always has to be at home and can never go out for long. And that matches his work, which often ends up very fast and gives a lot of money. You guessed it: he works for the Dragon. The famous boss of the Sproustown underworld. He's a sicario or something.

I also work for the Dragon in the same vocation, but my tattoo is hidden on the back, I don't show it around wearing a baby look. And it's because I work under the same boss I come and sit on that couch the day before he talks to the said whose, about work.

"Know what happened? An ET appeared."

"An alien?"

"And he gave an invitation from some tournament of I-don't-know-what from Arena to the police.

"What? An invitation from Arena? Do you mean 'the' invitation from Arena? And what do you mean by 'gave' the invitation to the police?"

"He must've lost it, I dunno."

"Do you even know what this invitation is?"

I shrugged. Sprawled on the couch, I was still playing Cinder Clash on my cell phone. I didn't know. How was I supposed to know? It was probably something horrible and illegal as usual. These humans are all so weird.

"The Uahmyr tournament is a competition of paranormal beings, the best in the entire solar system."

"Hum..."

"The little antennae got up, huh?"

"And anyone can participate?"

"Unfortunately no, you couldn't participate even if you wanted to, Bubble. It's something made from mafia organizations to mafia organizations. Leaders sign up their puppies and they fight amongst themselves. Unwillingly, obviously."

"So they mustn't be the strongest being ... If they let themselves get controlled like that."

My interest faded.

"Coincidentally you tell me that the very day the Dragon called me... I suppose you must think he wants to discuss something about it, isn't it?"

"I think so. It was the only relevant thing that happened... Since you say this tournament is famous among the mafia, he must be wishing that you usurp the invitation so that one of the three of us can participate. By the three of us I mean you or Sub. I exclude Marcelle, obviously."

Craig gave me a grumpy look. He hates when I badmouth Marcelle in any way. But that she disturbs the group's activities a lot, it is a given.

"Marcelle is not disturbing the activities of the Dragon, Bubble. On the contrary; I've been following orders one hundred percent since before Sub-Zero joined the team."

Hate when he does that. The most annoying finesse of all is Craig's mind reading..

"It's not mind reading, Bubble," he answered guessing what I was thinking, "but a reading of facial microexpressions. From the almost invisible expressions of the human body I can get an idea of what goes on in the head of the observed target. I spent years studying the psychology language of the body and testing on several people until I got an acceptable result which is this level of reading I have now. Based on your irritable tone of voice, mixed with the fact that your brow skin retracted a few millimeters, I can tell that you must be thinking something bad of her when you said the phrase 'I exclude Marcelle, obviously.' And your face winced even more when I answered, indicating that I read your mind spot on: complaining about my finesse of understanding the thought. Did I get it right again?

'Psychology of I-don't know-what...' Whatever... For me it's still a mind reading thing.

(And besides, no one asked you, Craig. You might as well let me finish my sentences.)

To change the topic, I teased him:

"Hmm. I'd probably be better suited than you to participate in the tournament."

Just kidding. It is obvious that someone who reads other people's minds would be much better suited.

"Is that so? You're right. You really are a scary mercenary. The terror of Sproustown. Doubly scarier when you get glazed in this little game and sit on your legs sprawled on the couch. I imagine you would want to take your phone with you to the tournament."

Craig yawned as he put on a coat that was hung by the door, you know... In those places where one hangs coats by the doors.

"Anyway, today's talk with the Dragon will be about the alien and the invitation with a ninety percent certainty. Why a paper invitation though? It would be much better if criminal organizations used a type of password or something that was not physical, just to keep these things from falling into police's hands. As if we no longer had enough trouble with the police."

"With the ease we paranormals get information, something like passwords would be the least reliable way to certify your identity in a tournament, Craig."

"And wouldn't a piece of paper be even less reliable? Orare you telling me they can't forge a paper? Everyone with so much finesses and not even one for that..."

Craig glanced at me quickly as he shifted his cell phone from his pants pocket to his coat pocket

"Your expression says it's impossible to falsify the paper." He guessed.

I shrugged.

"If it's the kind of paper I'm thinking of... That material only exists outside Earth, and the ink with which official signatures are made can be identified by a serial number. They make that kind of ink only at Arena's interstellar criminal case center.

"At the central interstellar criminal case? Really? And they still get the ink to sign a paper exactly for interstellar criminal purposes? Do they steal the paint like that under their nose? Wow... I see it is an extremely reliable method of access."

It 'is' an extremely reliable method of access, Craig: I'm not sure who steals the ink to make the papers, but whoever it is, no one but him can do it. They have control over the material... There is a code they change every year which they use to identify whether the paper is fake or not or something like that. And even if someone tried to steal the paper, as I said before, they'd have to search that particular location, which is monitored all the time by the committee themselves since they start applying, so..."

"Falsifying is out of bounds."

"Yep."

Craig went to the bedroom to finish getting ready. I kept playing Cinder Clash. I could hear Marcelle's voice doing her things in the next room. Sometimes it was a little embarrassing to talk about work knowing she was home, but probably with the noise of the radio she heard nothing.

And then, if she heard it was Craig's problem and not mine, so...

Craig came back.

" 'Yep...' Something between your intonation and expression tells me that you are deliberately hiding something, waiting for me to ask you first and only then answer. All right, I ask you, Bubble... What's the catch?"

"I was going to say that even if it's impossible to fake the invitation, it's easy to fake the identity of whoever is being invited. If someone here gets this paper, simply end the recipient and falsify their identity as to impersonate him. After all falsifying human-made IDs is the easiest thing. Trivial. Banal like a banana."

"Makes sense. Uahmyr's tournament's staff probably don't even know all the guests as they're so many. Impersonating one of them as long as the real one didn't attend would not be impossible. Yeah... That would explain why our Dragon is after the invitation."

"Remember that a priori we don't even know for sure if the Dragon really called you because of this invitation."

"Of course that's why. Why else would he have?"

"How am I supposed to know?"

After adjusting the collar of his shirt, Craig looked completely neat now.

"Hey, Bubble... Tell me something: how are you so informed about the Arena underworld? For someone who just learned what the invitation is about, you know a lot about their staff."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Craig ... I only know about the Arena underworld because I came from there. I didn't know it was a specific invitation for the Uahmyr tournament, that's all. But since the kind of paper they use in the Arena for everything confidential is of that same kind, I figured that in Uahmyr it should be no different. That's all."

I tilted my head to the phone screen again. The game was coming to the interesting part.

"More of that and your biggest finesse will be this little game." He nodded at Cinder Clash. I just casually showed him the finger while looking at the screen. He muttered something else, but I was too focused on the game to hear.

"Well, Bubble... I'm finally going there to talk to the boss and see what he has for us. What are you going to do?"

Without taking my eyes off the screen, I prepared to get up.

"Me? Let me see... I think I'll stop by the Johnson's house... Since as you said we will probably have to deal with that anyway."

"Johnson? Who's Johnson?"

"Didn't I tell you? The ET who appeared was seen at the house of this Margareth Johnson... They died of ductu."

Craig mixed a face of interest and amazement, but instead of commenting, he just said goodbye and closed the door behind him. I wasn't going to babysit Marcelle so I ready'd up, took a cab and drove to my destination.