The case of the mind controlled moll –
A Charles Maplewood story
Part 1
By: Stainless Steel Rat
This was originally done as something of a side-story to the RRRPG. The basic premise is that the Rangers broke up and are each going it alone, some more than others. Monty and Zipper are on walkabout, Gadget has moved toa city junkyard, and Dale has his own Comics and Memorabilia store, and as far as we know is still an item with Foxglove. Chip, minus the Rangers has had to re-invent himself as a solo detective & troubleshooter, using his 'real' first name to distance himself from what had been before. Which leads us to...
The case of the mind controlled moll – A Charles Maplewood story
A chipmunk walked into a bar… The start to a dozen bad jokes, but this wasn’t one of them. The bar was a sleazy dive, a rodent place down in the docks area of the city, called ‘The Broken Arms’. The chipmunk had a grizzled white muzzle. He wore a duster style coat, a flat cap and a scowl. The first two were because a fedora and bomber jacket might have attracted attention from the wrong people; the last was because Charles Maplewood, known to his friends as Chip, was having a bad time finding those same people. A rumour had reached him concerning old business and he’d spent a good part of the last 24 hours trying to put some salt on it’s tail.
Rat Capone was back in town. He’d left over a year ago, run out by the Rescue Rangers, back when there _were_ Rescue Rangers. The boat he’d ended up on had been heading for South America, and Chip had always assumed that Capone had gone to ground in some rat hole there. Chip had started to build up a small network of information sources after Monty had left, people who owed the Rangers a favour, and it had paid off on several occasions since. A gopher for one of the small animal companies that ran a parasite cargo business had called this in via bird mail.
Unfortunately, though Capone and his two hoods had been confirmed as getting off a cattle boat, carrying some sort of soda can sized barrel, none of his regular sources had a location on them. The city was a big place, and far bigger if you were only five inches tall. He’d been reduced to trawling the docks area on the Hudson opposite the south end of Manhattan, fishing for clues. All he’d gotten so far were old boots, metaphorically speaking.
This place was fairly quiet, it being too late for the daytime folk, and not early enough for the nocturnal types to really get into gear. The clients were the sort who made a precarious living off the human activity of the docks. A few bar rats, a couple of mice in worn sea jerseys and a bat in the corner, half hidden by an airline bottle of what claimed to be Jack Daniels, but was almost certainly some rebottled paint stripper sold by this place. ‘Dale would call this a ‘hive of scum and villainy’, and he’d be right.’ Chip thought, wistfully.
He slid onto a cotton spool barstool at one end of the bar and caught the bartenders eye. Not that it was hard, there wasn’t exactly a queue.
“An Oakleaf, make it a double.” If he was going to have to drink, he might as well order something palatable, though the chances of getting the genuine acorn liqueur in this place were slim. He could have gone that way after Dale moved out with Foxglove, but he’d resisted. Instead, of crawling inside a bottle, he’d thrown himself into his work, learning how to compensate for the team that wasn’t there any more.
The racoon in the canvas apron sauntered over, carrying a toothpaste tube cap full of clear liquid. A few drops spilled and started to eat at the varnish. “That’ll be two wedges.’ This was mouse currency, each representing one troy ounce of mature cheddar and backed by a mouse run New York Cheese Reserve, and was therefore the de-facto, small animal tender for New York. The primarily barter economy that held out in the countryside was insufficient for metropolitan rodents, and most cities had some equivalent. Some, such as Swiss Cheese Franc, were good world-wide.
Chip pulled a wad of golden foil covered 10 wedge notes from an inside pocket of his jacket, reflecting that sometimes it was good to have the occasional client who rewarded you in cash, and paid. Unlike a human detective, he never asked for a payment, but his clients generally found some way to return the favour. When the bartender made change, he pushed over a yellow one wedge note as a tip, then stopped the racoon before he moved off. Chip dropped two more gold foil notes on the change pile and said, “Maybe you’ve seen some people…” When the racoon reached for the pile, Chip put his paw over it. “If I like the answers.”
He described Sugar Ray and Arnold Mousenegger, but without names or referring to their boss, on the basis that the name Rat Capone would still cause a lot of dockside people to clam up like a clam. He’d made that mistake down at the fish bar on the waterfront. In this case he thought he was on to something, the bartender showed signs of recognition when he described Arnie’s peculiar speech pattern.
“Yeah, a guy who spoke like that did stop by earlier. He bought a couple of shots of our cheapest stuff, then half a dozen bottles of Runcorn Bourbon, still sealed. Didn’t leave no tip either.” The racoon looked meaningfully at the pile of notes.
Chip let the change and one of the gold notes go, then said. “Do you remember them saying anything about where they were going? Think, the smallest detail could be significant.”
The racoons face screwed up in thought. “Come to think of it that lizard might have been with him, but he was way back and it was busy. But I remember, cause of the guy (bleep) at him about not liking needles. Then this mouse says something like, ‘Well you’re not the one getting them stuck in you, and you’re not hypothermic either.’”
Chip was already at work on the information. Runcorn Bourbon was Capone’s favourite guzzle, and his two hench-males could always be counted to do things the easiest way possible. So their new hide-out would be around here somewhere, probably in the sewer system or a basement. But why the comment, unless…
“Did you see which way they left?” He could see the racoon hesitate, look to one side, probably wondering whether to pad his info for a better tip. “No is a better answer than a wrong one.” He tapped the remaining money meaningfully.
The racoon stiffened then admitted, “No. Just didn’t notice. Darn!”
Chip gave a small grin. Reading visual cues had been one of the more useful things he’d gotten from auditing police academy courses. He released the last note, and the racoon made it disappear. “It’s okay. Any doctors, vets or tattoo parlours in the neighbourhood?”
“Hoi, that’s’a lotta money mate.”, a different voice interrupted. A big muskrat, probably a stevedore, had come up to the bar and seen the cash change hands. “Mebee you could buy a drink for a pal who down on his luck.” He was clearly already nicely drunk [1], and in Chip’s estimate, likely to flip to nastily drunk if he didn’t get his way. He was also attracting attention. If the rest of this crew realised Chip was carrying over a hundred wedges, he’d be swamped.
He was already slipping off his barstool, thinking tactically, getting it between him and the muskrat, who towered over him. He matched the others argot. “I ain’t got no money, I ain’t yer pal, and you had way too much already…”
The rat lunged forward, swinging a roundhouse on him. Chip ducked the clumsy swing and booted the barstool with all his strength straight into the big guy. The top edge caught him nicely in the gut, making him double over with a gasp. Chip immediately grabbed the back of his head with one hand, the cap full of paint-stripper in the other and slammed it onto the rats nose just as he inhaled. The rat snorked up most of the cap full of something Gadget could use to power rockets, the rest spilling down his clothes. He staggered back, choking and gargling, paws to his face.
Chip brushed the tip of his cap towards the bartender and left, but not before saying. “I’d say it was on me, but it looks like it’s on him.” He walked calmly out the door, but as soon as he was out of line of sight he hit four paw drive and bailed for the nearest cover. Once under cover he pulled out his normal hat and jacket (the loose duster was as good as a wardrobe) and changed. He also wiped the off the flour that made his muzzle look grizzled with white hairs. Mentally he was counting down.
After a few seconds the stevedore, ran out, screaming threats as to what he’d do to the chipmunk. He looked around, then headed off in completely the wrong direction. Chip carefully stashed the duster and cap for later retrieval and walked away. Time to find a yellow pages and a local map.
[1] ‘Nicely drunk’ may not be an American expression. For such people, it is defined as that state between tipsy and falling over, when wearing a traffic cone on your head and eating a donner kebab seem like excellent ideas. In short, one notch below permanent brain damage.
&&&
The sign above the door said ‘Bubba’s Skin Art and Piercings’ It was one of a dozen tiny ‘hole in the wall’ joints down this dockside alley, such as a bar, a greasy burger joint, key cutting and watch repairs, couple of very cheap hotels, a tobacconists, a goodwill store, a fortune tellers, and a pawn shop. The litter strewn alley completed the picture of urban decay at its finest. The evening sea mist was rolling in and tendrils of fog were momentarily obscuring the surroundings.
Chips little cross reference exercise had come up with no small medical facilities in the area, other than the human port authority and coastguard stations. That left tattoo parlours as the only legal place where you’d find hypodermic needles. There were three, and if he came up blank he’d have to consider the alternatives, but for now he was sticking to the ones in the Yellow Pages. But a hunch told him he was on the right track. The hunch was the back of a well dressed mouse, bent over from the weight of a heavy sack he was carrying.
He went up to a crack in the fronting of the place, and Chip shadowed him. Not hard, the alley was littered with trash. In fact the only problem was that it was sometimes hard to watch out for others, which was why he almost ran into a second character, a hamster, obviously someone’s pet from the bow round his neck. He was also carrying a sack. Despite almost running him down, he didn’t acknowledge Chip, or even pay the slightest attention.
The look on the hamsters face, a blank stare, suddenly kicked Chip’s memory into motion. He’d seen it on the face of friends as they tried to get him and Dale, in an abandoned South American temple, while a drum beat command and the smell of chocolate rose from the vats.
‘Oh no… he couldn’t have…’ Chip’s thoughts didn’t prevent him from creeping up outside the crack in the facing and observing carefully for signs of movement. Seeing nothing, he slid into the crack which led to one of those ‘left over’ spaces human buildings had in such abundance. He followed it quietly and came to a gap that led down into a basement, abandoned or used for storage by the look of it. Boxes and other junk were stacked around including several ancient pieces of furniture. A series of planks formed ramps between boxes leading down to a large dresser where Rat Capone was holding court.
Chip immediately headed off to one side and arranged himself in a good but concealed vantage point. He was prone on top of a box, using a telescope, once a present from Gadget, and a paper cone listening device. The various shops were part of what had once been a much bigger building, and the cellar had originally been common to most of the rooms above. The individual cellars were split off by badly fitted plywood partitions and the crooks had taken advantage of this to scavenge from the cellars of the entire row.
The self styled gangster rat was on a large comfy throne, made out of various junk hammered together around a fancy bookend. A dozen tall candles formed a row of pillars along the edge, their light glinting the throne and the stuff piled beside it. A large plastic flask of the sort you might find in a tropical survival kit stood beside him, with a gantry arrangement. . Several syringes lay on the floor, the dregs of some green goo in them.
To the front and to one side, Arnold Mousenegger was standing stripped to the waist and beating time on a snare drum, obviously some musicians meal ticket from the pawn shop sticker still on it. The mouse and the hamster made their way down to the throne and dumped out their sacks which contained valuables onto the mount of stuff already there.
“Alright, youse guys, now go back and pick up whatever you left off doin’. You won’t remember coming here or anything.”
The pair left the same way they came and Mousenegger stopped the drum beat with a tara-diddle. “Say boss, do I have’ta do the drumming this way? I feel kinda dumb, and I look silly too.”
“That’s cause you are dumb, ya lugnut. We follow the instructions we got from that German guy to the letter. Only a great mind like Rat Capone could turn our little vacation around like this.”
Arnold, not knowing when to shut up, said, “But we only found out about the juice ‘cause Sugar Ray heard the bozo crying into his beer in that port bar. And I was the one who stole the scroll with the instructions.”
Now Chip remembered fully. A chocolate maker, ‘Heinrich Von Sugarbottom’ his card-file memory popped up, had used a hypnotic juice, injected by mosquitoes, to create zombie slave labour to steal cocoa trees from the Peruvian jungle. Only Dale had escaped them initially and had done a creditable job of saving the rest of them. One of the first ones he awoke was Chip. Sugarbottom had been zapped by his own juice and put to work replanting the trees. Obviously he’d managed to retain a copy of the recipe, but unable to go back and try again.
Capone jumped up from the throne and Arnold got cuffed round the head for his pains. “Shaddap! I was the one to figger out how ta use it best. This is just the beginning, the normal juice is good for small stuff. But it’s when we get that stuck up mouse inventor that the fun really starts. I told her she was gonna be my moll, and the special stuff will make sure she does whatever I tell her to, see?”
Chip froze up. They were after Gadget? Just before they’d been booted into the cargo hold of the freighter, Rat Capone had yelled at Gadget, “One day I’ll come back, and then you’ll be my moll!” Of course that had been some time ago. His thoughts whiled into overdrive. ‘Not happening. Never happening, and what was that about special stuff?’
“But we don’t know where she lives boss. Plus she and those other Ranger types work together and they’re always around each other too. How we gonna get her alone?”
“I been thinking see. We set up a heist, but it’s a trap. Those dirty rats will come along all ready to stop us and we shoot ‘em all with syringe darts full of the normal stuff. Then we can control ‘em, get her away and give her the special juice.”
“I still don’t get why this frail’s so important, boss. She’s just a skirt, and she don’t even wear a skirt, just that purple thing all’a time.”
Capone sneered and poured himself some bourbon from the bottle beside him. “That’s why I’m the boss see? She’s some kinda hot shot inventor, remember? With her building stuff for me, I’ll become undisputed boss of the whole a’ New York. Plus she’s decorative, and she turned me down. No-one does that to Rat Capone and gets away with it.” He swirled the glass, more dolls house furniture gear. He was going for sophisticated villain, but he was no Fat Cat. He looked like what he was, a cheap hood swilling down expensive hooch.
Chip was already planning what he needed to do to, destroying the green goo and this special stuff was clearly the top priority, when he heard a noise from behind and to the side of him. He turned over to see the figure of Sugar Ray Lizard and two other big tough guys with the blank look of zombies. Mentally berating himself, ‘Of course they’d have patrols. Idiot!’, he nonetheless sprang up with a ‘Pistachio!’
He tried to pull out a sleep ammo round for a distraction, but all the two guys jumped him at Sugar Ray’s command. He tried to duck and weave between them, but caught a foot in the gap between the flaps of the cardboard box. They quickly grappled him and Sugar Ray’s tail snapped out to wrap round his throat, throttling him. He tried to dislodge it, but it wouldn’t let go. His vision blurred and faded.
Waking up again was not a pleasant experience. It felt like someone had been trying to unscrew his head. For a second he regretted that they hadn’t succeeded, after all why stay attached to something that hurt this much. His vision came into focus, along with his sense of smell and quickly wished it hadn’t. Rat Capone’s ugly mug was not something you wanted to see at a time like this, and the twin bouquet of sewer rat and alcohol did nothing to improve things.
“Well now, if it isn’t the leader of the Rescue Rejects, Chump.” Rat Capone had clearly been practising villainous sneering during his time away. Chip stood mute, not wishing to give the big goon the satisfaction of seeing him squirm. Not that he had any choice about the standing part, it felt like he was tied to the bottle gantry with his forepaws together above his head. His hind paws just touched the ground on tiptoe. He was also wearing nothing but fur, he could see his jacket and hat discarded out of the corner of his eye.
“Not talking, huh?” Capone fumed. “Well you’re gonna, see? You’ll tell us everything we want to know and then some.”
“Can I beat on him some more, huh boss, can I?”, Sugar Ray’s voice called.
The rat grinned an unpleasant grin. “No we’ll loosen his tongue without loosening his teeth. Payback comes later.”
It was Arnold’s voice this time. “Whaddya mean boss?”
“I think he means the needle.” Sugar Ray replied.
“Yeah, the needle.” Capone said, hauling back a fist and punching Chip in the stomach. “That was a down payment on your account. Don’t worry, it’ll be paid in full.”
Bile rose in Chips throat. “I don’t know what’s worse, your breath or the cheesy dialogue.” That got him a smack across the chops.
“You don’t talk smart to me, see? You’re gonna spill your guts and then I’m gonna get the girl and juice her right in front of you. It ain’t like the stuff we’re giving you, it’s permanent. She’ll do whatever I tell her, permanently.”
Sugar Ray and Arnold approached, carrying a hypodermic needle. It was designed
to give humans local anaesthetic, which mean at rodent scale it looked like
a rifle barrel. The hypnotic juice dripped from it’s tip.