The Hat (short story

The Hat



I once was a cop. That was in the city of Bane, in the country of Thune. I wasn't a good cop...But, I wasn't a bad cop either. Yes, I took money... And , I took drugs....And, I enjoyed the company of easy women. But I was a good investigator. In fact, that's what lead to all the trouble.


Henri Ankiwi was a blackman from the country of Samadeii. He was mature ,yet his age was
indeterminate. His face was round, very dark , and he had no hair on his face. His skin was very smooth. He was somewhat short, yet he seemed sturdy. His voice was soft, and his speech was almost like music. Henri alway wore hats... Not always the same one, but he seemed to have several. He often seemed to favor a small grey one with a black band. It was because of this habit, that I often refered to Henri as "The Hat."

Henri was a conman , and petty theif. He was also one of my informants. In fact, Henri was my best informant. He alway provided me with very good data and info.... This is why I almost thought of him as a friend.... Almost.


Now, if The hat could set me on to the trail of a scam that could make me a little money on the side... Well. I was always very happy. Not only could I line my pockets with a little extra cheddar...I could also put away some "riff raff...and look good to the Brass.


One day The hat told me about some suspicious activity in the wearhouse district... So I followed the lead. Now, often criminals work at night, to use the darkness to mask their activities... But, this group thought they were smart... They operated in the early morning... before noon... Their "mask" was to pretend as if they were doing normal activities... That was their way to blend in to the normal cityscape.


I staked out an alley in the wearhouse district. I saw the operators in the same location, three times in one week... The only thing was... I couldn't figger out just what they were smuggling... Now, I haveta tell ya... I usually work alone... That's the only way this thing works... If I have a partner.. Well, he might blab... If I tell the Brass... then, there's no chedder for me... So, it's pretty much a solo act... The Hat gets his cut of course...


It was on a Tuesday. It was early spring. The sky was blue, with just a few clouds...
That's when I struck..


A big transport truck was in the alley... The driver was in the cab... The truck was loaded.
I had seen that from my lookout position. It looked like the driver was getting ready to take off... His engine was on...

And then I made my move... I ran down the alley, gun in one hand my badge in the other..

I could see the frightened look on the driver's face.. He tried to back the truck up... But
the alley deadended behind him...So, there was nowhere to go....

He was sitting there , holding the wheel, with a stupid look on his face...His eyes wide, and his mouth empty... I told him to scram.

I ran behind the truck to the wearhouse where they had been loading from.. It was empty...
I guess they heard me coming...Haw!


There wer crates packed on the truck. They were packed up so tight, I couldn't open them without tools. I decided to go snooping in the wearhouse..

The area was well maintained, and clean...Not like most wearhouses... It was only five stories high.. and every floor seemed to be empty... But there was an elevator to the basement... and, it wasn't a freight elevator like you would normally expect. It was alift like in an apartment building... I decided to take a ride..


When I reached the basement, ther was a narrow hallway... I followed it on.. the hallway turned to the left, and I continued to follow. At the end of this hallway was another lift...

This was beginning to get interesting...




To be continued...

The Hat pt.2


...I had always thought it was uncanny, the way The Hat could always provide sources of info and data... It was like he had a sixth sense or something... He always joked, that it was just his lucky hat. Sometimes, If I glanced at The Hat out the corner of my eye...it was almost like I was seeing two people...One was strong and wiry... the other one seemed somehow vulnerable. I usually shrugged it off, as that's why The hat was such a good conman.
I was thinking this as I descended through the second elevator... I went down seven floors... undergroun...,Then the lift stopped.

I stepped out into an area that was ultra modern. It was a large area and there were four thick metal doors.There was a thick metal wired window, head high on each door...
The first room appeared to be a lab... So did the second and third.

When I looked through the fourth door... I nearly fell on my ass from shock....
In the lab room, was The Hat!

The Hat was in a lab chair... It was metal, and tubular... like a raised reinforced lawn chair with restraints... But, the strangest thing was... Their was a device fitted over The Hat's head... He had to stare straigth forward and upward... Their were metal braces. and metal devices that forced his eyes open... But, even stranger than that was.. above his forehead, about a foot in the air...spinning freely... was a tennis ball!

It appeared as if The Hat was spinning a tennis ball in the air ...with the power of his min!. Or rather, being forced to. So... Did that mean The Hat had psychic powers..? Was he telekenetic...? Did this explain why The Hat was always able to ferret out useful, if not obscure data and info...?

When I looked closely, it appeared that The hat was not conscious...He seemed asleep, even though his eyes were forced to remain open.... It looked like some kinds tourture and I was determined to free The hat from this strange device...

What kind of people would have done something like this? But this was not the most vile thing I had seen someone do...even if it seemed one of the strangest... Truly, some people
would do just about anything for self profit...or even for self gratification...
I reflected...I had become a cop because of my cynical nature... I became an undercover cop because of my distrust and distaste of humanity...

Then.... I heard a voice... A voice that I reconized...

..."Even if you free them...There is no garantee that they will survive... The procedure was intrusive... and, I'm afraid I cannot know how much damage has been done to their mind"...


This was the voice of the psycholigist assigned to the district investigations department...

I had encountered her before...


...It was my first undercover assignment... Before that I had been little more than a goffer, and a "bagman"...
When an officer first becomes a detective, he is the low man on the totem pole... So, he has to do the grunt work... While the seasoned detectives bust down the door to arrest a suspect, especially a drug suspect, the bag man waits at the back door of a joint, or the side window... so if the suspects try to toss out the contraband you are ther to grab it or catch it... Sarge taught me that...


I had first met Sarge on banks of the Ponochioo river... He was still on reserve duty as a Marine NCO (Non Comissioned Officer) he has me to help him fly a small plane dowe the "Gold coast" , a known hotbed of drug trafficers.. I t was after that that I received my first solo assignment...


...It was part of Tinsel Town , the film making capitol... Seaside... and I had wormed my way ito the entorage of a minor filmstar... I was a nameless member of his "posse"...in hopes that this nondescript position would lead me to bigger fish... middle management, or higher in the drug trade... Now, to work areound people who take drugs.. you often have to take them too... It's the only way to maintain your "cover'...

I was at a beach house in Seaside... We had been smoking Buzz all day... I watched in a semi-stupor as everyone left the beach house... Leaving me alone with a goodly stash of drugs... It was lucky for me... or ... it was a setup...

About twenty minutes after everyone left... He came in through the side door... It was the local Buzz supplier... But, he was also a Narc... a narcotics cop... It was a danger to anyone who knew that...

I was sitting on the sofa... a big drug pipe in front of me.. The Narc was a little tall, he had blond hair and a beard... He looked like a biker... and, he had on sunglasses...
He was waring well worn bluegeans, and a distressed brown leather, waist length jacket.. I could see his pistol sticking out of his jacket from a shoulder holster...

He sat on the coffee table right in front of me, close ... too close... He put some Buzz in the pipe and told me to take a blast... I knew he was planning to kill me...

I reached for the bowl... My hand were shaking (on purpose) I leaned back with seeming trepredation.. before taking what might very well be my last blast... As I leaned back,
I slowly eased my fingers for the pistol hidden under a throw pillow behind me on the sofa... I saw the Narc lean back slowly to reach for his gun... As I leaned forward to prentend to take a toke I slowly pulled my pistol out and blasted the Narc three three times..
Blam ! Blam ! Blam ! He fell backwards off the coffee table... deader than a doorknob.


Now this situation had provided a little bit of trouble for me.. I had killed a cop... a fellow officer... Haw! I had some explaining to do...

In the end... the Brass has decided that it was good shoot , and that I was something of a minor hero... I had uncovered a bad cop and put a dent in the local drug trade...
But, it had been the police psychologist that had tried to convince everyone that I had murdered a fellow policeman... She had said that I was nothing more than a "sociopath with a badge"...

... And now, here she was again, in the great here and now... Well honey, "dirty is as dirty does"., I thought out loud...



...To be continued...



[edit on 18-12-2008 by cosmokatt7]

[edit on 18-12-2008 by cosmokatt7]

The Hat pt.III (conclusion)




... I was facing a person I never expected to see again... The Psychologist..! That dirty wench had two henchmen with her... They looked like "Inchabod" and "Blutto"... One was thin
as a rail, and looked almost grey, with decay... The other one was beefy with underlying muscles... Although I was disstainful of them... that did not mean that they weren't
dangerous.

Here I was in a hidden underground lab confronted with gun weilding adversaries... with a almost friend strapped to some strange device out of a sci fi film...with a tennis ball spinning a foot above his head..

Behind me, The hat, on the torture rack, lawn chair lay motionless...

Everyone was waiting for the shoe to drop... But... It was the tennis ball that dropped first...

It hit the floor with a loud Plop!... and everyone looked...

Then... something odd happened... Thewe window in the thick metal lab door shattered! There was a strange tinkle... There was a loud crash! as the thick glass hit the cement floor...

That's when I made my move...!

Out came my pistol.. and I aimed for the head of "Blutto"...

Blam.! Blam.! Two shots rung out... one hit "blutto" in the neck... the other one missed him entirely...

Blam.! Blam.! Two more shots echoed... They perforated "Inchabod" in the chest... both of them...

The two goons lay on the floor mortally wounded...bleeding profusely...



The Psychologist had run for one of the combination lock doors at the sound of the first shot... I raced toward her, but she was through the door before I could reach her...

I turned my attention to The Hat..

...As I was unstrapping him from the scif lawnchair torture device... I started to think back.. to our first meeting...




... The Hat had been a petty, theif, and his speciality was Art books... He frequented a chain bookstore on the main drag... he musta been a neophyte then... 'cause I had no trouble catching him.

We had been alearted that a lot of inventory came up missing in this certain bookshop... The clerks were suspicious of a frequent visitor to the bookshop, who never seemed to buy aqnything... It was The Hat.

I shadowed him and observed... One day he was operating... I made my move...

As he was placing an Art book under his heavy overcoat, into the small of his back. I walked around the corner of the book bin to confront him. I had caught him red handed... He looked at me sheepishly, embarrassed... and handed the book to me. I pointed toward the store door, singnaling him to leave the premis... I didn't even bother to bust him...

maybe, that had been a mistake. Instead of stopping his theivery, he upped the ante...

In the months to come, t6here was a rash of book thefts... mostly, from that same shop.
In fact, now The Hat had come to the attention of some regional Federal officers... they
assigned a Fed named Vance Woodward to take, and break the case. Vance was a solid enough agent, if not somewhat lowbrow...His nickname was "Woody"...because wel... he really liked strippers...Haw!

Woody stalked out he same bookstore I had... Now, Woody was good... Although he had a habit of using by the book methods... Still, there is a reason these methods are 'still in the book'...



The Hat had just picked up a premumium edition of Salvatore Dali, with golf leaf on the cover... he kneeled down and placed the book at his side. As he rose... he felt a prickle at the back of his neck, and turned... A balding, thick man with glasses was holding a newspaper as if he was reading it. He lowered the newspaper, and looked directly at The Hat.
Then he smiled... a wide sly ,knowing grin...

The Hat cocked his head on aleart. he turned slowly, and walked just as sliwly down the book isle... toward the cashier, and the entrasnce to the bookshop. Above the cashier's counter, facing the store area, was a large concave morror... The Hat glanced at the mirror...and could see the entire store... He saw the Fed behind him following quickly.
he continued walking, slowly to the door. As he opened the door , he could feel the cool evening air... He saw neon signs reflected off the slick black asphalt streets...
As soon as he was out the door he started running... Woody was behind him running frantically, chasing in pursuit...

The Hat ran through the parking lot... "Stop!...Stop!... screamed Woody. The Hat ran directly toward a 7 foot redwood fence ... But... there was an opening in the fence...
and he was away...







I removed the last of the Hat's restraints... he stirred slightly, then his eyes closed.
Then... something strange happened.

As his eyes closed, The hat's features seemed to shift somewhat and change... It was kinda like the effect you get if you take the drug haze; the world seems to somehow shift and change..

The Hat's face wasn't round anymore... Now it looked oval and refined...even delicate... The hat's wool cap fell off to reveil tightly curled, but very fine hair... and a gold earring on each ear... The Hat's heavy coat fell away, and his thick wool shirt parted... to reveal a set of the ripest, finest, most well formed broe bazooms I had even seen...

Good golly Miss Molly...! The Hat was a girl...!

..What! How could it be...! What kinda detective was I, not to know it..or even guess it..!

The Hat's eyes opened slowly... They were cloudly but focused....

In a small sing song voice The Hat haltingly stammered... "I love you... I've always loved you"...

Then her eyes slowly closed... The spark slowly faded... and was gone forever.



...I was still trying to understand...My almost friend...was really an erotic woman... who had always loved me...!

I was attempting to wrap my brain around this, when I head an irritating recognizable voice... The Psychologist..!

"We suspect they used their formitible mental abilities to mask their true idenity... and gender. We wanted to study those abilities... but I think the stress was too much for the poor creature"...

I was turning, in rage, to face that despicable, unfeeling person...



...He felt a heavy blow to the side of his head... Darkness encroached...as he faded in the heavy velvet of oblivion...









The End

It has a dreamlike quality...actually it seems like two different dreams, the first one ending with the ball in the air, and then the other incidents, bookstealing, and The Hat being a woman being the second dream...
To my taste, if you would have stopped with the ball in the air, that unexplained weirdness, fleshed out a bit, that could be a strangely intriguing little story...something good in there

nine-eyed-eel

...Thanks for the informative, and insightful comments...

Indeed, parts of this story came from dreams..

And, other parts came from real life...(Haw!)


..Next, I think I will post a series of (dream) story vignettes...

I think I may call it "Virtual Night"


Cheers!

[edit on 19-12-2008 by cosmokatt7]

I have always enjoyed reading your stories thanks for sharing another great one. Very exciting, had a bit of a Dean Koontz element to it.

... Thanks Worldwatcher... I always appreciate the encouragement...


...Actually, I have never read Dean Koontz... So now maybe I'll give it a try!