There's an old saying: fame is to a man what fat is to a pig — it makes you a target. The language is uncharitable, but the principle holds.
Jude sat on the tricycle and looked at the two men blocking the road with the professional detachment of someone assessing a logistics problem.
Central City is too comfortable, he thought. The ecosystem hasn't selected for competence yet. In Gotham, these two would have been sorted out by the food chain before they got their first job.
"You know I'm registered with the local crews," he said. "You know my arrangement."
The burly one — big, straightforward, already halfway to answering — opened his mouth.
"We don't care about your gang arrangement," the skinny one cut in, grabbing his partner's arm. "Hand over the wallet. We leave. Simple."
Jude checked the time display in the corner of his vision. Fifty seconds.
"You didn't come to my apartment," he said, more to himself than to them, working it through. "You made contact with the crews. They gave you information — my banking habits, the daily deposits, the fact that I don't keep cash at home." He looked at the skinny one. "You're not here for the wallet. You're here to collect a bounty and make it look like a robbery gone wrong."
The burly one's eyes went wide. "How does he—"
"Shut up, Matthew." The skinny one — Brian, apparently — delivered this along with an elbow to Matthew's ribs. "I told you. Less talking, more doing. Every single time."
Matthew rubbed his side, looking aggrieved.
"Serious question," Jude said. "Those gangs have been watching me for three months. Three months, and they still haven't moved directly. Why do you think that is?" He let that sit for a moment. "They posted a bounty instead of handling it themselves. They gave you just enough information to feel confident and not enough to feel cautious. They're using you to test whether I'm actually manageable, and if things go wrong, you absorb the consequences. They're not partners — you're a probe."
Matthew turned to Brian. "He's... not wrong about that."
"He's stalling—"
"If I were you," Jude continued, pleasantly, "I'd turn around right now and have this conversation with the crew instead of me. They owe you an honest accounting of the risk profile, and they clearly didn't provide one. I'm telling you more about your situation in two minutes than they did in whatever briefing they gave you. Doesn't that say something?"
Brian had reached the limit of his patience, which Jude had been able to see coming for about thirty seconds. The pistol came out from his waistband.
"Someone paid to kill you," Brian said flatly. "So we kill you. That's the whole thing."
"Fair enough," Jude said. "Good luck."
Forty-five seconds had elapsed.
Yomogi, which had been sitting beside the front wheel in its full round Siamese disguise, reached under the chassis of the tricycle and produced an acorn-handled cat shovel approximately two-thirds of its own body length. It had been carrying this the entire time, in a location that defied straightforward physical explanation, with the equanimity of something that did not find this unusual.
It jumped.
The cat shovel connected with Brian's face and Matthew's face in sequence — not a devastating blow by any technical measure, two points of attack in the game sense, functionally a firm tap — but the source of the tap was a round purple-tinted Siamese cat with a shovel, which had appeared from underneath a food cart, and the humiliation of the experience registered at a level that the pain alone could not have produced.
Two bright red marks bloomed across two faces.
Jude had already turned the ignition.
The tricycle's modified engine delivered him approximately twelve meters down the street in the time it took Brian and Matthew to process what had just happened to them, and then the colour spread from the marks on their faces to the rest of their faces, and Matthew grabbed Brian by the collar, and they ran.
"You are dead!"
The shout echoed through the surrounding blocks.
Jimmy had shared the cart's location in the precinct group chat at four minutes past closing time.
Joe had been heading for the exit anyway. He'd checked the message, noted the street, and changed his angle of approach. Several colleagues had done the same, because the three-month accumulation of pastry experiences had produced, in the Central City Police Department's day shift, a level of group investment in the cart's daily movements that probably warranted some professional reflection.
"Joe." One of the officers slowed. "Did you hear shouting?"
"I did."
"Should we—"
Jude's tricycle cleared the corner at a speed inconsistent with food service vehicles, the engine sound preceding it and trailing after it like a signature. He passed the cluster of officers close enough that Joe felt the air displacement and caught a brief impression of a man leaning forward over the handlebars with the focused expression of someone who was going fast on purpose.
"Was that—" Jimmy squinted after it.
"Yes," Joe said.
"He doesn't usually sound like that."
"Stop right there, you dead man!"
Matthew appeared at the corner. He was carrying Brian, who was lighter, and he was running with the momentum of a man carrying a personal grievance that had escalated well beyond its original parameters. His face had the specific dark red of someone who had recently been hit with a small shovel by a cat and found the experience intolerable.
Joe took one look at him, at Brian, at the direction Jude's tricycle had gone, and drew his weapon.
"Stop. Both of you." Four officers fanned out across the sidewalk, hands on holsters. "Hands where we can see them. Why were you chasing that vehicle?"
Brian raised his hands. The pistol was already back at his waistband — he'd been quick about that, at least. "Officer, it's a misunderstanding. The food truck guy took our money and drove off. We were trying to get it back."
The officers looked at each other.
Jimmy, who had been a day-shift regular at the cart for two months and had opinions, made a sound that was nearly a laugh.
"Friend," he said, "do you have any idea what this guy's reputation is around here?"
Brian blinked.
"Three months. He's been working these streets for three months. He's never shorted anyone, never hiked a price, never had a complaint filed. You know what people say about him?" Jimmy tilted his head. "Honest. Genuinely honest. Prices the same for everyone, knows his regulars by name, gives extra to the kids. If he wanted to double his prices, nobody would argue — the product is that good." He stepped forward and reached for Brian's wrist. "An honest man with a food cart. And you two—"
He clicked the handcuffs.
"— come with me."
As it turned out, fame wasn't all bad.