Smoke on Seventh Street
June 2, 2025
The alley behind Seventh Street Liquor smelled like piss, old beer, and something worse. It was the kind of place where secrets got dumped with yesterday’s trash. Detective Iris Connolly had been on the force for twelve years, and she’d seen her share of crime scenes—but this one was different.
The victim was slumped against a brick wall, hands in his pockets like he’d just taken a smoke break. Only his eyes were wide open and glassy, and a neat bullet hole rested between them.
“Name’s Wallace Bricks,” said Officer Damon, flipping through a wallet with gloved fingers. “Local bookie. Ran numbers for half the neighborhood.”
“Anybody see it?” Iris asked, crouching to study the body.
“Store owner across the street heard the shot around midnight. Didn’t see a damn thing. Said the cameras ‘ain’t been working since Tuesday.’”
Iris scanned the alley. No casings. No footprints. Just the lingering scent of gunpowder and the faint flicker of a streetlamp that was about to die.
Professional job.
She straightened up and looked at the message spray-painted behind the body:
“DEBTS GET PAID.”
Back at the precinct, Iris dug into Wallace’s file. He had a long list of clients—gamblers, hustlers, a couple of minor politicians. All of them owed, or had owed, something. But one name jumped out: James LaRue.
James had once been a rising star in the city council before scandal and addiction sent him spiraling. He owed Bricks over ten grand.
“Bring him in,” she told Damon.
James LaRue looked like a man who had been living on borrowed time and credit. Eyes sunken, fingers twitching, lips dry.
“I didn’t kill him,” he said the moment he sat down.
“Funny,” Iris said, “no one said you did.”
“I know how this works,” he muttered. “Bricks was scum, but I didn’t shoot him. I was with my sponsor last night.”
“Got a name?”
“Margaret Flint. She runs the shelter off Lincoln.”
Damon checked it out. The alibi held.
For now.
By Day Two, another body dropped.
Same alley. Same pose.
This time it was Nico Salinas, a low-level enforcer known for collecting debts with a crowbar. Message on the wall:
“COLLECTORS PAY TOO.”
Iris stared at it, the knot in her stomach tightening. This wasn’t random. Someone was working their way through a list. A vendetta—but with method.
That night, she sat in her car outside Bricks’ old office. Watched. Waited.
At 2:43 AM, the front door creaked open. A figure stepped inside.
Iris followed.
The office smelled like stale smoke and mold. The figure was bent over the desk, rifling through drawers.
“Hands up,” Iris barked, gun raised.
The figure froze.
Slowly, he turned. A young man—maybe twenty. Skinny. Eyes full of fire and fury.
“Name,” Iris demanded.
He hesitated. “Milo.”
“Milo what?”
He said nothing.
Damon cuffed him while Iris dug through the drawers. In one, she found a worn notebook with lists of names—and red X’s beside Bricks and Salinas.
“Who gave you this?” she asked.
“My brother,” Milo said quietly. “Before they killed him.”
Back at the station, Milo told the story.
His brother, Reggie, had borrowed from Bricks. The debt ballooned. When he missed a payment, Salinas and another guy paid him a visit.
They beat him so badly he died two days later. The cops called it an overdose.
“No one looked into it,” Milo said, eyes burning. “No one cared. So I did what they wouldn’t.”
“You’re not a killer,” Iris said softly.
He didn’t answer.
That night, Iris reviewed Reggie’s file. The timeline matched. Witnesses had reported Salinas dragging someone into an alley a week before Reggie died.
It had been buried.
She stared at the last page of Bricks’ ledger. One final name without an X.
“A. Voss”
Arthur Voss was a retired cop. Long before Iris’s time. But his name still carried weight in the department—corrupt weight.
She found him at his bar in Northside, nursing a bourbon.
“You here to drink or dig?” he asked.
“Depends,” she said. “You used to work collections for Bricks?”
He chuckled darkly. “Retirement hobby.”
“You’re the last name on the list.”
He sipped his drink. “Then I guess I’d better keep it short.”
When he reached for something under the bar, Iris was faster.
Gun out. Hammer cocked.
“Don’t,” she said.
He froze.
“You protected Bricks. Covered for Salinas. All for a cut.”
“You can’t prove—”
“I don’t have to. Milo’s already confessed. And his story lines up.”
Voss’s hand twitched.
Iris didn’t hesitate. One shot—clean through the shoulder.
He slumped, cursing.
In the end, Voss lived. So did Milo—though he went away for two counts of murder.
At sentencing, the judge called him a “dangerous vigilante.” Iris called him a kid who did what justice wouldn’t.
And every time she drove by that alley, the one with the faint letters still clinging to the bricks, she remembered:
In a city full of debts, sometimes the only payment people understood was blood.