White Fox--Chapter 2, Part 1

I apologize for the late post; I wanted to make sure that this part of my story looked fit enough for my blog.  In this section of White Fox, Renardo deals with the emotional distress of his recent failure in the city.  Mustache Man's link to Malvin (or lack thereof, perhaps?) is also revealed. While this portion of the novel is a bit slow, I find it necessary as a foundation for the rest of the story.  I hope you enjoy the first part of chapter two!

Chapter 2

The Scheme of Doctor Wiles

Part 1

Renardo had sprawled himself across a recliner in one corner of his family room an hour ago, and still he could not summon the courage to face the day.  There had not been a doubt in his mind about Mustache Man’s culpability and connection to Malvin when he had left his home earlier.  The evidence was inarguable, or so he had believed.  But as he reflected continually on his former target’s demeanor, and on his countenance when charged with such wild accusations, he managed to convince himself that, somehow, he had erred in his research;  there was no link between Malvin and Mustache Man.  The very idea caused his stomach to reel and blood rise to his cheeks in shame, and he clasped his hands before his face as if to ward off the judgmental laugh of an unseen foe.  In his long career, he had made few errors, and none of this magnitude.  Perhaps he was getting too old, and his mind was not as sharp as it once was? That was a possibility, but he was only in his mid-twenties.  Perhaps, recognizing for the first time in years potential bridges to Malvin, he had leapt at the first piece of solid evidence, and thus had not checked all of his facts before taking action? Also a possibility.  He sat up in the chair and forced himself to disregard such thoughts.  Sacramento needed him; he could not permit his own mind to stop him from continuing his mission.

The sun had not yet reached its zenith when he stepped out of his house and made his way across the front porch.  Ahead of him, a long string of concrete rived through the uncut lawn and ended at a gate of gothic craft.  A few valley oak trees were scattered across the grass, nearly concealing view of the house from onlookers; large plants, their vines contorting around the dark fence on either side of the gate, further discouraged unwelcome eyes.  Renardo turned left the moment his foot touched the concrete and rounded a huddle of bushes standing before the porch.  He walked along the right side of the house, stopped at a particular bush, and focused his eyes on it.  He reached for a small device hanging from a belt loop on his pants.  At the push of a button, a hidden chain coursed through a downspout along the side of the house and tugged at the bush.  There was a creaking sound, and the bush suddenly rose toward the house, mounted on a door encased in fake dirt.  Renardo stepped down into the revealed cellar, and as he descended the stone steps, the door silently reunited with the earth behind him.

He pressed a second button on the device at his hip, and lights flickered on overhead.  He was in a squat room with four walls, the wall behind him almost completely covered by the staircase.  Against the wall on his left were a recliner and an old television set wedged in a chipped entertainment center; a weapon display case, bearing two sheathed fighting knives, hung between them.  A desk filled up most of the space on the wall to his right, but there was room for a dog bed (currently occupied by Sancho, his Australian shepherd, whose eyes were adjusting to the light) on its left and a miniature bookcase on its opposing side.  Above the desk there loomed a massive plasma screen, to which his computer was connected; nearby, the dog’s bed was overshadowed by a hanging mirror.  The wall ahead of him was blank, save for a rounded display case that reached from the floor to the ceiling.  A black curtain stretched across the interior of the case, blocking all view of its contents.  Crowning a carpet in the center of the room was an unrecognizable practice dummy, scored by thousands of slashes and stabs.

Renardo approached his desk, and Sancho immediately sped from his bed and hopped about his legs.  He laughed and lifted the dog from the floor.  It was always nice to come home to someone so excited by and reliant upon his presence.  Carrying Sancho in one arm, he walked over to the entertainment center, and from it took a bag of dog food and a bowl.  He poured the food into the bowl and returned the bag to its place.  Then he sat at his desk and watched for a moment as Sancho slurped down the food.

“You would be helpless without me, wouldn’t you?” he asked.  “I’m all you have, poor guy.”

The dog said nothing.  Renardo swiveled around to his desk and turned on his computer.  He needed to understand how he had been misled.  Soon his desktop was displayed on the screen, and across it were numerous tabs of electronic paper littered with notes.  On the first note was only one word, “Malvin.”  As he stared at the name, he shut his eyes and recalled a series of crimes that had plagued Sacramento five years prior to the present day; it had taken him two years of research and clandestine tracking to discover that the assaults were not arbitrary, but were guided by a man by the name of Malvin Centius.  Although the organized crimes had stopped, Renardo was likely the only person who was aware that their catalyst was still at large.  He alerted the authorities daily, to no avail.  It was as if their ears were shut off from hearing the truth.  Frustrated and distressed by their incompetence, he made it his personal duty to find Malvin and stop him before he could loose another volley of attacks on the city. 

Malvin covered his tracks well.  He apparently stayed away from all social networking, or utilized a false name when logging in.  His number was unlisted in the white pages.  Typing his name into a search engine yielded few results, none of them of any immediate help to his search; one page led to an article about Malvin’s victory in a spelling bee when he was a boy, another to his results in a fundraising race, and yet another to an article he had written about leadership in business.  At the bottom of the latter page was a brief biography on Malvin, which explained that he was a senior level student at the Wharton University of Pennsylvania.  Unfortunately, Malvin had written the article seven years before Renardo’s discovery of the page, and so he set aside the article for a time.  He commenced a grueling workout routine that lasted months, preparing himself for a potential confrontation with the crime lord.  Finally, a few months ago, he returned to the article and decided to read comments that readers had left on the page.  One commenter referred to Malvin as a former student from the university.  Renardo clicked on the commenter’s user name, found his email address on the following page, and sent him a message.  He wrote that he was considering applying at Wharton, but wanted to sit in on one of the professor’s classes, if that was not too much to ask.  The response came to him a week later: he was not only welcomed to sit in, but encouraged as well.

Thus, he endured the lengthy flight to Pennsylvania and attended a class held by the professor, Doctor Jonathan Wiles.  Once the class had ended, he managed to speak to the man in private, and brought up the name of his “old friend,” Malvin Centius, in an offhand manner.  Wiles exclaimed that Mr. Centius had attended multiple classes of his, and Renardo’s face illumined with artificial amazement.  But this amazement faded and transformed into contemplation, and then to melancholy; it was then that Renardo expressed his dismay over the fact that he and Malvin had grown apart because of Malvin’s constant scholarly involvement.  Now nearly a decade had gone by, and Renardo still cherished the friendship they had once possessed.  He no longer knew where Malvin lived, he lamented to the sympathetic professor.  Wiles remarked that he did not know of his former student’s whereabouts; however, he did know that a close comrade of Malvin’s from the university, Joell Fiore, had moved to California.  If anyone knew where Malvin lived, he explained, it would be Joell.  

Renardo returned to his home in Sacramento and began to search for Joell.  He was shocked when he learned that the man lived in the same city as he.  It was not long before he ascertained his address, and this information permitted him some degree of espionage.  He learned that Joell frequented a diner in downtown Sacramento, and that one consistent day and time at which he visited the place was Saturday at 9:00 AM.  Therefore, before the man’s appointed time this morning, Renardo seated himself at the diner within sight of his target’s usual table.  There were a handful of seats available on that side of the building, but he sat before the cute woman with red hair, knowing that he would be less obvious if it appeared that he were engaged in interesting conversation.  When Joell walked in and took his seat, Renardo realized with some trepidation that the name could be an alias.  Any “close comrade” of Malvin’s was liable to be a shady character.  Until he was certain that the name was legitimate, he labeled him with the pseudonym “Mustache Man” because of his most prominent feature.

After the most unfortunate scuffle in downtown Sacramento, however, Renardo doubted Mustache Man’s shadiness.  The look in his eyes was too genuine; he did not know a thing about Malvin.  Not even a trained fraud could contort his eyes in such a convincing way while having the life beaten out of him.  Renardo leaned back in his chair and sighed.  His search for Joell Fiore had been flawless; there was absolutely no chance of error, because there was only one Joell Fiore in Sacramento.  His heart skipped a beat as a thought came to him.  Joell was not connected to Malvin, and Doctor Wiles had known it.  Somehow, Malvin had anticipated his questioning of the professor, and so he had supplied Wiles with the name of an innocent man.  With a curse that caused Sancho to leap away from his bowl, Renardo sent his fist into the front of his desk.  He had been caught like a fly in a web, and now the citizens of Sacramento had seen their only possible hero attack a man who had not committed a crime.  Even more alarming was the fact that Malvin, the city’s most frightening criminal, knew that Renardo was onto him.