Sporemageddon

It took two days to arrange for the arrest of Ol’ Jim.

The local police was willing to arrest the man, but when the chief of police asked Mallory about the overall situation and discovered how connected Ol’ Jim was, he decided to err on the side of caution.

Mallory wished he could be upset, but crossing one's Ts and dotting one’s Is wasn’t something he’d look down on. The arrest was a delicate thing, especially as Ol’ Jim had a few guards and contacts within Ratesco’s Union.

It still went smoothly.

For all that the dealer had some local thugs hired to keep him safe, they weren’t the kinds of men equipped--either materially or mentally--to stand up to a full squad of bullies charging into the bar with billy clubs and voices raised. They scampered off in a jiffy, and it was only luck that let the cops catch Ol’ Jim halfway out of a window.

The man was spitting mad, and managed to shank an officer with a knife, which earned him a few hard wallops before he was loaded into a wagon and carted off to the nearest station.

Mallory attended the interrogations, but didn’t interfere, not on that first day.

They had pretty concrete proof that Ol’ Jim, or Jim Oldsworth as his record said, was selling illegal substances. That didn’t include the mushrooms-based drugs, which hadn’t yet been made illegal.

They were working on that, but the cogs of bureaucracy could be slow at times. In a few months, the sale, possession and distribution of sleeping powders would be made officially against the law, at least within City Nineteen. That would help, a little.