Part 22: Base Noir

Update 22: Base Noir



So there I was conducting a murder investigation on what looked like a simple overdose, the kind that happened dozens of times a day in New Reno. Papa Wright wasn't going to accept that, so I started by asking around about the kid…Keith figured it was a dealer or the Mordinos, since they were the most heavily invested in Jet.



The good news was that two of his main suspects were already in my pocket, so getting some kind of answers out of them wouldn't be too hard. He was most suspicious of Lil' Jesus, but from what I'd seen of him it was more likely that Lil' Jesus would have just knifed the kid.



Keith had a lot to say about Richard, and if half of it was true I thought they were right to be suspicious. Then again, every family thinks well of their kids and him being recently deceased meant that nobody was willing to speak ill of him. I got Keith's permission to look around in his room, although I wasn't sure what I thought I was going to find.



Finding an empty jet canister under the dresser showed that the Wrights weren't exactly right about Richard… he'd definitely been using, even if he'd been hiding his empties like a kid. I held on to the jet canister since they wouldn't thank me for pointing it out and then went to see Richard's mother.



She was an older woman with all the right curves in all the wrong places, probably as a consequence of there being more than a dozen Wright children running around. The weirdest thing was that she introduced herself as the head of the Temperance Union, which had to be a conflict of interest with the family business.



She broke down when I brought up Richard, and seemed to have no difficulty with the idea that he might have strayed and gotten started on Jet. No idea on pushers, but that was because she was half convinced that everyone in the city was a dealer. Not that she was far wrong.



I tried to tell her that we called it alcohol too, but that was like standing in front of a freight train. She ran right over me and started in on the vices of New Reno, and it took all of my considerable conversational skill to keep from telling her that I knew from experience that people enjoyed drinking, gambling, and whoring.



Instead, I went looking for dealers. Out of sheer convenience I started with Jagged Jimmy J, who was parked out front of the boxing ring in the middle of the street. That would have been a bit more dangerous when there were more cars on the road, but in this case it just made him very visible.



"Jimmy, play it straight with me and I'll be straight with you. You said your Jet was safe… does that mean that there's bad shit out there?"

"Hell, all's I'M sayin' is Jimmy likes his buyers happy and ALIVE. Draw yer own conclusions, my pilot friend. Is breathin' more important to you than shaving a few chips off your next Jet purchase?"

"I got a stiff who took a whiff off of this canister, Jimmy. Know anything about it?"



"Poisoned? I thought he was crazy, but it looks like pops was on to something…Jimmy, who did it? Was it you?"

"Naw, I don't… look, now, don't be spreading the word that's mine… if I were you, I'd ask Jules and Renesco about it… but you didn't hear that from me, right?"

"You've been real up front, Jimmy. If anybody asks I didn't hear nothin' from nobody, and I never talked to you in my life. You definitely didn't sing like a canary."

"What the hell's a canary?"

"Don't worry about it Jimmy. I'm pretty sure that where he grew up the only mystery novel around was a bad detective story."



"Come clean, Renesco. Did you sell Jet to Richard Wright?"

"Don't you even TRY and pin that accusation on me. You want to know who did it, ask Tweedledum and Tweedledumber if they're still selling Jet laced with arsenic."

"Can it, geezer. Look at this Jet canister and tell me what's wrong with it."

"It's empty. It's a Jet canister like the hundreds of others all over New Reno. Anything else I can help you with?"

"So do all the hundreds of Jet canisters in Reno have radscorpion venom inside of them?"



"Gotcha, you son of a bitch. You poisoned the kid, didn't you?"

"Whoa! Now wait just a minute…!"

"Don't mess with me, Renesco! You try and weasel out this one and you'll be joining Richard out on the Golgotha plains. Understand?"

"Wait a minute! Look… I didn't sell it to the kid! He never bought anything from me! I… was asked to make some Jet laced with radscorpion venom, but… but I didn't sell it to the kid!"

"So if you didn't sell it to the stiff, who did you sell it to?"



"Just adults, huh, Renesco? You sorry son of a bitch…you had to know they were going to kill someone with it! There wasn't anything else they could have used it for!"



"Yeah, I'm sure you had the best of intentions while you were spiking that Jet with poison… but you're right, in this lousy town we've all got to get by and you'd be dead now. Hell, if Salvatore has his way you'll be going the same direction as that kid… I won't rat you out, but that's because you're already more screwed than I could make you even if I tried. Goodbye, Renesco."

"Kid, was the only mystery book in your village a noir detective novel?"

"Well… yeah. How did you know?"

"It wasn't hard."



"You were right. Your son didn't die of an overdose. He was poisoned."

"Wh…? Poisoned? What in hell's name are you talking about?"

"They used a compound extracted from the juice of the common.."

"I got this man. Dey put the radscorp juice in the jet and make it look like an overdose so nobody looks close."

"Assuming I believe this for a second… and I ain't saying I am… then who poisoned my son? And why did they go to the trouble of dosing' him with Jet?"

"Well, Bishop tried to hire me to kill somebody else and make it look like an accident, but it was the Salvatores. Renesco doctored up some jet for them, but he didn't know they were going to use it on your boy."

"Weren't you going to not rat him out?"

"Oops."



"Uh, but Renesco didn't give Richard the Jet… he didn't know who it was for… it was the SALVATORES that poisoned your son."

"Now why in hell would they do that?"

"I don't know. Maybe you should ask them."



"What?"



"Sure, as long as it's not another murder investigation. Once was enough."

"It so happens, not too long ago, I came across a map that shows an old army base in the mountains not far from here. You find a way in there, and I'll see that you're taken care of."

"Hell, that sounds easy in comparison. No problem."



I was grateful for the fact that we were actually getting coordinates rather than vague directions.



It was actually a pretty good distance away up in the mountains, but we found our way using abandoned roads that had actually held up pretty well without people tearing them up.



The last people who'd tried to get into the Army base hadn't done very well. Hopefully they weren't all Wright's kids.



A bit of looking around revealed that the idiots had tried to run directly past an auto-cannon armed with a pair of mini guns. I'd seen what a single one in the hands of Marcus could do, and I could only imagine a machine would be even more freakishly accurate.



My plan was to stay as far back out of their range as possible and use my scoped rifle to disable some of the more important looking bits, but Sulik and Marcus decided that instead I would be drawing the turrets attention while they went and smashed it to pieces. I'm amazed that it didn't end up with one of them in bloody chunks on the ground.



The tricky bastards who had designed the place tucked one of the turrets around a couple of blind corners so that we had to get uncomfortably close to deal with it. Shooting through a wire fence is a lot tougher than you'd think.



Out front of the main entrance there was a tiny sub-bunker surrounded by explosive plates and with a shock trap built into the door frame. I don't know how many soldiers they must have lost on a daily basis back when people actually worked here. Dynamite, by the way, makes a dandy way of disarming delicate electronic traps.



"Ooh, I can use tha…"

"I got it. Still got a bullet in we and our ass from your minigun."

"That shell doesn't look like it goes with that rocket launcher for some reason."



It did, however, fit neatly into an artillery piece that was conveniently already pointed at the front door. You'd think they'd have wanted it pointed out toward where enemies would come from, but the military mind is a mysterious thing.



My skin started to tingle as soon as we stepped into the high voltage area and investigated a ladder leading underneath the generators. Even a century and a half after the war ended everything still worked, which was pretty surprising.

You actually will take damage if you stand around inside the marked area. This is one of the few places in the game that use this mechanic, with the other notable example being a bad luck Special encounter.



There was a giant switch labeled "main power" so naturally we flipped it. Considering that they were paranoid enough to leave fully automated turrets and explosives on their front door I didn't want to deal with whatever was actually inside the base.



Once we'd stowed a few of our ill gotten gains in the trunk of the car, we were finally ready to head inside and see what scraps of pre-war technology were still left.