Pier Nine smells like salt, dust, and old paper. Harlan Tate stands trapped behind the desk, pale under the lamp glow, while Dallas Fontaine holds the room in a hard, silent grip.
Harlan Tate
You should have taken the money and walked away.
Dallas flips the ledger open. The second name sits where the margin is smudged, then crossed, then written again with a steady hand. Not Sloane. Not Tate. Someone above them.
Dallas Fontaine
The ink is different on the last line.
Harlan Tate
I handled the transfers. That is all. The rest was arranged by the city clerk, Jonas Bell.
Harlan Tate
If Bell falls, I fall with him.
A boot thunders in the hall. Murderbone snarls at the door. Tate’s composure cracks, and Dallas sees it, the fear of a man who knows the trap is closing on the wrong throat.
Harlan Tate
Bell used the dock permits, the clean manifests, the calls. He knew about your daughter. He wanted the witness gone before she spoke.
The office goes still except for the distant shuffle outside. Tate waits, sweating under the lamp, while Dallas holds the ledger and the truth together. One move now decides whether Tate talks, runs, or dies in his chair.
“I press Tate for Jonas Bell's role”
SUCCESS (Legendary Interrogation, rolled +2)
Dallas lowers the ledger just enough to trap Tate in its shadow, not the hallway. The room narrows around the lamp glow and Tate’s breathing goes thin.
Dallas Fontaine
Tell me exactly what Bell does.
Harlan Tate
He moves permits, signatures, and calls. He keeps the harbor clean on paper, and dirty where it counts.
Tate swallows hard, then keeps going like a man confessing to a judge he fears more than prison.
Harlan Tate
Bell flagged your daughter’s photo, then ordered the witness problem handled. I only knew the paperwork, not the body.
From the hall, the footsteps stop. Someone listens. Murderbone stays rigid at the door, teeth bared, waiting for the wrong hand to appear.
Harlan Tate
The clean route ran through Bell’s office. If you want proof, his copybook is in the civic annex file room.
Tate’s eyes flick to the doorway, then back to Dallas, as if the name itself costs him blood. The hallway quiet turns sharp and close.
The office held its breath. Murderbone kept low at the door, a warning rumbling in his chest, while Harlan Tate stared at the floor, shaken and spent.
Harlan Tate
Bell set it all up. The transfers, the pressure, your girl. It was him.
Dallas Fontaine
Then the lie ends with him.
Dallas pocketed the truth from the civic annex and let the silence settle around it.
By the time the door stopped rattling, the case had a shape and a name. Jonas Bell's shadow no longer belonged to rumor, and Harlan Tate had nothing left to hide behind. Dallas Fontaine walked out with evidence in hand, and Pier Nine was left to reckon with what had been pulled into the light.