Robert Duluth was not simply born; he was meticulously crafted in the fiery depths of Chicago's most shadowy neighborhoods. In this unforgiving city, where grit and resilience were the only currency, weak men were devoured by its relentless pace, spat out onto the bleak, underground corridors of Lower Wacker Drive. There, they emerged bruised, with darkened eyes that told tales of their struggles, often burdened with the weight of a parking ticket, a stark reminder of their place in a city that demanded everything and offered little in return.
Robert was not one to take insults or threats lightly; he firmly believed in fighting back. A stoic figure, he wore a demeanor that rarely cracked a smile, reserving any hint of joy for the moment when justice was served and the perpetrator was locked away behind bars. He abstained from alcohol until he had completely closed a case, finding solace only in the finality of his work. When it came to sleep, the demands of his job compelled him to stay alert even when he was forced off duty by the Bureau. And when he did succumb to slumber, he kept one eye open, ever vigilant, with a gleaming Smith & Wesson resting on his nightstand, their presence a comforting reminder of his commitment to safety and control in a chaotic world.
He was not merely an agent; he was an unstoppable analytical powerhouse. A bulldozer cutting through the bureaucratic jungle of red tape and endless coffee breaks, Robert Duluth was the name whispered when a case stubbornly refused to find its conclusion.
Having navigated the complex realms of the FBI, Special Task Force, and counter-mob operations, he held black-badge clearance that opened doors few dared to approach. His file was heavily redacted, resembling a secretive CIA document, and within it lay the thrilling narrative of his takedowns—each one a gripping chapter featuring the most notorious figures in Chicago's underworld.
Alfonse “Needles” Mancini? He caught him trying to smuggle heroin in a hearse. Big Rita Morelli? He arrested her mid-wedding, dress, veil, and all, for laundering church donations. The Bramble Street Butcher? That was Robert’s first major collar. Everyone said he would never crack it. Robert found the guy’s hideout in a condemned meat locker and dragged him out by his ears, covered in blood.
He didn’t collaborate with partners. Partners slowed him down. Partners got emotional. Robert had one once, Agent Stanley Coen, who got sentimental during a raid and hesitated for one second. Robert took a bullet to the ribs because of it. Stanley never got another assignment, and Robert never took another partner.
Robert followed protocol like it was scripture and bent it like origami when no one was watching. Paper trails? He made them vanish. Witnesses? He didn’t need them. Motives? Who cared? If you were guilty, Robert could smell it before you opened your mouth.
The press called him The Bureau’s Blade. To his face, they called him "Sir." And in the office, they called him what he was: a goddamn legend.
He didn’t wear suits like the rest of the force. His attire consisted of a black trench coat, scuffed boots, and button-down shirts always a little wrinkled, as if he had just been in a scuffle—because he had. His badge hung from a lanyard around his neck, not for easy access but so people could choke on their own respect when they saw it.
He walked like a bouncer who read crime novels, talked like a noir film, and got drunk on the police scanner. His voice was gravelly and threatening yet just smooth enough to make you wonder whether to shake his hand or call your lawyer.
His office—back when he had one—was a shrine to the cases nobody wanted. Clippings, photos, pins in maps, arrows and strings, whiteboards with equations that looked more like prophecies than evidence. The man didn’t just work cases; he became them, lived them, and breathed them in until he could tell you what the perpetrator had for lunch three Thursdays ago. His longest case? Three hundred eighty-two days undercover with the Churro Syndicate. He ate nothing but sugar and fear and busted thirty-eight criminals on Easter Sunday.
He didn’t do politics. He didn’t do press briefings. He didn’t do awards ceremonies or office potlucks. He did the job, and then he went home—alone—to his condominium overlooking the lake: sleek, cold, and spotless, just like him.
Neighbors said he rarely smiled, never had guests, and always left at 4:57 a.m. sharp. His landlord once joked that Robert was more predictable than the sunrise. But the truth? Robert Duluth was haunted—not by ghosts, but by justice left unfinished. Every name he crossed off his list left another inked in blood.
His instincts were too sharp for retirement, and his record was too clean for promotion. He was an apex predator in a department full of lapdogs. Until the chickens. Until Ruby Lukas. Until the one case—the dumbest, weirdest case of his career—blew everything up like a cigar box full of dynamite.
Long before the Bureau, before the headlines, before the hammer and the chickens, there was a boy standing outside a bank in Oak Park, waiting for his parents to cash a check. He was nine. They had gone in smiling, saying they would be right out. He remembers his mother’s perfume—it smelled like lilacs—and his father’s hand on his shoulder. He remembers the sound, too: gunshots, screams, and then, nothing but sirens and the click of a pen signing forms that made him an orphan.
The robbers were never caught. They took everything: money,
lives, and his childhood. From that day on, Robert made a vow. He would never
be weak, never wait for justice to show up late. He would become the one who
knocked, the shadow behind the badge, the protector who never flinched.
He didn’t have family, didn’t date, never married, and had no kids. The FBI was his only constant. His loyalty wasn’t to people; it was to purpose. And that, dear reader, is where our story begins.
Chicago never slept; it barely blinked. On that particular evening, it shivered in its trench coat of fog and streetlamp steam. The El rumbled like an old man’s cough, and Robert Duluth stood beneath it, hands in his pockets, eyes scanning "Benny’s Liquor Cabinet" storefront, its battered neon flickering like a dying lie.
Inside, Ruby Lukas ran the show: kingpin of the Northside. He loved bingo, despised cats, and smuggled cocaine in novelty rubber chickens.
“We’ve been watching this place for months,” Robert muttered, his words curling out like smoke from a Lucky Strike. “Every delivery, every duck call. Lukas thinks he’s clever. He ain’t.”
Dennis Furgo had gone under six weeks ago. Clean-cut, with a Boy Scout face, he could cry on command. The brass called him dependable; Robert called him doomed.
Tonight was supposed to be the bust. The Big One. The end of rubber poultry narco-trafficking in the Midwest. Then it all went to hell.
Dennis Furgo, Robert's undercover agent, got caught. They had arranged a simple handoff behind Benny’s. But Furgo panicked, or maybe he was compromised. Either way, he got sloppy, and Ruby's people grabbed him. Cameras were rolling before he hit the pavement.
Faced with a choice between witness protection and a bullet, Furgo folded like a cheap suit. He named Robert as the mastermind, claiming the operation was a front, that Robert had orchestrated the whole bust to eliminate competitors and take over the rubber poultry route himself.
Ruby planted evidence, Dennis slipped files into Robert’s drawer,
swapped labels on evidence bags, and together they even doctored surveillance tapes to show
Robert loading crates himself.
The Tribune dropped the bomb at sunrise. Front page, all caps: “ROBERT DULUTH: DETECTIVE OR DRUG LORD?”
Beneath it? A photograph so poorly doctored it looked like satire—Robert, grimacing mid-blink, mid-motion, as if cramming white powder into the hollow belly of a rubber chicken. The lighting was all wrong. The angle? Suspiciously perfect. The whole thing stunk of a setup.
The byline read “Elliot Grieves, Investigative Correspondent.” But Robert knew better. Elliot wasn’t a reporter. He was Ruby Lukas’s inside man—press pass and all. A smear merchant in a tailored suit.
The office was quiet. Too quiet—the kind of quiet that
follows a firing squad's exit.
Robert was still in his suit, creased from sleep—or maybe
from not sleeping at all—when the call came to go upstairs. He hoped, maybe,
just maybe, someone was going to say sorry. Perhaps this was where the cavalry
rode in. Maybe someone finally checked the evidence and realized it was
doctored.
It wasn’t.
He walked into the Sergeant’s office. Sgt. Max Brenner was a
lifelong lawman and ex-Marine—the kind of guy who called his own kids “Cadet”
for fun. Brenner didn’t look up; he just stared at a manila file on his desk.
“Sit down, Duluth.”
Robert sat and didn’t speak.
Brenner finally looked up, eyes red. “You know, I always
thought if you went down, it’d be in a blaze. Not... chickens, Bob. Not
chickens.”
Robert’s jaw clenched. “It’s not real.”
Brenner nodded slowly. “I know that. You know that. But
Twitter doesn’t. The Tribune doesn’t. Half the damn state doesn’t.”
He pushed a piece of paper across the desk.
“What’s this?” Robert asked.
“Administrative leave,” Brenner said. “Pending full
investigation. Effective immediately.”
“You’re putting me on desk duty?” Robert asked, almost
hopefully.
Brenner shook his head. “No desk. No duty. No gun. No
badge.”
There was a pause, heavy enough to fill the room like smoke.
“I’m sorry, Bob,” Brenner said quietly. “But you're
radioactive. If we keep you in the building, it looks like we're defending it.
And HQ isn’t looking to take any hits. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
Robert stood slowly, reaching into his jacket. He laid down
his badge first, then the holster, then his ID.
Brenner looked like he wanted to say something—maybe even
reach across the desk. But he didn’t.
As Robert turned to leave, the Sergeant said, “You were the
best damn agent I ever had.”
Robert paused at the door.
“That’s what makes this worse,” he replied. “I was.”
Dennis disappeared into Witness Protection—or Cancun. No one
knew. No one cared.
Robert’s condominium still had clean sheets and the best view on the lake. But sleep became a myth. Food turned to ash in his mouth. Every face on the street wore judgment like cheap cologne, and every whisper behind his back twisted into the hiss of “chicken man”—a nickname that dripped with ridicule.
He worked the desk for a week, a temporary duty, Sarge
said, just until things cooled off. Robert filed reports, logged evidence, and
sorted incident slips like a ghost in an office full of whispers. He kept his
head down, tuned out the news, and told himself it was temporary.
But it wasn’t. They didn’t want him back on the streets. They wanted him to remain quiet, boxed away, and ultimately forgotten.
He attempted to deny the situation. Watching old crime
procedurals, he convinced himself that everything would eventually blow over.
Yet, the silence of his condo, once a comforting refuge, now resonated with
guilt. The TV felt like a constant reminder of his mistakes, and the framed
commendations on his wall no longer represented pride; they felt like hollow
lies. He spent countless hours at his kitchen table, fists clenched and heart
racing, trying to understand how everything had spiraled so wrong.
At 3:17 a.m., he reached for his phone and typed a
message.
“Hey Sarge. Taking an extended break. Do what you need to
do.”
He stared at the screen for a long moment before hitting send. No response was expected, and indeed, none came.
For over an hour, Robert sat in profound stillness—no movement, no thoughts, no plans. Just the steady hum of the refrigerator and the overwhelming weight of his spiraling reality pressing down on him.
Eventually, his gaze fell on a flier on the table. It was
vibrant, almost absurd, and entirely out of place.
**Surrey Main, Maine.**
A charming corgi in a bowler hat.
The tagline read: “The Most British Neighborhood in
America.”
As he examined it, his bloodshot eyes struggled to focus;
the words blurred before him as emotions of sleepless rage and shame buzzed in
his chest. Before he knew it, his phone was back in his hand. It rang twice
before his landlord answered.
“Robert? It’s 6 a.m. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, hi,” he replied, his voice shaky. “I’m not keeping the place.”
“What are you talking about, Robert?” she asked, concern creeping into her voice.
He picked up the flier and read aloud, almost incredulously. “Surrey Main, Maine. What the—?”
“Robert?” she pressed. “What are you talking about?”
“I have to go. I’ll leave the key on the counter. Please
just rent the place out. Get rid of whatever’s left behind.”
He hung up, swiftly packed one suitcase, and resolved to leave everything else behind—no souvenirs, no keepsakes, no backward glances. The condo, once his command center, now felt like a tomb of lost credibility and expired takeout. He took the flier from the table, smoothed out its creases, and gave the corgi in the bowler hat one last look of whimsical nostalgia.
Then, with determination, he pulled out his phone and booked the next available train ticket. A one-way journey to a quiet place—somewhere far from headlines, hashtags, and feelings of betrayal.
Upon arriving at Union Station just after dawn, he was
struck by the echoing marble floors filled with footsteps and muffled
announcements. He moved through the crowd like a ghost, his zip-up hoodie
pulled tight, his suitcase trailing behind him with a stubborn wheel.
At Platform Nine, the train hissed and groaned as if it,
too, were hesitant to embark on this journey.
He climbed aboard and found his compartment—simple and
sparse, with a bench that doubled as a bed—and sat down slowly. For the first
time in weeks, he felt a sense of tension begin to release. He laid back, arms
folded behind his head.
The train ride lasted one day, eight hours, and twenty
minutes.
For nearly all of his journey, he slept soundly. He didn’t fidget or dream; he simply sank into unconsciousness like a stone sinking in deep water. Occasionally, he would wake and make his way to the dining car, where he sat beneath dim lights with plastic-encased menus. The food was unremarkable, gray eggs, questionable stew, and a biscuit so dry it could have doubled as a coaster, but he ate it with gratitude and hunger. He didn’t interact with the staff, and they didn’t pry.
Afterward, he returned to his bunk and fell asleep again.
Then, with a sudden jolt, the train screeched like it had second thoughts.
Robert shot upright. His heart jackhammered in his chest as the compartment shuddered to a halt. Light—strange, gray, and far too polite—filtered through the smeared window. Outside, nothing looked real. Just soft edges and postcard colors, like the world had been water colored by a maniac.
He blinked. Sat perfectly still.
What the hell was I thinking?
His hand tightened around the stupid flier in his pocket. Surrey Main, Maine. The bowler hat. The corgi. The promise of peace.
He’d run. He’d burned it all to the ground and booked a one-way train to goddamn Disneyland with a British fetish.
The regret hit like a gut punch.
He rubbed his face. Exhaled slowly. “Jesus Christ, Duluth,” he muttered to himself, “you just moved to a brochure.”
