Informant in the Flats
— by Mario Crescibene
Case Filed May 9, 2026 | Cleveland, Ohio
Nobody comes down to the Flats at night unless they’re comfortable walking in the shadows. The district draws two kinds of people at that hour — those trying to uncover secrets, and those trying to hide them.
I’d gotten the call late. All it said was, “Meet me under the Main Avenue Bridge. Hurry.” And then the line went dead. I’d grabbed my coat and headed straight to the Flats. But that was twenty minutes ago.
I stood on the brick road under
the bridge and looked up. The blue steel of the overpass hung low and heavy, a dense lattice of iron that completely erased the sky. It was a ceiling of industrial bone, thousands of rivets holding the weight of the city in a permanent, metallic chokehold. The girders sliced the streetlights into jagged shards, throwing geometric shadows across the pavement. In the underbelly of the city, the air tasted of river silt and old grease, humming with the mechanical groan of the world above.
A car rumbled by overhead and a shadowy figure emerged from behind a steel support beam. His trench coat was cinched tight with the collar turned up against the damp lake air — a fedora sitting low over his brow— but those pale blue eyes pierced through the Cleveland night like high beams.
“That you, Frankie?” I called out.
The figure reached into his coat. I froze, my hand instinctively twitching toward my hip where a revolver should have been. Dammit. In my rush, I’d left my Fitz Special in the desk drawer back in Little Italy. But then, the shrouded figure pulled out a pack of Luckies and readied one in the corner of his mouth. The quick flash of a Zippo lit up his face in the dark.
“Yeah, it’s me, Mario. Who’d ya think it was? Some lost soul going for a stroll at midnight?”
Relieved, I hurried over, my shoes clicking against the bricks. “So, did you get an answer from your source inside the Guards’ organization?”
Frankie’s pace wouldn’t be rushed. He took a long pull on the cigarette, the smoke trailing up under the streetlights. “I did,” was all he offered as he exhaled.
“And?!” He knew he had the goods. Frankie always loved to string out a reveal.
“It was an interesting question, Mario,” he continued, “asking if the team had a policy about players on the IL being guaranteed their roster spot when they got back.”
“Well, it’s got to be asked,” I said. “I’m not aiming to just be some blogger here — I’m trying to be a legit journalist. I mean, we’ve got Arias coming back eventually, but Bazzana and Rocchio are playing like they belong. Same for Schneemann. Who do they bump when Arias comes back? It’s a tough break if a guy loses his seat at the table just because he went on the IL for a month.”
“You got that right,” Frankie echoed, exhaling a cloud of smoke.
“So what did he say?” I urged.
“Who?”
“Your source inside the organization!” I barked, my frustration finally boiling over.
“You’re going to want to hear this, Mario,” Frankie said as he finished the cigarette and stamped it out under his foot.
“I asked if an IL stint can cost a guy his job,” he continued. “The only thing my source offered was a ‘No comment.’”
I couldn’t take it any longer. “Frankie, you drag me down to the Flats at midnight for what?… A ‘No comment’?! You’re wasting my time!”
“I’ve never wasted anyone’s time who wasn’t already wasting it themselves, ignoring clues right in front of them,” he countered. Then his voice dropped, sliding the next words across like a clue in the dark. “You gotta read between the lines, Mario.”
“Read what, Frankie? It’s a dead end!”
“Think about it, Mario,” he continued. “If the Guards had a policy that protected an injured player’s spot, they would’ve said as much. But ‘No comment’? In this town, that’s as good as a firm ‘No.’”
I let the thought settle as the Cleveland night hung in the balance. The logic was tight. “So you’re saying the silence is the answer? A ‘No comment’ is the same as a confession.”
“Exactly.”
“Then no one is safe,” I whispered. “Arias… Shawn Armstrong… Andrew Walters… Get hurt and you might lose more than time. Anyone who hits the shelf could come back to find their chair already taken.”
“Now you’re catching the scent,” Frankie said slyly. He pulled his lapel higher, turning back toward the darkness.
But just as he was about to be swallowed by the shadows of the Flats, a thought occurred to me.
“You got all that from a ‘No comment,’ Frankie?”
He paused for a moment, and then his head snapped quickly in my direction, the shadows catching the sharp angles of his face.
“I’m Frankie de la Noche.”
And then he disappeared like a specter in the Cleveland night.
