Koban Universe 1 (20 page)

“Mr. Gibson, the Flea Bag up the street serves food all night, right?”

“Yea. So?” As Haveram watched the bartender’s face, in the reflection he noticed Tall Man looked around at the other six thugs. Apparently, leaving this cozy nest didn’t suit them. Food might perk up their target or let him vanish in the dark outside.

“Well I’m not hungry, but these people are. How about if I send them up there to eat the best meals the Flea Bag has to offer, and I’ll stay here and drink until they get back. I’ll pay for everything. The same company owns that grill and this bar, right? I can give you the money and you can phone the order in to them.”

Gibson looked flustered and confused. “How do…, I mean what makes you think the same guy…, I mean the same company owns both places?”

“Because the business license and the sanitation rating forms are right behind you at the base of the mirror. I heard someone call the other place one of Carmody’s dumps when I was there on my last trip.” He pointed at the forms displayed on the mirror.

“It says Carmody Enterprises right there. How about you call them, I pay you for their food, and they head up there to eat. And give them an open bar tab, on me.” They didn’t have an actual bar, but the Flea Bag served booze and beer with their food.

He fished out some larger credit notes, and invited every one present to go eat and drink on his tab. He caught Gibson, in a reflection of the back of his head, look directly at Tall Man, who nodded fractionally. As he suspected, they both worked for the same organization. Possibly Tall Man was Carmody, or one of his high-ranking flunkies.

The bartender used his personal com unit to call the Flea Bag. It was obvious from the conversation that the person at the other end knew Gibson well, and he knew them. It was a done deal. Price wasn’t even discussed.

Turning to the port workers, although a few of them were simply passing locals, he sent them all, even those that had avoided his offer of free drinks, out the door, and staggering in more than a few cases, to walk the several blocks up the street to eat. He tossed two one thousand credit notes on the bar. Gibson didn’t walk over to pick them up right away. Instead, he locked the door and flicked a switch next to it, sending a red glow through that small diamond window. Haveram remembered there was a red colored holographic “closed” sign on the wall next to the door.

Haveram turned to Tall Man, and in a slightly slurred manner, asked, “Can I buy you and your six friends a drink now? I’ll include good old Gibson here if you want. Although he must be tired of making all those drinks I’ve been buying all night.”

Carl stood and looked him over carefully. “I think you can drop the slurred speech act Mr. Smith. I don't know what drug you take that keeps you sober, but my boss sure wouldn’t want you selling it around here. Most people wouldn’t spend money on liquor that doesn’t affect them.” Haveram picked up the “my boss” reference, so this man wasn’t him.

Haveram shook his head. “I made plenty of piss trips, so it did have some impact.” He smiled and spoke clearly.

“You know my name, Tall Man. Do you have one to offer in exchange? I know Gibson’s name here, and I don't really care what the names are of the six meatheads you brought with you.”

The meatheads bristled at the description, and two of them stood up when he said that.

He winked at them. “Look threatening on your own time. Tall Man there has not let you off your leashes, so settle back down.”

“I’m Carl.” The tall “leash holder” told him. “That’s my real first name. You certainly aren’t Fred Smith.”

“Probably not.” Haveram agreed easily. “If you were convinced that I wasn’t getting drunk, why did you wait all that time?”

“There was a chance we were wrong and you might pass out and fall flat on your ass. However, when you decided to slickly evacuate those drinking buddies the way you did, I knew no booze-fogged brain had decided so suddenly and cleverly to do what you did to get them out of here. Therefore, you are not drunk. Let me turn your question back on you. If at long last you caught on that we were here after you, why did you stay behind? Why didn’t you try to go with them?”

In a friendly tone he said, “Carl, I waited because I wanted to have fun with the kind of people I like to associate with, and I did indeed enjoy their company, their jokes, and some shared tall tales and some true tales.” He shrugged and continued.

“However, I didn’t
finally
figure out that you were here for me. I’m sure you recall the creep I’ve thought of as Oily Man, just as I thought of you as Tall Man, until a moment ago. I knew I had been followed here when he first walked in, and then I saw him talking to someone on an ear bud phone. He soon looked at the door, just before he walked over and you paid him off for his work.”

“OK. You were observant. I’ll grant you that. Why didn’t you try to leave with the others?”

Haveram couldn’t resist tweaking his nose, and doing the same, even if remotely, to his boss. “I saw that you might object to my leaving. If I did that before moving those friendly drunks out of here, they could get hurt. I naturally knew you had another way of tracking my movements, because you seven arrived here too quickly for Oily to have provided directions. Thirty seconds after he began talking on his phone, he was startled to learn you were already at the front door. He was a redundant method of tracking me if I did the unexpected, but I proved predictable, like your boss anticipated from my prior visits here. Your employer had already sent you to the port area after I landed, and then told you exactly where I was. In his own bar.”

He turned his head and looked directly where the infrared outline of the warm Tri-Vid camera was located, behind the bar’s two-way mirror. “Isn’t that right, Carmody Enterprises?”

Carl had to listen to a few annoyed words through his ear bud from Carmody. He Looked at the mirror, and nodded.

He signaled the six toughs to stand back as he strode closer to where “Smith” leaned casually at the bar, his back turned now to the mirror. He seemed calm for a man that had recognized he had been tracked and trapped by people he didn’t know, and was heav
ily outnumbered and out massed.

He stopped a few feet away, but never saw a “trapped” animal look in Smith’s eyes, or sensed his body tensing, such as preparing to defend himself from an attack. However, Carl was only going to talk, for now at least.

“We know the ship you claim to own, the Sparrow, is also registered as the Falcon, out of Poldark with a different owner named.” That last part about the owner’s name was a supposition, because they couldn’t obtain the name. It wasn’t likely to be the unimaginative name of Fred Smith, however.

“The operators of the Falcon run lucrative smuggling operations between Poldark and three other worlds. It’s obvious that you have had to move to new markets, because the Krall have disrupted two of your former sources of goods and customers on the Rim. Poldark has very serious security now, controlled by the PU military, which we doubt you have been able to bribe. Gribble’s Nook and Bollovstic are dead. Thus, we find you coming here to our territory, without permission fro
m my boss mind you, to smuggle
something
, in or out, without paying him for the privilege. You need to explain that financial lack of respect right now.”

Haveram smiled. “Gee, Carl. On every trip here I’ve paid the exorbitant exchange rates at the bank, where Carmody Enterprises has a representative on its board, I paid high export fees of which I’m sure the local government probably receives only a small share, and I paid bribes to the truck drivers so that they would actually deliver everything I ordered locally. The truck line I used belongs to Carmody Enterprises, based on the signs on their sides. I suspect that all political kickbacks, vice, and shipping related activities in Brisbane are controlled by…,” he paused in thought. “Is Carmody one person’s name, or is it a sort of distributed
Family
of close friends?”

Carl’s head tilted as he listened to the little voice in his ear. “Mr. Carmody runs the business alone, with assistance from loyal employees such as me, and from these large…, ah…, Gentle Men.” He con
cluded, also with an easy grin.

The feminine controlled society’s introduction of the appellation of
Gentle Men
to all males of the species, after the Gene War had left only two or three percent alive, struck even Carl as amusing when that term was applied to these hulking thugs. Haveram shared his grin, at that incongruous description of these modern day Neanderthal looking males.

They had obviously benefitted from muscle developing drugs, as well as exercise. They were too bulky to be lithe and limber, deferring to the gorilla image of looking strong and dangerous. A Krall warrior could break them in half with one hand. Perhaps that was the reason for the holsters, worn under jackets that were too warm for the season, causing them to sweat. Haveram estimated they’d even have to raise their non-gun arms slightly, to increase the draw speed of their pistols from the squeezed-in holsters. Not a smart choice for mob enforcers, although he doubted they had been hired for their brilliance, and muscles we
re likely their normal weapons.

The dapper tall man was another matter entirely. He had the look and movements that hinted that he would be far more dangerous in a fight than the muscle bound men. There was a slight bulge of a shoulder holster for him as well.

Carl removed his smile. “Mr. Carmody is aware of the routine collections for services he has provided to you, as he provides for any citizen of, or visitor to Brisbane. However, you and your ship do not represent just any visitor. Your ship’s known past association with smuggling, something we learned from various contacts in our mutual trade, forces us to conclude that you are generating an additional level of illegal revenue here that is off the books. Revenue of which Mr. Carmody demands his fair share, as with any illegal profits earned in his territory. Or else perhaps some other form of compensation will suffice.”

Haveram nodded. “I suppose that my assurances that all of my dealings on New Australia have been entirely open, honest, and legal would not alter his opinion in the slightest. I certainly have done some things elsewhere that the Planetary Union would call illegal, including smuggling, and other more egregious offences, which their outdated laws say deserve the death penalty.” He continued smiling, now leaning back slightly,
resting his elbows on the bar.

Carl raised his eyebrow. The squeamish women that had dominated the PU government for three centuries didn’t have any criminal laws he could think of that had the death penalty attached. Even Krall collaborators, if they survived that stupid and pointless effort, were never executed if recaptured by the PU Army. Not even if they had personally killed or tortured other human captives while with the Krall. Carl was an army deserter in a time of war, yet he wouldn’t face a death penalty if caught.

Carmody, sitting in front of his wall screen saw his henchman’s skepticism. “Carl, ask him if he’s done any human genetic research.” That was the only set of old laws he knew of that still had the death penalty attached. It had not been applied in Carmody’s seventy-one year lifetime, as far as he had heard. The Tri-Vid news services would be all over such a trial, and live coverage of the execution would have been on every channel.

Echoing his boss’s question Carl asked, “Smith, you don’t look like a science type to me, but have you done any human genetic research?” The question seemed idiotic to him, but he couldn’t say that, not with his bad tempered boss the questioner.

The brief pause before the question, combined with an attitude of Carl listening to someone, had been obvious to Haveram. “You apparently have a boss better informed than you are. That’s a very perceptive question.” He glanced back at the mirror before answering.

“I don’t known squat about bio-science, including genetics. At one time, I would have said I don’t have a scientific related bone in my body. I can’t say that now.” He laughed outright at a joke he knew only he understood. His carbon nanotube reinforced bones comprising the re
ason for the cryptic punchline.

He was impatient to get this game over, so he came to the point. “You wanted me alone, and here I am. What do you want Carmody, that you couldn’t have simply invited me over for a drink, and asked me directly?”

The relay of questions must have also grated on Carmody, and Carl, after listening to his ear bud a second, said, “Gibson, put your com set on top of the bar. Put it on speaker when the boss calls.” The chiming started as Gibson placed the set down, and he pressed the speaker button.

A nasal sounding deep voice issued from the speaker. “Mr. Smith, I don’t care how legally you claim to have acted here, swombats never change their stripes, and smugglers with a fast ship never give up their trade until caught. You didn’t come all this way from Poldark for cheap household goods. However, I might forgive and forget the trespass, this one time, if we work out a reasonable arrangement.”