Max swore some more. “All right, everybody out, don’t touch anything, mind where you step and call for the forensic team. I’ll give Gus Brannhard a buzz and let him know what’s going on, here. I imagine this news will be like watching your mother-in-law fly into a mountain in your brand new aircar. He won’t know exactly how to feel about it.”
The cops cleared the room and returned to the lounge. After Max brought the colonial prosecutor up to speed over the police radio he took a seat at the bar. His stomach started rumbling, again.
“Hungry, Marshal?” Piet asked.
“That and other things.”
“Um, at the risk of getting busted down to patrolman, again, may I point out that we are in a fully stocked restaurant that is now a crime scene? The owner is dead and has no known relatives or business partners on-planet. Even if he did, The Bitter End will not be able to reopen until our investigation has cleared the place, probably in a few weeks, possibly months, and even then it’s likely to be seized as assets used in the perpetuation of a crime…hundreds of crimes, most likely… and either sold at the next police auction or taken over by the Colonial Government.”
“If we find any proof of said criminal activity.” The Marshal looked up at Piet and added, “Your point?”
“Well, it would be a shame to let all of this food just spoil in the meantime.”
“Piet, while you make a very good point, that is still borderline looting and as the Colonial Marshal I can hardly condone—” Max’s stomach rumbled again. “Ah, what the hell. How are you at making a club sandwich?”
* * * * * * * * *
Dr. Emil Patrick Rankin started his medical career on Loki doing reconstructive surgery and providing general medical care, mostly for the Terran miners and, occasionally, for the indigenous inhabitants. It was a comfortable life if not a luxurious one. Rankin might even have gone on until retirement age in that capacity had he not been offered an obscene amount of money to perform a face-changing operation on a wanted felon.
The felon was caught with a random DNA check while attempting to leave planet and gave up Rankin’s name during interrogation under veridication. Rankin lost his license to practice medicine on Loki and narrowly avoided a prison term. He tried to restart his practice on Baldur where he met Ivan Dane. Dane went under a different name at the time and was in need of Rankin’s skills to alter his appearance.
It had been a substantial procedure. Dane had a great deal of body fat removed, facial reconstruction, implants in the arms and legs to increase height and reach, and even his larynx adjusted to deepen his voice. Next came the hair transplants and melanin injections to darken the skin. Steroids were used to speed-up the recovery and increase muscle mass. Rankin never learned Ivan Dane’s real name, but it didn’t matter; Dane was born on the operating table.
Rankin accepted Dane’s offer to work with him knowing that he would be performing illegal surgery on known and wanted criminals. He no longer cared; the money was too good to pass up. Even Dane’s outrageous plan to take over an entire planet didn’t give him pause. He simply continued to collect his share of any monies that came in and did his job.
When Brandon Murdock walked in with a deep knife wound on his left arm, Rankin didn’t bat an eye. The wound was wrapped in a neck cloth that was soaked in blood. Murdock still wore his own neck cloth which meant the blood-soaked one likely came from whomever inflicted the wound.
“Cut yourself shaving, Brandon?”
Rankin asked the question with such a deadpan delivery that it took Murdock a moment to realize the doctor was making a joke.
“Yah. It was full moons last night,” Murdock quipped back with irritation. “Less comedy and more medicine, ’kay, Doc?”
Rankin took it in stride. Patients in pain were often irritable and Murdock was no joy to be around under the best of circumstances. He quickly cleaned the wound, inspected the injury for particulate matter, sprayed it with a derma-bond that closed the wound and created a temporary seal, then covered the cut with neo-derma-plas. It would take at least three days for the flesh to completely knit back together. During that time the derma-plas would protect and even hide the wound from all but an experienced eye.
Dr. Rankin was just finishing up when Ivan Dane came storming in red-faced.
“What happened?” Dane demanded.
Murdock held up his forearm and inspected the doctor’s work. After making a fist and flexing the muscle he nodded approvingly to Rankin and then turned to Dane.
“La Rue wasn’t goin’ for it,” Murdock said. “Pulled a knife, instead.”
“So you killed him?” Dane yelled. “You were supposed to just… lean on him a little, let him know who was running things. I told you before that killing high profile citizens could bring the heat down on us. The police are probably dissecting every square millimeter of The Bitter End looking for evidence. There may be recordings of you being there. Witnesses.”
Dane pointed at Murdock’s arm. “At the very least you left your DNA at the scene.”
Murdock calmly extracted a small aerosol can from his jacket. It was a high-powered antiseptic used in hospitals. “I sprayed the room with this stuff. Degrades the DNA of anythin’ it comes in contact with like bleach. An’ my crew took care of La Rue’s men before we left. This ain’t my first rodeo, ya know.”
“I am very familiar with the effects of that aerosol if you recall. Still, you might have missed something,” Dane snarled. “At the very least they’ll have your blood type—”
“O Positive,” said Dr. Rankin. “The most common blood type there is.”
“Haw!” Murdock sneered at Dane. “What’ll the cops do? Arrest, half the population on suspicion?”
“Thirty-eight percent,” Rankin supplied. “I could change his blood type with a bone marrow transplant and accommodation drugs. I would have to use chemo to destroy the existing bone marrow, of course, and it would take a few weeks….”
“You’ll have to change his face, also,” Dane said. “Maybe even his fingerprints.”
“Hey, I ain’t no amateur,” Murdock said. “I wore gloves.”
“Thank Ghu for that,” Dane said throwing his hands up in the air. “You’ll have to burn the gloves in case they left any traceable fibers.”
“I could have altered the fingerprints, anyway,” Rankin said. “As you already know.”
“Yes, Dr. Rankin,” Dane said irritably. “You are a Ghu-damned medical genius and I am intimately aware of your expertise. Now, what happens when the man who had been shaking down and breaking into the local rackets suddenly disappears and is replaced by another man? They’ll either assume he was killed, or a new gang has entered the scene. That means we would have to re-establish ourselves with most of them.”
“Nah,” interrupted Murdock. “Guys get promoted or replaced all the time. All the mooks need to know is that I represent the same organization an’ they’ll stay in line. They don’t care who collects the dough from them as long as it’s only one weekly pay-off.”
“Might I suggest we wait and see what, if anything, the police have before we take extreme measures?” Rankin said. “I think Brandon could just lay low for a few days while Richard does a little hacking into police files to see what they have.”
“If he can hack into the police computers,” Dane said.
Rankin pointed out that Lundgren had his way with the TFN system without excessive difficulty.
“Fine. Murdock, go to ground in Junktown until we know what we’re up against. Your men, too.” Dane turned as if to leave, then stopped and took a closer look at Murdock’s arm. “How did that happen?”
“La Rue pulled this big knife on me. If it weren’t for my fibroid vest, he woulda gutted me like a fish. As for layin’ low….”
Dane’s eyes went wide. “A knife? Was it a bowie knife about ten inches long?”
Murdock nodded.
“And he used it like he knew what he was doing?”
Murdock simpl
y held out his arm to show the derma-plas repair.
“Son-of-a-bitch! You didn’t just kill La Rue…you killed Raul Laporte.”
Murdock’s eyebrows came together. “How d’ya figure that?”
“Trust me; I know what I’m talking about. Lay low until this all blows over.”
“Nah. If I suddenly disappeared, I’d become the obvious suspect. Instead, I keep doin’ like I’ve been doin.’ No change to my routine. I doubt this La Rue, Laporte, whatever, had any cameras in his office. It coulda been used against him if he ever got busted.”
“Fine. It’s your neck.” Dane spun around and rushed out of the room.
Murdock and Rankin stared at Dane’s retreating back for a moment then Rankin extracted a pill bottle from his bag. “Take one every six hours with food or milk. No alcohol until at least a day after you finish the bottle.”
“I don’t need no pain killers, Doc,” Murdock argued.
“This is more than just a pain killer,” explained Rankin. “These are accommodation and antibiotic pills. Just a precaution against your body rejecting the derma-plas and removing the possibility of an infection. You can’t play fast and loose with the bacteria of an alien planet. There was a case on Thor, where a germ that the indigenous life-forms casually dismissed, destroyed every square millimeter of skin on the body of a human in less than forty-eight hours.”
Murdock accepted the pill bottle and promised to behave. After he left, Rankin sat down behind his desk and pulled a fifth of Old Atom Bomb Bourbon from a drawer. He poured a stiff shot into his coffee.
XXI
Colonial Prosecutor Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard received the message with his usual grace. “Damn. I wanted to prosecute the bastard. Well, somebody saved me the trouble, so we’ll just have to prosecute him or them, instead.”
Marshal Fane’s image nodded in the viewscreen. “We’re still waiting for forensics to finish processing the crime scene, but York found a hidden button in La Rue’s, or Laporte’s, desk that opened a section of wall. There was a hidden room behind the office loaded with file cabinets and what looks like a make-up table and mirror. There were also a bunch of wigs, make-up kits, various colored contact lenses—you name it. Real Larry Chaney stuff.”
Gus stifled a chuckle. “You mean Lon Chaney. Hey, do we know if this La Rue was wearing his real face, yet?”
“Yes. The coroner said there were some traces of make-up on the skin, but it was the real Ricardo La Rue underneath. He took a big chance disguising himself as one of his movie characters.”
“Maybe that is why he chose a colony planet,” Gus observed. “B-movies don’t make the circuit the way the topflight films do, and colony planets are the last to get even those.” Gus smiled as he lit a cigar. “Once this gets out don’t be surprised if some enterprising citizen holds a Ricardo La Rue film festival, though. What have you found in the files?”
“Oh, the usual; records of illegal sunstone purchases back when the Company held the monopoly, a couple of blackmail scams against CZC division heads, lots of information he brokered between the CZC and the TFN through cut-outs…the usual. We did dig up records of his running muscle for Bowlby, Heenan and Thaxter. That’ll allow us to bring ol’ Spike in and question him under veridication.”
“Humph. La Rue gets points for his disguise and keeping paper records instead of encrypted computer files that we could have broken over time, but he didn’t seem to think much of security beyond that. No secret codes.” Gus was almost disappointed in the late gangster.
“Don’t be too sure about that.” Max held up a file on the screen. “We found the records where he assisted in your kidnapping, but he identified the nabbers as A.A. and D.R.”
“Anthony Anderson and Duncan Rippolone,” Gus said. “Not exactly a first class encryption.”
“True, but we have another file detailing the assistance he intended to supply to a ‘Weasel and the Geek’ to bust Thaxter out of Prison House. It doesn’t look like he followed through, though. This Weasel and Geek may have found other assistance.”
Gus slammed his fist down on his desk, which was a mistake as it was made of solid zaraoak. He grunted in pain, then said, “Damn! If we had gotten to La Rue sooner…”
“That’s not all. La Rue provided Thaxter with money and some sunstones to get off-planet. It looks like he bought out Thaxter’s loan sharking business.”
Now that was odd. Why buy out an underworld enterprise from a man on the run? Why not just stuff him into an M/E converter and take over? Thaxter must have had something on Laporte, La Rue, whatever. Well, that was moot, now.
“Thaxter is still on-planet, though,” Gus said. “Why stick around? He could be getting facial reconstruction to avoid detection, though he could have done that just as easily on Gimli where nobody knows him.”
“Maybe he wants to get his sister, Rose Evins, out of prison,” Max suggested. “Even Khooghras look out for their families.” An idea struck Max. “You think Thaxter offed La Rue? He may have thought he was doing Laporte a favor not knowing they were the same person.”
“To what end? Thaxter is scum, but he doesn’t kill without a good reason.”
“That I don’t know. Or…nah, it doesn’t wash. It took at least three men to kill Laporte-La Rue and his men without taking any casualties. I doubt Thaxter has access to that kind of back-up. He’s too hot.”
Gus nodded. “True. I think we have a new player in town, Marshal. And he’s trying a takeover.”
“If that’s so, he’ll be trying to muscle in on the existing rackets.” Max was thoughtful, which on his face made him look angry until surprise took over. “Bowlby’s overdose! The new crew came in, tried to get him to knuckle under and ended up killing him instead, I’ll bet.”
“You could be right about that. We’ll have to check the body again. Do we still have it in cold storage?”
“Unless somebody claimed it or it was recycled,” Max said. Recycled meant stuffed into a mass-energy converter, in which case it was gone for good. “I’ll head down to the morgue now and make sure we still have it.”
“Thanks, Marshal,” Gus said. “Give me a holler when you know.”
Gus blanked the screen and leaned back in the chair. He never drank while in the office, though sometimes he was very tempted. He gave some thought to Bowlby. Bowlby had died while he was absent from his position as Colonial Prosecutor. Even though he was kidnapped from his home shortly before Bowlby’s demise it still rankled him.
Gus had read the reports on the investigation. Everybody was so busy tearing the planet apart looking for him, Bowlby’s overdose was practically rubber stamped. While Leslie Coombes did a good job of running the office of the Colonial Prosecutor, he lacked experience in dealing with the police and coroner. Frankly, even they couldn’t be faulted; Ben Rainsford had been riding everybody mercilessly to find Gus. Nobody could fault the Governor for pushing to find the Chief Colonial Prosecutor that he personally appointed. It would set a very bad precedent not to.
Nobody could be faulted, yet police work had suffered as a result. Something would have to be done about that!
* * * * * * * * *
Roger Shijabuyenzikumligwanagwashi, or just Shija, former Terran Army Sergeant, accompanied by what he privately called the Junktown Irregulars, led the way through the brush. Shija had retired from service with a twenty-year pension and found that he couldn’t live on the retirement money. This was partly due to the child support on his son in the custody of his ex-wife, but mostly because of his gambling debts. Shija had run-up a sizeable tab at The Bitter End. He knew better than to try to leave Zarathustra with the marker unpaid, so he sought out ways to make money on the sly.
Everybody knew that the best sunstone deposits were on Beta Continent, and the best of the best were on the Fuzzy Reservation. So, Shija gathered up a team of like-minded individuals from Junktown who were also down on their luck—easy to do since everybody in Junktown was down on their luck—stole an aircar an
d headed out for Beta.
Unlike many of the other opportunists taking advantage of the confusion created by the Fuzzy Rocket, Shija did his research. The best deposits were invariably near rivers and streams in a black flint. As such, as coincidence would have it, they came upon the stretch of land formerly occupied by one Bradley Small. The campsite had long since been cleaned out by the NPF, but signs of previous activity were still evident.
Shija checked his electronic map pad and nodded. “We’ll start in here. Get the camou weave up and the sonic hammers out. We start right away. Mason, M’benga, you have first watch. If any cops or dangerous animals come around, activate the beepers.”
The two men nodded and took up positions at opposite ends of the camp. The scanning equipment was outdated and bought at a pawn shop, but would still identify any man-sized bio-signatures within two kilometers. It was useless against anything as small as a goofer or a Fuzzy, but they were not considered a threat to Shija or his men.
Everybody accepted Shija as the leader due to his military background. What they didn’t know was that his time in the Army was spent flipping burgers and washing tables. Shija was a cook, and not a very good one, which is why he was typically relegated to doing the short-order food preparation.
While all military personnel were expected to qualify on the weapons range, of the three qualifying levels, Marksman, Sharpshooter and Expert, Shija typically qualified as a sharpshooter, which was purely average. However, he knew how to bark orders and sounded like he knew what he was doing. Shija also knew how to cultivate the right friends and work the system. That talent more than anything else allowed him to make the rank of Staff Sergeant, but no higher.
Among the men currently working the illegal prospecting, only one had any experience in that field, Naruto Mazzola. Mazzola was one of the prospectors who was displaced when the Fuzzies were discovered and declared sapient. Rather than start a new dig with a replacement land grant, Mazzola took a job at Yellowsand working the sunstone mining operation, until it was noticed that quotas on his shift started coming up short. He quietly resigned before an investigation could start. He left with twelve thousand sols worth of unpolished sunstones hidden in the bottom of his duffle bag. Shija and Mazzola met up in a bar one night, got to talking and hatched the plan.
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