“Now that’s just plain rude,” Piet said. “We go to all the trouble to arrest this mutt and he can’t even bother to be awake for it.”
“Well, we can still tag him,” Max said. He nodded at Chang and the officer produced an electronic ankle tether. York assisted and the two men placed the tether on Dane’s left ankle. No matter where Dane went, the police would be able to track his movements for as long as he remained on Zarathustra. Moreover, any attempt to leave the planet would result in a sudden explosive loss of the leg. “Chang, York, you have first watch. This Khooghra so much as hiccups, I want to know about it.”
“Yes, sir!” the two officers replied in unison.
“What is going on here?” The group turned to the sound of the voice and discovered Dr. Drogan. “This man is under heavy sedation and should not be disturbed.”
“This man is under arrest for murder, illegal gem trafficking, illegal mining, conspiracy to murder, and a bunch of other crimes we haven’t tallied, yet,” Gus said.
Drogan glanced at the patient, then back to Gus. “He’s a wanted felon? Interesting; that might explain this body scan.”
“What body scan?” demanded Max.
Drogan shifted uncomfortably. Doctor/patient confidentiality prevented him from giving too many details of Dane’s condition. “I’ll need a warrant to tell you anything more.”
Max started to say something and Gus put up a restraining hand. “Dr. Drogan is correct. I’m not going to give this mutt any avenue to duck the charges, no matter how minor or unlikely. I’ll be back in an hour, maybe less, with that warrant. I am sure Chief Justice Pendarvis will be happy to sign it himself.”
* * * * * * * * *
“…and we’ll supply them all the extee-three they want,” finished Jack. He and Little Fuzzy had been discussing opening political relations with the Jin-f’ke, a concept unique in Zarathustran history.
“We give shoppo-diggo, medicine and estee-fee to Jin-f’ke,” Little Fuzzy summarized.
“And?” Jack prodded.
Little Fuzzy thought for a moment, them his face brightened. “An’ Big Ones not interfere with Jin’f-ke.”
Jack ruffled the Fuzzy’s head. “Very good, Ambassador. Pappy George will fly you up to meet with Red Fur, uh, Bal-f’ke as soon as he gets back from Alpha Continent.” Jack had decided that it would improve Little Fuzzy’s standing with the Northern Fuzzies if the Wise One for all Big Ones wasn’t there to look over his shoulder.
“Hokay, Pappy Jack.” Little Fuzzy scampered out narrowly missing Betty Kanazawa as she stormed in. The look on her face was intense.
Damn, I should have put on my gun belt. “Betty, when did you get in?”
“What were you thinking letting yourself get captured like that?” Betty demanded. She had her hands on her waist and she leaned slightly forward as she spoke. The stance reminded Jack of his mother when she argued with his father.
Jack couldn’t help smiling, which was a mistake. Betty went up three octaves and railed at him for taking unnecessary chances. Jack let her wind down before he spoke.
“Betty, this is my job. It is what I do. And if being captured by Fuzzies is the most dangerous thing I ever do, I’m going to get real bored real fast.”
Betty sputtered for a second, then deflated and sat on the edge of the desk. After a moment, she laughed. “I almost forgot what attracted me to you.”
Jack sat on the desk next to Betty. “Ah…Betty, about the other night. I wasn’t myself. It seems I suffered from a drug interaction….”
“You did seem a little loopy after you took your meds,” Betty said, nodding. “Don’t sweat it, Jack. I wasn’t looking to trap you. I will admit that I am very interested in pursuing a relationship with you. And no, I do not have any daddy issues or a thing for white hair, though it does look good on you.”
Jack let out a long breath. “I was worried, I may have taken some liberties….”
“Hah! I practically dragged you into the bedroom. You’re a lot heavier than you look, by the way.” Betty shifted a bit to get closer to Jack. “I’m a big girl and know how to defend myself. I strength train and take self-defense classes and could probably kick your ass even if you were fully recovered. If anything, I should apologize to you.”
Jack smiled. “Oh, I think I can live with being taken advantage of.”
Betty winked. “You certainly seemed to manage that night.”
“Betty, I am old enough to be your father, you know. I have way more birthdays behind me than ahead of me.”
Betty laughed again. “Actually, you’re about the same age as my grandfather who will likely outlive us both, but I won’t tell anybody if you don’t.”
Jack chuckled. “Deal. I’ll admit that you interest me as well, Betty. That hasn’t happened in a long time.”
“Morgan’s mother, right? I understand.” Betty snorted as she tried to stifle another laugh. “What say we give Morgan a heart attack and tell him we’re eloping?”
Jack laughed out loud. He pictured the look on his son’s face. “I don’t know. You might be a bit old for me.” Jack thought about Freyan culture and remembered something. “Actually, it is not uncommon for an elderly man who has lost his wife to take a much younger bride on Freya.”
“It’s not all that uncommon on Terra, either,” Betty remarked. “And they don’t always wait for the first wife to die, first.”
“Okay, here’s the deal. We’ll see how well things work between us and go from there. But remember, I am an old coot with a lot of hardwired habits and I don’t figure on changing any of them.”
Betty nodded. “Fair enough. And back at’cha, though if anybody calls me an old anything they’ll be picking their teeth up off of the floor.”
Yup, a lot like mom. Jack thought about it for a moment and remembered it was that same quality that attracted him to Morgan’s mother back on Freya. “So, what are you doing tonight?”
“Oh, Nifflheim! I took off after work and didn’t give any thought to anything other than seeing if you were okay. Hmm…I think I am coming down with something.”
“Oh? Something serious?”
“I’ll say. I’ll be bedridden for the next couple of days, I think. I’ll have to take some sick time, of course.”
Jack feigned concern over the convenient malady. “What do you think you have?”
Betty winked again. “Jack Fever. I think it could be terminal.”
* * * * * * * * *
Gus Brannhard, accompanied by Victor Grego and Colonial Marshal Max Fane, pushed their way into Governor Rainsford’s office unannounced. Ben Rainsford raised his head in surprise to find their three grinning faces staring back at him. Gus was almost purring with a feral look in his eyes. The last time he looked like that was when Chief Justice Pendarvis ruled that he and Leslie Coombes would be prosecuting each other’s clients in the now famous Fuzzy Trial.
Gus laid a folder in front of Rainsford and tapped it with a hairy finger. “Ben, you are not going to believe what we have here.”
Rainsford looked over the smiling faces. It was a little disturbing. “Okay, I’ll bite. What do you have there?”
Gus opened the folder. On the first sheet was a medical file-page on one Ivan Maximilian Dane. Rainsford looked it over with a ‘so what’ expression on his face.
“Okay. Dane has had numerous surgeries and a recent gunshot wound. Anybody who watched the news knows about that last bit.”
“Ah, but it is the kind of surgeries he has had that is so interesting,” Gus said. “Notice he had leg and arm extension surgery. Plastic surgery, dental reconstruction, a larynx adjustment, hair transplants, and there are signs of significant weight loss. A lot of it. Ocular enhancement surgery, too.”
Rainsford sighed. “He’s vain and rich. I trust you are surrounding a point here, Gus.”
“Yes, Gus, you should get to the point,” Grego said.
“One shouldn’t keep the Governor waiting, Mr. Brannhard,” Max added.
Gus nodded dramatically. “Quite right, gentleman. Ben, when Mr. Dane was admitted, the hospital did a full body scan. Standard procedure. That is how we got all that information. Now, here is something I didn’t know: a smart computer graphics artist can take that scan and do a graphic reconstruction to find out what that person looked like before all that surgery.”
“As it turns out, we have some very talented graphic artists working for the Company,” Grego said.
“You promised you were getting to a point,” Rainsford prodded.
“Look at the next page,” Gus, Grego and Max said in unison.
Rainsford suspected the three of them had practiced the presentation. It had to be truly amazing for all of them to go to that much effort. He turned the page and saw the artist’s rendition of what Ivan Dane looked like prior to his cosmetic surgeries.
“Holy Mother of Ghu!”
Gus nodded once at Max and Grego. “There it is.”
“Tell me he’s in custody. Under guard, with lots of collapsium around his ass.”
“Yes, yes and soon. He isn’t skipping planet this time,” Gus said. “We have him for murder and a slew of other charges. There is a list of them on the next page.”
Rainsford stood up, sat down, stood up again. “Would anybody think it too odd if I did a little happy dance?”
“A little.”
“Yes.”
“Understandable, but not very governor-like.”
Rainsford looked at the three men then said, “To Nifflheim with it. It isn’t every day that Hugo Ingermann is caught red-handed.” That said Bennett Rainsford, Colonial Governor of Zarathustra, danced a jig.
“He’s pretty good, don’t you think?” Max pointed out.
XXXIV
“Hugo Ingermann!”
“The one and only, accept no substitutes.”
Jack could not believe his ears. Rainsford was smiling from the viewscreen like a Khooghra about to eat a deceased relative. He was also sweating, like he had just finished exercising.
“So, the illegal mining that started all the troubles with the Jin-f’ke, those anti-you and Grego editorials, the death of Ricardo La Rue, or Raul Laporte, whatever his real name was, and the Fuzzy Rocket are all part of…what, a bid to take over the planet?”
“The rocket, no, but pretty much everything else. Max is heading over to the B.I.N. building to arrest everyone in sight. Judge Pendarvis has hand cramps from signing all the writs and warrants. Once we secure a conviction on Ingermann or Dane, whatever, we’ll seize the B.I.N. building and contents as assets in furtherance of a crime. Since that used to be Bowlby’s little enterprise, there’s no telling what all we’ll find once we start tearing that place apart.”
Jack leaned back and reached for his pipe, then set it down. Damned doctors, he thought, how is a man supposed to celebrate without a cocktail and a pipe? “Sounds like organized crime is wiped out on Zarathustra.”
“For the next week or so. Gus assures me we’ll have a new crop of criminal cartels or syndicates or what-have-you to keep the police earning their pay in no time. Nature abhors a vacuum and all that.”
“An unfortunate truth. Hey, when is that son of mine getting back here? I have a severe shellacking to hand him.”
“Aren’t you going to try to get him out of the charges George Lunt is hitting him with? He has to go to court this afternoon, Gus tells me.”
“No, I am not. He got himself in trouble, he can get himself out. George asked me if I wanted him to drop the charges and I said no. I never liked nepotism and I’ll be damned if I start practicing it now. Besides, Gus told me there would be no jail time involved due to the extenuating circumstances. He can handle any fine the judge throws at him.”
“True. Well, I’ll tell him you asked when I see him this afternoon to finalize the sale of Zeta Continent.” Rainsford grabbed a sheet of paper from the desk and held it up to the screen. “I shoved this through the legislature this morning. With Ivan Dane, excuse me, Hugo Ingermann off his soapbox I am pretty much bulletproof in the media. So, the legislature is rubber-stamping things for me.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts. Hey, Hugo Ingermann, if convicted, and I really don’t see how he can avoid it, will be up for the death penalty. Planning on selling tickets to that one, too?”
Rainsford eyes went wide. “Oh, hell, that’s a great idea. The line for that one will be clean around the planet. I’ll set it up as soon as the verdict is in.” The Governor looked up from the screen. “Gus just came in to remind me I have to go pin the medal on Clancy Slade. It’ll be covered on CZCN.”
“Okay. Talk to you later.”
Jack broke the connection and leaned back in his chair. Betty came up behind him wearing something filmy from Marduk and sat down on the edge of the desk.
“Good news?”
“We got Hugo Ingermann.”
Betty filled the air with some extremely unladylike metaphors. She finished with, “He should be shot from a cannon into a collapsium wall.”
“No argument. By the way, when is Akira going to tell Morgan that she’s pregnant?”
Betty looked stricken. “What? How did you…um…oh! You tricked me!”
“Old age and deviousness beat youth and inexperience every time. How far along is she?”
“About two months. What clued you in?”
“Nothing I can put my finger on, but I’ve been around a lot of pregnant women in my time and after a while you just get a sense about these things. I figured that was why she was here working for me. That Freyan tradition thing, even though I am hardly of the noble class.”
Betty pulled a chair over and sat next to Jack. “What are you going to do? Will you give your approval?”
“Nifflheim, she had that ten minutes after I first met her. I also respect the fact that she isn’t using the baby to trap Morgan. In fact, I’m going to speed the process up a bit and maybe have a little fun with them. Want to help?”
Betty smiled brightly. “Of course. What will we do?”
Jack explained and Betty laughed out loud.
* * * * * * * * *
The ceremony had gone well. Clancy didn’t appear too nervous on camera, and Rainsford kept his speech short, which was always a crowd pleaser. Gus handed an envelope to Clancy afterwards then followed the governor back to his office. Once back, he explained what was in the envelope. It was the reissued deeds for the cabin and aircar that Thaxter had bought in Clancy’s name.
“You did what?” the Colonial Governor screamed. “Gus, that cabin, aircar and the contents of that locker were all proceeds of a crime. As such they were subject to seizure by the police.”
“What crime,” Gus asked in his most reasonable tone of voice.
Ben sputtered as he tried to think of an answer. “You’re the lawyer. You tell me.”
Gus sighed and took a seat. “Ben, the only provable crimes were committed by us, if you want to be technical. There is no law that says a convicted felon cannot buy or sell property. In fact, believe it or not, he could run for governor as there are no provisions in our constitution to prohibit it. The fact that Thaxter was an escapee is irrelevant. There is also no law that says a convicted felon cannot rent property, to wit, a spaceport locker.
“What the law does say is that police cannot enter a private residence without either a warrant or the owner’s consent except in rare cases of exigent circumstances, like somebody is about to be murdered, or there is probable cause, as in a scream or gunshot coming from the dwelling. That applies to the spaceport locker as well. It is Federation law not subject to reversal by member planets. And unlike the old days before the veridicator was invented, a cop can’t claim exigent circumstances if the veridicator won’t bear him out. With me so far?”
Ben nodded.
“Good. So, either the police entered the cabin and took data from the computer therein with the consent of the owner, to wit Clancy Slade, or they did an illegal search and seizure of Leo Thaxter’s
property. Now, if Clancy was able to give that consent, then it has to be his property, in which case we have no business seizing it as we have no proof he did anything illegal. Still with me?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure I like where this is going,” Ben said.
Gus shrugged. “Now, if it is not the property of Clancy Slade, then we can all be sued for violating Thaxter’s civil liberties. Even though he is not alive to do so on his own initiative, there is always some ambulance chaser willing to do it on Leo’s behalf for the good of the people and to get his name in the news feed.” Gus put air quotes around ‘good of the people.’ “His sister, Rose Evins, could make a stink about it from prison, too.”
Ben slumped a little in his chair. “Okay, fine, the cabin and aircar are Clancy’s, but the contents of that locker….”
“The cash and sunstones in the locker were suspicious, yes, but not illegal in and of themselves,” Gus continued. “There has been no reported theft of cash or sunstones in anywhere near that quantity. We have no evidence that they were stolen at all. We have no direct evidence that they came from that illegal prospecting operation on Beta, either, though I wouldn’t be at all surprised.
“On a planet with income tax, we could go after either Clancy or Thaxter for tax fraud, but that would be it. Thaxter’s dead and Clancy was granted blanket immunity for anything we might find even if he was a co-conspirator, which we know for a veridicated fact that he is not, so even if we had income tax, which, thanks to you, we don’t, we still couldn’t touch him.
“There is an old misquote that claims ‘possession is nine-tenths of the law.’ The cabin and locker were all in Clancy’s name, making them his property. Trust me Ben, it isn’t worth the headache to try and take it away from him, and as far as I’m concerned, he earned it when he shot Thaxter.”
Ben rolled his eyes and leaned back in his seat. Gus was right, of course. He was one of the best legal minds on the planet, and if he said it wasn’t legally possible, then it just plain wasn’t legally possible. “You said that expression is misquoted? What is the actual quote?”
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