Authors: Joseph Lallo
“
Hey, listen, I just need to check those inverters. I didn’t-”
“
Stick to piloting. Subterfuge and espionage are not among your skills. If you are checking up on a potential recall you have violated several dozen corporate and regulatory protocols. Now. My clients, the ones you’ve indicated in particular, expect a degree of discretion, and I do so aim to please. Thus, you are through prying. Are we clear?”
“
Crystal.”
“
Excellent. Generally I would be inclined to treat a breach of this sort far more severely, but the meeting you helped me to attend on time was the source of a truly remarkable amount of income, so I am willing to suspend punishment,” he remarked, approaching a panel on the wall and pressing a button, “Preethy? I will be in my office with a guest. Scotch and soda please.”
He turned and raised an eyebrow.
“
Oh, uh. Rum and coke.”
“
And a rum and coke. I rather think a tube of the skin cream would be appreciated as well.”
“
Yes sir,” came the voice of the receptionist.
The trip through the building had taken them from the concrete dungeon, back through a maze of flimsy walled cubicles, and finally through a frosted glass door to a hallway that would look at home in a museum. The walls were paneled with dark stained hardwood. The floor was polished marble. Lining the hall, each in its own lighted recess, were works of art. There were wood carvings, statues, metal sculptures, and paintings. Lex wasn’t an art buff, but some of them even he recognized. Judging from the quality, there was almost certainly a gifted forger involved. The real question was whether or not it was the museum that had the forgery.
“
Open,” Nicholas said.
The door opened quietly into an office triple the size of Lex’s apartment.
“
If you don’t mind, take a seat on the wooden chair. The usual guest chair is leather and I would rather not learn what sort of lingering character you might lend to it, judging from the state of your outfit,” the wealthy businessman said, indicating an antique chair at one corner of his desk.
“
Don’t stink up the fancy chair. I gotcha,” Lex said, carefully sitting down on the antique. Chances were very good that if he broke it, he would have to sell everything he owned to pay for the replacement.
No sooner had he taken a seat than a second door opened to allow the young woman from the front desk to enter bearing a tray. The pleasing way that her immodest business suit had traced her shape while she was seated had been noticeable. Seeing what it did for her while she was in motion was downright impossible to ignore. At some point a voice in his head pointed out that it was not nice to stare. A louder voice from further south overruled it. It was downright criminal to give something with a sway like that anything less than your full attention. It wasn’t until his host spoke that he was jolted out of the decidedly primitive state of mind.
“
Thank you, Preethy,” he said, “This is Mr. Trevor Alexander.”
“
We met, briefly,” she said simply.
“
Just long enough for me to make an ass out of myself,” Lex remarked.
“
Yes. He was very efficient in that regard,” she said, her precise, professional tone never wavering, “Will there be anything else, Mr. Patel.”
“
Nothing at the moment.”
“
Yes sir.”
She placed the tray down and departed. Lex watched her go. Very intently.
“
It may interest you to know that the young lady you are so eagerly observing is my niece,” said a bemused Mr. Patel.
“
... Yes... Yes that is very useful information,” Lex said, picking up his drink and downing half of it in order to muster up the courage to make eye contact again.
“
I thought it might be. Now then. Before we begin, let me -”
A tone drew Patel’s attention to the pad on his desk.
“
One moment,” he said, snatching up the pad and thumbing a command, “William my boy, been waiting ages to hear from you!” He covered the device with is hand and spoke aside to Lex. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, this is a rather important call. Won’t be a moment. Make yourself at home, but don’t try anything foolish.”
He stood and marched briskly out of the room, oozing charisma as he went. “Yes, yes. All is ready. No problems whatsoever. Looking forward to meeting your man...”
Lex’s instincts once again offered up the highly complex “run for your life” plan that they were so fond of, but he slapped it down. Best to stay calm. Of the alarmingly long list of dangerous sociopaths that Lex had run into in the past few days, Patel was by far the most reasonable and stable. And at least the office was air conditioned. As his sun-baked mind tried to piece together a plan of action, he stood and looked over the walls.
Just as Patel was not the first man you might picture as the head of a crime syndicate, his office didn’t seem to suit the role either. Granted, Lex didn’t tend to spend much time envisioning the lairs of racketeers, but if he did, family vacation photos probably would have been fairly far down the list of expected decor. Nonetheless, dozens of frames were skillfully arranged, proudly showcasing images of a very large and very happy family. What little space that was not used to display snapshots was used instead to show off his other accomplishments. There were degrees, several of them. He had evidently won a “Small Businessman of the Year” award when he was younger, probably before he turned to a life of crime. There were news clippings regarding IPOs, plaques commemorating the ground breaking for new facilities, and a dozen other things that a CEO with a long and successful career would gladly show off. As a matter of fact, the only remotely criminal-looking thing was a clip depicting a courtroom scene and the headline “
Over six hundred collared in cross planet crackdown.
” Lex was glancing over the small print of the image when Patel returned.
“
... Yes, yes, well, I’ll certainly be keeping my eyes open. … Yes, and my mouth shut. You know me, William. I am nothing if not discrete. … Thank you. Good bye.” He closed the message before muttering something unseemly under his breath. He then turned to his guest once more. “Sorry again, that man is a nightmare to get a hold of. Must leap at every opportunity. Find anything interesting? Ah, the crackdown! Yes, yes. That was quite a day for me.”
“
How so?”
“
Mine is a competitive business, Mr. Alexander. Openings in the upper ranks are rare. That court case stirred things up quite a bit. Enough for a certain young upstart to get his foot in the door. Just look at those names. Francis Green, Malcolm Vincenzo, Little Carl Rodrigo...”
Lex’s ears perked up.
“
Little Carl. Carlito? Carlito Rodrigo?”
“
Indeed. Heard of him, have you?”
“
The name came up recently.”
“
Mmm. Small time gun runner. In your neighborhood, as I recall. Shame what happened to him.”
“
What happened?”
“
They locked him up on some obscure regional law tucked away in the constitution of one of the third world nations he helped sell weapons to. It allowed them to charge him with the murders of anyone who was killed using weapons he was involved in delivering. Even after plea bargaining and helping the prosecution, the sentence was measured in centuries. Gun running tends to cause one to accumulate enemies, as does turning informant, and that case locked him in the same facility with more than a few of them. The witness protection kept him away from the new enemies. It didn’t do anything for the old. He died after a few months. Sharpened screw driver, which in that jail may as well be listed as natural causes. He left a wife and children behind, I believe.”
“
What happened to them?” Lex asked, though he suspected he knew the answer.
“
Relocated, I suspect. New home, new identity.”
Lex looked at the dateline and quickly did the math, though the alcohol slowed it down a bit. Rodrigo would have been testifying just about eleven years ago... The same year that Michella moved to his school...
“
Enough reminiscing, though, back to business,” proclaimed his host, clapping his hands and rubbing them vigorously together, “Take a seat.”
Lex found his way to the antique chair and carefully sat down.
“
I’m a very busy man, so I will lay it all out for you. VectorCorp has sent word out that you are under suspicion of industrial espionage, and that you are to be apprehended immediately. As I understand it, I was one of the few individuals to be given your name along with the description.”
“
Hey, now, I-” Lex objected, standing suddenly, then panicking to prevent the chair from falling. Patel cut him off.
“
This will all go much more smoothly if you let me finish,” he said sternly, “Now, take a seat.”
“
No way! You’re going to turn me in!”
“
I consider myself a reasonable man, Mr. Alexander, and I prefer to DEAL with reasonable men. You are in my complex, surrounded by my people. You don’t really think you can run away, do you?”
“
I’m re-e-e-a-ally good at running away.”
“
No doubt. However, have a seat, and we shall see if an escape is called for.”
Lex glanced at the door. It was a long way away... and the hall on the other side was long, too. They’d taken a twisty path through and awful lot of floor space to get here, and in all likelihood there were a handful of big angry men with guns... and two miles of desert between him and the ship. He looked back to his host/captor. The businessman smiled and gave a little nod, gesturing toward the seat. Defeated, Lex sat down and finished his drink.
“
Another?” asked Patel.
“
Several,” he said.
The well dressed man leaned forward to tap at a pad built into the desk.
“
Sorry to bother you again so soon, Preethy, but would you please bring in the bottle of rum and a bottle of coke?” he asked.
“
Yes sir, Mr. Patel,” the voice replied quickly.
“
Now, while we wait, might I suggest you apply some of that cream to your face. Otherwise you are likely to find the top few layers of your face sitting on your pillow tomorrow like a pile of corn flakes,” he advised.
“
If you say so,” Lex said, squirting the ointment from a prescription tube and making ready to swab it on his face, “You know, I appreciate the whole concerned fatherly figure routine, but can we just skip to the threats? I’m used to threats. I get threats from... Holy crap, this stuff works!”
Lex had managed to become used to the constant burning sensation in his exposed skin. It wasn’t until it suddenly and completely vanished when he smeared the cream on did he remember that the surface of your body isn’t supposed to feel like it was being spritzed with boiling water. He quickly slathered his hands, face, and the back of his neck with the cream. Predictably, he’d
just
managed to get every square inch of exposed skin coated with the stuff when the attractive young Miss Misra entered with the requested drink ingredients. This time she didn’t quite fail to suppress an amused smirk as she placed down a tray containing a bottle of very expensive rum, a tall slender glass bottle of cola with the words ‘cane sugar’ etched into the glass, and a bucket of ice with tongs.
“…
Well, as long as I don’t have any dignity left to lose, did I miss a spot?” Lex asked, offering up the tube.
The receptionist took the tube gingerly with two fingers, dabbed a bit on her index finger, and ran it across the top of one of his ears. The smirk lingered for a moment longer before she straightened and restored the carefully cultivated business expression to her face.
“
Will there be anything else?” she asked.
“
Not at the moment. Thank you,” Patel said.
Her heels clicked quickly to the door and down the hall. Lex turned to his host.
“
Now, I believe you were interested in threats.”
“
Well, not interested, but I figure they are on the way, and I’d rather just get them over with,” Lex said, wiping himself off with the towel that had been underneath the tube of ointment and pouring himself glass of rum with a drop or two of coke in it.
“
Let us analyze the facts and see what sort of conclusion they lead us to, shall we?” he suggested, “VectorCorp claims you have stolen proprietary information with the intent to sell. Now, VC is with little doubt the best secured company in the galaxy. It would take someone of considerable skill to liberate anything of value from them. To be perfectly blunt, if what we’ve witnessed here is any example, your own talents in the ways of espionage are woefully inadequate.”
“
Can’t argue with that.”
“
Now certainly, as a freelance courier, you could easily obtain information by simply opening the packages you deliver, but there is simply no reason for VC to ever entrust you or any other freelancer with sensitive data, as they run the largest and fastest distribution network in the galaxy, by a large margin.”
“
That they do. So where does that leave us?”
“
Their story is highly suspect, wouldn’t you agree?”
“
Pff, yeah!”
“
And yet, you managed to get your hands on this,” Patel remarked, sliding the manila envelope containing the manifest onto the table, “Care to explain how you managed it?”
“
My clients expect discretion, too.”
“
I’m sure they do, but at the moment you aren’t in an ideal position to provide it.”
“…
That’s true,” he said, draining his glass, and adding with a shrug, “She’s dead, anyway.”