2953-10-29 – Tales from the Inbox: The Criminal’s Preoccupation
Mari Robertson arrived at the front of the Songbird’s Roost before her friend Eddy Rothbauer. Despite its whimsical name, the Songbird was one of the roughest bars in the entire Sprawl complex; the sign depicted not one of Earth’s many colorful singing avians, but a flightless xeno-specimen with a jagged beak and a predatory gleam in its eyes. No doubt the proprietor thought this amusing, but Mari had always thought the place would be more intimidating still if its advertisement was as whimsical as its name.
Mari had of course already sent out the queries she’d promised Eddy. She knew most of the people on the station who supplied questionably moral but not officially illegal demand to the many visitors coming through Sagittarius Gate. Surely if one of them had vanished with a large sum of money, one of the others would have heard of it, and besides, anyone who didn’t respond within a few minutes to a vague query about high value business was probably a suspect anyway.
As she loitered across from the Songbird’s door, Mari was thinking, however, of the datapack, not of Eddy, his friends, and their missing money. If she could bury herself in this problem, it would give her an excellent alibi for the theft whenever it was discovered, and in the mean time it was, while not precisely safe, stashed somewhere that didn’t trace back to her. If it were found by someone else, she’d be out a massive payout in a few weeks or months, but at least the chance of trouble was looking remote.
Eddy appeared from the direction of the nearest public lift well, and Mari waited until he was about to enter the Songbird before darting across the concourse and sliding her arm into his. As they went in, the murmur of pedestrian traffic was drowned out by the crashing music that always filled the bar, making it impossible for anyone to overhear anyone even at the next table.
The loud music was, Mari suspected, an anti-brawling measure more than anything else; if people couldn’t hear each other, they couldn’t take umbrage at snide comments made in nearby conversations. It certainly made the place convenient for any conversation one wanted to guarantee was held off the record; most recording technology simply couldn’t filter out the discordant music enough to make speech intelligible later.
Mari slid into a booth along the left wall, and Eddy sat down next to her, leaving the seat opposite vacant. They’d be able to converse in low tones better this way, and it would make her being approached by libidinous patrons somewhat less likely.
“Do we know who the Glitters were dealing with?” Mari poked the hard-button table interface to order a pair of drinks.
“They gave me a name, but it’s an alias.” Eddy shook his head. “No records in the station system of a person by that name. It’s not one I’ve seen any of the usual suspects use either.”
Mari nodded. “Someone scammed them. Aren’t they supposed to be nearly telepathic? Who scams a telepath anyway?”
“They can't read minds.” Eddy shrugged. “They’re just really observant. At least that’s what they say.”
“Even if they aren’t.” Mari waved her hand, suppressing a shudder at how close to home this conversation was. “Still sounds like a death wish.”
“Sounds like a good way to be at their mercy.” Eddy nodded. “That might be worse than being dead. They’re basically all diplomats, and diplomat is just another word for politician.”
He didn’t need to explain this; they had both escaped the mesh-network of interwoven petty dictatorships that was the Silver Strand. It was a fine line to walk, doing odd black work for the rich and influential, without being dragged into their orbit, and one scam gone bad would send the perpetrator spiraling down into such a gravity well from which there was rarely any escape.
Mari opened her mouth to mention that her queries were still not conclusive, but a hard set to Eddy’s jaw gave her pause. She realized with a start that he’d spoken from far too personal experience – he was on that spiraling course already, prioritizing the needs of the Gilhedat councilors for a quick turnaround because the alternative was them letting the station authorities know about something they had caught him doing. In that moment, she soured on the idea of ever going back for that datapack. She felt bad for Eddy, but she couldn’t help him, she could only help herself.
“I had worried it was you, actually.” Eddy looked hard at Mari. “You looked like you had seen a ghost when those Gilhedat followed me into Rennecker’s.”
“Me?” Mari smiled. “If it was, I’d have cut you in already, and we’d both be on a transport to somewhere anonymous and remote.” She couldn’t help but wince; if Eddy was already snared, he couldn’t have accepted such generosity, but she couldn’t let on that she’d guessed his predicament.
“Sure.” Eddy smiled back doubtfully. “We’ve got to move fast to make sure whoever did it, isn’t doing that right now. Who do you reckon we start with?”
“My queries aren’t done, but based on the responses I’ve got and I haven’t got, I say we pay Schmelling a visit. This is something he’s dumb enough to try.”
Eddy rolled his eyes. Albie Schmelling was a big, bluff Philadelphian who managed somehow to be one of the station’s most effective con-men. Neither of them liked him very much. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.”
Their drink bottles arrived from the delivery chute, and Eddy reached over to drop a few chits into the payment receptacle. “Drink up. I’ll look to see if he has any outbound bookings.”
Mari’s fear of being pulled out of the grey trades and into being a semi-official agent for some flavor of officialdom is strange to most of us; it would seem this is an easy path to legitimacy for such a person who wanted out of their high risk lifestyle while still using all their existing skills. One should keep in mind however that personal autonomy (if only for the purposes of misusing one’s talents and time) is highly prized by those who find themselves drawn to this sort of lifestyle; they resent anything that smells like having a permanent boss.
