Phule's Paradise (14 page)

     
"How very interesting," Maxine said, studying the figure with a new respect. "Forgive me, Laverna, but I'm still tired and sleepy, and my mind is a little slow right now. What is it exactly that you're trying to tell me here?"

     
Now it was Laverna's turn to shrug.

     
"To me, this changes the game," she said. "Whether he knows it or not, Rafael just hired himself some real heavyweight help. I thought you might want to reconsider your whole idea of taking over the casino."

     
While Maxine might give the appearance of being someone's grandmother or, perhaps, a maiden aunt, this impression couldn't be further from the truth. Locally she was known simply as "Max" or "the Max." She had married into organized crime while still young, and surprised everyone by successfully stepping into her late husband's shoes after his untimely demise during a shoot-out with unsympathetic authorities. She had sold off most of the "business interests" her husband had maintained, focusing her entire energies and resources on one specialty-casinos.

     
Max liked casinos, officially because of their money-laundering capacity, which earned her a steady income providing that service for other crime families, but, in actuality, because she liked the glittery life-style that prevailed at those establishments. She was a common fixture at the tables around Lorelei, though she rarely placed a bet for more than the table minimum. The tourists who gambled beside her never realized that she held controlling interest in nearly every casino on the space station, but the permanent residents knew who she was and treated her with appropriate deference.

     
Despite her years of experience in behind-the-scenes casino work, however, Maxine had a lot of respect for Laverna, which was why the black woman was in her current, favored position of being Max's main advisor and confidante. Not only did Laverna have advanced degrees in both business and law, she was by far the coldest analyst of risks and odds Max had ever met. Maxine, though she prided herself on her levelheadedness, still might be swayed by feelings of anger, vengeance, or ego, but Laverna was as emotionless as a computer, weighing all pluses and minuses of any endeavor before bluntly stating her opinion, however unpopular. The others in the organization called her "the Ice Bitch," or just "Ice," but there was always an undercurrent of respect in the title. If Laverna said this uniformed gentleman could affect their plans, Maxine would be foolish not to give her words serious consideration. Still, Max was a gambler.

     
"No," she said finally, shaking her head. "I want this casino. This Mr. Phule may know numbers and corporations, but I know casinos. If anything, it adds a bit of spice to the challenge. We're going to take this enterprise right out from under his nose, and if he gets in our way, we'll just have to persuade him to stand aside."

     
Laverna glanced at her employer sharply, then looked away again. Max's casual mention of "persuasion" was, of course, a reference to violence-the one point the two women disagreed on. What was more, it was far from an empty threat.

     
Maxine had proven herself to be a more than competent general for her troops on the occasions when other crime factions had thought her territory easy pickings and tried to move in. Nor was she averse to getting personally involved in the bloodshed.

     
The sleeves of Max's housecoat were loose, as were the sleeves of all her clothes. This was to accommodate the custom pistol and spring holster that she always wore. It was a very small caliber, .177 to be exact, the same size as a BB, and the sound it made when firing was no louder than a man snapping his fingers. The small size of the hollow-point bullets meant that she could fit twenty-five of them into a magazine no larger than a matchbox, yet they were deadly if they hit a vital organ, and Max was a crack shot who could hit anything she could see.

     
Laverna knew this, and while she acknowledged the constant potential for violence in their profession, she didn't approve of it.

     
"Suit yourself," she said, shrugging again. "You pay me for my opinions, and you've heard my thoughts on this one. By the way, if you're seriously thinking of leaning on that child, remember he has a couple hundred troops of his own backing him. What's more, that isn't the Regular Army, that's the Space Legion, and it's my understanding they aren't big on playing by the rules."

     
"Oh?" Maxine said, raising one eyebrow. "Well, neither are we. See if you can locate Mr. Stilman, and tell him I want to see him in about an hour. I'm still a little tired. Not getting any younger, you know."

     
Her decision made, Max retreated back into the bedroom, leaving Laverna to stare at the holo-images alone again.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Journal #212

Even as the company was settling into their new quarters and beginning to stand duty, their undercover colleagues were filtering into the space station.

     
I have endeavored to keep these events as sequential as possible to avoid confusion. This effort has been hampered, however, by the sketchy nature by which the facts have been reported to me-directly or indirectly-as well as by the previously noted timelessness of life in the casinos. Much of the difficulty in chronicling the company's arrival on Lorelei is due to the fact that its undercover members were traveling as individuals by a wide variety of transports independent of the "official" group, and were establishing their presence both before and after the company's formal, publicized entrance.

     
Often, my only clue as to "what happened when" is by chance passing reference to an event known to me, or which, by simple logic, would have had to take place prior to an event which I was aware of.

     
Such was the case regarding Chocolate Harry's arrival ...

Although Lorelei was known mostly for its famous Strip, which ran down the center of the station for its entire circumference, there were back streets as well. These housed the businesses necessary to keep the casinos operating, such as laundries and warehouses, as well as the hole-in-the-wall hotels where the minimum-wage employees made their homes. Also found here were the mini-hospitals and pawnshops, carefully hidden away to avoid reminding the space station's visitors of the less frivolous side of life on Lorelei. This off-Strip area, though lighted adequately by normal standards, always seemed dark in comparison to the gaudy light displays along the Strip proper, and tourists needed no warnings to give it wide berth, clinging instead to the better-traveled areas which clamored for their attention and money.

     
It was along one of these back streets that Harry tooled his hover cycle, enjoying anew the freedom from his normal Legion duties. Though he genuinely liked the uniforms Phule had provided for the company, it felt good to be back in his denims, threadbare but velvet soft from years of hard wear.

     
His arrival on Lorelei had been surprisingly easy, especially considering his current, disreputable appearance. The only difficulty he had encountered was in off-loading his beloved hover cycle. The spaceport officials were noticeably reluctant to allow it in the space station, and he had had to spend several hours filling out forms, initialing tersely phrased lists of rules and regulations, and, finally, paying several rounds of fees, duty charges, and deposits before they grudgingly cleared it for admission.

     
It didn't take a genius to realize that much of the ordeal was specifically designed to frustrate the applicant to a point where he would be willing to simply store the vehicle until his departure, but Harry had used every trick in the book, as well as a few new ones, to keep his hover cycle while he was in the Legion, and he wasn't about to pass using it now that he was back in civilian garb.

     
The reason for this "screening" was quickly apparent. All the air on Lorelei was recycled, and while the support systems were efficient enough to handle the monoxide generated by the people on the station, excessive engine use would have taxed it severely. Consequently there were few vehicles on Lorelei aside from the electric carts that shuttled gamblers back and forth along the Strip. The formula was simple: The limited air supply could support people or vehicles-and vehicles didn't lose money at the tables.

     
Despite his apparent nonchalance, Harry knew exactly where he was going. In fact, he had known since before he left the ship. His information had come in the form of a warning from one of the ship's porters.

     
"Goin' to Lorelei, huh?" the man said as they were talking one night. "Let me tell you, brother, you keep yourself out of a place there called the Starlight Lounge. Hear? Bad enough to lose your money at those places where they smile and call you `sir' while they rake in your chips. There's bad folks hang out at the Starlight. More trouble than the likes of us can afford."

     
Casual pressure had yielded no more details, as the man was apparently passing along hearsay rather than firsthand experience. Still, it told Harry what he needed to know.

     
The Starlight Lounge itself looked harmless enough as Harry parked his cycle in front and pushed through the door. If anything, it seemed to be several cuts above the average neighborhood bar. Rather than being disappointed, he was heartened by the place's appearance. It was only in the holo-movies that criminal hangouts looked like an opium den in a bad cartoon strip. In real life, those who successfully worked the nonlegal side of the street had money and preferred to do their drinking and eating in fairly upscale surroundings.

     
"Gimme a draft," he said, sliding onto a stool at the bar.

     
The bartender hesitated, running an appraising eye over Harry's clothes until the Legionnaire-in-disguise produced a thick wad of bills from his pocket, peeled one off, and tossed it casually on the bar. The bill was of sufficiently high denomination that it would have been noticeable most places in the galaxy, but this was Lorelei, where gamblers often preferred to make their wagers in cash, and the barman barely gave it a glance before going off to fetch his drink.

     
The drink appeared and the bill vanished in the same motion, only to be replaced a few moments later by a stack of bills and change. Harry carefully separated a bill from the stack before pocketing the rest, pushing it forward on the bar as a tip. The bait worked, and the barman materialized again to claim the perk.

     
"Excuse me, my man," Harry drawled before the man could retreat again. "I was wonderin' if maybe you could help me out?"

     
"Depends on what you need," the bartender said, his eyes wary, but he didn't leave.

     
Moving slowly, Harry withdrew a wristwatch from his pocket and laid it gently on the bar.

     
"What can you give me on this?"

     
Shooting a quick glance around the bar, the man picked up the watch and examined it, front and back.

     
"This came from off station, right?" he said.

     
"Does it make a difference?"

     
The bartender looked at him hard.

     
"Yeah, it does," he said, and tapped a finger on an inscription on the watch's back. "I figure you aren't Captain Anderson or his grateful crew. If you picked it up here on Lorelei, I'm holding trouble in my hand. They come down hard on pickpockets and muggers up here-bad for the tourists."

     
Harry held up both hands with the fingers spread like a magician accused of cheating at cards.

     
"The captain misplaced that beauty before our last stop," he explained, "and stopped askin' around about it two days out. By now, he and his ship should be well on their way. If there was a chance he was still lookin', I wouldn't be showin' it around like this."

     
The bartender studied the watch again.

     
"Tell you what," he said at last. "I'll give you twenty for it."

     
Harry rocked back on his stool like the man had taken a swing at him.

     
"Twenty?" he echoed. "Excuse me, but that's a pretty steep cut. I knew I wasn't gonna get a one-for-ten deal, bein' new here and all, but that's barely one for a hundred!"

     
"Suit yourself." The bartender shrugged, setting the watch down. "Take it back if you think you can get a better offer. Let me show you something, though."

     
He ducked out of sight under the bar, then emerged again and plopped a cardboard box next to Harry's beer.

     
"Take a look," he said.

     
The box was two-thirds full of wristwatches and jewelry.

     
The bartender smirked. "This is Lorelei, my friend. Gamblers will hawk or pawn anything to raise money for a ticket off-station-or, more often, another pass at the tables. When the box gets full, I run it over to one of the pawnshops, and I'll be lucky to get back what I paid for most of it. I just do this as a public service for our customers."