BOOK ELEVEN - !BUSTED¡
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
- “GORLED!”
In
“Nectar of Rassoul!” the gambler
drawls.
“Rawth!”
“Ah… but soon, soon…” Rats promises, “we'll
be drinking Hurtian champagne. If that’s your desire, I mean… to get out of
here…”
“Goin' to Hurt?” Turpin wakes up.
“Depends. Got a lotta skilk still tied up in
He kicks the carpetbag at his feet, but gently. The clock over the bar tells the time sixteen
ways on sixteen planets, all of which make Turp a
little more hincty.
“Oughta be going!” he mutters.
“Let 'im wait. Want 'im grateful when we show up.”
Instead, a couple of jims in dark suits
approach from either side of their table.
“Davey send you?” Rats is, well, rattled.
“Lemme finish my ale!” he whimpers
The Regency Men lay
their badges down on the table
“What say we all pay a
visit to this Davey fellow,” one of them says
“I know you?” Rateyes pretends not to
have seen the badges. “Jam off!”
“What's in the sack, Cap'n?” the other
inquires, drawing his gat. Both seem to
find this funny, and the first shurt kicks the bag.
“None of your business,” Rateyes protests.
“Percy Ray Frobisher…” the first declares, placing an Official
order on the table, where it soaks up a quantity of the bad ale and starts to
disintegrate. “You and your associates…
we know of several, is this one?... are under arrest
for violation of the ANUS-BEST-US
orbiting ilaam, violation of a Regency
Electromagnetic Preserve, larceny therefrom and
certain other offenses we'll get into at a later date. Tell us about Davey…”
Rats looks
up at the two shurts.
“Stuff it up your anus-best-us…”
The regency men cuff Rats and Turpin, lift up the bag of chimes
and set it on the table.
“Found a funny little doll on that rawth
you flew out of here in…” the first of the Regency men toys with his suspects,
“I'd say you were lookin' at capital offenses. So why
don't we begin with Davey, or this other member of your crew we have witnesses
say cut outta here when you got back…”
“I ain't
saying nothin'…”
Rats shakes his head.
“And I want an attorney.”
Turpin, following his lead, echoes “nothin'!”
Which is why, an hour later, he finds himself in a yellowish
interrogation room, hands and ankles laser-manacled but loosely; he still can
reach up and pick his nose. Behind a one
way mirror, Detective Crandall and Officer Pimm watch with disgust.
“Frobisher was the organizational brains behind this…” Crandall
nudges his subordinate, “Kollucks the tech brains…”
Pimm
ain’t the sharpest killdart
in the drawer, but even he can figure this out.
“The squashed guy?”
“Yeah.
This other dank was the muscle… I hear things. This guy… don't know what
the Johanna he was doing... well, let’s find out…”
They leave their observation post and enter the yellow room,
slapping the door behind them for luck… one of those pointless Regency
rituals. Taking a seat opposite Turpin, Pimm slaps a folder against the table.
“Turpin, Timur… twenty eight soyears old, Hurtsman geneology… aspect, uh, miscellaneous… born Ursa Majoris… last known
occupations: Klown, sailor, provisional with a QI of
one thirty six…
This brings the prisoner up and complaining. “Hey… I gotta two
oh four! I’m a legitimate snaker. Guild said
so…”
Crandall remains standing, hands folded in front of his
clams. “That was before this little
adventure…” Pimm explains.
“Ain't
supposed to count gorls.
Ain't been gormed
of anything…
“Gotta bag o' chimes and a corpse,
witnesses…” Crandall recites, tiredly, “I think you're demattied!
Plus whatever you were into at that sikken hotel, the
night Lyca Arbatax died?”
and he gives the prisoner a sikken little smile,
lifting the carpetbag a few centis and letting it
drop again.
“I was just doin’ a job,” Turpin
whines. “For a friend, he was working
for Davey…”
“Davey Clegg, yes, that’s another one,” Crandall smirks. “Queer thing happened, Clegg gets found
darted in the City – back alley, no witnesses.
You, now, you’re the sort of jim
as got mawts piling up all around your feet, maybe
Frobisher ain’t the nog
behind this rawth, maybe you are…
“You got all the rook, don’t you? You're the jammin'
shurt…”
“Detective, to you.” Crandall wags a finger in front of the gorler’s face as if speaking to a naughty child. “Long and short of it is… give
up the fourth member of your crew and you might save your skin.”
This seems to unnerve Turpin and he recoils in his seat. “I want a lawyer, faq? It's my right…”
Pimm
smiles, waving towards the door. “Omar?”
A shriveled little turtley-man with a
beard, Omar scuttles in… looking either drunk or very old and palsied…
“This is your lawyer. Omar. Ohm, this chunk of rawth
is Timur Turpin ordinary snaker,
that’s bein’ generous, and… oh yeah,” Pimm adds, cruelly, “former Klown. Kindly advise your veeb
of a client…”
“Tell them everything they want to hear,” the turtley-attorney rasps, “and the Regency might let you
live.”
“He's fired!” Turpin shouts at the shurts. “I want Mushnovarian…”
“Can't do that!
Mooshie's under suspension for a duration!” Crandall
shakes his head. “Bad acquaintances.”
“What duration?”
“The duration that lasts till we say he ain't. You get one lawyer, that's all, and that’s
Omar here. And a psychiatric evaluation, in case you try claiming you were
insane when you went to the Bezend!”
“Don't want one!”
“Too bad, you're getting' one,” Pimm
glances at the Detective. “With all the fixin's!”
“Tell the Regency what it wants to hear and you might get off
with twenty years…” Omar the lawyer coaxes, then looks to the shurts for assurance, “uh, that's, uh, fifty
something, Hurtian…”
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