I, the Constable Page 4

“Not if I have to wait for you to finish your business. I won’t hang around in that part of the city. The people over there are . . . Well, they’re not like us. It’s like they’ve given up.”

  “Given up . . . how?” Odo asked, leaning forward.

  The driver just shook his head, as if he had nothing else to say.

  Odo sighed. “Don’t worry,” he said, reaching into his internal “pouch” and pulling out a few latinum slips. He dropped them into the remittance slot. “You won’t have to wait. Just get me there, and I’ll find my own way back.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” the pilot muttered, and he fired up the vehicle.

  It was the kind of neighborhood where the children likely would have been happy to play with even an unpopular toy like Dilb the Destitute, if only their parents had been affluent enough to buy one. Just one look at the street informed Odo that not every Ferengi harbored dreams of membership in the Entrepreneurs’ Club. Three-story buildings lined the narrow street, mostly contiguous, with an occasional narrow alley slicing through them. Some doorways were blocked by sagging security gates. Others appeared equally uninviting, despite the presence of inexpensive display signs hanging above, some hand-painted with Ferengi lexis that Odo didn’t recognize. Broken bottles and detritus too heavy for the rain to wash away lay scattered before most thresholds. An elderly Ferengi man bundled in a dung-colored raincoat popped out of an establishment, glanced at Odo nervously, and disappeared into the alley next door. No one else appeared. This was a neighborhood, Odo felt, where fathers worked with tools, children played inside, and mothers weren’t allowed to wear clothes, despite the changing norms.

  He looked at the commercial building bearing Hilt’s address. Like those on either side, the stone structure had seen better decades. Or perhaps centuries. A drainage grate near the entrance was clogged, overwhelmed by the ever-present precipitation. He stretched his leg over a formidable puddle that blocked his way and surmised that, contrary to what his Ferengi acquaintances said about loving the constant moisture, these locals might find it less than inspiring.

  Stepping through the slightly askew door, Odo saw Hilt’s name on a directory. Second floor, no lift. This “brilliant financial advisor” may not be as brilliant as Frin’s ex-wives say, he thought. As he climbed the stairs, he saw that the door at the top was ajar. Pushing it open, he walked into an anteroom with a desk, a chair, and a flickering digital poster promoting the hills surrounding Risa’s Temtibi Lagoon.

  That’s odd, he thought. You wouldn’t think Ferengi enjoyed vacationing at one of the few places where it never rains. I’ll have to ask Quark . . .

  When I find him.

  He passed through the deserted room and into the office beyond.

  The place was a mess, resembling what one of O’Brien’s detectives might have called “tossed.” Two chairs lay toppled on their sides, with a lamp and an overturned corner table leaning against them. A desk had been shoved out of place, one corner of it jammed against the back wall, and bric-a-brac, probably from the desktop, was scattered helter-skelter across the floor.

  As Odo carefully stepped over the lamp, he spotted a hand and lace-cuffed wrist peeking out from behind the desk. Moving closer, he observed that the hand was attached to a body sprawled on the floor: a male Ferengi dressed in a shiny silvery-amber suit, the tone reminiscent of liquid latinum.

  You must be Hilt, Odo thought. Or you used to be. He took note of a large hole that was burned into the middle of the man’s chest, apparently from a close-up weapon blast.

  Odo didn’t have to touch the body to know the Ferengi was dead, and he certainly didn’t want to touch it. But he did need to search for clues that might indicate exactly what had happened. He raised the corpse just enough to peek underneath.

  Nothing. And there’s no sign of a second body, no sign of smoldering physical remains that would be typical of complete disintegration. I’ll assume that Quark is still alive.

  He looked through the desk’s drawers, and searched a tiny storage closet, hoping to find files. But there was no sign that Hilt had kept any. Odo postulated that he’d run his enterprise entirely on padds; many Ferengi did. The fact that none were in the office might be the most important clue he’d find. Someone clearly had reason to take them—either to learn something that Hilt knew, or to reclaim something that Hilt shouldn’t have known.

  Looking about, he saw two additional posters and a framed document on the wall nearest the body. One poster promoted the “updated look” of Wrigley’s Pleasure Planet. The other offered another view of Risa. The document was a license issued by the Ferengi Board of Business Barons. This was worthy of greater attention. The date on the license indicated that it had been issued recently. And it listed both Hilt’s business address and his home address. Good to know, Odo thought as he locked the address into his memory.

  A glittering item amidst the debris strewn on the floor caught his eye, and he leaned over to pick it up. It was a jeweled broach. He recognized it at once as one of Quark’s adornments, confirming that the bar owner had been here—and very likely was present during the melee.

  Odo tried to imagine what had happened. Unfortunately, he saw too many possibilities to form a likely scenario. Perhaps Quark had been the unwitting witness to an attack on Hilt. If so, he may have been wounded and taken hostage by the killer. Or perhaps he was on the run from the killer. Neither of those possibilities pleased Odo.

  Even more disturbing, he had to consider the possibility that Quark had gotten into an argument with Hilt and fired on him. Quark typically wasn’t prone to violence, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t the killer. So, again, he might be on the run.

  Odo considered his next action. Clearly someone should contact the Ferengi authorities—but he didn’t really know which commission, or chamber, or council, or board, or delegation, or panel, or directorate would oversee a crime like this. He decided that it would be best to notify the nagus and let him get the wheels of justice spinning.

  As he exited the disheveled office, Odo couldn’t help but be preoccupied by one thought:

  Quark is in trouble. Deep, deep trouble.

  Chapter 6

  My dear Nerys,

  You’ll recall that I speculated about encountering illicit activity in my search for Quark.

  Well, I’ve encountered a body. No, it’s not Quark’s body. I couldn’t be that lucky.

  The deceased is a Ferengi con man named Hilt. No sign of Quark in the vicinity, but I’m fairly certain he was present when Hilt suffered a “permanent ventilation problem”—as Mike Hammer would say—a nice neat hole burned into the middle of his chest, suggestive of a disruptor blast.

  Because I’m not familiar with police customs on Ferenginar, I reported the murder to the nagus, who was shocked. Shocked.

  What he wasn’t, however, was spurred into action.

  What he needed, I realized, was motivation. So I grilled him about what efforts he’d enlisted so far to find his brother.

  “Um, I called Captain Ro on the station,” he said.

  “And?” I said.

  “And I talked to you.”

  “And?”

  “Uh . . .” He made a pretense at thinking about it for a minute. “Um, that’s all.”

  My patience was as thin as the mucus trail of a Denebian slime devil. It had been days since Quark disappeared, and his trail was growing colder every minute. I pushed Rom, asking if he’d bothered to contact the local authorities to let them know that Quark was missing.

  I thought he was going to swallow his tongue.

  “No, no, no!” he managed to choke out. “Quark wouldn’t appreciate that kind of attention! Right?” He threw a panicked glance to Leeta and Ishka. The ladies, who were as familiar with Quark’s personality as Rom, nodded in agreement.

  I tried a different route. “Okay, how about the hospitals? H
ave you contacted them?”

  Now Rom looked utterly confused. The idea had never occurred to him. “Why would Quark go to a . . . a hospital?”

  “Considering the way I found Hilt,” I explained, “it might not have been a voluntary decision on Quark’s part.”

  Silence. I took it as a “no” and moved on. “Have you checked—”

  “The morgue?” Ishka blurted out. The others stared at her in horror.

  “Well,” I said, “that’s not a bad guess, but I was going to ask if there was someplace on Ferenginar that he might use as a bolt hole.”

  “A what?” Leeta asked.

  “A hideout,” Ishka explained matter-of-factly.

  I have no idea how she knew. Perhaps she’s been reading those Mike Hammer novels, too.

  “A hideout?” Rom echoed. “What are you saying, Odo?”

  “We know that Quark was going to see Hilt,” I replied. “And Hilt is dead.” I shrugged and let the assumptions fall where they may.

  They all exchanged wide-eyed glances. They clearly didn’t know what to say, so I said it for them.

  “Now would be a good time for you to contact your local law enforcement authorities.”

  Chapter 7

  With no active leads, Odo decided to investigate an inactive one: Hilt. The man’s home address had been listed on the business license in his office. And unlike the office address, it wasn’t on the wrong side of the river. It was just a short tram ride from the city center.

  Trams, Odo discovered, were cheaper than skimmers. He found that out when he dropped a slip into the tram’s payment box and began to move toward the rear of the vehicle.

  “Hey, smooth-face!” shouted the elderly Ferengi attendant. “You forgot your change!” The nearby passengers gasped. Clearly this was a serious breach of etiquette, if not a legal infraction.

  “I’m . . . sorry,” Odo said, returning to the front. “It, uh, won’t happen again.” He extended his hand, palm up, toward the attendant, but the annoyed civil servant impatiently gestured at a slot on the side of the payment box. Odo obediently lowered his palm to the slot, and a handful of tiny gold-colored flecks slid from the box into his hand.

  Seating himself nearby, he raised his palm to eye level and studied the flecks curiously. They resembled nothing so much as particles of confetti (he recalled a sample of confetti that Jake Sisko had once shown him—a souvenir, the boy said, of something called Mardi Gras). Yet they weighed substantially more.

  “Snips,” commented the passenger seated across from him.

  Odo looked up to see a male Bolian staring at him. “I beg your pardon?” the Changeling said.

  “They’re called snips,” said the Bolian. “A thousand snips to the slip. The fare is only half a slip. Yeah, I didn’t know either, or I’d have picked up some half-slips at the currency exchange,” he added, pulling a similar handful of flecks from his pocket and showing it to Odo. “Of course, they charge half a slip to break a slip, so it’s hard to tell if you’re better off with exact change or lugging around a pocketful of gold-pressed pebbles all day.”

  “Thank you for the explanation,” said Odo, creating an additional interior “pocket” in his uniform for the snips. “Snips. Hmmph. I hadn’t heard that particular denomination before.”

  “Don’t think the more affluent crowd uses it much,” the blue humanoid responded.

  “Can there possibly be any latinum in them?” Odo wondered out loud.

  “Oh yeah,” the Bolian said, rising to his feet. “They call ’em drips,” he added with a chuckle as he moved toward the door. The tram stopped and he got off, Odo noticed, at the main station for several Federation embassies.

  Minutes later, the tram arrived at the stop closest to Hilt’s residence. Odo walked through the main entrance of the nondescript apartment building and glanced around for anything identifiable as a manager’s office. But the doors were marked only with Ferengi numerals. At the moment, he was the sole person in the public area of the building.

  So much for asking someone to grant me entry.

  Time, however, was of the essence, so he walked down the corridor, studying the numerals. When he found the apartment he was looking for, he allowed his body to revert to its natural gelatinous state, and he oozed under Hilt’s front door.

  Ahhhhh.

  It was relaxing to let go of his solid state. He’d been holding it since he arrived on the planet some eight hours earlier, but he had plenty of time before he actually needed to regenerate. And anyway, there was little he could investigate as a puddle of goo on the floor.

  Returning to his humanoid form, he began exploring Hilt’s residence. It didn’t take long to conclude that Hilt hadn’t been the type to bring work home. There was no home office, and nothing to suggest that he maintained digital records of anything, either business or personal.

  In the bedroom, however, Odo found a collection of framed holophotos of the women in Hilt’s life: a gaggle of Ferengi widows—most of them old and shriveled, but a few as young as Weede—posing provocatively in various items of clothing. Blowing kisses, delivering their best “come hither” look. All quite obviously infatuated. It was easy to speculate on how Hilt got his clients: he romanced and then fleeced them.

  Most of the ladies wore just one racy item, like a fancy belt or a pair of high heels. But a few were extremely bold by Ferengi standards: all bundled up in garments of Tholian silk, Argelian suede, or Bajoran yak fur, to the point where you could barely see any skin.

  Just the thing to inflame a male Ferengi’s heart, Odo thought, shaking his head. Females looking for someone they hope will appreciate them. Guess they’ll have to find a new playmate. Hopefully one who won’t try to plunder their life savings.

  The last room Odo checked was the ’fresher. He looked in the cupboards and into the interior mechanisms of the bathroom equipment. Then his eyes fell upon a stack of reading material set on a small table next to the room’s main accoutrement.

  He took note of the items: subscription padds for Ferengi World News, Global/Quadrant Finance, and Latinum Times; a Dopterian joke padd; a digital catalogue of Fe-male Fashion (Federation Edition); and, finally, tucked inside a folded copy of a dog-eared pamphlet called “Rules 101: The Road to Wealthiness,” a small personal notepadd.

  Odo carefully scrolled through the notepadd. There wasn’t much in it—it was essentially a datebook, containing a few upcoming appointments and reminders to go here or there. Grocery lists. Comm numbers—including those of Frin’s three widows.

  And a name that had been scrawled on a blank page with a digital stylus: Sludge Liquid Investments.

  The name appeared several times in the notepadd, sometimes with a question mark after it, and once with an exclamation point. Never with an explanation, description, or context.

  Clearly Hilt hadn’t known what it was—but it seemed he’d very much wanted to.

  Pondering this, Odo slipped from the apartment the same way he’d entered.

  Chapter 8

  An opalescent twilight had fallen by the time Odo boarded the tram back to the city center. Once seated, he checked the list of Frin’s saloons that he’d gotten from Rom. A number of them were at distant locations across the planet. Most, however, were scattered throughout the capital, with several nearby in the business district.

  Jumping off the tram, Odo walked through the early evening rain toward the nearest address. He could see a flamboyant sign ahead, flashing bright Ferengi script. Odo adjusted his padd to “Translate” and pointed it at the lettering. A name popped onto the screen: Frin’s Fabulous Fortune.

  Of course, he thought as he stepped under a grandiose portico that stretched over the street. I should have guessed. Instantly, a tastefully tailored valet approached. “Welcome to Frin’s, sir,” the youth uttered in an obsequious tone, and he began brushing the rain from Odo�
��s “clothes.”

  “Don’t bother,” the shape-shifter said, and he shook the water off with a single quiver. The surprised youth stepped back and Odo strode into the saloon.

  The room was smaller than he’d expected, given the ostentatious entrance. Granted, the ambiance likely was the stuff that Ferengi dreams were made of. Gilded chandeliers offered more in the way of atmosphere than visibility. Accent lights in the floor directed customers to several gambling tables where Odo heard the familiar cry of “Dabo!” as he made his way toward a bottle-backed bar along the rear wall. He slid onto a stool and a Ferengi bartender caught his attention with a quizzical glance. “Bajoran ale,” the constable said, catching the significance of the look.

  Leaning with his back to the bar, he perused the scene. The frippering sound he heard came from a fountain, centrally placed to inspire tranquility and free spending amongst the clientele. A tall plant with purple leaves and orange blossoms grew from a pot positioned next to his stool.

  Ah—perfect.

  Odo surreptitiously poured a quarter of the ale into the pot, then raised the glass to his mouth to give the impression that he was drinking. After a few minutes, the bartender stopped in front of him. “Another?” he asked.

  “No, I’m fine,” Odo responded. Looking at the symbols embroidered on the man’s name tag, he said, “Sorry, but I don’t read Ferengi. Is that your name?”

  “Yup. Pug,” he translated.

  “Glad to meet you, Pug. A question, if you don’t mind. Did I hear that the owner of this establishment—Frin, I think it was—passed away recently?”

  “Yeah,” the bartender answered, remaining nearby but keeping his hands busy peeling and shredding ­kronfruits. “He was pretty old, so we’d been expecting it for a while.”

  “That’s too bad. This looks like a nice place. Do you think it’ll stay open?”

  The bartender finished garnishing a bevy of drinks with the fruit. “I don’t know why it wouldn’t,” he said as he placed the drinks on a waiter’s tray.