I, the Constable Read online

  The shape-shifter peeked through a window set in the door. Nothing moved inside. He rapped his knuckles on the door, then peeked in again. Still nothing.

  He stared down at the ground, at the puddle forming around his feet and slowly trickling under the door.

  Well, when on Ferenginar, do as the climate does . . .

  . . . and suddenly the puddle was much larger. It oozed under the door, where most of it morphed back into Odo’s humanoid form, sans the excess moisture that had gathered on his body during his walk.

  He looked around the room cautiously. The door led into a tiny kitchen, dark and silent but for the sound of heavy raindrops on the roof.

  “Hello?” he called out. “Pug, are you here?”

  No response.

  “Lights,” he said out loud, and the room’s voice-controlled illumination came up.

  After that, it didn’t take long for him to locate Pug. The bartender was in the next room. On the floor. With a hole burned into his chest that looked quite similar to the one Odo had observed in Hilt.

  The Changeling sighed.

  He contacted Quirk.

  “Two murders in one week,” observed the security consultant. “I typically don’t see two murders in a decade, Constable. If nothing else, you’re bad luck to the people of Ferenginar.”

  “Trust me,” the shape-shifter said, “I’d be happy to distance myself from your planet, but I need to find the nagus’s brother first.”

  Quirk knelt next to the body. After a quick examination, he looked up at Odo. “Want to tell me why you were visiting this unfortunate fellow?” he said, poking a forensic instrument into the singed hole.

  “I was hoping to follow up on a conversation he and I had yesterday at one of Frin’s establishments. He’s the bartender there. He didn’t come to work today, so I came here.”

  “Looks like his excuse to take a sick day was valid,” Quirk said, getting to his feet and studying the instrument. “He was shot last night. Who knew that you talked to the bartender?”

  “Anyone who was there yesterday. One customer in particular seemed interested in the conversation. In fact, he followed me out of the tavern. I gave him the slip and was attempting to track him down, but I was interrupted in my pursuit.”

  Quirk nodded silently as he put the instrument in its case and attached it to his belt.

  “I learned today that the customer’s name was Bakke,” continued Odo. “Apparently he had a history with both Pug and Hilt.” The shape-shifter described Bakke, and Quirk jotted down a few notes. “Have you heard of him?” Odo questioned.

  “Can’t say I have,” Quirk responded. “I’ll start looking into who this Bakke fellow might be connected to in the Great Material Continuum. Someone might have figured Pug was rocking their boat on the Great River.”

  Odo stared at Pug’s body and frowned. He didn’t relish the thought that his interest in the deceased might have gotten him killed, particularly since he hadn’t provided any relevant information.

  Which reminds me . . .

  “Chief, have you come across anything called Sludge Liquid Investments in your research?” he asked.

  Quirk shook his head. “I’m still going through Frin’s backlog of files, but nothing like that has come up. I did notice that Hilt was doing some very creative bookkeeping with the widows’ accounts, but nothing that seems too out of the ordinary. Do you think Sludge Liquid Investments is important?”

  “Hilt seemed to think so. And it appears that Bakke did too.”

  The two investigators left the shack together, stepping out into the continuing rain. Quirk headed toward his official Department of Security skimmer. “Need a lift somewhere?” he asked.

  “No, thanks,” said Odo. “I think better when I’m walking.”

  “Suit yourself,” Quirk said with a shrug. He opened the door to the skimmer, then paused before he entered. “By the way, Constable, how did you manage to get into Pug’s house without overriding any of the locks on the doors or windows?”

  Odo’s faint smile was ghostlike in the glistening rain. “I’ve picked up a few skills over the years,” he said. Then he turned and disappeared into the dark and sodden night.

  Chapter 15

  His kidnappers paused at a landing where the staircase took a turn. “He’s heavier than he looks,” Rascoe complained, his exposed arms damp with sweat. “Why couldn’t this conversation take place downstairs?”

  “You know why,” responded Bakke, who was panting just as hard as his counterpart. “Because ‘all business discussions take place in the tower.’ So catch your breath and let’s go!”

  As the painful process again got under way, Quark decided that it was time to make a helpful suggestion. “You realize that this trip would be easier on all of us if you untied my feet and let me walk up the stairs?”

  “SHUT UP!” the two kidnappers shouted in unison.

  Idiots, Quark thought between the painful bounces. Wait—all business discussions take place in the tower? What tower? What’s that about? Who’s up there?

  After another landing, and another pause, and yet another flight of steps, Quark worried that they planned to carry him to the roof and drop him off. Maybe that’s what these maroons call a business discussion, he thought. But on the next, and apparently final, landing, the pair stepped through an open doorway and dumped him onto the floor—which felt different. Surprised, he saw that it was carpeted.

  Carpeted nicely, too.

  Bakke shot a glare at Quark. “Stay here!” he ordered. Then he and Rascoe went through the doorway and headed back down the stairs.

  “And where is it that you think I could go?” Quark shouted after them, determined to have a defiant last word.

  Their voices floated up the stairwell. “SHUT UP!”

  Alone at last, Quark looked around to see what fresh new purgatory he’d been delivered unto.

  To his surprise, he was in a brightly lit suite, filled with tasteful furnishings—which told him that he’d been correct about a third “who” being involved in this illicit group. Neither Rascoe nor Bakke seemed the type to appreciate such decor. One half of the area was designated as a sitting room, with comfortable-looking puffed-fabric chairs in a deep, rich blue; elegant accent tables; and a golden yellow divan strewn with pillows. The other side resembled a traditional office, albeit a very swanky one. A cushioned executive chair sat behind a handsome desk of rich tickwood set on beautiful curvy legs. The desk was flanked by classic urns of live, rare fungi phyla: giant zygomycota and ascomycota that Quark knew to be expensive, not to mention delicious. A computer sat in the center of the desk, along with a number of padds that were neatly arranged, aligned with the edge of the desktop.

  This is the kind of office I would have if I could afford it.

  The distinctive sound of rain beating against a frosted window caught Quark’s ears. Thloppering, he thought. So I’m still on Ferenginar. I don’t know which part of the planet, but at least I’m alive. And being in this room is a lot better than being in that subterranean storage closet. I can see the light, and hear the rain, and smell the perfume.

  Wait. Perfume?

  Quark heard soft footsteps behind him and, with difficulty, he twisted around just enough to see who was entering the room. He followed with his eyes as a Ferengi female clad in a bold red cape dress walked past him and sat down behind the desk.

  “Toad Sweat in Spring,” he said.

  “Why, yes,” the woman said, visibly pleased. “Very good. It’s my favorite scent. Perhaps you’re a bit more cultivated than the average male I encounter around here.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Quark said from his position on the floor. “Plus, it’s a favorite of my mother’s as well.”

  “Not surprising,” she said with an enigmatic smile. “It’s very popular with a certain segment of the female pop
ulation.”

  Her pronunciation of the word “female” caught Quark’s attention. Most Ferengi—well, most male Ferengi—emphasized the first syllable of the word. But a growing “segment of the female population,” as she’d put it, had begun to consider that pronunciation demeaning.

  Okay, she’s one of them, he thought.

  His captor sat for a long moment, contemplating the man trussed before her. At last she said, “I understand from my sons that you regard yourself as a valuable commodity.”

  Those cretins are hers? Quark frowned. Something about her voice struck him as familiar—although in his memory it had carried more of a soft, submissive lilt.

  He cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “if they told you that, they must have mentioned that my brother is—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. He’s the nagus. And while it would be annoying having the nagus poke his nose into my affairs while looking for his brother, it wouldn’t be the end of my world. Yet you’re quite right. That revelation is what so far has prevented the end of your world. When the boys heard you mention it to Hilt, they decided it might be best to keep you alive until I could talk to you. You are, after all, family.”

  Quark stared at her. “Family?”

  She smiled. “Yes. Well, contractually speaking anyway, Nephew.”

  Quark’s jaw dropped as he realized where he’d heard her voice before.

  Fe-males look sooo different when dressed! he thought. But he was too surprised to immediately comment on that fact.

  “What’s the matter, Quark?” she said sharply, leaning forward over her desk. “Gilvo got your tongue?”

  “Yrena!” he gasped at last. “Aunt Yrena! In clothes! Frin would be . . . incensed!”

  “Frin has been interred,” she said with a chuckle. “I doubt that he cares about anything, except perhaps the price his remains are bringing on the Futures Exchange.”

  “Well, I’m incensed!” Quark sputtered. Using every bit of strength he could muster, he wiggled himself into an upright position. “What’s going on here?” he demanded. “Where am I? And why?”

  Yrena’s high, barking laugh pierced the air. “Why, you’re in the same home you were when you first came to see me. In the upper level, actually.”

  She stood, then stepped out from behind her desk and slowly circled the room. “This is the house that Frin built for me and my two darling little boys when we first got married. He was going to make it a traditional suburban wifely hovel, with a couple of ’freshers, a kitchen, a room for the boys, and a great big bedroom for the two of us.” She chuckled. “Not that we used that much! Anyway, I convinced him that I also needed a space where I could sometimes be alone—a meditation room. I said that it would help me focus on my wifely duties. He wasn’t happy about the extra expense, but after a bit of . . . persuasion”—here she reached out to run a finger down one of Quark’s lobes—“the old fool agreed to build my tower. It’s quite practical. I knew he’d never be able to climb up to check on me—too many stairs. And no lift. So he never knew what I do up here.”

  “And what do you do up here?”

  “You tell me,” she said coyly. She picked up several of the padds on her desk, one at a time, and held them so her prisoner could read the screens.

  “They’re just ordinary accounting ledgers and balance sheets,” Quark started to say. And then it struck him. “You . . . you’re doing . . . business!” he said.

  His knee-jerk response was to scold her and tell her she was a disgrace to fe-male Ferengi. But he wisely held his tongue. After all, his own mother was the fe-male who’d manipulated the rule change. Instead, he made a plain statement of fact. “So Frin never realized you were that kind of fe-male.”

  Yrena smiled. “Of course not. But I didn’t just jump into it. I studied Frin’s investments for years. I spent a great deal of my ‘naked and alone’ time thinking about how I’d run his business differently.” She took several more padds off the desk and laid them on the floor in front of Quark. “These are just a few of my most recent ideas,” she said. “What do you think?”

  Quark leaned over and scrutinized the screens. “Interesting,” he said after a moment. “I especially like these shell accounts on the Isle of Grub.” Then he frowned. “But this new tavern—really? You’re planning to build a tavern in Upper Bowog Bay? That’s a big mistake!”

  “And why do you say that, dear?”

  “That’s Eelwasser’s home turf—the Upper Bowog Bay and the whole of Bowog Bog, for that matter. Every businessman who enters the Tower of Commerce knows that the Eelwasser people have verified their plans for a chain of high-end cafés in that region,” Quark said, unable to keep a know-it-all tone from his voice. “Their flagship facility will be in Upper Bowog Bay, near the main Eelwasser plant. A grubby little tavern won’t have a chance against those fancy cafés.”

  Yrena chucked. “My facility won’t be a simple tavern,” she said derisively. “You’re almost as big a fool as Frin.” Lifting her eyes and her arms toward the ceiling as if in reverie, she declared, “I am building the ultimate destination spot on Ferenginar for seekers of venial iniquity. And gambling, of course. This will be a Temple of Turpitude! A Warren of Wantonness that will draw customers from across the Ferengi Alliance.” She dropped to her knees in front of Quark and stared directly into his startled blue eyes. “Eelwasser’s limited vision is focused on . . .”—she paused and practically spit out the word—“cafés! A place to buy a brew and eat a snail sandwich! Bar food! I’m building the ultimate recreational facility! And nothing Eelwasser attempts will stand a chance against it.”

  Then she got up, returned to her desk, seated herself, and calmly stated, “No Ferengi has ever attempted a project this ambitious. It will be my legacy. How do you like the name Reni’s Latinum Lyceum?”

  Quark relaxed a bit with Yrena seated farther from him, but he still worried. He needed to get away from her, and fast. The woman was dangerous! Maybe you should build a Domicile for the Deranged, he thought. You could be the first resident.

  Then the negotiator in him realized that his only chance of staying alive at this point was to act as though he thought her idea was brilliant.

  “I love the name!” he said, attempting to sound sincere. “But where would you get the latinum to build it? You’d have to sell all ten of your taverns, and even then, it wouldn’t be enough.”

  “Oh, I don’t have to sell anything,” Yrena replied. “I have . . . let’s call it an endowment. Or I did until that fool Hilt rerouted the latinum flow. But we’ve since managed to straighten that out, haven’t we, boys?”

  Quark heard insipid giggling from the stairwell and realized that Rascoe and Bakke had returned. He kept his eyes on Yrena. “You, uh, you figured out a financial plan?”

  She brought Quark still another padd. “You’re a businessman,” she said. “Tell me what you think of my methods.”

  Quark smiled enthusiastically and studied the padd, more to satisfy her apparent need for recognition than to satisfy his own curiosity. But then his eyes grew large. It was all there—how she got the money for the casino and why Hilt was eliminated. And it actually made sense.

  “You diverted assets from the other wives’ holdings into a hidden account and accumulated quite a large nest egg,” he observed. “And invested it in the Futures Exchange . . . where it did extremely well.” He looked up at her admiringly. “That’s very good work. But the other wives—they didn’t notice?”

  “Them? They never look at the accounts. As long as they get their monthly stipend to keep them comfortable, they don’t think twice about it.”

  “But Hilt—I guess he noticed it,” Quark said quietly.

  “Yes, that fool! When he approached the three of us and offered to help us increase the size of our trust in exchange for a small commission, Chartreux and Weede jumped at the opportunity. I went along wi
th it, figuring he couldn’t cause much harm. He seemed too stupid.”

  “But he found the blind alley you’d created,” Quark added.

  “I’d made it look like Frin created it before he died—a new venture with a nondescript name: Sludge Liquid Investments. Hilt tried to get at it, to find out what it was, and he couldn’t. It drove him crazy!”

  “Let me guess how it worked,” Quark said. “Technically, the latinum that flowed into that venture didn’t belong to the wives, which meant Hilt couldn’t add a percentage of it into his commission.”

  Yrena nodded. “But then he found a way to block it. He rerouted the money into the accounts of Frin’s three widows.”

  “Well, uh—that was nice of him . . .” Quark said tentatively.

  “Nice? Nice?” Yrena squawked. “When I found out, I sent the boys over to talk some sense into him. Unfortunately, things got . . . messy.”

  “I know,” Quark said. “I was there.”

  “Yes, you were. And now you’re here. And everything is back on track. My entertainment empire will be operating by the end of the year.”

  Quark looked at Yrena with a sense of revulsion, mixed with a touch of understanding. Maybe even admiration, although he hated to admit it to himself. She obviously was obsessed with her plan, to a frightening degree. She was a psychopath. Or maybe a high-functioning sociopath. Is there a difference? he wondered.

  Her dream had resulted in the death of one person, maybe more. But the business acumen evident in the financial structure she’d detailed on the padds was compelling, focused, and clear. The parameters of her objectives and goals were logical—in spite of her unorthodox acquisition methods.

  She’s a thief and a murderer, he told himself. But a very smart business . . . um . . . person.

  Fortunately, business was his forte.

  “Well, this is all very beautiful, Yrena,” he said. “Beautiful and ambitious. Just like you, I might add. But you have yet to finalize a prospectus on growth potential. And you haven’t defined the flow of operations. Are you planning to structure as a proprietorship or a corporation? The FCA will want to know every aspect of your tax enhancements before you can open the doors to the public. And a very enthusiastic public it will be—if you can get the necessary licenses.”