The way Dan Wirth was looking at Trish just made her fume all the more. The guy had that smirking superiority virtually leaking from his plastic smile, as if to offset the steely set of his brown eyes. She sat across from him at one of the gambling tables in The Jewel. One hand rested suggestively on her pistol as she glared, the tabletop between them like a battlefield.
Dan Wirth had arrived aboard Turalon. A transportee. Sent by The Corporation to herd cattle. Since no one back in Solar System had heard that the last cow on Donovan died eight years ago.
Instead, Wirth had built The Jewel in an old core drill warehouse that Thumbs Exman owned up until the night he lost both the warehouse and his life in a card game with Dan Wirth.
Trish had never been able to prove that Wirth had been Exman’s killer. Thumbs’ body had been found in a farmer’s field out beyond the fence.
Wirth was in his thirties; the three-month growth of curly brown hair atop his head barely masked his newcomer status. Trish had been there the day the guy stepped off the shuttle. She’d been instantly dazzled by his lady-killer smile, that sparkle in his eyes, and those charming dimples.
“Quetzal,” Talina had warned her, seeing through Wirth’s roguishly charming personality to the cold and calculating predator beneath. Talina had an eye for monsters, no matter how beguiling they might appear on the surface.
“That’s all I can tell you, officer,” Wirth now told Trish, his voice reeking of false sensitivity. “If I’d had the slightest clue that Jay and Mullony were going to get into it, I’d have had Art toss them out forthwith.”
She glanced behind Wirth to where his enforcer, Art Maniken, sat smiling and playing with a long-bladed knife at the back bar. Art had been around. Arrived at Donovan on Mekong as a Corporate-trained accountant. He’d played at the farce for a couple of months, chafed under Clemenceau’s stern hand. Not that there had been much accounting to start with. Then he’d deserted into the bush in the company of a couple of miners.
Art Maniken had thrived on the fringes of Port Authority. A natural hunter and tracker, he made his living shooting chamois and crest for the hides and meat, and trading them for as many wild nights in town as his credit would allow. Then he’d head back to the bush.
Art had taken to Dan Wirth the moment he met him, figured him for a kindred spirit. Tough, willing to kill on command, Maniken had found his niche. Wirth let Maniken indulge in enough sex, drink, food, and good times to keep the man lapdog loyal.
Trish refocused on Wirth. “This is the second guy Jay Cates has knifed. Back before Turalon spaced, he knifed a guy in Inga’s. Killed him.”
Wirth’s smile might have been filled with sunbeams. “Officer Monagan, I can’t deny a man access to my establishment just because he has a checkered past. That’s half of Donovan. Even Shig. Didn’t I hear he shot a man in the back of the head?”
“Tambuko. Yeah. We tried him for rape. Convicted him. That was an execution, Dan.”
“Precisely.” Wirth thrust out a finger as he leaned forward, a carnivorous grin on his full lips. His quetzal-hide vest flickered in the light. “Where’s the moral prerogative? Let’s not fool ourselves with hypocritical little games, Officer. We both know that some problems are best dealt with permanently, and quickly, for the good of the community. Heaven forbid a Tambuko, or let’s say a Fig Paloduro, or an Abdul Oman be allowed to rile up the good citizens of Port Authority.”
He spread his arms wide, head back as if in rapture, saying, “Praise be, how joyous the light that brings us comfort with the timely departure of black brigands of their like.”
Then he was in her face again, eyes narrowed. “But Cates and Mullony, after a few drinks, get cross-wise over a game of cards. In a fit of passion, they both leap to their feet as they shout insults so dastardly and vile they’re fit to shiver the dead, and lay into each other. Fair fight, no less.”
He paused. “And for that, you’re in here busting my balls? I’m the guy who had to clean the bloodstains off my floor, chairs, and tables.”
“You always have the answer, don’t you?” Trish took a deep breath and slapped the tabletop with an impotent hand.
“Officer Monagan,” Wirth said, overacting his feigned weariness. “When you have proof of my craven disregard for the lives, wealth, and health of our beloved community, please, come clap me in irons. Until then . . . ?” He tilted his head as if to invite comment.
At that juncture, Allison Chomko walked over wearing a slinky and low-cut dress. Was this still the same woman Trish had known back in school? Allison was older—had been a couple of years ahead of Trish in school. She was second ship, arrived as a child, but still in that limited first group of children raised on Donovan. That Allison had been shy, dominated by a tyrannical father, and blushingly in love with Rick Chomko. A man she married within weeks of her father being killed by a bem out in the bush.
Allison had always been a tall beauty with pale-blonde hair and a complexion like fine porcelain. Now she looked absolutely gorgeous; the thick wealth of her hair fell over her shoulders, the skintight dress accenting every elegant curve in her perfectly proportioned body. Word on the street was that if a man could meet Wirth’s price, Allison would take him back for an extended session of sex and drugs.
That Wirth had convinced Allison to prostitute herself was just another measure of how thoroughly she’d fallen under his spell.
Trish could see it in the woman’s eyes, which looked wistfully vacant, dreamy blue, as though hallucinating some lovely thing beyond this world.
“Yes, my darling?” Wirth asked, grinning up at his prize.
“I have a man with a nugget, Dan.” The dreamy smile widened. “Almost two ounces. He’d like to cash it out.”
“Safe’s open,” Dan told her.
“Oh. It is?” A slight frown crossed Allison’s smooth forehead, wrinkling her golden eyebrows. “I should have remembered.”
Then she turned and crossed the floor in a perfectly balanced undulation, moving like a gentle wave among the tables. Every male eye in the place followed her.
“Is that how you turned her into a whore?” Trish asked acidly. “Drugged her?”
“Do I ask if the men in your bed are stimulating their erotic tendencies?” Wirth arched an inquiring eyebrow. “Or are we instituting a moral inquisition in Port Authority that I didn’t know about?”
“The Allison that I used to know, that I grew up with—”
“Is an adult, making her own decisions. I’ll assume the root of your jealousy stems from your inability to lure a man of any sort into your bed.”
Trish wrinkled her nose. “God, you really piss me off sometimes, you maggot.”
Wirth laughed from deep in his belly, the lady-killer grin back. “Not that it’s any of your business, but the glassy look in Allison’s eyes? She fell the other morning. Wrenched her back. Not enough to take her to Raya, but the painkillers keep her up and enjoying life.”
Trish stood. “Yeah, right.”
“Heard the good Supervisor shot a deserter down at the Corporate Mine the other morning.”
“That’s what Talina tells me.” Trish paused. “You worried Aguila might be coming after some of the transportees you’ve taken on?”
Wirth leaned back in the chair and straightened his colorful vest. “Me? I’m not so worried. My people are making wages. The ones who hired on as indentured, I’ll take good care of them. They came to me. Asked me for a contract. We’ve been all through that.”
He studied her thoughtfully. “But, Officer, if you ever hear that slit’s going to move on my people? You let me know. ASAP. Ricky tick.”
Trish shrugged her rifle over her shoulder, glanced around at the gaming tables, the bar, the cage in the back of the room where a prospector was even now getting Port Authority coin for his gold nugget.
Wirth was making a fortune, had a couple dozen men and women working for him here, at Betty Able’s brothel, and at the other “businesses” he’d managed to gain control of. Not to mention that he had his name on titles and deeds all across Port Authority.
“I’ll think about it, Skull.”
“All of which brings me to another problem. I’ve got missing people. Three of them. The ringleader’s a fellow by the name of Petre Howe. Rita Valerie and Ashanti Kung are with him. They were crew on Turalon. Didn’t want to space on what was sure to be slow suicide trapped in that bucket. Signed an indenture for ten years to work for me. So I sent them out to Tosi Damitiri’s mine outside of town.”
“Out at Tosi’s place?” Trish shrugged. “You checked all the piles of quetzal crap out there for bits of uniform? Maybe the odd shoe?”
“I think they’re all alive and well,” Wirth said with a smile. “I just thought I’d take this opportunity to let you know that when I find them, it won’t be murder, but an execution for contract violation. Call it a heads up. Just so you don’t waste your time coming to interrogate me for the ‘facts.’”
“Yeah. Sure. As if you gave a damn about facts.” With that, she gave him a mock salute and headed for the door.
Behind her, Wirth broke out in amused laughter.