A Perfect Crime (TWS)

"There's just one thing I need settled, though. See, I need to know just how much I'm putting my neck at risk working with you. And not just for my own sake - it affects just what kind of cucumber I can justify getting for you. If you're likely to run into big trouble with the law, well, I'm not going to get into the more exotic stuff."

She gave me a nasty look. I was on thin ice, but I needed the info.

"I'll make this quick. I haven't been here long, but it's been long enough to get a little bit of info. Maybe you can clear it up. Seems there was a murder last night, and some of your boys were spotted at the scene. Now, I ain't here to pass judgement or anything, but I gotta tread carefully around a murder. For obvious reasons."

"It wasn't us," she snarled. "We had some dealings with the victim, and he was holding out, but we only scheduled a shakedown. The boys found him already dead and emptied what they could from his pockets. Wasn't much, mind. Whoever killed him had probably rifled through them first."

Well, it was a good explanation. It didn't clear anything up about the weird setup on the second floor, though.

"Hang on, boss," one of the boys piped up. "That was last week's shakedown. We had one scheduled for today, some unregistered journalist we were blackmailing, but we had to cancel because he died suddenly."

Well, that was interesting.

"You mean to tell me we missed out on two shakedowns in a row?" the Crone bellowed. "That's the sort of coincidence I don't believe in." She turned her head towards me. "And that means our deal's off. Nothing personal, but when someone's got it in for me, I'm not inclined to take any chances with strangers. Now, leave or I'll send my boys after you."

"Wait! Who's after you? Who's going after your shakedown victims?"

"Why, so you can do business with them? You can just figure that out for yourself. Get out."

I knew when I was pressing my luck, so I ran off. I'd already learned something real interesting. Somebody was going after the Crone's shakedown list, and apparently it was somebody with a grudge.

Of course, I didn't have any real evidence of overstepping the bounds of her license, other than failing to report an unauthorized criminal. And given the communicator message that I hadn't actually seen, admitting that I had posed as one would just get me in more trouble with the Council.

And when I got back home, I realized I had a new problem, because the kid had dropped off a bunch of notes with anagrams of hats scrawled on them. Not that the notes themselves were a problem, I wasn't going to read 'em. But it was going to get harder to ditch that eager young cephalawpod if ??? knew my address.

Still, that could wait for tomorrow. I picked up my communicator where I had "lost" it, reported that it had gone missing at a time five minutes before the message on it and I hadn't reported it earlier because I couldn't find my communicator, put my scuba suit away and went to sleep.

Then I remembered the surveillance cameras. I was an old hand at losing my communicator, so it wasn't a problem if that was on there. But the Council would probably want to know why I had a scuba suit on and where I had gone with it.

The truth was right out. Maybe if I'd learned more from the Crone, I could get away with that, but I only had a little info. I was going to need a solid excuse to give the Manegerial Officers in the morning.

What was that going be?