Dexter waddled out from behind the counter, wiping his four hands on his greasy apron.
"Obi-Wan! My friend! Why didn't you come back to the kitchen and greet me?" Dexter's wide face creased in an enormous grin. "And you brought the tadpole with you!"
Anakin winced at the nickname. Then he stood up. He had grown since the last time Dexter had seen him, and Dexter burst out with a shout of laughter.
"Well, you showed me, you did, young Skywalker. I'd say you were full- grown now!" He hooked one enormous foot over a chair rail and dragged it over to the booth, then eased his bulk onto it.
"Now, what can I get the two of you — ten-alarm chili? Sliders? I've got a stew cooking with bantha meat, cooked long and slow to make it tender. I know they say banthas taste like old boots, but they haven't tasted Dex's stew! I'll tell you my secret, boys." Dex leaned over. "I leave the hooves in the pot while it's cooking."
"Sounds delicious, Dex, but we've come for information," Obi-Wan said quickly, as Anakin's face paled. "We're on the trail of some galactic criminals, and we believe they have a taste for your slider garnish."
Dex slapped his knees with two of his hands. "And who doesn't? I've got to remember to bottle it. I could make my fortune! One of these days, when I get a minute away from the stove, ha!"
"One of the criminals is Jenna Zan Arbor."
Dex whistled. "A nasty piece of work. Wouldn't know her to see her, though. And I haven't heard she's back on Coruscant."
"How about Senator Bog Divinian?"
"Astri Oddo's husband? Sure, he's been here. Likes my sliders. You know, some people find them addictive! Picks up his dinner many a time and brings it back to his lodgings."
Obi-Wan briefly described the Slams. "Have you seen them?"
Dex stroked his chin. "Don't think so, and haven't heard of them, either. Hard to say. Here's the problem — we've been too busy here lately to notice much of anything except dirty dishes. And things are set to get even busier tomorrow, because the All Planets Relief Fund Ceremony will be held right across the way." With one fat finger, Dex pointed out the window to the plaza. "This is the kind of area the Fund will be trying to improve.
Anyway, I'll keep my eye out. Many will be coming to see the big shots like the Chancellor. But most will come, I'd wager, to see a fortune being transferred. Everyone likes to be close to vertex, even if they don't have any themselves. They feel richer for looking at it — at least until they go home and look around at what they've got!" Dex laughed heartily.
Anakin looked at Obi-Wan. Fortune? Vertex? "What do you mean, Dex?" he asked.
"Don't you know the drill? Every planet in the Senate is donating vertex to the new fund. They present it to Palpatine, and then his personal guard brings it to the vault." Dex pointed across the plaza. "The Bank of the Core. Now don't be thinking there will be hanky-panky," he said, waggling his finger. "There will be security like you've never seen.
Coruscant security and the Chancellor's Red Guards. Tomorrow they'll be cordoning off walkways and placing officers around the plaza. A journalist for the HoloNet news even paid me to keep her airspeeder out back so she'd be able to take off quick tomorrow to get to her vidcam studio hookup. I said yes because she was a looker — or maybe it was the credits she put in my hand, ha! Then she goes and parks it so it blocks my food-delivery doors. Left it locked tight as a drum. Now you know I don't stand for that.
" Dex chuckled. "So I got my pal Acey to break in and I moved it myself behind a dumpster."
Dex's words washed over Obi-Wan. There was something here. Item after item clicked in, but he couldn't add them up.
"Can we see that airspeeder, Dex?"
Dex gave him a puzzled look. "Don't see why, but what I have is yours, Obi-Wan. This way."
Chapter Twelve
Anakin and Obi-Wan followed Dex through the steamy kitchen noisy with clattering pans and spattering grease, through the rear exit doors into the alley. A long airspeeder was parked in an angle, wedged between a dumpster and durasteel trash bins.
"It'll smell like old fish tomorrow, but I can't help it. They can't block my kitchen," Dexter said.
"It's a Ralion B-14." Anakin said.
"Can you show me how it was parked before you moved it, Dex?" Obi-Wan asked.
Dexter stamped his enormous foot. "Right here. In the way."
Obi-Wan bent over and studied a round cover sunk into the duracrete street. He knocked on it with his knuckles. "Utility tunnel."
"For my water delivery," Dexter said. "I know because my water froze last winter, and that's where they crawled down to fix it."
Anakin and Obi-Wan exchanged a glance. It was all adding up.
"Got to check on my stew. You two come in when you have more time. You know I like to feed you." Dexter waddled back into the diner.
"Must have been Valadon in disguise," Obi-Wan said. "The airspeeder is for their getaway. And here," he said, stamping his foot on the cover, "is one of the entrance points for the Zone, most likely."
Anakin prowled around the airspeeder. "Doesn't seem to be juiced up, at least on the outside. No extra exhaust valves. Seats four, five in a crunch." He opened the door and slid inside.
Obi-Wan entered the speeder from the other end. "Looks clean."
"Fully fueled," Anakin noted.
Obi-Wan reached over toward the door on his side. Something had drifted down to the floor when he'd opened the door, the tiniest wisp of a thing. Attuned to notice every scrap, he bent over to pick it up. It was a thread. He held it up. Blue.
"Anything?" Anakin asked.
"I'll send it to the Temple lab for analysis, but it looks like standard cloth," Obi-Wan said, carefully placing it in his utility belt.
"Certainly not the septsilk and veda cloth that both Zan Arbor and the Slams like to wear."
Anakin murmured a reply, busy studying the engine specs. "This doesn't make sense," he said. "The transport body style doesn't fit the engine. In speeders, you maximize every particle of space. I'd guess there is about three centimeters unaccounted for."
"That's not very much."