“So… you’re the one behind the robberies?”
His laugh was muffled from behind the mask. “See. I knew that your deduction skills were top rate.”
I figured out what the odd-looking guns were for. It became pretty obvious when I choked on the thick gas fumes that billowed out and sent me straight to dreamland.
I woke up from nightmares of drowning. Light flooded my vision, blinding me for a minute. My head pounded with that severe hangover type of throb, and I generally felt like I’d been run over by a dump truck. I sat up with a groan. Something yanked on my wrist, preventing me from sitting up straight.
I was shackled to a bed. The room was gloomy, lit up only by the consoles hooked to the bed, and some flickering overhead light that was probably faulty on purpose. I knew exactly where I was.
The slammer.
The door slid open, admitting a doctor and a sour-looking mug in a rumpled flogger who could only have been a dick. He flashed his brass in case I needed help figuring that out.
“Ah, our guest finally has awakened,” the quack said. The light reflected off his round spectacles as he examined the monitors. “And none too worse for the wear, it seems.”
“So he can answer questions?” The dick had strode over and hovered by my head in a very irritating manner.
“He’s all yours, detective.”
The dick frowned down at me. “Where are the rest of your partners?”
I rubbed my head groggily. “You gonna offer me a gasper or something? A drink, maybe?”
The dick nodded to the quack. “Get the man a drink, willya?”
The dick pulled a gasper pack from his pocket and took his time extracting a smoke and lighting it in front of me. “My name is Detective Flask. You might wanna consider cutting to the chase and dropping dimes real quick like. Save yourself the trouble of harder time later.”
The quack returned with a plastic cup that I gratefully accepted. I downed the contents and immediately choked.
“What… what the hell is this stuff?”
The doc’s eyebrows lifted. “It’s… water.”
I set the cup down and looked at Flask. “Isn’t this kind of torture illegal?”
Flask didn’t exactly get all teary-eyed. “Just start ‘fessing up and it’ll go better for you.”
“You gonna uncuff me so that I can stretch out a bit?”
“Nope.”
I sighed. “Didn’t think so.”
Flask opened his holoband screen and scanned some crime reports. “Let’s talk about the robbery. Your crew put a lot of important people to sleep and made off with some valuable commodities. You might start by telling me where we can find your partners and what they’re planning to do with what they stole.”
“And what exactly did they steal?”
Flask glared at me. “I’ll ask the questions. Like who the hell are you? ‘Mick Trubble’ sounds like an alias to me. Your holoband only has a name — no address, no files, no nothing. Nothing on you in the databanks at the precinct either.”
He shut the screens off. “I figure your holoband was flashed by some underground streetcoats. Not too hard to do these days. Bad thing is that a flash job is a federal offense. So is carrying an unlicensed firearm, even one as old as that relic we found on you.”
He gave me one of those grins that aren’t worth much of anything except for giving a mug the creeps. “Know what, though? An older firearm like yours makes for easy tracing. Seems it fits the bill for a number of unsolved murders around town. Put that with being caught red-handed on a robbery and you’re looking at being locked away for good. Unless you get real good at singing, that is.”
I rubbed my head. “Thing is, I was real good at sleeping, from what I can tell. Breathed in a chest full of foul air, courtesy of the gang that did the actual robbing. I’m a Troubleshooter. I was there to stop the damn thing from happening in the first place.”
Flask snorted. “Right. A Troubleshooter. One that no one’s heard of, who just so happened to be the only stiff on the cruiser that wasn’t logged on the ship’s records. On a ship, by the way, that was robbed at that exact time. A lot of coincidences, and I don’t believe in coincidence. Maybe you want to try again.”
I gave him a bleary-eyed stare. “Nothing else to say. I was double-crossed. My partner flimflammed me into getting on board, then set me up as the patsy to take the fall. You think that one guy just so happened to be knocked out cold by accident while the others got away? If so then maybe you might wanna sharpen your skills a bit, shamus.”
Flask frowned and exhaled a cloud of gasper smoke in my face. “Know what I think? I think that you got set up, all right. But that doesn’t mean you weren’t in on the job.”
He gestured with his gasper, tormenting my nicotine addiction with the vapor trails. “You see, every crew has a screw-up. One of those guys who aren’t so quick on the draw, catch my drift? Always mucking up the job and making it harder for the rest of the crew. Know what happens to that particular brand of screw-up?”
He looked around at the dim cell. “This happens. So now that you’ve been sold out, you really don’t owe any loyalty to those lugs, do you? Time to start thinking about your future. You drop names and locations, and I’ll drop some of the charges. Make it so you’ll be able to see daylight again — after a bid or two, of course. Still, it’s better than what you’re facing right now. A lot better.”
He put his hands behind his head and leaned back with an expectant look on his mug.
I shrugged. “Love to help you out, Flask. I really would. But it just so happens that I don’t know nothing. I was just a mug in the wrong place at the wrong time. Happens to the best sometimes.”
Flask narrowed his eyes and gave me his best intimidating stare. I guess it worked pretty well on the lowlife skels that he was used to dealing with.
Not so much on me.
Finally he angrily straightened up. “Looks like Mr. Trubble is choosing to be uncooperative. Maybe he needs a little time alone.”
He unlocked the handcuff and shoved me to the wall as the quack wheeled my bed out of the cell. Flask kept his hand on his iron as he joined the doc at the door. “Or maybe a lot of time.”
The door closed behind them. The lights cut off soon after.
I was alone in the dark.
It’s real hard to judge the time when you’re marinating in the meat locker. Especially when they got you in the bing ward, segregated from the rest of the population. But judging by the meals served, I couldn’t have been there for more than two days before a pair of bulky, uniformed androids lumbered in.
“Come with us.”
I made a big show of yawning and stretching until my joints crackled. Didn’t want the lugs to think that they’d gotten to me. The androids didn’t care too much for my show of nonchalance. They grabbed me by my arms and hustled me out of the cell, ignoring my protests.
“Hey — you lugs wanna go easy? What’s the rush? I get a lawyer or something? What the hell gives?”
“You act like you like it here,” Flask said. He glowered a few steps away with his arms crossed. “We can always set up more permanent accommodations if you can’t find it in your heart to leave.”
I blinked stupidly as the comprehension slowly dawned. “You’re letting me skip out?”
He shrugged. “The manacle on the bed was more than a restraint. It was a lie detector. While attached to your wrist it took data on your responses. Turns out you were telling the truth, so you’re free to go.”
“You had those results two days ago. Why let me cool my heels in the meat locker?”
“That was in case you were holding back on us. And for wasting my time.”