Last Voyage of Delilah, Episode 217: Green Pursuits
Quick and dirty but the high points are there. Sound file available on request.—Maer
Air Date: 03 Dec 2014
Present: Andy, Kim, Terri, Matt, and Maer
Thursday, 18 Oct 2525
You Ge Memorial Hospital
Lorngaard, Highgate
Blue Sun (Qing Long) system
Poco sees his daughter by his old lover, Veronica, exit the hospital with Veronica's (apparent) husband and drive away. Veronica is a doctor at the hospital but before Poco can inquire for her contact information, his contact for the drug deal pulls him aside.
His boss, Mr. Green, is not happy over the botched deal, he tells Poco. Not pleased at all but he is willing to give us another chance. Meet the boss at a truck stop outside the Naval Base. Once there, he'll give us a chance to explain ourselves.
The meet's in an hour.
If we can't make the meet … well, the Boss'll be upset. The orderly tells Poco that we'll likely have to recover the lost drugs.
Why are the drugs lost? Well, what we'd managed to escape with are on our ship and our ship is currently inside the Naval base, ostensibly under unofficial impoundment. The idea that the drugs are sitting so close to what passes as the law here is making the boss extremely twitchy.
Thus, the meet.
Be there.
Poco searches the hospital for Valentine and finds him treated for his injuries and drugged to the gills. He's feeling no pain. Perhaps that is the reason he agrees to go to the meet instead of running, which Poco advises. Valentine quits the bed, throwing off the covers and heading for the door.
Um, Captain? Put some pants on first.
Valentine notices Poco hanging back. Isn't he coming along?
No, Poco has some personal business to attend to.
What kind? Valentine is a little worried but … Is it something important, he asks?
Yes.
Okay, Poco. Go take care of it. Just tell Tian on the way out.
'Kay, bye.
And Poco makes tracks out of there. He's got to find out where Veronica and her family are. He's got a daughter he knows nothing about and he's not entirely sure how to handle it. Nevertheless, he's going to find out.
He also finds Tian and relays the information the orderly contact gave him. She also wants to know what's so important that Poco's not going with the rest of the crew to the meet. Doesn't he realize that Valentine is as high as a kite and might get the crew killed?
Poco's caught in a bind but how can he explain something he can't explain to himself?
Tian convinces him to come with the crew in exchange for her helping him out with his matter afterward.
Okay.
Last Chance Truck Stop
One hour later
The crew takes the bus to the truck stop and Vikki's tasked to stay outside and act as the look out. The rest of the crew walk into the truck stop diner. As diners go, it's nothing elaborate. You have your standard long counter with the stools that spin, the dusty bric-a-brac, the care worn booths, the juke box in the corner that makes no promises of working properly.
There is a man in a business suit at the last booth. He doesn't fit in with the setting. He's obviously here to meet someone. He's wearing a green tie. Val walks right over.
Mr. Green?
Yes, he is. They talk.
The talk goes something like this: Mr. Green is unhappy. He doesn't like losing drugs or money. He likes even less that the drugs are on a military base where they might be found. He's willing to give us one more chance. Get his merchandise off our ship andoff the base and deliver it to Poco's contact at the hospital, where we're to drop it off at the place specified.
No Imperial entanglements. Understood?
If we succeed, we're clear. If we fail, we will owe Mr. Green fifty thousand platinum. If we cannot raise the fifty thousand in coin, he will take the fifty out of our hides by any means necessary. We've got some fine looking women on our crew, Mr. Green says, leaving their fate to Valentine's imagination. It isn't hard to imagine Mr. Green's intent.
We have two days to pull this off.
Mr. Green walks out of the diner and on his way out, he murmurs to Vikki not to get her hopes up. Which sends her right inside to ask the Captain how the meet went. Valentine ushers his crew out and on the walk onto the base to pick up our ship, he fills her in. Also, along the way, we rehearse our story if we're asked by the base personnel what happened.
We devise a sanitized version of the truth: We were on our way to the next city to find work when we had to stop in the middle of the desert for repairs, at which point we were attacked by bandits. We can describe Killjoy and his crew in all truthfulness.
It's a good thing we got our story nailed. The military refuses to release our ship to us without debriefing us first. We're shown into a room and told to wait.
The drugs are right there on the table.
Um ….
A man in uniform walks in. He introduces himself as Lt. McClarin. He asks us if we have anything we want to declare.
Valentine's thinking that we're humped. Seven-ways-come-Sunday kind of humped.
McClarin throws us a lifeline. He understands that times are hard and work is scarce. A freighter captain might take on a job with no questions asked. It's not entirely impossible he wouldn't be aware he was dealing with bad people running drugs, right? And when things didn't go according to the plan, he naturally had to make an escape. So … is that how the story goes?
Valentine says it's a pretty good story. But how does it end?
McClarin tells us he's familiar with Hodger's reputation on the Southern Continent. The PDF investigated the hulk at our meeting spot and found the bodies. He knows we're in over our heads.
McClarin offers us a deal. Help the PDF find the owner of the drugs or … they can leave us to extricate ourselves from this mess on our own.
Valentine asks for a moment alone with his crew. McClarin exits. Valentine turns to us and we're pretty much already there with him: we agree to negotiate the deal. Valentine and McClarin arrange the details.
McClarin says he's authorized to grant clemency in return for our help in nailing the drug lord. Valentine describes Mr. Green. McClarin nods: he's heard of him.
In fact, McClarin wants Mr. Green badly enough that he wants Valentine and the crew to arrange a face to face meeting with him when we deliver the drugs. If we can get the man on tape accepting the drugs, that would be enough proof for the PDF to come in and make their case against the drug lord. But they need the proof first.
Well, hang on, now. Mr. Green didn't say he'd be there when we delivered the drugs to the hospital drop. Valentine got the signal loud and clear that he was to deal with Poco's contact, that Mr. Green was to remain clear of it all. How are we going to convince the man to show up? We're already in Dutch with him as it is.
That is not McClarin's problem, but that's the deal. Take it or leave it.
Valentine takes it.
McClarin clears the crew to take possession of Delilah and he releases the drugs to us so we can arrange the meet.
Thank you, sir. We'll keep you in the loop.
And we get the hell out of there.
Yikes!
Once we're off base and out of their airspace, we discuss what we're going to do. Could we pressure Poco's contact, the orderly, to convince Mr. Green to come to the meet? Tian points out that the drugs came from a pharmaceutical corporation. It's likely Green has ties to a pharm corp. There would also have to be someone high enough up the corporate ladder to divert shipment of the drugs without notice or concern. If we could find out for certain on either of those points, we'd have leverage against Mr. Green.
Yeah. Maybe.
So what are we dealing with?
- Follow the money? What can we offer that's better than 50K in platinum?
- Does Mr. Green owe someone else 50K in platinum, and is using us to get him off the hook?
- Is Mr. Green an operator with 50K to lose in order to save his reputation?
How do we find out? What should we do?
We come up with two options:
- We tell the orderly that we don't trust leaving the drugs with him—look how well our trust worked at the desert meet, yeah?—and we're not going to deal through intermediaries. We're dealing directly with Mr. Green.
- OR we mark the drugs with a trackable isotope so the PDF can follow it through the criminal chain
We take the second idea to McClarin. He's reluctant to do it. He thinks it's too risky. He really wants Green on tape taking the drugs with his hands. We ask for more information about Green. What more can McClarin tell us?
Not much. He warns us that the LEOs in the area are colluding with the drug lords, basically looking the other way. The PDF doesn't have jurisdiction dirtside unless they can prove the drugs crossed the lines off-world coming or going. McClarin is pretty confident he can get that proof, but he has to get Green with the goods in order to get that proof.
When Rachel asks McClarin a little more closely, he finally admits that he doesn't even know what Green looks like. Well, how the hell're we supposed to know if we're even dealing with the right man when we hand the drugs off?
We won't.
Great.
Tian asks McClarin if he knows of Highgate's social elite. Any Core high society? Lord knows, there are enough of those folks hooked on prescription painkillers that there'd be a good business serving that market. Possible as a gateway market into the harder stuff. Perhaps by tracking them we can narrow in on our target?
Of course, this points us back to the hospital as the distribution bottleneck. We decide to ask around with the janitors and the nursing staff: they're practicallyt invisible but are placed to see everything that goes on at the hospital.
Tian thinks out loud about posing as a high society woman looking to score some drugs but only if she can pay Mr. Green directly. Poco fine tunes the idea, saying ideally the person to make that offer should be someone Mr. Green hasn't seen yet. That pretty much nixes anyone on the crew for the task of arranging the meet.
Now wait a tick. Rachel knows someone with the manners and the connections to high society folk with possibly unsavory secrets: Lord Anatole, 2nd Earl of Morrow, currently at Paderborn. Rachel's pretty sure she can get him to agree to send a wave as the go-between. Anatole would be a very tempting lure—rich, landed, has a title, should have a lot of money to go with it.
Barring that, Valentine suggests maybe getting the Triad to stand in as our buyer …. err … no. We need a whale to make he sale with Green, yes, but it should be a whale we can trust.
Antole is looking really good as our whale.
Rachel waves Anatole and begs his help to get her out of a jam. He's the only man she can trust. He's the only one with the expertise to save her.
She hits send and sits back to wait his response. She and he have a history. They go way back. He's helped her out of jams before and she's been ever so appreciative afterward. She's implied pretty heavily he won't go unappreciated if he helps her out this time.
While we wait, we fine tune Anatole's offer to Green, making it as enticing as possible. Valentine and Poco have the most experience in influencing people, given their backgrounds. They take on the task of writing Anatole's offer.
When he responds to Rachel's wave, saying he'll help, we give him what Valentine and Poco have drafted. Say this when making the offer, we tell him. Think of it as a dramatic role in a play, we tell him. Sell it, make it look good.
Anatole delivers!
Now all we have to do is make the meet and get the target on tape accepting the drugs. McClarin assures us that he'll have his men on hand to back us up.
Poco meets his contact at the hospital. He says we have a client, very rich, that we can offer to Green to make amends for our drug snafu. His contact isn't buying it …. but eventually is convinced to take the offer to Mr. Green.
Poco prevails in the end but he's pretty sure he's lost the trust of his contact. As a consequence, we'll only have one shot at this. This had better work.
There being nothing else he can do at the moment, Poco finally takes off to find out more about Veronica and his daughter. He bribes a paperpusher with cigarettes to find out the lovely doctor's address. It's in a middle class area.
Address acquired, Poco returns to the crew to tell them that the meet is arranged, though it's pretty much burned his contact. As a consolation prize, he's got their conversation on tape. We can turn it in with the footage of Green at the meet, when the time comes.
Poco's contact calls us back: the meet is on. Mr. Green will meet us. He passes on the time and the place: 9pm at the ambulance dock at the hospital.
We confirm we'll be there.
Now all we have to do is wait for tomorrow to get here.
Friday, 19 Oct 2525
While we're waiting, Tian tells Valentine in private that she and Poco have a little business off ship to tend to. They'll be back well in time for the meet.
She and Poco take the bus to Veronica's neighborhood in Lorngaard. They walk the rest of the way to her Brownstone. There's a bench nearby and they sit down on it in a sort-of stakeout of the place. Poco confides that he only wants to talk to Veronica, to find out what has happened in the intervening years, but he's not looking to start up anything between them. It's obvious that she's already built a good life for herself. He doesn't want to wreck it for her. After a while, it's clear that there's no one at the Brownstone. Poco waits a little more, then leaves.
Closure will have to wait for another day.
Assuming he gets through tonight.
That evening…
We will take the shuttle and land at the ambulance dock for the meet. Thanks to the equipment McClarin gave us, we're wired for sound and video in order to catch Mr. Green in the act. We give the PDF the heads up we're leaving and take off for the meet.
We'll just have to trust that McClarin will be there to cover us.
When we land and disembark, we're not met by the man in the green tie but the orderly. He tells us that the ambulance dock is too exposed. We're to meet with the boss inside. There being nothing for it, we follow him where he leads us.
Straight to the basement morgue.
Let's hope it's not a harbinger of the outcome.
We're ushered in and the room is dimly lit and quiet as a …. well, morgue. At the far end a light throws down a bright cone and someone waits for us in it. A woman in a doctor's white coat.
Mr. Green, it turns out, is a woman. The man in the green tie was a stand-in, a go-between. A beard, as it were. She tells the orderly to check the drugs we've brought. He does. They look fine to him.
Ms. Green looks over the drugs. She seems unconvinced. Was there any trouble with the PDF, she asks. Valentine truthfully tells her we had no more trouble than expected.
Ms. Green orders the orderly (by name of Vince) to have Mr. Brown check the area for uninvited people. Something has her spooked. Valentine plays it honest as the day is long. It's not hard. He really doesn't want any trouble. He just wants to get himself and his crew out in one piece.
There is a noise outside. Vince is trying to keep someone from entering the morgue.
Someone comes in, despite. Another doctor in a white coat. "Dr. Cage" his name tag says. He recognizes Ms. Green. He sees the drugs. He sees the crew. We see him do the math. And Vikki's face gives it away.
Dr. Wesley, he asks. What are you doing here with these people?
Dr. Wesley (aka Ms. Green) quickly starts extricating herself from the obviously irregular dealings … by trying to bribe Dr. Cage with the drugs. She knows he runs a clinic that is constantly in short supply. What we've got on the table here will more than make up the lack, wouldn't it? We could just keep it between us where he'd gotten the meds, wouldn't we?
No deal.
Dr. Cage leaves. The door closes on his back. Dr. Wesley orders Vince to follow and kill Dr. Cage before he can call the authorities.
Vince moves for the door. Poco punches Dr. Wesley. Vikki pushes a gurney with a corpse hard into Vince. Vince goes down. So does the corpse. As Valentine jumps in and knocks out Dr. Wesley, Vikki tries frantically to right the corpse, mortified she'd so badly handled someone's dearly departed's remains.
If it weren't so damned dire, the scene would be comical.
It only takes a moment but we manage to turn the tables. Vince and Dr. Wesley are knocked unconscious and we put them under sheets on separate gurneys. We'll wheel them and the drugs outside under cover to the waiting arms of the PDF. McClarin should have a field day with them.
We're met at the ambulance dock by a man in PDF uniform. He takes custody of the gurneys, the drugs, and the recordings we've made. He tells us we can leave.
Sure! Nice doing business with you.
On our way out, we see the man in the green tie walk toward the man in the PDF uniform and too late, we realize things might not be as tidied up as we'd thought. Valentine moves to intercept the man in the green tie. Poco, Tian, and Vikki move off to the side to watch … and wait for Valentine's play to become evident.
Excuse me, Mr. Green! Valentine shouts.
Green and the PDF man look up, the PDF man nods in our direction, and Mr. Green changes direction and heads for us.
Shit. The PDF guy isn't really the PDF guy. Poco rushes him—by God, he's getting the recordings back. Without them to back up our story, we're humped.
(To Be Continued ….)
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