Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck (34 page)

And there were all kinds of deals and
half-deals and partnerships. Someone would own a dock operation but another guy
would own half the dock workers and another guy would own the other half and
another guy would own the equipment and some lady would own the shipping
containers.

If I color-coded just one block it
looked like someone knifed a rainbow in the stomach and its guts spilled out on
the page. It was so complicated you couldn’t make sense of it.

And that was just one block!

I wasn’t sure if I was being naïve or
idealistic. I mean, it was a strange concept to apply to a bunch of killers and
crooks.

On one hand Belvaille was all chaos and
freedom. But the most basic concept of all these criminals was a gang. That’s
organization
.
If you went up the chain far enough things got organized. They had to, or nothing
would get done.

But our station was fragile. One guy,
Zadeck, had been stepped on by a Therezian and it turned into a station-wide
gang war. If I had formal treaties and heirs to territories, that wouldn’t
happen. But how was I going to bring it about?

It was time for some soup.

There was a dusty, dirty, dilapidated
soup restaurant far to the northeast. It was in a wealthy area of the city, but
the little soup shop was far from attractive.

Whoever owned it apparently hated
selling soup, because it was only open a few hours a day and those hours
changed regularly. I couldn’t tell you how many times I had walked there, only
to find it closed. Finally, I stopped going.

The soup wasn’t even that good. There
was one cook, one waiter, and they seemed to dislike people almost as much as
soup.

But the restaurant was owned by a man
named Tamshius qua-Froyeled.

Tamshius had been the most powerful gang
boss for perhaps a century. No other gang leader had held influence for as long
as he did. He had been a lieutenant from the very founding of the city. He was
established by the time I moved to the station and I was here shortly after
Belvaille opened.

Now, Tamshius was long since retired and
aged beyond reckoning.

He was about half the size he had been
in his youth and hunched over as if his silk robe weighed a thousand pounds.

I had sent my Stair Boys to camp out
here for a week to find a time when the restaurant was open. It was now three
in the morning.

“We close soon,” the waiter said, as I
entered.

I looked to the Kommilaire who was
waiting for me.

“They just opened thirty minutes ago
when I radioed you, Boss,” he said.

“Close soon,” the waiter repeated
defiantly.

Tamshius was in the corner, sleeping.
His robe matched the frayed wallpaper and he was so thin and insubstantial you had
to know he was there to see him.

I approached the old man.

“Tamshius. Tamshius?” I said.

He blinked his large eyes, sleepily. His
eyes were probably his largest organs at this point. Everything else had
shriveled to near-nothingness.

Tamshius was one reason I was scared of
retirement. He had been a significant player for so long. I always thought of
him as a force to be reckoned with. Then he retired, half-heartedly served soup,
and wasted away. I was probably the only person who knew Tamshius still existed.

“Hank,” he said, cracking a feeble
smile.

“I need your advice,” I implored.

“Would you like some soup?”

“I—yeah, sure.”

I don’t know how, but the waiter
suddenly appeared and literally threw a bowl of soup at me from maybe five feet
away. It landed on the table beside me, half of its contents sloshing onto the
tabletop. The waiter left, his customer service completed.

I took the bowl and it was barely enough
to wet my tongue.

“Have a seat,” Tamshius said, but I knew
his rickety booths couldn’t support me.

“I’m fine. Tamshius, I have a situation—”
I started.

“Or a solution,” he said, holding up a
bony finger.

“Right,” I began uneasily. “Or a
solution.”

“What may I help you with, my friend?”

“The gangs,” I began. “There’s too many.
I want to organize them on a map. To show who is doing what and where their
territory is. Who has what deals. A line of succession. Make everything formal
and keep people from fighting—so easily.”

“You’re talking about the Athletic
Club,” he said. The Belvaille Athletic Club was one of the precursors of the
Athletic Gentleman’s Club. It had been where all the gang bosses congregated.

“Well, I want something more official.
Like you could look at a map and see. Kind of a chart.”

“That’s what the Athletic Club was. Do
you know why everyone joined that club?”

“Because it was exclusive. And plush.”

“Because if we didn’t, we would have gone
out of business. That’s where the deals were made. Alliances brokered. Buying
and selling done.”

“Yeah, but all the bosses that exist now
couldn’t fit in a hundred Athletic Clubs. There’s too many. And you can’t keep
them all straight. Before, there were maybe five counterfeiters. Now there’s, I
don’t know, seventy-five people who ship canned meat. I need to keep track of
all of them.”

“I understand what you need. I’m saying
make a giant Athletic Club. Organize it by block and by industry. Every crime.
Every business. Every street. However many you need to encompass them all. Then
all of those groups together will be your map.”

“But why would they join?” I asked.

“As owner of this restaurant I would
join. Because I have to buy my ingredients, and pay my protection, and hire my
cleaners and maintenance from the same groups as all my competitors. And if
they are all in that club cutting deals and I’m not, I’m going to lose out.”

“But there’s still no way to collect them
together physically. I might know on paper they are in a club, but there’s no
building big enough to house them all. How will they communicate and make deals
and even schedule gang wars?”

He pointed at me slowly. And missed. Was
he blind too?

But I looked where he was pointing and
saw my Stair Boy standing behind me.

“They are your representatives. They can
send messages on behalf of club members. Set aside one day a month where each
group meets in person, protected by your Kommilaire. Whether it be by block or
by industry is your choice. And you can charge a fee for managing their
affairs. This is good for their business. More importantly, it’s bad if they
don’t participate.”

I wasn’t sure about making my Kommilaire
glorified couriers. But I suppose I already shook down bosses and businesses as
it was. Now it would simply be scheduled.

It was a pretty amazing idea, actually.
Hundreds of gangs formed into coalitions formed into a super gang.

“What do you call something like this?”
I asked Tamshius.

He didn’t even hesitate, as if he’d had
this idea for years and years.

“The Belvaille Confederation.”

My feet hurt.

I was standing waiting for the Boranjame
Zeti to say something.

I had cleared my voice numerous times,
said hello numerous times, and even waved. Zeti just floated there, shimmering
and rotating.

His Po servants flipped and scuttled
around like the building was on fire, but they always did that. In fact, I kept
my eyes on the ceiling or floor because it was unsettling watching the Po and
it was intimidating watching a Boranjame.

“I would like to buy a stock,” Zeti
finally said, with aid of his electronic speakers.

“A what?”

“A share. From the Boards.”

Boranjame were weird. There was a
city-wide panic and Zeti had demanded the presence of the chief law enforcer,
master of elections, and tastemaker of fashion.

All because he wanted to purchase something?
I swallowed about half a million sarcastic responses.

“Sure,” I said. “Seems appropriate. What
do you want to buy?”

“A share of aluminum.”

“Alright. I’ll have one of my people do
that, I guess. Will they know what it means?”

“You shall purchase it,” Zeti
interrupted. “Here are the required funds.”

A Po dashed up and waved around some
thumbs in my face so blindingly fast that I had to turn my head and close one
eye.

“Stop,” I complained.

It slowed to merely a tornado and I took
the clip of money. There appeared to be about 250 thumbs.

“You will purchase this. At the Boards,”
Zeti stated.

“Yeah.” I looked at the money and I was
thinking how I could tell a member of the most powerful race in the galaxy that
I wasn’t an errand boy.

But I just smiled.

I had seen fights. I had seen riots. I
had seen wars.

But the Boards were different.

There were thousands of people yelling
and flailing at one another, but no one was dying. There was hardly any blood
and it was rare for anyone to fall down.

10,000 shares of this. 50,000 shares of
that. Contracts. Puts. Closes. Guarantees. They used hand gestures. They used
jargon. They traded paper and made notes. Some used whistles and clapped hands.

It was as close as I’d ever seen to a
lunatic asylum except there were no walls.

Yet untold fortunes were washing around
this gaggle of screamers. They flowed east up the block, then gushed back, then
north, then swirled. If there was a pattern, it was unknowable to my feeble
intellect.

I stood there for two hours trying to
understand what the hell was going on. I was perpetually ten minutes behind the
action. Someone would say they were selling 100,000 aluminum and by the time I
looked at him, he was selling something else. Or buying something else. How was
I actually supposed to purchase an aluminum?

The Board prices continually fluctuated
and every once in a while I could match what was being said with what was
listed. But it was rare.

I was getting a headache and I was
hungry and I couldn’t waste any more time here.

“I would like to buy an aluminum,” I
said to no one.

It was like I wasn’t even there.

“I would like to buy an aluminum.”

I held up my 250 thumbs, hoping that
might make me somehow legitimate. Might cut through all the arcane gestures and
lingo so I could leave.

“Aluminum,” I repeated.

Several people around me seemed to have
heard and they ceased their screaming and stared, their eyes wide.

“I would like to buy an aluminum,” I
said again.

More and more people began to listen. As
if I was giving a very profound speech. The pit of traders was still yelling
and carrying on for the most part, but the tide of quiet was spreading. I was by
far the biggest person there and I stood out easily.

“Aluminum. I would like one.”

Finally, the entire area around the
Boards became almost still. There was murmuring and whispers and even the
people changing the figures on the Boards stopped momentarily.

“What did you say?” a man next to me
asked. He was dressed in a fancy suit that was disheveled and he had a bloody
nose and bloody lip.

“I-I would like to buy an aluminum.”

“An aluminum what?” another man asked,
confused.

“A…share? A share of aluminum?” Was I
saying it wrong?

Pandemonium!

The traders exploded back into their
original action except at three times the intensity. I heard copious calls for
“aluminum” but it quickly returned to them trading everything. Now people
were
falling and
were
fighting. I saw a man getting kicked by another man
until they swapped papers and then they attacked other people.

The employees writing the Board figures
couldn’t keep up.

What had I done?

“I couldn’t buy it,” I told Zeti,
holding out the 250 thumbs. “I’m not really sure what happened, actually.”

“You may keep it,” Zeti said.

“Right. Uh, thanks.”

I turned to go when:

“And thank you, Supreme Kommilaire, Hank
of Belvaille, Secretary of City. May you finally assist those who are depending
upon you. And may you suffer no further betrayals.”

“This is really starting to…” I began,
angry.

But then I thought better of it and
simply left.

http://www.belvaille.com/hlh3/boards.gif