You'd Better Start At The Beginning
Posted on Tue Nov 22nd, 2016 @ 10:49am by Commander Jordan Gunning
Mission:
Lie Of Omission
Location: A Dive Bar on Mantovani Plaza [Archa IV]
"Get out!" The shout came from behind the bar and Gunning pressed a finger into his own chest. "I've warned you before!" The warning was stronger this time, more punctuated by spittle and expletives. "Not you, you idiot."
Gunning looked behind him just in time to see a young man, no more than twenty one, receive an empty bottle to the forehead, flung by the half-man, half-rock monster lurking behind the bar like it was keeping a particularly fresh kill underneath it. The kid fled in a cloud of vapourising blood and Gunning did his best to look unfazed. There were things that working in Starfleet prepared you for, but seeing some fresh-faced kid bottled in the doorway of a bar wasn't one of them.
"Tough crowd?" He asked the homunculus as he took up a seat on one of the burst leather stools in front of the gun-metal bar. The mountain ignored him. I'll have a whisky - something from Earth if you've got it.
"Of course we got it." The mountain's grunt was louder than jet engine. "What you think this is, some kind of crap joint?"
A crap joint was the perfect description of the pokey little bar which offered a number of cramped, dilapidated booths on one side, leading up to a little stage where sat a piano which looked like it had been bought after a fall from the outer atmosphere. The bar was scratched and stained, the mountain's incessant wiping with a ragged cloth didn't seem to be having the desired effect. Gunning began to wonder which of the two was dirtier.
It turned out the dirtiest thing in the joint was the glassware which came sliding down the bar toward him after being filled with some mass-produced American gut-rot which was pretty much the opposite of what Gunning had in mind. He lifted the glass and examined it, wondering whether his friend Drusus would have allowed him to drink out of it without first subjecting it to intense scientific analysis.
"You got a problem?" The mountain finally addressed him without prompting.
Gunning took a sip from the glass placed it on a part of the bar which looked like a fairly safe haven. "I'm looking for someone. A kid. You seem to have a pretty good memory for faces." Even if they are covered in blood. He pushed a PADD into the Mountain's hand and immediately felt decidedly inadequate. "Seen him before?"
"What's his name?" The Mountain asked. "I got a better memory for names."
"Murak Sazarel."
"Hm, I know someone got a name like that but it ain't this kid. I don't think I ever seen him in here before." It looked like, for whatever reason, the Mountain was really trying to help him out. Probably thought he was police and didn't want to get shut down. Either way he didn't seem like the brightest crayon in the box and Murak Sazarel was a common enough name that it didn't really help - he didn't know the face. Onto the next one then.
He polished off his drink, something the glass could have done with and turned to leave when he saw a woman look up from a bundle of tissues. Her glass looked much cleaner than his - lucky for the grieving. "Are you a cop?" She asked out of nowhere.
"Something like that. Private Investigator." He told her, passing her a business card. Grieving people usually had some need of his services.
She studied the card and ran her tear-soaked thumb across the card, leaving the ink of his name smudged. "Can you help me? My fiancé was shot."
Pretty on the nose for someone whose fiancé was shot, Gunning thought. She managed to avoid bursting out crying. He looked down at the PADD holding the photograph of the missing kid. The missing student junkie. He was probably dead in a ditch somewhere and there wasn't much Jordan could do besides hit the streets. He could take another case - two at once wasn't unsual.
He took a seat in the booth and motioned for the Mountain to pour another couple of filthy beverages. "You'd better start at the beginning."
Jordan Gunning
Private Investigator
