[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(10)

The beggar scooped up the coin and followed after Bossk. “But you’re a bounty hunter! One of the big ones! Top of the biz-or at least you were.”

That brought blood up into Bossk’s slit-pupiled gaze; he could feel the muscles tightening underneath the scales of his shoulders. This time, when he stopped and turned around, he reached down and gathered up the front of the beggar’s rags in his clenched fists and lifted the insolent creature up on tiptoe. He didn’t care if anyone was watching. “What,” he said quietly and ominously, “do you mean by that?”

“No offense.” A gap-toothed smile showed on the beggar’s seamed humanoid face. “It’s just that everybody in the galaxy knows what happened to the Bounty Hunters Guild. It’s all gone, ain’t it? Maybe there aren’t any big-time bounty hunters left.” The smile widened, like an overripe fruit splitting open in the heat of Tatooine’s double suns. “Except for one.”

Bossk knew which one the beggar meant. It didn’t improve his temper to be reminded about Boba Fett. “You’re pretty free with your little comments, aren’t you?” Holding the beggar up close, he could smell the encrusted dirt and sweat on him. “Maybe you should be a little more careful.”

“I’m no freer with ‘em than anybody else in this dump.” Dangling from Bossk’s doubled fists, the beggar nodded toward the sun-baked hovels of Mos Eisley. “Everybody around here talks their heads off, however many they’ve got of ‘em. Pretty gossipy bunch, if you ask me.”

“Did I?” Bossk felt the points of his claws meeting through the beggar’s wadded rags.

“You don’t have to, pal. ‘Cause I’ll tell you the way it is.” The beggar appeared completely unafraid. “Place like Mos Eisley, ain’t much else to do except talk. Mostly about each other’s business. Maybe your business, once they know you’re in town. Lots of ‘em would be real interested in hearing that a certain bounty hunter named Bossk just arrived. Without a ship of his own, traveling on an ordinary freighter, and”-the beggar leaned his head back to survey Bossk with one squinting eye-“not looking like he was doing too good at the moment.”

“I’m doing fine,” said Bossk.

“Sure you are, pal.” The beggar managed a shrug. “Appearances can be deceiving, right? So maybe you got some real good reason for coming here, all incognito and all. Tricky guy like you, maybe ya got some big plan up your sleeve. So you probably want to stay incognito, right? Is that a good guess, or what?”

Bossk forced his anger down a few degrees. “If you’re so smart, why are you a beggar?”

“It suits me. Nice clean outdoor work. You meet lovely

people, too. Besides, it’s only a part-time thing for me. It’s a good cover for my real business.”

“Which is?”

“Finding things out,” said the beggar. “In a place like Mos Eisley, somebody like me is just about invisible. It’s like being the plaster on the walls. So when creatures don’t notice you, don’t know you’re even there, you can find out some interesting stuff. Stuff about other creatures-like you, Bossk. I didn’t just recognize you, like pulling something out of my own personal memory bank. I knew you were coming here to Tatooine; I got friends all through this system and out on the freighters. They let me know you were heading this way. We kinda keep an eye on interesting characters like you, when they show up in these parts. Let’s face it, nobody comes to a backwater world like this, unless they got a good reason. It’s not exactly the center of the universe, you know. So it figures that you’ve got some kind of a reason for coming here.” The beggar scratched the side of his head with a dirty fingernail. “Couldn’t be any kind of job for Jabba the Hutt-he’s dead, must be a coupla weeks now. Ain’t nothing worth bothering with out in what used to be his palace. And there’s nobody around here with a bounty on his head-and believe me, I’d know if there was.” The expression on his grizzled face turned slyer.”So maybe it’s just kinda your personal business, huh?”

Bossk glared straight into the beggar’s eyes. “I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I’m sure you would, pal. So that’s why I was thinking, soon as I recognized you, when you came off that transport. Thinking about some way you and I could do business, like. You’ve had partners before-shoot, bounty hunters are always hooking up with each other. Guess that’s so you can watch each other’s back, huh?” The beggar showed some more of the gaps in his smile. “Well, maybe you and me can be partners.”