Chapter 36

After a stretch of covert discussion in the sauna, the group finally came out. What followed next were the amusements Gape had arranged for them.

Sabine City, as a second-tier city with no great name to it, naturally could not rival the great metropolises in certain respects. In other respects, though, it was not necessarily much inferior.

The reason they had chosen to talk here was discretion. A private club, a sauna room where everyone was nearly naked, steam everywhere, voices distorted by heat, even if someone wanted to leave something behind, the odds of success were slim.

Once those conversations, the sort that might cause trouble if overheard, were over, the group left the place and began returning to the ordinary course of their nightlife.

The beauty of the city lay in money everywhere and nights awash in colored light, things the countryside would never offer. That was exactly why people poured into the cities in such numbers.

In only a few short years, the urban population across the Federation had doubled in some places, multiplied several times over in others.

The club was fine enough, but only for talking things over or relaxing a little. It offered no other services. Preserving their class was one of the most important duties of such private clubs, and they would never lightly break the rules they had set for themselves.

Sitting in the last car of the convoy, Gape glanced back after being quietly alerted by the driver. His brow furrowed at once when he spotted a car trailing them.

If the driver had not pointed it out, he would not even have noticed he was being followed.

Private detectives were not part of the Federation’s judicial system. They were a profession that had grown up on its own among the people. Still, so long as they were properly registered, the evidence they gathered could be used in any sort of case, provided it met judicial standards.

There was, in truth, a common misunderstanding among the public. Most of the evidence in the hands of private detectives was not collected lawfully at all. But they knew how to fabricate supporting testimony to make that evidence look legitimate. At times, even the local judicial system needed their help filling out gaps in a case, so very few people ever seriously scrutinized where a private detective’s evidence had come from.

Beyond that, the greatest difference between private detectives and police was simple. The police would not tail someone for you. They would not rummage through rubbish bins for you. And they certainly would not call you “boss” just because you paid them.