It can be very dangerous trying to deal with illegal merchandise

I'm generally pretty careful to only deal with legal substances and/or items. It's not that dealing with illegal things isn't profitable, it's just dangerous. For lots of reasons. I mean, even ignoring some of the things I've seen the agents of the Lady of Pain do to people, you still have to realize that you're dealing with people who generally don't care for the rules of society, which on its own can be dangerous. Here's the thing, I got burned once by those people, and I'm lucky I was able to walk away at all.

You remember the party Sean and I went to where I met Kira? Well, Sean took me there at least partly to calm my nerves after this. See, I'd made a couple of deals, but I was getting pretty desperate for business, so when I got an invitation to a meeting to discuss a potentially profitable deal, I went along without asking some questions I probably should have. This was a while ago, so let me see if I can remember the details.

I was sitting in one of the seedier taverns in Sigil, nursing some very cheap beer one afternoon, and in walks this guy wearing some very cheap clothing. It wasn't quite rags, but wasn't far from. On the other hand, he's walking like he owns the place. He was maybe a little taller than me, and a little thinner, dark hair, and lightly armed. A couple of knives, but I don't think he had a sword. He walked up to the bar, ordered a drink, and then he just started talking to me. Not that there were many other people in the bar to talk to. It was early afternoon, so most folks were out trying to earn an honest living, not in a seedy bar drinking.

After a few pleasantries, which with this individual didn't seem so pleasant, he asked me if I'd be interested in making some money. He introduced himself as "Hins", and said he had some merchandise he needed transported across the city, and that he'd heard that I could do so with some discression. Well, I was down on my luck just then, so I told him we should talk. I knew a few ways to smuggle things, but it wound up that he was way ahead of me. What he wanted me to do was to take a cartload of small idols from a particular sculptors shop down to a particular warehouse, where the real goods would be concealed, and then go to a particular temple, half way across Sigil, and sell them to a particular priest. He'd give me some money up-front, and meet me back in the bar in two days, where I would deliver his share of the profits, which in this deal would be 90%. Since I'd be allowed to negotiate the sale price with the priest, I had some room to make quite a bit.

The actual merchandise was a powerful hallucinogenic drug that was made illegal because of its potency, but that several temples valued for their ability to give their priests visions. Didn't seem overtly harmful to me, so long as nobody else was involved, so I figured it would be ok. I took the job, and got the initial money and the details from Hins.

The first pickup at the sculptors went without a hitch. He had the cart all loaded up and ready to go, so I was able to pay him for his part, and walk away hauling a cart full of small idols. Easy enough, right? Well, I got to the second stop, the warehouse, and the men there seemed slightly surprised to see me. They asked why I was there, and why Hins hadn't brought the cart himself. That's when I started to doubt the validity of this whole exchange. Well, they packed up the goods and I was able to leave without any real difficulties, after paying them their share as well. Since nothing bad had happened to that point, I figured it was still all ok, though I was a bit more on edge at that point. Never hurts to pay attention.

Well, the next hint of something was when I realized I was being followed by a couple of city guards, and not the nice shiny-breastplate kind either. These were the big, mean, dented helmet, notched sword kind. The ones who they send in to deal with real bruisers, not march in parades. They did seem to just be tailing me, not actually coming up and beating me, so I tried to act casual, so as to not arouse any suspicion. I'm pretty good at that kind of thing, or hadn't you noticed?

Anyway, I made it to the temple, and the heavies just sort of strolled past me. I thought I must have just been paranoid. So I parked the cart around the side of the temple and went inside to see if I could find the priest I was supposed to make the sale to. Wasn't too hard to find him. So I'm talking to him, we close the deal, and he agrees to meet me out by the cart and says he's going to get his money. Well, that part went well. I'd even talked him up a bit, so I would make a pretty tidy profit.

The priest comes out, hands me the money, and takes the cart inside. A few minutes later, I see a priest run out of the temple, and then a bunch of guards run in. Well, I back off a bit, but stick around enough to find out that the priest I'd just made the sale to had tried some of the stuff I'd brought him, and promptly died. Seems it was tainted with what was supposed to be something harmless, but it was off. mixed together like that, they turned into something deadly. And the guards were looking for the guy who sold the stuff to the priests. That was me. Needless to say, I got out of there, though not in a frenzied manner, just strolled off bluffing like nothing was wrong.

I got back to the bar a little early, and scouted out the place. Hins was there with a couple of toughs. I think he expected me to saunter in, he'd have the toughs grab me, take me to the law, and turn me in. That way the law gets what they want, the heat is off of him, and he gets the money. I couldn't just cut and run. He'd hunt me down sooner or later, or maybe just drop my description off with the guards and let them hunt me down.

I had to do something, and quickly. I had a few contacts who I thought might be able to help me out of this mess, and I managed to find one relatively quickly. I can't tell you who he was, but he helped me convince the local law that the situation wasn't my fault, and swing it around into a sting against Hins. Well, I got back to the bar, and a couple of guards were hanging around outside, waiting to see what would happen.

I walked in to the bar on time and saw Hins and his toughs sitting at a corner table waiting. I strolled over like I didn't suspect anything, smiling like someone who's finished a good job and is looking to close the deal. Well, Hins didn't suspect anything was up, because he told me to sit down and had the barman bring me a drink.

What, do you think I was stupid enough to drink it? I thanked him for the drink and got down to business. No, I didn't drink it, but I did make a show of starting to a few times, and then put it back down to talk. I think he was getting impatient, because he made a mistake at that point. He jestured to his toughs, who took up positions on either side of me and asked me how the job went. I told him that it had gone smoothly, but that there was some sort of ruckus at the temple after I left. His surprise at that was less than sincere. I mean, what did he take me for, some kind of idiot? I'm a business man who lives and dies by his ability to see through to the truth of the deal, so seeing through that kind of lie wasn't hard. That's when I got blunt and asked him what happened. I figured he was going to have his goons grab me pretty soon anyway.

It worked way too well. Well, it seemed to anyway. He smiled and told me that the merchandise had been tainted to get him in trouble, since he was doing a little too well for himself, and he decided to set someone up as a patsy, which I'd done very nicely. Unfortunately, his goons grabbed me at that point, before I could slip from between them. It wasn't a good place to be. I wasn't sure what the plan was, but it wasn't going to leave me in any kind of shape to object to whatever they were planning. I figured it was time for one of my little tricks that I've kept up my sleeves for a while, and don't use very often.

I triggered a little toy I keep on me and quickly shrank to half my normal size. This surprised the goons, and allowed me to slip out of their grasps quickly, and make for the exit. I didn't get out clean though. Hins was quick with those knives, and managed to hit me with one that he threw just as I was getting back outside. Well, the guards were quick to take action at that point. They saw me hit by the knife, and rushed the door. I grew back to my normal size, which hurt like heck with a knife sticking in my back, and managed to get myself out of the line of fire. The scuffle inside was brief, but apparently those guards knew what they were doing. And they had backup before I had the knife out of my back. A couple of minutes later, Hins and both of his toughs were being dragged out of the bar by the guards, and the head of that group of guards asked me to come down to the jail with him for my side of the story.

I won't bore you with the details, since it took most of the rest of the day for them to finish questioning me, but in the end the guards let me go with a warning to keep my nose out of deals like this one, and to check on my business contacts more carefully before entering into a contract. I suppose I did come out ahead in the end, since nobody thought to try to take any of the large pile of cash I had on me as the end of the deal. Hins didn't get his 90%, and the guards didn't seem to care about the money so much, though it was hinted at some point that I should tithe something to that temple to help ease the cost of their dead and probably raised priest. Since I'd made quite a bit, I did wind up making an anonymous donation to their temple in an amount that would cover raising two or three people.