If imitation is flattery, theft is outright worship. Don't sue.

They found the Fountain of Youth. After centuries of pilfering, however, piracy has gotten a wee bit challenging in the richest shipping lane on Earth, and Jack Sparrow sees fit to visit a snobbish old business partner.

This is the one-shot that started the series.

Killer Queen

To avoid complications, she never kept the same address.

"I tried, miss, I couldn't stop him, he must have slipped past somehow, strangled me with a f--ing guitar string—"

"It's called garrote wire, Thomas. Mind the language." A tall woman, perhaps thirty, turned from the commanding window of her private office to see a comely young man staggering in a headlock, under the elbow of a punkish Rastafarian with a sinister grin and a wide, floppy leather hat. With the hat, the trench coat, the hair, and the smell, it boggled the mind how the man could possibly have 'slipped past.' "Oh, not you, Ahmed. … Ha-ha. … Oh, how droll. You must excuse me, I have a visitor. … Yes, of course. … Very well. Thomas, stop struggling—good.

"Captain Sparrow," said Rhiannon Hartson, slipping her cell phone back into her alligator clutch, "And in my business office, no less. To what do I owe this extreme displeasure?"

Calculating, manipulative spider queen though she was, the woman never forgot a proper title.

"A very int'resting rumor out of Singapore." He clutched his hat to his chest and bowed his head. "Poor Singapore, I hardly know 'er."

"If it is a rumor, I've heard it," she replied, one hand pointing her strapping secretario to leave the office. Sparrow lifted his elbow with a bemused expression, as though he had forgotten the six foot man trapped under it like a carpet bag, and Thomas gratefully obeyed. After a disappointed glance at the sparse décor—all filing cabinets and modish gunmetal-green walls—Sparrow made his way toward the leather swivel chair. "Please stand, or I'll charge you to clean the upholstery. I want a name."

"I want a price."

"Show me your wares and I'll name my price."

Sparrow rolled his eyes. "In trades of information, the value of the information diminishes in direct proportion to the informer's divulging, unlike your usual sovereigns and signets you might bandy about."

Rhiannon curled her sharp red lip.

"You look well, by the bye. Love the nose."

"You ought to, it cost me enough," she remarked, sitting at the computer and Googling news on Singapore. Sparrow seemed unconcerned; she couldn't tell if he understood what she was doing or not. The man still hadn't bought himself a cell phone, but knowing him, that could be as much laziness as backwardness.

"Has to do with four hundred cases of a certain pungent liquor," he remarked, squinting at a framed map of Hong Kong on the wall, after a few minutes of her fruitless searching.

Rhiannon arched an eyebrow. "I'm not interested in someone starting up a bar, Captain Sparrow."

"Not at all. But a case is twenty-four bottles," he explained in a patronizing tone, for some reason holding up two fingers. "A bar might use one, two bottles a week, and unless this entity is determined to become the sole supplier of Angostura Bitters to every ale draper in the Malay Isles, he's probably procuring it for something very divergent from its usual use."

"Bizarre," admitted Rhiannon. "You disappoint me."

"Peggie!" Sparrow drawled mournfully, drawing a heated grimace from his opponent, "Where is that canny paranoia I know and loathe? Use some imagination. What the devil do you do with fifty gallons of bitters, eh?"

"Do not use old names," she hissed, but he cut her off.

"They don't sell the stuff by the ton, love: must have ordered it special, paid through the nose—ten, twenty, forty? (bloody inflation) a bottle—and that was the benign, ord'n'ry, barely nefarious part. This entity," he said, careful to avoid indicating male, female, or number of persons, "had a bloody urgent thirst for cocktail juice. Among other things. Rummy, in'it?"

Rhiannon rested her hand on her middle left desk drawer—inside: the names and personal information of four dozen Wiccans, mambos, and folklorists from around the world—and reluctantly raised her eyes to meet Captain Sparrow's inevitable knowing smirk. "Two hundred."

"Bottles? Carats? Pounds?" he rattled, pretending to be reading the map.

"Dollars. A quarter ounce for you—little more than a guinea. Consider that an advance for the whole story, if you please." Past dealings had established that Sparrow preferred to be paid in gold bullion, and Rhiannon kept a handful of Canadian Maple Leafs in the wall safe. He was, after all, a valuable, if infuriating, font of shady information to digest and curiosities to fence.

For ten minutes, they dickered over the price of the story.

Rhiannon was somewhat of a connoisseur of information, with a battery of paid researchers and eyes and ears wherever she could buy them, and like any collector, she saved her money for the rare occasions she encountered something new.

Sparrow…while he started at an exorbitant price, he did, in fact, know what his tip was likely to be worth.

"This Puli Kamarasan person," said Sparrow, once they had agreed on one and a half ounces, or almost a thousand dollars, "very rich. Fast cars. Terrific security." His fingers wandered to a healing rib. "Buys up great barrels and bushels of long-fiber chrysotile—the stuff to burn a man in to save his ashes, should one be so inclined."

"Thank you, I know what asbestos is," replied Rhiannon, one finger on a tape recorder under the desk.

"Pressgangs weavers, drunkards—not that there is anyplace a man can be a drunkard in Singapore now—and midwives by the dozen."

"Obstetricians?"

"Midwives," said Sparrow firmly. "He likely eats the drunkards."

"Really." Sparrow's stories demanded a good fistful of salt.

"Well, what else does he do with twenty barrel-fevered vagrants a week? Were I myself that rich, which I will be, I would—will—indulge my eccentricities likewise at every turn."

"As a financial advisor, I believe your means have always been quite sufficient for a man of your ingenuity," she said, failing to imagine a more eccentric Jack Sparrow than the man before her. "But cannibalism seems rather—"

"Unsanitary? Tasty? An effigy in miniature of the grand circle of life and consumption? Victualarily incestuous?"

"I was about to say, far-fetched," supplied Rhiannon, disconcerted.

"Do tell." He glared down his nose at her until she stiffened, like a bristling cat.

"You were saying. Junkies, 'midwives,' and…what?"

"Vultures."

The list went on. Whatever Puli Kamarasan was planning, it was expensive, earnest, and complex, requiring a dizzying variety of animals human and otherwise, strange plants, delicacies, and sundries, all in bulk. There was no pattern to it. Rhiannon was relieved when Sparrow finally mentioned a few pounds of explosives; at least that had some conceivable purpose.

"And may I ask how you came by Mr. Kamarasan's intake figures?" she asked, after he had finished.

He glanced to the left, squinting. Rhiannon knew there was nothing for him to see on that section of the wall. "A friend…of an uncle of mine—mine first mate. A friend of the mate's uncle. Shifty fellow, squints like a sack of nails. Handles Puli's covert transportation of goods and services."

"I was about to say," said Rhiannon, with a slow smile that set Sparrow's teeth on edge, "I would be very surprised if you had any surviving uncles. But the mate…"

"Yes, yes, 'es a very good mate, very informative."

"Quite friendly are you? Introducing you to his uncle, I mean…"

"Daft old cove thinks it his duty to vet his neffy's employers for 'im—"

"Careless, too, of Mr. Kamarasan to employ a smuggler with such a loose grasp of the business of secrecy."

"That uncle—face could charm a pocketknife off a hangman—"

"And so considerate of you, Captain, to track him down for me. How ever did you find it all out?"

"I asked nicely," said Sparrow, with a grin that was more teeth than mirth.

After paying Sparrow twelve eighth-ounce Canadian coins, each of which he bit a dent into and stuck in his boot, and letting him show himself out the door, Rhiannon called Thomas the secretary into her office for a pep talk and a raise. She hated to lose staff; they tended to go loose-lipped once free from her employ.

Don't worry, we won't see much of Rhiannon. But for those who've read Freeway Robbers, now you know what was up with her nose, and who bought that snaky statue! Not that it's important or anything.

Thanks for reading! Please let me know if you liked it or no.