Eliane nodded. Clementine was a somewhat new contact of hers, someone she’d been working with for a little ofer a year. She supposed they’d been in business together long enough for Clementine to start spreading her name around, though now that Eliane knew the girl was doing so, she’d talk to her about guidelines. She’d also double-check to be sure that Clementine actually was the one who dropped the tip.
Still, she could forgive the slight overstep of boundaries. Making a connection with Khala Tajik was worth the risk.
She smiled warmly. “Rest assured that I hold full rights to refuse an offer at any time. If anything turns up too risky for my style, I’ll certainly let you know. In the meantime, I’ll give you a quick rundown of how this works.”
She hit the feed button on her printer and tore off a blank swath of receipt paper to write on as she spoke. “I price intel and investigations on three categories: profile, accuracy, and personal risk. Profile involves the target of the intel themselves. Stories about crime lords are going to cost you more than finding out about their lackeys. The more people involved in a tip, the more expensive it will be.
“The seond is accuracy. Tip for the wise: if any informant ever tells you that all of their information is guaranteed accurate, they’re lying to your face. That said, I will never lie to you about how accurate a piece of information is. A rumor that I’ve heard through the grapevine or a whisper off the street will be much cheaper than something I’ve seen first hand or had corroborated by multiple sources. I will always tell you how well sourced all of my intel is. You will know exactly what you’re getting”
That was a slight lie. She had lied about how accurate her intel was to a client on only four separate occasions. Three of those had been scams she’d been trying to pull off. One was to Dier, when she’d seeded the false intel to protect Jace. Seeing as she didn’t expect to be scamming Khala, and she wasn’t Eliane’s brother, she had a feeling that those situations wouldn’t come up.
“If you want to know more about the sources themselves, anything specific like names, places, or documents, sometimes you can pay ex/tra to get that information, though I have the right to refuse to reveal sources if I feel the anonymity of my contacts would be at risk. Sometimes they can be made public, sometimes they can’t.”
She watched Khala carefully, making sure she was tracking all of this. It was quite a bit of a spiel, and she’d said it so many times she had it down to an art. The woman seemed bright enough; she had to be a quick thinker in order to make it very far in politics.
“Finally, I charge extra for personal risk. If revealing a piece of intel is going to put me at a higher level of danger, or if an investigation is going to involve excessive difficulties for me, that will drive up the price as well. So that’s also something to keep in mind.”
Eliane slid the written list of her points across the counter and leaned back. “So, with that in mind, anything specific that you’re interested in?
I want to know everything sounded a bit forward so Kahla restrained herself. She instead mulled over what Eliane had told her and as she did, she bit back a sigh as well. This was not going to be cheap.
Well you knew that when you came in, she reminded herself. Still she'd sort of been hoping that she wouldn't have to move to increase taxes just to fund her grand schemes. Not that she had any scruples about that mind you. It was more that she just didn't want to get people too suspicious. She had so much more room to get away with things if she stood high in the opinion polls.
She wanted information on high profile people, that much was true... However, she felt that her questions were relatively simple, even if she did speak as a layman. She smiled again, taking a quiet breath and making sure one last time that her thoughts were in order. It was the mental equivalent of tapping a sheaf of papers on the table to make them stack neatly.
"I have my own list for you," she began. "I want to know who the biggest players are in the current drug trade. I want to know which of those are the loose canons. I want to know their reputations, most specifically who is willing to negotiate and who is going to have to be put down if things get out of hand. If you feel that some of that is something that you need to refuse then complete what you can. I need as rounded a picture as you can get me if I am to do my job properly." She held Eliane's gaze for a moment, trying to to emphasize the importance of what she was trying to accomplish.
She wondered if she ought to ask about weaknesses just yet and decided to hold off for the moment. She did need to know the weak spots of anyone who might dare to oppose her, but really, for the moment it might just be best to take things one step at a time. There was no reason why she couldn't just wait and see how smoothly and efficiently Eliane accomplished this task that Kahla had already set before her. Already, Kahla imagined she would do it rather well. She spoke with confidence and after all it seemed to Kahla that an informant's protection largely lay in being too valuable to misuse.
