Tek power, p.2
Tek Power, page 2
“At the moment I’m between cases.”
Resting her elbows on the table again, Alicia said, “I’ve been thinking I’d like to see you now and then. In a strictly friendship sort of way.”
“I’m pretty much practicing the solitary life myself these days,” he told her. “As far as any sort of social life goes.”
She said, “I suppose I’m making too much of the fact that you saved my life.”
“That was part of my job,” he said. “What you have to understand, Alicia, is that any one of a dozen other Cosmos Detective Agency operatives could’ve—”
“Excessive modesty doesn’t fit you very well.” She gave a shake of her head. “I’m not a schoolgirl and this isn’t a crush. I like you—Jake Cardigan. If we’d met at a party or a brawl, I’d still think of you as an exceptional person.”
“An exceptional person who’s nearly twice your age.”
She laughed. “Is that what’s bothering you? You don’t want to get involved with a kid?”
Jake studied the black starless sky up above the restaurant deck. “It’s simpler than that,” he answered finally. “I don’t want to get involved with anybody, age has very little to—”
“Excuse me, amigo, for intruding on what sounds like it’s bound to develop into a very touching spiel—and how might you be, Miss Bower.” Gomez had come striding out onto the deck. He bowed toward the young woman. “We’ve never met, señorita, but no doubt you’ve heard of me. Sid Gomez, Jake’s partner and well-known ace detective in my own right.”
Eyeing him, Jake inquired, “You just happen to be passing by, too?” He indicated the third chair with a tilt of his thumb.
Gomez was a dark curlyhaired man, about ten years younger than his partner. He remained standing. “When I checked with Dan at your residence, he informed me you’d reported in that you were cavorting here.”
“So what’s happening?”
“Walt Bascom, our esteemed jefe, wants to see us immediately if not sooner. He awaits at the Cosmos Detective Agency building.”
“I’ll have to go, Alicia.” He pushed back from the table. “We’ll escort you to your skycar.”
“Thanks, I’d feel safer if you did.” Standing, she held out her hand to Gomez. “Nice to meet you. I’ve heard a good deal about you.”
He bent, kissed her hand. “Sí, I’m a legend in my own time.”
Jake stood. “Must be an important case Bascom has for us.”
As the three of them crossed the deck, Gomez said, “I don’t know exactly what’s going on, since the chief hasn’t as yet provided any details. I have the feeling, though, that there’s something special about this one.”
3
JAKE NODDED AT the figure that had materialized atop the hologram projection stage. “That’s your son, isn’t it?”
“One of them,” answered Bascom. “Richard, the youngest.” The agency head was sitting, somewhat stiffly, behind his large desk. “Lives in New York.” His desktop was uncharacteristically uncluttered. “He works for the TriState EdSystem as a Lit professor.” All the windows in the big tower office had been blanked and nothing of the night streets of this part of the Malibu Sector showed. “Until tonight he was married.”
“And what happened tonight, jefe?” Gomez was sitting on the edge of the holostage with part of Richard Bascom’s left foot superimposed on his backside.
Bascom, whose grey suit was considerably rumpled, reached out to the control panel again. “His wife was killed.” The figure of a slender darkhaired woman of about thirty replaced the image of the detective agency head’s son. “Eve was her name.”
Standing up and away from the platform, Gomez asked, “Didn’t she work for some public relations outfit?”
“Yeah, for Larson-Dunn.” Bascom touched the controls again and Eve vanished. “Their Manhattan office.”
Jake was straddling a straightback metal chair. “A very shifty outfit,” he commented, “and not one known for its probity.”
“Both Larson and Dunn are corrupt, moneygrubbing swine,” said Bascom. “Their organization’s been involved in numerous shady deals both domestic and foreign.”
Gomez had roamed over to one of the high wide blanked windows. He tapped absently on the plastiglass with his forefinger. “How would you rate Eve’s honesty and integrity?”
“Not very highly.”
Jake said, “Did your son share your opinion?”
“Nope, not at all.”
“Ever discuss it with—”
“Only once. That was three years or so ago. Right before he went and married her,” said Bascom. “I’d already heard a little something about the lady, and that public relations gang she was working for. LarsonDunn has its headquarters office in Washington, DC, and I’ve had a few run-ins with them. They tend to represent scoundrels in the business, political and criminal areas—crooked tycoons, Teklords, bloodstained dictators and the like.”
“You know for a fact that Eve herself was crooked?”
“Hell, she’d have to be to sign up with that bunch in the first place,” answered the chief. “And, although I never told Richard about this, I had the lady checked out.”
“Remind me in future incarnations,” said Gomez, “not to have a gumshoe for a relative.”
“How much of what you found out about her did you pass along to your son?”
“Not a hell of a lot, Jake. Richard and I—well, we haven’t been all that close for a long time,” admitted Bascom. “So I only hinted that maybe he ought to wait, look into her background a little more.”
“I bet that didn’t work too well.”
“He told me to go screw myself and hung up. We didn’t talk to each other again for nearly a year.”
Jake asked, “Have you kept checking up on her?”
Bascom sighed. “Yep, I have every so often,” he said slowly. “In addition to dealing with a slew of extremely fragrant clients here and abroad, Eve has been—Eve was not particularly faithful to my son.”
“How much so?”
“Oh, she wasn’t exactly promiscuous, but she carried on several affairs after she married my son.”
“Muy mal,” commented Gomez as he settled into an armchair.
The image of a blond, overweight man of forty materialized on the stage. “This lad was the most recent of her lovers. Arnold Maxfield, Jr.”
“Son of the communications mogul,” said Jake.
Gomez sat up. “Didn’t Junior get knocked off in some sort of accident down Nicaragua way only last week?”
“Might be it wasn’t an accident,” said Bascom. “I’m sorry I didn’t put fulltime operatives on Eve soon as I heard about Maxfield’s death.”
“Was she with him down there, jefe?”
“Supposedly Eve was in Managua on Larson-Dunn business for nearly two weeks. He was down there at the same time and the day after she headed for home, Maxfield was killed during a riot at an air soccer match,” he told them. “She and Junior saw a lot of each other, day and night.”
Jake rubbed his knuckles across his cheek. “How was she killed and where?”
“Back in New York City—at roughly eleven PM tonight—when a runaway skyvan slammed into her skycar.”
“Two fatal accidents in a week,” observed Gomez, “make for a nice coincidence.”
“At midnight, before he even knew anything had happened, Richard got a call,” continued the chief. “The caller was a man and he kept the screen blanked. He told my son, in what sounds to me like a nasty way, that no matter what anybody tried to tell him, his wife had been murdered.”
“Be interesting,” said Jake, “to find out what that guy knows.”
“I’ve already had an op with your Manhattan affiliate trying to track down the call.” Bascom shook his head. “Made from a booth in a skybus station.”
“You want us to head back to New York?”
“I’ve already booked you both on a skyliner that leaves GLA at two AM this morning.”
Standing up, Gomez asked, “How many sons do you have?”
“Three, and I’d like very much to have all of them attend my wake someday,” he said. “I wouldn’t want Richard to have an accident.” He placed both hands, palms down, on the uncluttered desk top. “He and I don’t get along too damn well, but when this came up—and after the cops told him her death was an accident plain and simple—he turned to me for help. I’m glad he did and I don’t want him feeling that I let him down.”
“We’ll give him the same matchless service we provide all our clients,” promised Gomez. “With a few added frills to boot.”
“If you could avoid it, fellas,” cautioned Bascom, “don’t tell him anything about his wife’s romances. Okay?”
“WHAT YOU NEED is somebody who’s not a lunatic.” Dan Cardigan, a lean young man of sixteen, was leaning in the doorway of his father’s bedroom and watching him pack.
“Alicia’s actually a stable and rational person,” Jake told his son. “You, like the lady herself, tend to believe all the rumors you’ve heard about her.”
“From what you tell me, she just about came stalking you tonight.”
“All she did was pay me a friendly social call.”
“So are you going to start dating her?”
“Wasn’t planning to, no.”
Dan said, “Still, you ought to be dating someone.”
“Eventually.” He shut the single suitcase he was planning to take.
“What’s wrong with Bev Kendricks?”
“Not a damn thing, far as I know.”
“I figured, after you ran into her while you were working on that case involving Alicia Bower, that you’d renew your old friendship.”
“What Bev and I had back when we were both cops wasn’t exactly a friendship.” He lifted the suitcase off his bed.
“But she’s a private eye now, too, just like you. That sure as hell gives you something in common.”
“Too much probably.”
Dan took a few steps backward. “I’m not trying to play matchmaker, Dad. But, you know, I hate to see you turning into a recluse.”
“I get around too much to be ranked a recluse.” He carried the suitcase out into the hallway.
“Any idea how long you’ll be back East?”
“Few days at least. And I’ve got a feeling this one could lead us pretty far afield.”
“Have you ever met Bascom’s son?”
“Nope.”
“How do they get along?”
“Not, according to Bascom, very well,” answered Jake. “Mainly because he tried to intrude into his son’s personal life. A bad practice.”
“Ah, I see the parallel you’re attempting to make, Pops.” He walked alongside his father to the door of the apartment.
“I always suspected you were a perceptive kid.”
Dan laughed. “Maybe you’ll meet an interesting woman in New York.”
“New York is a vast metropolis. Bound to be several interesting women residing thereabouts.”
Dan put his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Excuse the paternalistic attitude,” he said, “but I do worry about you.”
The door announced, “There’s a Gomez on the doorstep.”
The small vidscreen mounted in the door’s midsection showed them a picture of the moustached detective.
“Ready to embark, amigo?” inquired Gomez’s image.
“Be right there.” Turning, Jake hugged his son.
4
HE SHOULDN’T HAVE lost his temper, since he was, afterall, only arguing with a robot. But Nathan Anger kept growing increasingly upset and found himself yelling at the smug, goddamned silvery mechanical man. “You’ve got to stop this, Sunny,” he shouted, his hands fisting and his breathing starting to get choppy. “It draws too much attention to—”
“You’re the one, jocko, who’s going to attract attention. Especially with all these little tantrums of yours.” The big silverplated bot was lounging, cross-legged, in a padded plastiglass rocker at the center of the big oval living room.
It was nearly three AM and a light, steady rain was falling all across New Baltimore. You could hear the unvaried patter of it on the domed ceiling of their top-floor condo.
Anger, wrapped in a thin black nightrobe, was pacing back and forth in front of the simulated fireplace. “You take orders from me,” he reminded, struggling to control his voice and to keep the rage he was feeling from breaking through.
“That’s your notion, not mine.”
“I’m the one who’s a top agent with the Office of Clandestine Operations,” he reminded. “You, Sunny, work for me and—”
“People who go out of their way to tell you they’re top agents usually aren’t.”
The short, compact agent took a few quick breaths in and out. “A cat, for Christ sake.”
“It annoyed me, jocko.”
“Nothing’s supposed to annoy you. You’re a goddamn machine.”
“A top machine in my field.”
“You’re a bodyguard, an enforcer, an interrogator,” said Anger. “You’re not supposed to make a decision about anything.”
“I’ve saved your ass more than once by making a quick sizeup of a situation.”
“Killing somebody’s pet—Jesus, breaking its damn neck—that’s completely nuts.”
“Machines can’t go nuts, can they? Not according to your theory.”
“It wasn’t bad enough you kill the thing. No, then you leave it tossed out there in the condo courtyard. If I hadn’t spotted it before Mrs. Averil got a look at—”
“It was a nasty caterwauling nuisance,” observed Sunny. “Much better off dead.”
“Doing stuff like that is—damn it, it’s not tactful.”
The robot made a harsh snickering sound. “That’s very funny, jocko,” he said. “We can kill Eve Bascom and that’s perfectly okay. But get rid of some pissant feline and—”
“We didn’t kill Eve Bascom.”
“Right, we only helped arrange it.”
“That’s a very different thing.”
Sunny leaned back in his chair and spread his glittering metal hands wide. “You’re hairsplitting again.”
“The point is, you’ve got to control these violent impulses of yours,” Anger told him. “Otherwise, I’m going to haul you into the OCO offices and order a complete—”
“You won’t do that.”
“Oh, won’t I now?”
Sunny made a chuckling noise. “It wouldn’t be at all smart,” he advised. “I know too much about you. No, you don’t want to risk annoying me.”
The lefthand pocket of Anger’s dark robe buzzed. Scowling, he yanked out the palmsize phone. “Who?”
“Access A2,” said the phone.
Anger sat down on the low black sofa. “I’ll take it.”
A husky black man appeared on the tiny rectangular screen. “How come we haven’t had any further followup reports on the Eve Bascom matter?”
“I was about to contact you, when I got distracted by another matter,” the OCO agent apologized.
“Distracted by a kitty.” Sunny snickered again.
WHEN THE TAPPING sounded on the metal door of his small skyliner compartment, Jake said, “C’mon in, Sid.”
His partner, wearing a very bright orange robe, crossed the threshold from the adjoining compartment. “Have I grown several feet in height since we departed Greater LA?”
“Not noticeably, no.”
“Then my room really is as squatty as I thought.” He was carrying a laptop filescreen. “Finding myself in a sleepless state, I’ve been going over again this background stuff Bascom passed on to us.” He settled into the room’s other chair. “Haven’t you been sleeping either?”
“Nope.” Jake was still dressed.
“Is something other than this case bothering you?”
“I was thinking about what Dan said tonight.”
“Doesn’t pay to heed what any near relative has to say. Most of my earlier wives, for example, were notoriously crackbrained.”
“My son was suggesting that I’m turning into a recluse—not literally but in a social sense.”
“Tell him you’ve been losing yourself in your work. That’s a perfectly acceptable USA pastime.”
“Beth Kittridge has been dead for several months,” he said quietly. He unblanked the small oval compartment window and looked out into the night sky they were rushing through.
“Some things,” said Gomez, “take quite a lot of time to get over.”
“I’m probably taking way too long.”
Gomez shrugged one shoulder. “What do you think?”
“I still miss her,” answered Jake. “I’ve accepted, you know, the fact she’s dead and out of my life for the rest of my days.” He watched the darkness again for a moment. “I don’t know, Sid. There just hasn’t been anyone since Beth.”
“She was an exceptional lady,” said his partner. “Women like that you usually don’t find more than once per given lifetime. Unfortunate, but that’s one of the annoying ground rules of life.”
“I’m also a little uneasy about Alicia’s looking me up,” he admitted. “She’s an interesting young woman, but what I feel about her is more avuncular than romantic.”
“I don’t think she’s the kind of mujer who’ll keep tossing herself at you.”
Jake said, “Could be this is a symptom of growing older. I’m losing interest in romantic affairs.”
“No es verdad. You never lose interest,” Gomez assured him.
Jake said, “Enough about the life and loves of Jake Cardigan.”
Gomez said, “I’ve been going over this list of hombres that Eve Bascom had a fling with.”
“And?”
“Well, one thing I’m wondering is why Ricardo didn’t tumble to what was afoot. There were nine different gents since they were married. Nine the chief found out about—there may be a few more who escaped the tally. You’d have to do some serious looking the other way to miss noticing your wife carrying on with close on to a dozen guys.”
“Some people don’t want to notice.”
“Seems muy tonto to me.”
“We can ask Richard about it—very carefully,” said Jake. “Bascom’s anxious we don’t tell his son anything about his wife that he doesn’t already know.”
