Aaron Conners - Tex Murphy 02 (17 page)

“Get in.”

UAKM - Chapter 15

The speeder lifted off. I was in the front passenger seat, and the beautiful woman was in the back. I couldn’t see the gun, but I could feel it. I looked out of the corner of my eye at the man driving. I guessed he was about thirty five, clean cut, with a pleasant face and a larger than usual nose.

When we cleared the roofline, the man turned the speeder and headed into the darkness, away from the city. My curiosity was piqued. “So, where are we going?”

“Nowhere.” The beautiful woman spoke from the back seat. Her tone wasn’t particularly threatening, more businesslike than anything. “Just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

“Sounds good to me. I love to fly.”

The man at the wheel turned and smiled at me. “And it shows.”

Unexpectedly, he extended his hand. “I’m Agent McCovey. My partner is Agent Andrews. We’re with Interpol. I hope you don’t mind… we need to ask you a few questions, and were a little pressed for time.”

Even as I shook his hand, I wasn’t altogether certain whether I should be relieved or not.

Agent Andrews’ gun was still pointed at my head.

“If your partner’ll put her gun away, I promise I won’t jump out of the speeder.”

I watched Agent McCovey as he smiled into the rearview mirror and nodded. The gun barrel disappeared from my peripheral vision. It made me feel better, but I was still nervous and had an almost uncontrollable urge to smoke. I dragged the pack of Lucky Strikes out of my pocket and held it up. “Do you mind?”

Agent McCovey didn’t take his eyes from the airspace ahead. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Regulations?”

The agent shook his head. “No.”

Agent Andrews smirked in the back seat. I put the pack away and looked out the side window. We left the occupied areas and were heading out over the no-man’s-land to the north. This part of the city had never been cleaned up after the war and, according to rumour, was now inhabited by orc-like creatures who only came out at night and fed on human flesh.

Several tall buildings were still standing, and we descended toward one of them. There was no sign of electricity for miles. Agent McCovey skilfully navigated the speeder over the flat roof and landed. Agent Andrews tapped me on the shoulder. “Let’s get some air, shall we?”

I opened the speeder door and stepped out. The only light source was the faintly pink half-moon, the evening had gotten as cold as it was dark. I adjusted my overcoat, tied the sash tightly, then lit up a much-needed cigarette. Agent Andrews had followed me out the door and was now leaning against the side of the speeder, arms folded across what was probably a lovely chest. Despite her having held a gun to my head only minutes before, I had quite a yearning to hug her. This wasn’t unusual-I’d always been attracted to women who’d just as soon kill me.

Agent McCovey walked around from the driver’s side and stooped down to collect a handful of gravel. I eyed him warily, afraid that I was about to experience a strange, new form of Interpol interrogation/torture, but he wandered toward the edge of the roof and began throwing small rocks into the murky darkness. Satisfied that I wasn’t going to have information pelted out of me, I turned back and smiled disarmingly at Agent Andrews.

“This is a lovely spot. It must be true what they say-people take the places where they live for granted. I’ve never made the time to visit as part of town before.”

The agents wide green eyes gazed at me, unblinking and unamused. “We chose this place because we know it’s not bugged. There are things we need to talk about, sensitive things, that none of us want to be overheard. That includes you.”

I was flattered that they’d include me in their spy games, but I was feeling the same sensation I felt in my recurring nightmare, of being a Jeopardy contestant and having the Final Jeopardy category turn out to be Famous Suffragettes. I took a deep drag and let the smoke slip out of my nose and mouth as I spoke.

“Don’t get me wrong… I think we’re hitting it off really well, and I’m having a great time, but do you mind telling me what I’m doing here?”

Agent McCovey meandered back into the conversation. “Don’t worry. You’re not in any kind of trouble. We just need to find out what you know.”

Agent Andrews interrupted. “We know you found the video disc.”

“Who told you that? Drysdale? He is such a liar.”

McCovey smiled and looked out into the chilly night.

“It’s no big deal, Murphy. The only reason we picked you up is to see if you found out anything else about Colonel O’Brien’s murder.”

It sounded like Interpol was grasping at straws. Taking the time to round me up seemed like a last ditch effort, though I would never verbalize that. The upside was that they might let me in on something I didn’t know, in trade for me telling them everything I’d found out. Of course, I hadn’t learned much, but they didn’t know that.

Agent Andrews seemed to be getting cold and tucked her hands under her arms. I noticed with mixed reactions that her right hand was fondling the loaded holster under her black jacket. She seemed to be the less accommodating of the two agents, so I spoke to the man.

“Well, I’m assuming you both saw what was on the videodisc. I didn’t recognize the attacker.”

McCovey stuck his hands into his pockets. “There’s no reason why you should have. But that’s irrelevant. We already know who he is.”

Agent Andrews threw her partner a cautionary glance, but he disregarded it and went on.

“The man goes by the name of the Chameleon. He’s been on our most-wanted lists for years. We believe his real name is Jacques Fou, but his fingerprints have been surgically removed, and he’s a genius with disguises. If you saw him again, you probably wouldn’t recognise him.”

If Interpol knew who the killer was, then they already knew more than I did.

“So how am I supposed to help you, seeing as how you’ve already solved the murder?”

Agent Andrews jumped in. “The Chameleon isn’t some kind of psychopath who kills people for the hell of it. He’s a mercenary. Organizations and individuals hire him for specialized hits. We want to know who his employer was this time.”

Agent McCovey began to pace casually as he picked up where the woman left off.

“Even more importantly, we’re trying to find out more about the Winter Chip. On the videodisc, it looked like that was what the Chameleon was trying to find out from O’Brien.” He turned to face me. “Where were you earlier this evening?”

I flicked my spent cigarette off to the side and buried my hands in the pockets of my overcoat. I considered how much I should tell the agents. Dubois had told me a little about the Winter Chip, and McCovey seemed open to sharing information, so I decided to tell them what I found out. In exchange, maybe they could tell me more about CAPRICORN.

As I described my meeting with Dubois, Agent McCovey nodded occasionally while Agent Andrews took notes. I wrapped things up by recounting Dubois’s apparent abduction. When I’d finished, Andrews looked up from her notebook. “Any idea where we could locate Dubois?”

I shook my head. “Like I said, I had a bad feeling that he’s been located for the last time.

And he didn’t leave me with any way to get in touch with him.”

My fingers had warmed sufficiently to have another smoke. I cupped my hands around the Zippo flame, then let loose a long stream of half smoke, half breath steam. I told them what I knew. Maybe they’d toss me another bone.

“What can the two of you tell me about CAPRICORN? Do you suppose it figures somehow into the Colonel’s murder?”

Agent McCovey, who’d been very attentive while I was talking, resumed his leisurely pacing. “Odds are pretty good. Whoever decimated CAPRICORN knew what they were doing. They had to have someone on the inside, to provide information, but they also needed manpower and resources. That doesn’t come cheap.”

“So who was it? Could it have been this Phoenix person, the one Dubois told me about?”

McCovey shook his head. “We’re not sure. And we don’t have any information on who Phoenix is or how he figures into this. What we do know is, the Crusade for Genetic Purity had the most to gain from CAPRICORN being dismantled. We also have reason to believe that the Crusade isn’t the real power in the equation. There is another group behind it… nameless and faceless, probably very small, with a lot of money and an agenda. What the agenda is… we don’t know, but we intend to find out.”

“And you think this group behind the Crusade had the Chameleon kill the Colonel?”

McCovey shrugged. “Seems likely.”

He turned and walked around to the driver’s side. Agent Andrews opened the passenger side door and crawled in. Apparently, our interview was over. I slid into the seat and shut the door as we lifted off. Once we were airborne and headed back to Chandler Avenue, Agent McCovey turned to me.

“There’s another thing I wanted to ask you about. I understand that you asked the police to search a vacant house out in the Pacific Heights area. There was also something about a Duchess and a stolen statue. It didn’t make much sense.”

“It never does, coming from Malden.”

As we flew back to my office, I recounted my meeting with Countess Renier and what had followed. I could hear Agent Andrews taking notes in the back. At one point, Agent McCovey interrupted to ask me to describe the statue thoroughly. My story wrapped up just as we landed at the curb behind my speeder.

“That’s why I had the police check out the mansion.”

Agent McCovey nodded silently several times, then took a breath. “Well, Mr Murphy, thanks for your time. I hope we didn’t keep you up too late.”

There were other questions I wanted to ask, but I was being dismissed. I opened the door and held it there as Agent Andrews’ shapely legs emerged from the back seat. She looked up at me and held my eyes-not with any interest, but to keep me from

comfortably scanning her gams-until she was safely seated beside her partner. I shut the door, and the speeder took off.

As I walked back to my office, I realized the Interpol agents had never shown me any identification.

UAKM - Chapter 16

Getting up at a reasonable hour the previous day seemed to have taken a toll on my thirtysomething body. It was eleven something when I rolled over and squinted at my alarm clock. What a piece of junk. The LED read 11:88. Even worse, the plastic bumps on the snooze bar had worn off completely, making it harder to find those all-important eight minute incre-ments of extra sleep. What I needed was one of those voice response devices with the special Monique feature. They had a sultry female voice that would make naughty sex noises instead of beeping and could be programmed to say things like,

“Time to get up, handsome. I’m ready for some breakfast in bed.” Of course, I’d just set the alarm over and over and spend the rest of my life in the sack.

I lurched over the side of the bed, staggered blindly in the direction of the bathroom, and began making myself beautiful. It was a longer process than it used to be, but five minutes later, I was modestly presentable. With breakfast smoldering between my fingers and the coffeemaker belching like a steel worker, I settled into the chair behind my desk and began composing my daily list of things to do.

(1) Get up. Check. (2) Splash water on face. Done. (3) PI breakfast. Almost ready. (4) Lose weight and get into shape. (5) Go see Percival.

The coffee hadn’t even finished brewing, and I’d already covered half the list. I leaned back in my chair and took a drag, feeling like I had things pretty well in hand. When the coffee was ready, I poured a mug and returned to my chair.

Reading while eating breakfast is one of life’s simple joys. Back when I could afford cold cereal, I knew the Cap’n Crunch box like the back of my hand. I fished the now dog-eared blue card out of my overcoat and examined it for the umpteenth time as I downed my coffee. BXK+A261184. I still couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Maybe I should have shown it to the Interpol agents. I’d forgotten to ask.

Staring at the index card started to get me frustrated, so I switched to the Colonel’s notebook. Maybe I’d overlooked something the first time through. I opened it up and saw the three names I’d jotted down when I’d been talking to Paul Dubois: Phoenix, Chameleon, and Professor Perriman. The first two were almost certainly code names, but Professor Perriman sounded like someone I should be able to track down.

Dubois had told me that he’d gotten the name from the Capricorn mole’s report. The mole was working inside the Crusade for Genetic Purity, which was based in New San Francisco. Hopefully, the Professor was also a citizen of our fair-to-middlin’ city.

I pulled up the directory on my computer and found eighteen Perrimans listed. Then I got on the horn and started calling. Eventually I reached a Mrs Perriman, who said her husband taught classes at the University of San Francisco until one o’clock and probably wouldn’t be home until dinnertime.

After my third cup of sweet caffeine, I left the office and flew my speeder to USF. The campus was bustling with fresh faced students who didn’t look old enough to have driver’s licences. One of these, a cute redhead with newly straightened teeth, helpfully informed me that Professor Perriman taught history in the Jerry Rice building.

I followed her directions and found the building shortly before one o’clock. I paused outside the door and joined several students in a pre-lecture smoke. As we puffed, I listened in on their conversation, which was laced with sophomoric philosophy and rumours of huge, post finals keggers.

I finished my cigarette and stepped inside. On the third floor, I found a directory and made my way to room 319. The door was open, and I looked in to see a heavy-set man rummaging through a stack of papers on top of a file cabinet.

“Professor Perriman?”

The large man turned to face me. His hair was thick and untamed and had almost completely lost the pigment battle, though his impressively feral beard still had streaks of black in it. He had a high, broad forehead and a pinkish complexion, with red blotched cheeks that peeked over the top of his beard. A pair of bifocals sat forgotten on the bridge of his bulbous nose. Professor Perriman had the look of a man who had lived a full life and still had a ways to go.