Seeker (7 page)

The tables were well supplied with jasmine candles. Walls and tables were dark-stained wood. Prints in the style of the last century provided a sense of nostalgia. I noticed a couple of senators with their spouses (I assumed) across the room. One, a well-known champion of corporate benefits, recognized Alex and came over to say hello.

Amy walked in a few minutes later, looking around as if she were lost. Then she spotted us and strode briskly over. “Good evening, Mr. Benedict,” she said, still taking in her surroundings. “This is really nice.”

Alex rose, pulled her chair out for her, and said he was glad she was pleased. She said hello to me and sat down.

She wore a pressed lavender suit and seemed to have had something of a makeover. Her hair was pulled back and in better order. Her eyes were more alert, and she stood a bit straighter than she had at the office. She wasn’t at ease, but that of course was the reason we were there. The Hillside was the place Alex used when he wanted to put a client on the defensive. Which is to say, when he wanted something he wasn’t sure he could get.

She went immediately to business: “Chase said you have good news for me.”

That was her imagination at work. Alex looked at me, read my face, and smiled. “The cup is associated with a famous, and very early, interstellar,” he said. “We think it’s reasonably valuable.”

“How much?” she asked.

“We’ll have to let the market decide, Amy. I’d rather not guess.” He produced a chip. “When you get time, complete this document. It will establish your ownership of the property.”

“Why do I have to do that?” she asked. “It’s mine. It was given to me.”

“And possession is ninety percent. But disputes have a way of appearing in these cases. It’s a formality, but it might save problems later.”

She was annoyed, but she took it and dropped it in a side pocket. “I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.”

“Good,” said Alex. “As soon as you’ve done that, we’ll put the cup on the market and see what happens.”

“All right.”

He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Now,” he said, “while we don’t know its precise value, we should establish a minimum bid.”

“How much?”

He gave her a number. I’ve been through these things before, but it took my breath away. It was more than I’d been able to earn so far in a lifetime. Amy’s eyes squeezed hard shut and I saw a tear run down her cheek. I may have been getting a little damp myself.

“Wonderful,” she said, with a breaking voice.

Alex beamed. He was the picture of philanthropic content. It was so nice to be of assistance. Our cut, of course, would be the standard ten percent of the eventual sale price. I knew him well enough to be aware that his minimum bid was conservative.

I thought for a minute she was going to come apart. Fluttering handkerchief, brave smile, giggle, and an apology. Sorry, it’s such a shock.

“Now,” said Alex, “I want you to do something for me.”

“Of course.”

The waiter arrived, and we took time to order, although Amy was no longer paying much attention to the menu. When he was gone, Alex leaned across the table. “I want you to tell me where it came from.”

She looked startled. Fox and hounds. “Why, I told you, Mr. Benedict. My ex-boyfriend gave it to me.”

“When would that have been?”

“I don’t know. Several weeks ago.”

Alex’s voice dropped even lower. “Would you be kind enough to tell me his name?”

“Why? I told you, it belongs to me.”

“Because there might be more of these objects around. If there are, the owner may not be aware of their value.”

She shook her head. No. “I’d rather not do that.”

Breakup city. Alex reached across the table and took her hand. “It could mean a great deal to you,” he said. “We’d arrange things so you got a finder’s fee.”

“No.”

He looked at me, shrugged, and changed the subject. We talked about how nice it was to have an enormous amount of money fall out of the sky, and how the cup was a valuable artifact. The meals came, and we continued in that vein until Alex caught my eye again. I understood what he wanted, and a few minutes later he excused himself.

Time for girl talk. “Bad ending?” I asked in a sympathetic voice.

She nodded. “I hate him.”

“Another woman?”

“Yeah. He had no right.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay. I let him get away with it a couple times. But promises don’t mean nothing to him.”

“You’re probably better off. He sounds like a jerk.”

“I’m over it.”

“Good.” I tried to look casual. “If he has more of these around somewhere, it could mean a lot more money for you.”

“I don’t care.”

“We could handle it so he wouldn’t know where the information came from. It would not involve you. He’d never know.”

She shook her head. Absolutely not.

“How about this? If he has any more artifacts like the cup, we’ll keep you out of it, and we’ll make him an offer without telling him what they’re really worth. Then you and I can split whatever we make.”

That would have been a trifle unethical, and Alex would never have gone for it. Me, I wouldn’t have had a problem. I was beginning to feel some sympathy for Amy, so I had no trouble taking her side.

She started having second thoughts. “You’re sure he’d never find out? About me?”

“Absolutely. We’ve handled these things before.” If we could get a name, it would be easy enough to look into the situation without alerting him. If it turned out there were actually more souvenirs from the
Seeker
lying around, then we could go back and negotiate some more with Amy.

“He would know it was me the minute you mentioned the cup.”

“We’d be careful.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’d know.”

“We wouldn’t mention the cup.”

“Don’t bring it up at all.”

“Okay. We won’t. We won’t say a word about it.”

She thought about it some more. “His name’s Hap.” Her face tightened and I thought she was going to cry again. It was turning into a weepy evening. “Actually, it’s Cleve Plotzky. But everybody calls him Hap.”

“Okay.”

“If you tell him, he’ll come after me.”

“He’s assaulted you,” I said.

She wouldn’t look at me.

“Does he live in Andiquar?”

“Aker Point.”

Aker Point was a small community west of the capital. Most of the people who lived there were either unable to hold a job or satisfied subsisting on the minimum ration.

I saw Alex loitering across the room, pretending to examine the artwork. He figured out that the negotiation had ended, lingered another minute or two, said something to a waiter, and rejoined us. Moments later a fresh round of cocktails arrived.

Cleve (Hap) Plotzky
did
work for a living. He was a burglar. But not a very successful one. We got that much from the public record. He was good at rigging devices that shut down security systems, but he always seemed to make a beginner’s mistake. Sometimes he got caught trying to move the merchandise. Or because he sneezed and left his DNA on the property. Or because he bragged to the wrong people about his skills. He also had a record of assorted assaults, mostly against women.

So we went back to see Fenn Redfield. The police inspector had been a burglar himself at one time, sufficiently prone to the profession that the courts eventually ordered a mind wipe. He knew none of this, of course. His memories of his past life, up to about fifteen years earlier, were all fictitious.

He let Alex look through the court documents regarding Hap but could not show him the police reports. “Against the rules,” he said. “Wish I could help.”

The court documents didn’t go into sufficient detail about what had been stolen. “How about,” Alex said, “if I tell you what I’m looking for, and you tell me if it was among the stuff this guy took?”

So Alex described the cup with its English inscription, and Fenn looked at the record and said no. “It’s not listed.”

“Is anything like that on the list? Any kind of drinking vessel?”

Fenn explained that Hap Plotzky only took jewelry. And ID cards if he found any. And maybe electronic devices that were lying around loose. But pots and dishes and collectors’ items? “No. Not ever.”

Our next step was to talk with Plotzky himself.

We put together a mass-distribution ad. Jacob gave us an attractive female avatar, dark-skinned, dark-eyed, lithe, long-legged, with spectacular bumpers, and we had her sit in a virtual office surrounded by virtual antique dishware. We used my voice, which Alex told me was sexy, then smiled to let me know he was kidding. And we wrote a script.

“Hello, Cleve,”
the avatar would say,
“do you have some old pottery or other similar items that have been around a long time and are just gathering dust? Turn them into instant cash with us. . . .”

We used “Cleve” instead of “Hap” because we wanted to be sure he concluded this was a mass mailing and not a message directed specifically at him. We figured this guy wasn’t very bright.

“Will it get past the AI?” I wondered.

“Sure,” said Alex. “Plotzky will have a basic, no-frills model.”

So we sent it off.

We got no response, and after a couple of days we went to Plan B. If Hap had given the cup to Amy, he had no idea of its value. That made it likely any similar object he owned wouldn’t be locked away. It would be on a shelf somewhere. All we really had to do was gain entry.

Jacob connected me with Hap’s AI. I introduced myself as a researcher with the Caldwell Scientific Sampling Survey and asked to speak with Mr. Plotzky. The AI gave me an avatar to look at, a large, hostile, ill-kempt female. The sort of woman you might find enjoying a good fight. That image told me everything I needed to know about Hap. In fact, you can tell quite a lot about people from the images their houses show you. Anyone who calls Alex, for example, first sees a well-dressed, polished, impeccably polite individual. It might be a male or female figure. That’s left to Jacob’s discretion. But there’s no question it holds a master’s degree from New London.

“Why?”
she asked, making no effort to mask her owner’s hostility.
“What do you want?”

“I’d like very much to ask Mr. Plotzky some survey questions. I’ll only take a few minutes of his time.”

“Sorry,”
she said.
“He’s busy.”

“I could call back later.”

“You could, but it wouldn’t matter.”

Alex was sitting back out of range of the image pickup so he couldn’t be seen. But he was nodding vigorously, egging me on. Don’t lose your patience. “There’s money in it for him,” I said.

“Oh? How much?”

“Enough. Please tell him I’m here.”

She ran the idea through her software. Then the picture froze. She had her arms folded and was staring directly at me. That sort of thing tends to hold your attention. A minute later she blinked off and I was looking at Hap himself. “
Yeah
?” he said. “
What’s the problem
?” He looked as if he’d been asleep. We knew he was thirty-two, but he had the battered, caved-in features of someone much older.

“I’m conducting a survey for the entertainment industry. We want to make a determination about what people are watching. It would only take a few minutes.”

“Lulu tells me you said something about money.”

“Yes,” I said. “There’s a modest stipend.”

“How much?”

I told him.

“Okay,”
he said.
“What do you want to know?”

“Well, I’d need to come by the house, Mr. Plotzky. We need to complete a document on your equipment as well.”

“I can tell you what I have, lady. Save you the trip.”

“Sorry. We can’t do it that way. I’d like to, but I have to certify that I’ve made the visit.”

He nodded and took a long look. It was as if he hadn’t noticed me before. Then he said okay, and tried a come-hither grin. It was crooked and repulsive but I smiled back.

Actually the place wasn’t the hovel I expected. Plotzky lived nineteen or twenty floors up in one of the vertical cities that made Aker Point infamous. There wasn’t a lot of space, but it was reasonably clean, and he had a pretty good view of the Melony. I mean it was well south of lush, but if you’d decided just to drift through life, you could have done worse.

He opened the door and attempted a smile. There was a woman with him, hard-eyed, short, solid as a bowling ball. It struck me he should have tried to keep Amy on board. This one made the avatar look good. She watched me suspiciously, the way women do when they think you’re out to steal their guy.

Hap was wearing a workout suit with a top that said DOWNTOWN AND LIKE IT, under a picture of a shot glass and some bubbles. He was short and barrel-chested with thick black hair, lots of it, growing everywhere. He indicated the chair I could use. I complied and took out my notebook.

Hap Plotzky was more congenial than he’d been on the circuit. Maybe it was because I’d become a money source, but I decided he was trying to figure out how to make a play for me while the steamroller was sitting there. I was willing to bet he’d tried unsuccessfully to get her out the door prior to my arrival, and that was what explained the woman’s animus.

“So what did you want to know, Ms. Kolpath?”

I asked him about his favorite programs, how much he participated, what he would prefer to do other than what was available, and so on. I recorded his answers and admired the furniture, which allowed me to get a good look around the living room. The decorations were, you could say, sparse. What he had, essentially, was a sofa, a couple of chairs, and walls. The walls were lemon-colored. There was a cheap laminex shelf adjacent the front door, but the only thing on it was a pile of data chips.

“Yeah,” he said, “I like cop shows. Nothin’ much else worth a damn.” He thought he’d cut off the angle on his female guest — or roommate — and he tried leering.

I felt sorry for the guy. Don’t ask me why.

When we’d gotten through my list of questions, I took out a monitor that’s designed to interact with the AI in my skimmer. It’s in a small black case and it had red and white status lamps. It doesn’t do anything else, and it certainly wasn’t capable of what I was about to claim for it, but he had no way of knowing that. “If you don’t mind, Hap, I’m going to record the capabilities of your system now.” We were on first-name terms by then.