Tek Power (3 page)

“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?”

“W
HAT 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

H
E 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.

W
HEN 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.”

“Sooner or later sonny's going to find out.” Gomez smoothed an end of his moustache. “Suppose, for instance, that her death does have some connection with Junior Maxfield's demise? If we establish that, he's going to realize they were up to something besides diplomacy down there.”

“He may already suspect that and just didn't mention it to his father.”

Tapping the filescreen, Gomez said, “After we talk to the boss's son and get all the background stuff from him we can, we're probably going to have to check out every single fellow on this list of Eve's old beaux.”

Jake nodded. “A sad business,” he said.

T
HIS TIME HE'D
be able to do something.

Jake got to Berlin ahead of her. It was a cold, grey morning filled with heavy rain. A small crowd was already gathering on the rainslick street in front of the World Drug Court. They huddled beneath dark umbrellas, curious onlookers, watching the long passway that led from the curb to the narrow gate of the court building.

There were ten armed guards, human and robot, strung out on each side of the passway.

Then the landcar pulled up, the one carrying Beth and the International Drug Control Agency men assigned to escort her safely into the trial to testify.

Things were going to be okay. This time he'd be able to do something. This time Beth wasn't going to die.

Jake started to push his way through the growing crowd. The man nearest him turned out to be Bascom.

“Easy, Jake, don't shove.”

“But they're going to attempt to kill her.” He started to push around him.

“I have another case for you to work on.” Rain was rolling down off his black umbrella and hitting at Jake's face. “Much more important than this one.”

“Damn you, get out of my way.”

A few feet away he saw another Jake. This one called out to Beth, grinned, waved his hand. “Thought for a while I wasn't going to make it.”

“Jake!” A smile brightened her face and she pulled herself free of the IDCA agent who was holding her arm. “My god, where've you been?”

Jake shouted, cupping his hands. “That's not me, Beth! It's a kamikaze—an android loaded with explosives!”

She didn't seem to hear him. She kept moving toward the false Jake.

An agent was trotting after her, reaching out to pull her back.

Jake fought to get near. “Beth, no!” he yelled. “I know what's going to happen.”

The other Jake, grinning, held out his arms to her.

She put her arms tight around the android. “I'm so glad—”

There was an enormous explosion.

“No!” cried Jake. “I have to save you.”

The rain turned blood red and came slamming at him. It knocked him to the sidewalk, pounding at his chest.

“How you doing,
amigo?
”

Jake sat up on his narrow bed. “Sid?”

“You were hollering,” explained his partner from the compartment doorway. “I thought I'd best pop in.”

“Thanks, but it's nothing,” Jake assured him. “A bad dream. Can't even remember what it was about.”

“It was about Beth.”

“Naw, I don't think—”

“I heard you shouting her name over and over.”

Jake sighed and nodded his head slowly. “Yeah, I go back to Berlin quite a lot,” he admitted. “Most often I get another chance to try to save her. But, shit, I never succeed. Just like in real life.” He hit at his leg with his fist. “If I hadn't been such an asshole, letting myself get sidetracked in Brazil—Beth would be alive.”