Tek Power (6 page)

Gomez frowned. “Charla? He used to specialize in peddling information on Central American and Latin American politics and the Tek trade down that way.”

“He still does,” said Ramirez.

8

T
HE FINAL RECEPTIONIST
Jake encountered as he penetrated deeper into the Larson-Dunn offices was human. The first had been an ivory-trimmed, silverplated android, the second a handsome suntanned android. The third receptionist was a woman in her late thirties with bright crimson hair and a pale puffy face.

“I'm Jake Cardigan.” He leaned and rested his left fist on the far edge of her rubberoid desk.

“Miss McDonnell,” said the voxbox in the desktop. “May I introduce Miss McDonnell, Mr. Cardigan.”

“Pleased to meet you.” He lifted his hand and took a step back. “I'm with the Cosmos Detective Agency and—”

“Oh, I've heard of you.” The redhaired woman's voice was dim and somewhat fuzzy.

“I'd like to talk to Larry Seagrove. His apartment tells me he's not at home,” explained Jake. “Is he at work today?”

Miss McDonnell furrowed her brow, then glanced over her shoulder. “No, he's not, but …” She looked up at a security camera in the distant grey ceiling. “If Larry were in some kind of trouble, could you … No, I'm sorry, sir, Mr. Seagrove is out of the office on confidential business. He'll be away for several days.”

A door across the large grey reception room had come flapping open. “You, Cardigan.” The thin darkhaired woman who'd appeared in the opening beckoned to him. “Get on in here.”

“Who might you be, ma'am?” he inquired, not moving.

“I'm Andre Larson. This is my agency.” She made an impatient summoning gesture with her right hand. “C'mon, c'mon—I want to see you.”

The receptionist gave Jake a fleeting look of sympathy.

Grinning, he entered Andre Larson's office.

“Sit. No, in the black chair.” She moved behind her clear Lucite desk.

Settling into the white chair, Jake asked, “Do you know where Larry Seagrove is?”

The high walls of the large, chill room were covered with dozens of small viewscreens. Silent images unfolded on each and every one—newscasts, interviews, documentary footage about a variety of businesses and industries, stock market quotations, animated charts, animated schematic drawings. Andre gestured with her right hand and every screen went blind. She said, “He's out of the office.”

“Any specifics? A direction maybe? North? South?”

“Here's exactly what I have to say to you, Cardigan.” Her long fingers touched the steel frame of a holophoto of a thickset blonde woman and a thin blonde girl of ten. “I know you're digging into Eve Bascom's death and I want you to understand that Eve, rest her soul, died in an accident.”

Jake said, “There's really no way, Miss Larson, that you can know for sure that—”

“
Mrs
. Larson.” She tapped the picture. “My wife and daughter.”

“Okay, Mrs. Larson, there isn't any way that you, or anyone else at this stage, can know for certain it was an accident.”

“The police don't agree with you, Cardigan,” she informed him. “They've ruled her death accidental and I accept that. Whatever happened to poor Eve had absolutely nothing to do with any Larson-Dunn client nor with any business activities of this organization. Is that clear to you?”

“Eve's been dead less than twelve hours and you've determined all that already, huh?”

“We've had earlier encounters with Walt Bascom and that band of grifters he calls a detective agency,” she said. “I don't want to see Cosmos spread any further negative stories about my public relations agency.”

“What accounts was Eve working on?”

“Her husband can tell you all that.” She rose to her feet. “Now, get out, Cardigan.”

He remained seated. “Last night who'd she have dinner with?”

“I don't have any further time for you.”

He eased up from the chair. “I appreciate this little interlude, ma'am.”

“Keep in mind that you're nowhere near as smart as you seem to think you are,” she warned. “Remember, too, that I can make a whole hell of a lot of trouble for you.”

The office door snapped open. “And I can do the same for you, Mrs. Larson.”

Out in the reception room Miss McDonnell said, “You got a vidphone message while you were in there, Mr. Cardigan.” She passed him a slip of paper.

It read:
1 PM. Mundy's Pub. Please!

He pocketed it. “Thanks,” he said. “I'll take care of that.”

T
HE ARCADE AT
the Level 10 exit to the building that housed the Larson-Dunn offices was thick with roving midday shoppers and seated lunchers. Robot waitresses in bright polkadot aprons were deftly wending their way through the wide circular dining area that was surrounded by small shops.

There were several large animated billboards floating high above the tables. One was extolling the virtues of Mechanix International's servomech division. It showed a chromeplated maidbot efficiently cleaning up a large kitchen, supervising the dinner-fixing equipment and monitoring two pretty blond young children in their nursery. The slogan MI SERVOS—THEY'RE ALMOST HUMAN was superimposed over the door-sized screen at five-second intervals.

Another animated sign depicted a sunbright field of rippling grain.
FARMBOY INDUSTRIES
—
FEEDING AMERICA FROM THE HEART OF FARMLAND
flashed across the scene.

Wincing, Jake started for an exit that led to the nearest pedramp.

Someone at a small table at the outer rim of the dining circle hailed him. “Cardigan, if you can spare a moment.”

Jake made his way over to the table. He recognized the short, thickset man in the dark suit and the robot who was sharing his small table. “Hi, Nate,” he said, betraying not a shade of enthusiasm.

The robot started to rise. “You snubbing me, jailbird?”

“Enough, Sunny,” warned Nathan Anger.

“He's got no call to highhat me.”

Jake grinned at both of them. “Sunny, I mistook you for one of the waitresses,” he explained. “Should have noticed you weren't wearing an apron.”

“Keep needling me, jocko, and—”

“Quit, Sunny,” Anger ordered.

“What brings you up from DC, Nate?”

“Sit for a moment, so we can have a talk.”

“Don't really have time.”

“Hey, when we tell you to sit, buddy, you damn well better—”

“That's allright,” cut in Anger, patting Jake on the sleeve. “You stand if you want. I simply wanted to pass on a cordial warning, Jake.”

“From the Office of Clandestine Operations?”

“From friend to friend.”

“I don't think we have the right cast to play that scene.”

Anger said, “Eve Bascom had an unfortunate accident. I can sympathize with Bascom's son—Richard, is it? I can sympathize with him, and I can even understand that he can't readily accept the fact that it was nothing more than an accident.”

“Sure, an accident,” said Jake. “Which is why the OCO is warning me off.”

Sunny said, “You could have an accident, too, smartass.”

“That's enough,” cautioned the OCO agent. “This isn't a threat. But it would be, really, much smarter and safer to forget this one.”

“I'll think that over, Nate.”

“One of the things that concerns us is the way you're bothering Andre Larson,” continued Anger. “The Larson-Dunn organization happens to work for certain clients, both here and in Latin America, whose continued peace of mind and wellbeing the government of the United States is interested in. Trouble for L-D might very well lead to trouble for them. None of this has anything to do with the late Mrs. Bascom.”

“I'm glad you took the time to set me straight, Nate.” Jake gave him a lazy salute. “Don't get rusty, Sunny.”

“Wiseass,” muttered the robot as Jake left them.

Out on the Level 10 ramp Jake walked for several minutes. When he came to a plump woman who was sitting on a restbench with her purple-tinted poodle, he halted. “Nice boy,” he said, patting the animal on the neck.

“It's a
she
,” said the woman, smiling. “Her name is Lulu.”

“Hi, Lulu. She must be a great companion to you.” He succeeded in transferring the tiny electronic tracking bug that Anger had planted on his sleeve to the dog's fur. “Going to be taking a walk?”

“As soon as I catch my breath.”

“A long one?”

“We like to cover about two miles of ramps every day at least.”

“Splendid.” Jake continued on his way.

9

T
HE DRIVER OF
the skycab said, “This is, absolutely, far as I go, pal.”

“We're still three blocks from my destination,” Gomez pointed out as the vehicle commenced dropping down through the sky over SemiSecure Zone 3.

The driver told him, “Can't be helped, pal. This café you want happens to be just two short blocks from the White Harlem border—and we never go that close.” He tapped the mapscreen on his control panel, where a warning red arrow had commenced flashing over a street grid of the neighborhood.

“Company policy.”

“Far be it from me to buck company policy,” said the detective. “You
hombres
are, I take it, afraid of the Axis Brotherhood?”

“Cautious, pal, we're cautious.” The skycab settled down on a landing lot. “Those Nazi bastards control that whole fifteen-square-block patch over across the border. They are, to a man, a rotten and quarrelsome bunch.”

“Do they ever spill over here into Spanish Harlem?”

“Been known to.”

Settling his fare, Gomez slid free of the cab. “Thanks for taking me this far,” he said as the cab rose upward.

There were no pedramps in this part of the town and the skycar got up and away rapidly.

Sitting on an empty neowood crate next to the narrow entrance to the Café Francisca was a skinny man with a rusty metal right leg showing through his tattered khaki trousers. “I'm a Brazil vet,
señor
,” he informed Gomez. “Can you help out?”

“
Sí
.” After passing him a $5 chit, Gomez inquired, “You know Charley Charla?”

“Might.” He slipped the money away into a side pocket.

“Is he about?”

“Who're you?”

“The celebrated, some say fabled, Sid Gomez.”

The undernourished man gave an affirmative nod. “Take the first door on your right after you go in. Charley you'll find two levels down.”

The hallway of the café smelled richly of spices and cooking oils. Gomez entered the indicated door.

Three steps into the darkness beyond the door a metal hand took hold of his throat. “Where you bound,
gringo?
”

“To consult with Charley,” Gomez managed to gasp out. “And, hey, I'm no
gringo
.”

Thin yellowish light blossomed around them. Gomez discovered he was in a greywalled corridor and that a large robot, much dented and long ago painted yellow, had a grip on his neck.

The bot asked, “Who sent you?”

“Bob Ramirez.”

“How's old Bobby doing?”

“Well, he's overweight and, frankly, I think the closer he gets to retirement the less nerve he shows.” Gomez tapped at the fingers that were still circling his throat. “Can you loosen up,
hermano?
”

“
Sí
, surely.” The hand let go and pointed at a green doorway across the way. “Go down the ramp and you'll find Charley's office.”

Charla was a small man in a large white suit. In his late fifties, intricately wrinkled and with a moustache that was much fuller and fuzzier than the one the detective sported. “You call that a moustache?” he asked as he nodded at Gomez's upper lip and beckoned him into the small office.

“I used to call it an eyebrow, but that confused people.” He sniffed, glancing around the dimlit place. “What's that smell, Charley?”

“Mildew.”

“Didn't know mildew could spoil.” Gingerly, he sat on the sprung flowered sofa that faced the small folding table the information peddler was using for a desk. “Ramirez suggested I drop in on you.”

“He told me.” Charla grabbed up an oldfashioned manila folder from a pile on the table. He opened it and set it out in front of him. There was nothing inside. “We'll put your five hundred dollars in here.”

“Is this going to be a magical trick?”

“It's my fee,
tonto
.”

“Give me a hint of what I'm buying for this enormous amount of money.”

Charla shut the folder, picked it up and fanned himself with it a few times. “I'll give you a sample.” When he smiled, dozens of new wrinkles joined the permanent collection on his weathered face. “The killing of Eve Bascom was a collaborative effort.”

When Gomez leaned back, the ancient sofa made a loud spong noise. “
Bueno
, Carlito,” he said. “That little snippet of news is worth about ten bucks. So you owe me another four hundred and ninety dollars' worth.”

“I can't pass on information if you keep butting in with prattle, Sidney,” he warned. “The collaboration in question was between a United States government intelligence agency and certain members of the ruling junta in Nicaragua.”

“Are we, perhaps, alluding to the Office of Clandestine Operations?”

“That's right, the OCO is into this up to here.” He brushed at his wrinkled neck.

“And who down in Nicaragua?”

“I don't have the details yet, Sidney.” He dropped the folder, reopened it, pushed it closer to the detective. “Are we going to do some business?”

“Three hundred dollars tops.”

“Four hundred and fifty is my bottom price.”