Tek Kill (22 page)

“Susan Grossman was right about all this,” said Jake. “So I'm, though sort of skeptical, a convert.”

“It isn't possible, do you think, Jake, that she came upon this information in some less magical manner?”

“How?”

“Oh, her dead old dad might be in cahoots with a Teklord or with somebody high up in NewTown Pharmaceuticals,” he suggested. “She could simply have overheard something and is trying to pass it off as a supernatural message.”

“Nope. From what Molly Fine tells me, this is legit.”

Menken glanced from Jake to Gomez. “I have great faith in extrasensory powers,” he said. “I'm extremely open-minded.”

“Empty-headed,” muttered Shawna, who was watching the lanky Kipling putter with the giant carrot.

38

BASCOM blanked the windows of his tower office and the twilight city vanished. “Why the hangdog expression, Anselmo?” he asked from behind his desk.

Roy Anselmo was sitting in a plastiglass chair facing his boss. He ran a hand through his feathery blond hair, contemplated his feet, glanced at the blank viewindows. “We've never exactly, Walt, seen eye to eye on the methods of either Jake Cardigan or Sid Gomez,” he said.

“The truth shouldn't make you uneasy.”

Anselmo looked directly at the agency chief. “Jake shouldn't have been allowed to abandon work on your case.”

“He took some time off. He didn't desert the sinking ship.”

“Your life is on the line, Walt. It's unforgivable for him to—”

“So is his son's.” Bascom made an impatient dismissive gesture with his right hand. “I don't have a problem with the way Jake's handling things. So there's no need for you to.”

Anselmo cleared his throat. “Then there's Gomez,” he said. “What he did in regard to Avram Moyech just isn't right.”

“He tracked down the bozo who helped frame me, Roy,” reminded Bascom. “Moyech will be arriving here fairly soon now. Fact is, I just got confirming word that delivery will be made shortly.”

“From my reading of Gomez's report on this matter—which is as terse and cocky as all of his reports—he kidnapped the man.”

“He made, rather, a citizen's arrest.”

“
And
he entered into a conspiracy with smugglers to get Moyech to the agency.”

“I'm figuring that the guy's testimony will help clear me. Seems to me, Roy, that you ought to be glad about that.”

“Moyech's testimony is one thing, Walt,” said the detective, “but I have a fear that the methods Gomez is using will taint everything.”

“Naw, it won't hurt—not after I smooth the rough edges. Now, do you have—”

“Police officer here to see you, sir,” broke in the desk vidphone.

“Who?”

“Lieutenant Drexler of the SoCal force.”

Bascom drummed the fingers of his right hand in sequence on his desktop. He sighed and instructed, “Send the guy in.”

The black policeman entered, walking fast and looking grim. “Evening, Walt. Roy.”

“Another sourpuss,” commented Bascom.

“How's that?”

“Merely the ramblings of a doddering old coot. Why are you here, Lieutenant?”

Drexler stopped next to Anselmo's chair and looked down at Bascom. “Aren't you in enough trouble already, Walt?”

“Are you here to offer me more?”

The policeman said, “I'm here to investigate a report that you're involved with kidnapping and smuggling.”

ON THE HOLOSTAGE, a life-size J. J. Bracken bounced twice in his high-back black metal chair and jabbed a finger in the direction of the uniformed guest in the facing chair. “Tell us about this thousand-dollar-a-week Tek habit of yours, Colonel Woodbine,” he invited, brushing back an unruly lock of his pale blond hair.

“I don't have a thousand-dollar-a-week Tek habit,” insisted the colonel, a heavyset man in the tan uniform of the National Army.

“More than a thousand dollars, then?”

“I'm not addicted to Tek, you offensive scoundrel. I agreed to appear on your disgusting
Facin' Bracken
broadcast to answer your recent slanderous attacks on the American Cyborg Rights Organization. Not to have my reputation muddied over.”

“So it's not true, then, not true, that you are a hopeless Tekkie? Not true despite the huge amount of data I have access to, that you have long been tapping the fat treasury of your subversive organization to pay your mounting bills for illegal electronic stimulants?”

“I won't remain here if you—”

“And it's not true, not true, that you're also involved in a sneaky plan to manufacture Tek in a clandestine setup with a legitimate—”

“Darn,” said Kacey Bascom, who was sitting in one of the two occupied chairs in the entertainment room of the seaside villa. “He's going to spill the news before I can even get inside NewTown.”

“How's that, Kacey?” inquired the pinkish man sitting next to her.

“Nothing, Mr. Temmerson.”

On the stage the colonel was hopping up out of his chair. He lunged, swinging at the host with his coppery cyborg right fist. “This ends the interview, sir,” he explained as he punched Bracken twice in the jaw and sent him stumbling back to fall completely out of the picture.

Without taking his eyes off the stage, Temmerson asked, “What were you saying, young lady?”

“Oh, nothing.”

Colonel Woodbine strode angrily off the stage. Seconds later two large white robots lifted J. J. Bracken into view and arranged him in his high-back black chair.

“You can see, see clearly, how people like Colonel Woodbine work,” he told his audience. Then he rubbed at his jaw. “He and his organization, swilling at the public trough, are bully boys. Violence, and not pure sweet reason, is their tool; violence and lying; violence, lying, and disloyalty to just about every basic American virtue and value, every value and virtue.” He slumped slightly. “Well, that's all the time we have for now. On my next eagerly awaited
Facin' Bracken
I'll have the notorious Emily Briarcliff facing me and trying, in her annoyingly mild-mannered way, to explain the incredible boondoggles that have been uncovered at the SoCal Home for Orphans. I'll also be telling you how to order, how to get one for your very own, my new vidisk
Throw All the Freeloading Orphans into the Gutter Where They Belong
.”

Temmerson turned off the stage with the control in his seat arm. “The man's inspirational.”

“Yes, isn't he?” Kacey smiled. “I want to go into the NewTown setup tomorrow.”

“That can be arranged. Which delivery shift?”

“Morning, if possible.”

“Your associate will be accompanying you. Mr. Carrington, was it?”

“Cardigan. No, he's away for a few days.”

“You're going to do this alone?”

“There's a time factor here, Mr. Temmerson. I have to.”

“Very brave. But you'd have to be working for a man like J. J. Bracken.” He lowered his voice. “Does this have something to do with what he was hinting about Tek on tonight's show?”

“You've guessed it. But, please, don't mention this to anyone.”

“I have too much respect for J. J. Bracken and you to do anything like that, young lady.”

“What time should I report to your Foodz plant?”

“No later than eight A.M. Shall I send a skylimo for you?”

“I'll get there on my own, thanks.”

“It's a great thrill to be helping someone I admire as much as J. J. Bracken.”

“I can imagine,” said Kacey.

39

A light mist had come drifting in across the Pacific with the night, and the Malibu Sector of Greater Los Angeles had a hazy, blurred look. The brightlit towers, the interlacing, multilevel pedramps and walkways, the skycars and skycabs floating by all appeared smudged. There was a strong scent of the sea in the air. Even in the plastiglass tracking shed in the landing area atop the Cosmos tower you could smell it.

“They should be setting down in about six minutes,” Bascom was saying.

Lieutenant Drexler looked from the screen, which showed an image of a yellow skyvan marked B
ORDERLAND
P
RODUCTS
, L
TD
. descending down through the misty night, up into the misty sky itself. “I'm still,” he said, holding his thumb and forefinger several inches apart, “at least that far from being convinced, Walt.”

“You know all about Avram Moyech and his career, Lieutenant. You've even arrested the gent several times.”

“I admit Moyech is a very talented vid forger.” He was still looking skyward through the plastiglass roof. “But you haven't convinced me he's good enough to produce security tapes that'd fool our experts.”

“Yet he did that very thing.”

“You say.”

“True. But, better yet,
he
says.”

“Not to you. Not to me so far.”

“He confided in Gomez.”

The black cop laughed. “Gomez is not my idea of a reliable source of the truth.”

“Funny, he always lists you among his favorite people on the face of the Earth.”

“I'll question Moyech,” said Lieutenant Drexler. “And make sure he answers.”

“This is a complex business that's going on.”

“You mean there's more to it than your going goofy with jealousy and knocking off your rival?”

“C'mon, Lieutenant. I can outcharm any rival I ever ran into. I don't have to shoot the competition,” Bascom assured him. “Moyech was linked to the Zack Excoffon Tek cartel up in NorCal. There's a plot afoot to set up a huge Tek manufacturing plant down in the Caribbean with a cover of—”

“Señor Bascom, Señor Bascom!” A voice suddenly came booming out of the voxbox.

The Cosmos chief activated the talkback. “Yeah, what?”

“This is Raoul Martinez,” said the voice. “We're nearly to your headquarters.”

“Good, but is something wrong?”

“
¡Sí, muy malo!
We've lost our power and—
¡Dios!
”

“There they are.” Drexler was in the open doorway of the shed, pointing up into the misty night.

The yellow skyvan was dropping down too rapidly, and in a wild zigzag way.

“Martinez!” cried Bascom.

“… out of control…”

The nose of the plummeting van sideswiped the side of a high pedramp. Light globes started smashing all along the guardrail, the rails were snapping, a series of long jagged cracks went snaking along the ramp. Pedestrians were tripping and falling, shouting, crying out.

The skyvan hit another ramp. A heavyset woman screamed, fell through a broken railing. More big globes of yellow light popped, a huge glosign advertising NewTown's Upmood was ripped free of its moorings and went spinning and smashing down toward the distant ground.

Drexler yanked out his handphone. “Malibu Sector—Cosmos vicinity!” he yelled. “Skyvan crash, civilian injuries, fires, considerable damage! Get on it!”

The skyvan, with Avram Moyech inside, smashed into yet another pedramp. It remained there, and then came an immense roaring explosion.

The craft came apart like a huge jigsaw puzzle, and its parts and its people were scattered violently across the blurred night. A jagged chunk that had BORDERLAND on it spun away and smashed into the display window of a skytravel agency; PRODUCTS hit a passing skycab smack in the engine, and there was another explosion.

Dark smoke came billowing out of the skyvan to mix with the fog, and everything turned a sad, sooty gray.

Drexler said quietly, “There goes your witness, Walt.”

THE FOG WAS THICK in the Santa Barbara Sector of Greater LA. Susan Grossman was sitting out on the deck of the beach house where she was a guest. The one-way plastiglass dome kept out the night chill—kept anyone from seeing her—yet allowed the young woman to watch the dark, foggy ocean. “This is very pleasant,” she was saying to Molly Fine. “Thank your Uncle Leo for me.”

“His friends are up vacationing on the Moon and they owe him a favor. So you have this place to hide out in,” Molly told her friend. “Uncle Leo mentioned to me that he hoped you wouldn't have any gun battles here.”

“I'll make a serious effort, but I don't have much control over that.” Her smile was faint and brief.

“How've you been doing?”

“Well, I'm not especially joyful. But it has been pleasant living this way—with just servos and robots,” she answered. “Androids and people take a lot more effort.”

“Most often, yes. And they're much harder to order around.”

Susan twisted her fingers together. “Typical of me, complaining of my problems. What about Dan?”

“As I told you, he is where you said.”

“Yes, I know. I'm never wrong about things like that,” she said. “I'm not bragging, I just mean the visions are never wrong—not so far, anyway.”

“Well, Jake Cardigan is in Mississippi, too.”

“What's he going to do?”

“Get Dan out.”

“You mean he'll go to the authorities and—”

“Nope, I don't think he intends to be especially law-abiding about this.”

“A prison break—something like that?”

Smiling, Molly shook her head. “Jake didn't give me any details about what, how, or when. But I got the impression he expects to have Dan out of that rotten camp soon,” she answered. “This way, though, I can't give anything away, since I don't know the details.”

After a silent moment, Susan said, “I had another one.”

Molly left her chair, crossing to her friend. “About Dan? Tell me what you saw.”

“No, not about Dan.” Susan touched Molly's arm. “I'm sorry if I got your hopes up. No, this was a very brief one and had to do with Rebecca Burdon.”

“She's co-owner of NewTown Pharmaceuticals—and they're deeply mixed up in this whole mess.”