Tek Net (2 page)

Spotting a chair that was real and not a holographic projection, he sat down, leaned back and let out a long, slow sigh.

“But there's no way of telling if she's still alive.” He rubbed his hand over the lower half of his face, shaking his head. “This is a rough one, I'm afraid. Yeah, it smells
muy malo
to me.”

He fetched out his own palmphone and punched out a number.

“Well, I'm going to have to find her,” he said. “And I'll need Jake to help me.”

Above the fog that was drifting in across the night Pacific the sky was a sharp, clear black. Jake Cardigan, fifty and good-looking in a been-around sort of way, was piloting the skycar on its return trip from the San Diego Sector of Greater LA.

Bev Kendricks, a pretty blonde woman, was in the passenger seat, leaning back and gazing up through the viewpanel in the cabin ceiling. “What'd you think?” she asked him.

Several seconds later Jake responded. “About the concert?”

“That—or anything else.”

He shrugged his right shoulder. “Technically it was okay, but I guess I prefer live musicians to androids.”

“Be difficult to see Duke Ellington's orchestra live.”

“True.”

After a silence, Bev said, “I'm going to say something, Jake.”

“Sounds ominous.”

She continued, “We have quite a lot in common. You've spent most of your grown-up life in law enforcement and so have I. You're a damned good private investigator now and so am I.”

“A better private eye than I am,” he told her.

“We've been together a lot in the past year or so.” Frowning, he glanced over at her. “This is starting to sound like a farewell address.”

Bev gave a slow sigh. “I like you a hell of a lot, Jake. But …”

“But?”

She moved a hand back and forth in front of her face, as though she were brushing away cobwebs or mist. “I've mentioned this before and I don't mean to nag,” said Bev. “But it hasn't gotten any better. Fact is, you seem, much too often, to be very depressed.”

“Really? I see myself as being nothing short of jolly lately.”

Bev inhaled slowly before speaking again. “I know how much you loved Beth Kittridge. I understand how hard her death hit you.”

“That's the trouble, huh? To you it seems I'm still in mourning for her.”

“She was killed quite a while ago by the Teklords and—Christ, Jake, the other night in bed you actually called me Beth.”

“You should have told me then. I'm sorry.”

“You should see somebody, talk about this,” suggested Bev. “I know the Cosmos Detective Agency has a better maxmed plan than even my agency. So you could easily—”

“Nope, no. I have to work this all out on my own.”

She shook her head. “I don't think you can.”

Looking straight ahead into the dark night, Jake said, “You probably already know this. I'm not trying to hurt you. But in my life so far I've only really loved two women.”

“I know, yes. And neither one is me.”

“My wife Kate was the first.” His voice was low, far away. “She was—like nobody I'd even met up until then. Of course, it turned out to be like a Tek dream that I conjured up for myself without needing a chip or a Brainbox.”

“You don't have to tell me about Kate. I already know about her.” Bev reached over and put her hand on his.

“I talk about it to remind myself how stupid and naïve I used to be,” Jake said. “I never had a single damned doubt about Kate. Shit—and she helped the Sonny Hokori Tek Cartel set me up and she slept with …” He wasn't able to finish the sentence.

“That's the past, Jake. It's gone.”

“No, it's a place I can visit anytime I want,” he said. “Hell, I even end up there when I don't want to go.”

The voxbox on the control dash spoke. “Emergency call from Sid Gomez.”

Jake said, “I'll take it.”

The small rectangular screen came to life and there was Gomez looking uneasy and downcast. “This isn't agency business,
amigo
,” he began, “but I need your help.”

“Tell me,” invited Jake.

His partner said, “You remember my second wife, don't you?”

“Jill Bernardino, sure.”

“Okay, I got a call from her about an hour or so ago,” continued Gomez. “Jill told me she was down here at the Hollywood Starwalk Park and was afraid she was being trailed by some goons.”

“She contacted you instead of the cops?”

“I'll explain that later,” Gomez said. “Important thing is that Jill's gone. It looks like she was tagged and abducted.”

“Any idea why?”

Gomez answered, “She's back writing, working on a vidwall movie about our old Tek chum, the late Sonny Hokori.”

“That bastard,” said Jake. “You figure there's a Tek angle to her kidnapping?”

“I think, Jake, that in the course of her researches she found out something she wasn't supposed to find out.”

“But Hokori's outfit is completely defunct. We took care of most of that.”

“We can speculate at length later,” suggested his partner. “Can you get down here?”

“Within a half hour,” Jake assured him.

3

Jake paced the large drawing room, hands in pockets. “Okay, give me the rest of what you've got.”

Gomez was sitting on the edge of an armchair, holding a palm-size e-notebook. “Jill arrived here by way of a skycab,” he told his partner. “It picked her up at an address over in the Laguna Sector of Greater LA. That turns out to be her present home.”

“Robot cabbie?”

“
Sí
, and the bot claims nobody tailed them and nothing else unusual occurred.”

“What about other cabs that deposited people in the vicinity?”

“Nobody was brought to within a block of this ruin since early this morning,” answered Gomez. “I doubt those two
cabrones
lurked around here that long.”

Jake stopped pacing and straddled a straight-back chair. “You mentioned she was working on a script about the late, lamented Sonny Hokori.”

“The same Tek entrepreneur who helped frame you into a stay up in the Freezer.” He pointed at the ceiling with his thumb.

“Sonny's dead and gone, so's his sister,” said Jake thoughtfully. “But there are still a lot of other Teklords above the ground.”

“I don't know exactly what Jill found out, but it was sufficient to get her snatched.”

“We ought to be able to gather some facts from one of our informants.”

“You want to handle that angle,
amigo?
” Gomez stood up, clicked off the e-notebook and slipped it into a side pocket.

“While you?”

“First off I'm going to visit her
hacienda
and talk to her current husband,” replied the detective. “He's a gent named Ernst Reinman.”

“Which husband is this by now?”

Gomez held up four fingers. “
Cuatro
. I have the distinction of being the first in the series,” he said. “She's been hooked up with this Reinman for a bit over two years and he's an executive with a charitable org called the Starvation Center.”

“During her days with you,” mentioned Jake, “she had a tendency to stray now and then. Would there currently be other gentlemen friends in her life?”

“I've already got somebody researching that for me,” Gomez said. “But I do know that a gent by the name of Mervyn Illsworth has been providing Jill with some of her background information for the script.”

“I'll check on him before I contact any informants,” volunteered Jake.

“Illsworth resides at Tube Village in the Long Beach Sector.”

Jake then inquired, “And why didn't Jill want to bring the police in on this?”

“Mostly, far as I know, because she used to have a rotten reputation with the SoCal law and still likes to avoid them as much as possible,” said Gomez. “During her heyday as an enthusiastic Tek customer—well, she got in several fairly serious tangles with the forces of law and order.”

Jake rose up. “Even so, Sid,” he said, “if we don't find some trace of her within the next few hours—we have to bring them in.”

“Agreed. Besides, once her hubby finds out she's among the missing, he'll more than likely do that himself.”

“What about the Cosmos Agency?”

“I want to talk to our esteemed chief, Walt Bascom, about this whole business
mañana
,” said Gomez. “If one or more of the big Tek cartels are planning some new deviltry—then our
jefe
ought to be able to sell that news to some of his many government agency contacts.”

“My thought exactly,” said Jake.

The night fog hung heavy over the two-acre stretch of simulated beach. Most of the sand was real, but the clusters of large black rocks and the scatters of seaweed and driftwood were all holographic projections.

An actual seagull was dozing beside a twisted, seemingly sea-worn chunk of wood. He made an annoyed sound, unfurled and then refolded his wings, as Jake passed him on foot on his way to one of the entry kiosks to the underground Tube City.

Kiosk 7 was manned by a pair of gunmetal guardbots. “Welcome to Tube City, sir,” greeted the one with
A25
stenciled in white across his wide chest. “You are?”

“Jake Cardigan,” he answered. “I have an appointment with Mervyn Illsworth, who lives down on Level 5.”

The second bot—F14 was his name—opened a panel in his metal chest. “While my colleague is taking you through the identification routine, sir,” he said, “let me show you some of the popular Tube City souvenirs that are available at extremely reasonable prices.”

“Actually, I'm trying,” Jake informed him, “to free my life of any and all clutter.”

F14 had a fairly large shelved compartment built into his upper torso. “Here you see,” he announced, pointing into himself, “our very popular Tube City nearcaf mug, the equally popular Tube City cap, the Tube City plazshirt and—”

“If you'll hand me your ID packet, sir,” requested A25.

Jake obliged.

“You'll notice,” went on F14, “that all our sought-after Tube City souvenirs have an appealing likeness of the famous Tube City mascot, Lowell the Mole, emblazoned on them.”

“Cute little rascal,” remarked Jake as he took back his identification materials. “Can I descend now?”

Nodding, A25 gestured at the grey floor. “Take the ramp to Entry Tube 7, sir,” he instructed. “Then follow the litearrows down to Level 5. You'll find Mr. Illsworth residing in Section 5-N.”

A portion of the floor came sliding open and Jake saw a brightly illuminated ramp slanting downward. “Thanks.”

“We're having a two-for-one sale on the mugs,” called F14 as Jake started down.

Mervyn Illsworth was very fat. Seeing him magnified to twice his actual size up on the high, wide vidwall made his bulk all the more impressive. “I appreciate, truly, your going along with this little quirk of mine, Cardigan,” he was saying in his chirpy voice.

Jake was straddling a chair in the foyer of the researcher's underground apartment, after having made his way down through a succession of snaking tubes and tunnels. “I'm more interested in getting information than in seeing you face-to-face,” he informed the fat man's image.

“I'm not exactly, you must understand, really a complete and total recluse,” explained Illsworth. “Yet, I readily admit, I feel much more at ease if I remain here, snug in my studio, and visitors stay out there and we communicate electronically.” The fat man was sprawled in a large, sturdy metal chair surrounded by keyboards and monitor screens.

“Okay, fine,” said Jake, impatient. “Now what about Jill Bernardino?”

“I was, really, extremely upset when you phoned to inform me that Jill may've been kidnapped tonight, Cardigan,” Illsworth said in his small, high-pitched voice. “Particularly if it might have something to do with information that I supplied her.”

Jake asked, “Would she come here to your place?”

“Yes, frequently. I consider her, truly, a dear friend as well as a valued client,” answered the fat man. “Jill, of course, always remained out there where you are.”

“When did you talk to her last?”

“She dropped down here just yesterday afternoon to discuss some of the new material I'd unearthed relating to Sonny Hokori and his Tek activities. By the way, I'd very much like to interview you someday soon, Cardigan, about how the late Sonny attempted to destroy you and frame—”

“Let's get back to Jill,” cut in Jake as he stood up and moved close to the giant image on the wall. “Did she mention being worried or talk about something she'd discovered in the course of her digging into the history of the Hokori Tek operations?”

Illsworth shook his massive head. “No, there was nothing like that, Cardigan,” he answered. “She did seem a bit depressed, but …”

“Well, what?”

“Oh, it occurs to me that Jill did make a rather odd remark yesterday,” said the fat man. “She and I were, as I've explained, dear buddies and sometimes we'd just talk about our personal lives and problems.”

“She was seeing somebody?”

The researcher's immense body quivered when he sighed. “You know, then, about her unfortunate habit?”

“She tends to sleep around, yeah.”

“Can't help it really.” Illsworth sighed once more. “At any rate—Jill made this remark. She said something along the lines of, ‘Maybe I didn't need you after all, Merv dear. I've just now found out I've been involved with somebody who knows more about this whole damn business than you do.'”

“Who would that be?”

“I really haven't even a vague idea.”

“Didn't she confide the names of her boyfriends?”