F Paul Wilson - Sims 03 (4 page)

 
          
Patrick parted the curtains that
separated Romy’s treatment area from the rest of the bustling emergency room.
She sat on the edge of a gurney, her head swathed in fresh gauze—but no seepage
this time. She looked pale and tired, but even so, to Patrick she was a vision.

 
          
“How are you feeling?”

 
          
A wan smile.
“I’ve got a killer headache but I’ll survive.”

 
          
He leaned close. “How’d you get
hurt?”

 
          
“You’ve heard the expression, ‘Shit
happens’? Well—”

 
          
Patrick clapped his hands over his
ears.
“The ‘S’ word!
Saints preserve us!” He wanted to
throw his arms around her but made do with seating himself next to her on the
gurney.
“Seriously.
What happened?”

 
          
“This lighting fixture fell from the
ceiling and clocked me on the noggin; things get a little fuzzy after that.
Took the ER doc hours to get to me, then after she stitched up my scalp there
were x-rays and—”

 
          
“How many
stitches?”

 
          
“The doctor said seventeen.”

 
          
“Seventeen!”
The number horrified him.

 
          
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. She
said she placed them close together to keep the scar thin.”

 
          
Scar?
“Jesus,
Romy—”

 
          
She smiled. “Not like I’m going to
look like the bride of Frankenstein, or anything. It cut my scalp, way up above
the hairline. Once the hair grows back where they shaved it, no one will know,
not even me.”

 
          
Relief seeped through Patrick. The
lighting fixture had been his idea. If it had left Romy disfigured…

 
          
“Why, Romy?”

 
          
“Relax, will you. I got a tetanus
shot out of it, and a free ride in a stoplight-running ambulance. It’s no
biggie, Patrick.
Really.”

 
          
“Is to me.
Zero too.” Patrick had driven him to the garage,
then
rushed back here. “He wants me to call him as soon as—”

 
          
“I’ll call him.”

 
          
“How many days are they going to keep
you?”

 
          
“Days?
More like minutes.
They’re finishing up my paperwork now.”

 
          
“You’re kidding!” Patrick realized
his knowledge of medicine was just this side of nothing, but wasn’t it standard
procedure to admit a head-trauma patient for observation, at least overnight?
“They’re letting you go?”

 
          
“Be real, will you. It’s just a cut
on my head. I can—”

 
          
“Excuse me,” said a male voice.

 
          
Patrick looked up and saw a
dark-haired man in a gray suit standing between the parted curtains.

 
          
“Are you her doctor?” Patrick said.
If so he was going to warn him about the malpractice risks of releasing Romy
too early.

 
          
The man flashed a collector’s edition
set of
pearlies
. “Not a chance. I’m an attorney and
I’m looking for the woman who was injured in the Manassas Ventures offices this
morning.”

 
          
Patrick stared at him. He’d met his
share of ambulance chasers, but this guy really lived up to the name.

 
          
“That would be me.” Romy shook her
head. “But I don’t need a lawyer. I’ve—”

 
          
“You’re absolutely right. And that’s
precisely why I’m here.” He handed Romy a card. “Harold Rudner. I represent
Manassas Ventures.” He set his briefcase on the gurney and popped its latches.
“The company called me the instant its landlord informed it of this unfortunate
incident. I was instructed to find you and compensate you immediately for the
pain and inconvenience you have suffered.”

 
          
“Compensate me?”

 
          
He lifted the briefcase lid, removed
a slip of paper, and extended it toward Romy.

 
          
“Exactly.
Although your injury resulted from shoddy work by remodeling contractors,
Manassas
is taking full responsibility and offering you this to ease your distress.”

 
          
Romy took the slip and stared at it.
“A check?
For a hundred thousand dollars?”

 
          
“Yes.” He pulled a sheaf of papers
from the briefcase. “And all you need do to have your name written on the
pay-to-the-order-of line is sign this release absolving Manassas Ventures of
all liability and refrain from any future—”

 
          
“Wow!” Patrick said, impressed. “Hit
her while she’s still dazed from the terrible concussive impact of her
life-threatening head injury, then shove a check under her nose and tell her
all those zeroes can be hers if she’ll just sign away her legal rights to just
compensation for an injury that might affect her quality of life for years,
maybe decades, perhaps permanently. You are a smoothy.”

 
          
Romy and Rudner were staring at him.

 
          
Finally Rudner spoke. “Are you her
lawyer?”

 
          
“I am a very close personal friend
who just happens to be an attorney.”

 
          
Rudner turned to Romy. “I am offering
you far more than you could hope to receive from any jury.”

 
          
“We’ll see about that,” Patrick said.
“One hundred thousand dollars barely scratches the surface of the amount this
unfortunate woman deserves for her pain and suffering.”

 
          
Romy smiled and handed back the
check. Rudner took it with a sad shake of his head.

 
          
“You’re making a big mistake,” he
told her. “One you’ll regret when a jury offers you only a fraction of this—one
third of which will go to your attorney. This could be all yours, every cent of
it.”

 
          
Romy’s hands flew to her mouth as she
gave Patrick a wide-eyed stare.
“Oh, Patrick!
Am I
making a terrible mistake? You know how I depend on your wisdom. Tell me. I
don’t know what to do!”

 
          
Patrick had to look away. It took all
his will to keep a straight face. When he had control, he turned back, took
both her hands in his, and lowered his voice an octave. “Trust me, my dear. I
am well versed in these matters. You deserve much, much more.”

 
          
“All…all right,” she said, her voice
faltering.
“If you say so.”

 
          
Rudner shook his head again and
closed his briefcase. As he lifted it off the gurney he turned to Patrick.

 
          
“And you called me a smoothy?”

 
          
As soon as he was gone they both
doubled over in silent laughter.

 
          
“Life-threatening
head injury?”
Romy gasped, red-faced.

 
          
Patrick countered with, “
‘You
know how I depend on your wisdom’? I thought I was
going to get a hernia!”

 
          
She pressed her hands against her
temples. “Oh, I shouldn’t laugh! It makes my headache worse!”

 
          
Patrick looked at her. “I know this
is serious business, but I couldn’t resist. That was fun.”

 
          
She frowned. “Do you think he knew
who we were?”

 
          
“Not a clue. He’s a hired gun.”
Patrick shook his head, still amazed at how quickly the company had responded.
“A hundred grand for a cut head offered to someone they might just as easily
have charged with trespassing. If this is any indication of how badly
Manassas
wants to avoid the legal system, I think we’re onto something.”

 
          
SUSSEX COUNTY
,
NJ

 
          
DECEMBER 7

 
          
“So,” Mercer Sinclair said, “the
missing globulin farmers have surfaced.” He’d chosen that word deliberately but
his little pun went unappreciated by his audience. So he added, “Literally.”

 
          
That at least elicited a smile from
Abel Voss.

 
          
Mercer had invited the usual
crew—Voss, Portero, and Ellis—to his office to discuss the matter. He had his
agenda for the meeting posted in a corner of the computer monitor embedded in
the ebony expanse of his desk while his custom news service scrolled items
tailored to his topics of interest.

 
          
“Postmortem ain’t back yet,” Voss
said, “but the M-E’s on notice to copy us immediately with any and all
results.”

 
          
“I’m told the bodies appear to have
been in the river about a week.”

 
          
Voss nodded. “All three of them
shackled together and weighted down. But the
Hudson
’s
gotta way of returning some of the gifts it gets. Looks like these
SLA
boys took ’em for a ride that very night, shot them in the head, then dumped
them before sunup.”

 
          
“But not before torturing them,”
Ellis said.

 
          
Mercer glanced at his brother. Ellis
hadn’t missed a meeting in months now. Maybe his latest anti-depressant
cocktail was working. Mercer knew he should be glad about that but he wasn’t.
The closer Ellis was to catatonia, the easier he was to deal with.

 
          
“Yep, I heard that too,” Voss said.
“Cigarette burns, fingernails tore off.” He grimaced.
“Ugly
stuff.”

 
          
“They were globulin farmers, Abel,”
Mercer said, unable to keep the scorn from his tone. “Somebody improved the
gene pool by removing them.”

 
          
“Don’t get me wrong, son. I ain’t
no
fan of their sort. Riddin the world of their kind is all
fine and good. But torture? Ain’t
no
call to torture
no one, son.
No one.
I think we’re dealin with some
real sick puppies here.”

 
          
“
Which segues very
neatly into the reason for our meeting: the ‘sick puppies’ who call themselves
the Sim Liberation Army.
It’s been a week since they raided that
globulin farm and no one knows any more about them today than they did then.
And where
are
the sims they supposedly wanted to
free?” He turned to his chief of security who had yet to say a word. “Mr.
Portero, if the NYPD is at a loss, surely your people have the resources to
pick up the slack, don’t you think?”

 
          
Portero shrugged. “We’re looking into
it.”

 
          
“This needs more than mere looking
into, Mr. Portero. We need to track them down. It’s vitally important that
SimGen be recognized as the true guardians and protectors of
sims
,
not some group of murderous radicals.”

 
          
Portero said, “The longer they go
undetected, the lower the odds of finding them. And so far they seem to have
pulled off a perfect disappearing act.”

 
          
“Which means what?”

 
          
“That they’re probably
professionals—well-funded professionals.
Which makes me
wonder if they might not be connected to that lawyer Patrick Sullivan.
”

 
          
“Why on earth would you think that?”
Ellis said.

 
          
“It’s not a stretch. A quarter of a
million dollars appeared out of the blue to keep his unionization case going
just when it was ready to fall apart. And I saw him and the Cadman woman
outside the globulin farm the morning after this
SLA
demolished it.”

 
          
Cadman?
Mercer thought. Didn’t I just see that name? He’d been about to switch the
topic to the annual stockholders’ meeting less than two weeks away, but instead
he reversed the scroll on his newsclips.

 
          
“On the contrary, Portero,” Ellis
said. “It’s quite a stretch. People who try to use the legal system to seek a
solution don’t suddenly leap to murder and arson.”

 
          
Portero’s face remained impassive as
he replied. “Perhaps Sullivan became a bit testy after his clients were put
down.”

 
          
Ellis stared at him. “You lousy piece
of—”

 
          
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Voss said,
shifting his considerable bulk in his seat and raising his hands. “We’re not
the enemy here. The enemy is out
there .”

 
          
“Really?”
Ellis said. “Sometimes I wonder.”

 
          
Cadman…Mercer kept searching his
screen. There. Found it.
A suit against
Manassas
.
He smiled. He’d long ago embraced his anal-completist nature because it so
often paid unexpected dividends. Like now: Years ago, when he’d begun using the
service, he’d entered ‘Manassas Ventures’ as a search string; this was the
first hit he’d ever seen. He clicked on the abstract to bring up the full
article; he felt a sweat break as he skimmed it.

 
          
“Listen to this,” Mercer said.
“Someone is suing Manassas Ventures.”

 
          
He noticed a slight stiffening of
Portero’s parade-rest stance. “Is that so?”

 
          
“
Manassas
is in your people’s bailiwick. Why don’t you know about this?”

 
          
“We have lawyers for legal problems.
What’s the suit about?”

 
          
“Let’s see…no dollar amount given,
just ‘unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.’”

 
          
“No, I mean the reason for the suit.”

 
          
“Lots of things.
Here’s just a sample: ‘physical injury, pain, suffering, mental anguish and
trauma, unpleasant mental reactions including fright, horror, worry, disgrace,
embarrassment, indignity, ridicule, grief, shame, humiliation, anger, and
outrage.’”

 
          
Portero snorted.
“Probably
a stubbed toe.
They’ll put a check in front of him and he’ll go away.”

 
          
“I doubt it. It’s not
a him
. It’s
a her
named Cadman.
Romilda Cadman.”

 
          
Portero’s smug reptile mask dropped
and, just for a second, Mercer caught a flash of uncertainty.
Portero…unsettled? The possibility turned his stomach sour, like curdled milk.

 
          
“The OPRR inspector
lady?”
Voss said.
“The one who funded Sullivan’s sim
case?
What
thehell ?”

 
          
“Care to guess what attorney is
representing her?”

 
          
“I don’t have to,” Voss said.
“Gotta be Sullivan.”

 
          
Mercer noted that Portero’s
dumbfounded look had surrendered to tightlipped anger. He glanced at Ellis,
expecting some sort of comment, but his brother remained silent, his expression
unreadable.

 
          
“Right,” Mercer said.
“Patrick Sullivan again.
I don’t like this.”

 
          
“This makes no sense.” Portero’s
voice was even softer than usual. “What can they possibly hope to gain? Are
they that desperate for cash?”

 
          
“Oh, I doubt money’s got a thing to
do with this,” Voss said. “It will take them years to get a decision, and even
if they win, more years before they ever see a dime. No, instead of thinking about
money, we should be asking why the man who harassed SimGen about unionizing
sims
is now harassing the venture capital company that
helped put SimGen in business. I find that real disturbin.”

 
          
The question disturbed Mercer as
well. “You’re the lawyer,” he told Voss. “Have you got an answer?”

 
          
“I’m bettin he wants to use the
discovery procedures of a civil action to dissect Manassas Ventures’
workings—its board of directors, its assets and liabilities, the whole tamale.”

 
          
Mercer’s gnawing sense of malignant
forces converging on him had receded after the withdrawal of the sim
unionization suit, but now it returned with a gut-roiling vengeance.

 
          
“Why
Manassas
?
Beyond owning a bundle of SimGen stock, it has no direct link to us.”

 
          
“Not anymore, but it used to.
Obviously he’s sniffed out something and he’s going after it.”

 
          
“Maybe it’s just a fishing
expedition,” Mercer said, but he didn’t believe it.

 
          
“Could be, but why in that particular
pond? And let’s face it,
Manassas
is such a well-stocked pond, he just might hook something.”

 
          
No one spoke then. The idea that
anyone would want to lift the Manassas Ventures rock and inspect what was
crawling around beneath it had never occurred to Mercer. He’d been assured that
Manassas
was a dead end. But what
if wasn’t? What if someone found a trail that led from
Manassas
to SIRG?

 
          
This had to be stopped.
Now.
Before it went any further.

 
          
He looked at Portero. “Your people
can handle this, can’t they?”

 
          
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Voss
said, holding up a hand before Portero could reply. “Before we start talking
about stuff I don’t want to hear, why don’t you just buy her off?”

 
          
Portero stared at him. “Buy her off?
You don’t know this woman. I spent days with her during the OPRR inspection and
let me tell you, she is not for sale.”

 
          
Voss grinned. “Sure she is, son. I’ve
waded through truckloads of bullshit in my day, but I’ve learned one thing
always holds true: Everybody’s got a price tag. Some hide it better’n others,
but you look hard enough, you’ll find it. Your folks’ve got pockets deep as a
well to
China
.
You have them tell her to name a price, and then you meet it. And that’ll be
it. You’ll see.”

 
          
But Portero was shaking his head. “I
don’t think there’s enough money in the world.”

 
          
Mercer was surprised by something in
his tone. It sounded like admiration.