Tek Money (5 page)

Nodding, Bascom frowned in Jake's direction. “I don't, you know, want folks getting the impression we have to go running to some little pipsqueak detective outfit for help.”

“
Cuidado
,” cautioned Gomez with a smile, “careful. You're speaking of the pipsqueak he loves.”

The chief put the saxophone back on his desk. “You and Bev Kendricks are an item?”

“We're friends,” said Jake evenly. “And if you don't approve of how I handle my work, Walt, maybe it's time for me to quit this damn outfit and—”

“Whoa, hey, easy,” said Bascom, holding up his right hand in a stop-right-there motion. “I retract anything I said that's annoyed you.”

Jake was on his feet now. “I have to be able to work in any way I think is—”

“Let's make a list of chores for today, gang.” Gomez stood up. “Me, I'll find out which Tek parlor Traynor visited and, hopefully, who slipped him the sizzler and why. You want to follow up on the Flanders business first, Jake?”

After a few seconds his partner replied, “I'll start with that, yeah.”

“
Bueno.
Later in the day I'll check with you and we'll compare notes on what fun we've had thus far,” said Gomez. “What about the folks at Gunsmiths, Ltd.? Do we waltz right in or do we use an oblique approach?”

Bascom answered, “By now, they probably know we're on the case. So, initially anyway, walk right in on the bastards and start asking questions.”

“Dennis Barragray is the first one to talk to,” said Jake. “He was Traynor's boss and a friend of his. He's also a friend of our client, so you ought to be able to see him without too much trouble.”

“I'll grill him,” offered Gomez. “My first inquiry will be—‘Did you slip Pedro a sizzler because he had the goods on you?' That ought to start the ball rolling, don't you think?”

“Be just a wee bit subtler,” advised his chief.

Jake moved to the door. “I'll be in touch, Sid.” He left the big office.

Bascom frowned as the door hissed shut. “Jake seems to be pissed off at me,” he observed.

“Terrific deduction,
jefe.
” Gomez headed for the way out. “We'll be able to make a detective of you yet.”

8

T
HE SIMULATED CANALS
down at this end of the Venice Sector of Greater LA were not, as usual, in especially good shape. The water was a cloudy yellow and reeked of decay and worse. As Gomez walked along the ground-level pedramp, he noted a dead calico cat and a partly burned toyboat go floating, sluggishly, by. “Scenic wonders abound,” he murmured, increasing his pace.

Farther up the bedraggled block a rusty, dented robot was sitting crouched in the doorway of a shutdown wineshop. Taped to the rattletrap mechanical man's pocked copper chest was a hand-lettered sign—
My friends, I was once the valet of a prominent vid superstar. Ill fortune and failing ratings ruined his career and, thus, mine. I lost my position and, after a pathetic
series of humiliating failures, ended up in this slew of despond that you find me in at present. However, an expensive tune-up will put me on my feet again. God bless you for whatever you see your way clear to contributing.

“You misspelled slough,” mentioned Gomez in passing.

The seated bot eyed him with dingy plazeyes. “You making a contribution, sir?”

“No, merely a correction in your pitch.”

“Then go blurp yourself.”

“Blurp?”

“I was a very proper gentleman's gentleman, programmed to use no seriously vulgar language, sir. You walleyed poop.”

Smiling, the detective moved onward.

At the corner he found the establishment he was seeking. Lettered in gloletters across the dusty, narrow shop window was
Fragrant Illusions
and below that
The BEST in Holographic Flowers.
Gomez, frowning, noticed that all the dozen or so brick-red flowerpots on display in the window were devoid of flowers, holographic or otherwise.

Cautiously, he entered the shop. “What happened to your blooms?” he asked the handsome blond android clerk who stood behind the narrow counter.

The andy made no reply. He remained standing stiffly, arms at his sides, eyes staring.

“
Cuidado
,” Gomez warned himself as he drew out his stungun from its shoulder holster beneath his jacket.

After a moment, he moved across the room and stopped in front of the rear door. The door was a few inches open.

He listened for several seconds, then booted the door all the way open and hopped to one side.

“Come on in, Gomez,” invited a voice from the next room.

The fight didn't start until Jake had been there for nearly ten minutes. Bev's offices were in the Santa Monica Sector, in a tall, mostly plastiglass building that was built out over the Pacific. At midmorning there was still a thin white mist hanging over the quiet blue water. Gulls were diving into the white blur, disappearing and reappearing.

“There's nobody we've turned up in the Flanders case who fits the description of this Janine Traynor,” Bev was saying from behind her desk.

Jake turned his back to the window. “Then she was connected in some other way,” he said. “Have you connected Flanders with Traynor yet?”

“I'm following up on that,” the blonde detective said. “So far this killing looked to me like a typical Tek assassination. But we can't come up with any reason for the Teklords to want to eliminate Flanders. He didn't seem that important till now.”

“I'd like to go over your files on Flanders,” he said. “Unless that violates agency policy.”

“It's my agency, Jake,” she reminded him.

“To my way of thinking, both killings must have something to do with what's going on wrong out at Gunsmiths.” Jake sat in a metallic chair that faced her desk. “But some of the Tek cartels have to be tied in, too. Both of them were killed with traditional Tek methods.”

“Could also be a copycat.”

He shook his head negatively. “Nope, feels to me like there has to be a Tek angle someplace.”

Bev smiled. “Hunches don't always stand up.”

“Even so.” He leaned forward in his chair. “If you're going to dig into the links between Flanders and Traynor, I'll concentrate on some of the other aspects of this mess. Then later we can compare—”

The door to Beth's private office came hissing open and a large, wide man of thirty five or so came barging in. His face was flushed with anger, both big fists were clutched. “What the hell is this bastard doing here? Damn it now, Bev, you can't—”

“What I can or can't do is no business of yours, Jabb,” she said evenly. “If you want to see me, wait until—”

“What I have to talk about,” said Jabb Marx, pointing angrily at Jake, “is this asshole here. It's bad enough you see him socially, for Christ sake, but now you're sharing confidential agency files with him.”

“How do you know I'm sharing anything with him?”

“It's obvious that's why he's here—to pump you about the Wes Flanders case.”

Jake had risen to his feet. “Marx,” he said quietly, “get out of here now.”

“You just keep the hell quiet, Cardigan,” the detective shouted at him. “I tell you something, asshole—you got one good woman killed so far in your career, but I'm damned if I'm going to let the same thing happen to Bev.”

Jake didn't say anything. He was just all at once next to Marx. He hit him, hard, in the midsection.

Marx gasped, doubled, tried to swing at Jake.

Jake kicked him, his booted foot connecting with his ribs.

Marx jerked back, clutching at his side, groaning.

Jake moved in, hitting him again and again in the face with each fist in turn.

His face bloody, his jacket and shirt splotched with red, Marx dropped to his knees.

Jake kicked him again, in the chest this time.

“Jake!” cried Bev.

The woman may have cried out before, but Jake hadn't been hearing anything for a while there.

“Jake.” She ran over to him, caught him by an arm and pulled him back. “That's enough—more than enough.”

Jake shook himself, as though he'd just stepped out of the chill ocean. “Sorry,” he managed to croak. His voice was raw, raspy.

Pushing him aside, she knelt next to the unconscious operative. “His nose is broken, lord knows what else is wrong.” She reached up and flipped a switch on the voxbox on her desk. “Emmy Lou, get the medibots up here—quick!”

“He was right,” Jake said, his voice still not his own. “It's my fault that Beth died.”

She stood up, spun and glared at him. “I don't give a good goddamn who's right and who's wrong,” she said, angry. “You don't have the right to do things like this.”

“Maybe not.” He shook his head once, left to right, before walking out of there.

Detective Lieutenant Drexler said, “Too, late, Gomez.”

“So I notice.” He walked over to where the large, fat corpse was sprawled in front of the entrance to one of the Tek parlor cribs. “
Sí
, this is the proprietor, Lorenzo Printz, sure enough.”

“The boss himself.”

“I note they used a lazgun on the
cabrón.
” There was a large sooty hole in the back of the sinsilk floral robe that was twisted around the huge puffy dead man. “Rather than a sizzler.”

“Lorenzo, like most Tek joint operators, never touched the stuff.” The black cop was sitting on the edge of a wooden chair. “How'd you find your way here, by the way?”

“Came in to buy a bunch of holo roses for my sweet old grandmother on her graduation from robotics night school,” Gomez told him. “Much to my surprise, I found that somebody had used a stunner on the handsome clerk. Curious, I—”

“C'mon, don't make me treat you the way I treat that partner of yours. Tell me the truth—or at least part of it.”

“Okay, we're working on the Traynor case.” Gomez left the vicinity of the body.

“That I heard earlier in the day. How'd you end up at Lorenzo's Tek parlor here?”

“It's the one Traynor visited on his last night out. I was planning to persuade Lorenzo to confide in me.”

“Who tipped you that this was the place Traynor'd been coming lately?”

Gomez smiled, settling into a chair near the policeman's. “I hope this won't change the warm feelings you have for me, Drexler, but I don't ever give out the names of my sources of information.”

Drexler watched him for a moment. “And I suppose you don't know anything about who ordered Lorenzo to slip Traynor a sizzler?”

“Would I be here if I did? This was my first stop on the road to enlightenment,” he said. “Any notions of your own?”

Drexler laughed. “I'll write up everything I know and send it to you.”

“Everything okay back there?” called a female voice from out front.

“The forensic bots here, Cathleen?”

“They came with me, yes.” A plump blonde young woman, uniformed, stepped into the Tek parlor. She wrinkled her nose upon sighting Gomez. “You going to haul Gomez off to the pokey, lieutenant?”

“
Chiquita
, after all we've meant to each other—how can you think I'd commit any sort of illegal act?” He left the chair.

“I'd toss him in a cell,” she advised Drexler.

“No, no,” he said. “Gomez has promised to cooperate with us. Every single clue he unearths, he's going to turn over to the SoCal police.”

“Oh,
sí.
” He crossed to the doorway. “I'll even have them giftwrapped.” He stepped across the threshold. “
Adiós
, colleagues.”

Outside, he went striding toward the lot where he'd left the agency skycar.

9

W
HEN THE VIDPHONE
on the dash of his skycar buzzed, Jake hit the auto/answer key.

A mechanical version of his voice said, “Please leave your message now.”

Bev appeared on the small rectangular screen. She was seated at her desk, face pale, hands folded. “Jake, Jabb Marx will be spending the day at the Santa Monica Emergency Center,” she said. “I'm pretty sure I've persuaded him not to take any legal action against you for assault. For now—well, I think you ought to stay away from me and the office. We'll be better off working separately on this Flanders-Traynor business for a while. I'll … I'll probably get in touch with you again in a couple of days.” Then her image was gone from the screen.

After a moment Jake said aloud, “I'm not getting off to a very impressive start on this case.”

“Beg pardon, sir?” inquired the voice of the car computer.

“Nothing. Talking to myself.”

“Would you care to have me patch you through to one of the agency therapists?”

“Not just yet.”

The computer said, “You have been, if I may mention it, unusually tense of late, sir. Is there anything I can do?”

“I appreciate your interest,” said Jake. “But I don't think I'm far enough around the bend to need advice from my car. But thanks.”

“As you wish, sir.” The computer fell silent.

Jake punched out a flight pattern that would take him to the Palm Springs Sector.

Gomez took a careful step backward, made a go-away motion with both hands. “I don't want to take a card.”

The magician doll was nearly three feet high, dressed in a glittery tuxsuit and top hat. He had a perpetual grin under his slick, dark moustache. “Don't be a schmuck,” he urged, fanning out six bright playing cards. “Take one, for Pete's sake.”

“Hey, simp,” said a fuzzy teddybear, jumping off his low perch, “ignore that four-flusher. Buy me. I'm the cutest darn toy in this whole darn Wondersmith's toyshop.”

“You do have an awfully cute lisp,” the detective admitted. “But I came to consult with your boss.”