Tek Money Read online

  3

  THE COPPERPLATED ROBOT waitress at the AllNite Neptune Cafe had been in service there for close to seven years and hadn’t gone in for a tune-up in nearly two. She was as amiable as ever, but sometimes moved with a slight wobble and now and then you could hear her inner workings whirring and sputtering. When Gomez, his dark curly hair and moustache dotted with night mist, came strolling into the long, narrow seaside restaurant, she straightened up, making a chuckling noise, and went lurching up to him. “Hiya, stranger,” she said. “Long time no see.”

  The detective smiled and returned her hug. “Buenas noches, my love,” he said. “I’m hunting for my amigos—did they drop in here?”

  “If you mean Sourpuss,” she said, nodding her coppery head in the direction of the rear of the place, “he’s back there with his son and a pretty blonde who ought to know better.”

  “Now, now, chiquita, Jake, at the core, is nearly as jolly as you.”

  “Not tonight.”

  Gomez eased around her and walked through the nearly empty restaurant to the booth Jake was sharing with his son and Bev. “For lack of anything better to do,” he explained as he slid onto the bench next to Jake, “I was monitoring the cop channels on my skycar dash and thus heard that some poor hombre was found dead on your doorstep. When I arrived on the scene, the amiable Drexler told me he’d shooed you elsewhere.”

  “Yeah, we were just starting to talk about what happened, Sid.” He tapped his forefinger absently on the side of his plazmug of nearcaf. “You knew Pete Traynor, didn’t you?”

  “Much better than I wanted to. A burrito, stubborn and stupid—at least as far as Tek was concerned. You were wise, amigo, to cross that guy off your guest list.” Gomez smiled across the table. “Evening, Bev. Daniel.”

  Dan nodded, smiling back. “I was filling them in on what I heard Traynor saying,” he told Gomez. “I didn’t share any of this with Lieutenant Drexler.”

  “He’s not the sort of pendejo who invites sharing.”

  “I heard somebody shouting out there and I figured he was drunk or drugged on something,” continued Dan, resting both elbows on the tabletop. “He—and I didn’t catch everything—was talking to people, imaginary people. One name he yelled was Flanders. He said something about not having anything to do with what happened to this Flanders. And he called out to Amy. Oh, and somebody named Denton or Dennis.”

  Gomez asked, “Did you actually talk to him before he expired?”

  “A little, yeah,” answered Jake’s son. “He’d been shouting Dad’s name, too, which is why I went out to take a look. I recognized him and it was obvious something was wrong. He looked sick, disoriented. He knew who I was, too, and he told me it was important that he talk to you, Dad.”

  Jake asked, “He didn’t say about what?”

  Dan shook his head. “Well, he started to say something about some kind of hijacking. But he had that seizure—or whatever it was—and just died.”

  Bev put her arm around the young man’s shoulders. “Rough thing for you to go through.”

  “Not that bad,” said Dan. “It was all the cop activity afterwards that really got me upset, Bev.”

  Gomez waved away the copperplated waitress, who was heading for their booth with a drawn electronic orderpad. “Give me a few more minutes to gather my thoughts and order, dear lady.”

  “You got it, Sidney.” She ground to a halt, tottered, and withdrew to the front of the cafe again.

  “It sounds like they slipped this Tek addicted hombre a sizzler,” observed Gomez.

  Jake said, “That’s what our chum Drexler thinks, too.”

  Gomez gave a shrug. “Even a nitwit can have a right notion occasionally,” he said. “Traynor was apparently having hallucinations about things that were on his mind. I assume his nocturnal visit wasn’t announced in advance.”

  “Nope, I had no idea he was coming by—and I don’t know what he wanted to talk to me about.” Jake leaned back, took a sip of his nearcaf. “In spite of his Tek habit, the guy was a pretty good weapons technician. Last I heard, he had a fairly responsible job with Gunsmiths, Ltd., out in the West Hills Sector.”

  “Those cabróns cook up a lot of the nastier weapons used by our esteemed nation—and for a whole stew-pot of less esteemed countries around the globe—to exterminate their current shitlist entries,” said Gomez, rubbing at his moustache. “Could it be that the late Pedro Traynor was agitated and het up about a hijacking of some of Gunsmith’s engines of destruction?”

  “Something stolen from an outfit like that,” said Dan, “that could be dangerous all right.”

  “The thing is, Traynor’s dead and gone,” said Jake. “So we’ll probably never find out.”

  Frowning thoughtfully, Bev said, “Flanders. We started working on a case a few weeks ago—my agency gets a case every so often, even though it’s nowhere near as big as the Cosmos outfit you guys work for—a case involving a Wes Flanders, who was gunned down in the Casino Strip in the Hollywood Sector. He worked for the Banx Card central office. We haven’t solved it yet and neither have the police. I’m wondering if he could be the Flanders your visitor was referring to.”

  “I didn’t hear any first name,” said Dan. “But this Flanders was killed recently and Traynor apparently thought somebody was trying to blame him.”

  “Is there a pattern here, folks?” inquired Gomez, making another shooing motion at the robot waitress, who seemed on the verge of rumbling toward their booth again. “A banker and a weapons technician—what’s the link?”

  “Probably isn’t one,” Jake said. “As for Amy—that has to be Amy St. Mars, Traynor’s erstwhile missus.”

  “Of the St. Mars Ponics agriculture empire?” asked his partner, sitting up straighter “There’s a family with dinero.”

  “The same, yeah. They divorced about a year or more back. Traynor came to me to help him prove she wasn’t treating their two kids right,” said Jake, his fingers circling the mug. “He hoped to get custody from her—but I didn’t want to get tangled up with anything like that. For one thing, it would’ve been impossible to prove he was any fitter a parent than Amy.”

  “Well, we’ve checked off most of the names you heard, Dan,” commented Bev. “Except for Denton/Dennis. Anybody got a suggestion on him?”

  Jake shook his head. “You know, why don’t we simply forget all about this?” he suggested to them. “Traynor and I were a hell of a long way from being pals. Okay, he died—assassinated apparently—on my doorstep, but I sure don’t feel any strong desire to avenge him. Unless it starts to look like Dan and I are in danger, I’d just as well back off completely from this mess.”

  Bev asked him, “Aren’t you even curious, Jake?”

  “Not especially, no. Tekheads are getting knocked off with considerable frequency in these parts.”

  Gomez said, “But usually not so close to your hearth and home, amigo.”

  “Even so,” said Jake. “I’d like to pass on this one. Especially since nobody is paying us to poke around and investigate.”

  After a few seconds, Gomez signaled to the robot waitress. “Long as we’re here, I think I’ll have a vegetarian fish sandwich,” he decided.

  4

  THE DARK-HAIRED YOUNG woman with the lazgun resting on her knee was thin, at least fifteen pounds underweight. She was sitting, slouched slightly, in a tin slingchair out on the shadowy deck in front of Jake’s place when he got back from seeing Bev Kendricks home. It was nearly two A.M.; the law had long since departed and hauled away the body of Peter Traynor. The wind had died to a warm whisper.

  “You’re Jake Cardigan, aren’t you?” she asked, not getting up.

  He stepped onto the deck, eyes on the weapon she was holding. “Yeah, and you?”

  She glanced down at the gun in her lap. “Oh, this is for my protection,” she explained. “Not to use on you.”

  “Put it away anyhow.” He moved closer to her.

  Sliding the lazgun into a po
cket of her black jacket, she said, “I’m Janine Traynor. Peter was my stepbrother.” She brushed at her dark hair with a bony hand. “I want you to find out who killed him.”

  Light suddenly blossomed around the deck floor. Dan, a stungun in his right hand, stepped out into the night. “Everything all right, Dad?”

  “Sure, just having a cordial chat with this young lady.”

  “Need me?”

  “Not yet.”

  Nodding slowly, giving Janine a sideways look, Dan slipped back inside the apartment.

  “I didn’t know,” mentioned Jake as he straddled a neowood chair, “that Pete had a sister.”

  “Stepsister.”

  “How old are you?”

  “What the hell does that have to do with your finding out who murdered him?”

  “Not a damn thing actually. Just curious.”

  She sighed, sniffling once. “I’m twenty one, okay,” she said, touching at the pocket that held the gun. “I’m a vid actress—sometimes anyway, whenever my dimwitted agents can dig me up some work. That’s part of what we have to talk over, Cardigan.”

  Jake said nothing, watching her.

  “What I mean is,” continued the dead man’s sister, “I can’t pay the kind of fee that Bascom and the Cosmos Detective Agency asks for.”

  “You know, huh, who I work for?”

  “Obviously, for Christ’s sake. I didn’t come to you just because my brother happened to die in your vicinity,” she told him. “Peter told me about you. That you were fairly honest and that he trusted you.”

  “You sound as though you, maybe, don’t share in that appraisal of me.”

  She tilted her head to the left, studying him. Dan had left the floor lights on and the shadows beneath her eyes and cheekbones showed deep and sooty. “Not completely yet,” she admitted finally. “You look trustworthy on the outside, but inside—who can tell?”

  He grinned. “Gather yourself up and go home, then.”

  “No, I’ll go on what my brother felt about you for now,” Janine told him. “What I want you to do—Well, I’m pretty sure you can persuade that vindictive bitch who used to be his wife to finance an investigation into Peter’s death.”

  “You didn’t study diplomacy in school. Not a good idea to label people you’re trying to get money out of as vindictive bitches.”

  “C’mon, Cardigan, you know damned well Amy St. Mars is a nasty shrew.” She crossed her legs, uncrossed them, crossed them again. The knees were sharp, with too little flesh to them. “When you go to her, you obviously won’t mention my true feelings or yours.”

  “You’re suggesting that I lie and dissemble? That would tarnish my trustworthy image, wouldn’t it?”

  “Look, Cardigan, there’s being twenty one and then there’s being twenty one,” she said slowly, angry. “The life I’ve led—Let’s just say I’m not especially naive. I know you have to con people to get what you want. Now, please, let’s get back to business.”

  “I don’t think, Miss Traynor, we’re going to be doing any business.”

  “Hey, I’m offering you a case. A goddamned job.”

  “Nope, you’re telling me to go try and beg a fee off Pete’s widow,” he corrected. “Now, if you know as much about their relationship as you ought to, you know that Amy wouldn’t pay ten bucks to keep wild dogs from pissing on his grave. She sure as hell isn’t going to hire Cosmos and pay our kind of fees.”

  “She’s got millions.”

  “People who have millions have millions, most of them, because they’re extremely careful about how they spend any of those millions.” He got up from his chair, wandered over to the deck rail to look out toward the dark ocean. “That’s been my experience.”

  She left the slingchair and came to stand at his side. It was still warm, but she shuddered now and hugged herself. “I figured out where he died,” she said, pointing. “Right about there.”

  “More or less.”

  “Aren’t you at all interested in what happened to him?” she asked quietly. “He was your friend.”

  “He was somebody I knew a long time ago, that’s all.”

  She reached over and touched his arm. “I know why he was coming to talk to you.”

  He turned to look at her. “Oh, so?”

  “Peter and I haven’t been especially close lately,” Janine began. “I mean, he didn’t think too much of some of the acting jobs I had to take—and he was annoyed because I kept after him to get himself, quick, into some kind of Tek rehab program.” She lowered her head, sniffling again. “He was a bright man, a good person before he got all tangled up with that stuff.”

  “Get back to what Pete was so anxious to talk to me about.”

  “I’m coming to that,” she said. “I want you to understand that I don’t know as much as I should because we didn’t see each other as often these past few weeks.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “What I do know is that Peter was very upset about something that was going on at Gunsmiths, Ltd. He was working for them, you know.”

  “Yeah. Were weapons being stolen from there?”

  “Did he tell you that tonight?”

  “He didn’t tell me a damn thing. He was dead and done for long before I got home.”

  “Maybe he told your son?”

  “No, that was just a guess, Janine. Based on what you’ve been telling me.”

  “All right, I think he was worried about some sort of particularly dangerous weapon,” she said, leaning an elbow on the rail and watching the surf glide in across the dark sand. “He hinted, without coming out directly, that a dangerous weapon was being smuggled out of Gunsmiths. Probably from their San Andreas Arsenal warehouse.”

  “What’s kept there?”

  “From what my brother told me, that’s where they stockpile stuff. And where they’re supposed to mothball supplies of weapons that have been outlawed or put on hold because of UN rulings and such.”

  “He give you any specifics?” Jake took hold of her thin arm and guided her back toward the chair.

  Shaking her head, she sat again. “All I know is that he was very scared,” she said. “He suspected someone in the company—an important someone—was letting something important be taken out of the warehouse.”

  “You know anybody named Denton or Dennis?”

  She patted the gun in her pocket again. “That might be Dennis Barragray,” she answered. “He’s one of the vice presidents at Gunsmiths, and a good friend of my brother’s. Where’d you hear about him?”

  Straddling the neowood chair, Jake asked her, “What about Wes Flanders?”

  “I never heard of him. Is he somebody who worked at Gunsmiths, Ltd., with Peter?”

  “Nope.”

  “Can we get back, then, to why I came to see you, Cardigan?” She folded her thin hands together. “Will you, please, take the case? It’s important, not just to me, to find out who did this to my brother—and exactly why.”

  Jake said, “I work for the Cosmos agency, not myself, Janine. Walt Bascom isn’t noted for sentimentality or generosity. If you want to hit Amy St. Mars on your own and persuade her to finance this—that’s fine. Otherwise, this is all we have to talk about.”

  “That’s a shitty attitude.” Janine stood up, thrust her hands deep into her jacket pockets. “Don’t you give a damn what happened to him?”

  “I’m sorry he’s dead,” he replied. “But I never do charity work. On top of which, it’s one hell of a long time since I risked my ass for a cause.”

  “But I thought you believed in what you did.”

  “I’m a professional. I don’t need faith.” He nodded toward the night beach. “Where’d you park your skycar?”

  “I took a skycab.”

  “I’ll take you home.”

  “Don’t strain your generosity.”

  “You want a lift or don’t you?”

  “Okay, all right. I’ll accept the offer.” She moved, slowly, across the deck. Turnin
g, she looked, forlornly, back toward him. “I’m awfully disappointed.”

  “Happens a lot when you’re young.”

  5

  THE MORNING WAS clear, pale blue and chilly. Jake was on the homeward lap of his daily run along the Malibu Sector beach. Out on the deck of an ivory white beach house two goldplated robots were setting out a large breakfast table and four chairs. One of the bots waved to Jake.

  “Morning, Ralph,” called Jake, returning the wave.

  “Got time for a cup of nearcaf?” inquired the glittering mechanism.

  “Not today.”

  Farther along Jake encountered a plump silver-haired young woman in a scarlet beach robe. She was squatting at the edge of the sea. “Darn, heck,” she muttered as she poked a pudgy finger into the wet sand, probing for something.

  “Problem, Jane?” Jake slowed and halted.

  “Yeah, darn it,” she answered, not looking up. “I lost my mood patch again.”

  “Shouldn’t go swimming with that still on your arm.” He crouched beside her.

  “I wasn’t swimming. Just doing my exercises.” Jane kept on searching. “If I don’t find the darn thing—it’s my last one until I can get the prescription refilled—I’m going to swing from manic to depressed all day. I’ll probably punch my halfwit boss at the Ponics Farmers’ Market and then—”

  “Here it is.” Jake spotted the tiny silvery circle near his right foot. He picked it up carefully, blew off the sand and returned it to the anxious young woman.

  “Great, thanks.” Chuckling, she stood, rolled up her sleeve and slapped the mood-controlling disc in place on her upper arm. “By the way, who was that who got slaughtered in front of your digs last night, Jake?”

  “Somebody I used to know.”

  “What in the devil killed the poor doof?”

  Jake said, “Soon as the police tell me, I’ll let you know.” He resumed running.

  Dan, dressed in his SoCal Police Academy uniform, was sitting out on the deck with a glass of citrisub in his hand. Molly Fine, also in uniform, was occupying the slingchair that the dead man’s sister had used last night. Molly was slim and dark, a year older than Jake’s son.