Tek Money Read online

  “Good morning, Jake. It’s impressive how you can run such a distance and not get all red in the face the way my Uncle Stan does after about fifty feet.” She stood up, smiling at him. “I’m collecting your wayward son and giving him free transport to school this morning.”

  “I noticed your skycar parked there next to mine, Molly, and figured as much.”

  “See?” said Dan, setting his glass on the deck beside his chair. “I told you Dad was still an ace detective despite his advanced age. Give him just a little clue like a lemon yellow skycar and he—”

  “Respect for your elders is something they ought to be teaching at the academy.” Jake leaned an elbow on the rail.

  Molly said, “Now—about the Gunsmiths outfit.”

  He glanced over at his son. “Been telling her all about—”

  “I wheedled the information out of him,” the young woman explained. “I’m pretty good at interrogation. I get better grades in that area than Dan, though maybe that isn’t saying much.”

  “One of her uncles is—”

  “Uncle Jerry,” took up Molly. “He used to do legal work for Gunsmiths. Uncle Jerry’s the one with the diminished capacity for integrity.”

  “Molly thinks she knows something about what’s stored at the San Andreas Arsenal.”

  Nodding, she asked Jake, “Ever hear of Garret Devlin?”

  “Technical whiz, no moral sense to speak of, killed in a skytram crash in New Phoenix three years ago.”

  “That’s him, right. Devlin, according to what my disreputable attorney uncle once told me, was a specialist in creating all sorts of nasty weapons,” she said. “Weapons that were so nasty, in fact, most of them were outlawed before ever getting used in combat.”

  “And that’s part of what’s being stored in the warehouse?”

  “Yeah, along with a lot of other deadly stuff,” said Molly. “If some of Devlin’s gadgets have been hijacked or smuggled out of there—well, havoc, destruction and worse may be in the offing, Jake.”

  He said, “Dan probably didn’t mention that I have no connection, official or otherwise, with this whole business. I’m making a serious effort to forget all about Peter Traynor, his employers and his stepsister.”

  “Gomez,” observed Dan, nodding skyward.

  The detective’s skycar was drifting down through the brightening morning. It settled smoothly to a landing next to Molly’s vehicle. Gomez, wearing a jacket the color of a tropical sunrise, emerged. “Get out of your sports togs and into your work duds,” he advised. “Buenas dias, Molly. You’re looking even lovelier than when we last met.”

  “That was only four nights ago, Gomez,” she said as he came bounding onto the deck. “At the Twentieth Century Jazz Android Orchestra concert over in the Hollywood Sector.”

  The curlyhaired detective took her hand, bent and kissed it. “It must be that your charm is increasing at an alarming rate, chiquita.”

  “Trust him,” said Dan. “He’s an expert on female charm.”

  “I know, I’ve read his dossier.” She retrieved her hand. “Five wives.”

  Gomez frowned at his partner. “Have I, truly, been married five times?”

  “I quit counting after three. Why am I supposed to change clothes?”

  “Bascom, our beloved jefe, wants to see us both muy pronto,” he explained. “He vidphoned me to swing by and gather you up. We have a meeting with an important client in about thirty minutes or so.”

  “What sort of a case?”

  “You’ll be pleased to hear,” answered his partner with a smile, “that we’re being hired to investigate the murder of the late Peter Traynor.”

  “A sister, eh?” Gomez was hunched slightly in the drive seat of his skycar.

  “A very intense and sincere sister, yeah,” answered Jake as they flew toward the Cosmos Detective Agency building in the Laguna Sector of Greater LA. “Or so she tried to seem.”

  “Ai, you’re becoming ever more cynical with each passing day, amigo.”

  “Janine Traynor is an actor,” said Jake. “Sometimes actors tend to act even off stage.”

  “She was very convincing, though?”

  “Yeah, and the tears were real.” Jake then filled him in on what the young woman had told him last night and also on the footnote on Gunsmiths, Ltd., that Molly had added this morning.

  “So just about all the names Pedro was yelling during his last go-round with Tek are tied in with that weapons factory.”

  “Except for Amy and Wes Flanders.”

  “Wouldn’t have been too tough for you to have found out how Flanders connects.” Gomez punched out a landing pattern on the dash controls. “Since Bev is working on that case involving him, she would’ve shared enough information for you to track—”

  “Last night, remember, I’d resolved not to poke around in this business.”

  “You can’t fight fate. We’re apparently destined to investigate this one,” observed the detective. “Bev—have I mentioned this?—is an impressive lady. You ought to see more of her—maybe even ask her to go steady.”

  The skycar settled down on the roof landing area of one of the Cosmos towers.

  “What you haven’t mentioned is who our client is.” Jake stepped free of the car.

  “I was saving the news,” said Gomez. “It is none other than the onetime spouse, Amy St. Mars.”

  Jake frowned, shaking his head. “Looks like Janine is a lot more persuasive than I figured.”

  6

  BASCOM’S SUIT WAS almost presentable, his vast desk was only moderately disordered, and he even seemed to have fewer wrinkles on his weathered, tanned face. “Gents, I trust all is well with you?” he inquired as the partners entered his tower office. All the windows were unblanked this morning and the big circular room was full of sunshine.

  Gomez slacked his pace, taking hold of Jake’s arm. “Amigo, I think this must be a cleverly constructed android sim of our respected padrone,” he announced. “The Walt Bascom I serve so devotedly ain’t anywhere near this cheerful of a morning.”

  “Yeah, and this impostor isn’t rumpled and wrinkled enough to be our esteemed boss.”

  “Sit down and spare me any further schoolboy wit.” Bascom nodded at a couple of chairs near his desk. “I don’t see why you yahoos can’t accept the fact that I’ve changed for the better.”

  As Gomez sank into his plazchair, he said, “You see what the love of a good woman can do, Jake?”

  Jake straddled his chair, watching the chief. “You still courting Kay Norwood?”

  “The attorney and I are good friends, lads,” he conceded. “We’ll be visited by our client, by way of holographic projection, in a little less than eight minutes. Suppose, Jake, you tell me about that fracas at your place last evening. I’ve already scanned the police reports.”

  Jake obliged, concluding with, “What’s Amy told you?”

  “Not a damn thing beyond the size of the fee she’s willing to fork over.” Bascom walked over to sit on the edge of the hologram projection stage. “I had to cajole her into offering us anywhere near what we’re worth. She’s one of the richest ladies in SoCal, yet a shade on the parsimonious side.”

  “Somebody,” said Jake, “was mentioning to me recently that detectives should work simply for the love of seeing justice done.”

  “Sure, yep, justice is nice,” admitted the head of the detective agency. “A fat fee is better.”

  Gomez smiled. “We can have that inscribed on your tombstone, jefe.”

  “I’m going to be cremated and leave instructions to blow my ashes in the eyes of several assholes who’ve been less than sweet to me during my stay on earth.” A faint buzzing hum started under his backside. Bascom jumped up and patted a keypad on the stage. “This will be the grieving widow.”

  A very believable image of a pretty, slender woman of thirty five appeared on the stage. She was sitting in a silvery metal chair and her long red hair was tied back with a single strand of
black ribbon. “Good morning, Jake,” Amy St. Mars said in her husky voice. “You look much the worse for wear. Apparently being on ice up in the Freezer didn’t do you any good.”

  “You’re as lovable as ever, Amy.” He moved his chair so he faced her projected image.

  “No wiseassing with the clients,” advised Bascom in a whisper.

  “That’s perfectly all right, Bascom.” She leaned forward and rested the palm of her right hand on her right knee. She was wearing a simple white frock, slit to the thigh. “Jake and I, as I’m sure he’s told you by now, are old friends. I used to run into him on the many occasions when I was dragging my former husband out of various Tek joints.”

  “Jake has reformed long since,” Bascom assured her.

  “Oh, I’m well aware of that or I wouldn’t be hiring you people at all. I won’t have a damn thing to do with Tekheads.” She rubbed at her knee. “Can we get down to business now? I have to be in Frisco in two hours. Let me commence by explaining that I have absolutely no feelings for Peter. He was a hopeless Tekkie, a pain in the ass, and he’s better off dead.” She straightened up, moved her hand to her left knee. “He was, long ago, fairly attractive and charming, and before he cooked his brains with Tek, he had a relatively good mind. Yet one of the happiest days in my young life was the one on which our dreadful marriage was over for good.”

  Jake moved his chair about two feet forward. “So you’re not exactly hiring Cosmos to avenge Pete’s death?”

  She gave a slow shake of her head. “No, Jake,” she answered. “If he’d died of natural causes or been killed in some sort of accident, well, hell, I wouldn’t even send flowers to the bastard. What concerns and upsets me is that someone hastened his end. He was murdered, wasn’t he?”

  “That he was,” confirmed Bascom. “I got hold of the initial coroner’s report—the one done up by the prelim robots—right after you called to set up this appointment, Miss St. Mars. It was a sizzler that killed him. A sizzler is a Tek chip that—”

  “I know what it is, Bascom,” she cut in disdainfully. “I was, remember, married to a Tekkie.” She rubbed at her left knee. “About the only admirable thing Peter ever did was father our two children. Alex is just ten and Marisa will be seven and, praise the lord, neither one of them is a bit like him. I’m extremely fond of both of them and I make sure I spend at least a full half hour with them every day.”

  “Mother love,” muttered Gomez, “you can’t beat it.”

  “I was wondering how long it’d be before you popped off, Gomez,” said Amy. “You were a wiseass when you were with the SoCal cops, too. But be quiet for a while and let me get on with this.”

  “Hush,” mentioned Bascom, giving the curly-haired detective a sour look.

  “I’ve upped the security on all three of our homes,” continued Amy. “I’m confident that we’re all safe when we’re at home, but the kids have to go out to school every day and I travel a great deal for St. Mars Ponics. I’ve added bodyguards, too, but I feel we’re still vulnerable. I have very little confidence in the police and I’ll feel a lot better once the killers are caught.”

  “Killers?” asked Bascom. “Plural?”

  “I assume this is some kind of conspiracy thing,” Amy told them. “And I’m very concerned that they may suspect I know more than I do. Peter paid the children a monthly visit—I had to concede that when I got rid of him.” She sighed out a slow breath, inhaled slowly. “The last time I saw him—which was at our Studio City Sector home three weeks ago—he told me he was afraid he was in serious trouble because of some knowledge he’d stumbled across. If these people who killed him think that I know what he knew—or that he might even have told the children something—they’ll try to harm us, too.”

  “What sort of trouble was he in, señorita?”

  “Why are we speaking Spanish, for God’s sake?” She gave Gomez an annoyed frown before going on. “Peter, as you know, was employed by Gunsmiths, Ltd. As a matter of fact, I helped him get the job a few years back by putting in a word with a close, dear friend of mine, Dennis Barragray.” She paused, shaking her head. Part of the black hair ribbon came loose. “Peter didn’t provide me a great many details and, I have to admit, I wasn’t paying close attention to what he was nattering about. But it had something to do with a shipment of weapons that he suspected was taken, on the sly, from the San Andreas Arsenal warehouse facilities. Peter, fool that he was, was also digging into how this supposed smuggling operation was financed.”

  “Wes Flanders.” Jake snapped his fingers. “Did your husband know him?”

  “Former husband,” she quickly corrected. “Yes, Wes Flanders—another Tekhead, by the way—was a good friend of Peter’s. In fact, Flanders was killed recently, too. That unsettled Peter a great deal.”

  Bascom was standing over by his big desk now. He absently tapped on the bell of his saxophone, which was sprawled atop several neat stacks of faxmemos. “Who’d Traynor suspect was involved with whatever the hell was going on at Gunsmiths, Ltd.?”

  “I don’t know that,” she replied. “I do know he mentioned some of these suspicions of his to Dennis. Dennis thought Peter was simply suffering from a Tek hangover—but, obviously, he was onto something.”

  Jake asked, “Did Pete have any idea where these highjacked weapons were ending up?”

  “If he did, he didn’t mention it to me.”

  “Anything about what kind of weapons specifically?”

  “Pete said, as best I can recall, something about the Devlin Gun. Does that mean anything?”

  “Bingo,” said Gomez.

  “It does, yeah,” Jake told her. “At least, it might. Garret Devlin was in charge of Research & Development at Gunsmiths until his death three years back. He came up with some pretty deadly—and often illicit—weapons in his time.”

  “Peter knew too much about that and they killed him,” Amy said, putting both hands together and entangling her slender fingers. “If they think I know something, too …” She stiffened in her silver chair. “I expect rapid and positive results from Cosmos, Bascom.”

  “You’ll get ’em.” Bascom was standing straight, smiling stiffly at the holographic image. “And more, to boot.”

  “You haven’t talked at all about Traynor’s stepsister,” put in Jake. “But I guess she was able to enlist your help.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “I’m referring to Janine Traynor.”

  Impatience sounded in Amy St. Mars’s voice as she said, “Peter never had a sister, step or otherwise.” She stood up. “He was, Jake, an only child.” Her image vanished from the room.

  7

  BASCOM TURNED AWAY from the vidphone on his desk as the screen went black. “Well, lads,” he said, “the minions of the law haven’t made much further progress.”

  Gomez was sunk in a bubblechair. “The final autopsy confirms that Pedro was bumped off with a sizzler Tek chip,” he remarked. “So there’s one item for our travel itinerary. We have to find out where he was slipped that fatal Tek and on whose orders.”

  “Cops haven’t been able to determine yet what joint he visited before dropping in at Jake’s last night,” said the agency head. “I want us to solve this ahead of them. If Traynor really did know something about an international gunrunning plot—I can finagle a nice bonus from one of the relatively honest US government agencies I am cozy with.”

  “Crass. Everybody in Greater LA is so crass,” sighed Gomez. “It really pains a sensitive youth such as myself.”

  Jake was at one of the high, wide windows, watching the midmorning outside. Absently, he followed the upward progress of a scarlet skybus that was rising up from its stop platform. “Who the hell was posing as his sister?” he said.

  Bascom picked up his saxophone. “That,” he said, “is certainly something you have to find out, my boy.”

  “Now, if she had visited me,” offered Gomez, “we could figure that her yarn about being kin of the deceased was merely a flimsy exc
use to get close to one of the most charming hombres in all of Greater Los Angeles.” He shrugged one shoulder. “But love struck maidens aren’t in the habit of throwing themselves at Jake.”

  “The few that do don’t need excuses.” Jake went over and sat on the edge of the holo platform. “Janine Traynor, whoever she really may be, wanted to find out how much I knew—how much Pete told me before he died. That has to be what she was up to.”

  “Or maybe,” put in Gomez, “she really and truly does want to find out who knocked off the poor guy.”

  “Meaning what—that she’s actually a ladyfriend of his?”

  “It’s possible, amigo.”

  “I’ll find out.”

  Bascom rested the sax across his knees. “It would also be nice to know what the late Wes Flanders was nosing around in,” he suggested. “And whether he and Traynor were collaborating on some kind of halfass investigation.”

  Gomez unslouched slightly. “Dillinger,” he said toward Jake.

  “I’ll talk to him, yeah,” he said. “First, though, I want to see what Bev has on Flanders.”

  “Who might Dillinger be?” inquired the agency head.

  “Jefe, you don’t keep up with who’s who in informers, stool pigeons, snitches and blabbermouths.” Gomez sunk farther down into the fat yellow chair. “Dillinger is a young chap who specializes in accessing privileged banking information.”

  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.”