Tek Kill Read online

  “You’ve guessed it,” answered Jake.

  THE GRAY-WALLED CELL was small and contained two gray chairs and a gray cot.

  Bascom, looking almost dapper in an unrumpled tan suit, was slowly pacing the gray floor.

  Jake, settled in one of the hard metal chairs, said, “Courting Kay Norwood has had a very positive effect on you, Chief. No more wrinkled—” Standing suddenly up, he snapped his fingers.

  “Developing a twitch?” inquired the head of the Cosmos Detective Agency, scanning him.

  “It just occurred to me that the Bascom on display in all those sectapes is based on the old you. The wrinkled, sloppy Bascom of bygone—”

  “Hey, we already know they’re faked,” cut in Bascom. “What we have to uncover is who did the dirty work.”

  “And why,” added Jake, sitting again. “Any notions on motives for wanting this Grossman fellow dead?”

  “Could be he’s an innocent bystander. Killed simply to frame me.”

  “Naw, that’s too roundabout a way of doing things,” said Jake, shaking his head. “We can look into that angle, but meantime, what about Grossman as a target?”

  Bascom took the other chair. “I don’t as yet know all that much about the guy, Jake,” he admitted. “He worked for the Thelwell Brokerage Services outfit. According to Kay, Grossman specialized in investigating companies and preparing reports on them for would-be investors.”

  “What sort of companies?”

  “Mostly pharmaceutical businesses. Might be an angle there, though I don’t see what the hell it is at this juncture.”

  “What about his private life?”

  “Outside of being an obsessive asshole when it came to trying to get Kay to come back into his life,” answered the chief, “the late Dwight Grossman was a relatively normal citizen. When he started making trouble—calling her on the vidphone, dropping in at her office—I had the agency run a preliminary check on him.”

  “And?”

  Bascom shrugged. “Sweetness and light for the most part, Jake,” he said. “No criminal record, no outstanding debts. He was married once to a respectable lady who’s a graphics supervisor at a reputable GLA advertising agency. Divorced, with no fuss and no scandal, two years ago. Mother’s dead, father is very well off, and he has a sister who dropped out of college last year. The kid had some sort of mental problems. Seems to have been a breakdown that was pretty likely triggered by a serious Tek addiction.”

  “Tek,” said Jake quietly. “But Grossman himself has no involvement, no connection with the stuff?”

  “None that I could unearth. But, again, it’s something to dig into further.”

  “Did you really threaten him?”

  “I threatened to coldcock him if he didn’t quit harassing Kay.” He held up a fist. “I might well have slugged him. But shooting a guy down with a lazgun—nope.”

  “And you were nowhere near his place last night?”

  “Never been there, Jake,” he said.

  “The security tapes from your house show you coming home around four in the morning,” said Jake. “They were faked, obviously, but when were they substituted for the real ones?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that quite a lot,” admitted the agency boss. “I never heard a damn thing and no alarm went off. Ambrose, my valet, was found sprawled on his backside in the kitchen. Could be Drexler and his crew did that, but maybe it was done earlier by parties unknown.”

  “Lieutenant Drexler is not an especially lovable guy,” said Jake, “but I don’t see him being directly involved in a frame.”

  “I wouldn’t think so, either,” said Bascom. “But we have to check up on him, too. Cops, as shocking as it may seem to a sensitive lad such as you, have been known to sell out for sufficient kale.”

  “When are you expecting to get out of here?”

  “Kay’s working on it. Hopefully before sundown.”

  “Meantime, Sid and I will get going.”

  Bascom held up his hand. “Couple of more things, Jake,” he said. “Firstly, until I’m sprung, please, try to get along with Roy Anselmo.”

  “We’re as friendly as can be, Chief.”

  “I’m sure, yeah,” said Bascom. “And then—well, Kacey dropped in on me right before you called.”

  “I know, I collided with her outside.” He pointed a thumb at the door.

  “This is where, if you would, Jake, you can do me a favor,” confided Bascom, leaning forward in the chair. “Kacey and I haven’t been very damned close for a lot of years. I’m never going to agree with her politically, since she’s a wild-eyed nut in that sphere. I would, though, like to see her more often than I do. After this mess is over … well, I’d like to stay in touch. This family crisis has brought her back into my circle and I’d like her to stay a mite closer from here on.”

  “She wants me to involve her in the investigation.”

  Bascom rubbed his hands, slowly, together. “I don’t think Kacey ought to become deeply mixed up in this business,” he said.

  “But you don’t want her to feel she’s left out, either.”

  “That’s about it. I’d be much obliged if you’d keep her distracted but not unhappy.”

  “Don’t they ask goats to do this when they want to catch tigers?”

  Bascom smiled. “You’re very good at dealing with wacky women, Jake,” he told his operative. “Roy Anselmo can’t cope with Kacey if she starts poking around at the agency.”

  Jake said, “I’ll give it a try.”

  7

  WHEN the big robot rubbed his copper-plated hands together, they produced an echoing rasping sound. “This is swell, kids,” he said in his deep rattling voice. “We just installed this dingus and it’s supposed to be hot stuff. Unlike other identity imagers, this baby can—”

  “Hey, we’ve got a class to get to in about sixteen minutes, Rex,” said Dan, impatient.

  Rex/GK-30 chuckled. “You flesh-and-blood types worry too much about a few unimportant minutes. If you look at time from a non-human perspective, why—”

  “We are on sort of a tight schedule,” added Molly. “We hoped just to pop in and out of Background & ID, consult you, and depart.”

  The robot, who was in charge of this sector of the SoCal Police Academy’s information center, invited, “What say we get rolling, then?”

  “I’ll give you the descriptions I got from my friend, Rex, and you see what you can do. Okay?”

  “Not necessary with this new, improved imager, kiddo.” Rex pointed a large metallic forefinger at the small holostage that rested on the table in front of him. “Just speak the details. It’ll do the rest.”

  Molly, nodding and clearing her throat, took a few steps closer to the table. She began by reciting the details that Susan Grossman had given her about the short red-haired man whom she’d seen in her vision when her brother had been killed.

  When Molly concluded, the coppery robot requested of the gadget, “Let’s see a visual, chum.”

  On the platform a doll-size image popped into being. It was a three-dimensional projection of an undersized redheaded man.

  “That the gink?” asked Rex/GK-30.

  “I never actually saw him,” reminded Molly. “But Sue gave me fairly detailed descriptions of both the—”

  “Perhaps we ought,” suggested the robot, “to sneak this Sue frail in here so she can get a firsthand look-see.”

  “She’s not able to leave home right now.”

  “Prostrated with grief, huh?”

  Dan said, “No, too loony to be allowed to run around loose.”

  “We could vidphone her,” offered Rex. “I can transmit this image over the—”

  “That’s not possible, either,” put in Molly. “But why don’t we get a tentative identification of people who fit this description? Then maybe I can show the photos to her.”

  “Possible makes,” the robot told the projection device.

  All at once a shrill bleating sound came
from the voxbox at the base of the ID stage.

  The image of the possible killer faded, to be replaced by the figure of a very similar red-haired man. But this time he was stretched out, naked, on a white metal table with a gray plyosheet half covering him.

  “Salten, Leroy M.,” droned the voxbox. “Matches prior simulation in seventeen of twenty ID points.”

  “Details on this stiff,” urged the big copper-plated robot.

  The metallic voice continued, “Leroy M. Salten was found at 6:14 this morning beneath Fun Pier 12 in the Long Beach Sector of Greater Los Angeles. He had been shot twice in the back with a standard lazgun. It is estimated that Salten had been dead for approximately two hours. Do you require a printed copy of his criminal record?”

  “Yep,” answered Rex. “And some pix.”

  “Alive or dead?”

  “Both.”

  Dan touched Molly’s hand. “Now I’m wondering.”

  “About what?” she asked.

  He indicated the image of the dead man. “Your friend Sue Grossman thought she saw a mystical vision of a fellow who looked a lot like the guy that killed her brother,” he said slowly. “And then—what? About four or so hours after that this same fellow is knocked off over in the Long Beach Sector. Logic tells me she couldn’t have seen a picture of this guy in her head, but I don’t know how else to explain it.”

  “Leroy Salten has to be one of the two men Sue saw in her vision,” said Molly, convinced. “There’s simply no other way she could’ve known about him.”

  “Coincidence?” offered the robot.

  “Hooey,” replied Molly.

  “Hoax?”

  “Nuts.”

  Dan, frowning, shook his head. “The trouble is, I don’t believe in telepathy.”

  “You’re,” advised Molly, “going to have to change your notions.”

  Rex lumbered over to collect the report on the late Leroy Salten that had just come clicking out of the printer next to the ID stage. “Now, what about the other lug the little lady saw? Shall we try to get a make on him, kids?”

  Molly said, “Yes, of course. Let’s give him a try.”

  This time, however, they had no luck. The hairless man couldn’t be identified at all.

  JAKE ASKED his partner, “What meal is this you’re indulging in?”

  Looking up from his plate of soycakes and prosub, Gomez answered, “Late breakfast.”

  Tapping his finger against the side of his mug of nearcaf, Jake said, “At two in the afternoon?”

  “It’s too early for high tea and I’m skipping lunch all week as part of my new diet regimen.” He patted his midsection a few times before turning to gaze out the plastiglass window of the diner toward the nearby afternoon Pacific. “How’s our esteemed comandante?”

  “Pissed off but otherwise in fine fettle. Hopes to be out and about no later than—”

  “Once again,” came a loud matronly voice from out of the half dozen voxboxes hanging up under the low neowood ceiling of the small seaside diner, “let us welcome you to Mom’s, one of 864 friendly, homelike eating establishments in Greater Los Angeles. Remember, when it comes to home cooking and low, low prices, nobody beats Mom. Today’s special is soycakes and prosub with sudaspuds on the side. Enjoy.”

  “Nice to know I’m in the culinary mainstream.” Gomez forked up another bite of prosub.

  Jake said, “I called the asshole and informed him that—”

  “Meaning Roy Anselmo?”

  “That asshole, yeah. I told him I want to do some digging into the life and times of Dwight Grossman,” continued Jake. “Grossman worked for an outfit that researches companies for investors. His specialty was apparently pharmaceutical outfits.”

  “Doesn’t sound like an especially hazardous profession.”

  “Depends on what you dig up,” said Jake. “I’m also interested in Grossman’s romantic life.”

  “Meaning he may have been annoying and bedeviling other ladies besides Kay Norwood?”

  “Right, and perhaps somebody decided to curtail his harassing in a drastic way.”

  After wiping his mustache with a checkered plyonapkin, Gomez said, “Keep in mind, amigo, that we’re dealing with folks who can do some pretty fancy technical fudging. Two separate”—he held up his forefinger and middle finger side by side—“security tapes show Bascom doing stuff we know he never did.”

  “I assume you’re going to locate any experts hereabouts who are capable of that degree of electronic fakery?”

  “Sí, of course,” answered his partner. “I calculate there aren’t more than four, maybe five pendejos who do work good enough to fool the SoCal constabulary and our own Doc Olan.”

  “We better split, then, Sid. I’ll follow the Grossman angle, you concentrate on who rigged the frame.”

  Gomez drank most of his citrisub juice. “You are looking, even for the dour sourpuss you are, exceptionally downhearted this afternoon, compañero,” he observed. “You holding back some bad news?”

  Jake looked out toward the hazy ocean. “Turns out I have an honorary partner to contend with, Sid.”

  Gomez blinked. “Ai, surely nobody can replace me?”

  “Kacey Bascom has volunteered her services to help save her pop.”

  After exhaling a long, rueful sigh, Gomez said, “She’s a very pretty mujer. A few pounds too skinny for my tastes, yet I can appreciate her general attractiveness.” He sighed further. “Pity she’s politically only about two steps removed from the sort of cabrones who’d like to see lovable liberal Latinos like me burned at the stake.”

  “She happens to be working for Bracken just now.”

  “J. J. Bracken? The gent who makes Ebenezer Scrooge look like a soft touch?”

  “The esteemed star of Facin’ Bracken himself. When she’s not doing research for his daily vidnet harangues, Kacey is going to help me find out who really killed Grossman and why.”

  “What’s the jefe say about that, Jake?”

  “Hell, you know Bascom’s never happy about his relationships with his assorted offspring,” answered Jake. “He’s been pretty much estranged from Kacey and he sees her coming to visit him in the jug and offering to help as a wedge that—”

  “Wedges are what Kacey’s cronies like to drive through heretics’ hearts,” reminded his partner with a combination shrug and shudder. “I thank the fates, amigo, that I’m too disreputable to be allowed anywhere near the formidable Señorita Kacey. How do you intend to handle this?”

  “I’ll try to humor the lady long as I can,” said Jake. “If she gets too much underfoot, then I’ll have to sideline her.”

  “Try not to break anything,” cautioned Gomez.

  8

  SLOTZ is one of dozens of government-operated gambling parlors to be found in Greater Los Angeles. It’s housed in a moderate-sized domed building in a hilly stretch of the Sherman Oaks Sector. There are no windows and only a minimum of interior light. Up to ninety patrons can use the compscreens to play simulated blackjack, slot machines, roulette, and 3D bingo. Nearly every player seat was filled that afternoon as Leo Anson walked through the dimlit circular room to halt in front of an opaque plastiglass door.

  The Cosmos Agency detective was a large man, dark, with short-cropped graying hair. He stood straight and still at the door, unmoving and uninterested in the electronic gaming going on all around him.

  Just behind him, someone—sounded like an older woman—gave a pleased laugh and cried, “Bingo!”

  Anson didn’t turn around to look.

  After rattling faintly, the door slid open.

  The big detective hurried across the threshold. As the door shut quietly behind him, Anson was already hurrying down the ramp that led to the lower level of Slotz.

  He stopped again in front of an opaque plastiglass door labeled PERSONNEL II.

  After nearly thirty seconds that door slid open.

  The room beyond was small and shadowy. A single compscreen sat glowing fa
intly on a three-legged green metal table at the cubicle’s center.

  Sitting in the straight green metal chair, Anson tapped the screen’s control panel.

  The screen presented an image of a sunlit field of wildflowers. A faint breeze was touching the blossoms and large white butterflies swirled and flickered in the afternoon air above the bright blossoms.

  “You took your sweet time dragging your fat ass over here, Anson,” observed the voxbox.

  “I’m supposed to be working full-time on the Grossman case,” reminded Anson.

  “Work on the case, but get here when you’re supposed to.”

  “I’m here now.”

  The metallic voice said, “Bascom’s getting out.”

  “I hadn’t heard that.”

  “He’s being sprung by that lawyer broad. He’ll be free before nightfall, looks like.”

  “You knew he had a hell of a lot of influence in Greater LA,” said Anson. “So does Kay Norwood.”

  “We’d prefer him to stay inside longer and not get directly involved in this.”

  “Looks like that isn’t going to happen, doesn’t it?”

  The voxbox asked, “What’s Jake Cardigan up to?”

  “He told Anselmo—you know, the guy who’s temporarily in charge of Cosmos—he wanted to concentrate on Grossman, on his work, and his social life.”

  “Shit. Cardigan can be a pain in the butt.”

  “Quite often,” agreed the detective.

  “And what angle are you supposed to be working on?”

  “The Grossman family so far. His father, his sister, and Juneanne Stackpoole, the current lady in the old boy’s life.”

  “Do they know anything?”

  “They don’t seem to,” said Anson. “But…”

  “But what, asshole?”

  “I’m still looking into something concerning the sister, Susan Grossman.”

  “She’s a Tekhead, isn’t she?”

  “Used to be. She took a cure.”

  The voxbox laughed. “There’s no cure.”

  “Cardigan’s cured, too.”

  “Naw, they all come back. But get on about this sister of Grossman’s.”

  “She made a couple of calls last night,” Anson went on. “The first one to her brother at about a half hour after your people—”