Tek Money Read online

  16

  THE BEDSIDE VIDPHONE buzzed at a few minutes past four A.M. Jake, immediately awake, sat up and said, “Yeah?”

  The phonescreen activated, showing him the frowning face of Detective Lieutenant Drexler of the SoCal State Police. “I want to see you, Cardigan.”

  “I’m touched. How about lunch sometime next month?”

  “Get off your ass and come down here to the Long Beach Sector right now,” ordered the cop.

  “Is this an official summons?”

  “It sure as hell is.”

  “Where, specifically, are you?”

  “I thought you might have guessed,” said Drexler. “It’s the hideaway that Dennis Barragray had.”

  “Had? Is he—”

  “Just get the hell down here. I’m real eager to talk to you.” As soon as he gave Jake the address, the phone went blank.

  Drexler told the gunmetal forensic robot, “Outside for a few minutes. Mr. Cardigan wants to view the body.”

  Dennis Barragray was sprawled on his back, arms spread wide and legs twisted. Someone had used a lazgun on him, up close, and his torso had been cut nearly in two. Blood and burnt cloth covered his ruined chest.

  “You knew this guy, didn’t you, Cardigan?”

  “Never met him. Seen his picture.”

  “How come Gomez called on him yesterday?”

  “Agency business.”

  “C’mon, don’t be an asshole.”

  “You can figure it out.” Jake backed away from the body. He glanced up at the starless night sky through the domed living room ceiling.

  “He was Peter Traynor’s boss.”

  “Exactly, lieutenant, and that’s why Sid had to talk to him,” Jake said. “If you knew it was my partner who interviewed the guy, why drag me down here instead of him?”

  The black cop crossed to a Lucite coffee table to pick the top sheet of paper from a small stack. “This isn’t Barragray’s official home,” he said. “In fact, his wife doesn’t even know about it. No, this place was what they call a love nest.”

  “And?”

  “We’ve talked to some of the neighbors—Yeah, I have enough balls to wake up any and all the rich bastards who live hereabouts,” he said, passing the sheet to Jake. “Here’s a comp portrait our ID bot printed up, based on the descriptions of the lady who was sharing this place with Barragray. Know her?”

  The young woman in the simulated photo was Janine Traynor with blonde hair. “She looks vaguely familiar,” said Jake. “Have you identified her?”

  “The name she’s been using here was Jean McCrea,” answered the policeman. “But yesterday afternoon you stungunned a fellow in the Sherman Oaks Sector residence of a lady known as Janet Mavity.” From an inside pocket of his jacket, he took out a folded sheet of paper. “I happened to be going over the file on that case, since I’m awfully interested in your activities these days, Cardigan. I had this comp shot in my skycar with me.” He held up this second simulated photograph. “Except for the red hair, this is the same lady who was in residence here.”

  “Say, it might be at that.”

  “Who is she?”

  “You’ve got two names, Drexler—take your pick.”

  “I’ve sent both these pictures on to ID Central in DC. But those bastards’ll take a couple of days to grind out an answer as to her true identity,” he said, putting the picture away. “Why were you interested in her?”

  “Had a tip she was a friend of Traynor’s.”

  “Have you contacted her?”

  “Not yet.” He shook his head. “Have you?”

  “We think she’s left the country.”

  “Bound for where?”

  “Spain.”

  Jake studied the night sky again. “Spain. Interesting country.”

  “C’mon. Save me some time and tell me who she really is.”

  “I don’t really know,” Jake assured him. “You think she killed Barragray?”

  “Too soon to tell,” answered the lieutenant. “But she used to live here and now she doesn’t. She left most of her clothes and belongings behind, but took enough to indicate she was skipping.”

  “When did she leave?”

  “She took off in a skyliner three and a half hours ago.”

  Jake returned to the corpse. “He’s been dead at least five hours.”

  “Five or six.”

  “So she could have killed him and still caught her flight.”

  “She booked it at the last minute, from a phone at the twenty four-hour mall a mile from here.”

  Jake said, “Of course, it could be she walked in and found him dead. Got scared and ran.”

  “That’s another possibility, sure.” He walked over to an open doorway. “Here’s something else for you to look at, Cardigan.”

  “Another body?”

  “No, just a hole in the wall.”

  There was a neat, sooty hole, about two feet in diameter, high in the cream-colored wall behind the large oval bed. “Safe, huh?”

  “Used to be,” said Drexler. “The house’s entire secsystem, by the way, was disabled—expertly. So blowing the safe didn’t ring any bells anywhere.”

  “Would Jean McCrea do that?”

  “To get at the safe, sure.”

  “If she was cozy with Barragray, she’d probably have known how to open it.”

  “Then to make it look like an outside job.”

  Jake nodded at the hole. “Any idea about the contents?”

  “Go over by the bed and look at the pillow. Don’t touch anything.”

  Lying on the pillow was an antique $50 bill. “Twentieth-century currency, isn’t it?”

  “Nineteen-fifties. Worth about seventy-five dollars in the present collector market.”

  “You figure Barragray had a safe full of that kind of cash?”

  “It’s an assumption I’m considering. And that would give the absent Jean McCrea a nice motive for gunning the poor bastard,” replied the lieutenant. “Do you know anything about a cache of old money?”

  “Not a damn thing.”

  Drexler eyed him. “You sure you never talked to this woman—under any of her names?”

  “I didn’t, no,” lied Jake again.

  17

  GOMEZ SAID, “AI.” He leaned back in the pilot seat of his skycar, which was taking him through the bright clear morning. He closed his eyes, clenched his fists and groaned. Then, getting his emotions under control, he glowered at the dash panel vidphone. “Sí, okay. For the good of the agency, I’ll accept the call.”

  “What sort of pagan orgy were you involved in last night, Gomez, or, which I predicted, you recall, a long time ago, is your reckless lifestyle finally catching up with you? Well, no matter, let’s get down to business and start—Did you, if you don’t mind my pausing to inquire, have that many wrinkles under your bleary eyes the last time we met?”

  “They appeared shortly after our last encounter, Nat.”

  The slender redhaired reporter, Natalie Dent, nodded. “I understand, and I’m not at all flattered, since I’m aware, having been entangled with you, in a purely workaday sense, several times in the past, alas, that you’ve been trying to contact me numerous times over here in Spain and I’m assuming, knowing you all too well, that you’re hatching some duplicitous scheme that involves hoodwinking me in order to ensure its ultimate success.”

  “Twice. I phoned you merely twice.”

  “I have an important dinner date, strictly business, with a highplaced government official here in Madrid, Gomez. He’ll be calling for me in ten minutes, unless, like a great many of the people over here, he’s late,” the Newz reporter told him. “So, if you can cut out your usual circumlocutions and attempts to lead me up the garden path, and get right to the nubbin of what you’re trying to con me into doing for you, I’d, really and truly, appreciate it.” Lowering her voice, she added, “I’m using a tap-proof phone and I assume, dimwitted as you are, that you have the sense to use one
, too.”

  “Yes, cara,” he assured her. “Here’s what I want to chat about. Jake and I are working on a case that—”

  “If you’re going to go on at great length about the Peter Traynor murder, spare yourself, and me, the trouble. I already know all about that.”

  “Bueno. Now, then, cara, we may well want to expose certain of our upcoming findings to the public,” he said. “You’ve been helpful in that area in the past and it’s benefited your alleged career as well as—”

  “You’ve grown, if you’ll pardon my pointing this out, since I’m doing it in an absolutely constructive manner, even more longwinded, Gomez. I wonder, and maybe you’ll want to see your physician, if your already understaffed brain isn’t getting even more feeble as a result of your growing older and—”

  “Suppose, Nat, that in a few days we pass along some information about this case? Can you see to it that—”

  “What aspect exactly are you going on about? Does this have to do with the supply of outlaw Devlin Guns that was delivered to Janeiro Martinez’s rebels? I already know quite a lot about that.”

  “Momentito,” he requested. “You know for certain that the guns went to Martinez and not one of the other rebel groups in Spain?”

  She smiled. “Of course, didn’t you?”

  “We must, Natalie, compare notes on this whole setup and then—”

  “That sounds just wonderful, Gomez, since, as disrespectful and sneaky as you are, and even though you’re even seedier than in former times, I do, at my innermost core, have a certain amount of grudging affection for you. And I’d be an ungrateful wretch, if anybody uses that expression anymore, which I seriously doubt, if I didn’t feel a certain gratitude to you for helping me get the scoop up there on the New Hollywood satellite, which enabled me to reassume my rightful position in the media world as one of the top investigative reporters going,” she said. “Anytime you’re in Madrid, why, I’d love to get together. Perhaps, if you pick up the tab, we can even have lunch. I have to go now.”

  Gomez scowled at the blank screen. “Caramba,” he said as the skycar set him down on the Cosmos agency rooftop.

  Bascom said, “I’m glad you mentioned Spain, fellas.”

  “Planning to send us there?” inquired Jake.

  “I am indeed.” The agency head was perched on the edge of his desk with his saxophone resting across his lap.

  Gomez, slouching in a lime-colored bubblechair, said, “Is the Widder Traynor going to pay for the jaunt?”

  “Amy St. Mars, I’m pleased to say, is not the only well-fixed client interested in the Traynor killing.”

  “Are we, jefe, going to be working for one of your sneaky government agency chums again?”

  “Actually, Sidney my boy, for a pretty powerful, although unknown to the public, committee that oversees the actions of the intelligence agencies,” answered Bascom. “They want us to perform, for a tidy fee, a few simple chores for them.”

  Jake asked him, “Such as?”

  “Firstly, they’d like you to determine how and why the OCO is apparently engaged in helping to run illicit weapons from GLA to Spain,” the chief began. “Next, you’re to get a list of all the main participants engaged in this caper, whatever side they’re on.” Setting his sax aside, he left the desk. “Oh, and it would be nice—and bring us a substantial bonus—if you lads can get the Devlin Guns, every damned one of ’em, out of rebel hands and back into a safe storage spot.”

  Gomez smiled at his partner. “That shouldn’t take more than a couple days, do you think, amigo?”

  “Three at the most,” said Jake. “We can spend the rest of our time in Spain going to robot bullfights and learning to play the guitar.”

  “What was I just recently warning you guys about schoolboy buffoonery?” Bascom squatted next to a holostage. “It’s bad enough when you hooligans get shirty with clients of the caliber of Amy St. Mars. But bear in mind that we’ve got a very serious group of people running this great land of ours and it won’t do to razz ’em.”

  Gomez produced a rude noise.

  Jake said, “Are we allowed to hire some help over in Spain? Going up against Janeiro Martinez and his bunch is going to require some assistance, Walt.”

  “We’re, in a manner of speaking, working for the government. So spend whatever you have to.” Bascom tapped the keypad of the stage. “Here’s some information I rounded up from a connection at the ID Central back in Washington, DC.”

  An image of Janine Traynor, lifesize, materialized on the stage.

  “This is what she really looks like,” continued Bascom. “And her real name is Janine Kanter. She’s five foot four, weighs one hundred fifteen, has black hair, hazel eyes and is twenty five years old.”

  “Told me twenty one.”

  “Just one of her many bendings of the facts,” said Bascom, backing from the platform and studying the young woman. “Janine Kanter graduated from the University of NorCal’s Petaluma Campus five years ago with top grades. She majored in International Political Science and had a minor in Dramatic Arts. She worked for a year in Frisco at a theater run by a group calling itself Politiks Playhouse.”

  “She’s a darn good actress,” conceded Jake. “Who’s she working for now?”

  Bascom shook his head. “Seems to be freelancing in the political area and nobody is sure who’s backing her. She doesn’t go in for terrorism or assassination—or if she does, nobody’s ever caught her at it. What she’s been up to openly in recent times is aiding causes that some folks consider far too liberal and radical.”

  “Any examples?” asked Jake.

  “She helped run guns into New Brazil to aid the guerrillas who were trying to topple the Furtado dictatorship, for instance. She spent some time in the Angola backcountry with Father Wepman’s Christian Commandos.” Bascom bent, hitting another key and Janine was gone. “Things like that, Jake.”

  Jake was still looking at where her image had been. “You say there’s no indication she goes in for killing?”

  “Nothing on her record, not even a suspicion.”

  “This mujer sounds to me like she’s an idealist, in it for what she believes and not what she can make,” observed Gomez. “If her record up to now is any indication, she sure doesn’t sound like somebody who’d be working for the Teklords.”

  “And she probably didn’t kill any of the guys on our growing list of victims,” said Jake. “But she sure as hell must have had something to do with those smuggled guns. Especially since she seems to have been living with Dennis Barragray for the past few months.”

  Gomez shifted his position in his fat chair. “As I perceive this, Barragray must’ve been helping to get the guns to the rebels—for a handsome fee,” he said. “The lady must’ve wanted those guns to get to their destination, so she should have been happy about what this cabrón was up to. Therefore, she wouldn’t have sliced him up with a lazgun.”

  “Unless he sold the guns to the wrong rebel faction,” said Jake.

  Bascom cleared his throat. “You’re booked on a skyliner flight that departs for Madrid at three this very afternoon,” he informed them. “I suggest that you save all further speculations until you’re trotting around on Spanish soil.”

  18

  THE SCHOOL DAY had long since ended at the SoCal State Policy Academy and the second-level corridor was empty. Outside the oneway window the misty evening showed. Dan moved rapidly along, came to the door marked Background & ID and tapped on it quietly.

  The heavy metal door hissed open.

  “Geez, you took your sweet time getting here.” A robot, large, wide and copperplated, popped up out of a wicker rocker.

  “It takes a while to get to the Santa Monica Sector from our place,” said Dan, slipping inside the big room. “You said it was important that you talk to me, Rex. So?”

  Rex/GK-30 lumbered over to the nearest wall, which was covered, floor to ceiling, with rows of infoscreens. “I was sitting and rocking here on my
toke this evening—being both the librarian and the night watchman means I got a lot of time on my hands, so to speak. Anyhow, Daniel, I got to thinking about this latest case your old man is working on.”

  “How’d you find out about that?”

  Rex’s metallic eyelids clicked a few times. “Hey, didn’t Molly tell you she’d been—”

  “Molly Fine’s been consulting you again?”

  “That Molly, yes. She wanted some material on the assorted goniffs and lowlifes connected with this opus.”

  Dan sighed. “No, she hasn’t gotten around to mentioning that as yet.”

  “She’s an exceptional skirt,” said the robot. “Feisty, independent. Not your standard confiding-type sweetheart.”

  “Molly’s not exactly my sweetheart.”

  “Applesauce,” remarked Rex. “You’re smitten and vice versa.” He pointed a coppery forefinger at one of the midlevel screens. It flashed alive. “To while away the lonely hours, I started digging deeper into the lives and times of some of the central characters in this mishmash. When I got around to the late Dr. Garret Devlin, I encountered something interesting.”

  “That can’t be very important, Rex. Devlin’s been dead and gone for years.”

  Rex/GK-30 gave a rattling chuckle. “Maybe yes, maybe no, kiddo.”

  On the activated screen a fullface and profile shot of a pudgy, balding man of about fifty appeared side by side. “Is this Devlin?”

  “Himself. Out-of-shape gink, by the looks of him. With proper exercise you can add years to your life, you flesh-and-blood types.”

  “You were hinting that he isn’t dead? That’s impossible, Rex.”

  The photos went away, replaced by printed copy that was slowly scrolling upward across the screen. “Here you have a dull and tedious account of the sky-tram crash that was supposed to have put out his lights.”

  “Yeah, and it says right here—” Dan tapped a line of text that was slowly climbing by. “Says a DNA scan of the burnt remains positively established that the body was that of Garret Devlin, age fifty three. So?”

  “Feast your glims on the next document.”