“Not tonight.”
“What, then?” asked the detective.
“The only thing I’d trust is the chicken soup.”
Shaking his head, Gomez said, “Nope, I’m not in the mood for that this evening. Just bring me a cup of nearcaf for now.”
“A real spender I got here.”
As the waiter shuffled away from the small ground-level booth, Jake arrived and slid in opposite his partner. “Have a profitable day?”
“Fairly so—and quite scary at one point. And you?”
“Memorable.” Jake filled him in on his encounters with Dillinger, Wolfe Bosco and the young man who’d followed him to the Sherman Oaks Sector.
After he finished, Gomez asked, “How’d you know the lad wasn’t the creator of the Dillinger andy?”
“Because, Sid, I happen to know who the true owner and operator of that Banx-tapping operation is,” he replied, grinning. “I made it my business to find out quite a while ago, but I’ve never let on to Dillinger. Whoever sent this kid to get rid of me was obviously eavesdropping electronically on my meeting in the Palm Springs Sector today, where I kidded with the andy about being ignorant as to who was behind him.”
“And this cholo had a lazgun in his reticule?”
Jake nodded. “Yeah, I found it in his briefcase after I stungunned the lad.”
“Am I correct in assuming, amigo, that this assassin turned out to have no idea who actually hired him? He’s a freelance murderer and was contacted anonymously, paid a fee and prepped on what to say and do.”
“That’s my boy, yeah,” agreed Jake. “I turned him over to the SoCal cops and then ran a make on him. He works out of the San Diego Sector, has four arrests but no convictions and his name is Clare Victor Hillman.”
Gomez said, “Gracias,” as the greenclad waiter plopped a cup of nearcaf down in front of him.
“Don’t thank me until after you taste it.” The waiter scowled at Jake. “You just here to try out the seating arrangements?”
“I’ll have the blintzes.”
“Coming right up.”
Gomez tugged at the side of his moustache. “Before Dillinger became nothing more than a defunct mechanism sprawled upon the burning sands of the desert, he claimed that there was a transfer of an enormous amount of dinero from certain interests in Spain into the coffers of Gunsmiths, Ltd., right?”
“Into a fund that certain folks connected with Gunsmiths can access,” said Jake. “Keep in mind, Sid, that we don’t as yet know what the money was paid for.”
“Devlin Guns would be my guess,” said his partner. “Ah, and speaking of that little dingus—let me describe to you the demo I got from Barragray.” He went on to tell Jake about what he’d seen on the holostage in the executive’s office.
“That’s a rough one,” observed Jake when he’d finished. “Hate to think there are hundreds of those floating around. Particularly since they may be in the hands of the Zabicas Cartel by now.”
“It’s definitely kindly old Teklord Carlos Zabicas who is the recipient of the missing weapons?”
“Probably, Sid, although Dillinger—just before he ceased to be—was implying that, while Zabicas is the customer, he wasn’t the original source of the money.”
“If Dillinger was right—and considering that they knocked him off to keep him from giving you more colorful details, we have to conclude he was—then the trail doesn’t end in Madrid.”
“We’ve got a couple of other informants who can tap bank records,” said Jake. “I’ll hit one of them tomorrow. It’ll more than likely turn out that newer, stronger barriers have been put up between us and the information we want—but I’ll give it a try.”
Gomez tried his nearcaf. “Ai, muy malo, says our dining-out critic,” he remarked. “Barragray, by the way, assured me that nothing was missing, nobody was on the take and that the late lamented Pedro Traynor was simply one more goofy Tekkie. From what you found out, the hombre was lying.”
“Probably so. Although it’s possible that Dillinger was fed some fake information and that the Tek money never ended up with anyone connected to Gunsmiths.”
“Naw, something has to be going on wrong with those Gunsmiths pendejos,” Gomez said. “Too many people and mechanisms involved with them are biting the dust.”
“That’s what—Excuse me a minute.” The band of his wristphone had begun contracting and expanding. “Yeah?”
“It’s Dan,” came the voice of his son. “I think you’d better get home—if you can.”
“More trouble?”
“Not exactly, but there’s someone here who’s very anxious to talk to you and pass along some information.”
“Who?”
“She says her name won’t mean anything,” answered Dan. “But to tell you she’s the one who owned and operated Dillinger.”
15
BEV KENDRICKS SAID, “About time we had some lights.”
The windows in her office blanked, light blossomed overhead and at floor level.
The black young woman sitting on the other side of her desk said, “You were right about Jabb Marx.”
“I really wasn’t sure,” admitted the blonde detective. “That’s why I put you on him, Katie.”
“Well, Jabb is most certainly not working solely for us,” said Katie McTell. “I’ll give you the stuff I got on him by doing a Banx tap in a while. First off, though, jefe, I—”
“Where’d you pick up that jefe?”
“Jake’s partner, Gomez. He always refers to Bascom that way.”
Smiling, Bev said, “You’ll pick up bad habits if you hang around with him too much.”
“I certainly hope so,” said Kate. “As I was saying, chief, I picked up some interesting stuff at the hospital. Look on yonder wall for a minute, will you?”
On one of the large rectangular vidscreens pictures now appeared. It was silent footage, showing the busy lobby of the Santa Monica Emergency Center. The picture froze and zoomed in on a lean, tanned man who had been heading up a ramp.
“I managed, at no cost to the expense account, to get a copy of the secsystem tapes at SMEC.” Getting up, Katie went over to tap the image of the tan man. “This guy visited Jabb and stayed nearly fifteen minutes.”
“I don’t recognize the guy,” said Bev.
“Fortunately, I sure do. There’s some doubt as to his true name, but he’s known as Gardner Munsey to the intelligence community.”
Bev went over to stand beside her operative. “Munsey is somebody I’ve heard of,” she said. “An agent of the US Office of Clandestine Operations, isn’t he?”
“Right, and Munsey specializes in troubleshooting—and, sometimes, in cleaning up after operations get screwed up. Sort of like the guy who follows the elephants in a parade with a big broom and a bucket.” Katie moved a few feet back from the wall-screen. “Troubleshooting, as defined by the OCO, includes arranging assassinations.”
“So he might be involved in the death of Wes Flanders.” Bev went back to her desk. “As well as Peter Traynor.”
“Okay, but if that’s true, what’s he using Jabb Marx for?”
“To keep informed on how close we’re getting to solving the Flanders case,” Bev answered. “And to incapacitate Jake. They obviously want to sideline him and keep him from working on the Traynor business.”
“According to the money trail, Jabb’s been getting a fat government subsidy for over a month.”
“Meaning the guy was recruited after we went to work on the Flanders case.”
Kate sat down again and said, “I heard you chastising Jake for working Jabb over. That was an act, huh?”
“I was pretty sure Jabb had provoked Jake into a fight,” answered Bev. “It’s my guess he anticipated being on the winning side. Whoever’s running him at the OCO wanted to stop Jake but, apparently, not kill him.”
“It sure didn’t work out that way for Jabb.”
“No, Jake is pretty tough—and extremely competent.�
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“Which is why you like him.”
“But Jake didn’t have to be so brutal in what he did,” Bev continued. “He’s got an unruly temper—and he’s still much too preoccupied with the death of Beth Kittridge. So, even though I was putting on an act for Jabb’s benefit, some of what I said to Jake was what I really felt. Does that make sense?”
“To me,” said Katie. “You’re going to have to tell Jake what we’ve found out about the OCO’s being involved.”
“I will, yes,” said Bev. “After I explain why I was so bitchy with him.”
The girl in the wheelchair was thirteen years old. She was thin and pale and wore a dark pullover and dark slax. The chair was large and chromeplated and had obviously been expertly augmented and adapted from a standard Mechanix International model.
As Jake entered the living room of his condo, he grinned at her. “Hi, Jimmy,” he said. “This is my partner, Sid Gomez.”
“You’re a heck of a lot smarter than I thought,” Jimmy Bristol admitted to him. “How long’ve you known who I was?”
“Since shortly after I started using Dillinger as a source of information.” Jake sat in a tin slingchair. “I like to know who’s behind what I’m being told. To make sure I’m not being fed something from some Tek cartel or a rival detective agency that’s bent on leading me astray.”
Gomez joined Dan on the sofa. “And this niña is the only daughter of Joseph S. Bristol, noted plutocrat and a very highly placed vice prez of the Banx operation.”
“I don’t live with him any longer,” said Jimmy.
“You learned a lot about the inner workings of the Banx setup before you moved in with your mother last year,” said Jake.
“That’s because I had a lot of time on my hands,” she told him. “When you’re crippled and ugly, most people don’t want to have anything to do with you. Not even when you’re as rich as I am.”
Jake nodded at his partner. “You’re a top-seeded detective, Sid. What does the evidence convey to you?”
Eyeing the ceiling, Gomez said, “Judging by the clues, I’d say we’ve got a bad case of self-pity, amigo.”
“Hey, the poor kid’s not faking,” said Dan, scowling at Gomez and then his father. “She really does have serious problems.”
“Like everybody else.” To the crippled girl Jake said, “If you’re through trying to impress us with your sad lot, suppose we get to why you’re here.”
“I’m sorry I came.” She glared at him. “I had something important to pass along to you. And, after what happened to Dillinger, I figured you were in serious danger, too.” She touched a button on the chair arm and the chair started rolling for the way out.
“Stay awhile,” suggested Jake.
“Why? So you can tell me what a complete mess I am?”
“We’ve had a lot of conversations, even if they weren’t face-to-face,” he reminded her. “You know what I think of you, Jimmy?”
“That I’m funny looking and—”
“That you’re terrifically bright and gifted,” he corrected. “Once you graduate out of this poor-little-me mode, I imagine you’ll accomplish quite a lot.”
“Pep talk,” she muttered, thin fingers drumming on the chair arm. “Sermon.”
“You might utilize your talent,” added Gomez, “to do something a mite more ennobling than dealing in bootleg financial information, chiquita.”
“Oh really?” She made a faint chuckling noise inside her narrow chest. “You guys both bought a lot of that bootleg info from me and Dillinger.”
“That’s business,” said Jake. “I’ll buy information from just about anybody and I don’t care much about how they came by it.”
“Then why make an exception with me?”
Dan said, “I think I see what he’s trying to do, Miss Bristol.”
“Good for you. He’s your father, you listen to him.”
“In his blunt, heavy-handed way, he’s trying to get you to forget about your personal problems and concentrate on getting on with—”
“Personal problems? What kind of halfassed euphemism is that? I’ve got a defective spine and not even all the Bristol money could fix it right. It bought me a nice wheelchair, but—”
“Suppose Sid and I take a leisurely stroll along the beach?” suggested Jake. “You think you’ll be in the mood to talk by the time we get back?”
Jimmy touched a button on the chair arm again. The big silvery chair started rolling for the doorway again. Then the chair halted when she was still several feet from leaving. Slowly, the metal chair did an about-face and carried her back to the center of the room again. “You really do like me, don’t you?” she asked Jake in a surprised and perplexed tone.
“Quite a bit, yeah,” he said.
“Me, too, niña,” volunteered Gomez. “And, as one of the top-seeded experts on women in the whole state, I can assure you that you fall into the cute category.”
“Latino hogwash,” she said, starting to smile a little.
“Of all the brands of hogwash available at the moment,” the curlyhaired detective said, “Latino is the best. Much better for you and no serious side effects.”
She sighed out a slow breath. “I’ll tell you something,” she said to all of them. “I’m sort of scared for myself, too. They tumbled to what I was using Dillinger for and they tracked him to the hideout in the Palm Springs Sector. I was really upset when they disabled the poor guy.”
“You can construct another Dillinger,” said Jake.
“Sure, but it’d take months,” the thin girl said. “Besides, as Gomez pointed out, it may well be time for me to move on to something else.”
Jake asked her, “Do you have something else to tell me?”
She nodded her head. “After they hurt Dillinger, immediately after and before I started getting uneasy, I was just simply mad,” Jimmy began. “So I used the equipment I keep at home in the Westwood Sector to do some more poking,” she explained, leaning forward in the chair and gripping both the chrome plated arms. “It was very difficult, because they’d erected all sorts of new barriers.” She paused, smiling with satisfaction and pride. “But, hell, I’m better at this than just about anyone.”
“Even so, it’s probably a good idea to quit annoying these folks for now, Jimmy.”
“I probably will,” she said. “Anyway, Jake, here’s what I found out. Carlos Zabicas, of the big Spanish Tek cartel, made the arrangements with Barragray to get a shipment of Devlin Guns to him in Madrid.”
“Chihuahua,” commented Gomez.
“But the money, not all of it anyhow, didn’t come from Zabicas at all, though it was all filtered through him,” Jimmy continued. “The Zabicas Cartel put up just ten million dollars. The rest of the dough …” She paused. “The rest of the dough came from the Weber Pharmaceutical Company of New Baltimore, Maryland.”
Jake said, “Who’re they a front for?”
She gave an exasperated snort. “Honestly, Jake, I thought everybody knew that the OCO used the company to funnel payoff money overseas.”
Gomez sat up. “So we got the Office of Clandestine Operations in on this, too?”
Jake was thoughtful. “Why is the OCO helping a Teklord acquire a substantial supply of deadly weapons?”
“Suppose, amigo, that Zabicas wants those nasty gadgets for somebody else?”
“Right, yeah,” said Jake. “Spain is having a lot of trouble right now. President Garcia has been increasingly tough on the Tek cartels that operate in his country.”
“And at least two powerful rebel terrorist groups are working to topple the prez,” added Gomez. “Could our pal Zabicas be counting on the rebels, once in power, being much more cordial to the Tek trade?”
“That’s got to be it.”
“A nice scenario, guys,” conceded Jimmy. “Trouble is, how the hell are you going to prove it all? Besides which, I thought you two were supposed to be solving the murder of Peter Traynor?”
Jake stood
up, thrust both hands deep into his trouser pockets. “It’s more than likely that Barragray of Gunsmiths, Ltd., had Pete killed, using Tek goons to help him. But I doubt we can ever put together a case that’ll get to court.”
“There are, fortunately,” said Gomez, smiling, “other ways to assure that Amy St. Mars and her offspring won’t be harmed.”
“Yeah, just what I’ve been thinking about,” said Jake. “If we can throw a spanner in the works of their whole operation—expose it and get everything out in the open—then they’d have no reason to want to silence Amy.”
“We’ll have to move fast, though.”
“I know of a way to—”
“Ai, caramba.”
“What’s wrong?”
“The easiest way to do this is to bring my old nemesis, Natalie Dent of the Newz vidnet organization, into this at some point fairly soon,” he realized. “She can help us gather facts and, when we know exactly what’s going on, she’ll get it onto the Newz network and tell the whole world. She’d done that for us before.”
Jake grinned. “Better get in touch with Natalie and set up a meeting for early tomorrow.”
Gomez made a pained face. “I keep trying to avoid that redheaded scourge and yet—”
“I think,” said Dan, “that you really like her, Sid. It seems to me you protest just a little too—”
“Por favor, don’t try to tell me that I really am fond of that woman.” Groaning slightly, he made his way over to the vidphone in the corner of the room.
Jake told Jimmy, “We’ll escort you home.”
“Good, that’ll make me feel considerably safer.”
“I’ve already put a Cosmos team to watching your place in the Westwood Sector. One of them tagged you over here, I imagine.”
Her eyes widened. “You really are smarter than I thought.”
“Apparently,” he conceded.
Gomez came back from the phone. “Muy interesante.”
“What’s interesting?”
“I couldn’t get through to Nat right now, because she’s overseas on an assignment and is in the field at the moment,” he said. “Seems she’s covering a story in Madrid, Spain.”
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