by Neil Hunter
“All this is great,” he said. “But it isn’t giving us a line on Brak’s whereabouts.”
“Goes with the territory,” Brink said. “Major bust always generates paperwork. Tracking fugitives takes time.”
“The longer it takes, the more likely he’ll disappear.”
Janek appeared in the doorway. “Just had a call from the highway patrol out near Quinn’s Crossing. They’ve located the Pontiac.”
“But no Brak?” Cade said.
Janek shook his head. “The car was burned out. Somebody had doused it in gas and set it alight.” The cybo entered the office. “There was a corpse inside. Burned up pretty badly, but they’ve got an ID. It’s Tate Jessup.”
“Sounds odd,” Brink said.
“Wait till you hear the rest,” Janek said. “There were a couple of slugs in Jessup’s back. Same caliber as the gun you used when firing at the car. Remember we saw it go off course for a few seconds.”
“You must have hit him hard,” Brink said.
“Not hard enough to kill him. He died from a bullet between the eyes. Different caliber.”
“Who...?”
“Think about it, Jack. Brak and Jessup on the run. The last thing Brak would need to be hung with is a badly wounded man. What the hell could he do with Jessup? Take him to the nearest emergency hospital? The man’s on his way to a new life, ready to start up his drug empire somewhere on the West Coast. He’s already proved he won’t let anything stand in his way. Everyone’s expendable—even his enforcer, once he’s outlived his usefulness.”
Brink shook his head. “So the son of a bitch puts a slug in the guy’s head, torches the car and takes off.”
“Trying to cover his tracks. Jessup dead means he can’t do any talking.”
“What a mother,” Brink said. He put down the mug of coffee. “Janek, where did that report say they found the car?”
“Quinn’s Crossing. It’s about two hundred miles west of here. Some little whistle-stop farming community.”
“Yeah, I know it,” Brink said. He crossed to the large map pinned to the wall behind the desk. “Here. Quinn’s Crossing is right next to the main railroad link.”
“Does that report give any indication when all this happened?” Cade asked.
“Not yet,” Janek said. “But if I put through a call, maybe they can have it by the time we get there.”
“Jack, Mid Town is all yours,” Cade said.
“We’ve enough to keep us busy for a couple of days,” Brink said. “Locating that cache of Thunder Crystals has cinched everything.”
“Thanks for your help,” Cade said. “Can you fix us with a ride so we can pick up our chopper?”
“Sure.” Brink scooped up a key from the desk. “Why don’t you take Thornton’s truck? He isn’t going to be needing it any longer.”
Janek tooled the powerful truck along the highway. Mid Town slipped out of sight in the dust clouding up from the rear wheels. It was an hour after daylight. The sun was already turning the new day hot.
“What’s bugging you?” the cyborg asked after a lengthy silence.
“That damn chopper,” Cade said. “I want to know who and why.”
“I’ve been thinking about it myself. The only answer I came up with was Brak’s ex-partners.”
“Or some new players,” Cade suggested.
“For example?”
“Brak’s partners are pissed off, sure. But are they mad enough to want to kill Thornton? The guy who ran Mid Town for them? And Dekker?”
“So they found out the pair had sold them down the river. That was bound to give them enough incentive, Thomas.”
“Maybe. But they’d have to be damn certain before they did it. And from what we’ve heard, Lorenzo and Shultz have been too busy saving their own hides to do much about Brak the last couple of days.”
“You said new players. Who, exactly?”
“The people who can’t afford to have the finger pointed at them. Now the Outfit’s been broken up, they’ll want out with their reputations unstained. And they won’t be too happy about Brak running off with their cut of the loot.”
“The city financiers. I think you might have a point there, T.J. They won’t feel happy until the whole organization has been wiped out. A total cover-up.”
“And that could include Lorenzo and Shultz,” Cade added.
He reached for the handset and punched in a number.
Braddock’s voice grated over the line. “Yeah?”
“Cade. I need a question answered.”
“Shoot.”
“Any reports on Lorenzo or Shultz?”
“Matter of fact, yes,” Braddock said. “They’re both dead. We got the report a while ago. Explains why we couldn’t find them. Apparently they were found together in Lorenzo’s car upstate. Parked near a deserted gas station. The car was riddled with cannon fire. And so were Lorenzo and Shultz. The way the report reads, they must have been waiting for someone. There was no sign of any disturbance. The angle of the cannon fire suggests the attack was from the air. We figure somebody set them up, T.J. Arranged a meet, then shot them to death. Looks like Brak got his wish. Now all his partners are dead.”
“Might be what he wished, but I don’t think he fixed this particular hit,” Cade said. “We’ve got a wild card in the deck. He’s already showed his hand. We had Brak, the local renegade police chief and the head man of Mid Town ready for transportation last night. Before we could take them away, we were hit with cannon fire from a chopper.”
“You guys okay?”
“Sure,” Cade replied. “Except our pride got dented. We ended up with a bunch of dead prisoners and Loren Brak running free and clear.”
“You sure it wasn’t Brak’s people freeing him?”
“Not the way that chopper was spraying us with cannon shells. They wanted us all dead. Brak included.”
“Any notion who?”
“Suspicions. But I need more proof.”
Braddock sighed. “I’ll leave it with you, T.J. What’s your next move?”
“We’ve got a line on Brak, so we’re following it up. On our way to pick up our chopper, then we’re heading west. Be in touch.”
Cade hung up the handset. “Janek, for Christ’s sake put the pedal to the floor. You’re driving like we were on a Sunday outing.”
The cybo responded. The truck leaped forward, burning rubber.
Cade stared through the fly-speckled windshield. He was thinking about three dead Justice marshals and one dead enforcer by the name of Tate Jessup. At least that part of the deal had been settled. Jessup might have died at someone else’s hand, but at least he’d paid the price. It was only satisfactory in a distant way, as far as Cade was concerned, but he realized that under the circumstances it was the best he was liable to get.
The highway patrolman who had found the car took Cade and Janek to view the burned-out Pontiac. It had been parked in a hollow off the highway a couple of miles outside Quinn’s Crossing.
The officer behind the cruiser’s wheel was a lean, sandy-haired youngster, more than eager to help in what he saw as a major incident.
“She was burning pretty fierce when I rolled by,” he explained. “Must have been going for a good while. Too damn hot for me to get near. All I could do was call in the fire department, then sit and wait.”
“Were there any reports of unusual incidents last night?” Janek asked. “Gunshots?”
“No, sir, Marshal Janek,” the patrolman said. “Not likely to be out here. There aren’t any houses out this way. Gets pretty lonely after dark. We wouldn’t have spotted the burning car if’n it hadn’t been on my regular patrol.”
“Stolen cars? Rentals?” Janek asked.
“No, sir. I checked that myself.”
Cade was checking a map of the area. “It’s more than likely Brak headed for the railroad. If he could pick up a local, he’d be able to reach a main line station and jump one of the cross-country flyers.”
“I’m going for that,” Cade said. “It’d be Brak’s easiest way out. He’d go for the ride that attracted the least attention. He’s got us chasing him and this guy in the chopper. He wants to hit L.A. and lose himself.”
The highway patrolman said, “You sayin’ he wants to go to Los Angeles? Hell, he must be crazy.”
“If he is, we’re just as bad,” Janek remarked, “‘cause that’s exactly where we have to go to catch him.”
“Nobody said the job had to be fun all the time,” Cade remarked.
There was a message waiting for Cade to call Jack Brink when they got back their chopper.
“T.J., we got something that could tie in to the hit last night.”
“Shoot.”
“We found the chopper, abandoned about five miles the other side of Mid Town. It took a number of shots through a pressure line. We found tire tracks nearby. Must have been a pickup car waiting for them. It headed cross-country. We followed, but the trail petered out after a few miles.”
“Get anything from the chopper?”
“The one bright spot, T.J. We found some prints inside. I’m running them through Washington Central right now. Soon as I get a readout, I’ll let you have it.”
“Appreciate that, Jack.”
“What about your burnout?”
“Confirmation that the body belongs to Jessup. No sign of Brak, but we’re pretty certain he’s on his way to L.A. By train.”
“He’s nothing if not versatile.”
“I’d go for a pain in the ass, Jack.”
“Talk to you later, T.J.”
An hour later, with the helicopter fueled up, Cade and Janek were back in the air. Janek punched in a course for Los Angeles via the Washington Central computer. Once it was locked into the chopper’s system, Janek keyed in the autopilot and sat back in his reclining seat. He closed his eyes, flicking through the radio dial, and relaxed as he picked up a jazz broadcast.
Cade picked up the handset and punched in a number. “T. J. Cade,” he said when the connection was made. “Patch me through to the L.A. department office.”
“One moment,” the female operative in Washington Central advised.
Cade leaned back, scanning the chopper’s instrument layout. The craft was maintaining its course at a steady altitude. The computer’s sensors, situated on the chopper’s outer skin, monitored any changes and relayed them to the inbuilt program, which made the necessary changes to the flight pattern. Extreme changes would activate a warning, both visual and audible, bringing the human—cyborg, in Janek’s case-pilot back to the controls.
“Marshal Cade? This is Hal Jordan, L.A. Justice Department. What can I do to help you?”
Cade sketched in the background to the case. “Right now Brak is heading your way. I’m certain he’s coming in by train. But knowing the way he thinks, he could ditch that and change to something else for the last part of the journey.”
“I’ll pull Brak’s file and issue a search-and-seize order for him. We’ve a good number of enforcement agencies out here. I’ll ask for cooperation and have them go on lookout. All we can do is cover every means of entry into California and try to pick Brak up before he reaches Los Angeles. If he does hit the city, it’s going to be a lot harder. You familiar with this burg?”
“Only by what I see on TV.”
Jordan laughed. “You’re in for a shock, Cade. California’s a hell of a place. It’s great but it’s crazy, too. Hope you enjoy your stay. Let me know when you arrive. I’ll assign a couple of my people to give you an assist. In the meantime I’ll put the word out on the street. See if anyone has heard about this new drug setup.”
Cade replaced the handset. He glanced at Janek, still seemingly lost in his jazz music.
“California?” the cyborg muttered in disgust, showing he had been listening to Cade’s conversation. “Fantasy land, T.J. Full of oranges, movie studios and crazy people.”
“And now Loren Brak.”
“There’s a bright side to it,” Janek said. “They’re getting us, too.”
Chapter Eleven
Los Angeles
They entered Los Angeles airspace midmorning the following day. Within minutes the L.A. Air Control Department came through on the radio.
“Please identify yourself. We have you on-screen. Your registration is out of state.”
“L.A. Control, this craft is registered to the Justice Department, New York City.” Janek activated the computer code that would flash their official ED on the air controller’s screen.
“Acknowledged. Welcome to the Los Angeles area. Have you a destination? Or would you like a guide drone to assist?”
“Thank you, no,” Janek said. “We’re headed for the Justice Department at New Parker Center. They have already been notified of our arrival.”
“Thank you for your cooperation,” the controller said.
“Well, they’re very polite,” Janek said.
As the chopper swept in over the vast sprawl of Los Angeles, the city’s immense size showed itself.
L.A. lay beneath a soft haze made semitransparent by the sun. The city seemed to go on forever in every direction, and as Janek took the chopper down they were able to make out the intricate web of freeways and interconnecting ramps. The L.A. transport system, developed over the decades, gave substance to the myth of the California car cult. Despite the advances of air cruisers, the Californians still revered their ground-based vehicles, which had proliferated by the thousands. Land had been claimed by the government from time to time in order to add yet more freeways. If extra land wasn’t available, then new highways were built over existing ones, creating multilayer systems. This happened frequently within the city areas, where freeways curved and rose between and over whole city blocks.
Even the skies over L.A. were crowded. Advertising drones, floating platforms carrying huge vid-screens, air-lane markers—they all cluttered the hazy emptiness. Air cruisers of various sizes and shapes slid back and forth.
It was all watched over by the ever-present LAPD air cruisers and helicopters.
Dropping down toward the imposing, reconstructed New Parker Center, the Justice cops viewed the L.A. skyline with mixed feelings. The California architecture was way ahead of anything New York had to offer, but Cade felt it lacked something. There were too many cold steel and plas-glass constructions for Cade’s liking. New York, for all its advances, still maintained a great deal of its old character. Los Angeles, if it had ever had character, appeared to have abandoned it for the pristine look of the electronic age.
California had long since succumbed to the lure of the microchip. It intruded into every aspect of life, benefiting in many instances, but dominating in others. Automation was the name of the game, spearheaded by the vast Japanese-owned mega corporations that had increased their dominance by leaps and bounds since the turn of the century. Money and power, always at the forefront of California dreaming, had tipped the scales, creating a state that relied heavily on the wonders of electronic aids and devices.
Janek touched down on the vast rooftop helipad of the Parker Center. The radio chattered and warbled to itself, an array of speech patterns running through complicated checks and analysis of the helicopter’s condition. By the time Cade and Janek climbed from the chopper, it was surrounded by a collection of automated machines, intent on fully servicing and maintaining its efficiency.
“I’m beginning to dislike this place already,” Janek grumbled, stepping clear of the whirring, busy machines.
“Stay with it, partner,” Cade said. “It can only get worse,” he added with a smirk.
They were confronted by a slender, gleaming silver android. The droid inclined its naked, polished skull.
“Marshal Cade. Marshal Janek. Please follow me. I will take you to meet Hal Jordan.” Its voice w
as low and gentle, the words clear and polite.
The droid turned and walked away, gesturing with a slender, chromed arm. “I hope you had a pleasant trip. Flying these days can be such a strain, don’t you agree?”
Cade saw the disgusted look on Janek’s face. The cyborg hated the kind of sycophancy demonstrated by the hospitality droid. Service droids in general, who had a single function—to please humans in whatever capacity their programming instructed—went against Janek’s independent line of thought. Even though he accepted that they couldn’t do anything else because of their design, he felt that type of behavior denigrated all droids.
An express elevator took them down to the Justice Department floor of the spacious building. It had been built on the site of the original Parker Center, expanded to cover almost six times the area, and now incorporated half a dozen law-enforcement agencies within its miles of corridors and acres of floor space.
The L.A. Justice Department looked more like a spacious, modern hotel than a law department. The order and near silence of the place were nothing like the hectic atmosphere of the New York offices. And the personnel all looked like TV stars. Everyone had a tan and seemed to be blond and lean.
“They get all these out of the same mold?” Janek asked.
“Hal Jordan’s office, gentlemen,” the droid said as it opened the door and ushered them in. It waited until the door had closed before falling into immobility, waiting for its next set of instructions.
Hal Jordan was as tall as Cade. He had light blond hair above a strong, tanned, open face. “Sit down,” he said, indicating the comfortable re-diners.
“You got anything for us?” Cade asked.
Jordan smiled. He had been warned about Cade’s direct, no-nonsense approach.
“We’ve done our best, Cade,” he said, reaching for a file. He pulled out a few sheets, glancing at them briefly to acquaint himself with the contents before passing them to Cade.
Janek leaned over to scan the sheets as Cade worked through them. The cyborg had completed reading them well ahead of his human partner.