by Ron Goulart
“I know a mansion in the Bel Air Sector. Vacant at the moment.”
“We don’t need room or a lavish setup, Hildy.”
“Be nice, though. Huge bedroom, big indoor pool. Tennis and airball courts. Complete movie and vid theater, gourmet kitchen the size of—”
“Okay, we’ll go first cabin for your sake,” Jake said. “I’ll fix Harlow Titts so he can’t follow us for a few hours and then we’ll—”
“Jake try not breathing on me until that gum wears out,” she said. “There are a few truths I don’t want to have to confide in you.”
“Oh, so?”
CHAPTER 5
THE HOUSE DIDN’T START to sink immediately.
It was a multidome houseboat actually, moored off the Malibu Sector coast. Jake had parked his rented landcar on the simulated beach at a few minutes shy of noon.
The imitation sand crunched underfoot as he made his way to the plaz gangplank.
“Stop in your tracks, sir!” A British-tinged voice came booming at him.
Jake retracted the foot which had been about to step on the pastel plank. The plank had commenced giving off a loud, unsettling sizzle.
Narrowing his eyes, he scanned the licorice-hued front of the gently bobbing houseboat. “I’m Pace,” he said toward the opaque door.
“If you wouldn’t mind, sir, you might give the arranged-upon password.”
“From here?” He was a good 50 feet from the door and the concealed speaker.
“It’s a bit safer this way, if you don’t object to very much.”
Sighing briefly, Jake said, “My mama done told me, when I was in knee pants, my mama done told me, Son, a woman’s a two-face, a worrisome thing who’ll lead you to sing the blues in the night. Okay?”
“Forgive me, sir, I didn’t catch all of that. Could you, with out too much difficulty to yourself, repeat it?”
Jake cupped his hands and used them as a megaphone. “MY MAMA DONE TOLD ME, WHEN I WAS IN KNEE PANTS, MY MAMA DONE TOLD ME, SON, A WOMAN’S A TWO-FACE, A WORRISOME THING WHO’LL LEAD YOU TO SING THE BLUES IN THE NIGHT.”
“Very good, sir. The best reading of those lines I’ve heard in many a—”
“Suppose we discuss the merits of my performance inside.”
“Oh, yes. Terribly sorry, sir. Come in, do.”
The gangway ceased sizzling.
Jake walked across it.
The heavy door inched open.
“I’m Metz, sir,” announced the chubby cyborg who was stepping aside to allow Jake to enter. “During the lifetime of the late and most unfortunate Mr. Kazee, I served as butler, valet and, I don’t think I flatter myself when I add, confidant.”
“Good for you.” Jake entered the floating livingpod.
Metz shut the door and activated the multilox with his metallic right arm. “Permit me to say, sir, that I have followed the exploits of you and your estimable wife with keen interest over the past few years in the popular media.” He moved to the center of the circular room. “I regret she could not accompany you on this particular—”
“She’s elsewhere.” Frowning, Jake nodded toward an arched doorway. “What’s that hum?”
“Hum, sir?”
Jake moved closer to the doorway. “Coming from what ought to be, from the floor plans I’ve seen, the bedpod.”
Metz raised his metal and flesh hands up to pat his plump reddish cheeks. “I fear I’ve grown quite used to it, sir. That would be Sergeant O’Breen.”
“Who’s he with?”
“The Greater Los Angeles Police Murder Squad, sir.”
Jake strode across the see-through floor, ignoring the almost clean Pacific underfoot. “Why the hell are you here, O’Breen?”
O’Breen took a cigarette from between his lips, sneered at it and stubbed it in an abalone shell ashtray already packed with an assortment of other butts. “Holy shit, it’s Jake Pace himself. Hey, I’m a great fan of you and your—”
“Nobody told me you’d still be nosing around here.”
O’Breen was a tall, hefty man of thirty-seven, wearing a two-piece blue work suit. The plaz form-hug chair he was sitting in had been dragged close to a portable vidscreen. The screen was hooked up to a small chromed vidcassette player. All around the room were neowood cabinets, most of them jammed with cassettes.
“I’ve been here for a frigging week,” said O’Breen forlornly. “Do you realize, despite what the manuals and all the edcasts try to tell you, there aren’t all that many ways to screw? Either he’s on top and she’s on the bottom or she’s on top and he’s on the bottom. For a guy who had an audience of 140,000,000 on a good night, he wasn’t too imaginative. Course I suppose a lot of celebs are dull in their private lives. Couple days back I monitored a caz which bid fair to enliven the drab routine. Kazee came bounding into this boudoir clad as Hunneker the Jungle Man. Decked out, don’t you know, in a leopard-skin loincloth. That is a leopard, isn’t it, with the spots? Right. So he is Hunneker and this terrific-looking Chinese quiff is playing his mate, also clad in spots. Well, they swing from vines that he’s got dangling from the light strips up there, put up special for the evening. I perked up, expecting something new and different. Then they rip off their respective costumes and jump in bed. He gets on top, she’s on the bottom. Same old shit.”
“That’s your job, monitoring all these tapes?”
O’Breen nodded. “We’re nothing if not thorough at the GLAPD, Pace,” he said. “We don’t want to miss a clue or a valuable hunk of info.”
“So far,” Jake inquired, “have all the girls been attractive?”
“Attractive? They’ve been pips. Terrific. Dull but one hundred and one percent gorgeous.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“This Kazee guy went first cabin when it came to screwing.”
“Seven thousand and four cassettes,” mused Jake. “They all look to be the four-hour format. That means you’ve got over twenty-eight thousand hours of material to watch. Even if you keep at it twenty-four hours a day, you’ll have to spend over three solid years at—”
“Oh, I use the fast-forward button now and again.” O’Breen extracted a strange bluish cigarette from an inner pocket. “This one’s made out of cabbage. Doesn’t sound too tasty, but you never can tell.” He lit the cabbage cigarette, inhaled, reflected. “Shitty.”
“So far,” asked Jake, “have you learned anything new?”
“About screwing?”
“About who knocked off Kazee, and why?”
“Could be, Pace, you’re wondering why I’m trying out all these different kind of ciggies. Lettuce, kelp, cabbage—”
“Nope, I’m not interested in that at all. What I want to know is if you’ve turned up any new information on Kazee’s death.”
“Not a frigging thing,” admitted the policeman after another pained puff. “Turns out, which is surprising in a guy in show business, that Kazee was a silent lover. Don’t know about you, Pace, and wouldn’t ask since we’ve only just met, but myself I like to talk, converse and often holler while in the sack. Especially if I was recording it, which I’ve never tried thus far. Now when he was dressed up like a jungle man, there would have been a great opportunity for some yelling. But neither one of them spoke a mumbling word.”
Jake, slowly, circled the room. “Kazee was found right here.” He knelt on a plyo throw rug.
“Found there, but killed on the bed over there.”
“I know, I’ve gone over all the reports, said Jake. “Somebody had to heft him off the bed, stretch him out on this rug and fold his arm across his chest.”
“Listen, most killers are goofy.”
“This one was also efficient,” he said. “Got in through the security system, without leaving a trace on how he did it.”
“Maybe he didn’t at all,” suggested O’Breen. “My theory is the Angel Tolliver bimbo killed him. He invites her over for a friendly roll in the haymow. He’s on top and she’s on the bottom, or maybe
she’s on the top and he’s on the bottom. Anyway, she whips out a kilgun and shoots him.”
“Concealing the gun where while they’re making love?”
“Aw, they didn’t always take off their clothes to screw. At least a lot of the other ones didn’t. Plenty of places you can hide a gun.”
Jake rose. “The butler was out that night.”
“The old junk heap let Angel in, tidied up and took off for Casinoland over in the Altadena Sector,” said O’Breen. “And, no, he isn’t a habitual gambler. Never won or lost more than fifty clams.”
Jake made another slow circuit of the room. “Did Kazee ever—”
“Begging your pardon, sir and sergeant.” Metz, rubbing his flesh hand and his metal hand together, was hesitating in the entrance. “But somehow the houseboat seems to be adrift.”
“Adrift?” O’Breen leaped out of his form-hug chair, which made a mild whooshing sound at his departure. Dashing to the nearest land-side window, he gazed out. “Shit, we’re a mile offshore.”
Jake asked, “What’s that gurgling, Metz?”
“We also seem to be sinking, sir.”
CHAPTER 6
“WELL, BLAZES.”
“Language, language.”
“Thunderation and hellsfire! Nobody told me to expect another nosy inspector.”
“You’ve done it again, Mr. Stoops.” Hildy made a disdainful face, brushing at the mouse-brown hair of her frowsy wig. “Bad language will get you nowhere.”
“I’m already nowhere,” said the small man in the gray rabbit suit. “Graduate of the Glendale Institute of Technology and Social Agreeableness, I.Q. of 159, voted the Best Dressed Boy … and here I am looking after a herd of servobots while dressed up like Bud Bunny.”
“Bugs Bunny.”
“What blasted difference does it make?” He gestured at the vast, sprawling hotel resort complex which stretched away in all directions from the see-through plaz warehouse they were standing in. “The only thing this punk job is better than is the one I had before, looking after the golf courses while decked out as Alvin Fudd.”
“Elmer Fudd.” Hildy took a palm-size talkbox from a pouch pocket in her one-piece frumpy bizsuit. “Perhaps if you took more interest in your work here at Bunnyville, you’d get more enjoyment out of life.”
“Blast enjoyment! I’m stuck in a dead-end job, washed up at thirty-two. And my bunny ears are continually going limp. Fudge!”
“Language, language.” Hildy cleared her throat. “Now, if I might view the robot in question, please?”
“Why’s the State Board of Robotics poking into this again, Miss Sparling?”
“You’d have to take that up with SactoSouth, Mr. Stoops.” She tapped impatiently on the talkbox. “I’m anxious to get going on my report. Will you lead me to the servo who was responsible for the incident at the Looney Tunes Plaza Hotel last week.”
“Incident? Blazes, it was cold-blooded murder,” insisted the bunny-suited Stoops. “That’s to be expected, since all these dratted mechs are potentially nutty. They’re even crazier than the people who run this place.”
“Might we see the servobot?’
“Okay, sure, I don’t give a gosh darn,” Stoops said. “But, listen, do you mind if I don’t hippity-hop?”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Stoops?”
“See, I’m supposed to hop when I’m togged thusly,” he explained. “Like Bert Bunny.”
“Bugs.”
“Whoever. It’s okay by you if I don’t? It’s demeaning, degrading and a great dampener of my spirits. Lots of times, too, when I really get to hopping along my darn fluffy cotton tail drops off. Then they raise holy moley over in the Personnel Tower on Tweety Pie Square. Claim I have to sew the dingdang thing back on with my—”
“We can dispense with the hopping. Lead on, please.” Hildy made an impatient shooing motion with her free hand.
“This way.” Dragging his costumed feet some, the small Stoops walked along a row of dormant waiterbots. Each was tuxsuited, pleasant faced, slick haired.
After turning down a corridor made up of two rows of standing petite French-style housemaids, they reached a low plaz worktable. Atop it were scrambled wires, cogs, tubes, bulbs, arms, legs, breasts, plaz eyes and numerous other components.
“This is Inga,” announced Stoops, scratching behind one of his bunny ears.
Hildy cleared her throat and spoke into the talkbox. “Field Agent 260-26-A7, Alice M. Sparling, reporting on berserk servo Inga/HMCW-0321. Android in disgraceful shape, apparently dismantled by police techs who didn’t even bother to put it together again.” Clicking off the box, she rested it on the table edge.
“I hope you don’t think I should’ve reassembled Inga?”
Hildy hunched, studying the spill of parts. “According to all the reports I’ve studied, none of the techs who went over this poor thing could find anything wrong. Nothing at all to explain why it throttled the gentleman in Suite 72B of the Daffy Duck Wing.”
“I can tell you why she did it. Inga’s nutso, like all machines. The reason I wanted to get into the technocratic field was to remedy the flag—”
“My notes further indicate that, thus far, the manufacturer has refused to send its own team of troubleshooters to go over this mechanism.”
“Passing the buck is what National Robot and Android is doing,” said Stoops. “Know what they claim? They claim they didn’t manufacture this particular andy at all, that the ID number is spurious. Passing the buck, a classic case.”
Hildy said, “I wasn’t informed of any such development.”
“Word just came in today.”
Hildy started sorting through the parts spread out on the table. After a moment she picked up a section of the left side of the dismantled android. Turning it over, she brought it close to her face. “Pretty good job of faking an ID plate,” she murmured.
“If anybody’s faked anything, it wasn’t me. I’m too busy looking after these blasted andies and sewing on my—”
“Wasn’t I, Mr. Stoops. Good usage will get you far in this world.” Hildy ran her tongue along her lower lip. “Pixphone?”
“Over there.”
“I don’t see—”
“It’s shaped like an enormous pig, the booth. They all are here,” explained Stoops. “You walk up to the pig’s rear, twist his tail and the door pops open.”
Hildy took the section of the android with the small ID plate and stepped into the Porky Pig booth.
By inserting a special card into the pay slot, she got a scrambled call and a discount on the toll.
After five buzzes a kindly, wrinkled old face appeared on the oval pixphone screen. “My, my, it’s dear Hildy,” said the little old lady.
“Take a look at this, Old Mother Malley.” She held the ID plate close to the scanlens.
“Have you been keeping up with the soaring cost of living, child? A jump of 12.7 percent last week alone, according to the U.S. Department of Obfuscation.”
“Okay, how much has your price gone up?”
“Only 10 percent, dear.”
“You’re asking me for $1650?”
“Yes, and isn’t that dreadful, Hildy? Why, I can well remember when I was only soaking you and that handsome, devil-may-care hubby of yours $750. Times change.”
“You’ll have the dough in your account by morning.”
“Oh, that’s another thing, Hildy dear. I have to go easy on the Swiss account. Deposit this fee in my Jumatatu People’s Militant Bank account over in Black Africa.”
“Sure.”
“Nice job of faking an ID plate that. Fellow who did that used to peddle cheap Nip simulacra to military hospitals.”
“Is he loose?”
“Since he was in cahoots with two senators and a retired major general, he got off with a suspended sentence,” replied Old Mother Malley, crinkles ringing her eyes. “He allegedly went straight and is gainfully employed in CalNorth.”
“His name?”
“Joshua Steelybrass.”
“Of course, I should have remembered him and saved myself sixteen hundred bucks,” said Hildy. “Where’s Josh working?”
“For the Joyful Brothers Toy Works in the Carmel Valley Sector.”
“Thanks, Old Mother Malley.”
“You be real cautious now, dear.”
“I will,” Hildy promised before breaking the connection.
CHAPTER 7
THE FLOORS WERE AWASH, the posh houseboat was rapidly sinking into the Pacific.
“This is most distressing,” fretted the metal-armed Metz as he waded through the knee-deep water in the livingpod.
Jake turned away from another window. “Somebody’s jammed all the unlock mechs on the doors and windows.”
“I fear they’ve opened the seacocks as well, sir.”
“Where’s the central-control pod?”
“Along the blue corridor.” Metz pointed with a silvery finger. “That’s been tampered with, too, however. When I attempted to gain entrance, I got a fearful shock.”
“Okay, they’ve jobbed everything.” Jake frowned. “We can’t expect any of the standard rescue equipment to do us any good.”
“Shit, none of the damn windows’ll open.”
O’Breen came sloshing in from the kitchen pod. “And when I tried to get myself a brew out of the fridge I got one hell of a shock.”
“Just as well, safer to swim on an empty stomach,” Jake told him.
“How we going to swim when we can’t get out of this dump?”
“Dear me,” observed Metz. “The water’s well above my knees now.”
Jake asked him, “That’s a Multifunk, Ltd. prosarm, isn’t it?”
“Why, yes, I do believe it is, sir. Mr. Kazee purchased it for me after my earlier limb was rather badly damaged fending off a group of irate—”
“Let’s have it.”
“I’ll see if I can wade over to—”
“Not you, only the arm.” Jake hopped atop the sofa, which was on the verge of starting to float.
“You wish me to detach it, sir?”
“And quick.”
“I usually disarm only in the privacy of my—”