3rd World Products, Book 16

by Ed Howdershelt

  Turning off our fields to pocket our IDs, Tanya said, “That’s weird. He didn’t ask us anything about the fields.”

  “He didn’t have to. They know about them, they just don’t see them very often.”

  “I expected him to ask where he could get one.”

  “He knows they come with a PFM. He doesn’t know about boards. He checked us out and then went back to work.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Tanya surprised me again during the afternoon. She bought a disposable camera, a small diamond pendant, and a dozen postcards and stamps. I helped her put the pendant on, then we found a faux-Bavarian pub and had a drink as she addressed the cards and scribbled on them.

  Holding up the cards, she grinningly said, “Memories, like you said,” and sipped her drink.

  Inside the pub, nobody thought we were underdressed for the weather, but it was apparent most of them thought we were rather underdressed for the social environment.

  I said nothing about that to Tanya and when we finished our drinks, we left to find a mailbox. The days of public mailboxes on city streets seemed to be long gone. We ended up hiking two blocks to the post office to use their drop slot. On the way back, of course, we spotted a mailbox in an entranceway.

  Sure, I could have used my core to locate such things, but Tanya was having a grand time traipsing around town taking pictures. She asked why I hadn’t bought a camera.

  “Don’t need one,” I said, “Been here before and better photographers have shot better pictures than I could. But when we get to Europe, I’ll want…”

  Tanya stopped and stared at me. “Europe?!”

  “Sure. We can camp on the flitter and be tourists.”

  “You’re serious?!”

  “Of course I’m serious. We got this far, didn’t we? A few more miles won’t matter.”

  She launched herself at me and hugged me.

  I grinningly said, “Of course, people will think I’m your sugar daddy or something, but if you can live with that…”

  “Oh, fuck them! I like you, Ed! I was afraid you’d disappear once mom was back on her feet!”

  “Speaking of mom, will she go along with it?”

  “She doesn’t have to. I’ll be with anybody I want.”

  “Not to be difficult, but leave some room for doubt. Selena’s mother was a ten-point bitch about our time together. She kept saying Sel should be with a man who’d marry her and give her kids. She even rescheduled a surgery to keep us from going to a convention together.”

  “My God! Really?! Don’t worry. Mom won’t be like that.”

  “We’ll see. She already hates me without knowing I’m playing with her daughter.”

  Tanya stood straight and said, “I won’t put up with it, Ed.”

  “As I said, leave some room for doubt. Mothers can be formidable critters when they’re pissed.” I sighed, “In the meantime, I’ll just lick you silly at every opportunity and try my best to ruin you for all other men, ma’am.”

  Tanya laughed, “Sounds good to me!”

  We got underway again and made it another few blocks before the mountains cast their long, dark shadows. We had another drink at a place along Main Street, then we used the boards to skim up the flanks of the ski slopes and see the tops of the mountains.

  As we stood watching the real sunset from a prominent spot, my implant pinged with Linda’s chime.

  I said, “Yes’m? Tanya’s with me.”

  “No problem. I haven’t turned up much more than you did. Different, but similar. And it’s all circumstantial. I think we’d need an actual confession to make anything happen.”

  Tanya had turned when I spoke.

  I put up a screen and said, “Linda, we could call him if you think we have enough to work with.”

  Linda said, “Hello, Tanya.”

  Tanya replied, “Hello. Call who?”

  I said, “Brian White. Germany is six hours ahead of the east coast. Eight hours ahead of Linda.”

  “What do you expect to accomplish?”

  “I dunno. Maybe hearing from me will give him a heart attack. He’s got six years on me.”

  She goggled at me. “But what if he’s innocent?!”

  I shrugged. “Then hearing from me shouldn’t bother him much. He’s had almost forty years to get the canal water out of his nose. If he still gives a damn at all.”

  Looking at the screen, I asked, “Linda?”

  She nodded. “Yes. We’ll see how it goes.”

  “Good enough. What time?”

  “How’s seven a.m., my time?”

  “Kind of early, really, but… for you, anything, ma’am.”

  She laughed, “Okay. I’ll be up, so I’ll call you. Bye, all.”

  Tanya said, “Goodbye, Linda,” and I saluted as I said, “Auf Wiedersehen, Fearless Leader!”

  Linda laughed again and poked her ‘off’ icon.

  I let our screen dissolve as Tanya asked, “Kind of early? She’s in Arizona, right? Seven her time is nine in Florida.”

  “Yup. Would you mind terribly if I hugged you and took a big ol’ whiff of your hair, ma’am? If you smell good enough, I might even kiss you.”

  With a mock glower, she poked my chest and said, “If you don’t kiss me, I’ll send you down this hill on your ass.”

  We wandered atop the mountain for a time, then Tanya said it was time to think about food.

  After some discussion of what we might find in one of the Aspen restaurants, she asked, “But would we be able to eat without interruptions? A lot of people saw us today.”

  “There is that. What would you want for dinner, Tanya? I’m bad at picking restaurants; my default choices are Checkers, Wendy’s, and buffet places.”

  She perked up at the word ‘buffet’. “All you want, whatever you want. Yeah. Let’s find a buffet.”

  I consulted my core and said, “North side of Denver. A buffet steak house. Good?”

  Tanya grinned. “Great! I already know what I’ll get.”

  Leaning to kiss her, I laughed, “The perfect woman! Where have you been half my life, lady?”

  “Oh, around. Actually, I’ve probably only been your ‘perfect woman’ for about the last year.”

  “Only three? Why’s that?”

  “I was a typical suburban housewife. Getting mom into that place cost a small mint. That’s the main reason I sold the house. We got a lot of it back, but it took most of a year. Then Martin got sick. A heart problem.” She looked up and said, “Martin was my husband.”

  I didn’t say, “You’ve mentioned that,” I just nodded.

  Tanya said, “And then he died the following year. Burying him nearly cleaned me out. I had access to about fifteen thousand of mom’s money, so I used some of it. I figured I’d pay her back someday. At least, I hope so.”

  She stood straight to take a breath and said, “By then, all my starch was gone. I took a few jobs to make ends meet and waited to see how things would work out with the bill collectors. Some of them are still waiting, but I’m working on it. I won’t go bankrupt. I just won’t. Anyway, that’s when I realized the trappings of upper middle class living are just that… traps. Get in debt, stay in debt, it’s the American Way. I also realized I didn’t miss much of it. Maintaining that big house and everything else was always a pain in the ass. But when I moved to an apartment, a lot of people I once considered friends stopped inviting me to things.”

  “Um… some of that might be due to being a gorgeous widow lady, ma’am. You know how women can be, and they send out the invites, right? You became a risk.”

  Tanya studied me in the gathering darkness and said, “You seem to know a heck of a lot about women. But you’re right. I knew it then and it’s still true. Other than office events, I don’t get invited to much. That’s one reason I’d rather not lose Jessica. She’s my only real friend.”

  I said nothing about Jessica, but even silence speaks.

  Tanya made a dismissive gesture and said,
“Never mind. We won’t go there again. Let’s go find that restaurant.”

  “Denver’s only about a hundred miles by air. Want to use the boards or the flitter?”

  “The flitter. I’m ready to sit down for a while.”

  I called Galatea in two-seat mode and we flitted over the mountains to Denver. As we approached, I had Tea monitor 911 calls. She almost instantly reported a three-car pileup at Twentieth Street and I-25.

  Calling up an extra flitter, I had it pulse neon red and act as a road guard well behind the accident. Tea cast a weather dome over the scene and snuffed out a small fire as she checked the participants. Two drivers were seriously injured and the couple in the third car were only banged up. Treatment began as the first of several cop cars arrived.

  When one of the cops waved up at my flitter, I used my board to zip down there and discuss matters. Tanya followed on her own board and added her statement to mine, which amounted to, “The flitter said there was an accident, so we stopped.”

  Half an hour later we were able to leave and headed for the restaurant, where I used my credit card to buy our meals. Tanya noticed that and looked at me curiously, but said nothing at the time.

  She seemed oddly quiet during our meal, which I took to mean she was thinking about something. I decided it was only reasonable and fair to do some thinking of my own.

  The phrase ‘too good to be true’ bubbled up from some dark, cautionary recess. In what regard? So far she’d been a great companion. The best ever, it seemed. At least on a par with Selena and Toni, who’d been just as lusty at times and just as entertaining between those times. No complaints at all so far, except maybe her thing about Jessica.

  The thing in the mental crater yelled up, ‘That’s not what I mean!‘ but said no more. Cretin. He could at least explain. I looked at lovely Tanya and had my core scan her for health problems. None. Her mental state also seemed okay, but I realized I didn’t really know her well enough to judge. And of course, there were people who showed no signs and snapped for no apparent reason, so that concern was moot.

  Money? Shrug. I could find a way to toss her some anonymously. No strings, no bullshit. Probably ought to do that anyway just to give her a break from excessive frugality. What else could she get from me? A job at 3rd World? She’d have to be qualified, so she could just as easily apply, and a reference from me might hold up the process, not help it.

  We’d already fixed Marie. She had a board, if getting a field device had ever really been a factor. That didn’t seem likely, and she had no ties to any government outfits that didn’t have to do with Marie’s hospitalization and maintenance.

  Fact is, I couldn’t think of a damned thing to make Tanya’s affections seem suspicious, and that in itself made me suspicious of myself. Was I too close to see? Trees blocking my view of the forest? Been there before. Maybe it was time for a private talk with Linda or Angie. Or both.

  And then, again, maybe she just liked me. Gotta be fair. Could happen, right? But what would make that happen? Why would she hook up — to use the later urban definition — with a guy twenty… seven?… years older?

  I checked what I could about her through my core. It found security checks regarding Marie. Minor and routine surveillance stuff. No steady boyfriends on record since hubby Martin died.

  Will and Connie had automatically caused the vetting or re-vetting of anyone involved in almost any manner. Clean again. No police record, open or closed. Not known for hysterics. Strong sense of honor and duty. Hell, maybe she was perfect, or as close as anyone’s ever been.

  Reaching across the table, Tanya tapped my hand. I focused on her and found her looking at me oddly.

  She said, “You really do go off in your own little world, don’t you? What were you thinking about?”

  Mental shrug. Give her the truth.

  “You, of course, milady.”

  Rolling her eyes with a grin, she said, “No, really.”

  “Would you believe ‘mostly’, then?”

  “No. Come on, what was it?”

  “Well, among other things, I keep thinking I’ve overlooked something.” Sipping my drink, I said, “And I can’t figure out why your mom hates me so much. I never did a damned thing to deserve it that I know of.”

  Tanya canted her head and said, “I know I haven’t been around as long as you and Linda, but listen to me, okay? After Martin died, I learned to avoid couples. Well meaning friends from before took me to dinner and I’d watch them talk and laugh and… and I’d get jealous. I’d think, ‘yours is still alive’ and sometimes I actually seemed to hate her for a little while. It would pass. It always did, but it always seemed to come back, too. It was ‘Go ahead and laugh. Yours is still alive‘.”

  She paused and sipped tea, then said, “Maybe some version of that is what’s bugging her. You’re alive. Someone else isn’t. It wouldn’t matter whether it was your fault. It could be that simple, couldn’t it?”

  I shrugged. “Damned if I know. People come up with all kinds of… stuff. One woman hated me for years because she thought I was mooching off her sister, based on one incident when I had to get to work and couldn’t find my wallet. Found out later my wife had washed it with some clothes while she was drunk. I tapped her for twenty and ran out the door ‘cuz I was already late. It was ten years before we straightened things out.”

  Looking enlightened, Tanya asked, “Is your wife the reason you’re so down on drunks and drug users?”

  “She was just the first and the one I remember best ‘cuz I married her. Since then, several of my friends have been killed or severely damaged by drunks and druggies. Some others had their lives trashed by them. One almost lost his home because his son was selling drugs there.”

  With a gesture of dismissal, I said, “History. On to happier topics. Can you get tomorrow off, too?”

  Shaking her head, Tanya said, “Probably not without an emergency, and I’d really prefer not to have one of those. Can I ask you something?”

  “Okay.”

  “Why did you use a credit card here? We both have cash left over from Aspen.”

  “Yup. Who’d want to know where we are, ma’am?”

  “Oh. And watching your credit cards would be… So why didn’t you use it at the bar in Aspen? Oh, wait. You got money on it at the ATM.”

  “Yup. And a cop checked us out in Aspen and more cops checked us out at the accident on the Interstate. Remember when you asked if Elgin and the others could see us and I said, ‘not yet’?”

  “Uh… Yes. That took me a minute, but yes.”

  “Well, this is that ‘yet’ and there’s a neat little trail of bread crumbs. The only questionable part of the day is a two-hour window when we went to Guyana, and they’ll probably fill in that blank with their own ideas.”

  “Their own ideas?”

  “They saw you leave Jessica’s hospital. They saw us go back to flying above Lake George, then they saw us land in the woods. A while later they saw us fly up from the woods and head for your place. A while after that they saw us leave on the flitter.”

  Tanya sipped her drink and said, “And not long after that, your credit card was used in Aspen. Then the cops. Then your credit card was used here.”

  “Yup. Do you see any unexplainable gaps?”

  “Just the time at the lake. What were we doing for two hours in the woods…?” But even as she asked, realization struck her and she said, “Oh. They’ll think… Oh, God…”

  She shook her head disbelievingly and lightly smacked a palm on her forehead, then said, “And you made that crack about Elgin’s legs, then about not being able to look at other women… Oh, damn! I feel so damned dense right now! You’ve been stacking things up like alphabet blocks all day!”

  I chuckled, “Don’t feel dense. I was trying not to be noticed. Besides, if you didn’t notice, maybe they didn’t either. Today was supposed to look like us honeymooning like a couple of kids. Which we were.”

  Tanya said nothing
for a time. She sipped again, then picked up her fork and picked at her food for a while.

  When she pensively set her fork down and sipped again, I asked, “Are you okay, Tanya?”

  Looking at me, she stated, “I’m not sure.”

  I waited for more. After a moment, she asked, “Is this the kind of… stuff… you and my mom used to do?”

  With a shrug, I said, “Minus the sex, yes. We’d engineer escapes. That meant providing distractions for watchers and misleading them while things got done.”

  She regarded me thoughtfully for a time, then said, “Boy, I’ll bet this little adventure was like returning to the thrilling days of yesteryear for you. Was any of it real?”

  “Of course it was real. We got the job done and had a good time while we did it. What part of that didn’t seem real?”

  “A good time, huh? Was that all it was for you?”

  Maybe I blinked. I certainly stared at her. I really couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “What the hell are you talking about? Do you think I was faking anything when we made love?”

  She coolly replied, “I’m not sure what to think now.”

  Forking up some green beans, I said, “Then don’t think at all. Just let things happen until you have more to go on.”

  Putting her hands together in her lap, Tanya said, “I… I’m not sure I can do that, Ed. Not now.”

  With a mental sigh, I thought, ‘Yeah, right. Of course. No good deed goes unpunished. Or maybe she never intended to go any farther once her mom was fixed and this is how she’s going to bail out.’

  Whatever. I wasn’t going to air things out in a restaurant. We had half an hour or so of flight to Florida for hashing. I finished my meal in silence while Tanya picked at hers. Wadding up my napkin, I tossed it by my plate and sipped my tea, then stood up to visit the restroom.

  I said, “I’m gonna take a leak, then I’m out of here. Finish up if you’re coming with me.”

  Tanya looked up as if she had something to say, then didn’t say it and poked at her food. I went to the restroom and returned to find her getting to her feet. There were a few bucks on the table. Nice of her to get the tip.