3rd World Products, Book 16

by Ed Howdershelt

  She turned and walked back to her car. Moonlight flashed appealingly on her calves. As she opened her door and looked back at me, I made Tea vanish and called up my board, then launched toward home.

  When I arrived, I plunked myself down on the sofa chair and used a core link to retrieve Brian White’s street address, then pulled up photos of myself from the seventies. Passport. Visas and some training footage I recognized. Notalin’s classes. ‘Here’s what ya done wrong first, kid.’

  Using probes, I cobbled together a somewhat altered clone of myself at about age twenty-three and studied it. Good enough. Me-ish, but not quite me. More nose, a narrower chin, wider cheekbones, different ears. It was almost two in the morning in Germany. Just right. A probe found White in his bed. I sent my sim to his room and tapped on his bed’s footboard.

  He stirred, looked up blearily, and woke up fast. Freaking a bit, he opened the night stand and took out a pistol, shakily aimed it at me, and demanded to know why I was there.

  I said, “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  “What?! No! Who the hell are you?!”

  Pointing at the night stand, I said, “Put your glasses on.”

  Reaching across himself with his left hand, he fumbled up his glasses and almost stuck himself in the eye trying to fit them to his face. He stared at me again, but I saw no recognition at all.

  I said, “You said I pushed you into a canal in 1972. You and a Senator and another aide. Remember me now?”

  By the look of revelation on his face, he did, indeed.

  “That’s better,” I said, “You thought I was dead, huh?”

  “You can’t be him. That was forty years ago!”

  With some unexpected difficulty, I managed to make the sim shrug a bit. “The miracles of science, y’know?”

  The gun shook in White’s hand as he said, “But I… I saw the accident report. It was your car.” His voice dropped to a whisper as he hissed intently, “Look, I didn’t know he’d really do it! I swear!”

  He who, dammit? Asking would blow the game.

  “Well, he missed. That crash killed Mike Sayer, not me.” I smiled and said, “And now some people are looking into things again at long last. What are you going to tell them?”

  Taking a breath, he snapped, “I’m going to tell them you broke in,” and pulled the trigger twice. Both rounds were good torso hits that had zero effect on the sim.

  I moved around the bed and grinningly, mockingly sang, “Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?”

  He fired again. The bullet hit a mirror across the room. He fired the gun empty, then threw it at me and scrambled back across the bed. When he fell off the other side, I made my sim vanish.

  Through my probe I watched him tremblingly get up, look around, turn on a light, and look some more. He checked the closets and a bathroom. There were footsteps in the hall and mens’ voices yelled his name.

  After opening a window, he answered and three older men cautiously entered the room. Their conversations were in English and German. I recorded them to review later, but heard nothing unexpected. They wanted to know what the hell he was doing and why. He said someone had been in his room. One wanted to take the gun, but White wouldn’t give it up.

  He took it to the night stand, dropped the magazine, and reloaded it with a fresh magazine. Without racking the slide, he set the gun in the drawer, then told the men everything was fine and he’d fix the damage tomorrow.

  Heh. That’s not how it works, dude. I heard sirens and White groaned a flat-sounding, “Oh, shit.” He quickly unloaded the gun and put in the old magazine, then stashed the fresh one under his pillow. Maybe he had an extra gun in the room? I sent a field around the room and found it hidden behind a false baseboard panel in the bathroom.

  Leave it? For now, yeah. The cops would take the fired gun and he’d tell them he didn’t have another one. A second visit might make him shoot again. The cops would love that.

  What kind of place was this, anyway? Moving the probe outside, I looked for a sign. Nope. Just an address number. Searching the address turned up a business license for a retirement facility. Huh. White’s second floor room had looked more like an upscale hotel room.

  Whatever. I canceled the probes and sat back to think. White hadn’t said the guy’s name; just that he hadn’t known the guy would really do it. The other aide? Or maybe the Senator himself had bought some revenge? He’d said he’d seen the accident report. Where and when? And why would a visiting Senator’s temporary office be looking at traffic reports?

  Back to military records. Near the bottom of the unit morning report microfiche was a box with ‘cc:3’ next to my license plate number, but no indication of who got the copies. More rooting. A copy went to POV registration. One to Mike’s — our — station chief. One to the German cops. I tracked that one to a police archive. Closed until Monday.

  I sent my probe into the archive building and it found ancient paper copies of two reports; one by the MPs and one by the German police. The German report was more informative about both the accident and where copies went. One to the MPs, of course. Reciprocation. One to a city traffic control statistics office. And one to be picked up rather than delivered. The name on the document transfer line was Bryce Gate. He’d picked up the report at 10:17 the next morning.

  I searched government employment records for Bryce Gate. Background check: from a poor family, but excellent grades. Excused from PE until high school, barely passed it, lack of effort. Academic clubs in school, several leadership roles. An abrupt resignation from a middling office in an honors group, excused by poor health. Yet there were no health issues recorded for that year. Read as: he was caught doing something or wasn’t cooperative. A professor recommended him to the Senator. Almost four years on staff before the canal swim.

  Pictures of him reminded me how he’d seemed the more delicate of the two aides. Almost effeminate, not quite. A toady. Deferential as hell to rank, snide and arrogant to anyone else. The Senator and Brian had seemed to use him as a foil in questionings, letting him bark now and then to stir things or maybe say things they couldn’t.

  When we’d walked along the canal to get to another building, he’d been switching back and forth from Brian’s side of the walkway to the Senator’s. Half the time he’d walked in the grass, intent on the discussion.

  When Mona Case had said, “Excuse me, Senator, but…” that’s as far as she’d gotten before Bryce had glaringly snapped, “Just hold your water, honey! We’re talking here!”

  Mona had been shocked at his tone. She’d only been about to redirect them toward the right building. She glanced at me and I shrugged, then pretended to trip and heaved myself against Bryce as if trying to land on grass instead of concrete.

  Bryce had grabbed the Senator’s right arm. Brian had grabbed the Senator’s left arm, but his effort was late and hadn’t been enough. The three snotty stooges had tumbled down the steep slope into murky canal water.

  Later I was laughingly reprimanded for egregious clumsiness in a mock hearing at an impromptu pub party near our offices. Bryce and Brian had walked in on that festivity in street clothes and without their Senator.

  Someone had yelled, “Well, look who’s here!” and announced them as the Senator’s twin Poodles. As Bryce and Brian had realized whose party they’d crashed, several people expressed unkind and suggestive opinions about the Senator and his pet buttmonkeys.

  I’d been at a table in the center of the gathering with nearly a dozen drink chips in front of me. Bryce had glared raw hatred at me before they’d turned to leave.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I bundled a copy of my probe recording and my notes and sent them to Linda’s pad with the comment, ‘More to come.’ She must have been using or sitting right next to the pad because she almost immediately sent back two slashes. ‘Message received, can’t talk now‘. If there’d been three slashes, I’d have sent a probe.

  For all that rooting around and my chats
with Elgin and White, it was only a little before eight. Lots of evening left. I didn’t feel like reading or writing. Couldn’t think of a movie I wanted to see and Sunday night TV sucks. And for all I’d said to Tanya, I was kind of glad to have some time to myself for the first time since I’d met her.

  I wasn’t kidding myself. She was a big piece of candy. If she’d been here and willing, I’d have been all over her. But my proclivity for solitude was nonetheless feeling pretty good about having some alone time. I stretched out on the couch and listened to silence broken only by occasional tiny noises outside.

  What woke me was a tiny inside noise. I lay in the darkness and listened as I checked the time with my core. Almost nine. A small, buzzy rattle had come from the kitchen. I got up to see if I could find the source. If it was an appliance, it would be one that went on and off automatically. The fridge.

  Bumping the fridge with a fist made it rattle again. On the fridge door was a magnet someone had given me. It used a slanted drop-bar to hold a tiny notepad. It was out of paper, the bar rattling every time the compressor kicked in. I took it off the fridge and bumped the door again. No more rattle.

  Well, I was up. Rested. Bored, too. What to do? I thought about sending a probe to see what progress Marie might be making, but scratched the idea. The first half-day of two weeks of healing wouldn’t show much.

  Take the bike for a run? Nah. Unless I dressed for the night chill, I’d get stopped every few miles. “Don’t you know how cold it is, sir? Have you been drinking?” All that. No fun, no point.

  For lack of a more appealing idea, I decided to buzz down to the Mermaid Lounge. Beer and pool tables. Talk if I wanted it, relative solitude if I didn’t. I was about to hit the door when Tanya pinged me. Hm. If we didn’t get back together, I’d have to reroute that function.

  I returned her ping with, “Hi, Tanya.”

  “Uh, hi, Ed. Can we… can we talk?”

  “Sure. What’s on your mind?”

  When she didn’t say anything for a couple of beats, I prompted, “You aren’t talking, ma’am.”

  “Sorry. I thought I knew what I wanted to say, but now I can’t think of how to start.”

  Did she want me to take the lead? I didn’t want it; I’d said what I’d had to say on the flitter.

  “Well, give it some more thought, ma’am. You know where to find me. If you want to get back together, we will. If you don’t, just say so and I’ll link your board commo to your cell phone instead of me. Good enough?”

  There was another long pause, then Tanya said firmly, “No, it isn’t good enough.”

  I was about to say, “Okay, then. Later,” when Tanya continued. In a rapid string of words, she asked, “So do you want to come here or do I go there?”

  That gave me a pause of my own. I’d been expecting her to say something else entirely. I said, “You actually live in your place. I just sort of park my stuff here. Would you like to wake up in your own home?”

  “It would be more convenient, I guess. What’ll you do while I’m at work tomorrow?”

  Popping the top off my mug to make a fresh coffee, I said, “Guess I’ll just mope around thinking of you all day.”

  I could feel her smile as she chuckled, “I really doubt that.”

  “You don’t know me well enough yet. I’ll prob’ly be waiting by the door like a lonely puppy, ma’am.”

  She snorted, “Yeah, sure you will.” With a brief pause, she said, “Well, I guess I’ll let you go so you can get going.”

  Rinsing my mug, I said, “Yes’m. On my way shortly.”

  Yet another pause occurred, then she asked, “Uh… how do you turn this… connection… off?”

  “It’s hard to explain. How’d you make it happen?”

  “I just sort of envisioned making a cell call while I tried to do it. Oh, damn. The same thing in reverse?”

  “Well, if it works, it works.”

  “Is that how you do it?”

  “No. I don’t use a cell phone.”

  There was a moment of actual blankness through our link, then she said, “I thought you were kidding, but it’s true, isn’t it? I never saw you use one in two days.”

  “Nope. I get by well enough without one.”

  “And at the ATM… You looked like you’d never used one before. You had to read all the screens.”

  “I’ve used one exactly once.” For no particular reason, I added, “In Virginia.”

  With laughter in her voice, Tanya said, “Ed, you qualify as technologically challenged!”

  I finished assembling my coffee and capped the mug as I sighed, “Yeah, it’s really tragic. Feeling sympathetic yet?”

  Giggling, she said, “No, not really. Are you going to hang up any time soon?”

  Grabbing my pack and heading for the door, I said, “Me? I already know how to do it, ma’am. You’re the one who needs practice. Besides, I like your voice.”

  “My voice? But I’m not t… Oh. Again. I sound the same either way, don’t I? And so do you, now that I think of it. Okay, I’ll keep trying. Just in case, goodbye.”

  I laughed, “Okay. Bye.”

  Calling up my board on the porch, I didn’t bother with stealth mode and simply launched for Ocala. A couple of moments later, the link ended. As I passed above Brooksville, Tanya pinged me again.

  “Hello, again, Miz T.”

  “Hi, Ed. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t an accident, so I’m going to try again, okay?”

  “By all means, ma’am. Can’t have accidents. Go for it.”

  About two beats later, the link ended again. Heh. I wondered if she’d call back to announce her success, but she didn’t. Elgin’s car was back in its previous spot. As I descended, I angled my approach to pass directly over her car on my way to Tanya’s front door.

  Field-sweeping the building turned up no bugs. I rang the door bell and saw a shadow on the window blinds as Tanya walked to the door. Light from the peep hole was briefly obscured, then she opened the door with a big grin and stepped forward to embrace me tightly.

  Then she kissed me firmly and I could smell and taste booze. It wasn’t gin. With that same grin, she turned and led me by the arm into the apartment. She closed the door and I turned to face her. When I started to speak, Tanya quickly and precisely raised her left hand in a ‘stop’ gesture and placed a finger to her lips.

  “No,” she said, “Wait. I need to say something and talking is what nearly broke us up today.”

  Um. Well, no it wasn’t, really, and that statement had been self-contradictory. I tried to gauge her booze level. Three or maybe four drinks? My core scanned her and stated a BA that translated to four drinks. And that was inside two hours if she hadn’t started drinking the moment she got home.

  She said, “Don’t worry, I’m not drunk and I’m not going to get drunk. I just needed to relax a little more than usual.”

  Aw, hell. The word ‘relax’ was an ugly echo from the long dead past. My first wife had used the same word to excuse her drinks. Her idea of ‘relaxing’ had been half a pint or so.

  Tanya swept her right hand through her hair almost fretfully and said, “I was happy, Ed. Really happy. And then I screwed things up by running my damned big mouth when I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. You were just doing what you do the way you always do it.”

  True, but I wasn’t going to say so. I waited for more from the woman who’d declared a moratorium on talking. Or maybe just a moratorium on me talking. She’d stood chewing her lower lip for a few moments without speaking.

  I said, “Sounds like you spoke to Connie.”

  Her eyes widened slightly and she hesitantly replied, “Uh… Yes. How’d you know?”

  “It’s the kind of thing she used to say. And you’d have had a hard time reaching Angie without an emergency. Or Linda, for that matter. I hope you didn’t say anything about Marie.”

  Tanya shook her head frantically. “No! I called and told her I needed to talk about some
thing very personal and didn’t know who else to call. When I told her about us and what happened, I made it sound like I felt manipulated.”

  “As I recall, you did feel manipulated.”

  “Well, yes, but… I left out everything to do with mom. Everything! Really!”

  With a shrug and a sigh, I took a seat at the dining table and said, “Well, I guess we’ll know if you’re right soon enough. If the feds don’t come get us, we…”

  She cut in, “They won’t! I was careful! Super-careful!”

  “Tanya, you’ve had a few drinks since I dropped you off. Think real hard about what you actually said to her while we get on with the evening.”

  Tanya got a glass of water and sat down, then said, “It isn’t so much what I told her, Ed. It’s what she told me. She told me about a reporter named Marsha.”

  Leaving that statement hanging in the air between us, she took a long sip of water and watched me. I shrugged.

  “Marsha was a hot blonde wanna-be journalist who actually had a lot of talent, but she also had a shitty boss. She barged into one of our ops and I got custody of her. One thing led to another and we spent some time touring hotel bedrooms in France and Germany. My outfit hired her for a time and later got her a decent job at an American newspaper. Does that about match what Connie told you?”

  “Yes. But she said she didn’t know why you broke up.”

  I laughed, “Bullshit. Everybody in the outfit knew. I was about to get a subpoena and I had to get the hell out of Europe.”

  Taking another sip, Tanya asked, “Then why didn’t she tell me that?”

  “So you’d get curious. To add just a little more to the chance you’d call me. Now that I’m up here, she’d probably admit it and laugh. Call her and see.”

  Glancing at her watch, Tanya said, “No, it’s getting late.” She tapped a fingernail on the table for a moment, then said, “At first I was drinking because I was hurt and angry and… all that. I had one before I called Connie, then about two while I talked to her.”

  ‘About two’? That probably meant two hefty ones.

  “Then,” she said, “I had to work up the nerve to call you. I couldn’t let things stay the way they were, but I couldn’t think how to start a conversation with you. That last drink helped me decide to do it anyway, so don’t give me a hard time about drinking tonight.”