Chapter Twenty
West Club Grand Opening
On the corner of the Seventh Causeway and the OpDyke Building’s northwest corner, the West Club in New Dallas opened at four in the afternoon as did three hundred and eighteen other clubs in North and South American cities and eighty-three others world wide. A half hour after opening Bakman and Zee took the southwest elevator down to the Seventh Causeway and rented a public hover. At four-seventeen Bakman was surprised at the size of the crowd lined-up outside in the causeway waiting to get in when the Public Transport Hover carrying Bakman and Zee arrived.
Quickly Informationalists crowd around them recorders running. A smiling Morgana with her blue hair freshly dyed with pink stripes and wearing a one-size-to-small tight pink tunic of a companion met them at the curb.
"How do you like it?" Morgana yells waving toward the West Club as their hover pulls to a stop and settles down.
"Varn let you out dressed like that?" Bakman asks Morgana with disbelief on his face and then a grin.
Morgana's hand moved down to touch her tight pink tunic covered wide hips and gives him that strange deep giggling laugh of hers before answering. "Had three requests to do my companion duties in the backroom already. When I told each of them I would have to ask my husband first. All three seemed to loose interest when they found out I was not a mechanical."
"I don't understand how Varn can let you out advertising such a gorgeous product as that?" Bakman announces with recorders running as he grins and moves forward to hug Morgana and kiss her round yellowish cheek. As they hug, he playfully pats her pink backside. Rows of watchers standing in line clap, whistle, and shout at them hugging.
As the embrace ends Morgana steps to the side a step and announces loudly to the crowd, "This gentleman is my boss. This is D. G. Bakman, half-owner of West Club."
Smiling warmly Bakman moves down the line with Zee on his arm shaking hands and telling people that he hopes they have a good time. When he gets to the end of the line, Bakman waves at them and yells back at Morgana.
"For the rest of the night there is no charge to enter. Let them all in free . . . call the other clubs to do the same. Free to enter tonight."
D. G. Bakman gets another round of shouts and clapping with a few whistles mixed in as the happy crowd surged quickly through open doors and even the informationalists rush inside with their recorders running. When Zee and he get back to Morgana, they wait while she made the call that will be relayed his order to the other West Clubs.
Zee and Bakman can hear Morgana say, "By order of Bakman and Morgana."
When her round face turns back to him, Bakman asks, "Now, pretty lady tell me about this companion tunic. The true story . . . ."
With a low giggle, "Varn always wants to go to Atlantic City and gamble the money away that I let him have. The kids and I are tired of the place. We would like to go somewhere new. The sly devil said he would willingly go to another place if I wore the tunic he bought for me. I told him if I could get in it and it covered enough skin to be legal I would. The old fuddy planned a size-to-small pink one and did not think I would. We shook hands and did other things I can't tell you about to seal our bargain. To make this story move along, when I opened the box, this was what was inside. He did not think I would dare wear it, but I fooled him. Tonight, my Varn's at home watching me on our little 52-inch computerized view-screen with his chin hanging down to his shoe tops wondering where in the world I'm going to make him go this year." Morgana threw back her head and laughed so hard her round belly quivered.
"I'll bite. Where are you going on your vacation this year?"
"Atlantic City."
"Why wear the tunic then?"
"Varn's always tries something to win the right to go to Atlantic City. He always loses, and we always go there. Our little game is more fun than any vacation could ever be. If we went somewhere else, the game would end. Besides the poor dear man’s so considerate, so loving before the game, during the game, and after he sees those Atlantic City tickets." Her giggles end in loud laughter and several people inside turn to stare at Morgana.
"Atlantic City Lady, will you show us around."
"Gladly, Boss."
As they walk through the crowd toward the dance area, they hear loud old ReRun Screen type Western music blasting. For a minute or more Bakman stands looking at the crowd of dancers and the ring of customers around the room standing and sitting, talking, listening, and watching the dancers.
However, Zee remains busy with her duties scanning the crowd and has orders not to shoot inside the club tonight, except in a dire emergency. Her sensors pick up a matronly looking heavy-set woman older than forty on the left moving closer, pausing to look around, and moving closer again. At a distance of less than twelve feet the round-faced woman dressed in a loose tan tunic, a plastic copy of an old time black Western hat over salt and pepper dark brown hair, and a red bandana scoots sideways another quick two steps closer through a small break in the crowd. At less than eight feet the heavy woman smiles, turns half around, grins, and quickly her chubby arm points at Bakman like she recognizes him. Her wrist bends her hand up out of the way and her sleeve’s cuff puffs. Zee's purse plunges down toward Bakman's left side as she steps in close to him. Bakman hears a thump. To anyone looking it is just his tall shapely companion giving him a hug, but her purse has moved downward quick enough to shield him from a poison dart.
The still smiling assassin moves away, moving surprisingly fast for such a heavy-set person, zigzagging through the crowd toward the front doors. The noise of the music has masked the puff sound of her small poison dart weapon and the tiny thump of the dart sticking into Zee's purse. Five seconds later Zee's program is already sending Vee a picture of the assassin and that picture is quickly relayed to Breen’s crew outside.
Vee has it, a picture of that room, and all other rooms on a wall of screens. Vee tracks the wide bodied woman’s retreat relaying information about the assassin’s movements to Breen's security forces scattered around the area inside and out.
On all security team’s screens the heavy-set woman’s face pops on.
Two tense minutes and forty-one seconds later Zee hugs Bakman again and kisses his cheek to disguise a whispered, "One."
A smiling Bakman nods, knows the first one is on the way to the basement, pats her arm, and kisses Zee’s neck in return.
As they part, Zee pretends a need to look at herself in her mirror, but she is really pulling out the poison dart and putting it inside her purse. For more than a minute they stand quietly and listen to the music until the song ends and another starts.
Before the next song ends another dead assassin is laying on a stretcher in the secret seventh level basement. Quickly, two white-coated scientists, Dee the mechanical, and Breen start their routine. They strip the corpse on the stretcher and lift the heavy naked woman to an examination table. Careful minutes are spent going over the assassin’s corpse, her clothing, and weapon searching for any new information. They turn the corpse over on her belly and find a small one inch yellow flower tattooed on her left backside. They record it and a name tattooed on her right shoulder blade. They wonder about the name . . . Frieda O . . . tattooed in half-inch maroon letters. Is it her name, a friend, or lover? Breen sends a copy of both tattoos and flower up to the twenty-fourth floor in hope the artist can be identified.
Before Breen leaves to return to West Club, two men come down in the elevator dressed as mechanical construction workers. As Breen walks away to take the elevator up again he tosses a size forty-three extra large gray mechanical tunic to one of the two arriving workers, and orders.
"Get her ready to travel. Take isolated single frames of front, back, both sides, and a facial portrait of the woman for our records. Include frames of both tattoos. Also, for our records take a DNA sample, include fingernails and hair samples. Label her effects and information as West Club-1. Hold her in storage for there may be more to transport. They’re still working down at our fill s
ite in the south . . . but still no third shift . . . same as before this one and any others travel on a mechanical delivery and pickup cart. No rush, Hack Noonan is expecting several tonight."
The four men and Dee the mechanical only nod and continue taking a last look at the assassin’s corpse for clues, clean fingernails and toenails into a plastic labeled dish, make a recording of her teeth and fillings, roll the body over twice studying her front and back, slice through the seams and linings of her clothing, and run her table under a medical scanning machine. A disk of the scan is included in her collected information. All five are still working as Breen’s elevator rises. One starts slipping a gray mechanical tunic over the dead assassin’s feet and another helps slide the uniform upward. Two others lift the body so the tunic can slide upward.
Upstairs in West Club the music is a slow dance to an old song about a cattle drive. Zee and Bakman take a turn on the dance floor to the claps and cheers of the crowd after Morgana announces Bakman. When the dance ends, he waves to the crowd and announces to shouts and clapping, “Half price the rest of the night.”
They move to the food section after Morgana relays his order. Both Bakman and Morgana have a 9 ounce cup of artificially sweet Ginger tea and a three-inch across sugar cookie with sprinkled sugar-cinnamon swirls and sparkles. Their menu item on the wall-screen calls it, "Hot muddy water and a Sweetie Pie."
Zee, Bakman, and Morgana sit on a flat plastic rock around a campfire that glows but does not give off any heat. While they eat, Zee mixes into their small talk but keeps watching for assassins. The only information Zee really adds is, "One’s ready to move south."
Bakman nods and stands. They toss their plastic containers in a wooden-looking plastic barrel that grinds waste before moving through the batwing doors into the saloon. Inside, Bakman’s foot is on the rail next to a spittoon while drinking neat a shot glass full of rotgut, a slightly sour non-alcoholic whiskey. Bakman announces that for the next half-hour all drinks at the bar are free. Through the wild yelling and drink orders Morgana, Bakman, and Zee struggle away through the surging forward crowd.
As they step out of the saloon area into the main wide hallway while Morgana relays his order. A barely five-foot tall skinny man in a light blue tunic of a local building security force moves from near the game area toward the saloon. Zee watches the short thin man work his way closer as he appears to be leaving, whirls when passing close, his arm points at Bakman and his wrist bends to move his hand out of the way, and his sleeve’s cuff puffs.
Quickly, Zee slips her purse in front of Bakman’s left side. A relieved Bakman hears a small thunk sound. Zee sends a picture of the assassin to Vee who is watching.
Vee sends pictures to Breen's men as the short and thin assassin crashes out through an emergency exit onto the Seventh Causeway. In the darkness between causeway lights, only thirty-four running steps north, a double-ball puffs, and two minute and eight second later the short skinny light-blue dressed assassin posing as local security is on the way to the basement. Expertly this second assassin is stripped, lifted to the examination table, and processed to head south to the landfill this night.
Inside the game room, Bakman tries his hand at shooting with a computer target rifle made to look like an old time Winchester. He shoots at a charging buffalo, a leaping cougar, and a running antelope. His only recorded kill is a buffalo. Bakman laughs and tells the crowd watching, "It was too big to miss."
The crowd laughs and as Bakman moves toward the door, he yells at the attendants, "For the next half-hour all games are free." To the yells and cheers of the crowd, Bakman, Morgana, and Zee moved outside. While Morgana relays his order, Zee whispers, “Two.” Brakeman nods. The three of them walk outside to shake hands with Morgana at the hover and paused for a moment looking at a new long line of customers moving through the front door to get their first look at West Club.
A whispering Zee reports, "One more tried. Breen’s crew recognized and stopped before entry a young busty redheaded woman. You remember that eye-catching decoy from the Chondrin visit. Your redhead in similar yellow-gold tunic attempted entry with a double-ball purse like mine. When asked about it two hundred feet from the door, the woman reacted badly. That redheaded eyeful is now dressed in a poor fitting gray tunic and loaded on a mechanical hover cart in storage ready to go south."
With a nod Bakman pushes at the panel, waves at Morgana, and their rented hover moves away. Slowly at just less than three miles per hour Bakman and Zee ride on a public hover back down the Seventh Causeway for a hundred twenty-three yard trip toward the safety of the OpDyke Building’s closest elevator.
On a quiet uneventful ride Zee’s eyes switch to night vision to check every shadow. Their elevator door is suspiciously open and without lights, inside the black a shape gives off an unusually large heat signature.
Zee whispers, “Ambush.”
Shoving Bakman behind her, Zee points her purse at the dark doorway and it puffs twice. Two muffled explosions inside the elevator car just after something clicks off the hover’s front rail, and a massive six-foot-eight wide-bodied black hooded fat female pitched forward face down.
Zee lets the hover park, places Bakman against the building, takes time to look around on the causeway concrete roadway with her night vision, and finds the poison dart for her purse compartment. Security Team Nine rushes forward. One removes the hover for reprogramming and the rest are needed to help Bakman and Zee lift the four hundred twenty-one pound plus female corpse up on a cargo hover-cart and back it inside the elevator compartment. Inside there is barely room for Zee and Bakman. Zee pushes the Basement Six panel. It descends to deliver another killer for a south bound trip.
On the ride downward Bakman stares at the huge corpse and loudly speaks.
“She’s big enough to have killed me just by sitting on me or with her bare hands … this one’s a brute.”
Tonight had been a huge risk for Bakman, but one he thought he had to take. They, his enemies, had tried four times tonight to kill him. His enemies failed on all three planned direct attacks and a fourth ambush attempt. Bakman knows his people will worry that the hired assassins might not fail next time and security remains at alert status for the next two weeks.
The Centauri Conspiracy Page 22