High Bloods

by John Farris

  “Who are we looking for, R?”

  “No description. He’ll probably have a gym bag with him, just large enough for stashing fifty G’s worth of gold certs in a hurry.”

  Sure enough, half a minute later Ida had incoming.

  I saw her stiffen. She cupped a hand around her whisper tit, nodded twice, then got up slowly from the table. She reached down for her tote, glanced at Bea with a weak smile and another excuse for taking a break. Then she looked up at us.

  I put a hand on Duke’s shoulder, also a signal to Ida.

  “Stay put,” I said to Duke. “It’s routine now. I’ll follow Ida and make sure she’ll be okay.”

  “Yes, sir. Please don’t let nothin’ happen to her.”

  I had it figured beautifully, I thought.

  But I was all wrong.

  19

  t just a few seconds past five-thirty either a computer malfunction (unlikely) or someone hacking into the hotel’s deterrence system set off a couple of AUGIEs, which instantly spoiled what had been a good party.

  An AUGIE, for Augmented Galvanomagnetic Intercept Effector, employs staggered electromagnetic fields with laterally vectored sonic pulses to mentally disorient and physically incapacitate anything in the vicinity that is warm-blooded and walks, flies, or crawls.

  The overall effect was close to that of a Richter-10 earthquake. But only the air around us was moving, invisibly, with the staggering force of a tsunami; the aquamarine surface of the pool barely rippled and no roofs fell in. Everyone was holding their ears in pain. A dozen swans in their own pool, props for the fashion show, went squawking flapping nuts. Waiters reeled with their trays and crashed into tables. Anyone making it to his feet sprawled helplessly.

  Most people have never been exposed to the devastating effects of an AUGIE—or TRADs or PHASRs. As part of my Wolfer training I had endured all three. But ILC also has countermeasures, unknown and unavailable to the public, that gives us the edge in dealing with temporarily brain-locked werewolves.

  Duke Sanborn lurched against me. One hand clutched his chest in pain. I sat him down with his knees raised and his back to the bar. The tinted lenses in my Geekers already had darkened to full black and adjusted prismatically to neutralize the assault of the AUGIE pulses on my equilibrium. That left the skull-splitting low tones to deal with. I popped a spare whisper tit from a compartment on a sidebar of my Geekers and put it in my left ear, then manually activated the noise-cancel function on my wristpac.

  Suddenly I had complete silence and the rest of my faculties. I was a secure island in a universe of pandemonium.

  Booth Havergal and his guests from ILC Rome had eye-wear similar to mine. Booth’s wife didn’t, unfortunately, and she was throwing up in her lap—that was a stage-two reaction to an AUGIE blast.

  I looked at Duke, who was gasping. I wondered if he had a pacemaker. Not good. AUGIEs were hard on pacemakers.

  Within my cone of silence I couldn’t contact anyone; that feature of our wristpacs was blocked.

  I got Duke on his feet again, intending to carry him to the lobby and call for help once I was out of AUGIE range. I glanced at Ida Grace’s table. She had placed the tote on the table in front of her just before the AUGIEs went off. Now she was down on hands and knees along with Bea, torment in both their faces. I didn’t think about the money in the tote; Duke was my priority here.

  Then I saw the kid.

  He was heading casually for Ida’s table, sidestepping reeling or prostrate fashion show guests. He wore noise-canceling headphones and, unmistakably, a pair of Geekers. If he wasn’t with ILC, it was a third-class felony for him to have them. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. His glam was the tie-dye duds and love beads of an era decades in the past. He was tall, with shoulder-length, dirty blond hair and a pimply nose. He knew just where he was going and what he was there for.

  I had Duke as deadweight in my arms and I couldn’t react as the kid reached out while walking past Ida’s table and snatched the moneybag. He headed for the hotel lobby with a broad smile on his face.

  I followed, dragging Duke along with me.

  Fortunately the kid was in no hurry. He was aces up and two more in the flop. His lips were pursed as if he were whistling a happy tune, although he couldn’t have heard himself.

  I reached the lobby with Duke as the kid was going out the front door. I put Duke down in a nearby lounge chair, kicked over another chair and lifted his feet up to the seat. He had both hands on his chest, fingers digging in, and was breathing with difficulty.

  The AUGIEs were shut off. I could tell by the reaction of those hotel guests who were down on the carpet but no longer holding their ears in pain.

  I popped out the spare whisper tit as my Geeker lenses lightened up. I signaled for a Catastrophe Med Team from Beverly Hills Providian Hospital and took off after the kid, pulling my Glock from the shoulder leather.

  He had crossed the drive opposite the entrance and walked past a small crowd of pedicab operators untangling themselves on the greensward. Now he was loping down to Sunset, the tote slung over his shoulder, in more of a hurry because he’d seen a westbound Pacific Electric tandem streetcar that he apparently wanted to catch.

  There was a bright red TRAD box mounted on one of the stucco columns supporting the canopy over the driveway. I busted the glass with the butt of my Glock and passed my other hand over the heat-sensitive arming eye. On the sunny open downslope of the lawn TRADs popped up like mechanical mushrooms, one of them about ten feet directly in front of the getaway kid. I keyed all six of the TRADs to active, folded my arms, leaned against the column and watched.

  The kid was violently repulsed by the force field generated by the TRAD closest to him. It knocked him out of his Haight-Ashbury sandals and back a good fifteen feet. Where he encountered another field that bounced him into the air. He came down like someone being blanket-tossed, but he didn’t touch the ground again. A third TRAD sent him windmilling toward the street and the three-foot-high chain-link fence isolating Pacific Electric’s westbound track from those lanes on Sunset devoted to pedicabs, commercial, and emergency vehicle traffic.

  He cleared that fence with room to spare and sprawled across the track. The juice was underground and he wasn’t in danger of being electrocuted. But he’d come down hard, and the wind was knocked out of him. He staggered up and fled blindly into the path of the oncoming automated streetcar, which was slowing but still traveling about thirty miles an hour. He was knocked down and under the wheels as the sensors aboard applied the brakes.

  I got there as fast as I could, feeling sick about the accident I’d caused. I heard sirens. I picked up Ida’s tote that the kid had dropped on his way to a brutal end. I hopped the fence and had a look. Only about half of him was under the streetcar. The rest was lying faceup. He’d lost the Geekers in the impact with the front of the streetcar. I kneeled beside him.

  “Sorry, kid.” There wasn’t much else to say.

  His eyes were filming over. His arms shook. Blood bubbled from his mouth, and he died before I could ask him his name.

  I didn’t really need to know. He was just a delivery boy for whoever owned the Geekers.

  They were lying a dozen feet away. Not in great shape. One of the complex and very expensive optical systems was shattered. Two Beverly Hills Police Department prowlies were speeding up Beverly from the Flats, followed by Fire and Rescue. I had the Geekers stowed away. Now this was just an accident scene within BHPD’s jurisdiction.

  By the time I had walked back uphill to the hotel the driveway was filling up with paramedic and EMT buses. I grabbed an EMT named Barbara as she stepped down from the back of her bus with her medical bag and marched her into the lobby where I’d left Duke Sanborn.

  He was still conscious. “Chest pains?” the girl asked. Duke nodded. Barbara fed him baby aspirin, popped a nitro tablet under his tongue, put him on high-flow oxygen, and began attaching him to an EKG monitor. Efficiency was her game.r />
  Duke was on a nonrebreather and couldn’t talk to me. He rolled his eyes toward the tote I’d left on a chair.

  “Ida’s okay. So is her money.” I interpreted the second question in his eyes. “Mal? That’s what I’m going to find out next.”

  I left Duke in the hands of the EMT and caught up to Lew Rolling. He was wiping off his shirtfront with a handkerchief soaked in club soda.

  “Bad day to leave your Geekers somewhere else,” I admonished him as we went outside to the pool terrace. I handed over the pair the dead boy had been wearing and explained what had gone down. “Trace the serial number and find out who these were issued to.”

  “You think we have a bad apple?”

  “Yeah.”

  There was a lot of milling around on the terrace, but only a few guests were trying to leave. Most were just catching their breath. There were a few cases of nerves, some loud and angry voices. The hotel manager was an old hand at dealing with the obscenely rich. He had the serving staff handing out brandies and ice wrapped in towels. Lawyers on the guest list probably were thinking about fat lawsuits and those doctors on hand were helping with the elderly who required more than a stiff shot to keep that other foot out of the grave. A few models were sitting on the edge of the runway, either looking sullen or nonchalantly touching up their makeup. The band was playing again. “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries.” Catchy. Don’t get serious. It’s so mysterious.

  Ida Grace looked up when I sat down opposite her. She eyed the tote gratefully.

  “I wondered where that went.”

  “It’s where it was supposed to go that interests me.”

  A waiter placed glasses of cognac on the table with a murmured apology. I swallowed mine in gulps, watching two swan wranglers climb precariously on the tiled roofs of cabanas trying to coax down a pair of the beady-eyed birds.

  Beatrice and I looked at each other. She was holding hands with herself, probably because she still had the shakes. But she smiled.

  “I wonder what’s become of Duke?” Ida asked nervously, looking around.

  I told them, and threw in a cheery prognosis. No harm in that.

  “You didn’t happen to see Francesca Obregon this afternoon?” I said to Bea.

  “Yes! I mean, I only had a glimpse of her when she was dropped off at one of those big bungalows.”

  “Anyone with her?”

  Bea shook her head.

  “I didn’t see anyone. Come to think about it, I don’t believe she came to the show.” She looked around at overturned tables and floating trash in the pool while the band played on. “Some people don’t know how to have fun,” Bea said. A different look came into her eyes. “Do you suppose she still has my knife?”

  “Listen, Bea. I want you to take Ida home. I’ll arrange transportation. Both of you stay at the minka tonight. I’ll probably be delayed. Keep an eye on the loot until Ida can return it to the bank tomorrow. Meanwhile I’ll have private security guards on the front gate all night.”

  Her eyes got a little bigger.

  “What did you mean when you said where the money was supposed to go? There’s still somebody who might come after it?”

  “I don’t think so. He’ll probably be on the run, and in a different direction. Mexico is closest. I feel personally obligated to see that he doesn’t make it.”

  Lew Rolling called.

  “Got your boy. I wouldn’t have believed it.”

  “Go.”

  “That pair of Geekers was issued to G. W. McClusky by ILC Scientific. Three years ago, when they first became field-approved.”

  “Stork McClusky.”

  “You know him?”

  “Yeah. I need his exact location.”

  “Can’t get it, R.” He sounded exasperated. “He’s Intel, and they’re stonewalling. He’s none of our business and besides they’ve never heard of him.”

  “The fuck,” I said, and got up from the table. I looked at Bea, described her to Lew, and told him I had a job for him.

  Then I headed straight for the table where Booth Havergal, his wife, and the Spooks from Rome were preparing to leave. Cerise Havergal looked ill, but she was able to smile. I knew Booth had been wondering what I was doing there.

  “Sorry to be rude,” I said to Booth, “but I have a lousy situation on my hands and the clock is ticking. I need some help from your guests.”

  Booth winced. Paulo was, as usual, lighting a cigarette for the gloves-wearing woman. She flicked her dark glance at me. Even by daylight her face seemed dense with secrets; the glowing tip of her cigarette failed to ignite a responsive spark in the deep stealth of her being. Apparently she had no identifiable emotions. Paulo smiled, as laid-back as ever.

  “What is it, R?” Booth said, not too pleased with my usual lack of interest in the protocols of command. And whatever it was I’d brought to him, he didn’t want Cerise listening.

  “I’ll wait in the lobby,” she said. “Nice to see you again, R.” She was one of those women endowed with a natural elegance but without artifice whom I wouldn’t have minded being married to, if she hadn’t been married to someone else.

  I spoke to Booth as Cerise walked away.

  “An Intel agent’s gone sour,” I said. “I need him and need him damn fast, because I think he knows where Mal Scarlett is. He tried to promote his knowledge into some ready cash from Ida Grace. It won’t be too long before the Stork realizes the cash ain’t coming and he’s been burned.” Now I included the Spooks from Rome. “Intel won’t acknowledge McClusky or otherwise give me a thing I can use. But if you get hold of Cale DeMarco—”

  The gloves-wearing woman exhaled a long streamer of smoke from her nose and looked at Booth, granting him permission to give me some inside dope.

  “Cale DeMarco resigned as chief of ILC-Intel at ten this morning,” Booth said.

  “Oh,” I said. But now I had a grasp of why McClusky was trying to get his hands on some fast money. The walls were caving in at Intel.

  I looked at the gloves-wearing woman.

  “So you’re cleaning house. Just give me McClusky, that’s all I ask.”

  The Latin band had finished with “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries” and were packing up their instruments. Paulo began whistling a cheerful tune, providing the next musical interlude. He eyed a model, who gave him the eye back. Male model.

  “Paulo!” the gloves-wearing woman said a bit sharply. His whistling stopped and his smile became a little sheepish. He looked at her.

  She nodded in my direction.

  “Find out whatever he needs to know, and go with him,” she said.

  As we were leaving the terrace I got in touch with Lew Rolling and told him to meet us out front in a department R-Two (Rapid Response Transport/Tactical Weapons Operations).

  “All I need is McClusky’s ILC call sign,” I said to Paulo. “I think I know where he’s going to be for the next fifteen minutes. After that he’s long gone.”

  20

  he largest transit station on the Sunset light rail line was UCLA North, where passengers transferred to the Westwood/Wilshire monorail loop. The tandem streetcar that the dead kid who had come for the money probably intended to catch was now held up indefinitely by the accident. It was scheduled to make three more stops before arriving at UCLA North, ETA 5:58 P.M.

  That station was always busy: it served Bel Air as well as a campus of thirty-five thousand students. Most of the time even a Stork McClusky at six-six or so wouldn’t attract a lot of attention as he waited for the arrival of his delivery boy.

  “So what do you think?” Lew Rolling asked me. “If that’s where McClusky is?”

  “He could have planned it several ways. The simplest would be to get on the streetcar, locate the kid, sit or stand near him. Next stop the kid goes, leaves the bag, and Stork cuddles up to it. He rides to the Malibu terminus of the Sunset line, hires an air taxi there. Ten minutes later he’s at LAX, and in Mexico City in time for a late dinner.”

&
nbsp; “No streetcar, no money,” Paulo said. “Then what does he do?”

  “What does INTEL/INT have on him?”

  “Dipping too often into the black bag.”

  “Then he has money stashed somewhere else. Doesn’t need the fifty grand that bad, so he dusts.”

  “Among his other bad habits,” Paulo said, “was stiffing casinos.”

  “Okay. Then he might not be so well-off, and he’s nervous. But the cash from Ida Grace would seem like such easy pickings. So he doesn’t give up on it until he can’t control his fidgety feet any longer.”

  We had passed the Beverly Glen light rail interchange. I told Lew to take a left at the top of the hill onto Hilgard, then approach the station by a circuitous route through the campus. McClusky, wherever he might be waiting, wouldn’t miss an ILC heavy among the delivery trucks and an occasional restored old sport-ute on Sunset.

  “Speaking of bad habits,” I said to Paulo, “what about Cale DeMarco?”

  “Racketeering. Charges to come later. He was advised to hire a good lawyer.”

  “I hope you can make that stick.”

  Paulo smiled confidently.

  “My wife is very good at building airtight cases,” he said.

  “Arlequin? She’s your—None of my business, of course, but I thought you—”

  He nodded, still smiling.

  “Sexual orientation is no matter to us. We are two old souls, and we’ve spent other lifetimes together. We have perfect accord spiritually.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said. Old souls? I changed the subject. “The other night you told me that DeMarco had a helicopter tracking the armored truck from Angel Towne with Mal Scarlett in it. The pilot reported engine trouble and they had to break off surveillance. Do you think you can confirm that story? I have one I like better. McClusky was aboard; he faked the trouble call. The chopper continued to the next mal de lune site where Mallory was unloaded. Later Stork revisited the location, photographed Mal, who must have been hysterical from fear by then. But he didn’t attempt to rescue her. Uh-uh, not McClusky. For which over sight I will take great pleasure in kneecapping him. He sent his proof of life to Ida Grace, with a polite request for a payoff. I don’t think that he ever intended to give up the girl’s whereabouts. For that I will be pleased to take out his other knee, which ought to be enough to get his tongue wagging.”