Inside the cozy crib, Susan Grossman cried out again in pain.
Ducked low, Dan lunged into the room.
The large hairless man, giving a high-pitched grunt, lifted Susan high and hurled her into the oncoming young man.
She hit him hard, shoulder digging into his chest, right hand slapping across his face, just as he was about to aim his stungun.
Both she and Dan went falling back through the doorway and into the shadowy corridor.
Now from his shoulder holster the hairless man ripped out his lazgun. Snarling, he took three steps forward. “You little bastards are going to cease to be,” he promised in his piping voice.
His right arm stretched out rigid, the barrel of the gun pointed right at the tangled Dan.
But then Molly jumped into view, her stungun held in both hands. “Not just yet,” she informed him as she fired.
His empty eyebrows climbed, his eyes went rolling backward into his head. The gun hand snapped up and, his trigger finger spasmodically flexing and unflexing, the lazgun fired twice. Its sizzling beam ate two smoking jagged holes in the low crib ceiling.
An alarm started hooting in the corridor.
Staggering backward, arms flapping, the hairless man sat on the bed, tottered, rocked back and forth, then dropped over onto the floor, out cold.
Molly dashed into the crib, bent over the sprawled man, and did a quick frisk. “No ID at all,” she said disappointedly, moving up and away.
Dan, on his feet, was helping Susan to stand.
She said, “We’ve got to get out of here. That alarm’ll bring all sorts of nasty folks onto the scene.” She pointed at the far end of the passway. “There’s a back way out of here. Let’s, please, hurry.”
“We’ll retreat,” agreed Dan, catching hold of Molly’s hand.
The three of them went running.
HIS SKYCAR SET on an automatic homeward course, Jake was leaning back in the pilot seat. The aftereffects of having been stungunned were, not quite as rapidly as he might have wished, leaving him. By morning he ought to feel fit again.
“As fit as a weather-beaten codger has any right to feel,” he said.
The phonescreen spoke to him. “Call from your son.”
“Let’s have it.”
Dan, looking excited, appeared on the small rectangular screen in the dash. “Can you get over here right away, Dad?”
After taking in the details of the room Dan was phoning from, Jake said, “Looks like you’re at Molly’s.”
“I am,” confirmed his son. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to you since this morning, but we’ve come across something damned important. It has to do with the case you’re working on, with the murder Bascom’s accused of.”
“Listen, Dan—at least one Tek cartel is tied in with this,” he told him. “You and Molly have to be damned cautious about poking into—”
“Can we, maybe, Dad, have the paternal lecture after I tell you what we know. We may be working against a deadline here.”
Grinning, making a go-ahead gesture toward the screen, Jake invited, “Proceed.”
“Some of this stuff is going to sound very strange to you. It did to me,” began Dan. “I’ll fill in that background when you get here to the Beverly Hills Sector. The important thing is that Molly’s a pretty good friend of Susan Grossman and—”
“You’re talking about Dwight Grossman’s sister?”
“That Susan Grossman, yes,” said Dan, impatient. “She’s here at Molly’s with us. She saw the killing and can identify the two men who killed her brother. Fact, we already got a make on one of them, but he’s dead. The other one, a big guy with no hair to speak of, we ran into tonight when we pulled Susan out of a Tek parlor.”
“The hairless lout I’ve met myself,” said Jake, nodding. He punched out an alternate course on the control panel. “Was Susan Grossman there when they shot her brother?”
“Not exactly. That’s one of the odd things about this,” said Dan. “Are you coming over?”
“You’ve aroused my curiosity,” Jake told him. “See you in about ten minutes.”
THE HOUSE WAS nearly two hundred years old and had been built to resemble a Spanish villa. The large living room had a beamed ceiling of real wood and the floor was of real tile.
Jake was pacing across the yellow and blue tiles, passing close to the arched windows that looked out on an immense illuminated swimming pool that was ringed by several dozen real palm trees. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “it’s possible.”
“You saw the pictures Rex got for us,” said Dan. “They match her descriptions.”
“That they do,” admitted Jake. “And the lout with the absence of hair looks pretty much like the guy I tangled with at Thelwell.” He returned to the low oaken coffee table on which had been spread the pictures Molly and Dan had acquired from Rex/ GK-30. “I’ve heard of the redhead before. Leroy Salten. Yeah, a freelance gunman who’d work for just about anybody.”
Susan was sitting alone, very still, on the sofa. “I don’t know why I developed this … knack,” she said softly. “Some people call this sort of ability a gift. I don’t, though, look at it that way.”
Picking up one photo of each man, Jake moved closer to her. “You never saw either of these guys before?”
“Never, no, Mr. Cardigan. Not until I had the vision of their killing my brother last night.”
“We sure all saw the bald guy tonight,” put in Molly as she went over to sit beside her forlorn friend. “He was trying to kill Sue.”
Susan shook her head. “I’m not really certain of that,” she said in her faraway voice. “From the little he said before you two came to help me, I think he was planning to take me somewhere.”
“He didn’t say where?” asked Jake.
“No, I’m sorry.”
Dan said, “How did they know Susan was going to be at the Eternity Depot tonight?”
“We’ve got Teklords mixed up in this whole business.” Jake resumed pacing, slapping the photos, absently, against his leg. “Once she showed up at that Tek emporium, somebody passed the information along.”
“But why,” asked Molly, “do they want to hurt her?”
“Could be they’ve heard she claims to have information on the killing,” said Jake. “Or they may just figure she knows what he knew.”
Susan asked him, “Was my brother involved with Tek in some way? Was it because of my … of my being hooked on the stuff for so long?”
“He was doing research for some reports on the pharmaceutical outfits in Greater LA,” answered Jake, halting beside one of the big windows. “There’s a link there somewhere with the Tek trade. He didn’t mention any of that to you, Susan?”
Her smile was small and fleeting. “I haven’t seen much of Dwight for a long while, Mr. Cardigan,” she replied. “After my stay with … with Dr. Stolzer in his rehab facility … well, that made my brother very uneasy. He didn’t feel having a Tekhead for a sister was going to help him in his career. He never visited me while I was there and … once I came home, my father thought it best if I didn’t see too many people for a while. Not that Dwight was fighting to visit me.”
“Does your father know anything about what Dwight was working on?”
“I don’t believe they’ve been in touch for weeks,” she said. “My brother wasn’t especially fond of Juneanne Stackpoole. She’s my father’s … um … female companion. He made the mistake of telling Dad what he thought of her and … since my father is probably the only man in Greater Los Angeles who doesn’t realize what a terrible woman she is … well, it led to an argument and somewhat of a falling-out.”
Dan said, “Let’s get back to what Susan experienced, her vision of the killing. Obviously that’s not evidence, but I’m convinced it was accurate. She really did, I don’t know how, have some kind of psychic glimpse of what went on last night.”
“That won’t mean a damn thing to the police,” said Jake. “In fact, even after what you
’ve told me, I’m still a mite skeptical myself.”
“What do you think we’re doing?” asked his son. “Running a con on you?”
“I’m saying it’s hard to accept something this unusual.” He moved closer to Susan. “How long have you been able to do this?”
“It’s not something I can do,” answered the young woman. “It’s more like something that’s done to me. These scenes, these glimpses of what’s going on someplace else—they simply hit me all of a sudden. Like, you know, a seizure or a fit.”
“You can’t control one, summon up an image?”
“No, and I can’t tune in on something as if it were a vidnet show.” Sighing out a breath, she leaned back on the sofa. “I’ve thought about this a lot—and done quite a bit of reading, too—since I started having these visions. They got going right after I came home from Dr. Stolzer’s facility. Either all that Tek I used quirked my brain in a strange way or Dr. Stolzer’s electronic treatments caused a change in some of my brain cells. Supposedly brain injuries have been known to let psychic abilities loose. I also considered the possibility I was simply crazy, but the fact that what I see turns out to be true convinced me I’m not.”
Jake said, “Back when I was using Tek—five, six years ago—I ran into three or four people who claimed they’d developed psionic powers from using the stuff. I never saw any proof of it, though.”
“Nobody believes a Tekhead. That’s why I haven’t told anybody—except Molly. And then Dan and you, Mr. Cardigan,” she said, looking up at him. “When you said you used to be hooked on Tek, was that just to make me feel I’m not the only idiot in—”
“No, I had a serious problem with Tek,” he told her. “But I don’t anymore.”
“How’d you quit?”
“It was very rough. I did it mostly on my own, without any medical or psych help,” he said. “But Dan helped me and so did my partner Sid Gomez. Neither of them let me kid myself about what I was really doing.”
Susan said, “I don’t know if I can stop. I thought I could. Then tonight I got so upset—and, damn it, there I was, back at that place.”
“You’ll get to a point where no matter how bad reality gets, you won’t turn to Tek.”
“I don’t have the kind of people in my life that you apparently did, Mr. Cardigan.”
“First off, you’ve got yourself,” he said. “You’ve also got Molly and Dan—and you’ve got me.”
20
JAKE kissed the pretty blond woman, then stepped back. “Actually, Bev,” he said, “I’m also here on business.”
Bev Kendricks smiled, moved around behind her desk, and sat down. “That was a sort of businesslike kiss, now that I think about it.”
“No, that was the romantic portion of this get-together.” He straddled a chair. “Now comes the business.”
The offices of Bev’s private detective agency were in a towering commercial building that was built out over the Pacific in the Santa Monica Sector. From her high, wide windows one could see the ocean and the early-morning fog, still floating above the pale blue water.
“I heard Walt Bascom is out of jail,” she said. “Even though we’re rivals, I admire him. With some reservations.”
“He’s out for now, yeah,” said Jake. “We still have to find out who killed Dwight Grossman.”
“How can I help?”
“The Burdon twins figure in this mess somehow,” he told her. “As I recall, you know them.”
“Mostly I’m casual friends with Rebecca, better known as the lesser of two Burdons,” answered the private investigator. “She’s far less nasty than Rowland. As a matter of fact, Rebecca loaned me part of the money when I decided to start up my own agency.”
“Okay, she’s a pal, but what about the operations of NewTown Pharmaceuticals? Anything shady there that you know about?”
Frowning, Bev answered, “I don’t believe the Burdons are crooks, if that’s what you’re asking. And certainly not murderers.”
He hunched his shoulders slightly. “NewTown is working on a supposedly harmless version of Tek. The working title is SinTek,” he said. “Heard anything about it?”
“Nothing, no. But then I haven’t talked to Rebecca that much over the past few months,” she answered. “You think Grossman’s death has something to do with this imitation Tek?”
“Too soon to tell.”
Turning, she looked briefly out into the brightening morning. “What do you suspect, Jake, that the Burdons are actually manufacturing the real thing? That SinTek is just a cover for an illegal operation?”
“It’s a possibility that’s been suggested to me,” he replied. “By seemingly reliable sources.”
She faced him again, shaking her head. “Not Rebecca, she wouldn’t go along with anything like that. That company was founded by her grandfather and she—”
“How about her brother?”
“Well, Rowland is a very aggressive guy. But, no, I don’t see him sidelining in Tek.”
Jake asked, “Why haven’t you been in touch with Rebecca Burdon very much of late?”
“She’s been spending a lot of time in the Caribbean, and whatever she’s doing down there, it apparently doesn’t leave her much time to phone or be phoned,” said Bev. “Honestly now, Jake, she isn’t the sort of person to—”
“Why the Caribbean?”
“She likes it there, I suppose.”
“I have some digging to do at Cosmos.” Jake stood up. “Soon as this case is over, we’ll—”
“After this case, there’ll be another one,” she said. “But do look me up the next time you’re in a romantic mood, no matter how fleeting, Jake.”
“You’re very near the top of my list,” he assured her as he left the office.
THE COMPUTER SAID, “No, really, Jake, you can level with me. Give me, I’d appreciate it, your honest opinion.”
Jake was sitting in one of the pale green plastiglass research cubicles in the Cosmos Detective Agency’s InfoCenter. There were six large compscreens mounted on the wall in front of his seat. “It’s okay, Alec,” he said after taking another small sip from the plyomug on his work desk.
“I was expecting a more enthusiastic response to my homemade cappuccino nearcaf.”
“Alec, you’re a computer and this is an office situation. So the word homemade doesn’t actually apply.” He tapped the control panel. “Okay. Now let us return to fishing for information on the NewTown Pharmaceuticals folks. Specifically, I want stuff about any new plants and facilities built within the past two years or so.”
“If our homemade nearcaf operation doesn’t catch on, you lugs will have to send out again.”
“The cappuccino is great. Hits the spot. C’mon, and provide me with—”
“Having a nozzle installed can be painful, you know,” continued the computer. “But, feeling that no sacrifice is too great for you lads, I—”
“NewTown,” repeated Jake.
“Okay, ignore my efforts at hospitality. Take a gander at Screen 5. That’s the facade of the NewTown Research & Design Complex put up last summer in Lisbon, Portugal. Trite design, rather obviously reminiscent of the work of the late-twenty-first-century architectural whiz, Piet Goedewaagen. Though cheapened by the holographic—”
“What else do we have, Alec?”
“Screen 4 gives you a glimpse of the Project Development Facility on the island of San Peligro. Erected a year and a half ago. Note the artificial palm trees swaying in the balmy Caribbean breeze.”
Jake grinned. “Get me floor plans and area background on this one,” he requested. “Employee roster and any data about materials and equipment shipped there.”
“Sounds like this is a bingo.”
“A near bingo at least.”
Jake, after trying his tepid nearcaf again, said, “I’d also like you to check through all the NewTown employees in all their operations worldwide. Can you do that?”
“Certainly, but since it’s not entire
ly legal or kosher, it’ll take a minute longer,” answered the computer. “You looking for somebody in particular?”
Placing the simulated photo of the hairless assassin facedown on the computer’s scanpad, Jake suggested, “Like to know if this goon is on any of their payrolls—or ever was.”
“Not a very prepossessing chap.”
The computer made a dry clacking sound for nearly fifteen seconds. “Look at Screen 3.”
The image of a large, thickset man with curly brown hair and a fuzzy mustache was showing there.
Jake narrowed his eyes, studying the photo. “Yeah, that could very well be him under that wig.”
“Here. This is how he looks without it and the lip fuzz.”
A revised portrait appeared, this time of a hairless man.
Jake nodded. “That’s him. Who is he?”
“Summerson, Malcolm, age thirty-seven, unmarried. No criminal record. He’s been with NewTown a little over three years and works out of the Frisco office in a security capacity. Former Oregon State Militia officer.”
“Where can I find him?”
“Summerson resides in San Mateo in NorCal at … No, whoops. He moved out of there early this very morning. No forwarding address.”
“Print me out everything you’ve got on this lout.”
“No problem, Jake. And how about a fresh cup of—hold on. Message for you on Screen 2.”
Bascom, sitting cross-legged atop his cluttered desk, materialized on the compscreen. “There’s been another death, Jake,” he said. “The Long Beach Sector cops found Sam Hopkins dead on the sand a little after six this morning.”
“Shit,” observed Jake. “How was he killed?”
“They’re saying suicide …”
“Yeah, he was probably remorseful about getting stungunned and dragged out of his place by the NewTown lawmen.”
“Eventually, Jake, I’ll have a copy of the true autopsy,” promised the agency head. “Then we’ll know what really did him in and whether they used anything to make him talk before bumping him off.”
“If Hopkins was persuaded to talk, then the opposition is aware we know about SinTek and what it’s a cover-up for.” Jake leaned ahead in his chair. “I’m planning to embark for the colorful Caribbean later today. And you?”
Tek Kill Page 9
