Tek Power (10 page)

“Lots of people around here knew that.”

“Do you have any idea why he was killed?”

“I think I'll just abandon this crap here,” said Sulman. “I'll make it to the stop on my own.”

“Is there anybody else at MaxComm who I can—”

“Nobody.”

Jake said, “Suppose I contact Maxfield, Sr., and mention that I had a two-hour chat with you, wherein you passed along all sorts of Maxfield secrets?”

“That would screw me up a lot.”

“So give me something useful now.”

Sulman told him, “Talk to Karla Maxfield.”

“That's Maxfield's daughter?”

“Yes, and she was down in Nicaragua for a few days, too.” He glanced across at the huge MaxComm complex. “She's putting in an appearance at a fundraising cocktail party at the War Museum in DC tonight. If you can get into that, you might be able to approach her.”

“Okay, let me help you to that skybus stop,” offered Jake.

“Forget it,” said Sulman. “Today I think I'll splurge and take a cab.”

14

G
OMEZ WAS STRETCHED
out, facedown, on the parlor carpet when Jake returned to their suite at the Beltway Plaza.

“Fatigued, are you?” Jake asked his prone partner.

“Note the dornicks spread out on the coffee table,
amigo
,” grunted Gomez. His investigation of this stretch of carpeting concluded, he got to his knees and dropped the sniffer gadget away in a pocket.

“Three very small bugging devices.”

“Makes a fellow feel as though he's infested with ticks or
cucarachas
.” He rose up completely, rubbed at his left buttock and sighed. “I also had to ditch a pretty but inept
señorita
who was doing a secondrate job of trying to tag me. Cute and I was tempted to lure her into a bistro for a friendly ale—but who can dally with a lass who can't even tail somebody without tipping her hand?”

“Yeah, I was trailed for a while, too.” Bending, he poked a forefinger at the eavesdropping devices Gomez had collected in their suite. “Swiss manufacture. The type favored by the OCO.”

“We already knew they were interested in us.” Gomez wandered over to a window. The day was fading away to dusk. “I'd like to know, though, exactly how these Clandestine
cabrones
are connected with all this.”

“That's going to take a mite longer to find out than I anticipated,” Jake told him. “My contact there is—apparently—out of the country and unreachable. I tried to track him down this afternoon with absolutely no luck.” He rested on the arm of the sofa.

“Before we compare notes, there's a vidphone message for you,” said his partner, nodding in the direction of the vidwall. “I might mention that, since all these bugs were bugging away when the message came in, the OCO also knows all about your secret love life.”

“Huh?”

“Replay the last message,
por favor
,” Gomez instructed the wall.

Alicia Bower's image materialized on the screen. She was wearing a pale green tunicdress and her auburn hair was tied back with a twist of dark green ribbon. She was standing in what looked to be a public vidphone booth at a skyport. “Jake, it's very important that I talk to you,” she said, concern sounding in her voice. “I've just found out something and I think it may tie in with the case you're working on. I'm going to be in DC on business today. Meet me at my rooms at the Jefferson Hotel tonight at seven. Please.”

As the image faded, Gomez asked, “Think she actually knows something?”

“I'd better go over there and find out.” From his jacket pocket he took a small plasticard. “Which means you'll have to attend these festivities alone.”

“Were we going to a party?”

Jake tossed him the admittance chit. “A fundraiser for the War Museum and—”

“One of my favorite causes.”

“And Karla Maxfield's going to attend,” continued Jake. “It's probable she knows something about what's been going on.” He filled Gomez in on what he'd picked up from Sulman, adding, “I followed up on this some. Karla was indeed down there in Managua for most of the period that Maxfield, Jr. and Eve were in town.”

“If she really knows anything of importance,
amigo
, she's got to be on somebody's list, too.”

“Yeah, you might mention that to her. Might prompt her to confide in you.”

“That coupled with the well-known Gomez charm ought to do it.”

Picking up one of the disabled listening devices, Jake tossed it in his palm a few times. “What'd you find out today?”

Gomez told him about Timecheck's report on Dr. Morgana. “Researching the lady's career on my own thereafter,” added the detective, “I discovered that she's very likely been tied in with no less than five other assassinations over the past couple years.”

“You come up with anything as to what Maxfield, Jr. knew? Or anything on Surrogate 13?”

“
Nada
, nothing at all.”

“Maybe Karla Maxfield has some answers.”

Leaning against the wall and folding his arms, Gomez said, “You know Alicia Bower much better than I do.”

“True.”

“She's really got some information to pass on—this isn't just an excuse to get you over there?”

Jake grinned. “I doubt it, Sid,” he answered. “Unlike you, I don't have the sort of charm that drives women goofy.”

T
HE SECURITY ROBOT
was sitting in the hotel corridor, leaning against the wall, legs spread wide and coppery head tilted far to the right. His left eye was dangling from its socket and an acrid plume of sooty black smoke was drifting up from a large jagged rent in the top of his skull.

The door to Alicia's suite was standing nearly a foot open just beyond the slumped guard.

Drawing his stungun, Jake eased along the hallway of the Jefferson Hotel.

After listening for several seconds outside the doorway, Jake lunged and booted the door completely open.

The large living room was empty, an armchair was toppled over on its back with its legs in the air. Out the window you could see the Washington Monument glowing white in the night.

Jake stopped in the center of the big room, gun ready.

Then, slowly, he crossed to the bedroom.

No one was in there. Another chair lay upsidedown against the wall and a cosmetics case, its contents scattered, had fallen in front of it. The bedside vidphone was on the fritz, the screen glowing red and giving off harsh crackling sounds.

Beside the bed Jake noticed a fragment of paper, about two inches square. He picked it up, frowning. “Funny thing to find on her bedroom floor,” he observed.

The scrap was from a very old newspaper, probably from way back in the twentieth century. His frown deepening, Jake very carefully slipped the fragment into his jacket pocket.

He went carefully through the rest of the hotel suite, but found no trace of Alicia.

15

T
HE MARTIAL MUSIC
hit Gomez while he was still strolling along Independence Avenue a good block and a half from the War Museum. He was wearing the most conservative jacket he'd brought along with him from SoCal.

The five-story plastiglass, metal and neomarble building had been sprayed with red, white and blue litepaint for tonight and it glowed and flashed against the clear night. Sitting up in a huge gondola that hung suspended from a hoverliner was the Military Service Robot Band. Its brassy music, vastly amplified, flowed down across the night sky.

Several dozen people in formal attire were climbing the entrance ramp toward the high arched entryway as Gomez reached the War Museum. A pretty blonde android held up a hand in a halt gesture.

“Your ticket, please, sir.”

Smiling, he handed her the plasticard Jake'd given him. “Here you are,
bonita
.”

“All in order,” the android said, smiling back. “You'll be happy to know that Vice President McCracklin will be making a special holographic appearance here later tonight.”

“That truly cheers me up.” He continued up the ramp.

“I hope you won't think me rude,” spoke a tall silvery blonde woman whom he was passing.

“I might, it's hard to say at this point.”

“I wanted to ask you about your … um … coat I guess you'd call it.”

“
Sí?
”

“What color is it?”

“Blue.”

“Blue usually doesn't have flecks of … um … pink in it.”

“This is,” he explained patiently, “SoCal Pacific Ocean Sunset Blue, ma'am.”

“Ah, yes, that explains it.” Nodding, she moved away from him.

There were at least two hundred guests milling and mingling in the huge foyer. Gomez weaved his way through them, helping himself to a glass of ale from the silver tray of a passing goldplated servobot. He moved closer to a wall and, resting one shoulder against it and sipping his ale, scanned the crowd.

This afternoon he'd phoned the Cosmos file room, read up on Karla Maxfield's background and studied several pictures of her. She was said to be a bright and feisty young woman of twenty-nine. She had dark brown hair and for the past year and a half had been working as Executive Editor for a MaxComm faxweekly called
Gossip Digest
.

As soon as he determined Karla wasn't in the crowded foyer, he nudged his way into one of the other rooms on this level. It was the Land Tank Wing, containing sixteen tanks from previous centuries plus an animated mural of tank combat in World War II that covered one wall. The soundtrack for the mural, a combination of explosions and percussion, made this an unpopular area for conversation and there were fewer than fifty people here.

None of them was Karla Maxfield.

Gomez moved on. The History of Aerial Bombardment Room was even less conducive to chatting and only a dozen dedicated aviation buffs were in evidence. The Panorama of Propaganda Suite was relatively quiet and there Gomez spotted his quarry, standing with three other people in front of a display of twentieth-century Uncle Sam posters.

She was wearing a full-length black gown and had a single yellow rose in her hair. There was a tall black man on her right, a thin man in his seventies on her left. The fourth member of the group was a heavyset Indian woman.

Gomez walked confidently over to them, smiling an ingratiating smile. “Good evening, Miss Maxfield,” he said. “We met at—”

“You.” She frowned darkly. “I know you.”

“Exactly what I was saying. We met last year during a media conference in Rio,” he continued. “I'm Carlos Troxa with the—”

“Bullshit,” she said. “I was scanning a file on you only last month. You're Lopez … No, Gomez. Sidney José Gomez.”

“You're confusing me,
cara
, with a notorious cousin of mine who—”

“Gomez the gumshoe,” said Karla disdainfully. “Lowlife peeper, disgraced flatfoot, unscrupulous snoop who—”

“Coming from the Executive Editor of
Gossip Digest
, that remark—”

“Right, you're the doink who helped get my great friend Bennett Sands killed,” she went on. “And only a few weeks ago, teaming up with that flatchested shrike, Natalie Dent, from our hated rival, Newz, you caused enormous grief for a dedicated psychiatrist named—”

“This is going to make the cordial conversation I had in mind somewhat—”

“Scram,” she suggested.

The black man offered, “I can toss him out on his ear, Karla.”

“No, we'll simply move elsewhere.” Giving him one more glowering glance, she walked away from Gomez. “If he follows too closely on my heels, if he so much as breathes on me for the rest of the evening, then you can muss him up, Norm.”

Gomez remained in place, watching the four of them depart. “I'm not,” he told himself, “getting off to a very good start here.”

T
IMECHECK PUT DOWN
his mug of nearcaf, rolled up his sleeve and consulted one of his bulletin watches. “Doesn't do us a heck of a lot of good, Jake, if you're two minutes fifteen seconds early and then this dwork is seven minutes forty-five seconds late,” he complained.

“You sure he's the right guy for this chore?” Jake and the information dealer were sharing a booth at the back of a Snax restaurant just off Connecticut Avenue.

“Daddy, this Quatermain
lives
down under DC and he's a firstrate guide,” Timecheck assured him. “His only flaw is that he's not prompt.”

From up near the entrance came the sound of a robot waiter falling over. “Vagrant, am I?” growled someone.

“He's also got something of a temper.” Timecheck leaned out of the booth. “Over here, Quatermain.”

A large bearded man came lumbering up to them. “Told me they didn't allow beggars in here,” he said, scowling darkly. He was wearing a dirt-smeared greatcoat that bore patches of several different fabrics. “Hell, a few beggars would upgrade the looks of this cesspool.”

“Jake Cardigan, this is Quatermain.”

The big shaggy man held out his hand. “I hope
you're
not looking for trouble, pilgrim.”

Shaking hands, Jake answered, “I'm looking for somebody to guide me through the Paper Archives Catacombs under the city.”

Quatermain said, “Slide over, Timecheck,” and pushed onto the seat next to him. “Why—tourist?”

“Jake's a detective. I already told you about—”

“Let's hear him tell me.”

Jake grinned. “Okay, I'm impressed with your toughness,” he said to the big man. “You don't take any crap from anybody and you consider dirt a sign of manhood. Now, either we get down to business—because I'm in a hurry—or you can take a hike.”

Quatermain sat back, studying Jake. Then he shrugged. “What are you looking for down there?” Much of the growl had left his voice.