F Paul Wilson - Sims 02 (5 page)

 
          
“Maybe, but they’re a lucky minority.
You can’t imagine what I’ve seen. As a matter of fact…”

 
          
She stopped herself. Did she dare?
Yes. Why not? Mr. Patrick Sullivan needed something to rile him up, stiffen his
spine.

 
          
“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll call
you in the next day or two and bring you along as I wind up an investigation
I’ve been pursuing for weeks. You game?”

 
          
He shrugged. “Sure. I’ll just need—”

 
          
Anj whimpered. Her eyes remained
closed in sleep.

 
          
“Misses her mother, I’ll bet,” Romy
said.

 
          
Sullivan stared down at the young
sim. “Afraid I can’t help her there.”

 
          
“Want me to take her?”

 
          
He raised a hand and gingerly,
gently, began stroking her stiff, stringy hair. “No. That’s all right.”

 
          
Romy realized she was catching a
glimpse of a facet of Patrick Sullivan that he hid from the world, perhaps even
from himself.

 
          
“You prefer Patrick to Pat?” she
said.

 
          
He glanced up with a surprised
expression,
then
grimaced. “Pat sounds like an
androgynous serving of butter, and Patty makes me sound like I should be holding
up the bar at the Dublin House Pub.
Just Patrick.”

 
          
“All right, Patrick,” she said. She
hesitated,
then
figured, what the hell. “And you might
as well call me Romy.”

 
          
SUSSEX COUNTY
,
NJ

 
          
OCTOBER 25

 
          
“Sullivan quit the firm rather than
drop the
sims
!” Mercer Sinclair said.

 
          
He pushed his chair back from his
desk and began to pace his office. His personal news service had picked up
Sullivan’s announcement that he was going into solo practice, and informed him
via his computer first thing this morning. Immediately he’d called Voss and
Portero. Somehow his brother had got wind and showed up as well. Not that Ellis
would contribute anything. Not that Mercer cared. He was too baffled, too
pissed to care.

 
          
“I can’t believe it!” he went on. “Is
the man crazy? Has he suddenly become a crusader? What’s gotten into him?”

 
          
Abel Voss cleared his throat. “An
infusion of cash, it appears.”

 
          
“Really?
How much?”

 
          
“Quarter mil was deposited to his sim
defense fund two days ago.”

 
          
Mercer was stunned. “A quarter—how do
you know?”

 
          
Voss glanced at the security chief.
“Mr. Portero’s people have been monitoring the fund.”

 
          
Portero’s people…Mercer knew Voss
didn’t mean the SimGen security department Portero headed.Portero’s people
—SIRG. No one referred to them by name. They were elsewhere, far off the SimGen
campus, and Mercer wasn’t the least bit surprised that SIRG had devoted a small
part of its vast resources to keeping an eye on Patrick Sullivan’s activities.

 
          
He shivered ever so slightly at the
thought of being the object of that cold scrutiny.

 
          
“Who’d give that kind of money to a
small-town ambulance chaser?”

 
          
“That boy’s no rube. He was ready and
waitin with an injunction when Beacon Ridge tried to trade some of its
sims
to another club. And he had another ready in record
time when we issued that recall on them. He’s anticipated us at every turn. He
may be an opportunist, but he’s a smart one.”

 
          
“Fine.
He
got lucky. But where did the money come from?”

 
          
“A cashier’s check,” Voss said.
“That’s all I know.”

 
          
“Perfect,” Mercer said, cracking his
knuckles in frustration. “So we can’t trace it.”

 
          
“Yes, we can,” Portero said, speaking
for the first time. “And we did.”

 
          
Mercer stared at the security chief,
standing there in his dark suit with his hands tucked behind his back, straight
as a board, like some parade ground tin soldier waiting to be inspected.

 
          
“Why didn’t you say so in the first
place?”

 
          
Mercer thought he sensed an instant
of hesitation in Portero but couldn’t be sure. He doubted this man had an
uncertain cell in his body…and yet, he’d seen something flash across his face.

 
          
“We are looking into an unexpected
aspect of the situation.”

 
          
“Which is?”

 
          
“The purchaser of the cashier’s check
was a Ms. Romy Cadman. You may remember the name: She led the OPRR inspection
team.”

 
          
Mercer stiffened.
“OPRR?
You don’t think—?”

 
          
Voss shook his head. “OPRR’s budget
just barely covers its expenses. Even if it had the surplus it wouldn’t
jeopardize its funding by getting involved in something like this.”

 
          
“Is she independently wealthy?”
Mercer said, feeling his unease growing by the second. “Where’d she get that
kind of money?”

 
          
“She lives modestly on a modest
income,” Portero said flatly. “She purchased the check with cash. That is all
we know—so far.”

 
          
A quarter of a
million in cash.
And probably more where that came
from.
Someone out there wanted Sullivan to succeed.

 
          
Again that sense of malevolent
convergence through which he could almost hear the gears of some giant piece of
machinery starting to turn…an engine of destruction.
But
whose engine?
Whose destruction?

 
          
“I don’t like this,” Mercer said.

 
          
“Neither do my people,” Portero said.
“We’re going to handle matters from here.”

 
          
“Meaning what?” Ellis said.

 
          
Mercer glanced at his brother. Their
eyes met. On this they could agree; neither of them was comfortable with the
way Portero’s people handled problems.

 
          
“Meaning this situation is spinning
out of control. Your attempt to stop Sullivan failed. Now it’s our turn.”

 
          
“Now wait a minute,” Voss said, both
chins jiggling as he hauled his bulk out of the chair. “Wait just one damn
minute. Don’t you folks say another word until I’m on the right side of that
door.
I don’t need to hear this.”

 
          
He hustled across the gray carpet and
let himself out.

 
          
As soon as the door closed Ellis
turned to Portero. “You’re not planning to—”

 
          
“No plans have been finalized, but
direct action will be taken.”

 
          
“No!” Ellis said, rising. “I’m not
going to sit by while you and your people pull more of your dirty tricks.”

 
          
“You have no choice, I’m afraid,”
Portero said without changing his inflection. “The matter is out of your hands.
Sullivan has proven smarter and more stubborn than anyone anticipated. Even
though the chance that his suit will set a precedent is remote, the mere
possibility that he might succeed is unacceptable. My people have decided to
stop him now, before he uses the courtroom to plant himself in the national
consciousness.”

 
          
“My God!”
Ellis moaned, shutting his eyes. “Why did we ever become involved with you?”

 
          
Portero didn’t answer. No answer was
needed.
But here again, for the second time in as many
minutes—a rare occurrence, to be sure—Mercer could agree with his brother.
He wished at times like these that they’d found another way to finance their
start-up back in the seventies. But he knew that when he settled down later and
was able to regain his perspective, this feeling would pass, and once again
he’d appreciate how SimGen never could have achieved its current dominance
without SIRG’s help.

 
          
Portero said, “We also intend to
learn the source of the Cadman woman’s money.”

 
          
“How will you do that?”

 
          
“Not your concern.” And again a flash
of something in Portero’s ebony eyes, almost like regret this time. “But we
will know.”

 
          
WESTCHESTER
COUNTY

 
          
OCTOBER 26

 
          
“Mr. Sullivan?”

 
          
Patrick looked up from the box he’d
just folded closed. He was nearly finished packing up the books in his office.
Strangely enough, he wasn’t the least bit sad about leaving Payes & Hecht.
And from the cool reception he’d received in the hallways, he gathered the
feeling was mutual.

 
          
Only Maggie seemed genuinely sorry to
see him go. She was out now, scrounging up more boxes for him, so there’d been
no one to intercept his visitor.

 
          
He saw a thin, aging woman in a faded
blue flowered dress and a rumpled red cardigan sweater. She wore a yellow scarf
around her head, babushka style, and clutched a battered black handbag before
her with both her bony hands. Her pale hazel eyes peered at him and she nodded
vigorously.

 
          
“Yes, you’re him,” she said. “I
recognize you from the TV.”

 
          
“Yes, ma’am?” he said. “Can I help
you, Ms….?”

 
          
“
Fredericks
.
Miss Alice Fredericks.” She offered a smile that might have been girlish had
she possessed more teeth. “I wish to retain your services, Mr. Sullivan.”

 
          
The poor woman didn’t look like she
had enough for her next meal. Not that it mattered. He was no longer with the
firm.

 
          
“I’m afraid I—”

 
          
“I want you to sue SimGen for me. I
can tell you’re a brave man. You’re taking on the company on behalf of those
poor dear sims, so I figure you’re just the man, in fact the only man with the
guts to tackle them for me.”

 
          
This was interesting.

 
          
“That’s very gratifying. On what
grounds would you wish me to tackle them, may I ask?”

 
          
Her face screwed up, accentuating her
wrinkles, and she looked as if she was about to cry. “They took my baby!” she
wailed.

 
          
Baby?
Patrick stared at her. A warning bell clanged in his brain. SimGen might have
some skeletons in its corporate closets, but he doubted stealing babies was one
of them. And this woman was long, long past the baby-bearing years.

 
          
“When did this happen?”

 
          
She sobbed.
“Years
and years ago!
I…I’m not sure how many. Things get fuzzy…”

 
          
“Why have you waited so long to go
after them?”

 
          
“I’ve been to every lawyer in New
York City and no one will take the case. They’re all afraid!”

 
          
“I find that hard to believe, Miss
Fredericks. There are literally thousands of lawyers in the city who would get
in line to sue SimGen.”

 
          
“Sure…until they hear about the space
aliens.”

 
          
Oh, Christ. No need for a warning
bell anymore. There it was, right out on the table: a big, multicolored
bull’s-eye withLooney Tunes scrawled across it.

 
          
Patrick didn’t want to ask but had
to.
“Aliens?”

 
          
“Yes. Space aliens abducted me,
impregnated me, and then when I delivered, it was a sim. But I loved him
anyway. That didn’t matter, though. They took my baby boy away from me. And do
you know who they handed him to?
Right in front of me?
Mercer Sinclair! Mercer Sinclair took my baby and I want him back!” She sobbed
again.

 
          
She wasn’t scamming. Patrick had a
sensitive bullshit meter and it wasn’t even twitching. This poor woman believed
every word.

 
          
“I sympathize, Miss Fredericks, but—”

 
          
“And you know what Mercer Sinclair
did with my son, don’t you? He made the whole race of
sims
from him. And he did it for the aliens so that earth can be repopulated by a
slave race that the aliens can use around the galaxy.”

 
          
Patrick blinked. A living breathing
talking issue of Weekly World News had walked into his office. It might be
funny if the woman weren’t so genuinely upset. And he might be tempted to sit
down and listen to her—purely for entertainment—if he didn’t have such a
burning need to put this place behind him.

 
          
“Tell you what, Miss Fredericks. I’m
leaving the firm, so I won’t be able to help you. But you could try one of the
firm’s associates. I suggest you go down the hall and find Mr. Richard Berger’s
office and tell him your story. And tell him I referred you.”

 
          
“Thank you, Mr. Sullivan. I’ll do
that right now.”

 
          
That should teach Berger to call him
Sim-Sim Sullivan.