Tek Power (16 page)

Over near the registration desk a short, greying man had just placed his right hand on the palmprint recogpad. From a side entrance to the big lobby five men had come running. They wore black clothes, crimson berets and darktinted plastiglass face masks.

Two of the masked men aimed stunguns at the greyhaired man. Both of the sizzling beams hit him, one in the spine, the other in the ribs. He straightened up jerkily, like a jumping jack, arms flapping high. Tottering two steps back, he toppled over, landing hard on his right side.

Another masked man, heaviest of the group, ran over to the fallen man. He had a lazgun in his fist and he started to bend over the unconscious figure.

“Nope, you don't.” Jake had yanked out his stungun and he fired it now as the assassin was about to shoot the man in the head.

Jake's shot snapped him up stiff, seeming, for a few seconds, to crucify him in the air. Two of the other masked men caught him before he fell and the whole group went running out into the rainswept dusk.

Jake slipped his stungun away. “What exactly was that?”

“Probably not a smart move on your part,
amigo
,” answered his partner. “Although I was about to try the same thing.”

“That was a bunch of Red Angels, huh?”

“Members in good standing of the local death squads,
sí
.” Gomez nodded. “I'm pretty certain their target is a gent named Ignacio Mentosa. He used to write for
La Prensa
and lecture at one of the universities hereabouts.”

Two bellbots and an android desk clerk had gathered around Mentosa's unconscious body. “
Medico!
” shouted the immaculate android. “
Pronto!
”

Gomez mentioned, “If we weren't on the
Angeles Rojos
shitlist prior to this, we sure are now.”

“Could this Mentosa be tied in with anything we're working on?”

“Doubt it, Jake. I heard he was coming back to Nicaragua for a few lectures. The government allows a little polite dissent now and then.” He shrugged. “Obviously, however, they'd just as well Professor Mentosa didn't speak out—ever.”

“On the contrary,
señores
.” A slim man in his early forties had risen from a nearby real-leather armchair and was approaching them. A jagged red scar snaked down across his left cheek.

Gomez muttered, “This
hombre
smells like the law.”

The man bowed slightly. “I am Captain Carlos Dacobra of the National Security Police.” He smiled at them in turn. “You, of course, are Jake Cardigan and Sid Gomez of the respected Cosmos organization. I won't bother to request your ID packets or gun permits, gentlemen, since I'm more than certain everything is in order.”

“Are you here to welcome us,” inquired Jake, “or just to get a ringside seat for the murder of Professor Mentosa?”

Laughing, Captain Dacobra reached into his jacket. He drew out a pearlhandled lazgun. “We don't tolerate public killings, Señor Cardigan,” he assured him. “Had you not acted so swiftly to avert the tragedy, I would have dealt with those Red Angels much more harshly.”

“Couldn't you get in a shot while they were hightailing it out of here?”

The lawman gestured at the crowded lobby with his free hand. “Most difficult to bring down fleeing assassins without risking injuring innocent bystanders,” he explained. “A great many innocent bystanders come to grief in our city as it is, gentlemen. I'm certainly not eager to add to their number.”

“We're not bystanders,” said Jake.

“Nor especially innocent,” added Gomez.

Smiling, Dacobra said, “I did indeed come by, Señor Cardigan, to Welcome you to our beautiful capital city. You may have heard that Nicaragua is a violent, lawless land and that our government is little more than a bloody dictatorship. Such, however, is not the case.”

“I doubt Professor Mentosa would agree with you.” Gomez nodded over at the white-enameled medibots who were, gently, loading the stunned man onto a wheeled stretcher.

“Possibly, but that is his privilege, Señor Gomez,” said the captain. “If I may be of any help during your stay, contact me at once. Oh, and let me add that the Red Angels can be an extremely vengeful group. You'd best be on your guard while in Managua,
señores
.”

Jake told him, “We're always on our guard, Captain. Thanks for your interest in our welfare, though.”

“
De nada
.” He bowed again, smiled again and, turning crisply on his heel, went walking away from them.

“
Chihuahua
,” remarked Gomez. “This has been quite a reception.”

“Yeah,” agreed Jake, “with fireworks and everything.”

24

W
ALT
B
ASCOM, WEARING
one of his less rumpled suits, approached the neontrimmed doorway of Shinzoo's Lighthouse in the Venice Sector. It was a ramshackle place, sprawled just above a narrow stretch of darkening beach. Down on the sand a gaggle of scruffy youths was gathered around a crackling cookfire, barbecuing what appeared to be a small dog. Up on the slanting roof of the nightclub an ailing seagull was staggering around and producing mournful awking sounds.

A husky cyborg doorman moved out of the shadows of the recessed entryway to bar Bascom's progress. “Help you, pal?”

“I'm expected.”

The large man rubbed at his stubbled chin with his coppery left hand as he scanned the detective chief. “By whom, pal?”

“A lady.”

The doorman's shaggy eyebrows rose. “What's your tag?”

“Bascom.”

“Hold on a sec.” He activated the phone built into his metal hand. “Anybody expecting a sartorial mess called Bascom?”

The speaker in the center of his palm instructed, “Send him down to Level X, Rollo.”

“Right you are.” The doorman gave Bascom a curt nod. “What you want to do, pal, is go inside the club, use the door marked Private, wait until the floor opens. Follow the arrow. You got that?”

“That I do, Rollo.”

As he moved aside, the big man asked, “Was the inflection you gave my name meant in derision, pal?”

Bascom paused, gave a thoughtful look up overhead. “Now that you mention it, Rollo, it just could've been,” he admitted. “The thing is, trust me, you don't want to pursue the matter.”

After studying him for a few silent seconds, Rollo said, “Probably not. Allright, go on inside. I was, if it's any of your goddamn business, named after my grandfather.”

There were forty some patrons in the dimlit club, scattered at the small square tables, drinking, talking, some watching the rickety bandstand. Up on that, four android musicians, built to simulate jazz performers of the twentieth century, were playing “My Funny Valentine.”

“A grand old tune,” observed Bascom, and, warily, opened the Private door. He entered a short, deadend corridor and the door shut at his back.

“Who?” asked a thin, tinny voice from the speaker in the buff-colored ceiling.

“Bascom—same as I was out front.”

“Take a couple of steps back so you'll clear the trap door,” advised the voice. “And don't be such a smartass.”

Bascom complied with the first part of the request.

Whirring, a little over half of the floor slid away.

A downslanting ramp was visible now, an arrow of red light throbbing at his feet.

When Bascom stepped on the ramp, the glowing arrow began moving slowly downward.

It led him some five hundred paces underground before clicking off and leaving him in complete darkness.

An image began glowing a few feet ahead of him. It coalesced into a very large Japanese man dressed in a handsome scarlet suit embroidered with golden cherry blossoms. “Just popped by to say hello, Walt,” said the holographic figure, smiling and waving his right hand.

“Evening, Ray. You're looking well—for you.”

Ray Shinzoo said, “I always looked great. And, listen, I weigh exactly what I did back when I was the Zero-G Wrestling champ of the world.”

“So did you ask me here to admire what terrific shape you're in? Or is Kay Norwood actually down here somewhere?”

“She's here right enough,” the former wrestler informed him. “First, since you're a known jazz buff, tell me what you think of the group upstairs. That Chet Baker andy cost me plenty. And that's Hampton Hawes on piano. Did you ever—”

“I prefer twentieth-century East Coast Jazz to West Coast stuff, Ray. Where's the lady?”

“C'mon, Chet Baker transcends coasts,” insisted the proprietor. “Anyway, I got to go. See that you do right by my mouthpiece.”

“That I shall.”

Shinzoo blurred, faded and was gone.

Pale yellow light filled the hallway and a door materialized in the wall. It clicked twice before sliding open.

Bascom hesitated for a few seconds, shoulders slightly hunched, eyes narrowed, before stepping into the next corridor.

K
AY
N
ORWOOD WAS
tall, less than an inch shy of six feet, and blonde. In her middle thirties somewhere, wearing a plain grey slaxsuit. She sat in one of the small blank room's two metal chairs, hands folded in her lap, knees pressed tightly together. “You have an ambiguous reputation, Bascom,” she told him.

He was sitting facing her, with about five feet of chill, artificial air separating them. “Just about everything you hear about me is true,” he said. “You, on the other hand, have either an excellent public relations outfit working in your behalf or you actually are shrewd, brilliant and stainless.”

“Both.” Kay unfolded her hands, refolded them again. “Now here's the situation—I'm certain that my death has been ordered.”

“And you know who?”

She nodded. “It's a team effort actually. A couple of Central American Tek cartels and certain people in one of our government intelligence agencies. I realize, yes, that this sounds sort of paranoid. The person who warned me, though, is someone I trust.”

“Does this person know that you're holed up down here?”

“No, because I guess I don't trust him
that
much.”

Leaning forward, Bascom rested his palm on the wrinkled right knee of his rumpled suit. “I can put you up someplace that's a hell of a lot safer than Ray Shinzoo's basement,” he promised. “Is that what you need?”

“Yes, I'd appreciate that.”

“Keep in mind, Kay, that no hideaway is safe forever.”

She unfolded her hands, refolded them. “If things work out exactly right, the people who most want me dead will end up defunct or incapacitated themselves, Bascom.”

“You have me down as playing a part in bringing all that about?”

“Yes, you, the Cosmos Detective Agency and Jake Cardigan.”

“Alicia Bower, a client of yours, already told Jake about something dubbed Surrogate 13,” he said. “She pretty clearly implied that this particular sneaky Mechanix International project and the killing of my son's wife were linked.”

“After Alicia left here for DC,” continued the blonde attorney, “I did some more digging. Poking into things that are probably not any of my business is one of my few faults, Bascom. I found out more about what seems to be going on.”

“Found out enough to get yourself turned into a target.”

Nodding again, she told him what she knew.

25

T
HE RENTED SKYCAR
told Gomez, “Impossible,
señor
.”

The detective, alone, was flying through the hot humid Managua midday. “
Ay
, it's not bad enough that the aircirc system in this clunk is considerably deficient,” he mentioned to the control panel as he yet again wiped his perspiring forehead, “but now you inform me that I'm going to have vidcommercials inflicted on me for as long as I'm airborne.”

“
Sí
, that's true.”

A rectangular vidscreen filled the entire righthand side of the windshield. At the moment an impressive shot of a smoldering volcano was showing on the screen. Two voxboxes, slightly out of sync, were saying, “The Hermanos Mezclar offer you the absolute
best
volcano tour that can be obtained in all of Nicaragua. Once you sign up, which you can do,
amigos
, at any of Managua's hotels, you're guaranteed seeing not only every one of the country's eight
active
volcanoes but ten—yes,
ten
of its extinct volcanoes as well. Nothing equals—”

“Can we at least modify the volume?” inquired Gomez.

“It is at its
lowest
level now,
señor
.”

“Eh? I can't hear you over the huckstering.”

After a few seconds the control voice decided, “The
señor
is making a jest.”

Gomez made a rude noise and consulted the small destination screen. According to that, he'd almost reached the Avenida Socuanjoche. He punched out a landing pattern, then leaned back in his seat and looked elsewhere than at the adscreen.

“… in addition to the majestic Masaya volcano, you'll also behold the fiery wonders of Nindiri and San Pedro, two of—”

“I'd truly like to arrange some fiery wonders for the
hombres
who rented me this heap,” observed Gomez.

With considerable shivering and rattling, the skycar settled into a landing slot in the parking area at the rear of the Club Soñador.

Quickly disembarking, Gomez stood out in the steamy day and scanned the club. It was a low L-shaped structure of imitation adobe and plastile. A large off-kilter sign up on the slanting red roof proclaimed in dusty neon letters—
CLUB SOÑADOR! THE BEST IN LEGAL ILLUSIONS!

Wiping his forehead once again, Gomez crossed the buckled lot, which held five other skycars and twice that many landcars.

The rusty metal door whined forlornly as he pushed it open.