Tek Power (17 page)

The foyer was shadowy and damp, just slightly cooler than the day outside. There was a strong smell of spices all around.

Leaning in the only other doorway was a thin young woman of twenty. Darkskinned with silvery blonde hair, she was wearing a black singlet, black trousers and boots and a narrow silver belt. “What sort of illusions are you interested in,
guapo?
” she inquired. “We can offer you holographic sex, simulated brainstim, which compares favorably with Tek yet is completely legal, or—”

“Actually,
cara
, I'm pursuing grim reality,” he informed her. “Where can I find the proprietor, Dreamer Garcia?”

Smiling, she tapped herself between the breasts with her right thumb. “That's me,” she said. “I'm Dreamer Garcia.”

“Not unless you changed sexes and dropped twenty years since last week,” he contested. “Now,
por favor
, I'd like to talk to the
true
Dreamer.”

“We'll step into the office to discuss this.”

A copperplated lazgun was in her left hand.

“I guess we will,” agreed Gomez.

T
HE PRESIDENT OF
the United States was not feeling at all well. Warren Brookmeyer, his dark face touched with perspiration, was crouched in the middle of the small grey room, fists clenched at his sides. “Goddamn it,” he shouted. “Send somebody in here! Send someone in here at once!”

After nearly a full minute, the voxbox in the low metal ceiling said, “Lie down on your cot, Mr. President. Otherwise you'll be sedated again.”

“That's another damn thing I want to complain about.” Brookmeyer scowled up at the overhead speaker. “I'm not supposed to be sleeping on a lousy cot. For Christ sake, I'm the president of this whole damned country. I'm Commander in Chief. I was promised a suite at this rehab center.”

“Lie down on your cot,” repeated the voxbox. “If you don't comply, sir, a pacifying gas will be introduced into the room.”

“Not that stuff again.” President Brookmeyer went and sat on the edge of the metal cot, which was the room's only piece of furniture. “The last time you bastards used that crap on me, I woke up with one hell of a hangover. Listen, I want to discuss this whole mess with the director. I demand to talk to Dr. Marchitelli. I haven't seen him once in the—what is it? In the three days I've been here.”

“Dr. Marchitelli is no longer on our staff, Mr. President. Now, please, lie down. You have thirty seconds to cooperate.”

Muttering, the president stretched out on the narrow cot. He lay with his arms stiff at his sides, fists clenched, and the thin pillow under his head. “I want to see whoever's in charge now, whichever doctor is supposed to be looking after me. That's a presidential order.”

Part of the far wall slid away. “Which is part of the problem, Warren.” Vice President McCracklin stepped into the room.

“Jim!” The president sat up. “Can you explain to me what in the hell is going on?”

“Sure, that's why I'm here, Warren.” He smiled as the grey wall closed behind him.

Brookmeyer started to stand up. “Okay, first off tell me why they—”

“Stay on your cot,” suggested McCracklin.

“Why the hell are you—”

“Stay there.” Hands in trouser pockets, he leaned against the metal wall. “I hear you've been making a lot of fuss, Warren.”

“You're damn right I have,” agreed the angry president. “I came here voluntarily, Jim, as you well know. Admittedly I have a problem, but I don't think—”

“More than a problem,” cut in the vice president. “You're a hopeless Tek addict. You've been doing two, three hours of the damn stuff
every
day.”

“I'm not really arguing that part of it.” His frown deepened as he stared, perplexed at the blond younger man. “That's the reason I'm here, Jim.”

“Well, not exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

McCracklin smiled slowly. “The original plan has been somewhat modified.”

President Brookmeyer stood up. “Who gave you the authority to modify my plan?”

“Sit down.”

Brookmeyer sat. “The plan, as you damn well know, was for me to spend a couple of weeks here to get rid of my Tek habituation.” He watched the other man. “We had Mechanix International construct us that foolproof android simulacrum, which is filling in for me while I—”

“Thereby perpetrating a fraud on the American people.”

“That's not what you said when we first cooked up this idea, Jim.”

“Possibly, Warren, I wasn't completely truthful with you.”

“But, listen, no permanent harm'll be done,” Brookmeyer insisted. “Once I'm off Tek—or at least get my preoccupation under control—then I'll be back to run this country as well as ever. You know I—”

“Oh, there's not going to be any need for that.”

“What are you talking about?” He left the cot.

“Sit down again.” There was a stungun in Vice President McCracklin's hand.

President Brookmeyer returned to the metal bed and McCracklin explained to him what the real situation was.

26

T
HE THIN, PALE
man turned away from Jake. “We weren't actually
friends
back in Greater Los Angeles,” he said, gazing out the wide viewindow of his living room at the hazy green of the walled courtyard garden. “In fact, we were little more than
casual
acquaintances.”

Jake was sitting in a highback wicker chair, legs straight out in front of him, hands in his pockets. “I'm not,” he explained, “in Nicaragua looking up old pals, Mat.”

“There's another proof that we were never close. My
real
friends, Jake, all call me Matson,” pointed out Matson Tabor. “Anyone who
actually
knows me, or knew me, would never address me as Mat.”

“While you were teaching at SoCal Tech, you were Mat.” Jake grinned. “You seem a lot more uneasy than you used to be, Matson.”

“Nicaragua isn't Greater LA.” He frowned over his shoulder at Jake. “I really can't afford to have it known I was interviewed by a cop from—”

“Private investigator,” corrected Jake.

“It doesn't matter. The university is
very
conservative when it comes to—”

“You teach at the same college as Dr. Izabel Morgana, don't you?”

Tabor faced him. “I won't discuss Izabel with you,” he said, eyeing the ceiling. “You'd better just get—”

“Relax, Matson. None of the surveillance gear is functioning.”

“What? My god, they'll think that I—”

“Nope, they'll think it was a malfunction. I rigged things that way before I arrived at your doorstep,” explained Jake. “When I leave, I'll fix it back the—”

“I think you'd better leave right now.”

“I have pretty thorough itineraries, put together by the Cosmos Detective Agency, for both Arnold Maxfield, Jr. and Eve Bascom during their stay here,” Jake continued. “When I was going over them, I noticed that both Junior and Eve visited you twice. Once for dinner with you and—”

“It doesn't matter
who
he was.”

“And then, the day before Junior was killed, he and Eve attended a small cocktail party you gave. Another of your guests that night was Dr. Morgana.”

“Izabel and I aren't
close
friends either,” said Tabor. “But it's important that I ask certain faculty people over now and—”

“Ever hear of Surrogate 13?”

“No.”

“Curious about what it might be?”

“Not in the least. Now,
please
, you have to leave.”

“Anything unusual take place at your party?”

“Did Arnie tell me he expected to die a violent death the next day, do you mean?” He shook his head. “It was just another dull party. Were you
tailed
here? I don't want them to know that—”

“I ditched all my tags within five minutes of the hotel,” he assured the uneasy professor. “What about Dr. Morgana and Eve? Did they—”

“Listen, Jake, I'll give you something.” Tabor took a few steps in his direction. “But then,
really
, you have to get the hell out of my house. I can't, you know, teach in the States anymore. This position is
important
to me.”

“Give me what?”

“Information,” he said. “You're probably aware that Arnie was the sort of man who wasn't satisfied with one affair at a time. He was involved not only with Eve but with Izabel.”

“That I already know.”

“You probably don't know, however, that Izabel was having him watched. She wanted to find out what he and Eve did and who else he might be seeing down here.”

“Who did the watching, the National Security Police?”

“No, no, Izabel rarely utilized her government connections for private matters,” Tabor told him. “She hired a small local outfit called Observación Discreto, run by a scoundrel named Cleve Shannon, who—”

“Used to be a private cop in Chicago.”

“Is he another of your old chums?”

“Never met the guy, but his reputation was fragrant enough to have reached me in GLA,” answered Jake. “He was tagging Junior during his final days, huh?”

“Shannon's
very
good at gathering dirt,” said Tabor. “He's supposed to turn over
all
the material he gathers to his client, but I've heard he sometimes keeps copies.”

“Meaning he might have something hidden away that's worth looking at?”

“Up to and including the fatal accident, yes.”

Jake nodded, got to his feet. “Thanks, Matson,” he said. “It's been terrific renewing our old friendship.”

A
SKEPTICAL EXPRESSION
touched Gomez's face. “Are you certain,
chiquita
, that you're capable of differentiating betwixt truth and crapola?” he inquired.

The dark-clad silver blonde said,
Abuelo
I'm telling you the absolute truth. I—”

“If you think I'm in the grandpappy class, your perceptions obviously aren't—”

“You're twice my age,
cholo
,” she pointed out. “Now can we get back to business?”

They were in the musty office of the Club Soñador and three of the four walls were thick with foot-square monitor screens. The two dozen monitors behind the young woman's desk showed what was going on in the various holographic sex cribs on the next level down. It made a kaleidoscopic blur of real and simulated naked flesh.

“Are you offering to sell me Dreamer's current address?”

She gave him a disappointed frown. “I really am Dreamer's kid sister. My name is Rita,” she said. “I've heard of you, Señor Gomez—and even more of your illustrious partner, Jake Cardigan. I think maybe you can help me
and
do yourself some good.”

“How so,
cara?
” The detective was sitting on an armchair that faced her desk. “And, to keep the record straight, I happen to be every bit as illustrious as Jake. In fact, in certain circles they'd rank me higher than—”

“Can you shut your
boca
for just a moment, so I can explain?” asked Rita. “My brother disappeared yesterday, early in the morning, we think. It was, we're certain, Dacobra's men who got him. Do you know who Captain Dacobra is?”

“
Sí
, but why would his security goons grab Dreamer?”

“It could be for any number of reasons,” she said. “For one thing, our esteemed government has long suspected my brother of being sympathetic to the underground Revolutión Party.”

“And is he?”

“In more ways than they even suspect.”

“My notion is that they hauled him in for a different reason,” Gomez said. “See,
cara
, it was Charley Charla up in Manhattan who—”

“
Una víbora
.”

“A dead viper.”

“Charla's dead?”

Nodding, Gomez replied, “Diced by some lads with lazrifles. Quite probably because he was in the midst of providing me with information.”

“What's the connection with my brother?”

“Among Charley's last words was a message to me to contact Dreamer Garcia of this address,” Gomez explained. “According to Charley, your missing
hermano
has some useful knowledge to sell me.”

“About what, Gomez?”

“A connection between the Joaquim Tek Cartel and the murders of Eve Bascom and Arnold Maxfield, Junior.”

“
Mierda!
” Rita made a rapid sign of the cross. “If those Joaquim
pendejos
are involved, then—”

“Didn't you know about any of this?”

“I know that my brother, even though he's not an especially law-abiding citizen, is strongly opposed to Tek,” she answered. “He's had run-ins with Joaquim's people before. But I'm not aware of anything recent.”

“The cartel is in a position to tell Captain Dacobra what to do?”

The young woman laughed. “Tek runs Nicaragua, Gomez.”

Resting his elbow on the chair arm, he rested his head against his palm. “Whatever Dreamer had to sell me in the way of information was worth a thousand bucks.”

“Charla could just have been lying, you know.”

“No, the fact Charley's dead and Dreamer is missing seems to me to confirm the value of the tip.”

“Dreamer still thinks of me most of the time as a schoolgirl.” Shaking her head, she sighed. “He doesn't confide in me as much as he should.”

“Okay, then we'll have to find him,” said Gomez, straightening up. “So I can ask him firsthand.”

“There may be a way to do that,” Rita said. “Just an hour ago I was contacted by a friend of Professor Ignacio Mentosa. I don't know if you've heard of him in your country, Gomez, but he's a very important and courageous critic of the ruling junta.”