Android: Golem (The Identity Trilogy) (20 page)

Two men guarded the barred entrance. Both had sidearms hidden under loose club jackets featuring the Roxie HT’s logo.

One of them, a big man with G-mod—genetically modified—muscle, shifted his cybered eyes onto me. “Can I help you?”

“New Angeles Police Department.”

The man scanned my ID and checked his PAD. Then he looked back at me. “We had a scheduled inspection last week.”

“I’m not with licensing.”

“You’re not vice?”

“I’m with the homicide department.”

The man nodded. “Working Trina’s murder?”

“Yes.”

“You guys have been through here for over two years. You haven’t ever found anything.”

“I still have questions.”

“Who are you here to see?”

“Adrian Graham. I commed before coming over. I was told he was working.”

“He is.” The man didn’t look happy. “Come on, I’ll take you back.”

I followed him through the security door.

*

Music blared inside the club at levels that would cause damage to anyone subjected to it for too long. The club was dark, but I easily manuevered through with my infrared vision.

The big man led me through a short hallway, then we passed through another sec door into the main room. Several small tables filled the floor and patrons occupied nearly a third of them. More people would come in with the lunch crowd.

A voluptuous woman danced on the stage, gyrating and performing acrobatic moves that drew hoots and appreciative yells from the men lined up in chairs fronting the stage. She wore shiny pink boots that covered more skin than the rest of her outfit. As she danced, and the crowd cheered, those articles of clothing hit the floor. A credaccount stick on the floor pulsed as viewers tipped her.

“This way.” The sec guard hugged the side of the wall as we made our way behind the stage.

Another woman was already dressed and waiting for her chance to go on stage. She had a bioroid snake—probably from Eliza’s Toybox—draped over her shoulders, and G-mod green hair that ended at her jawline. The green strands almost matched her eyes, and her makeup made her look gangrenous. She lit up a cigarette and looked bored. Her gaze traveled over me and I knew she couldn’t make me out in the darkness.

“Who’s your friend, Tony?”

“Not a friend, Simone. He’s a cop.”

The woman turned away from me without saying anything more. I’d scanned her face and submitted it to facial recognition. Her name wasn’t Simone. She was Martha Hubbard. She was twenty-six years old and had three outstanding parking tickets. A bench warrant had been issued.

“I’m not with the courts, and I don’t work traffic.”

She shrugged, but she looked at me suspiciously over one naked shoulder. The snake’s tongue darted out.

The woman had also been named in the reports. I stopped. “Give me just a moment, Tony.”

He hesitated. “I don’t want you hassling the girls while they’re trying to work.”

“The current musical selection has another three minutes and forty-two seconds to play. I’ll be done by then.” I looked at the woman. “You knew Trina Oakes.”

“Yeah.”

“How well?”

“We were friends.” Simone seemed increasingly nervous.

“You were here the night she was killed.”

“Yeah.” She shrugged again. “A lot of us were. It was Saturday night—a busy time for us.”

“Trina Oakes wasn’t working that night.”

“No. She called in sick.”

“Why?”

“Dunno. I guess she was sick.”

The answer was an automatic dismissal of my authority over her, but I ignored it. “You saw her that night.” I stated that because it was a matter of record. Shelly had interviewed her.

“Yeah, for a couple minutes.”

“You talked to her.”

Simone nodded.

“Why was Trina Oakes here if she’d called in sick?”

Simone shrugged. “Sometimes you just need a mental health break from this place.”

I had less than two minutes to go before the song ended. “You know why she came up?”

For a moment, Simone hesitated. She hid her indecision with another drag on the cigarette. “Trina came up to talk to Adrian.”

“About what?”

“Cred.”

“Finances?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

Simone shrugged again. “People in this business, it’s about the money. It’s always about the money. Or the drugs.”

“Careful, Simone.” Tony’s voice held a threatening timber.

She turned on him. “He’s a cop, Tony. Do you really think he doesn’t know this already?”

I took a step to the side, positioning myself so Tony was more toward the periphery of her vision. I wanted her focused on me, not him. “They argued about finances that night?”

“Yeah. It got pretty ugly.”

That hadn’t been in the reports I’d read, but it coincided with what I had discovered by trolling through Adrian Graham’s bank records. “You didn’t mention this when you talked to the other investigators.”

Simone shrugged and the snake flicked its black tongue. “Finances are a big deal in this business. Trina was making more than Adrian. He kind of saw cred as a community property. He spent his money, and hers, too.”

“She didn’t approve of that.”

“Would you?” As soon as she spoke, Simone put a hand over her mouth. “I guess maybe you wouldn’t know.”

“Not personally, but I do understand that financial concerns are potentially devastating in relationships.”

“Yeah. Definitely that.” Simone dropped her cigarette and crushed it with one of her spiked heels. Tiny orange coals scattered, flared briefly, then winked out. “That was what was wrong with Trina that night. She found out Adrian had gotten into her rainy day cred.”

I knew what “rainy day cred” was only because Shelly had explained it to me. It was cred that the owner had put back for stressful times, or for some dream. I wondered what Trina Oakes had been saving for—a hope or a fear. It would have given me a better understanding of her.

“You didn’t mention this to the other investigators.”

“No.” Simone wrapped her arms around herself. “We’re kind of a closed group here. We don’t like anyone talking to anyone from the outside.”

Tony spoke up in a sarcastic tone. “Can’t get you to shut up now, can we?”

Simone glared at Tony. “That was before I got me a dose of Adrian. The guy is trouble.”

“You were involved with Adrian Graham?” I spoke without accusation.

“For a little while…after Trina…we got together. I thought we’d both lost somebody. Thought maybe we’d do better missing her together than apart.” Simone pursed her lips angrily. “I was wrong.”

“Why didn’t you come forward to the police?”

“With what? The fact that they fought over finances?” Simone shook her head. “Everybody in this business does that. Their problem was that people come here to watch the dancers, not listen to music. They can listen to music at home. But the dancers here? We’re not synthskin, we’re not chipped, and we’re totally human. Maybe other guys got kinks for clones and anatomically correct bioroids, but not our crowd. They like real women.”

Tony snorted derisively. “There’s not a dancer in this place that’s
real
.”

She cursed at him.

“Do you remember any of the specifics of Trina Oakes’s argument that night with Adrian Graham?”

“Something to do with Adrian’s grandmother.”

“You don’t remember anything else?”

Simone shook her head. “No. Adrian lost his grandma around the same time. She left him a lot of cred shortly after Trina died.”

That was what I had discovered. No one else had caught it.

I looked at Simone. “You have fourteen seconds left on the song. Thank you for your time.”

She nodded.

I turned back to Tony. “Let’s go.”

He led the way, but he was noticeably unhappy about the situation.

*

Adrian Graham danced in the DJ booth high on the wall next to the stage. He had long hair, animated neon tattoos that crawled under his skin like malignant, glowing worms, and wore black and silver clothing that hung on his skinny body. Despite the darkness inside the club, he wore wraparound sunglasses.

Tony walked up the stairs leading to the booth.

“There she is, people: the beautiful Angel.” Adrian’s voice boomed around the club. “Tip her well, and don’t forget about your DJ.” He worked the control panel.

A spotlight appeared on the dancer in the pink boots as she waved to the crowd. A holo spray of silver dust formed around her, then the stage went dark as she gathered up her clothing and her credaccount stick.
 

“And now…the exotic
Simone
.” Adrian triggered another musical score.

Mathematically, I could tell the difference in the songs, but aesthetically there wasn’t much. I was certain that both songs sounded pretty much the same to the human ear. Especially to humans that were drinking alcohol and using legitimized recreational drugs.

We topped the stair and Adrian looked at Tony. “Who’s the tin man?” His voice was brusque and shrill.

I could tell from his vocal patterns that he was already influenced by alcohol or drugs, which would render any confession he might give as inadmissible. That was fine, though. I wasn’t there to arrest him. I just wanted to serve him notice that the NAPD hadn’t forgotten about Trina Oakes.

“New Angeles homicide detective.” Tony’s identification of me was tactless.

I didn’t know who the guard approved of less. Tony obviously had issues with Adrian. Perhaps he’d had a relationship with the DJ as well.

Adrian stopped dancing. “What’s this about?”

“Trina Oakes.”

“I’m working, here.”

“I understand that, Mr. Graham. I won’t take up much of your time.”

The man shook his head. “You won’t take up any of my time. Tony, get him out of here.”

Tony held his hands up. “It’s the police. This guy has a right to be here.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Mr. Graham.” I spoke without inflection, but firmly. “I want you to make time to come down to the department to answer a few questions.”

“No way. Not without an attorney.”

“That’s certainly your prerogative.” I held up a hand. “I’d like to leave Detective Hansen’s contact information with you.”

“Why?”

“He’s the detective you’ll be talking to.”

“I don’t want to talk to a detective. I told your buddies two years ago that I didn’t know anything about Trina getting killed.”

“I understand that, sir. We want to know about the insurance that was taken out on Trina Oakes by your grandmother.”

Adrian stared at me.

“There appears to be a discrepancy. Your grandmother was in a rest home at the time the insurance was taken out. She couldn’t have done that because you held power of attorney over her estate.” That was what Shelly had missed. She had noted the insurance payment to Adrian’s grandmother, then the transfer of those funds when the grandmother had died two months later, but she hadn’t known about the power of attorney. I’d barely caught it myself. “You took out that insurance, Mr. Graham.”

For a moment, Adrian held his ground. The music throbbed from the aud system around us. Simone danced on the stage. The crowd yelled encouragement as Simone divested herself of her clothing.

Then, Adrian broke. He hurled himself over the side of the booth, dropped onto a table below, and collapsed to the floor with the table. He clawed through the surprised patrons like an animal until he got to his feet.

Tony cursed.

I hurled myself in pursuit and drew my Synap pistol. Until Adrian started to run, threatening to become a fugitive, I hadn’t been planning on arresting him. All I had were questions and a theory.

The cred Adrian had gotten from Trina and his grandmother’s death had disappeared quickly. I assumed he’d been in some kind of financial problems, probably gambling, given his background.

But I didn’t know if all the cred was gone. He might still have enough put back to disappear.

I couldn’t let that happen. I landed on the broken table and the recovering patrons drew back from me and my weapon. I brushed through the crowd, slowed by their presence because I couldn’t hurt any of them.

I waved my pistol. “New Angeles Police Department.” I blared the warning through my PA system and my broadcasted voice rolled like thunder inside the club. “Clear the way.”

Adrian raced for the club’s back door and shoved through. The emergency exit alarm shrilled to life. A few seconds later, I reached the door and shoved my head and shoulders through. My quarry had chosen to run to the left, obviously heading to the parking area where I’d left my hopper. It stood to reason that he had one there as well.

I ran after him, but his lead was too big. A nearby hopper flashed as he activated his keychip. The nose raised as I pounded after him. He threw himself into the vehicle and triggered the hatch closure.