Liquid Cool: The Cyberpunk Detective Series (17 page)

Part Six

The Case of the Nighttime Bionic Parts Thieves

Chapter 23: Mr. Smalls and His Boss

It wasn't Peacock Hills where the city's biggest and best non-tech megacorps were housed (tech corps were all in Silicon Dunes). I was on
Fat Street, w
here the second tier companies were clawing at each other to get into the top echelons of business. It wasn't the Dumps and there wasn't any real street crime as it was fairly well-patrolled by police, but still, it was a bit grimier than I preferred. Easy's sister-in-law was probably right--I was a bit booshy.

Today was my first shoe-leather day after almost a week of biz research. GW was my first real client--start to finish--and I had no one else since then, so I was on a mission, doing what all the business books tell you. Get off your butt and find your next client.

"I'm here to see,
Mr. Smalls," I
said to the lobby receptionist.

"He's expecting you?" she asked.

"Yeah," I replied with a lie. "Here's my card."

She took the card from my hand, read it, and looked up at me.

"Detective?"

"Yes, private detective."

The woman almost seemed frightened. "I'll announce you immediately."

People-Droid had
been the seventeenth company or so I came into. I started at the first business tower on the corner and would work my way down the street after I worked my way up each tower. This was the first company of the third floor, I had 100 more floors to go, and each one had six businesses on average. I figured my shoe-leather soliciting would take me somewhere around a few years or so to complete just this district.

"Mr. Smalls w
ill see you, Mr. Cruz."

I knew I had stumbled into something. Every other business took my card and told me that the person I asked for would call me, meaning they'd throw my card in the garbage the second I left the office. At some point, one of them would undoubtedly call building security on me to have the "solicitor" (me) escorted from the tower.

I followed th
e woman down one hallway to the first office on the left, which meant either my research was faulty or they purposely had a misleading public information. If Mr. Smalls was
the president as their site said, he wouldn't be in the first office in the hallway; he'd be at the last office at the end of the hallway.

She opened the door for me to enter.

A man stood there with an annoyed look on his face.

"Cruz," I said as I extended my arm and he reluctantly shook my hand.

"The detective?"

"Yes," I answered.

"That was pretty fast. Are your offices outside our doors?"

"I would love to play along, especially if it led to a new client, but you must have me confused with someone else."

"You're not the detective we called?"

"I'm a detective, but no, I'm not the one you called."

"Who are you then?"

"I've been checking in with businesses to see if they could use my services."

"Soliciting is not allowed in this building or any other, Mr. Cruz."

"Talking to a person is allowable on the entire planet, as far as I know. We're just talking."

"We have already called a real detective agency, so we won't be needing you."

"Big firm, are they?"

"One of the largest."

"I can understand that, but I doubt you will be happy with their system."

"System? What system?"

"For the big investigation firms, new clients are considered one-offs so they will send in their little flunky, entry-level agents who will come in here and do more talking than listening, trying to up-sell you on all kinds of other services, that you don't need, rather than being interested in the situation you originally called them for. Sole practitioner agencies like mine--I'm the guy. President, CEO, COO, and detective on the go. I don't pass you on to any flunkies. I handle your business directly because I want your business. Big firms want clients that have ongoing, recurring business. That's what pays for their high overhead and exorbitant salaries. Me, no car payments, legacy office space, one employee--minimal overhead."

"Mr. Cruz, that's all well and good, but I need an established firm to handle this matter."

"I understand, but let me ask you this: do you remember when you started your career and you were hungry?" I paused to wait for his expression. He tried to maintain his poker face. "That's me now, not some version of myself twenty years later. I do have references too, if it matters."

"I'm sure your references will not be of the caliber..."

"Let It Ride Enterprises, for instance."

"You've done work for them?"

"Run-Time is a personal friend."

"I don't believe you."

"You can check, but I think you really should compare my presentation to the flunkies they're about to send you. But
Mr. Smalls, I un
derstand you need to make the best business decision for your company. Here's my business card--it has my mobile on it--and if you change your mind, I'll get myself back in your office. I want to establish a good clientele of corporate businesses such as yours."

The man took my card and glanced at it.

"I'll let myself out, but thank you for the opportunity to present."

I left the office.

I didn't expect to ever hear from the man. I just consigned myself to a very, very long day of shoe-leather soliciting. That's all I could do. I had to make my own connections. No one was going to do it for me. Every business guy and gal I ever met all said the same thing: starting out a business is brutal, but once you get your first client, number two is easier, then comes number three, four, and five. Then you reach a critical mass where those first ones start sending you business automatically. But be prepared for the initial orgy of unfiltered, soul-crushing rejection. Well this day was already that, except for the brief chat with
Smalls.

I had already did the other offices on the floor so it was up to the fourth floor. As I exited the elevator, I felt my mobile vibrating.

"Liquid Cool Detective Agency. This is Cruz speaking."

"M
r. Cruz." It was Smalls' v
oice. "You can return to my office. My boss has decided not to go with the other detective firm we called. We'll give you a chance. When can you get back here?"

"I'll be back there in a few minutes."

GW's case was a missing persons. Mr. Smalls' case was corporate espionage. When I returned, I was escorted all the way to the office at the end of the hall. Waiting for me were more people in suits, male and female, than I had ever seen in one room in my entire life. Run-Time had three VPs. This company had like fifty, including Smalls. Prob
ably one of the many reasons they were a second-tier company rather than a first.

"I'm going to make this brief, Mr. Cruz," Smalls's boss said to me from his seat at the head of the long conference table. He was a much larger man, in a black pin-stripe suit and wearing blue-tinted shades. "I wan
t you to find out who's stealing from our warehouse."

All the VPs were sitting at attention around the long conference table and turned from him to look at me in unison. It was quite funny to watch.

"Find them and then do what? Police?"

"No police. Notify our internal security," he answered.

I knew what that meant. It meant that the internal security would be judge-jury-executioners. I heard all about the world of corporate espionage. Stealing was rampant between the megacorporations and if they used the phrase "internal security" and "espionage," as in the case of stealing, that meant the security were on-the-payroll gangsters who made people disappear permanently. The corporate world, government, the streets--they were all a bunch of criminals. But as long as they paid me; I had bills to pay.

I nodded. "All I need are the details, and I'll get on it today. If I can recover any of the products stolen, do you want them recovered for an additional fee?"

"Do you even know what products we make, Mr. Cruz?"

"You make cosmetic bionic parts--the best in Metropolis. My fianc
é
has one of your model
s--NS model."

"The neck and trapezoid replacement model," one of the female VPs said.

"Yeah. She was in a terrible accident as a teenager and it saved her life."

It was like a giant arctic cloud had lifted from the room. Suddenly, they were interested in me. Suddenly, they liked me. I realized that this is what business was all about. Connections. If you knew someone they knew, went to a school they
went to, used their product and had some human interest story to go with it, you were "part of the team." It was so simple. Smalls was more interested in me because I knew a fellow businessman. Smalls' boss and company were more interested that I knew someone who directly used their bionic (and very expensive) product. No one really seemed to care whether I actually was any good as a detective.

Smalls said to me as he glanced at his boss, "I'll get him fully debriefed on the situation."

"Mr. Cruz," his boss interrupted. "You're not a mindless solicitor then. You seem to know all about my company. Do you also know about our problem?"

"I do.
And
who's stealing from you."

Smalls and all the other VPs looked at me with surprised expressions.

I said, "The only way for someone like me, a new detective in the industry, to get new clients, beating out established detective firms, is if I'm willing and able to do a lot of work the established firms won't. I have to be able to walk into a business knowing all about their case before they tell me a thing--basically have the case solved. That's the only way, because the expectation of performance is so much higher for us new guys than the established firms."

"You're a smart man, Mr. Cruz," Smalls' boss said. "Who stole my products?"

"Your neighbor."

"My neighbor?" Smalls's boss looked at the other VPs. They looked at me.

"The Tech-Human company across the hall?" he asked. "Those motherless sons-of-bitches, I knew it."

I leaned forward in my chair and rested my elbows on the table. I looked right into the eyes of Smalls's boss, all the way across the table. "Your
neighbor
," I repeated.

Now he knew who I meant and a look of disgust came over his face. The two of us were the only ones in the room who knew what I meant.

Smalls's boss stood from the table. "Cut Mr. Cruz a check for his retainer and have the second one ready for when he concludes the case, and a third for a bonus."

"Yes, sir," Smalls said as he stood too.

All the VPs around the table stood in unison.

"Anything else, Mr. Cruz?"

"If my work is to your satisfaction, I'd like to get a business review, too."

"Fine, fine." He turned to Smalls. "Handle that too."

Chapter 24: Mr. Wan

My office was my domain. I did all the decorating, had the furniture moved in, had some stupid pictures on the wall to cover it, and all the secret stuff, like hiding my big shotgun underneath my main desk where I could get to it easily.

Punch Judy ruled the reception area. It would be like an ex-posh gang member to have an haute-couture interior design decorating sense. With her punk rock playing in the background on an infinite loop, she had turned the barren space into some hipster, scenester receptionist-waiting room of the stars. Psychedelic posters on the wall, her fancy "modern" glass desk with see-through glass drawers, and a boom box on top of it along with her own mobile computer. All of her workstation was behind some kind of metal barrier, but it didn't look like a barrier with the decorations. The waiting area had these geometric, purple couches around a glass table on a shimmering, neon powder blue rug. The reception table had all kinds of French fashion magazines, which I thought was stupid because how could people read them, but then I realized--fashion magazines--so that meant lots and lots of pictures with few words, so it didn't matter, and numerical prices were universal.

Now she was working on her own do-it-yourself neon light sign. I don't know where she found it, but she was busy at work making a LIQUID COOL sign for the space she designated right on the wall behind her, outside my office. It would be the first thing people would see. She even had another box in smaller neon letters to make DETECTIVE AGENCY with. I was impressed.

There was a knock on the door.

I was glad I had turned over office door security to her. I still didn't know why a paranoid like me who checked my car and home doors multiple times with my OCD self would so carelessly leave my new office door unlocked more than once.