Tek Money (24 page)

He came striding across the room and slapped the cup out of her hand. “
Perra!
”

The hot tea splattered the front of her white shirt, splashed the tabletop. The cup smashed against the high white cabinet behind her. “Something's upsetting you, Rafe?”

Leaning down, he grabbed hold of her shoulders. “Where are the damned guns?” he shouted. “
No me jada
, Janine! Just tell me.”

She shoved back in her chair, twisting free of his grip and standing up. “They're gone from the monastery.”

“I damn well know they're gone.” Standing wide-legged, he scowled at her. “Sinjon just called me. Your goddamn friend Cardigan was there at the clinic. They stungunned Dr. Ortega, dragged that Newz bitch away. But he doesn't think they took the Devlin Guns.”

“That's right, they didn't.”

“You took them.”

She said, “I arranged to have them moved.”

“Why? Have you sold out to Garcia?”

Janine smiled. “Speaking of selling out, Rafe,” she said. “I found out that you haven't been completely truthful with me.”

“What's who I sleep with got to do with—”

“Not the other women, that never bothers me,” she cut in. “No, it's the money, Rafe dear. The money I took from Barragray was meant to help fight against the Garcia regime.”

“That's exactly what it's doing.”

“Explain how that works—since it's in your private account in the wilds of Switzerland now, love.”

Santos lowered his head for a few seconds, fists clenched at his sides. “We aren't all dedicated as you are, Janine,” he said finally. “In case something goes wrong, in case we fail, I want to have money to—”

“And you didn't feel you were obliged to mention that you'd swiped the money?”

“If I had told you, Janine, you'd simply have had a tantrum and—”

“I see,” she said, resting her right hand on the handle of the cabinet door.

Santos said, “The real point is, whatever you think of me, that Martinez needs the guns. They're an important part of the coup plan and without them—”

“I'm afraid Janeiro's going to have to improvise.”

“No, we've got to have the Devlin Guns. It gives us an advantage that otherwise—”

“I'm withdrawing my support, Rafe dear,” she said. “While I was finding out about what you really did with the money, I gathered some other interesting information about this whole alleged revolution I've been helping. It turns out that the OCO—or at least the extreme faction inside that outfit—hasn't been exactly truthful either.”

“
Perra
, I don't have time for a lot of political theory crap. It's the whereabouts of the Devlin Guns that—”

“It seems these OCO fellows have made a deal with the Zabicas Cartel to get financing for some very dubious guerrilla movement in Brazil. I mean, Jesus, the administration in Brazil is rotten enough as it is, but these OCO darlings are even worse.”

Quietly Santos told her, “I'll have to make you tell me where the guns are, Janine.”

She opened the cabinet behind her, reaching inside. “You're right, Rafe. I should be more cooperative with you.” Smiling, she took a snub-nosed, ivory-colored handgun off a shelf. “Okay, here's one of the guns.”

“Janine!”

Pointing the Devlin Gun at him, she fired.

Santos had started to reach for the lazgun tucked into his waistband.

But the soundless, unseen touch of the gun hit him.

An odd, sad, mewing cry came spilling through his lips. From inside his body came grating, splashing noises.

He tried to make a pleading gesture toward her, but his hands and then his arms collapsed into dangling, bulging bags of skin. Fragments of bone made hundreds of punctures in the skin; blood and fluid came dribbling out.

His skull dissolved, leaving just a collapsing, puckering balloon of wrinkled flesh and hair.

The bloody, foul-smelling mess that had been Rafe Santos just a moment before went splashing to the floor, spilling blood and bile and body fluids.

Janine, lowering the gun to her side, stepped aside to avoid getting her shoes splashed by the spreading spill of liquids.

From the kitchen doorway Jake said, “Evening, Janine.”

“Jake.” She lifted the gun and aimed it at him. “I was hoping you'd stop by.”

43

J
AKE WAS SITTING
on the opposite side of the villa living room in a grey armchair. “You found out about what he'd done with the money, huh?”

Shoulders back, knees together, Janine sat on the sofa with the Devlin Gun resting in her lap. “This probably sounds strange after you just saw me kill Rafe,” she said, “but I'm an idealist. He betrayed what I thought was a cause that I could work for.”

“It's not your cause anymore?”

“No,” she said. “How'd you find your way to the Monasterio Tek Clinic?”

“Gardner Munsey confided in me, told me the guns were stored there,” answered Jake. “I used a few tricks I've acquired and got past their secsystem at the clinic.” He shrugged. “The guns were no longer there and it occurred to me that you might have had something to do with that.”

“I did. Where's that bastard Munsey now?”

“After our chat, I used a stungun on him,” he said. “Then I left him at a spot where another US government agency could collect the guy. They're dedicated to curbing the OCO's more uncivil activities.”

“That's right,” she said, fingers stroking the handle of the gun, “you and Bascom are thick with all sorts of intelligence types.”

“Bascom is,” he corrected. “I'm just a plain and simple private investigator.”

“Cynical Jake Cardigan,” she said. “You kidded me in Greater LA about being a naive kid.”

“I thought you were younger then. You're a convincing actor.”

“Yes, that's true. It probably comes from never being quite sure who I really am.”

“I'd like to find the Devlin Guns, Janine.”

She watched him for a few silent seconds. “You're probably a lot more honest than most of these bastards,” she said. “And, maybe, more of an idealist than I am.”

Jake grinned, saying, “Naw, it's only a knack I have for giving false impressions.”

She rose up, holding the Devlin Gun at her side. “I'm going to leave here,” she said. “The guns are stored here, down in what used to be a dungeon some centuries ago. I had them brought in while Rafe was off in the mountains consulting with Martinez.”

“Weren't you afraid he'd find them?”

“It wouldn't have mattered,” she said. “As soon as I learned about what he'd done with the money, I knew I was going to kill him.”

“You don't intend to let Janeiro Martinez have the guns?”

“No, I made a mistake about him, too,” she said, moving toward the doorway. “I'm trusting you to see that the Devlin Guns get to someplace where they can't be used.”

“I'll do that,” he promised.

“For a while I'm going to be inactive. Eventually I'll find something to work for.” She held up the gun as she went out of the room. “I'm keeping this one for a souvenir.”

Jabb Marx's highly chromed skycar set down in the middle of a dark grassy field that was surrounded by what looked like jungle. The safety gear unhooked and the door on his side flapped open.

“Last stop, all out,” announced the dash voxbox.

“What the hell is going on?” The big wide man whapped the dash with his fist. “Why'd you land me here?”

Something roared out on his left.

It was a large lion. Head slightly lowered, the beast was loping across the grass toward him.

“Up, take me away from here,” he told his skycar, punching at the controls. The car didn't respond. “Good Christ.” Marx grabbed at the door handle, trying to pull it shut. The door remained stubbornly wide open.

“It's only a robot lion.”

Marx jerked in his seat and gazed to his right. “How'd you get in my car?”

Bascom appeared to be sitting in the passenger seat. “It's a holoprojection, Jabb, my boy.”

“Where are we?”

“Santa Monica Sector ElectroZoo. Don't you ever come here?”

“Just because you run a hotshot detective agency, Bascom, doesn't give you the goddamned right to—”

“I wanted to have a little conference with you.”

The lion stopped beside the open door and began sniffing curiously at Marx's left leg.

“Go away, get the hell out of here,” he told the furry mechanism. “They're built not to attack people, aren't they?”

“Sure—unless somebody's tampered with this one.”

“I'm getting some nice stuff for a lawsuit against you,” warned the big man. “It's illegal to take over the control of a skycar in—”

“Yeah, but the notion appealed to me so much,” explained the head of the Cosmos Detective Agency. “Since you used the same gimmick on Dan Cardigan and Molly Fine only a few hours ago.”

Marx raised his hand to swat the lion, then thought better of it. “I don't know any—”

“After Dan told me what had happened, I started doing some digging,” the projected Bascom said. “Wasn't too difficult to trace the whole operation to you.”

“You can't establish a damn—”

“Skull faces, Jabb? C'mon now, really.”

“I didn't threaten those kids and I had nothing to do with sending their skycar out over the damned Pacific Ocean.”

“No, my sources aren't wrong this time, Jabb,” Bascom told him.

“Take a jump for yourself, Bascom.”

Snarling, the lion reared up and plopped both heavy paws in Jabb's wide lap.

“Get away, go.”

Bascom continued, “You were hired by some of your OCO chums to throw a scare into the kids, persuade them not to keep trying to find out if Devlin is truly dead.”

“I have nothing to do with the Office of Clandestine Operations,” insisted Marx. “Until that bastard Cardigan screwed me up with Bev Kendricks, I was a private—”

“I'm in the process of seeing to it that nobody in Washington bothers Dan or Molly again,” cut in the image of Bascom. “But I wanted personally, or almost personally, to suggest to you that you leave them alone, too. Best course for you to follow, my boy, would be to resettle in some other state. Learn a trade and forget about being a toady for the intelligence boys.”

“You can't order me to—”

“Take a couple of days to mull this over.” Bascom vanished.

Across the night field came two more lions.

44

J
AKE WAITED FOR
roughly two minutes after Janine had slipped away. Then he took out his palmphone and tapped out a number.

Gomez, surrounded by darkness, appeared on the tiny screen. “Is all well,
amigo?
I've been chilling my favorite portions while lurking out here watching the villa and covering the backside.”

“It's okay, yeah. Janine is leaving here, but the guns are supposed to be stored below.”

“Supposed? You allowed that multifaceted
mujer
to escape before you made certain about the weapons?”

“It wasn't a question of allowing, since she was carrying a Devlin Gun.”

“Ah.”

“And I decided to trust her.”

“I tend to trust armed women, too.”

“Contact Bascom from the skycar vidphone, Sid,” suggested Jake. “Arrange for the local branch of whatever Washington agency he's in cahoots with to get here fast and gather up these damned guns. Then come on in here. I'll be down in the subbasement.”

“What's the status of Santos?”

“He's gone to his reward.”

“Thanks to you?”

“Nope, Janine arranged that.”

“Hallelujah, I find out a new talent of hers each and every day,” said Gomez. “She's an inspiration to a youth such as myself.”

Jake pocketed the phone, then headed downstairs.

He located the guns where Janine had told him they'd be found, far beneath the villa in a large room that had been cut out of the mountain. The Devlin Guns were in unmarked plazcrates, six guns to a box, stacked all along one rough stone wall.

Some remnants of the days when the underground room had been a dungeon remained. There was a wooden stretching rack, a brazier for heating hot irons, a scatter of chains and manacles.

Jake lifted one of the stubby, off-white guns out of its box, hefted it in his hand and then put it back.

Behind him a boot scraped on the stone floor.

Not turning, he said, “You're getting impressively swift, Sid.”

“He won't be joining you, asshole.”

Almita was in the old dungeon with him.

“Where is he?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “I don't know exactly where he fell after I shot him.”

“This is, and I hate to be critical of the guy after he almost literally plucked me from the maw of destruction, typical of the way Gomez can let me down in moments of need.”

“Jaws,” corrected Sidebar. The cambot was sitting in an armchair with his large metallic feet up on a hassock. “It's jaws of destruction.”

He and Natalie were sharing an office in the Madrid offices of Newz, Inc.

“To someone who's chock-full of clichés maybe.” The reporter, wearing a mint-green skirtsuit, was sitting on the edge of a Lucite desk with a talkwriter mike in her hand. “He promised to contact me here soon as he and Jake had news about the Devlin Guns.”

“You should have tagged along with them.”

Natalie sighed. “It's astounding how I'm surrounded by a sea of ingratitude,” she mentioned. “I came back to Madrid to find out if you were okay. My concern for you, however, doesn't seem—”

“You need a good cameraman. It wasn't my well-being that—”