10

THE FIRST AXIS Brotherhood van shuddered to a stop in front of the Café Francisca. A side door, which carried a large swastika painted on it, rattled open and young men in black neoleather uniforms came doubletiming out onto the street. Each wore a crimson helmet with a double eagle engraved on it in silver and each carried a long black stunrod.

Gomez had by this time withdrawn to the other side of the street and was heading away from the arriving Axis Brotherhood raiders.

Now a large, thick young man jumped down from the driveset. “Hey, greaser! I’m not through talking to you,” he shouted after Gomez. Across his broad, blackclad chest he held a lazrifle.

Ignoring him, Gomez increased his pace.

The second crimson van had rattled to a stop behind the first. From out of it a dozen more uniformed youths were pouring. Instead of stunrods, they carried bullhorns and leaflets.

The husky young man who was interested in the departing Gomez doubled back, snatching a bullhorn from one of the other uniformed youths. “There goes an ethnik who’s defying us,” he announced over the bullhorn. “Let’s teach him!”

Gomez spun around, yanked out his stungun and fired.

The sizzling beam slapped the young man with the bullhorn smack in the chest. He gave an awking yell that was amplified and went echoing up and down the narrow street. Then he took three wobbly steps to his right and fell over in the gutter.

Gomez concentrated on running.

“Get the spick!” someone shouted.

“Stop that greaser!”

“Doesn’t sound,” Gomez told himself as he sped along, “like a time for peaceful negotiations.”

“Bring him down!”

“Stun the bastard!”

“Lazgun him!”

Running ever faster, Gomez went skidding around the corner.

As he passed the doorway of a fortune-telling shop, the door snapped suddenly open and blocked his progress. A huge metal arm came snaking out, a hand grabbed his arm and yanked him inside.

LARRY SEAGROVE, SNIFFLING, pointed at the sprawled butler with a right hand that quivered slightly. “Sure, you can do something, can’t you, Cardigan?” He grabbed his right hand with his left and pressed it to his chest.

“What happened to him?”

They were standing in the middle of the large living room of the Southport home where Seagrove was hiding out. All the windows had been blanked and the vidwall was dark. Stretched out, facedown, in the middle of the brightlit room was a darksuited android.

“He fell over,” explained Seagrove, letting go his right hand so he could wipe at his nose. “He hit his damn head.” He walked over toward an unseeing window. “It’s an expensive andy, one of the topline Mechanix International models. I couldn’t afford one myself. But Megan’s damned uncle, he’ll piss and moan about it. He’ll blame me.”

Jake poked the fallen android with his boot toe. “What’d you hit him with?”

“I didn’t touch him, didn’t lay a hand on him,” he insisted, sniffling. “Jesus, Cardigan, whose side are you on here? I’m helping you out, remember? You’ve no right to go accusing me of busting up the old bastard’s servos.”

“Somebody took a blunt instrument to the butler’s skull,” said Jake evenly. “He didn’t get that bunged up just falling. You have an argument with him?”

“No, not exactly. But, hell, Cardigan, he was a snotty son of a bitch. You know, they build them that way. Program the bastards to act like you weren’t worth shit. I have permission, afterall, to stay here.”

“You can have a repair squad come look at him after we take care of our business.”

“Why the hell should I do that? I don’t want to get stuck with the bill for the work, which is why I was hoping you could give me a hand patching him up.” Seagrove sniffled. “Here in Connecticut they think you’re a millionaire if you live in Southport. A repair bill that would cost five thousand dollars in Manhattan will run you fifteen thousand around here. Besides, he’s a servo, which means he was supposed to serve me and not go around insulting me all the damn time. The way I—”

“We can settle the butler matter later, Seagrove.” Stepping over the battered android, Jake approached the man. “Before I get you moved to a safer hideaway, I—”

“This place was safe,” he said. “If Megan hadn’t shot off her mouth to you, nobody would know where I was.”

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean?”

“Figure it out,” suggested Jake. “I found you. Others can.”

“Others—what others, for Christ sake?”

“The others who killed Eve. The others who broke in on her husband, looking for the vidcaz.”

Seagrove wiped at his nose. “They don’t know I have the damn cassette, do they? Megan doesn’t know, so I don’t see how they—”

“Look, I’m not sure yet of all that’s going on,” cut in Jake. “But I do know we’re dealing with folks who’ll kill to get what they want. And apparently they’d like to have the cassette.”

“Okay, allright,” he said. “Suppose I hand it over to you? That should stop them from hunting for me. That sounds right, doesn’t it? It makes sense.”

“Some sense, yeah. What’s on the cassette?”

Seagrove shook his head. “I don’t know,” he swore. “I have, you know, a general idea, but honest to god, Cardigan, I never actually looked at the cassette itself, never played it. Never, not once. That way nobody can say, ‘That asshole Seagrove knows what she knew, let’s ice him, too.’”

“Eve gave you the vidcaz?”

“Yes, right. The day she found out that Junior—Arnie Maxfield, Jr., that toad—that he was dead. That night she stopped by, said she’d put a message on tape. It was important and I was to keep it for her.”

“In what way important?”

“Okay, this is all, really, I know,” began Seagrove. “Eve was down in Managua on Larson-Dunn business. The manager of the Mechanix International operation in Nicaragua was in some sort of mess and, since we have the MI public relations account down there, she was assigned to make him look like less of a crook than he is.” He paused to fish out a handkerchief. “I’ve had this damn cold for a week. Can’t seem to shake it.”

“What happened in Nicaragua?”

“It had, far as I can tell, nothing to do with the client.” He blew his nose, then balled up the handkerchief in his hand. “Arnie, though, was down there on some business or other for his father—that’s MaxComm, you know—and he found out something. After he was killed, Eve got very upset and she told me it wasn’t an accident. She was certain someone had killed him.”

“What had he found out?”

“I’m not sure, but it was sure as hell something he wasn’t supposed to know.”

“Did Eve tell you who she suspected had killed Maxfield?”

“No, but she was afraid they were going to come after her.”

“Which means he’d shared what he knew with her.”

“Exactly. That’s why she was so scared.”

Jake asked, “Why couldn’t she go to the police?”

“She didn’t want to risk that,” said Seagrove, sniffing. “My feeling is, you know, that Eve wasn’t too sure who she could trust. She put what she knew on the vidcaz and she told me, if anything happened to her, to give the thing to her husband.”

“She probably told somebody else about the cassette, told them that it existed.”

“As insurance, but that didn’t work.” Seagrove blew his nose. “She told me her husband would know what to do. His old man is—but, hell, you know that since you work for the old bastard.”

Jake took a step back. “But you didn’t do what she asked you. You didn’t hand it over to her husband.”

“I decided to look after my own ass, Cardigan. Lie low for a while.”

“You phoned him, though.”

“I was drunk,” he explained. “Well, I’m drunk quite a lot these days. I wasn’t going to risk passing the thing to him or even trying to send it. But I thought, you know, I ought to at least give the poor guy a hint. Let him know it was bullshit about her being in an accident.”

“How’d you know Eve was dead before her husband did?”

“What?”

“You phoned Richard, told him she’d been murdered,” said Jake. “That was before the police had contacted him to tell him about the accident.”

“That’s because I heard it on the vidnews,” Seagrove told him, sniffling. “Listen, Cardigan, I’m not that big a shitcase. If I’d known in advance that they were going to kill her, I’d have gotten her a warning somehow.”

“I’ll take your word.”

“I loved her,” he said quietly. “More than that anemic husband of hers, more than Arnie—more than any of them. The trouble is, she quit loving me.”

“Where’s the cassette?”

“Here. Up in the bedroom I’m using,” answered Seagrove.

“Let’s,” suggested Jake, “go get it.”