The rest of the night passed rather quickly, or at least what I remembered of it. Pam and I had dug up quite a bit on Mr Cooper. He was 24, above average grades, and paid his rent through an IT support job and competitive video games.
He lived in one of the poorer areas of Residential District 3, which said something because the whole damn place looked like the set for a zombie movie. He also had a roommate. Luther Dwerry worked on a line at one of the factories in the neighbouring Industrial/Manufacturing District.
Pam nudged me into the waking world before adjusting the dimness setting on the smart-glass windows. Sunlight filled the room.
‘Good morning, sir,’ she said, with what might have been a hint of kindness in her tone. I checked my watch: 10 minutes before noon.
I wiped the sleep from my eyes and discovered a cup of Joe and a bagel on my desk. ‘Thank you for the coffee and breakfast.’
‘I ordered it from your usual place,’ she answered cryptically.
‘I didn’t know I had a usual breakfast place that also has a delivery service.’ I almost always ate breakfast at the diner where Erica worked and they didn’t deliver.
She responded by simply walking out of the room. A few seconds later, I heard her typing away at her desk.
I tested the coffee – warm but cool enough to drink – and demolished the bagel. After the two minutes that constituted my breakfast, I grabbed a seat on the corner of Pam’s desk.
‘Before I dozed off last night, I had a thought about how to nail Cooper.’
She stopped typing and looked up at me. ‘Frame Ms Voss for something unrelated to blackmail, but related to financial fraud, like embezzling from HTS, and link it to her boyfriend and his roommate?’
‘Umm… yeah. That’s exactly what I had in mind. How did you know?’
‘You talk in your sleep.’
‘I do?’
She shook her head no. ‘Out of the several scenarios we could employ to fulfil the terms of our agreement with Mr Porter, having her steal from the company made the most sense. The manipulation of data to create a viable, but false, trail of theft played to our collective strengths. And it gives us some flexibility in terms of how we fulfil the terms of agreement with Mr Porter. I, also, anticipated your enjoyment of the irony.’
Damn her! She had taken the steam out of my big reveal. ‘It does have a certain amount of elegance, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir. They are attempting to steal from the company. We will simply change the terms to something they did not anticipate.’
‘Alright. We have about a day to sort this out and execute a plan.’
‘No, sir. We do not.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The blackmailers sent Mr Porter another message moving the deadline to 6pm today. I believe it had something to do with your visit to his office yesterday. This also provides anecdotal evidence of Ms Voss’s involvement. I do not doubt she informed Mr Cooper and Mr Dwerry of your visit.’
‘Damn. We don’t have much time to set this up.’ I slid off her desk, intending to dash back to my office and get to work.
As usual, Pam stopped me. ‘After I decided embezzlement was the best course of action, I took steps to implement the plan. That the deadline has changed should have no effect on its execution.’
I resumed my perch on her desk and rolled my wrist in the universal gesture to ‘carry on’.
And she did. ‘While you slept, I researched more into HTS and discovered their mining operation is a subsidiary company, headquartered on Kepler 62f. Fortunately, their financial division is located on Earth, which made manipulating their system easier.’
‘So, you snuck in and are ready to transfer funds into an account owned by Ms Voss?’
Pam nodded. ‘I’ve created an entire false trail of field survey requisition reports over the last eighteen months by a dummy corporation in Cooper and Dwerry’s name.’
‘How do you know Dwerry is involved?’
‘A hunch.’
‘A hunch? You have those?’
She ignored my question. ‘Voss is the originator of the service request. Payments go to an account in a Singapore bank created in that company’s name.’
‘What did you name his company?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Humour me.’
‘Triumvirate Research and Operational Logistics, Ltd.’
I pondered the oddness of Pam’s false company name and then it hit me. ‘Wait, TROLL?’
She nodded. I laughed.
‘All things considered, sir, it seemed appropriate.’
‘Genius, Pam. Sheer genius. And let me guess, from this Singapore bank account, the money is siphoned into accounts owned by Cooper and Dwerry?’
‘And Ms Voss.’
‘What’s left then? Break into their network and get ready to dump this on their system?’
‘I completed that task as well.’
I nearly fell off her desk. ‘You did all of this while I was asleep?’
‘Though I am not the latest synthetic model, I can do more than answer phones and type reports.’
My mind raced through the plan. It was a good one, that’s for sure. ‘Sounds like you’ve thought of everyth—’ The ring of the phone cut me off. Pam answered.
‘It’s Mr Porter.’
‘Put him on speaker.’
I barely got ‘hello’ out before my client launched into a panic-filled diatribe. As soon as I explained to him we had a strategy in place – and that it was ready to go – he went quiet. Not unlike when Pam had taken the wind out of my sails a few minutes ago.
‘I’ll swing by your office later today,’ I told him.
‘Very good then.’ Uncertainty dripped from his tone but he hung up all the same.
I looked back at Pam. ‘So, I go over to Cooper and Dwerry’s, bash the living hell out of them. While I’m doing that, you dump the embezzlement racket on their system.’
‘Violence seems unnecessary to me. Can’t we just execute my scheme and notify the police? Your direct involvement will drag us into any investigation that follows.’
‘We could, but where’s the fun in that? Besides they can’t undo any of our handiwork if they’re unconscious. And, if – or when – we get caught in the investigation, you better make sure it can’t be traced back to us. You are that good, aren’t you, Pam?’
She answered with a look of sheer venom. ‘I am very good at what I do,’ she replied in an injured tone. It was hard to believe she wasn’t an actual human.
I slipped off her desk with a smile on my face and a spring in my step.
This should be fun.
Before I left the office, I grabbed two pairs of handcuffs, which I happened to possess legally; as well as a military grade stun gun, which I illegally possessed. The NEEDLE fired a single projectile in your choice of a neurological inhibitor for us fleshies or an EMP round that could take down your average robot.
I stuffed the bracelets and the gun, an extra tranquilliser round and a pair of leather gloves into a satchel, grabbed the laptop and went to chat with my office assistant one last time.
I slid the earpiece linked to my MAX into my ear. ‘Once I have Cooper and Dwerry down, I’ll give you the signal.’
‘Very well, sir. Are you going straight there?’
‘Not straight there, no. I thought it best to go home and change into something more appropriate.’
‘Appropriate for what?’
‘A pizza delivery guy.’
‘I am sorry, sir, but I do not understand.’
‘A disguise, Pam. I’ll go to their building masquerading as a pizza delivery guy.’
‘But you have no pizza.’
‘I’ll pick one up on the way.’
‘Naturally, ahem, I – I should have assumed that.’
I walked out of my apartment building dressed like every guy who’d ever brought a pizza to my doorstep: jeans, T-shirt and a pair of generic loafers. I secured the stun gun in a shoulder holster and wore a khaki fatigue jacket to cover it.
On my way to the nearest subway station, I scrolled through Res 3’s pizzeria choices and found one near Cooper’s address. I ordered a basic ham and mushroom pie over the phone before descending into the bowels of the city’s Underground network. One line-change and 15 minutes later, I paid for the pizza and hoofed it towards Berkshire Street.
The food smelled delicious and it got my stomach growling before I reached the end of the block. I figured I might as well stop for a minute to have a slice or two. It was nothing more than a prop after all. No reason to waste a perfectly good pizza. In the few seconds it took me to grab a wedge of cheesy goodness and lift it to my mouth, a man in a flat cap, black bomber jacket and aviators appeared on the other side of street and down the block from me.
I froze. With the pizza so close to my mouth, I couldn’t resist taking a bite and tried to play it off as cool. I snuck a couple of peeks as I wolfed down the slice. It might have been the same guy who had tailed me, or it might not. No way to be certain at that distance. I could walk his way, maybe even break out into a sprint. However, with the head start he’d have, I doubted I could catch him.
I spoke in a low tone. The mic in the earpiece could pick up anything above the faintest of whispers. ‘Pam, can you tap into the street cameras at my position? I think the guy who tailed me in the Electroglide yesterday is about a block east of where I’m standing.’
‘Accessing them now. Are you eating something?’
I grabbed another slice and continued on my way at a slow, casual pace. ‘Yeah, it’s the pizza I bought as a cover.’
As soon as I started to move, the man in the flat cap turned and dashed around the corner. ‘He’s on the run. Do you have anything?’
‘No, sir. His hat and sunglasses obscure too many of his features from the cameras. However, it appears he’s walking towards the nearest subway station. Shall I continue to follow him?’
‘Yes. But I’m already at 314 Berkshire and may also need your help getting in.’
‘Will you require me to bypass the security measures on the main door?’
‘Probably, but let me try to sneak in first.’
The building looked exactly like every other apartment building in the area – average, roughly cubic in shape and obvious signs of neglect. I scrolled through the directory until I found apartment D.
The ‘genius’ of my plan relied on someone coming out of the building right as I reached the entrance and I could just slip right in. But after a few minutes of waiting, I went to my second option.
‘Okay, do your thing, Pam.’
‘I assume you mean unlock the door?’
‘Of course I do.’ I sighed. Androids can be so literal sometimes – or all of the time.
The door clicked open and I slipped inside.
The interior of 314 Berkshire didn’t look like the post-apocalyptic nightmare I envisioned. Some of the hovels in Residential 3 can be downright scary. However, this one had swept floors, walls devoid of graffiti or stains of any kind, and smelled of disinfectant. With pizza in hand, I rode the elevator to the fourth floor.