Tek Power Read Free Page B

about her did you pass along to your son?”
    â€œNot a hell of a lot, Jake. Richard and I—well, we haven’t been all that close for a long time,” admitted Bascom. “So I only hinted that maybe he ought to wait, look into her background a little more.”
    â€œI bet that didn’t work too well.”
    â€œHe told me to go screw myself and hung up. We didn’t talk to each other again for nearly a year.”
    Jake asked, “Have you kept checking up on her?”
    Bascom sighed. “Yep, I have every so often,” he said slowly. “In addition to dealing with a slew of extremely fragrant clients here and abroad, Eve has been—Eve was not particularly faithful to my son.”
    â€œHow much so?”
    â€œOh, she wasn’t exactly promiscuous, but she carried on several affairs after she married my son.”
    â€œ Muy mal ,” commented Gomez as he settled into an armchair.
    The image of a blond, overweight man of forty materialized on the stage. “This lad was the most recent of her lovers. Arnold Maxfield, Jr.”
    â€œSon of the communications mogul,” said Jake.
    Gomez sat up. “Didn’t Junior get knocked off in some sort of accident down Nicaragua way only last week?”
    â€œMight be it wasn’t an accident,” said Bascom. “I’m sorry I didn’t put fulltime operatives on Eve soon as I heard about Maxfield’s death.”
    â€œWas she with him down there, jefe? ”
    â€œSupposedly Eve was in Managua on Larson-Dunn business for nearly two weeks. He was down there at the same time and the day after she headed for home, Maxfield was killed during a riot at an air soccer match,” he told them. “She and Junior saw a lot of each other, day and night.”
    Jake rubbed his knuckles across his cheek. “How was she killed and where?”
    â€œBack in New York City—at roughly eleven PM tonight—when a runaway skyvan slammed into her skycar.”
    â€œTwo fatal accidents in a week,” observed Gomez, “make for a nice coincidence.”
    â€œAt midnight, before he even knew anything had happened, Richard got a call,” continued the chief. “The caller was a man and he kept the screen blanked. He told my son, in what sounds to me like a nasty way, that no matter what anybody tried to tell him, his wife had been murdered.”
    â€œBe interesting,” said Jake, “to find out what that guy knows.”
    â€œI’ve already had an op with your Manhattan affiliate trying to track down the call.” Bascom shook his head. “Made from a booth in a skybus station.”
    â€œYou want us to head back to New York?”
    â€œI’ve already booked you both on a skyliner that leaves GLA at two AM this morning.”
    Standing up, Gomez asked, “How many sons do you have?”
    â€œThree, and I’d like very much to have all of them attend my wake someday,” he said. “I wouldn’t want Richard to have an accident.” He placed both hands, palms down, on the uncluttered desk top. “He and I don’t get along too damn well, but when this came up—and after the cops told him her death was an accident plain and simple—he turned to me for help. I’m glad he did and I don’t want him feeling that I let him down.”
    â€œWe’ll give him the same matchless service we provide all our clients,” promised Gomez. “With a few added frills to boot.”
    â€œIf you could avoid it, fellas,” cautioned Bascom, “don’t tell him anything about his wife’s romances. Okay?”
    â€œW HAT YOU NEED is somebody who’s not a lunatic.” Dan Cardigan, a lean young man of sixteen, was leaning in the doorway of his father’s bedroom and watching him pack.
    â€œAlicia’s actually a stable and rational person,” Jake told his son. “You, like the lady herself, tend to