The Bad Place Read Free Page B

the company’s competitors.
    “One O’Clock Jump” ended.
    Into the microphone Bobby said, “Music stop.”
    That vocal command cued his computerized compact-disc system to switch off, opening the headset for communication with Julie, his wife and business partner.
    “You there, babe?”
    From her surveillance position in a car at the farthest end of the parking lot behind Decodyne, she had been listening to the same music through her own headset. She sighed. “Did Vernon Brown ever play better trombone than the night of the Carnegie concert?”
    “What about Krupa on the drums?”
    “Auditory ambrosia. And an aphrodisiac. The music makes me want to go to bed with you.”
    “Can’t. Not sleepy. Besides, we’re being private detectives, remember?”
    “I like being lovers better.”
    “We don’t earn our daily bread by making love.”
    “I’d pay you,” she said.
    “Yeah? How much?”
    “Oh, in daily-bread terms ... half a loaf.”
    “I’m worth a whole loaf.”
    Julie said, “Actually, you’re worth a whole loaf, two croissants, and a bran muffin.”
    She had a pleasing, throaty, and altogether sexy voice that he loved to listen to, especially through headphones, when she sounded like an angel whispering in his ears. She would have been a marvelous big-band singer if she had been around in the 1930s and ’40s—and if she had been able to carry a tune. She was a great swing dancer, but she couldn’t croon worth a damn; when she was in the mood to sing along with old recordings by Margaret Whiting or the Andrews Sisters or Rosemary Clooney or Marion Hutton, Bobby had to leave the room out of respect for the music.
    She said, “What’s Rasmussen doing?”
    Bobby checked the second video display, to his left, which was linked to Decodyne’s interior security cameras. Rasmussen thought he had over-ridden the cameras and was unobserved; but they had been watching him for the last few weeks, night after night, and recording his every treachery on videotape.
    “Old Tom’s still in George Ackroyd’s office, at the VDT there.” Ackroyd was project director for Whizard. Bobby glanced at the other display, which duplicated what Rasmussen was seeing on Ackroyd’s computer screen. “He just copied the last Whizard file onto diskette.”
    Rasmussen switched off the computer in Ackroyd’s office.
    Simultaneously the linked VDT in front of Bobby went blank.
    Bobby said, “He’s finished. He’s got it all now.”
    Julie said, “The worm. He must be feeling smug.”
    Bobby turned to the display on his left, leaned forward, and watched the black-and-white image of Rasmussen at Ackroyd’s terminal. “I think he’s grinning.”
    “We’ll wipe that grin off his face.”
    “Let’s see what he does next. Want to make a bet? Will he stay in there, finish his shift, and waltz out in the morning—or leave right now?”
    “Now,” Julie said. “Or soon. He won’t risk getting caught with the floppies. He’ll leave while no one else is there.”
    “No bet. I think you’re right.”
    The transmitted image on the monitor flickered, rolled, but Rasmussen did not get out of Ackroyd’s chair. In fact he slumped back, as if exhausted. He yawned and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.
    “He seems to be resting, gathering his energy,” Bobby said.
    “Let’s have another tune while we wait for him to move.”
    “Good idea.” He gave the CD player the start-up cue— “Begin music”—and was rewarded with Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.”
    On the monitor, Tom Rasmussen rose from the chair in Ackroyd’s dimly lighted office. He yawned again, stretched, and crossed the room to the big windows that looked down on Michaelson Drive, the street on which Bobby was parked.
    If Bobby had slipped forward, out of the rear of the van and into the driver’s compartment, he probably would have been able to see Rasmussen standing up there at the second-floor window, silhouetted by the glow of Ackroyd’s