“Gar!” A huge lizard stormtrooper popped up out of his chair. “What in the blue blazes is the big idea, Jordan? I don’t mind a little broken crockery in my Waldorf salad, but I resent your dropping this gink smack in my tub of avocado dip.”
“Are you complaining?” Jordan eyed him.
“Well, not exactly.”
“Sit down then.”
“Okay, but…well, listen, Rocky, my mother brought me up to be a fastidious eater,” explained the big green man as he settled into his chair. “Having a stranger’s nose and chin resting in my dip makes me uneasy. Fact is, I doubt the health department would want me to dunk my rice crackers into this stuff now that-”
“Chris, have Susan bring this gent a fresh bowl of dip. On the house.” He sauntered back to the bar. “Can I help you, Jared?”
“I’m hoping so.”
“I can try.”
Cruz was glancing around the big room, taking in the customers and then the view of the canal you got through the high tinted windows. “I heard you were tough, Jordan, but…”
“I’m a little cranky today,” explained the owner. “It’s the height of the pollen season and that always riles me. Most other times I’m gentle as…what are you staring at, buddy?”
A handsome cleancut blond young man in a three-piece travelsuit had stepped in out of the bright day. He had three cameras dangling around his sunburned neck and a slim blonde young woman on his arm. “Sorry, if I’m annoying you, Mr. Jordan. It is Mr. Jordan, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. So?”
“I’m Wilson Teanegg, Jr. From Mars in the Earth System,” the young man explained, smiling nervously and guiding his companion closer to the bar. “This is my lovely wife Wanita…don’t step on that man, dear. We’re on a tour and…well, we’ve heard so much about you that I was wondering if I could get a picture of you. Here in your natural habitat, so to speak.”
“I guess so.” Jordan was frowning. “One picture.”
“Gee, thanks. That’s swell, isn’t it, Wanita?”
“It’s really terrific.”
Cruz rubbed at his nose with his metal forefinger, studying the couple.
“This’ll only take a second, Mr. Jordan.” Smiling, Teanegg raised one of his cameras and clicked off a picture. “Thanks a million.”
After he and his wife had departed Smith asked, “What’s the matter, Cruz?”
“Something about that guy…”
“Most tourists are strange,” observed Jordan.
Cruz drummed on the bartop with his real fingers for a few seconds. “I ran into somebody like him before,” he said. “Yes, it was while I was pursuing the wife of a used android dealer over on the planet Tarragon in the Barnum System. He called himself Crackpot Charlie, this dealer, and insisted his wife go around telling all and sundry her name was Mrs. Crackpot Charlie. At the time I came along to brighten her life she-”
“Does this lusty narrative have some point?” asked Smith, reaching for his just-arrived sparkling water.
“It does indeed.” Cruz nodded toward the doorway. “I’m pretty certain Crackpot had several fellows just like Brother Teanegg in stock.”
“In stock?”
“They call them Alfies,” continued Cruz. “Which stands for Artificial Life Form. They’re youthful looking humanoids that haven’t been on the market for several years. Used to be manufactured by-”
“Syndek,” finished Smith. “Triplan’s chief rivals. This lad was disguised some, but you could be right.”
“Why the heck,” inquired Jordan, “would a sinth want a picture of me?”
“He wanted us,” said Smith.
From the high, wide one-way window of Jordan’s private office you could see the vast gambling casinos across the canal shimmering in the afternoon sunlight.
“More of them than ever,” observed Smith from his lucite hiphug chair.
“Those new bastards over there have no ethics.” Jordan was perched on the edge of his tin desk, his dangling right leg swinging slowly to and fro. “Take the way they run the Fatal Illness room, for instance. It’s a sin and a-”
“That’s a new game to me,” said Smith.
“You bet,” put in Cruz, who was standing near the window, “on the exact second a terminally ill patient’ll die. It’s a variation on the old Teenage Orgasm dodge.”
“Leaving the poor taste angle out of it,” said Jordan,
“these bozos get my grout with the way they fake things. Hell, last week they rang in a zombie as the patient. Two nights ago they planted a resurrectionist in the crowd, bringing some withered old biddy back to life on the sly every time she croaked. You can make a stewpot of profit off gambling without resorting to cheating or sorcery.”
Smith said, “We’re looking for a fellow named Oscar Ruiz.”
Gesturing at the pleasure domes across the hazy water of the Grand Canal, the Cafe Frisco owner said, “Ruiz used to work in the Faulty Parachute room over in MacQuarrie’s Pavillion. You know, that’s where you bet on whether a skydiver’s chute’ll open or not. Never thought that one was much fun.”
“Especially for the divers. Did Ruiz quit?”
“Three weeks back, yeah.”
“We’d like to know where he is now.”
“So would MacQuarrie.”
Cruz asked, “He skip with some funds?”
“A hundred thousand trubux.”
“Any idea where he is?” said Smith.
Jordan wandered around behind his desk, sat on the edge of his tin swivel chair. “I’ve never much cared for MacQuarrie,” he said finally. “Which is why I didn’t bother to mention to the bastard that I happened to find out about Ruiz’ present whereabouts.”
“But you know where he is?”
Jordan answered, “The guy went on a pilgrimage to the Shrine.”
“You were right,” Cruz said to Smith.
“Ruiz didn’t come back,” said Jordan. “Instead he holed up at a place called the Red Desert Oasis. A tourist trap.”
“Didn’t MacQuarrie’s boys look for him there?”
“Hell, yes, but not in the right places.” Jordan pointed at the floor. “Ruiz is under the joint. There’s a hideaway setup under there that very few people know about. Expensive.”
Smith said, “Heard of anyone else looking for Ruiz?”
“Gent from Triplan, couple weeks back.” Jordan shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe how small their bribes are.”
“You tell him anything?”
“Quite a few things, none of them true. Hell, for a lousy thousand trubux you don’t get the truth. Not from Rocky Jordan.”
“Besides Triplan, anyone else?”
Jordan smiled. “This is about more than a missing hundred grand, isn’t it?”
“Yep, it is.”
“Our old buddy, Deac Constiner.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Think he found out anything?”
“Not from me, and I’m just about the only one who knows where Ruiz is holed up.”
Cruz stroked his metal arm. “We ought to take bets,” he suggested. “Who’s going to find Oscar Ruiz first.”
“My dough’s on you and Smith,” said Jordan.
CHAPTER 11
The plump blonde woman giggled. “That’s absolutely marvelous,” she told Jack Saint.
“Yes, isn’t it, rather?”
“I’m not at all musical myself.”
“Ah, I find that deuced hard to believe, Esme.”
They were drifting along a quiet, treelined stream in a plaz gondola. A metal-bodied twelve-string guitar was floating in the air some three feet above the green man’s dapper lap, seemingly plucking itself.
Esme sighed contentedly, letting a plump hand trail over the robotpowered gondola edge into the water. “This is, beyond doubt, the most wonderful lunch break I’ve ever spent since I began work in the Confidential Records Department of Triplan nine weary years ago.”