By the time the telecom beeped and saved me, I'd succeeded in memorizing the names and divisions for all TAB employees A to J in the building. "Keith Wolverton here."
"I have good news and bad news for you." Dempsey was one of the few people who sounded better on the telecom than in person. "What's your pleasure?"
Seeing Ms. Terpstra glowering in my direction, I raised my voice a bit so she could hear. "Well, Doctor, will the patient live?"
"Mr. Kies is in no danger, beyond those expected for a man in his line of work. Whatever symptoms he thought he had, he was mistaken."
"And the bad news."
"No one's out to ace Wolf, but there's five thousand nuyen on your head, Mr. Wolverton." Someone wanted Keith Wolverton hit? Why? He didn't exist forty-eight hours ago. "Your source was impeccable as usual, I assume?"
Dempsey grunted out a laugh. "The grieving widow was spending the five hundred nuyen down payment to blot out the memory of her late squeeze. Closed casket ceremony, you know."
"At least they could go for a shorter box and save money." I drank some more of the soykaf. "You have a name for the patron of this poor departed soul?"
"Are you sitting down and alone?"
I looked at the monitor and saw a message presenting itself to me, letter by letter. "Only my very wonderful supervisor, Ms. Terpstra, reminding me that I should not be taking personal calls via the wonders of binary magic."
"Probably safe, then. The name William Frid mean anything to you?"
I suddenly wondered if soykaf could cover the taste of arsenic. I assumed I would find out shortly. "Rings a bell. Thanks. Dempsey."
"No sweat, chummer. Tell me, is your Ms. Terpstra heavy-set, first name Agnes?"
I shrugged. "Hit on the first, and an 'A' for a first initial on her nameplate. Why?"
"No real reason." I could see Dempsey smiling like a fox in some dark telecom booth. "Heard that was the handle she'd adopted. Always wondered where she ended up after the Mitsuhama embezzlement scam. Watch your paycheck."
"Got it, Dempsey. I owe you big time."
"You'll be hearing from me."
"Anytime, bud, anytime."
I broke the connection and glanced over at Bill's cubicle. Braving the harsh look on Ms. Terpstra's face, I walked over there and crouched down at Bill's side. "Bill, I need some help."
His smile slowly died as the seriousness in my voice got to him. "Sure, Keith, what is it?" I shook my head. "Not here. It's personal. I'm new in town and there was this woman last night…"
He patted me on the shoulder. "You're right, not here. C'mon."
He led the way past the dragon lady to the men's room. We quickly checked the stalls for lurkers, then flipped the lock. Leaning back against a sink, Bill smiled with mild amusement. "Now, what's the problem?"
I shrugged. "The problem is that this woman is upset because the man you hired to kill me got dead himself in the attempt." I filled my right hand with Stealth's pistol. "That almost ruined my day. Explain to me why I don't want to ruin yours."
Bill's eyes grew wider than the bore of the pistol he was staring at. "No, no, no, you have it all wrong."
"That's correct about one of the two of us." I tore the loop-towel across the back part of the loop and started pulling it down in long lengths.
His blue pupils rolled around like a chalk-mark on a cue ball. "What's that for?"
"You're going to wrap it around your head so the brains don't splatter when I shoot you." I let my smile die except for a nervous twitch at the corner that convinced him I meant business. "No need to make the janitor's job any tougher."
"Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God." Frid dropped to his knees. "I don't want to die."
"Good, then tell me everything you know about the elves and TAB."
"What?" He looked at me with absolute terror in his eyes. "What are you talking about?"
"The Ancients."
"Who?"
"Dammit!" He flinched as I swore. "Why'd you want me killed?"
"I didn't want you killed. I just wanted you, ah, roughed up." His thick lips quivered in a way that told me he had to be telling the truth. "Offering someone five thousand nuyen to rough me up is a bit much."
He looked crestfallen. "How was I supposed to know? I went down to Damian's and offered a guy five grand to do a job, then I gave him five hundred and the copy of your picture I got from security. I just wanted to have you put out of action for a week or so."
I frowned. "I'm still waiting for a 'why' here, chummer."
"Because I wanted your job. Kant gets all sorts of courier jobs and he gets bonuses." He looked down at the floor and clasped his hands in an attitude of prayer. "You have to believe me."
"No, chummer," I said, tossing him the towel. "You have to convince me. What do you know about Kant's courier actions?"
"Oh, God, you're from Auditing, aren't you?" Frid wilted and his shoulders slumped forward. "Kant said he dealt with shadow projects."
Shadow projects. Anything a corp wanted to do without the shareholders or the government knowing about it. Projects that never showed up on the books, but got money funneled to them through fake projects and promotions. Given all the interlocking directorates and vertical integration within the corporate world, tracking down the source of funding for almost anything was impossible. For shadow projects it was that much more so.
And funding a war against the Ancients definitely sounded like a shadow project to me.
"Okay, Bill, let's take this slowly. Kant made three courier runs recently. One was on the twenty-third of last month. This month he did one on the seventh and the other on the twelfth. Enlighten me."
Sweat poured from his forehead and down his face. "I don't know."
"You'll look good in a turban, you know."
"Keith, I don't know. Honest, I don't."
I dropped down onto my haunches and parked the Derringer a centimeter or so from the tip of his nose. "You've got two strikes against you, you weasel. You fig- ured you'd get Kant's job and his bonuses, and you still think you can swing some sort of deal out of this…" I paused to let him consider how much his greed might cost him. "Well, chummer, you can. I only care about that one job. It involves elves and only local travel."
I tapped his nose with the gun. "What will it be? True Confessions, or die knowing that whatever you had for breakfast was your last meal."
"Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. Ah, ah…" He screwed his eyes shut. "I don't know for sure, Keith. All those jobs went through Ms. Terpstra. Please believe me."
I'd seen enough men crumble in my time to know Frid's marshmallow center was leaking through all the cracks in him. He had to be telling the truth, which meant I had a new nut to crack. I wouldn't have thought Ms. Terpstra capable of running a shadow project, but with Dempsey's cautionary tale about her, anything was possible.
"Okay, Bill, this is the way things go down. You're going home sick, right now." The man nodded like a child promising Santa he'd be good. "If I find you've been lying to me you can consider our little talk here as the opening scene of the worst nightmare you've ever had." I slipped the gun back into my pocket. "Get out of here."
Back in the office, I leaned forward on Ms. Terpstra's desk. "Agnes, I really need to know who asked you to give courier jobs concerning the demise of the Ancients to Mike Kant."
Ms. Terpstra's head jerked around as if I'd gaffed her in a gill and yanked her from the Sound. "Mr. Wolver-ton, I have no idea what you are talking about. How dare you address me in such a familiar manner?"