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nervous man in a straight-backed chair.
"So you say."
"You're the owner here?"
"Probably."
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"Why do you call the business Einstein, Inc.?"
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"Because I'm Einstein. Milton Einstein." Leaving the chair, he made a grab for
one of his suitcases. Yon' Il excuse me, but I'm on my way to... well, let's
just say elsewhere."
Gomez booted the suitcase out of his reach. "Corky tells me your specialty is
providing information about technically skilled hombres who do illicit futzing
with vidtapes and--"
"She's behind the times," put in Einstein, edging toward his other suitcase.
"I was formerly in that sideline. But I've retired." "Do you know who faked
the Bascom tapes?"
"I used to know," admitted Einstein as he bent to take hold of the suitcase
handle. "Too bad you didn't get here earlier, before I went out of business."
"Tell me, Einstein." He took the suitcase away from him.
"I started hearing some terrible things a few hours ago and I've decided it
isn't safe to continue--"
"That's what informants are supposed to do, Einstein, hear terrible things,"
reminded Gomez. "Then they pass such stuff on and collect rich rewards and--"
"No, there are Tek people involved, high-up Tek people. The kind who
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think nothing of having upstart information peddlers terminated."
"My name is Gomez. Call Corky, would you?" suggested the [detective.
"She'll, I assure you, point out that I tend to do great Iarm to folks who
don't comply with my search for enlightenment." He smiled. "Who did the job on
those tapes?"
"I'm late for my sky liner I have to go, Gomez."
"You'll never go anywhere, Einstein, unless you confide."
He glanced fretfully from one suitcase to the other. "It's a shame I
ever decided to go into this end of the information business," he lamented.
"After you fill me in, I'll put you in touch with a first-rate crackerjack
career counselor." Gomez got a firm grip on the man's arm.
"Give me the fellow's name, pot favor."
Einstein swallowed, coughed, swallowed again. "It was Avram Moyech."
"I thought Moyech was a SoCal Tech professor who worked undercover for the
Greater LA branch of the Office of Clandestine Operations."
"Avram quit that when he retired from SoCal Tech. Went into business
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for himself about five months ago." "Where is he at this moment?"
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Einstein coughed again. "Out of town." "Where did he go?"
"Texas. All I know is he went to Texas a couple days ago." "Texas is muy
grande. Give me a location."
"Sweetwater, Texas. Around Sweetwater someplace. That's all i know, really,
Gomez." , Gomez said, "Now, how about the cabrones who hired
Moyech ifor the task?
"I don't know that, don't have details." Einstein looked toward the doorway.
"It's obviously a big Tek cartel, but know which one."
they kill Dwight Grossman?" "For good and sufficient reasons, but reasons,
Gomez, that are unknown to me. I have to go now."
"Can I help carry your bags to your sky car offered the detective.
"No, no, thanks." Einstein shook his head. "I'd prefer not to be seen with you
out in the open."
"Gracias, then." Gomez let the shop.
"FREE," said Bascom, "more or less." He was sitting in the passenger seat of a
sky car that was speeding through the twilight sky of Greater LA, away from
jail and toward home. "I appreciate your
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efforts, Kay."
Kay Norwood, a tall blond woman, was in the pilot seat. "They really had you
embedded deeply in the lockup, Walt," she said. "I had to pull considerable
strings to extract you. And you're still going to have to stand trial."
"Nope, they're never going to try me for the Grossman killing."
"Because you and your Cosmos Detective Agency are going to find the real
murderer?"
The chief of Cosmos nodded, smiling thinly. "That's exactly what's going to
happen," he assured her.
"So far nobody thinks those tapes aren't authentic, including your own
experts."
"We know the damn things were rigged, so eventually we'll prove it," he said
confidently. "Now, give me some more background on Dwight
Grossman."
"I only went out with him seven or eight times over a stretch of two or three
months. But it didn't take much to get the guy fixated, I
guess," the attorney answered.
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Below them, as the night closed in, more and more lights were blossoming
across Greater Los Angeles. hat he tried on you, the harassing and the
threats, he must ye done to other ladies as well."
"I assume so, Walt, but I don't know who any of his other targets might have
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been."
"That's okay, Cardigan will get that information," he said.
"What about Grossman's work? Would the fact-finding missions he undertook for
Thelwell have given somebody a reason to knock him off?."
Kay started to shake her head. Then said, "Well, actually, I'm not certain."
He put his hand over hers. "You remembered something, Kay?" "Only something he
said one of the last times he made avid-phone call to me,"
she said. "He bragged, in between threats, that he was going to be very rich
soon and then maybe I'd be sorry for dropping him. All his years as an
investigator were going to pay off."
"Blackmail maybe?"
"That could have been what Dwight had in mind," she acknowledged. "The thing
is, Walt, he was a braggart much of the time, and that may have
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been merely a lie to impress me."
"Suppose it wasn't--any notion where this money was going to come from?"
"I think he implied it had something to do with the reports he was working on
at the moment."
"Then we--"
"You ought to see this, Bascom," suddenly said the voxbox beneath the dash
panel phone screen
"What the hell is going on?" The agency chief scowled at the now-glowing
screen.
The image of a bright afternoon living room appeared. The was white and pale
blue, and outside its high, wide win-gulls could be seen diving toward a patch
of ocean. "That's my place," realized Kay, inhaling sharply. "And that's me."
The blond attorney was crossing the room, moving toward the windows.
She stopped, turned abruptly, and said, "What's wrong, Walt? Why are you
here?"
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"You were still sleeping with that bastard, weren't you?" Bascom, in a rumpled
suit, was stomping closer to the obviously frightened woman. "I
killed him and then it turns out you were lovers."
"Get out, Walt," she demanded. "I don't want you around when you're in one of
these violent, angry moods!"
"Bullshit! We're going to settle this Kay," he shouted at her. "You lied to me
all along. You were sleeping with him and telling me you didn't want him
bothering you."
"That's not true. Now get out or--"
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