[NSW-Fic] Dramatis Personae

[machievelli]

The entire work split into tthree parts (I think)

 

 

 

Dramatis personae

 

By

 

Nick R Lorance

 

“Davis!” I glanced up at Captain Holoburton’s office. I raised a finger to signal ‘just a minute’, and went through the encryption process for the file I was working on.

 

I know encrypted files are odd for a police department, but ours take paranoia to a new level. There have been stories recently in the news from files hacked by the media. If they ever hacked into ours, they would find them triple encrypted. Using three different systems, each of which used different algorithms. The last one was a copy of the Mercury system used by the CIA. Hell, the NSA can’t break into our files. Sure. we’re paranoid. But the Advance Crime Squad (Or Odd squad as the Detectives who knew what we do labeled us) needed that extra edge to hide what we did.

 

I caught my jacket, but he motioned for me to put it down. I shrugged, and headed to the office.

 

A pert short redhead sat across from him, and Holoburton waved toward her. “Sergeant Dietrich Davis, meet Detective Celia Mendenhall, the

3+new addition to the squad.”

 

We shook hands. She had a good firm grip. Nice legs too.

 

Since she’s new, I thought-“

 

“No.” I dropped my hand, and turned. Legs or not, Mendenhall didn’t exist.

 

“Deit, we’ve had this discussion before.”

 

“Yeah. After Franco, and Martin, and Hoskins, Bonducci, Pushkin.” I glared at him. “Shall I go on?”

 

He sighed. “Sergeant, squad policy is no lone wolves. You take a partner, or you ride a desk.”

 

“Captain!”

 

“I mean it.”

 

“Then transfer me!”

 

“Where, the psyche ward at Lanterman?”

 

“Send me over!”

 

“Wait a minute!” We turned to discover that our duet had become a trio. She was small, but that red hadn’t come out of a bottle. She stalked over, tilting her head back until she could glare up at me. Then she poked me in the chest with her finger like I didn’t outweigh her two to one. “I asked for this transfer so that I could be among the best in the department. If you won’t work with me, then go off to Lanterman and change Depends diapers. I am sure someone else will.” She turned toward the captain, and did the same thing I had to her. I wasn’t in the room. “Who else is up.”

 

Holoburton hadn’t expected that, he fumbled on the desk. “Well there’s-“

 

“I’ll take her.” I said. She had spunk. So much like Franco. I made a note to put flowers on his grave.

 

“I won’t-“

 

Silence!’ She stepped back at the roar. Obviously I’m not a 90s kind of guy. Maybe 1890s. I looked at the Captain. “I withdraw my protests, Captain. She’s got guts. Maybe she’ll outlive the others.” I turned and went back to my desk.

 

I had already gotten the file open and was back to work when she approached. While the bulk of our files eventually end up in general storage, and open for study, some will probably never see the light of day. Too much weird crap has passed through our files for that. This one would probably end up in the general. As soon as the blood tests came back.

 

“Why do you hate me?”

 

I looked up. She loomed over me. It wasn’t her height, if she was more than five feet tall it was the heels. But that red hair made a fury of legend. Kali in a pantsuit.

 

“I have nothing against you. I don’t care what your name is, you race, your background or your color. I am equal opportunity in my foibles.” I turned the screen so she couldn’t see it. “You transferred in. From where?”

 

“Hollywood Homicide.”

 

“So you left what most would call the best gig to come here. Why?”

 

“My partner said the best he’d ever worked with were from the Advanced Squad. Then he’d fumble around, not willing to tell me what they were best at. I think I am one of the best. I want to be among them.”

 

Before I could comment the Captain shouted. “Davis! We got one!”

I was moving before she even knew it. “We’re up, kid.”

 

 

“Can’t you-“

 

“Zip it! If you’re going with me move!”

 

II

She steamed all the way. She didn’t understand why I was being abrupt with her. Maybe she’d hang around long enough to find out.

 

The address was an apartment complex in Hollywood about three blocks off the street of the same name. An ambulance was pulling away sedately. Three police cars were pulled up, and a young man in uniform was stretching the yellow CRIME SCENE tape. He started to wave me off, but I slapped down the visor with the SUPERVISOR tag. He nodded, pointing toward the curb. I pulled in, and climbed out. “Third floor, sir.” He pointed at the building. “Apartment eight.” I went in fast. I didn’t want the argument to start again. Her heels beat a frantic tattoo as she almost jogged to keep up.

 

There were too many people on the third floor. It was the same controlled chaos I always saw at our scenes. The uniform at the door knew me, and signaled toward the open door behind him. I stepped to the door, and surveyed the scene. It was a typical little two bedroom apartment, with the clutter you’d expect in a place where the person only gave it a ‘lick and a promise’ cleaning. Only the smashed electronics and the body slumped in the office chair didn’t belong .

 

Two men in suit jackets stood inside in a cleared area, scanning the room without moving. One saw us, and nudged his partner. They came over, automatically squaring off. “Mahoney, Homicide. This is Hanson.”

 

“Davis and Mendenhall, Advanced.”

 

“So the Odd Squad finally gets here.” the younger man quipped. “ looked at him. Hanson was young, and square. He looked like he should be chasing high school cheerleaders in his football uniform. He probably came off the plane from Saudi after the Gulf War, and went straight into the Academy. Admittedly, he had to be good to be a Homicide detective at his age. He flushed at my appraisal. He looked down. “I didn’t get into homicide to handle something this weird.” he mumbled.

 

Obviously he hadn’t been with them long. I looked at Mahoney. “You know the drill, Mahoney. Keep the file open as pending. If we can come up with a reasonable explanation, you get it back with all our notes, and it’s yours. Otherwise we have it.”

 

“Better you than me.” Mahoney growled. “The lab boys are on the way. Should be here in ten.”

 

“Good. We’ll take your statements first, then the uniforms, then the witnesses, if any.”

 

”We got witnesses. That’s why you got the call.”

 

I looked at Mendenhall. “You do Mahoney over there.” I pointed toward the end of the hall. She started to bristle. “Scoot!” She stormed off, followed by Mahoney, and Hanson grinned.

 

“New partner?”

 

“Every partner I’ve ever had has been new.”

 

It went pretty quickly. The homicide detectives had answered the call from patrol, walked in, had taken one look, and talked to the witnesses. Whatever they had said had caused a veteran of fifteen years on Homicide to call us five minutes later. Definitely one of our special cases.

 

I crooked my finger at Mendenhall, and went across the hall.

 

The Musgrave sisters had started the ball rolling. They lived in Apartment 7, right across the hall. Both were in there eighties. Adel, at 87, was the elder by eighteen months, and deaf as the proverbial post. But she had a set of eyes an Eagle would have died for. The younger, Daphne, wore glasses the thickness of old Coke bottles thanks to glaucoma. But she could hear a pin drop in the hall, and had the look of someone expecting the pin drop. She opened the door before we even touched it, leading us in. Both had that upper crust British accent American love, but can rarely fake.

 

We spent several minutes going over what we had been told by the detectives outside.

 

They had been playing their own version of scrabble (‘Every additional word has to continue the same concept. Foreign languages only.’ Daphne confided) when there had been a bang. “Not a gunshot or someone knocking down a door. Rather like a small explosive had gone off. A squib my dear Bertie would have said.” Then someone shouted. “Gaelic. Definitely Irish Gaelic. It’s my area of expertise.” She idly waved a hand at the bookshelf. I walked over, and looked at the ten volumes. All were by Daphne Musgrave, and covered English history when the islands were merely squabbling tribes. The picture on the dust jacket was of a woman twenty years younger. But she already had those glasses. Anthropologist, renowned expert on the Celts and Picts. I put the book away, and turned. Adel snorted. “They don’t believe you Daffy.” Her voice was soft, unlike most deaf people, who when they can talk too loud.

 

“That’s all right, Delly!” Daphne bellowed. We winced. You wouldn’t have told it by looking at her, but the tiny woman had a dock foreman’s bullhorn for lungs. She dropped back to a gentle tone and continued. After the shouted phrase, she had yelled to Adel to go to the door, and watch for someone leaving, and she had gone to the phone. It was one of those special phones with the one inch buttons with large numbers. She had dialed 911, and her sister had watched for the police to arrive. there had been shouting and smashing next door.

 

The uniforms had arrived in less than two minutes. One of them had knocked on their door, and Adel had told them what was happening. The other had knocked on the scene door. There had been a sound like someone running, and the sergeant had decided to kick the door. As it broke free, there had been another bang. They had gone in, and come out a minute or so later, looking totally confused.

 

“What did the man yell?”

 

“I didn’t tell the other officers that.” She admitted. “At my age, young people think you mind has gone when you say something they might not believe. She looked up, a frail old woman afraid for her own sanity.

 

“I’ve heard a lot of weird things in my time.” I told her. “Trust me, if you heard it, I want to know.”

 

“The man yelled, ‘Hold wizard, or die.”

 

We went and talked to the uniforms. The lab bys had arrived, and the chaos became even more hectic.

 

Ramirez and Latterby had been on a traffic stop down on Hollywood Boulevard. They had pulled over this woman in a Jag for making an illegal left turn. She had been lifting her skirt, intent on convincing the officer to ‘take it out in trade’ when the call came in. They had bailed, and made it here fast. Latterby had gotten the news from the sisters, and Ramirez had heard the running. He’d kicked the door. As he did there had been an explosion. He didn’t think it was a shot, from the bathroom. Both had charged over, set up, and kicked the bathroom door.

 

No one was there. There was nowhere anyone could have hidden if they were taller than a lawn jockey. Everything in the bathroom was scattered over the bathroom floor. like someone had merely thrown it all into a pile.

 

Having been on the street for a year in Laterby’s case, and ten with Ramirez, they had gone through the apartment as if the perp had been a PCP fiend. I remembered a man my size hiding in the space beneath a standing bathroom sink, so I knew how thorough they had been. Yet they had found no one.

 

We sent them off, and returned to the scene. The boys were almost finished. The Medical Examiner was kneeling beside the body, examining it carefully. He glanced up, and nodded at me.

 

“Hancock?”

 

“Hello, Davis.” He waved toward the split headed body. “Meet the late Matthew Corby.”

 

We looked. Mendenhall was kind of green. Maybe she had never seen a decapitation before. This went one better. whoever had killed Corby had hit him with something big and heavy. The skull had been split all the way down to the sternum, both parts flopping to the sides. Whatever it was had been long enough to also split the back of the officer chair as well, though it had held up better than his head had.

 

The Pentium I computer on the desk was dented, the monitor split into two ragged halves, and jammed against the wall. Again, the weapon had been heavy enough to slice all the way through, and cut into the case itself.

“What could have done that?”

 

“Machete? I’d say an axe, but they don’t make an axe with a foot long blade.”

“Lochenbar.” Mendenhall murmured.

 

“What?”

 

A Lochenbar axe. It was a weapon carried by the knights of the 13th century. The blade’s about this long.” She spread her hands about eighteen inches apart. She took out her notebook, and drew a quick sketch. It was a big nasty weapon with a long blade that recurved, The smooth upper curve coming back into a curve the opposite direction ending in a point. The back of the axe had a shorter narrower blade, and there was a finial spike.

 

“That’s what they usually looked like. The handle’s about oh, four, five feet long.”

 

I looked at the ME, who was snorting. Then I bent down. Where the monitor had rested, the dent was actually a slice in the case. about the length of my palm. A couple of inches below it, assuming the perp stood on this side, was another small hole about the width of my pinky.

 

I called over a lab tech, and he carefully opened the case. The damn thing was still humming, so we unplugged it. We pulled the disc drive, CD read-write, hard drive, and the floppy, bagging them. We left the disc in. Then we pulled the mother board. All went into bags, with orders to run them down to my car. I handed them to Mendenhall.

 

“Davis, you had better see this.” A lab photographer named Black stood in the doorway to the kitchen. We walked over, and looked in. There was an eight armed spiral shape etched into the floor. The ends of the arms swept clockwise, and the edges were cut neatly, as if someone had drawn them, then burned them with a torch. The glass on the cabinets had been shattered. I walked over, and looked in one. The glass had been blown in. Like the aftermath of an explosion with no shrapnel.

 

“Any idea what caused it?”

 

“No. But I showed you this so I could show you the other one.”

 

He led over to the bathroom. As the uniformed officer had reported, everything had been flung into the center of the room. They hadn’t mentioned the mirror. It had shattered, and the glass was intermingled with the wreckage. The photographer pointed. There was another etched pattern.

Carefully, we swept an area clear. It was the same pattern, except the arms were counter clockwise.

 

“What could cause everything to suddenly fly into the center of a room?” Mendenhall asked.

 

“Explosive decompression.” I answered. I’d been on a plane when a window had blown. Everything that hadn’t been nailed or strapped down had been sucked into space.

 

“True.” She demurred. “But how do you get explosive decompression at what, three hundred feet above sea level?” She looked up, and her eyes narrowed. “Do you have a Polaroid?”

 

“Yeah, why?”

 

Take a picture of that.” She said pointing at the wall. The neat aqua tiles had been scarred by something sharp. A straight line (As close as someone not an artist could do freehand) had been scored into the tile, bright white against the, darker color. There were notches along the line both above and below.

 

Black grabbed out the battered camera, and took the picture. As the film popped out, He wrote his name, the address and the time on it, and handed it to Mendenhall.

 

“Take at least two good shots of that for me in 35mm.”

 

He looked at me, then lifted the pentax around his neck. “O-kay.” he said.

 

“Come on.” She waved the picture to speed the emulsion.

 

“Where are we going, Celia?”

 

She looked at me strangely. “The Musgrave sisters say it was Gaelic. they heard.” She held out the picture. The wall had come out in sharp relief. “Willing to bet me that they can’t translate this as well?”

 

“He used the axe for that?” I asked.

 

“Not unless he’s built like Schwartzenegger.” She walked as she spoke. “But if he’s the kind of guy that carries a battle axe, I’m willing to bet he carries a dagger too.”

 

Daphne Musgrave not only could translate, she did. Adel got her a magnifying glass headset, and she scanned it. “Lovely. Ogham.”

 

“Ogham?”

 

“Yes, a very rare form of writing. Used by the Celts of the British Isles and Gaul. You can see it on the steles that still stand in Europe.” She waved, and Adel brought over a pad of paper. Her printing was neat and precise. I could see her as a professor, her hand writing the assignment on the blackboard so clearly that even the jock in the last row could read it. Assuming he could read.

 

“Oh I do love a joker.” she murmured. I looked over her shoulder. The series of Roman characters looked nothing like English. As I leaned away, she began to translate in the same exact script.

 

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE STORYTELLER

 

“What, the guy’s seen Highlander eight million times?” I growled.

 

“Perhaps, but the choice of this word is odd.” She tapped the last. “It could mean storyteller, or bard, or chronicler.”

 

Celia and I looked at each other.

 

 

 

III

 

“If he had come through the door, or had been caught by the unit that responded, I’d think it was a fan.” I commented.

 

“Why?”

 

“Remember, the term Fan is short for Fanatic. You get someone who is in love with a character, and they get all sorts of upset when you kill them. You never read Misery by Stephen King?”

 

“He’s too gross for me.” She looked out the passenger side window. “Could I ask a question?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“What changed? One minute you’re treating me like your friend’s obnoxious little sister. The next we’re on a first name basis.”

 

I glanced at her. “Part of it is the job itself. Most new people don’t clue in on their first site. Take what we just saw as an example. We walk into something that most people would have taken as a chainsaw murder. You could have accepted Hancock’s suggestion, that it was a machete. But instead you suggest something else. Not a fireman’s axe, or a woodsman’s axe. You suggest something that you don’t see out of fantasy stories or a museum.” I glanced at her again. “I noticed the extra dent, and your drawing fit the damage we could observe.

 

“Then we look in the bathroom. I saw the scratches on the wall. Anyone else would have simply gotten the pictures. No. You get a Polaroid, and take it over to the witnesses, and yep, they can translate it. They said they heard Gaelic, and you figured that if whoever did this spoke Gaelic, maybe that was Gaelic writing.” I pulled into the station, and shut the engine off.

 

“It takes an odd bent of mind to work the Squad for more than a few days. Most never clue in. Those guys end up shifted to the Anti-terrorist unit we have under us. Others do, but they don’t survive long.”

 

“Those names.” She murmured.

 

“Partners. The squad has more fatalities than any other unit in comparison to size. In the last six years, I have had fourteen partners. Of that number half of them are happily getting ready to duke it out with terrorists when they come. Of the others, only four are still alive, and only two are what society would consider functional.” I climbed out, then imitated the announcer from the Ronco commercials. “But wait! There’s more!”

 

She followed me to the special elevator. Once we were back in the office, I sent the computer stuff of to the lab, and sat down. “The entire squad is only about thirty cops. Three shifts. We don’t work out of any one Division specifically. We’re tasked with all of them. Because if there were enough of us for a squad in every station, the truth would come out.”

 

“But-“

 

“I know, the interviews. All bull.”

 

“But the interviews! Anti-terrorism, the computer fraud section. You told me about the ant-terrorist unit yourself!” She shook her head. “You even did an interview! The Hardest man in the Advanced Crime Squad!”

 

“Of course I did.” I smiled gently. “What do you think we tell the rejects? ‘Sorry, you should have seen that the killer was a zombie’?” I snorted. ‘When they got close during the forties, we were looking for mobsters. When they did in the fifties, we were now tasked with searching for Russian spies. In the sixties, we were looking into the drug cartels, and the seventies the Radical movement. Hell, no one has been on the inside above the Captain since Korea. When he decides to retire, he sends a name to the commissioner, and that guy gets assigned. The way our unit designation was marked, there’s nothing any politician can do.

 

“You have to remember, there are two ways to keep a secret. Either you never tell anyone. Not the President, not the Congress, not your own wife, no one. The other is to create a fiction they will believe. Remember back in ’83 when Reagan bombed Libya? All the papers were screaming about possible terrorist attack. Suddenly the press ‘discovers’ that we already have an Anti-terrorist squad.” She nodded numbly as it sank in.

 

“Now we,” I waved around me, “Aren’t on a shift rotation. We work as needed. We handle everything from Ventura to San Diego. They have a case we’d usually see, they ask us for assistance. We handle the weird ones, always have, and always did.”

 

I brought up one of the files I had worked on. “You worked the McNaughton homicide.”

 

“Yeah. The guy that thought he was a werewolf. That was taken over by you guys, then handed back finished.”

 

I turned the monitor. “This is really what happened.”

 

She read the file. I’d lost Pushkin on that one. Silver bullets worked, just not fast enough. She looked at me in amazement.

 

“Sometimes, we investigate because what the regular police find doesn’t make sense. You remember the Lovett case? The one that was in the papers for weeks?”

 

‘Wait,” She looked down, her finger snapping. “Got it. A kook who thought he could cure cancer with a mineral bath.”

 

“Not such a kook. We were called in because Bunko had his stuff, and it didn’t make any sense. So one of our lab boys did a test. The process worked. Bunko had been called on an anonymous tip. We found out later the caller was a doctor with the AMA.

 

“After we found that out, we called the college he went through. They said he’d never been there. We dug his files out of their computer. I love it, shredders hide a multitude of sins but a lot of people don’t bother with totally eliminating computer records. We convinced Bunko not to press charges if he left town.

 

“He changed his name, moved to Mexico right across the border from Texas, and is now making a comfortable living. Thanks to us.”

 

“But why! Think of all the people he could help!’

 

I laughed. My years on the Squad had made me a grade A extra large cynic. “Think of the money the average doctor would lose! Most people are just as money grubbing as any racketeer. How can you support a BMW life style without chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery? Who is going to pay you 50,000 dollars over the years, when this little guys is saying, ‘take a bath with these minerals in a glass bathtub. All you have to do is sit there for a normal bath time very day, and the cancer will go away, and this will keep it away’? Especially when even with the bath tub, it costs you less than a thousand to start, and about 50 dollars a year to continue?”

 

I waited until I could see the hard edge in her eyes “We also handle the cases that drive the regular guys crazy. Do you remember the movie ‘Love at First Bite’?” She nodded. “If we handle another vampire case, we’d go in and say this to the judge. ‘Your honor, the suspect has claimed in front of witnesses that he is a vampire, and a direct relation to Count Dracula. While we consider him to be insane, or perhaps too deeply linked into fantasy, we considered this before coming to you.

 

‘Having a number of bodies where the blood has been drained from two puncture wounds in the neck, We request permission to search this man’s home looking for any medical paraphernalia that could be used to simulate this type of injury. Since he sleep by day to fit his claims, we request permission to serve this warrant at anytime during daylight hours’.”

 

“That makes-“ she paused. “Another Vampire?”

 

“Slip of the tongue.” The phone rang, and I answered it instead of looking at her. “Davis.” I listened, then hung up. “Let’s go. Steiner has accessed the disc.”

 

IV

 

If a director had been casting for a computer geek, Mort Steiner would be sent back with comments that you try to avoid the stereotype next time. At 20, he was the youngest man on the Squad. He’d been the youngest when he joined us. Like most of the better computer experts that work in intelligence and law enforcement, he’d started on the other side as a hacker. He was one of the most phenomenal hackers ever recorded. From the age of thirteen, he had caused government agencies and businesses untold grief. There’s still talk that he was the one that- wait, that’s still secret.

 

Never mind.

 

We had first dealt with him when he looked through our open files. Then he tried to break into the sealed ones. He’d broken the encryption and was reading one of the juicier ones when two of our men knocked on the door to his house. That file had given grown men nightmares, and had cost us two lives. All he had to say was, ‘cool’.

 

He was 15 at the time.

 

In return for making our files hack-proof, we dropped the charges. That same year, he received a paid computer science internship with the police department. You don’t even have to ask which squad got him.

 

He winked at Mendenhall, and turned back to the screen. Women were still a mystery to him. “Now this is rad.” He turned the screen so we wouldn’t bend over his shoulder. I looked at the screen.

 

Conner swung his great axe Bruntheg in a whistling arc that belied the mass of the weapon. The Picts reared back in mortal terror as he charged, voicing his battlecry.

 

“What is it?”

 

“an unpublished Conner of Erin story.” Steiner pronounced. “After Derrick Winslow stopped writing them five years ago, there hasn’t been any more.”

 

“Winslow?” she asked.

 

The young man sighed. “The guy wrote some of the grittiest real life fiction stories from the sixties to the mid nineties. Everyone said his work was like he’d stood there and watched it. Conner was one of his lesser known works, and the third series.”

 

“Wait a minute. The Tamara Souvrein series.” I said.

 

“Yup. Ten books.”

 

“Who?” Mendenhall asked.

 

“Another character. I loved those books, I’ve got them all at home. When I was twenty, I would have loved to meet her.”

 

“In more spellings than one.” Steiner earned a glare.

 

“You said three series?” Mendenhall tried to drag the conversation back to the case.

 

“Souvrein was the first. A year and a half after that one started, he started the Mack Coster series about a 1920s detective. Eleven books there. Then Conner. Seven books, eight with this one.” He was talking while looking at the screen. It was scrolling like a demented player piano scroll. “But come to think of it, the characters are Winslow, but he never wrote it.” He held up his hand to forestall any comment, and scrolled down the pages. As he did, he’d stop, and flag something. Finally he reached the end, and keyed back to the first flag.

 

“If it were the Mona Lisa, I’d bet my life it’s a fake. Winslow definitely didn’t write this.”

 

“How do you know?”

 

First the style. Winslow wrote what one critic called the police procedural of fantasy. Everything is taken care of in the same manner, because it’s procedure.”

 

“Like Ed McBain’s 87th Division instead of his other works.” I said.

 

“Exactamundo. There are other clues. Winslow said that Conner had a bann placed on him as a child that he never drink anything but water and beer.” He saw our blank expressions. “In the Celtic religion, a parent can set a bann on a child. It’s like the Ten Commandments, thou shalt not. No one can stop the parent, and the child is bound by it their entire lives. In one story about bickering twin brothers, the bann was that they could not wear their armor unless their mother put in on them. In another, the great Hero Bran was banned from stepping inside a building. If you disobey, the gods get even.”

 

“So Conner had a bann that said all he could drink was beer?”

 

“Yep. But here…” He scrolled down. “The writer has him sipping a mead with friends.”

 

“Maybe the friend bought it.”

 

“No, Conner would know about the Bann, and live by it. To him it would be like drinking a glass of poison because someone asked nice.” He shook his head. “Writer’s evolve over the years, but this is like me deciding Mendenhall’s hair should really be brown instead of red.”

 

He went down, and as he explained them the changes became clear. This wasn’t Winslow’s work.

 

“So Winslow let him-“

 

“No way, Jo-say.” Steiner left the document, and brought up something else. “He was interviewed by a small fan mag, and this is what he said.”

 

‘While I chronicle his life, I have no more right to make Conner our social mores. The fans that protest some of the scenes in the books might as well protest that the sun cannot rise until they wish it. It is beyond my control, and theirs.’

 

Something about that statement made me cold. “So Winslow wouldn’t have asked this Korby to do some work?

 

“Winslow wouldn’t even have let this guy clean the keys of his computer.” Steiner was adamant. “It would like Shakespeare asking a Hollywood hack writer to do it.” We winced at the statement. Korby was a hack in more ways than one. The phone rang, and he caught it up without looking away from the screen. “Computers, Steiner.” He held it up. “For you, Deit.”

 

There are men that have been on the squad since before I started that didn’t dare call me Deit to my face. I think the reason our pictures of crime scenes didn’t get through to him was that it was on a phosphor screen. If it was, what he saw was just data. If it wasn’t on the screen, it didn’t exist.

“Davis.”

 

“We’ve got another one. This one in Central.” He gave me the address.

[machievelli]

V

 

The Central Division is located about four blocks from what is really downtown LA. The bar had slipped down the hill from affluence, and had seen much better days. Probably back when Teddy Roosevelt was in office. I pulled up, and stepped past the caution tape. It was a film noir type of place, the long burrowing tunnel kind of bar where you walked past the people sitting on their stools to the back where there’d be tables.

 

From here there was no sign of carnage. A pair of uniform cops sat across from the bartender, who was going though the entire stock of the place at a prodigious rate. One of them looked up as I flipped my badge folder open in my jacket pocket, and jerked his head toward the back.

A guy in the flannel shirt and bandana of one of the street gangs stood up from where he’d been sitting, and flashed his badge. He didn’t look over eighteen.

 

“Lopez, Narcotics.” He said. I gave our names, and as soon as I said Advanced, he almost hugged us. “They’re back there. Next time I want a drink, I’ll take the bottle home.” We walked back, and stopped at a small stair leading to the seating area. Right below us, two men were draped over each other as if they were the best of friends, and had fallen down drunk together. Only the blood that dripped from the table told us different. at the table farthest from the door, a Hispanic sprawled back as if he’d been flung there, the .32 piece of crap he had carried still in his hand. Just beyond him was one of the antique wooden phone booths with the original rotary dial. The glass was gone from the windows.

 

“As soon as the perp did his number, I called you guys, then the lab.” He shuddered.

Lopez had graduated less than four months before. Since it helps to have faces the perps didn’t know, a lot of the smarter kids got drafted for units like Narcotics. I would have been spotted instantly as a cop. At his age with this get-up, Lopez would appear to be a member of a local gang easily. After a couple of years, they’d rotate him off, and he’d go to uniform service.

 

He’d set up a meet with a Columbian to set a drug buy. While he was wired, it was only to the recorder in his car. No money was going to change hands, no drugs delivered. This was only chumming the water to draw the fish closer. Nervous, ‘Jefe’ the Columbian had set the meet for here.

 

A man had entered right before he got to the door. “Big guy, in a trench coat with a fedora. Blonde hair. His face looked like a thin Lou Ferrigno.” He described. “Not a wimp, but not a muscle man, if you get my drift.” Lopez had entered, and stopped at the bar, ordering a beer. The other man had walked down, and stopped at the table where the two men were sitting.

 

“He asked, ‘Are you Will Parker?’ and the guy on the right said yes.” He motioned at the smaller of two men at the table. “As soon as Parker said yes, the guy in the coat pulled out a pistol, and shot Parker.”

 

That was when all hell had broken loose. Jefe had been nervous, this seemed to set him off. He’d drawn the .32, and pumped out all eight in the magazine. Lopez had been diving for cover, getting his own gun as the shooter stumbled forward, dropping the firearm. He turned, then drew a .45 from his pocket. Lopez had gotten his gun, and could see bullet holes from at least four hits, but only blood from one in the upper right arm. The guy sneered something that sounded like ‘Bad move, Pan-cho.” and shot the Columbian as he was trying to find another magazine.

 

Lopez had shouted police, and the guy spun around. But instead of killing him, the big guy merely ran toward the back of the building, to the phone booth. “Next thing I know, there’s a Bam! Like a small hand grenade going off. The glass blows into the booth. I run back, and it’s empty.”

 

“Anything odd?” He stared at me. That wasn’t enough?

 

“There was a mark on the floor inside it.” He grabbed a napkin, and drew. I looked at it, then handed it to Mendenhall. A series of eight spiral arms, counterclockwise.

 

“Did you hear another bang like it a little earlier, before you walked in?”

 

“As I was parking. Just down the block.” He motioned toward the east. But that could have been a car backfiring.”

 

“Mendenhall?”

 

“I’m on it.” she went back to the uniforms

 

“Lopez, head back to the station. I want a full written report. I also want the tape from your recorder. You’ll get it back after we have it analyzed.” He nodded gratefully. I went to join Mendenhall. She had sent the uniforms to look, and had stopped the bartender’s drinking by forcibly removing the glass from his hand. I’d seen shell shocked men that had that look.

 

His name was Sam Shepherd (“No relation.” It might have been a standard line for him, but it didn’t have any energy) He’d been wiping the bar after drawing the beer when the gunfire had started. He’d turned, and seen the man in the trench coat jump into the phone booth. “He just whipped the coat aside, grabbed a metal box on his belt, and Bam!

 

We looked at each other. This was the first mention of a device. We stepped back away from the bar. “I told the uniforms to check every opening for two block east large enough for a man to hide in for that mark.” she waved toward the back. “I also told them to check cross street and alleys. They-“

 

“Sierra 9, this is 2 Charlie 14.”

 

She grabbed the radio from her belt. “This is Sierra niner, go.”

 

"I found it. Down the alley near the back of the bar. I even found you a witness of sorts.”

 

“Explain.”

 

“I found a souse that says the guy just appeared out of thin air.”

 

“Stay there, I’m on my way.” I nodded, and she left. The ME came in a minute later, followed by the lab boys. I went around the bar, drew a ginger ale, and sipped it as I waited. Mendenhall came in towing the drunk. She sat him at the bar, and came around to me. “Did Sam leave us any whiskey?”

 

“After this day, I’m not surprised.”

 

“No, you dork. For Bertie.” She waved toward the expectant drunk.

 

“He doesn’t look like your type.” She glared at me.

 

“I had to get him to come. I could have offered to buy him dinner, or taken him home. She shivered at the thought. “But rather than scare a maitre’d, or having my cat hate me for the rest of my life, I offered a drink. If he’d gone home with me, I think he’d be as hard to get rid of as the hard water ring on the toilet bowl.” She found a bottle of Jack Danials, set it aside in favor of a bottle of generic, and poured about a hand and a half into a glass. “Man wants a drink, man gets a drink.” she mumbled.

 

I grinned. at her, and followed. She set the glass down, holding it firmly. “All right, Bertie. Tell my partner what you told me in the alley, and you get this.”

 

He looked at her as if that hadn’t been the deal. Then he sighed, and began to talk. He had been in the wooden packing crate he called home, nestled among the paper and rags he had gathered into a nest. He’d panhandled enough for a quart bottle of Mad Dog 20-20, and was just starting to drink it when there had been an explosion in the alley. The blast had shattered the bottle in his hand, slicing up his thumb. But he didn’t flinch at the pain. “I went through worse in Hue.” He snorted.

 

He’d looked out, and there was this scorch mark on the ground, and a guy standing on it. He knew the guy hadn’t come down the ally from either end. The only way in was in plain sight. None of the doors leading into the alley had been used in years except for the bar’s back door. He could see it from the nest. His description matched Lopez. “Old suit, Trench coat, Fedora.”

 

“Old suit?” I asked.

 

“Yeah. Huge wide lapels. Like my granddad.” He pulled out a battered billfold, and pulled out an ancient daguerreotype photograph. A stern faced man stood beside a woman seated in a chair with a baby in her lap. All were wearing what look like something out of the roaring 20s.

 

Then the man had looked down, and asked him where this bar was. Bertie had pointed, and the guy had pulled out the kind of bill wallet you carried in your jacket pocket. He’d peeled out a ten, handed it to the rummy, and walked away. Bertie looked reproachfully at Mendenhall. “She took it.”

 

Mendenhall slid the tumbler across, and I watched in amazement as he drank it down like water. She handed me an evidence bag with the bill, and I stared hard at it. Then I took out my wallet, and handed him a twenty. “We need to get your prints, but after that you’re free to go.”

 

“C’n I have another drink?”

 

I nodded, and we walked over to the bar. While she ran him over another liver-wrecking drink I looked at the bill. Just like the ones you see all day, except for the US GOLD CERTIFICATE across the top. The bill was still crisp. She came back, looking over my shoulder. “Never heard of a gold certificate before.”

 

“Not surprising. They were pulled from circulation in 1932. That was how they were able to break the Lindberg Baby Case.” I tapped the date. “Look at that.”

 

“1922. A collector?”

 

“Not even the best collector has something that looks like it came out of an ATM.” I said. I pulled out my cell phone, and hit the speed-dial number. “This is Davis. Have someone check my Rolodex. Look for the name Dingo, yeah, like the dog. Call him, tell him I need a consultation. Have a uniform go to the address, pick him up and bring him here.” I gave the number.

 

The ME was on the way out, and he gave me the report. Three dead men. Parker shot twice with a small caliber weapon, Jefe shot once with a larger weapon, the other man seemed to have been caught in the crossfire. One slug had hit the wall instead. He went out to get the body bags and gurneys as one of the lab men came up with a gun in a bag.

 

“I wish this wasn’t going through the grinder.” He sighed, setting it down. I picked it up. “Read it and weep. Model 1898 Broomhandle Mauser, with a four number serial number. That gun is worth a fortune, as it sits.”

 

“How much?”

 

“Two, three thousand easy. He tapped the barrel “Look right there.”

 

I did. A double headed eagle was stamped into the steel. “Imperial Germany?”

 

“You got it. That gun was one of the first run out in 1998.” I handed it back. He put it in a box, and held up a pair of bags. Each held two empty shell casings. Two were standard .45s, the others were short bottlenecked cartridges. “Whoever this perp was, he didn’t care about expense. Look at these.”

 

He handed me the .45s first. The cases were stamped FA08. I looked at him “Frankfurt Arsenal, 1908. This is the standard ammo used during the start of World War One. It’s like using a cherry 56 Chevy in a demolition derby.”

“Maybe it’s been reloaded since the Great War.”

He shook his head. “I only see one set of extractor marks. You can tell a reloaded casing with experience.” He handed me the bottlenecked casings. There was a headstamp, but it was something I couldn’t read. “That is Mauser Waffenfabrikwerk. The Mauser ammunition factory. The date is 1916. Military issue.”

 

“Yeah, for the First World War.” I said. He nodded.

 

A small hunched-shouldered man entered the bar, followed by a uniformed officer. I motioned him toward one of the tables and Mendenhall and I joined him. He didn’t look as young as I did, but he was really ten years younger than me. Closer to Mendenhall’s age.

 

“Dingo, this is my new partner, Mendenhall. Mendenhall, this is Frank Cartman. A naturalized citizen born in Australia.”

 

“Hence the nickname.” He said in an accent thick enough to slice.

 

“We have something for you to look at.” Mendenhall brought out the envelope. Dingo stared, and he took it to hold closer to his eyes.

 

“Can I see it out of the bag?” We borrowed a set of gloves from the Lab boys, and he slipped them on, then reverently pulled the bill back out. A loupe came out of a pocket, and he leaned forward, not even an inch away from it. “Classic work.” he sighed. “A piece of history.”

 

“Authentic?”

 

“Oh yes.” He whispered. He handed it back regretfully.

 

“How much is it worth?”

 

“In mint condition like this? About five hundred dollars.” He looked at the bill in my hand. I slipped it back in the envelope, and looked at Mendenhall. She was a grim as I. The last of the lab boys were leaving, and we silently went back to the scene. It’s cleaner somehow without the bodies. You stand there, blood splattered all to hell and gone, yet it’s just paint in your minds. Only the chalk and tape outlines remain of three people. I wondered if I was starting to lose it.

 

On the edge of the table where Parker had died were several items bagged neatly. A couple of three and a half inch floppy disks, a burned CD, and a thick blue-backed paper bundle. We picked them up, and carried them to the car.

 

I closed the door, and leaned my head on the wheel. “Are you all right, Davis?”

 

“Call me Deit.” I leaned back. “Do you like Italian?”

 

“As long as it’s not Italian men.”

 

“Well about half way to the station is a restaurant. They make a lasagna worth dating an Italian man. I’m buying.”

 

VI

 

I called Steiner from the restaurant, and had a patrol car stop to pick up the evidence. Steiner was used to weird requests, but I figured this was probably one of the oddest he’d ever heard.

 

Mendenhall was greeted by a husky Italian man who ushered us to a table. I introduced her, and his big ugly face broke into a grin. “Be right back.” A bottle of Chianti arrived, with a smaller bottle of Sangria, which was more my taste. A small antipasto salad ‘Don’t want to fill you up yet.” A hefty woman said delivering it.

 

Then the lasagna. If I die, and believed in reincarnation, I’d ask to come back as an Italian for that taste.

 

We both ate too much, and had enough wine to relax. Technically we were still on the clock, but Mendenhall had decided to follow my lead. As I waved away the cheese and wine tray, the big guy came back, sliding a chair over to watch me. “How’s it going, Deit.”

 

“The usual.”

 

“So they gave you another partner.” He looked her up and down, and whistled softly. “At least she’s easy on the eyes.”

 

“Be nice, Bon. She’s been a big help since she came on this morning.”

 

“She had better be, or she’s out.” He said with finality. He stuck out his hand. “I’m Leo Bonducci. I partnered with this guy for about seven months.”

 

She took it, and he shook her hand with the gentle manner that so belied his bad guy exterior. He waved the cheese and wine back, poured for himself, and snapped up a wedge of cheddar. “They finally break the Dohenny case?”

 

“Yeah. We were right.”

 

“I thought so.” He bit off the cheese, taking a sip if Chianti.

 

“Is it any better outside?”

 

“You kidding me?” He laughed. “All I have to look forward to is some idiot trying to rob me.”

 

I filled him in, and his look to Mendenhall was appreciative. “So you got a clue who did it?”

 

“If I said it out loud, it would be in the papers tomorrow.”

 

“I get that.” He looked toward the cash register. “Hey! Sally! This guy, he don’t pay in my place!” The man that was at the register, who outweighed Bon 2-1 just nodded, and ripped up the check.

 

“That’s not right!” Mendenhall protested. “The food was wonderful!”

 

“I owe him my life.” Bon said. “I promised him in the hospital that I’d buy his dinner a hundred times for what he did for me.” He stood up, bowed, and left.

 

“And he still owes me 97.” I said as we walked out. “He’s doing as well as we’d hoped. The location is good, but if he sees someone from the squad, he won’t let us pay.” I opened the door for her, and climbed in. “So I make sure to come by when I know he’s not going to be here. After the sun goes down. Luisa, his wife, doesn’t tell him. You saw her, the big woman.”

 

“What, did you face a vampire?”

 

“No. He’s one of the functional ones I told you about. It’s just if there are strong shadows, he gets, well, shaky.”

 

“How long was he in the hospital?”

 

“He wasn’t I was.”

 

We got to the station, and I dropped off the plate Bon had made up for the Captain. He growled at that. Holoburton was watching his figure, and lasagna was a major food group in his mind. Pity was, it was something he wasn’t supposed to eat. I did like I used to do with a half feral kitten I had raised. I set the food down, stepped back smartly, and ran like hell as he fell on it like a starved man.

 

I dropped off the papers and disks, and we called it a night.

 

VII

 

The files were already on my desk when I arrived the next morning. Four of them, one about a quarter of an inch thick, the others probably just a couple pages. I picked up the big one. WINSLOW, DERRICK E.

 

Derrick Evan Winslow, born Riverside Iowa, 1925. That made him just over 75 years old. Graduated Tulane University in 1947. A wunderkind, he had gone through the Bachelor, and Masters program in less than four years, and had a master’s degree in electronics engineering. Served as a naval officer during Korea. His designs led to the modern AWACS and electronic surveillance aircraft now is use.

 

Left the service in 1953. Within a year he had four patents for electrical switching and telephone operations. He was a basement inventor.

 

A gap in 1954. There was a police report dated August of that year that a neighbor had heard an explosion. The house was open, and had been searched thoroughly. except for a mark on the floor of the basement, there was no sign of him.

 

Reappeared in January 1955. Claimed to have been on a business trip. Sold off the patents to ConEd and ATT for an estimated half a million dollars. Began to write.

 

Sold his first book, Hells Gate, in 1956. The first of the Tamara Souvrein series. Three years and two Souvrein books later, he published Mack Coster’s first book. Both series sold well, and are reprinted.

 

Turned down an offer to do a Mack Coster movie in 1970.

 

1975, he sells the first Conner of Erin book. At the time, an offer is made for a Tamara Souvrein movie. He turned them down. The deal had started to fall through when he told the studio that the sets they had drawn wouldn’t do. It was killed when he punched the Director, screaming that he wouldn’t let the ‘English hack’ change the script to include a love interest that didn’t exist. This was the first odd note. According to the witnesses, he had shouted that he didn’t approve, and neither would Tamara.

 

The squabbling ended when the sound stage exploded, cause unknown. The Squad had investigated at that time, but had no substantative clues. The studio was at a rocky patch, and couldn’t afford to start all over. Winslow gave them their advance back without being asked. They dropped it. Turned down a later offer of an estimated 10 figures for a Conner movie. Said special effects weren’t good enough yet to do the character justice.

 

Sold 22 books in all. Ten Souvrein, Seven Coster, and five Conner. Stopped writing in 1995 due to ill health.

 

A publishing house named Taser had signed him in 1988. They reprinted the older works under their logo in paperback, and bought the last of each series. In all they had 32 titles to their credit. All but ten were Winslow’s. They had legal difficulties, and in 1998, they had approached Winslow for more material. He had pleaded health reasons, and they had instead tried to get him to allow other writers to do the works under his name. He refused.

 

Second odd note. At the same time, he did an interview with a small on line fan magazine. He spoke of the proposal, saying ‘I’m not sure I can go back again’.

 

Suddenly Winslow was committed in late 2000. The asylum in Middleton Pennsylvania getting their checks from Taser. Taser announced that this year they would be releasing new books in all three series with ‘the touch of the master’.

 

I closed the file, nodded my thanks to Mendenhall for the huge Starbuck’s coffee, and flipped to the next file. Mort had left a note in those chicken scratches he calls hand writing. ‘Most of these are based on the Fanzines that cover them. I have left out conjectures by fans, such as whether Souvrein is a bull dyke, and whether Conner gets any. Everything else is taken from comments Winslow made during interviews. Same sources.’

 

They were in alphabetical order, so I read them that way.

 

Conner. Date of birth not known. The Julian calendar was in use, but not here. First mention is at the age of about 19 in the book ‘The Eagle Fall’ when he washed ashore in what is now Wales. From mentions of the Christians (As a small oddball sect), Roman uniforms, and customs, this has been tentatively placed around the 1st century AD.

 

Spent his life traveling through all of the minor nations of the British Isles, what is now France and Germany, and as far to the east as the Black Sea. Spent time, from comments and inference in Spain and Scandinavia. Last mention was in ‘The Long Voyage’ where he captured a Viking longship in Denmark. His last words state that he pointed west and says, ‘I shall now go beyond the great sea, there to find other men and creatures to defeat’.

 

I handed that across and opened the next.

 

Maximillian Andrew Coster. Born 1884 in New Brunswick Connecticut. Joined USMC in 1898. Lied about his age, since that made him fourteen years old. Served in China at the Peking Legation. In Peking during the Boxer rebellion. During the fighting, he strangled Count Seigfried Von Waffenbruck who he caught raping a Chinese girl. I looked at the date. Barely sixteen. Big for his age. Of course, if you were built like a brick wall back then, they didn’t ask your age. The Count’s death was later attributed to enemy action.

 

Von Waffenbruck had been given a commemoration piece, an 1898 broomhandle Mauser, which Coster kept.

 

Returned to the States in 1902. Transferred to Atlantic Fleet Marines. Served until 1916, when he left the service to get married. At that time he had 22 years of service. Wife died of typhoid, and he rejoined the Marines in 1917.

 

First mention, ‘Unfinished Business’. Coster, who spoke German, had been sent behind enemy lines right before the battle at Belleau Wood. Stunned by an artillery shell. Captured. Meets Manfred Von Waffenbruck, son of Seigfried. When he sees the Mauser, he accuses Coster of murder, Coster admits it, states that ‘the dog deserved a worse death’. The Count allows him to escape, then claims that Coster is an admitted spy. Has him hunted from the German headquarters to the front lines. Coster turns on his pursuers, and kills a dozen of them including Manfred. Escapes, and his information led to the battle.

 

Left the service again in 1919. Became a policeman in New York. Left the department when his partner is killed by the newly emergent mobs. Became a private detective. At that time, he had an arsenal at home of weapons he’d picked up during the war and after it. Pride of the collection was the BAR he carried at Belleau Wood. Carried two pistols on him. A .45 he had smuggled back after the war, and the Mauser. After a failed gangland attempt on his life, he took to wearing a bullet proof vest. Last mention ‘The Mint’, set in 1922. A gang intended to run off fifty or sixty sheets of 1,000 dollar Gold Certificates because the Government was going to stop issuing them.

Mendenhall was reading Conner’s. I handed this over, and went to the last one.

 

Tamara Souvrein, born simply Tamara at the Terran Colony on a planet called Blackspeare. An orphan, she had been raised in a crèche. Transferred within the State operated system to a military Academy, their equivilant of West Point or Annapolis. Chose the last name because of the policy of the Academy. Originally to be trained as a Marine, she had proven to have a flair for spatial geometry, and was instead trained in Astrogation. Joined the Vulteran Imperial Navy at age 16. First commanded a vessel in ‘Souvrein, Genesis’. The fifth book, which chronologically covered her life before ‘Hell’s Gate’. Mort had put a note here ‘hey, read this forward from S G; It’s the original forward of the book published only after his retirement. It’s attached to the end of the file.’

 

First mention, Battle of Hell’s Gate chronicled in the book of the same name. Compared by critics to Admiral Nelson, Horatio Hornblower, and more recently, to Honor Harrington and Esmay Suiza. At that time she had the rank of Commander, and was Captain of HMS Shrike, a light cruiser almost a century old. The last book ‘War Diary’ had her as a rear admiral in command of a 7th fleet taskforce in a battle that spanned four star systems. I picked up the forward.

 

Captain Lady Tamara Souvrein stood, walking to the clear plassteel port. Beyond It is the darkness of space blinked the friendly lights of the orbital yards of Peasiral. She sighed. “I don’t know, Doc. That really isn’t the favorite part of my life”

 

“I know.”

 

She waved off my comment with the abrupt manner she always affected when she dealt with the distasteful.” Now I am wishing that I never agreed to the first book. Now there are what, four?”

 

‘“Yes, My lady.”

 

She grinned at my use of the honorific. ‘ Well anything that convinces you to use proper respect to your betters can’t be all bad.”

 

“The curse of living in an egalitarian society.”

 

“And you have always been so patient with such a firm Monarchist.” She nodded sharply. “Very well. But all of it comes to me to be vetted first.”

“Doesn’t it always?” I asked.

 

On the next page was another of Mort’s notes. ‘You think that’s crazy, read this!’

 

Sergeant Major Kuykendal stood the man in front of the desk. Commander Souvrein sat back, looking him over. If his planet of origin was anything like Old Earth, he would have been in his late 20s, early thirties. Sandy brown hair fell into his eyes, and in front of them was a wire and glass arrangement she recognized from the old books. Spectacles? Glasses?

 

He was dressed in a two piece ensemble with buttons up the front of the shirt, and a slick brown leather belt holding up the pants. It looked to be made of natural fabrics. Hideously expensive.

 

“Report Sergeant Major.”

 

“We found him in Engineering, level three near the recycling center, Ma’am.” The Westphalian reported. “A couple of engineering techs heard a small explosion. They thought a four inch line had blown.

 

“He was just standing there, looking at the control panel, muttering. They took him into custody, and brought him to me. He didn’t have an ID disc. All he had was this.” The Sergeant set a flat laminated card on the desk.

She lifted it, and looked. Yes, the picture matched. But that was all that made sense. “United States Navy. Whatever is that?”

 

“The Navy of the most powerful nation on my world.” The man answered.

 

“Oh, and how many ships of the line do they have? United States. What world is it part of?”

 

“Earth.”

 

She laughed, flicking the card across the desk. “No one even knows where Earth is any more. No one has for almost a millennia.”

 

He looked around. “Where am I?”

 

“Aboard HMS Shrike.” She replied. “Patrolling the Hell’s Gate system.”

Below that Mort had made another note. ‘This was from the Galley proofs. It didn’t end up in the books until the Taser reprint. Winslow never resolved what happened to this mysterious guy, and the editors of the original cut it out.’

 

Below that was a picture taken from Winslow’s Navy service record. The picture looked like the description from the book.

 

I silently handed this one to Mendenhall. I kept adding 2+2 and getting Pi. I lifted the phone and called Steiner.

 

“Hey man, this is, like so choice!”

“Let me take a wild guess. Another Winslow book. This one about Mack Coster.”

 

“Got in one.” He moved something around. “The other guy was Palmer’s agent. He had a contract for this book, with an option on three more of the same genre. He also had a check for 5,000 dollars. The blue back paper was the contract.”

 

“all right, check the Taser database. See if they’ve hired a writer for the Souvrein series.”

 

“Already did. Matthew Pollota. Based in Hollywood. Oh, yeah, check your fax. I found something interesting in the Bay area.”

 

“Mendenhall.” I pointed at the fax machine, and called the Hollywood Division. A pair of uniforms were being pulled off patrol as Mendenhall stood beside me, reading the fax. She handed it to me.

 

Daniel Winslow, grand nephew of Derrick Winslow had called the police because some woman had broken into his house, and threatened his life ten days earlier. The description we had in front of us included ‘wearing a costume believed based on the uniform of fictional character Tamara Souvrein’.

 

If it had been down here, we would have already seen it. But San Francisco didn’t have a deal with LA. They were too busy thinking crimes we handled were ‘aberrations’, so nothing had been given to the Squad. They detailed a car to pass by every hour or so, and pretty much forgot it.

 

Two days later, some form of unknown combustion had reduced young Winslow’s house to an empty devastated lot. There was mention of two file names, and Mendenhall had the first up before I even looked. A supermarket tabloid had been first on the scene, and the story screamed at us.

 

ALIENS KILL SAN FRANCISCO MAN.

 

South San Francisco California

 

The home of Daniel Winslow, only surviving relative of Derrick Winslow was destroyed by what a witness believed to be an alien death ray. The witness who refused to be identified, reported that the weapon was carried by a man in what appeared to be a futuristic combat armor, and was shaped like the larger hand weapons used in the movie Star Wars. Killed in the house were Winslow, and two unnamed men.

 

The story went on to catalog a group of people that had disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances. Oddly enough, While Elvis was among them, he wasn’t first.

 

Judge Crater was.

 

There were three pictures, a vacant lot with carbonized wood still sticking up from the glass, an Imperial Storm trooper from the first movie carrying what looked to be a Lewis gun, and a picture of, you guessed it, Elvis.

 

The second was the onsite police report. The police had spoken to all of the witnesses, making a snide comment in the report that the ‘witness that refused to be identified had been a ten year old playing in the street. All anyone else had seen was a flash of light. The kid had seen a man in a ‘rad body armor suit like the television show Roughnecks. He had appeared in mid air with a bam, landed using rockets on his back, and unlimbered a weapon that looked like a thick tube with a grip and butt stock. He had fired a pulse of light that expanded, covering the house. He was too busy watching the house fade away to see where the man had gone. The police had discounted all of his testimony.

 

I picked up the phone, and called San Francisco. After proving my bonefides, I spoke with Detective Inspector Sharps.

 

The original police report had been more detailed, but was only in hardcopy. Winslow had called the police to report a break in and threat. He had come home from a business trip, and found a woman in odd clothes waiting for him. She had introduced herself as Tamara Souvrein, and had demanded to know where Derrick Winslow was. Thinking her merely an overzealous fan, he had told her that his granduncle had been committed. He also, at that time, stated that as the sole surviving relative, he intended to sell as many books of the three series as the public would buy.

 

The woman had then told him that neither she nor the others wanted that. That they refused to be chronicled by ‘blind hacks’. Any attempt to publish would be dealt with severely.

 

He promised to send down the files, and Mendenhall was reading the case file as I scanned the lab report. The weapon was a complete mystery, according to forensics and the Fire Marshal. The bulk of the two story building had been reduced to ash. The wood that still stood in the picture had powdered at the touch. The estimated heat necessary to cause this was 6,000 degrees.

But even with that burst of heat, there were clues that it wasn’t natural. While the rosebushes that had brushed the front of the house had been destroyed, a rental car parked a foot from the house hadn’t even been singed. It seemed that proximity was necessary. The gas line that came into the house had melted, sealing it. The houses on either side hadn’t been affected.

 

I sat back, considering. If the military had heard of it, they would have been frantic to grab this. A weapon that can be set to destroy one structure, leaving everything around it untouched. Christ on a crutch.

 

Mendenhall was staring at me. “What is happening?”

 

I thought I might be able to find out, but didn’t say. “Come on.

[machievelli]

VIII

 

I braced the captain with my request. He didn’t want to spring for two flights to New York, but I have a good track record. We were on the 10 am flight to New York. The flight started out smoothly, but we got bad news enroute.

 

Pollota had been leaving for work. He was escorted by two uniforms from Hollywood Division in a patrol car. They had just jumped on the 101 when a shape described as man-sized appeared above them, and landed on the freeway, causing a traffic pile-up. The figure had aimed a weapon, and the patrol car’s engine had suddenly died when a bolt of energy hit it. The car was coasting to a stop as the figure, as if it was on a shooting range, adjusted something, and aimed again. Pollota’s car had been hit by the second bolt. All that remained of the car were four scorch marks where the tires had touched the pavement. The police had opened fire, but had no more affect than rain on a tank. Then with a loud bam, it was gone. There were almost a hundred witnesses.

We also found out that the two men known to be with Winslow had rented a car at SFO. Max Winters, and Robert Carens, editor and accountant respectively for Taser Publications.

 

New York was cold. There was two feet of snow on the ground. Luckily the NYPD patrol car had chains. They dropped us off at Taser Publications, and went back on patrol. I had called in advance, so the Managing Editor was waiting.

 

Matt Lanz was a grease ball. He would have taken an hour going over the company’s outlook, ‘vision of the future’ and titles if I hadn’t dropped seven murders on his desk. He didn’t seem overly bothered by them.

 

“It’s a pity really, but there are more aspiring writers out there. It will slow what we’re doing, not stop it.”

 

Mendenhall looked at me. I wanted to drag him across the country so he could look at the bodies. “What about Daniel Winslow? What were your people doing there when he was murdered?”

 

“He was Derrick Winslow’s next of kin. We were finalizing the requirements for Derrick medical care. Paid for, mind you, by the sale of these books.”

 

“Why don’t you lay it out for us.” I snapped. “Tell us how you can steal a man’s life work because you want to make money.”

 

“I see no reason to endure accusations-“

 

“It’s what you did, and we both know it.” I stood, and leaned on the desk. “I’m not a New York cop or a Fed. Unless I can prove you committed a crime in California, there’s nothing I can charge you with. I haven’t tried to read you your rights, so nothing you say to me can be used in court.” I snatched up the receiver of his phone and bounced it off his fat stomach. “Call your own legal department if you don’t believe me.”

 

It took a few minutes. The Honorable (His word not mine) Thomas Phelps admitted that my statement was the truth, then immediately told his client to stand mute.

 

“Bad idea.” I leaned forward. “Listen, Phelps. I think all your client is going to do is give me some information that will help me break this case before more people die. But you tell him to be silent. To a cop handling seven murders, that tells me that maybe he’s part of it. Shut Up!” He had started to rise, and sank back in shock when I yelled at him.

 

Mendenhall played the good cop to perfection. “What will happen is the state of California will file to have a warrant served on your client to be held as a material witness in the events leading to seven murders in California. We have sufficient probable cause to charge him, and other members of the staff here with complicity, misprision of a felony, Accessory before the fact, and murder for gain. We have sufficient evidence of these charges to at least have him transported to California to answer them.”

 

“Impossible.”

 

“Are you sure?” I asked in a quiet tone. I’ve been told my quiet level tone is more threatening than shouting. He tried to outstare me, but after ten years on the squad, it would have taken Medusa.

 

“And think of the New York press.” Mendenhall printed the headline in the air with her hand. “Editor arrested for complicity in murder.”

 

“We’ll sue!” Phelps was trying, but Mendenhall had spent too much time around me already.

 

“Of course, you might even win, and they print the retraction, where is it with the LA Times? Where they put retractions of page one stories?”

 

“Page 14 of the first section, to the right below the fold. One column inch.” I extemporized. “But your submissions fall off, people decide not to buy books from possible murderers. Of course, it could happen the other way, but are you willing to bet on it?”

 

Lanz was trying to scream and whisper at the same time. Phelps seemed to be holding out for silence, but Lanz wasn’t buying. Finally the lawyer turned back to us. “Very well, this is being done without my client being given his rights. As such, nothing that is said in this room can be used in a court of law. On the personal level, if you say anything which reaches print, I will personally file a suit against your department and both of you that will buy Manhattan Island as it stands right now.”

 

I nodded.

 

Lanz began. They had been moving upward in prestige pretty well until two years earlier. At that time, an aspiring young writer had sent in an unsolicited manuscript. They had returned it, rejected. Six months later, they had published the book under another name. He had sued. “He was unknown. No one would have bought on the name alone.”

 

“No one knew John Updike before he sold.” I retorted.

 

They had done what they could to disguise it, but the kid had aces in the deck. The first was that he was prelaw at NYU. The firm’s lawyer, Phelps, not surprisingly, had decided to try to settle out of court. The young man had come in wearing his best clothes, which for an honest kid from Harlem, wasn’t that fancy. Under his arm, were the rest of those aces.

 

He might as well have brought a bomb.

 

He had used what is called the poor man’s copyright, taking a copy of his manuscript and having the envelope notarized. He would have been able to prove quite easily, that the notary had sealed the envelope almost a year before the publication date.

But the death knell for the Taser case came from the fact that the boy absolutely loved Tom Clancy’s books. He had loved the young Jack Ryan’s method of catching people who had released classified information. So he had created several scenes that were so compelling, that they had to be used.

 

Every one of them had been in the Taser printing.

 

They had fallen all over themselves to settle. If it had gone public, they would have been ruined. They paid him three times what even a best selling author would have made, and a percentage of the net which stung. The settlement was enough for the boy to move his family to Arizona, and into a 1.5 million dollar house. The young man had been handed a contract for his next work from another publisher, and it had already hit the shelves.

 

However the settlement had been a gut shot to Taser. They had a couple of books in the works, but nothing that was a guaranteed money maker.

 

Then the late Max Winters had suggested the fallow series belonging to Derrick Winslow. If they churned out one or two of each, it would cover the losses.

 

“But he wouldn’t play.” Lanz bemoaned. The last time I had heard that tone, it had been on a tape of a Drug kingpin complaining about the competitor he had killed. “He said his heart couldn’t stand the strain, and didn’t want to take the trips that were needed to complete them. We offered to have someone else make the trips for him, he laughed.” Lanz shrugged. “Said they wouldn’t get anything. It had to be him.

 

“We offered instead just to use his byline, pay him as if he wrote them. But he said that wasn’t his right.”

 

Then Daniel Winslow had gotten into it. He had tried first in 1974 to grab control of Derrick’s finances when his Grand-uncle had been rushed to the emergency room. The old man had been missing for eight months. Daniel had flown in for a deathwatch, but Derrick had been tough. He had walked out of the hospital on his own two feet.

 

“Where was he living then?”

 

“Still in Iowa.” Daniel had talked to his grand uncle after his return from New York, then called the publishers. For a fee, he would set the old man up. He arranged more meetings, and assured that two of them men at those meetings were psychologists. All they needed to hear was the author talking as if his characters were real people, and the trap sprang.

 

Derrick Winslow had been committed to the hospital, the court allowed Daniel to assume power of attorney, the publishers had slapped a contract for the rights they wanted in front of the man, and Daniel had signed them. In return, he received an annuity of 60,000 per year, and the medical expenses.

 

“Winslow ignored so many opportunities.” Lanz said sadly. “His characters could have changed with the times, been just as fresh as the 1990s, and the new millennium. There could have been a dozen movies with all three of them figured together. Merchandise, the works. Well now we can do it.”

 

Phelps pointed out that everything the company did was perfectly legal. They hadn’t committed the old man. They had merely bought the rights to the characters after the fact.

 

“Now if you’re quite done, we have to talk to a studio. They’re wrapping production on the Souvrein movie.”

 

“What!” I snapped erect. I leaned across, and gabbed Lanz’s phone. “Do I dial for an outside line?”

 

“I didn’t-“

 

I reached across, snatched him up out of the chair. “Do I dial for an outside line!”

 

“No!” I threw him back, dialing. Phelps wanted to protest when I didn’t dial collect, but stepped back from me.

 

I got the Captain, and sent the warning. As soon as he was done, I hung up.

 

“We will file suit for assault, officer!” Phelps shouted.

 

I took out one of my cards. “When you do, tell the judge I was too busy trying to save lives, and had gotten tired of your bull.” I flicked the card onto the desk, and left.

 

IX

 

I used one of the police call boxes, and had the car that came drop us at a rental agency. Mendenhall liked to go skiing, so I let her drive. “It doesn’t make sense.” she said again, this time as we crossed the Pennsylvania border. “I know Winslow would be angry, maybe even want revenge, but he’s an old man!”

 

“He couldn’t.” I agreed. “But you’re not getting the point. He isn’t doing it, his friends are.”

 

As night fell, she took the Middletown exit. “Who?”

 

“Remember Sherlock Holmes. Take the evidence, remove every suggestion that doesn’t fit. What you have left, no matter how bizarre, is the answer.” She was silent as we made the turn. The sanitarium was back in a wooded area about five miles out of town along a county road. We had just made the turn when something shot by us at less than a hundred feet altitude.

 

Mendenhall was busy trying to control the skid, so I watched the shape as it rocketed down the road. “Some kind of huge plane, low and fast.”

 

She punched the gas. There was a blinding flash ahead. Only the fact that there was a hill between us and the target saved our eyes. As we breasted the hill we could see the building. Something twice the size of a jumbo jet just hung there in the air, as if they had repealed the laws of gravity. I wish to this day I had a camera. Mort later said my drawing looked like the X-30 space plane Boeing was supposed to build. A huge rounded flat wedge. Only about twice as big.

 

It turned in space, the nose now aiming back down the road, and Mendenhall instinctively slammed the brakes. We had barely skidded when the pressure wave of something that big moving at just under mach one slapped the car down into the tarmac. The shocks bounced us frantically, then settled. She shook her head, looked at me to make sure I was all right, then raced the rest of the distance.

 

I hate to say it, but it sounded like a madhouse inside. No one in the place was on a heavy enough drug regimen to ignore what had just happened. Nurses and orderlies were running around frantically as was every patient. I snagged a guy in a lab coat, blocking the instinctive punch he threw. “Were is Winslow’s room?” His eyes rolled, and I shook him until he was looking at me. “Winslow’s room!”

 

He rattled off directions, and as soon as he was done, I shoved him aside. We went down the hall like broken field runners, dodging the frantic people, only the clothing identifying which were staff. I came up to Winslow’s door, and kicked it.

 

A circle of the outer wall ten feet across was gone. Not knocked down, not shattered, just gone. Beyond it you could see the forest. A man in doctor’s whites lay on the floor. His head had been twisted off like a bottle cap, and thrown into a corner. We drew our side arms and split up around the bed. I was feeling like cavemen armed with a club chasing an 18 foot tall cave bear.

 

“Deit.” Mendenhall pointed at something on her side. There was no danger on my side so I went to check. A wire framework sat there beside the electrical plug. I could see no circuitry. Hell, it was a block of wood with what looked like a coat hanger bent in a curlicue, and smaller wires running around it in a bewildering pattern. A section of electrical cord had been twisted onto the construct, and run into the wall. It hummed slightly, pulsing like a heartbeat.

 

I carefully unplugged it, wrapping it in a sheet. “Deit.” Mendenhall had walked to the opening, and was standing on the lawn. I came over, and looked at the footprint.

The print was 20 inches long and six wide, square at the front and back . Whatever had left it had been heavy, the weight had left a depression an inch in depth in the frozen ground. I picked up the construct, and took it outside.

 

Watching an investigation is not the same as being part of it. Procedures are pretty much the same worldwide, and knowing what is happening helps. We watched as the Middletown police lab unit worked, and the Pennsylvania State police handled traffic. The Pennsylvania Special Investigation department was in charge.

 

The corpse was Doctor Manharadaban, an Indian immigrant that had started at the sanitarium only a year earlier. He was the only one killed. Half a dozen of the patients had bolted, and the locals had automatically assumed that Winslow was among them. They were already saying that Winslow had killed the doctor. Even the M.E. saying that you would have needed to attach his head to a lathe head to do the damage did nothing to dissuade them.

 

They discounted our testimony as well. We were cops, but we weren’t Pennsylvania cops. Besides, who would believe that something that must have weighed almost a thousand tons could have flown in and out without alerting any radar defenses?

 

About eight hours later, we left. in the back seat sat the construct. We had driven almost all the way to the airport before Mendenhall spoke. “You know who’s doing this.” It wasn’t a question.

 

I nodded. “I have enough for me, for the Captain, for you. But no DA would accept it. All we can do from this point on is hope we can stop them.” Her phone rang, and she flipped it open. After a moment, she handed it to me.

 

We were too late. The report was faxed to the Police substation at the airport. It began half an hour before my call to the squad. The survivors were still being calmed down when the Captain called the Hollywood Division.

 

The movie, ‘Death of Honor’ had been wrapping up the physical part of the shoot. Loosely based on the third Souvrein book, it chronicled the week long convoy battle at Selebri. Fifty people were on the set for the last shots counting crew and actors. Only half of them had gotten out alive.

 

The last shot was of the bridge, and according to the witnesses, and the camera evidence, both film and tape, three people had appeared out of nowhere. After that it became confusing. The witness that had the good sense to run like hell obviously didn’t fill in the picture much. Those that were more helpful were lucky to be alive at all. The doors were jammed from the inside, and the people outside waited about ten minutes until the SWAT team had arrived and formed up. They stormed the building, finding only the dead, and the sets destroyed.

 

X

 

The film and tape was more informative. The clapper had struck the scene, and stepped away. nine actors were at their marks. There were four cameras aimed at the set. They had actually done a revamp on an older set from another movie. There was a bang, clear on the sound, and a woman in a black uniform was just there, directly in the center of camera one’s shot. Her hand came up with some kind of weapon, and camera one along with the operator, was scrap.

 

In front of Camera two, a huge man with stringy hair had appeared with the woman in the background. He bellowed, the great axe in his hand swinging, and camera was able to record only the pulse of light that spat out before it was also destroyed.

 

Camera three recorded the same scene, but there was a shot, and the camera spun as the cameraman fell. It aimed down, and a thin whippet of a man walked up to it. He flipped the .45 in his hand in reverse, and smashed the lens with the butt. So much for camera three.

 

Camera 4 lasted the longest, because it was on a boom, and the operator, a very brave man, was able to record the carnage in greater detail. From his position, we could see the cameramen on units two and three running like hell.

 

The big guy ran toward the fire door, and smashed the locking bars. The gunman went the other way. there were pleas for mercy, followed by blood curdling screams, and shots. Half a dozen had been axed, about the same dead from gunshots.

 

The woman blasted the director out of his chair, and turned toward the set, and the stunned actors. She made an adjustment on the weapon, muttering something. “Stop it.” I ordered. Run it back and enhance the sound.” Mort nodded, tapping at his key board. The tape ran backward, then stopped. I had my first good look at her profile. A strong face. Then it moved forward again.

 

The voice was a low alto, and a trifle petulant. “It’s not even close.” Then she fired. Instead of a bolt, a sheet of plasma shot out. The people fell, cut neatly in half, and the set fell on them. We had read the report before we came in. ‘The bodies on the main set, and the set itself were cut neatly. The cuts were perfectly clean, with no residue of metal or energy, as if they had been divided all along, and fell apart naturally.’ There was screaming from beneath the wreckage. None of them had survived the traumatic injuries, but they lived for a while. She looked up, and saw the last camera. She tossed an arrogant salute at the lens, then raised her weapon.

The cameraman dived free just before the camera simply vanished. He was the only survivor still in the building when the SWAT team kicked the door. His first interview was frantic. Our people interviewed him later, and got a more coherent story. He had hit the ground, and lay there barely conscious as everyone else died. After a time, the three people had returned to the main set. The woman had admonished the others to stand in the right places, then there was a loud bang, and they were gone.

 

Wait, why stand- “Mendenhall, do you remember any mention of the whirlwind marks?”

“There weren’t any. Maybe-“ Mort froze, then began typing fast. “Sergeant! Pull the main plug!”

 

“What?”

 

“Someone’s hacked into the system, and is downloading!”

 

I grabbed the power strips from the wall, and every computer in the room died. We were a frozen tableau for a moment, Mort staring at his monitor as if it were an unfaithful lover.

 

“Who?” I asked.

 

“I don’t know! If it were ten minutes ago, I’d have told you that no one could have. Hell, NSA tried last week and got booted out.” He shook his head. “I’m going to have to redesign the entire security package.”

 

I stared at the system. Mort had promised us a system that no one could hack into. If the National Security Agency, armed with Cray supercomputers couldn’t do it, who could? I asked him that question.

 

“Someone with a much better computer, better than I will ever be.” He replied.

 

“Someone like Tamara Souvrein?”

 

He snorted. “It wouldn’t be her. She has a man that’s a computer genius.” He snapped his fingers. “Monahan, Morgan-“

 

“Mondraschat?”

 

“Right, Emil Mondraschat.” Mort looked at the computer mournfully. “I’ll be down for about a week, I think.”

 

“I’ll tell the Captain.” Mendenhall said.

 

I walked through the squad room, and entered the office. Captain Holoburton looked at me. “Who hacked our computers?”

 

I told them what I had worked out, then what we had to do about it. Neither the Captain nor Mendenhall were happy about my suggestion. The Captain because the only way to bring them out was to use myself as bait. Mendenhall hated it because we only needed one bait.

 

Me.

 

First I had to stop at a books store, but an hour later I went home. I spent some time looking over the apartment. Not much to show for my life. I warmed up the computer, then opened the bag. I had bought copies of books from the two series I hadn’t read, and intended to sit, reading them. But we didn’t have the time. I decided to concentrate of Tamara Souvrein.

 

I used Winslow’s flat crisp style as I wrote. Don’t get flowery, don’t have a lot of introspection. Just tell it as if you are seeing it.

 

Souvrein stood at the clear plas-steel port. Behind her, the two men she had gone to such lengths to bring here watched her. She had told them what had happened.

 

“We must stop this.” she said finally.

 

“I know that.” Coster replied. “But there isn’t a whole lot we can do from here.”

 

“Yes, the Bard needs our help. But I would be noticed.”

 

“Yes.” Souvrein turned to face them, and her face was lit by one of her rare smiles. “As would I. But Mack can walk there. Being out of date only what, eighty years?”

 

“Yeah. And I don’t look my age.”

 

“Very well. Here is what you must do first, Mister Coster…”

 

I kept at it, laying out what had probably happened in sequence. I may only use two fingers when I type, but I’m fast. After a few hours, I plugged in Winslow’s signaling device, and went back at it.

 

The next time I looked up, it was almost midnight. The page counter read fifteen pages.

 

I picked up the phone, and called Mendenhall. “Sorry to wake you.”

 

“You didn’t wake me.” She was on her brick, I could tell from the noise. “How is it going?”

 

“Not too bad. I’ve gotten to the second murder. I was going to stop and go down to the deli.”

 

“Be careful, Deit.”

 

“In my line of work?” I joked. I looked at the page, then added another. See how you like that, eh?

 

It wasn’t that far to the deli. Back when I was first in uniform, I had chosen the apartment because the deli was open 24-7. When I was in the mood for something, I don’t want to have to drive.

 

Mister Begin behind the sandwich counter nodded to me, eyes wide as I ordered about five times what I usually do. He began making the order as I went back to the cooler. I settled on two six packs of Guinness, primarily because a friend of mine had once described beer in the 10th-16th century as halfway between Guinness and glue. The order was ready, and I was about to pick it up, when a soft voice said “Don’t bother, I’ve got it.”

 

I turned, and recognized him from the description and the tape. Not heavy, not tall, he was about my height, wiry, and had to look of a mile of really bad road. He drew out a wallet, and pulled a crisp bill out.

 

“No.” I stopped him, flashing my ATM card. “That is what helped me figure it out in the first place.”

 

Mr. Begin watched the man warily, running the card through the scanner. Coster’s eyes widened at the price. I punched in my pin, and picked up the bags.

 

We walked back toward the apartment, Coster half a pace behind me. We were passing the alley when there was a click. Mendenhall had her 10mm Glock aimed at Coster. “Freeze punk.”

 

Coster looked over his shoulder, and his grin said it all. “You should watch your mouth, lady.”

 

“One more word, and you’re dead.”

 

Coster looked at me smiling. “You put up with this all the time?” Then he looked back at her. “I don’t believe it. A skirt with an attitude.”

 

“Celia Mendenhall, meet Mack Coster. Coster, Mendenhall. Put the piece away, Celia.”

 

“But Deit-“

 

“We set this up, remember?” I looked at Coster. “He could have killed me all ready, but I think they want to talk. Until we’ve had that talk, I’m safe.” I looked at Coster. “Right?”

 

“Skipper’s orders.”

 

“Put it away.” She glared at me, and slowly holstered the weapon. “Since you’re here, come on.”

 

We walked back to the apartment in a parade formation. Me in the lead where Coster could shoot me, Mendenhall walking three paces back so she would have time to draw and fire if Coster tried for me or her. Coster kept both hands in sight when we reached the apartment door. He moved up, and knocked in a pattern. The door opened, and a woman stood there. She was wearing a formfitting uniform with braid at the cufflines and on the high collar. Her hair was an ebony sheet braided into a fall. When they had cast for the role, they picked a statuesque actress best known for her cheekbones and chest. This woman was shorter than I, but had the hard tough look you get from surviving hell. She looked maybe thirty years old. But if she had lived through even half of what Winslow had written, she must have been in her nineties.

 

“Admiral Souvrein.” I nodded. “You are more impressive in person than I anticipated."

 

“Thank you.” She gave me one of those smiles, and bowed more formally. “It galls one to be told ‘I thought you would be taller’ when someone meets you. Do come in.”

 

A man built like Lou Ferrigno leaned against the wall, idly checking the edge on the ax he held. His clothing was homespun, a kirtle falling to right above his knees. At the desk sat two men. One was dressed in a uniform like Admiral Souvrein’s. The other, I almost gaped. Derrick Winslow as he had been when he had first met Souvrein looked back at me.

 

“Welcome.” Winslow said, motioning toward the screen. There was the last page I had typed.

 

The admiral leaned over, looking at the screen. “We are dealing with a smart ass.” she said. Coster snickered, but Conner, who had never read anything but Ogham, was confused.

 

“What does he say?”

 

“That he went to some place called a deli to get some beer and sandwiches. And look at this.” She tapped the screen, and read it aloud. ‘To Admiral Souvrein, Conner, and Mack Coster. You can always kill me, but we need to talk first.’ It seems that our actions have been noticed for what they are.” She turned, steepling her fingers.

“Mister Coster, if you would be so good as to go and, collect this Dieter Davis?”

 

“My pleasure.”

 

“He didn’t even mention me.” The uniformed man looked over his shoulder. I could see a mischievous glint in his eye.

 

“Sorry, I didn’t know they’d bring you Mondraschat.” I looked around. “We have a lot to talk about, but we don’t have a whole lot of time. Knowing the Captain, they have this place under pretty tight surveillance.”

 

Souvrein motioned. The cameras, bugs, sensors that had been so carefully hidden by the technicians lay on the desk beside the computer. “Oh it was, what is the word? ‘plumbed’?”

 

“Wired.” I corrected.

 

“Ah, like the actual material. Yes, as you can see, we removed it, and assured ourselves that it would not work. We felt that you could convince him to moderate his response.”

 

I stepped to the phone, and called. If I had waited another ten seconds, we would have had a SWAT team in the room with us. After growling at me for even taking the chance, he hung up. I went to the closet, and pulled out the broomhandle Mauser, handing it to Coster. He nodded, slipping it in the wooden holster-stock. I opened the deli bag, and began passing out submarine sandwiches and beer. We had to help Souvrein Mondraschat and Conner. They had never dealt with a bottle cap before. Coster just set the cap of his against the edge of the door plate, and slapped the cap off.

 

“I did this to talk to all of you. You have got to stop killing people.”

 

“They do understand that, Sergeant.” Winslow sighed in happiness as he washed some potato salad down. “However they are not of this world.”

 

“I worked that out. Correct me if I’m wrong.

 

“In 1954, you’re working on some new dimension in radio transmission. But when you turned it on, instead of transmitting a signal, you transmitted yourself. You arrived aboard HMS Shrike right before the battle of Hell’s Gate. She let you return-“

 

“Actually, she sent me home. My device was far too cumbersome to be carried. It stayed here when I left. Her technicians were able to slap one together in a few hours. Small enough to hold in your hand.”

 

“Thank you, that was part of where I got hung up during the investigation. So, she sends you home, and you write down everything you saw. But you didn’t feel right about just publishing it. So you went back, and spoke to her. She allowed you to publish, and you became famous.

 

“After a while, you wondered how many other worlds were linked this way. “

 

“No, again, that was I.” Souvrein interjected. “His dimensional transfer device is a return machine only. He can come back from anywhere, to here.” She tapped the table. “When my scientists began discovering the other dimensions after Hell’s Gate, I came to ask him if he wished to see them.” She smiled. “He blackmailed me into allowing him to chronicle my life.”

 

“Don’t let her kid you. Our friend the Admiral is as vain as any woman you’ve met. She enjoys the appreciation.” Souvrein ducked her head shyly. “She supplied the information necessary to build a transfer transmitter here. I traveled a few places, then found Coster’s world.”

 

“He made the deal with me to.” Coster put in, popping a second top. “He traded me beer and whiskey.” I remembered that his world was still in Prohibition times.

 

“Yes. Mack was just dying to tell people of what he has done.” Winslow agreed. “Then I kept looking, and eventually found Conner’s world.”

 

“He is a noble bard. It is good that he will chronicle my adventures.” I think Conner was on his fourth beer. Mendenhall made a phone call, and the Captain delivered another case of beer. It was a good thing. I had never seen anyone put it away like Conner did.

 

“Let’s see, where were we? Yes, something about the transfer is physically dangerous in the long term. That’s why you retired a few years ago.”

 

“Yes. Staying in the other dimensions for more than a few days causes severe system shock. My friends didn’t notice, but I did.” Winslow shrugged. “I was worried about dying of a heart attack in any world but Tamara’s.”

 

“Our science has negated most of the deleterious effects.” She said. She had just opened her second beer, and her cheeks were flushed. “We can cure not only the side effects of the transfer, but as you can see,” she waved at Winslow and herself, “we can rejuvenate his body as well. He has been a true friend, and deserves such consideration.”

 

“But how do I explain that suddenly a seventy year old man looks twenty again?” Winslow sighed. “I was still trying to make up my mind when this happened.”

 

“I understand that. If I may?” He waved toward me. “So your publisher used the fact that you speak about them as real people to have you committed.”

 

“Yes. Derrick and I have a communications link, and write each other often. He notified me that he was going to New York to have it out with his publishers. When he was done, he was seriously considering taking up my offer. When I didn’t receive the message that he had returned, I came to investigate. That was my first actual trip” She shuddered. “This is such a horrible place. Noisy, with too many rude people. But Derrick had given me enough information about customs and dress that I merely looked like a foreigner rather than someone from another world.

 

“Using a library computer, I was able to discover that the publishers were claiming to be selling new books about us.” Her face turned cold. The Admiral showed through. “Without telling us, or obtaining Derrick’s permission.”

 

“So she came and grabbed me.” Coster said. He was nibbling on some pickle chips. “She figured I could handle the search better than anyone she could assign. She would make mistakes people would notice. Conner, well, his method of questioning includes a lot of screaming and blood.” The huge Celt belched, and reached for another beer. “By being dropped in the right places over a month, I tracked down the information. Derrick had been committed to an asylum, and who had signed the papers.”

“So you started to remove the people causing the problems.”

 

“The bard has done us proud. None other may do so without my let.” Conner said. He had stripped the meat and greenery from his sandwiches, eating them first. He had yet to master eating potato salad with a fork.

 

“Worse was their attitude.” Souvrein complained. “I had hoped speaking with Daniel might alleviate the situation, but he boasted of how he had removed an obstacle to what he was due! So I dealt with him.”

 

“Don’t you know it has all been wasted?” I snapped. “Derrick Winslow is insane. Doctors in Pennsylvania have said so. We can’t produce a sane Derrick Winslow,” I pointed at the man, “because everyone knows he’s in his seventies.

 

“Without that, the contract between Daniel Winslow and the publisher stand. How many more are going to die? What’s the count now? Thirty-one?” I glared at them. “And the publisher will just hire other writers. Sooner or later the secret gets out. How long do you think we,” I waved at Mendenhall and the Captain, “can cover for you?”

 

“I was able to explain this to them after the drugs wore off.” Winslow said. I thought of a man who in lucid moments, had built the device that sat in the corner, hiding it from search until he could be freed. “In fact, when we discovered who had sent the next message, I insisted that we meet.”

 

“Even if you’re scene was preternaturally accurate.” Souvrein pointed at the computer. “We still need a way to clear this up.”

 

“It’s a good thing you were willing to listen. Let me explain…”

 

XI

 

Two years later, I opened the door on the farm house I had bought with the first book. It was ostentatious, a four bedroom with bunkhouse spread in the High Desert of San Bernardino County. But it was necessary. Even with the refinements that Tamara’s people had developed, a loud noise would be reported eventually.

 

It was Mendenhall, a large buff man standing beside her staggering under three cases of Guinness. “Celia!”

 

“I thought you might need some supplies.” She hooked a thumb toward the beer. In the last years, she had made a name for herself with the Squad.

 

“Yes I could. I get nervous these days if I have less than three cases.” I led the way to the kitchen, and the man finally set them down.

 

“Yeah, he probably goes through it like water.”

 

“Say instead of water.” I looked at the guy. Younger than Mendenhall. He looked like another of the Saudi war Vets.

 

“Wait outside for me, Randall.” She didn’t look at him as the man walked back out. Once he was out, she shook her head. “He might make it. Me, I’m not too sure.”

 

“Give him a chance.”

 

“He’s been on a week.” I shook my head at that. If they didn’t catch on in a week, they usually never do.

 

I led her back through the locked door into my den. She stopped staring at the armor suit against the wall. “Is that what I think it is?”

 

“Mark 98 full environment combat armor suit.”

 

“Where did you-“ She shook her head. “Forget I asked.”

 

“Yeah, we’ve started a technological exchange program. You guys got the Vulteran computers?”

 

She pulled out the small billfold and flipped it open. A computer 100 generations faster than the Pentium IV in something that size. We had made modifications, using the standard alphabet instead of the 20 characters of the Vulterans. They also transmitted to each other on a fold-space com as they had been designed, so Mort could update everyone instantaneously and secretly. “We’ve also opened a shell company to market other things. The stun blasters the Vulteran police use for one. The army would be interested in a lot of things, but we’ll have to draw the line there.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because the Vulteran scientists have proven theoretically that this isn’t a dimensional door, but a door through time.”

 

“I could see the problem.”

 

“So do they. I’m going to England in a week, to plant this.” I opened a closet, and pulled out the emergency transponder.

 

“Thanks to our star charts, Tamara has figured out at least what section of the galaxy we’re in. But can’t narrow it down past about ten cubic parsecs.” I picked up the spike-like transponder. When it hit the ground, it would immediately punch into the ground, and then begin transmitting. “This can be heard in that small an area. Geothermal powered in an emergency, it will transmit for ten millennia.”

 

“But will it stay intact and undiscovered?”

 

I didn’t tell her that it had already. Temporal mechanics is a pain. “Yes, they want me to drop it in a Loch in Scotland.”

 

“Did you hear about Taser?” She suddenly laughed. I had to join in. A week after the meeting, the city of New York was flooded with reports that a UFO had hovered over the Taser building. No one from the building was ever seen again.

 

“You can tell the Captain that the Vulteran’s take care of their own. You should read their laws on plagiarism.”

 

“Wait, they’re selling us computers and stun blasters. What are they getting in return?”

 

“The Vulteran’s are bored. So they get entertainment. You wouldn’t believe what they were willing to give for old Jerry Lewis movies.” You wouldn’t believe, I mentally added, what they would give for the man himself.