Flatlander - Larry Niven [19]
“That is possible.”
“You can’t have it both ways.”
Ordaz lowered his fork. “I can have it both ways, Mr. Hamilton. But you won’t like it.”
“I’m sure I won’t.”
“Let us incorporate your assumption. Mr. Jennison was contacted by an agent of Loren, the organlegger, who intended to sell transplant material to Belters. He accepted. The promise of riches was too much for him.
“A month later something made him realize what a terrible thing he had done. He decided to die. He went to an ecstasy peddler and had a wire put in his head. Later, before he plugged in the droud, he made one attempt to atone for his crime. He listed you as his next of kin so that you might guess why he had died and perhaps so that you could use that knowledge against Loren.”
Ordaz looked at me across the table. “I see that you will never agree. I cannot help that. I can only read the evidence.”
“Me, too. But I knew Owen. He’d never have worked for an organlegger, he’d never have killed himself, and if he had, he’d never have done it that way.”
Ordaz didn’t answer.
“What about fingerprints?”
“In the apartment? None.”
“None but Owen’s?”
“Even his were found only on the chairs and end tables. I curse the man who invented the cleaning robot. Every smooth surface in that apartment was cleaned exactly forty-four times during Mr. Jennison’s tenancy.” Ordaz went back to his chili.
“Then try this. Assume for the moment that I’m right. Assume Owen was after Loren, and Loren got him. Owen knew he was doing something dangerous. He wouldn’t have wanted me to get onto Loren before he was ready. He wanted the reward for himself. But he might have left me something, just in case.
“Something in a locker somewhere, an airport or spaceport locker. Evidence. Not under his own name, or mine, either, because I’m a known ARM. But—”
“Some name you both know.”
“Right. Like Homer Chandrasekhar. Or—got it. Cubes Forsythe. Owen would have thought that was apt. Cubes is dead.”
“We will look. You must understand that it will not prove your case.”
“Sure. Anything you find, Owen could have arranged in a fit of conscience. Screw that. Let me know what you get,” I said, and stood up and left.
I rode the slidewalk, not caring where it was taking me. It would give me a chance to cool off.
Could Ordaz be right? Could he?
But the more I dug into Owen’s death, the worse it made Owen look.
Therefore, Ordaz was wrong.
Owen work for an organlegger? He’d rather have been a donor.
Owen getting his kicks from a wall socket? He never even watched tridee!
Owen kill himself? No. If so, not that way.
But even if I could have swallowed all that …
Owen Jennison letting me know he’s worked with organleggers? Me, Gil the Arm Hamilton? Let me know that?
The slidewalk rolled along, past restaurants and shopping centers and churches and banks. Ten stories below, the hum of cars and scooters drifted faintly up from the vehicular level. The sky was a narrow, vivid slash of blue between black shadows of skyscraper.
Let me know that? Never.
But Ordaz’s strangely inconsistent murderer was no better.
I thought of something even Ordaz had missed. Why would Loren dispose of Owen so elaborately? Owen need only disappear into the organ banks, never to bother Loren again.
The shops were thinning out now, and so were the crowds. The slidewalk narrowed, entered a residential area, and not a very good one. I’d let it carry me a long way. I looked around, trying to decide where I was.
And I was four blocks from Graham’s place.
My subconscious had done me a dirty. I wanted to look at Kenneth Graham face to face. The temptation to go on was nearly irresistible, but I fought it off and changed direction at the next disk.
A slidewalk intersection is a rotating disk, its rim tangent to four slidewalks and moving with the same speed. From the center you ride up an escalator and over the slidewalks to reach stationary walks along the buildings. I could have caught a cab at the center of the disk, but I still wanted to think,