Flatlander - Larry Niven [20]
I could have walked into Graham’s shop and gotten away with it. Maybe. I’d have looked hopeless and bored and hesitant, told Graham I wanted an ecstasy plug, worried loudly about what my wife and friends would say, then changed my mind at the last moment. He’d have let me walk out, knowing I’d be missed. Maybe.
But Loren had to know more about the ARMs than we knew about him. Some time or other, had Graham been shown a holo of yours truly? Let a known ARM walk into his shop, and Graham would panic. It wasn’t worth the risk.
Then, dammit, what could I do?
Ordaz’s inconsistent killer. If we assumed Owen was murdered, we couldn’t get away from the other assumptions. The care, the nitpicking detail—and then Owen left alone to pull out the plug and walk away, or to be discovered by a persistent salesman or a burglar, or—
No. Ordaz’s hypothetical killer, and mine, would have watched Owen like a hawk. For a month.
That did it. I stepped off at the next disk and got a taxi.
The taxi dropped me on the roof of Monica Apartments. I took an elevator to the lobby.
If the manager was surprised to see me, he didn’t show it as he gestured me into his office. The office seemed much roomier than the lobby had, possibly because there were things to break the anonymous modern decor: paintings on the wall, a small black worm track in the rug that must have been caused by a visitor’s cigarette, a holo of Miller and his wife on the wide, nearly empty desk. He waited until I was settled, then leaned forward expectantly.
“I’m here on ARM business,” I said, and passed him my ident.
He passed it back without checking it. “I presume it’s the same business,” he said without cordiality.
“Yah. I’m convinced Owen Jennison must have had visitors while he was here.”
The manager smiled. “That’s ridic—impossible.”
“Nope, it’s not. Your holo cameras take pictures of visitors, but they don’t snap the tenants, do they?”
“Of course not.”
“Then Owen could have been visited by any tenant in the building.”
The manager looked shocked. “No, certainly not. Really, I don’t see why you pursue this, Mr. Hamilton. If Mr. Jennison had been found in such a condition, it would have been reported!”
“I don’t think so. Could he have been visited by any tenant in the building?”
“No. No. The cameras would have taken a picture of anyone from another floor.”
“How about someone from the same floor?”
Reluctantly the manager bobbed his head. “Ye-es. As far as the holo cameras are concerned, that’s possible. But—”
“Then I’d like to ask for pictures of any tenant who lived on the eighteenth floor during the last six weeks. Send them to the ARM Building, Central LA. Can do?”
“Of course. You’ll have them within an hour.”
“Good. Now, something else occurred to me. Suppose a man got out on the nineteenth floor and walked down to the eighteenth. He’d be holoed on the nineteenth but not on the eighteenth, right?”
The manager smiled indulgently. “Mr. Hamilton, there are no stairs in this building.”
“Just the elevators? Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Not at all. There is a separate self-contained emergency power source for each of the elevators. It’s common practice. After all, who would want to walk up eighty stories if the elevator failed?”
“Okay, fine. One last point. Could someone tamper with the computer? Could someone make it decide not to take a certain picture, for instance?”
“I … am not an expert on bow to tamper with computers, Mr. Hamilton. Why don’t you go straight to the company? Caulfield Brains, Inc.”
“Okay. What’s your model?”
“Just a moment.” He got up and leafed through a drawer in a filing cabinet. “EQ 144.”
“Okay.”
That was all I could do here, and I knew it … and still I didn’t have the will to get up. There ought to be something …
Finally Miller cleared his throat. “Will that be all, sir?”
“Yes,” I said. “No. Can I get into 1809?”
“I’ll see if we’ve rented it yet.”
“The police are through with it?”
“Certainly.” He went back to the filing cabinet. “No, it’s still available. I’ll take you up. How long will