Flatlander - Larry Niven [23]
Maybe the dossier had given Owen the wrong idea. In any case, he’d decided to contact Loren and see what developed. Ordinarily he’d have sent me the entire message and let me try to track it down. I was the expert, after all. But Owen’s last trip out had been a disaster.
His fusion drive had blown somewhere beyond Jupiter’s orbit. No explanation. The safeties had blown his lifesystem capsule free of the explosion, barely. A rescue ship had returned him to Ceres. The fee had nearly broken him. He needed money. Loren might have known that and counted on it.
The reward for information leading to Loren’s capture would have bought him a new ship.
He’d landed at Outback Field, following Loren’s instructions. From there, Loren’s men had moved him about a good deal: to London, to Bombay, to Amberg, Germany. Owen’s personal, written story ended in Amberg. How had he reached California? He had not had a chance to say.
But in between he had learned a good deal. There were snatches of detail on Loren’s organization. There was Loren’s full plan for shipping illicit transplant materials to the Belt and for finding and contacting customers. Owen had made suggestions there. Most of them sounded reasonable and would be unworkable in practice. Typically Owen. I could find no sign that he’d overplayed his hand.
But of course he hadn’t known it when he had.
And there were holos, twenty-three of them, each a member of Loren’s gang. Some of the pictures had markings on the back; others were blank. Owen had been unable to find out where each of them stood in the organization. I leafed through them twice, wondering if one of them could be Loren himself. Owen had never known.
“It would seem you were right,” Ordaz said. “He could not have collected such detail by accident. He must have planned from the beginning to betray the Loren gang.”
“Just as I told you. And he was murdered for it.”
“It seems he must have been. What motive could he have had for suicide?” Ordaz’s round, calm face was doing its best to show anger. “I find I cannot believe in our inconsistent murderer, either. You have ruined my digestion, Mr. Hamilton.”
I told him my idea about other tenants on Owen’s floor. He nodded. “Possibly, possibly. This is your department now. Organlegging is the business of the ARMs.”
“Right.” I closed the briefcase and hefted it. “Let’s see what the computer can do with these. I’ll send you photocopies of everything in here.”
“You’ll let me know about the other tenants?”
“Of course.”
I walked into ARM Headquarters swinging that precious briefcase, feeling on top of the world. Owen had been murdered. He had died with honor, if not—oh, definitely not— with dignity. Even Ordaz knew it now.
Then Jackson Bera, snarling and panting, went by at a dead run.
“What’s up?” I called after him. Maybe I wanted a chance to brag. I had twenty-three faces, twenty-three organleggers, in my briefcase.
Bera slid to a stop beside me. “Where have you been?”
“Working. Honest. What’s the hurry?”
“Remember that pleasure peddler we were watching?”
“Graham? Kenneth Graham?”
“That’s the one. He’s dead. We blew it.” And Bera took off.
He’d reached the lab by the time I caught up with him.
Kenneth Graham’s corpse was faceup on the operating table. His long, lantern-jawed face was pale and slack, without expression, empty. Machinery was in place above and below his head.
“How you doing?” Bera demanded.
“Not good,” the doctor answered. “Not your fault. You got him into the deep freeze fast enough. It’s just that the current—” He shrugged.
I shook Bera’s shoulder. “What happened?”
Bera was panting a little from his run. “Something must have leaked. Graham tried to make a run for it. We got him at the airport.”
“You could have waited. Put someone on the plane with him. Flooded the plane with TY-4.”
“Remember the stink the last time we used TY-4 on civilians? Damn newscasters.