Big Bang Page 8

  “What about the Big Bang murders?”

  “Nothing to do with us.”

  “And the murder of Palsy Hatchbacker?”

  “Your problem, my boy,” said the food tycoon’s voice. “In case they lock you away for that one, we’ll expect a refund.”

  Jake told them, “The $750,000 fee is for my time during the week I have to clear up this whole mess. Anything beyond that goes into overtime.”

  “Why, of all the outrageous. …” The Gypsy opened her eyes. “Excuse it, gents. I got to go to the crapper.”

  “Daddy was right in the middle of a harangue, Madame Batota.”

  The Gypsy stood up. “I lost contact with the old fart anyhow,” she told Bunny. “Séance is over.”

  As she went slouching away, Bunny said, “We’ll draw up a contract between Foodopoly and Odd Jobs, Inc., Mr. Pace.”

  “Can you give me any leads?”

  “Well, the last two operatives who came to untimely ends,” said Bunny, tugging out his list again, “a Mr. Calamity Quade and a gentleman named Doan, were both investigating the activities of a young lady named Honey Chen. It’s ironic.”

  “How?”

  Dr. Willbarrow said, “Honey Chen is an actress, one of the hottest things in satvid right now. She stars on a kidopera we sponsor.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Jake, recalling. “She’s on Captain Texas.”

  “She plays the captain’s Eurasian mistress,” said the doctor.

  “The other ironic thing about Honey Chen,” said Bunny, “is she was a student of Professor Barrel’s.”

  “I bet,” said Jake, sitting up, “she graduated from Poorman’s Harvard in ’99.”

  “Golly whiskers, she did,” said Bunny, pleased. “You really are a crackerjack investigator, Mr. Pace.”

  “I am,” agreed Jake.

  CHAPTER 13

  SHE FOUND HIM IN the kitchen of the restaurant, arguing with six moustached robots.

  “You cannot,” Jake was insisting to the chrome-plated robot with the biggest chef’s hat, “create a perfect chili relleno without a pinch of—”

  “But, Señor Pace, my staff and I have programmed into us the culinary knowledge of generations of Chicanos. Recipes which were already venerated when the beloved Father Junipero Serra first set foot on the golden soil of California. Sí, and—”

  “Nevertheless,” Jake persisted, “unless you add that pinch of—”

  “Jake,” Hildy said quietly. She was herself again, red-haired and wearing a one-piece emerald green skirtsuit.

  He noticed his wife, grinned and moved back from the chefbots and the electrostoves. “I was early,” he explained to her, “so I wandered out here to have a chat with the boys.”

  “I figured as much.” She took his arm. “You gentlemen will, I know, simply ignore Jake’s eccentric notions about Mexican cuisine.”

  “Eccentric? Who won the Maximillian Ribbon two years back in the Best Guacamole category?” Jake said. “Not one of these gadgets, no. ’Twas me, your gifted spouse who copped all—”

  “That particular bakeoff,” reminded Hildy, “was open only to turistas.”

  “Verdad,” murmured one of the kitchen robots.

  One of the others was eyeing Hildy, sighing, “Muy bonita.”

  “Nix,” Jake cautioned him. “Don’t ogle.”

  “He’s built that way,” said the head chef. “He used to be a gigolo down at a CalSouth—”

  “What say we return to our table,” Hildy suggested, tugging. “We only have about two and a half hours, going by California Northern Liberal Time, of Xmas Eve left.”

  “You’re absolutely right.” He bowed to the cooking staff. “Adiós, gents.”

  “Vaya con dios, Señor Pace.”

  Out in the main dining room of Zorro’s Hildy guided Jake through the crowd of diners to a table close to the view window. From up here you could see nearly all of the Frisco Enclave far below. Beyond the lights of the bay city dangled the lights of its bridges, including the recently completed Gay Golden Gate.

  “Tell me a little more about your kidnapping,” Hildy requested once they were seated.

  “Your hair always looks a little frazzled after you’ve teleported,” he said.

  “Why, thank you. Now give me some details.”

  “As I told you on the pixphone, Foodopoly has hired us and they’re going to pay $750,000 into the Odd Jobs, Inc. acc—”

  “Already have. I checked with our Connecticut computer just before teleporting here from Texas.”

  Jake said, “Well, the Thrasher clan wants Professor Barrel.”

  “We want him, too, don’t we?”

  Frowning, Jake leaned back. “Probably,” he said. “He’s tied up in this Big Bang business somehow.”

  “You figure he’s adapted his process so you can blow up people instead of oats?”

  He nodded. “That’s got to be what Palsy wanted to pass on to me, why she blurted out that fragment of Bloaties jingle as she died,” he said. “She went to Poorman’s Harvard, studied with Barrel. So did Trina Twain, alias Christina Parkerhouse. And so did the next lady I aim to talk with, Honey Chen.”

  Hildy’s nose wrinkled. “That blatant sexpot? She actually studied nutrition?”

  “Minored in it, majored in Sensual Dramatics.”

  “Speaking of old PMH alums,” his red-haired wife said, “I’m going to drop in on another one, up in the Portland Redoubt tomorrow morning.”

  “You got something out of Reverend Lomax?”

  “Too much, probably.”

  “That sanctimonious goon didn’t try to fondle you or—”

  “Nope, but he did ask me what I was going to give him for Xmas.”

  Jake sat up. “Which reminds me.” He took a small flat package from an inner pocket of his two-piece black tuxsuit. “Merry Xmas, my love.” He slid the package across the white tabletop.

  Hildy produced a small, square, brightly wrapped package from within her purse and passed it to him. “Same to you.”

  Leaning on his elbows, Jake said, “Now what about the reverend as a source of information?”

  “He has a list of seventy-some possible suspected owners of Novem, Ltd.” Her long tan fingers tapped on the gift package he’d given her. “And an enormous stewpot of background data, raw stuff in boxes, cartons and folders. None of it’s been fed into a computer system yet. I have a copy of his list.”

  Jake took the faxpaper sheets she tossed on the table. “Who’s the chap with the asterisk? Your next object?”

  “Yep, I’ll tell you about him.”

  “I like his name. Screwball Smith,” he said. “Oh, yeah, he’s the guy who runs that chain of home computer supermarkets.”

  “ ‘Nobody Is Cheaper Than Screwball Smith! And He Don’t Screw Ya!’ ” quoted Hildy. “Even more interesting than his sales philosophy is this item. I chanced upon it when a carton fell on me and spilled over.”

  “Hildy, have you learned nothing from me on how to flimflam the public? Never admit to stumbling onto information. It is always the result of diligent work, dogged determination and the sort of back-breaking labor that’s well worth fees of $750,000 and $1,000,000 per case.” He studied the triop photo page she’d passed him.

  “Reading from left to right, Jake, you see Christina Parkerhouse, Palsy Hatchbacker, Shafter ‘Screwball’ Smith and Professor Dickens Barrel, snapped informally while judging a Soypie Eating Contest at PMH in ’98.”

  “You snipped this page from the Poorman’s Harvard Yearbook for 1999?”

  “I did. None of Lomax’s investigators, the ones who’ve survived, have as yet explored the possible links between Novem, Big Bang and the professor,” she replied. “No one else on his list ties in with Palsy and Barrel.”

  “So you mean to check out Screwball Smith first.”

  “Tomorrow morn up in Portland.”

  “He’s open on Xmas?”

  “ ‘Ol’ SS Never Shuts! We’re Dealin’ 24 Hours
A Day!’ ”

  “Splendid,” said Jake. “I’ll be off the coast of the BajaCal Enclave tomorrow. On the private island where they produce Captain Texas without letup.”

  “Jake.” She put a hand over his. “Don’t get annoyed at what I am about to mention.”

  “I am noted for being slow to anger. Compared to me the beatific Buddha was a nervous wreck. I rarely—”

  “Listen then. Whenever you get around actors and show folk, you tend to … Well, just don’t let them distract you or flatter you so you drop your guard.”

  “Very sound advice,” he said calmly. “I don’t, however, know where you got the notion I’m vain about my God-Given acting ability. I try never to be smug about natural gifts. It’s much the same with my good looks, I simply accept—”

  “Even so, be careful.”

  “Just because a ventriloquist’s dummy managed to get the drop on me recently, Hildy, that doesn’t mean I’m a rube when it comes to greasepaint and—”

  “Call for you, Mr. Pace.” A human waiter, clad in a sarape, sombrero and white one-piece peonsuit, was carrying a portable pixphone toward their table.

  A frown touched Hildy’s pretty face. “Who knows we’re here?”

  “Nobody.” He accepted the phone and stood. “I’ll take it in an alcove. Back soon.”

  As Jake went striding to a bank of alcoves far across the room, he passed a table where a Chinese neopath and his wife were dining.

  “Holy crow!” exclaimed the Chinese, dropping his forkful of enchilada. “It’s him.”

  “Easy, Sun Yen,” warned his wife.

  “Xmas Eve, thousands of miles from home, and there’s the infamous Jake Pace.” He began shivering.

  “He’s merely dining out with his glamorous wife. It’s a holiday and even hard-boiled private eyes have to relax now and—”

  “Trouble,” muttered Sun Yen. “Everywhere the Paces go, trouble follows. That time in Connecticut when we almost got incinerated and just two years ago in Manhattan when—”

  “Remember what Dr. Emerzon advised. You ought not to—”

  “When the shooting starts, duck under the table,” advised her husband.

  “How’s tricks? How’re you and the human skeleton? Planning to dip the old Yule log before you head back into the fray?”

  “Merry Xmas, Steranko,” Jake said to the image on the pixphone screen resting on the alcove shelf.

  Steranko the Siphoner asked, “Aren’t you amazed I was able to track you down in that greaseball bistro?”

  “I’m amazed. What’s up?”

  “Trina Twain’s real moniker is Christina Parkerhouse.”

  “I know.”

  “C’mon, Jake. It took me half a day, and most of your fee to learn that. You already knew it. How?”

  “Brilliant work, dogged determination, back-breaking labor,” answered Jake. “Why was it so tough to dig the information loose? Who’s blocking it?”

  The bald-headed siphoner shrugged. “Don’t know yet. It ain’t the government. Not ours anyway. I’ll have more on that angle mañana. If you care to advance another $2500.”

  “$1500.”

  “Okay.”

  “What else have you got?”

  “Maybe you already know this, too, sahib, and I’m wasting—”

  “Don’t sulk.”

  “I know where Trina is.”

  “That’s terrific. I didn’t know that.”

  “That’s the sort of reaction I like,” said Steranko. “That and cash. Trina, alias Christina, is on the moon.”

  “The moon?”

  “That silvery orb that inspires poets and lovers, yep.”

  “What the hell is she doing there?”

  “Nothing thus far except residing at the Sheraton-Luna. Could be, Jake, she’s planning to attend the Moonport Jazz Festival, which commences in but two short days.”

  Jake rubbed at his chin. “Were you able to trace her back, get any idea where she’s been over the last few months?”

  “I did indeed. The itinerary makes fascinating reading.”

  “Can you tie her in with any of the locations where the Big Bang murders have taken place?”

  “Not some, old buddy, but all. She was at every one, from a day before the fatal explo until a day after.”

  “Do me a similar check on Honey Chen and Screwball Smith.”

  Steranko chuckled. “You sure do rub shoulders with the great and the near great. That’ll add $4500 to the tab.”

  “$4000.”

  “For a pal. Anything further?”

  “What about Professor Barrel, anything on where he might be holed up? Any links with Trina in the last year?”

  “Hide nor hair of the old gent is what I ain’t been able to find, Jake. I’ll keep digging, throw him in for free.”

  “Do that.”

  “You going to be heading moonward?”

  “Probably. But I want to visit Baja first.”

  “Well, bon voyage and season’s greetings.” The screen went black.

  Jake returned to their table, almost colliding with the Chinese neopath and his wife who were scurrying out of the restaurant.

  “Who was it?” asked Hildy.

  “Steranko.” He sat. “He’s located Trina.”

  “Where?”

  “On the moon.”

  Hildy said, “Going to be a lot of important folks attending the jazz festival.”

  “We’ll need a list of them,” he said. “That we can have our own Odd Jobs, Inc. computer do and save a couple thousand bucks.”

  “Probably have to shuttle up there, too.”

  “One or both of us,” he said. “When you query ol’ SS, find out about his travel itinerary for the past few months. For the period since the Big Bang stuff got rolling. I’ll do the same for Honey Chen.”

  “Shall we order dinner now?”

  He thought about it. “I have a suite across the street in one of the towers of the Statler-Bierce,” he said. “Would you rather celebrate Xmas eve there instead of here?”

  “Is this a proposition?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Let’s adjourn,” Hildy said.

  CHAPTER 14

  THE VOICE-OVER ANNOUNCER WAS saying, “Well, boys and girls, thus far it’s been an exciting Xmas Day for Captain Texas and his friends. You’ll remember that in yesterday’s thrilling episode Captain Texas, freed from a foul Guatemalan jail after charges that he’d exposed himself at a recent Girl Scout Jamboree in this quaint little country had been proven false, encountered the mysterious Madame Scorpion, who’s been turning up under such strange circumstances of late. The mysterious Madame Scorpion revealed, shortly after the captain had invited her to share his posh hotel bedroom with him, that she couldn’t because she didn’t believe in incest. Yes, boys and girls, Madame Scorpion is none other than Captain Texas’s long lost mother. You’ll recall that some months back the captain’s power-mad father, Captain Texas, Sr., the lecherous solar power tycoon, admitted that he had been under the influence of powerful mind-altering drugs back when he made the particular donation to the sperm bank that resulted in the conception of our brave champion of truth and justice, Captain Texas. The captain has, ever since those startling revelations were made to him in the fever-ridden reaches of the Amazon River a few months back, been searching and seeking, in between bouts with Dr. Venial, often dubbed ‘The Most Dangerous Man In The World Today,’ for his lost mother. He knew only that she wore on her ring finger a strange serpent ring which glowed mysteriously in the dark. You can imagine, boys and girls, the captain’s surprise and elation when he saw that same ring glowing on the finger of the attractive mature woman he’d been planning to have a roll in the hay with. Yes, and if you’d like a ring just about like the one Captain Texas’s mother wears, a ring that actually glows in the dark and contains a built-in dog whistle good for summoning at least eighty-seven different breeds of dog, then be sure to have a pen or dictabox handy at the end of today
’s show. There’ll also be a message in code for all you members of Captain Texas’s Secret Rangers. So have your decoders handy, too, boys and girls. Wellsir, back to our story. While the captain is renewing his friendship with the mother he has never known, his scoundrel of a father has succeeded in luring Leroy and Lena, the captain’s two daring and loyal teen-age companions, into a brothel on the outskirts of the Tijuana Sector of Greater Los Angeles. Thereat the old tycoon offers them staggeringly large sums of money if they will perform certain disgusting sex acts with him. Let’s listen. …”

  “Gallopin’ gollywogs!” exclaimed the young actor portraying Leroy. “I will not dress up in my sister’s frilly lace underthings, sir.”

  “$100,000 and fifty shares of. …”

  Backstage in a dim stretch of studio floor two bouncy curly-haired young men were sitting in canvas chairs on each side of Jake.

  “You did very well in rehearsal,” said Bill Ganpat, one of the two senior script writers.

  “I know,” said Jake, who was dressed in a secret agent costume.

  “You have a real flair for kid opera,” said Bill Tappenzee, the other senior writer. “We’re really delighted you popped in when you did and agreed to fill in on this guest spot for us.”

  “When we heard Rance Keane had sprained his ankle at the last minute,” said Ganpat, “we were really afraid we might not have anybody for today’s celebrity walkon. Sometimes it’s tough to get a last-minute sub down here to our private island studios in time. Then there you were.”

  “You’re nearly as big a celeb as Rance Keane,” said Tappenzee.

  “I’d place myself as slightly bigger.”

  “Nope, we ran you through our Personalityscope and you test out at 6.2 points behind him, but that’s plenty good enough for us,” said Ganpat.

  Tappenzee said, “I’d like to make a teeny suggestion, Jake.”

  “Go ahead, Bill.”

  “When Honey shoots you with the lazgun, don’t take quite so long to die.”

  Sitting up in his canvas chair, Jake said, “I died in six seconds, fellows. Considering that, I managed to put in a hell of a lot of pathos.”

  “Try,” suggested Ganpat, “to die in four.”