Deadstock

CHAPTER ELEVEN organ grinder

Adrian Tableau was short in stature but powerfully muscled, his graying hair neatly cut but undyed, his face as creased but hard as a clenched fist. Even with his custom-made five-piece suit and the marble-topped desk he sat behind, he still spoke with the tough accent of the streets that had shaped him. A former business partner named Grant Leery had said of Adrian Tableau that he hadn't worked his way up from the streets to his penthouse apartment from the inside, but rather had climbed up the outside like a giant ape scaling a skyscraper.

The face that presently filled Tableau's comp screen was softer, more intellectual in aspect. The man introduced himself to Tableau as Simon McMartinez of the Paxton Center for Missing and Exploited Children. While McMartinez talked, Tableau dropped his gaze to the toolbar at the lower edge of the screen. The Caller ID feature there told him that the call did indeed originate from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, though the information also indicated that the particular device being used was a pay phone. That was a bit odd, but he supposed the man wasn't in his office at the moment.

After his introduction, McMartinez went on to say, "I understand, sir, that you filed a missing person report with the city police, regarding your daughter Krimson."

"Why, have you heard something?" Tableau said, impatient to get to the point.

"No, sir, I'm sorry, but I was hoping that we could lend you and the police some support with this case. We try to give them field investigative assistance in as many cases as our work load can handle."

"Well, I'd appreciate all the help I can get."

"Very good, sir. Might I come to your place of business right now and discuss this with you in person?"

"Yeah, yeah, sure. You know where I am? I can send my driver for you if it's easier."

"Ah, yes, actually-that would save me from using public transportation. Very good, sir. I'll wait in the lobby, then."

"Someone will be on their way." Tableau tapped a key, broke the connection, then tapped another key to contact his chief of security.

In moments, another face filled the screen. This face was covered in a camouflage of blue patches, ranging from pastel to indigo. But the camouflage was not makeup, nor was it even tattooing. It was the man's natural coloration, if natural were the right word. "Sir?" the man said.

"Jones, get down to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children." He recited the street address information that had been saved by his toolbar, as well. He then showed the man called Jones a picture of Simon McMartinez, a paused image from the call that his system had recorded automatically as it was programmed to do with all calls, until such time as he cleaned up its memory files of unnecessary data. "I want you to get this man and bring him here," he told Jones, as if his voice came from the frozen image of McMartinez. "He'll be waiting for you in the lobby."

"Very good, Mr. Tableau." Jones signed off, and his blue-camouflaged face vanished.

What a great idea to have Tableau's man come and pick him up, thought Jeremy Stake. He wished he had thought of it first.

Stake had anticipated that Tableau might check his Caller ID feature or trace the call. If Tableau doubted he was who he said he was, the meat magnate could later call the Center for Missing and Exploited Children and verify that a Simon McMartinez did indeed work there (though hopefully, he wouldn't be put through to the man himself). Or if Tableau cared to check any number of net sources, such as a phone directory, he might find an image of McMartinez's face, again to confirm his identity. It was for this sort of reason that Stake had decided to impersonate an actual person at an actual organization, rather than merely invent an undercover personality. But having Tableau's driver fetch him from the Center itself was just too perfect.

The only problem was that as Stake sat in the lobby waiting, a few people coming and going said hello to him, greeting him by name. One woman even looked at him quizzically and said, "Did you get a new hairstyle, Simon?" He smiled and pretended to be too busy talking on his wrist comp to answer her, and so she drifted along. But it made him anxious. What if McMartinez came down here right now from the building's third floor, on which the Center rented its offices?

Less than an hour ago, Stake had entered the Center and introduced himself as a private investigator hired by Adrian Tableau to find his missing daughter, Krimson. He had been introduced to Simon McMartinez, and had surreptitiously photo-captured the man on his wrist comp-several times, to be sure he got a clear, direct image. If he'd had more time, he might even have created a phony ID badge using one of these images, as he did when he impersonated forcers.

McMartinez said he hadn't seen Krimson's missing person file yet, but he called it up on his comp. He seemed genuinely concerned and apologized to Stake for not having been introduced to this case earlier; there were just too many kids going missing in a city of these proportions. But he promised to let Stake know right away if he came upon any information about the teenager.

Stake had then gone down to the lobby, locked himself in a stall in the men's room, and stared at the various images he had stolen of McMartinez's face, slowly transforming his features into those of the other man. As always when he needed to borrow an identity, Stake had been glad the man didn't have facial fair, wasn't obese or an octogenarian. Not that, in the latter two cases at least, his cells wouldn't have given their best effort. The planes of his face shifted, realigned themselves, as if the very bone of his skull were being molded, but as extreme as the process was it was without physical pain. When the metamorphosis was complete, he'd returned to the lobby to make his call.

And now, this simulacrum of Simon McMartinez looked up to see a man with a blue camouflaged face enter the office tower's lobby.

"Dung," Stake breathed.

It was not, of course, the first time he had seen a Blue War clone in the city of Punktown. But most of the clones who had survived the Blue War had been given jobs as miners on distant moon colonies, or made construction workers on orbital space stations, or made laborers in some other location that didn't intermix them greatly with a public too busy resenting clones as job competition to be grateful for their war service.

The clone veteran met Stake's eyes, as well, and immediately came walking toward him. But Stake had already guessed that this was Tableau's man. What else would a homunculus bred as a warrior be doing here in this silvery tower? And wearing an expensive black suit and a fashionable bowler hat, to boot?

"Mr. McMartinez?"

Stake pretended to end his imaginary wrist comp call, and stood up. "Yes? Are you Mr. Tableau's driver?"

"Yes, sir. I'm Mr. Jones, the security chief for Tableau Meats." He waved them back toward the lobby's revolving doors. "Will you come with me, please?"

They rode in Tableau's luxury helicar, which lifted above the congested street traffic and glided along invisible navigation tracks beamed through the canyons of steel and concrete. Its interior was heavy with Mr. Jones's high-priced cologne, which he seemed to overindulge in just to show that he could afford to do so on his salary. Or maybe the cologne and his fancy suit and bowler hat were his way of self-consciously compensating for his appearance-and origins. Stake couldn't help but lean toward the front seat and ask him, "So you were in the Blue War, huh?"

"Yes, sir. I was there for four years."

Me too, Stake wanted to tell him. "That must have been a rough ride."

"Yes it was. I lost my left foot in an engagement in the Kae Ta Valley."

"Really? Did you have it regenerated?"

"I don't believe that a cloned soldier would be deemed worthy of that level of attention, sir. No, I was given a prosthesis."

Ahh. Did Stake detect the slightest hint of resentment at the clone's station in life?

Then he frowned. The Kae Ta Valley? The cloned soldiers of the 5th Advance Rangers, led by Sergeant Adams, had been pinned down by heavy action in that location before rendezvousing with Stake's unit, holed up in the captured monastery. But he told himself not to become paranoid. The Fifth couldn't possibly have been the only cloned unit to fight their way through the Kae Ta Valley. Anyway, even in the unlikely case that this man had been one of the Rangers (Stake didn't remember him, as they all looked alike anyway), his guise as McMartinez would prevent him from being recognized. Still, unsettled, Stake activated his wrist comp, called up McMartinez's image, and stared hard at it, lest his face begin to dissolve back to its default setting prematurely.

He needed to maintain his disguise. He had felt this was the best way to approach Tableau, and poke about the issue of his missing daughter. And maybe in poking at that, he might turn up Yuki Fukuda's stolen doll. He knew it was unlikely that Tableau would have answered questions put to him by a private dick hired by his business rival.

"I hope you can help Mr. Tableau find his daughter," Jones spoke up from the front seat. "He's very distraught over it."

"I'll do my best," Stake said. Without lying in that regard, at least.

It was difficult for Stake to take in Tableau closely, at first, or even to hear his words. He was too stunned by the menagerie that formed the man's office, here at Tableau Meats.

The walls of the office were transparent, and behind this barrier were a dozen cells containing a variety of animals. These were natural specimens of the creatures his company produced in the form of headless/limbless battery animals. In one cell, a cow rested on its side in a bed of straw, its long-lashed eyes gazing back at Stake placidly. Two pigs in another cell. A cluster of chickens pecking at feed. A Kalian glebbi, a long-legged and long-necked reptile resembling a llama. Stake knew that the battery versions of these creatures, as produced in the manufacturing departments of this complex, would be bigger, plumper, without fur and scales and feathers to be removed. But what of that ape in one of the cells?

Stake had never heard about any race in Punktown that included such an advanced primate in their diet. This creature even looked bipedal, more of a hominid than an ape. But then he thought of the extradimensional race called the L'lewed, who bred a species of primate they had encountered on another world for sacrifice in a religious ritual. The L'lewed would have preferred to use more fully human beings for this purpose, but naturally that was frowned upon by the Earth Colonies. Could Tableau be producing the hominids here for the L'lewed's needs? Stake gestured at the creature, which was moving about its cell in an agitated way, back and forth, throwing them hostile looks and once baring its fangs in a cry they couldn't hear.

"Is this also a comestible animal, Mr. Tableau?"

Tableau turned to regard the creature, and laughed. "Oh, this guy is a one-of-a-kind, Mr. McMartinez. I once had a business partner named Grant Leery. We parted ways on, ah, bad terms. He liked to call me an ape in a suit, behind my back. So I had my lab people make this hairy fella from some of Grant's DNA that I got a hold of. But they tweaked it here and there, and we sort of regressed him a bit. I'm told my Grant is a fine specimen of Australopithecus africanus." He laughed again. "I had a hat made for him like an organ grinder's monkey, but he wouldn't keep it on."

"That's quite the unique revenge," Stake said, almost too stunned to feel disgusted.

Tableau faced his guest again, and looked like he regretted his candor. His mood became grimmer as he turned to the subject of his daughter. "I appreciate your help with Krimson. The forcers haven't done a damn thing, if you ask me. They suck enough tax money out of my ass to fund a half dozen precincts, but they can't turn up a single clue. And I've had my own security men dig around, asking questions, but… you know." He gestured at Jones as if to say, what can something that looks like that find out?

"I'll do everything within my power, Mr. Tableau."

"Here, come sit down. Coffee?" "Um, sure."

Tableau motioned to Jones, who promptly left the room, bowler hat cradled in one arm. Looking back at Stake, the businessman's hard eyes suddenly narrowed. He tilted his chin toward Stake's hands, folded in his lap. "Wrist comp not working?"

"Sir?"

"You called me from a pay phone." Stake glanced down at the device on his wrist. "Oh, right. No, no it isn't. It's glitched."

"Ah."

Stake, as McMartinez, asked Tableau to fill him in further on the circumstances of his daughter's disappearance. There had been no note left by her prior to her going missing and no message sent since, no calls to him from her, nothing; she simply hadn't returned home from school one day.

With an apologetic expression, Stake asked, "So do you think she might have run away with an older boyfriend, as the rumors have it?"

Once more Tableau's eyes narrowed, and his jaw thrust out more pugnaciously. "The problem with that theory is, I don't know this alleged person's name. She hinted to me that there was some older guy she liked-she wouldn't tell me how old-and I told her that any guy who tried to date her wouldn't be getting any older if he put a finger on her. She's sixteen! I don't care who her friends are fuc. seeing. I didn't want her getting taken advantage of by some horny punk. Well, after I told her how I felt, she wouldn't tell me a damn thing about him."

"But didn't she confide in any of her friends?"

"Either she didn't, or they've been covering for her. But I don't think they're covering for her now, because they know she could be in danger. And I've even offered some of her friends a reward if they put me on this boyfriend's trail, but they still can't tell me anything. So I don't know if there's a boyfriend involved in this or not. I don't know if I scared her away from dating him, or if she ended up protecting his identity even from her friends so I couldn't get to them."

"That's unfortunate," Stake mused aloud.

There was one bit of information he could provide Tableau, he knew, but he didn't dare. Not yet, anyway. That one of Krimson's friends claimed to have heard her voice on a Ouija phone. It looked like no one had shared that rumor with her father.

Instead, Stake casually introduced the matter that he had been hired to pursue. "Another funny rumor I've heard is that she envied a classmate of hers for having one of those kawaii-dolls that are so popular now. A very, very valuable one, belonging to a girl named Yuki Fukuda." He watched the businessman's eyes carefully after dropping this bomb. "Evidently this doll has been stolen. Is it possible she might have taken the doll and run off with it? To sell it, or.?"

Indeed, Tableau's eyes flashed with a predator's alertness. "Who are you talking to, to get a story like that?"

"Well," Stake stammered slightly, "I'm just starting out on this case, but I did put in a call to the Arbury School, and-"

"My daughter isn't a thief. And she hardly needs to sell stolen goods to make money, if you get my meaning." He waved his arms to encompass his office. "And for that matter, she has one of those dolls herself! I gave her the money for the stupid thing."

"Well, it's just that I heard she and Yuki aren't exactly the best of friends."

"Yeah, so? And that kid's father and I aren't the best of friends either, but my daughter wouldn't run away from home just because she stole a doll."

Stake glanced about the room at the animals behind the clear barrier. He was afraid to continue looking into Tableau's eyes; they were just too intense. He felt the knit of his face rustle on some nearly subliminal level. Maintaining his casual tone, he said, "Well, it's just that I'm told that doll was created at Fukuda Bioforms using some very controversial research."

"I don't know about that, and I don't care. I'm in the meat-making business, not the freak-making business like that arrogant son of a bitch."

Stake resisted the urge to bring up the hominid which presently crouched in its cell sifting through its fur for imaginary fleas. Though now Stake wouldn't put it past Tableau to breed fleas specifically for the purpose of tormenting that pitiful creature.

"As a product of that research," he said, "the doll could be very enlightening to another bio-engineer. Hence its extra value."

"Are you suggesting. you're not suggesting my daughter stole that doll to give to me, are you? So I could study Fukuda's techniques?"

"I'm just passing along the rumors that-"

"Well, she didn't!" Tableau snapped. "Even if she did steal it to give to me, where is she? Huh? Where is my daughter? This talk about that Fukuda kid's doll is not helping me out here, Mr. McMartinez. And you said you were going to help me find my daughter. I don't give a blast about John Fukuda's freaky research or his spoiled brat's toys."

"I understand, sir," Stake said, trying to calm the man.

Mr. Jones reentered the room then with a tray containing two coffees and a plate of croissants.

"About fucking time, Jones," Tableau grumbled to the clone, taking his own coffee.

"Yes, sir. Sorry," the war vet intoned.

Tableau addressed Stake again. "Okay, look, you keep in touch with me and I'll keep in touch with you. But you'll only be helping me if you stick to a realistic scenario."

"Mr. Tableau, I just feel it's in your daughter's best interest if we consider every possibility, no matter how far fetched it might seem at this point. As you say, Krimson is only sixteen. It's a volatile age. She might have done something impulsive and then, out of fear of the consequences, decided to run off. Either alone, or with her mystery man."

"I admit that mystery man angle is one we need to keep looking into."

"Well, that I'll do, sir."

Stake had finished about half his coffee when Tableau announced he had a business meeting coming up in fifteen minutes. Stake rose and the men shook hands again. The older man's grip was crushing. "Okay, then. Like I say, you keep in touch," Tableau said.

"Thanks for your help and hospitality."

Jones preceded Stake to the door and held it open for him. "I'll drive you back to your office now, sir."

"Jones, let Mr. Doe drive our guest back. I need you to be in that meeting with me." "Very well, Mr. Tableau. Then I'll be right back."

The clone walked Stake down a carpeted hallway and into another office, its door labeled SECURITY. In this large room, Stake was disconcerted-if not surprised-to see two clones identical to Mr. Jones sitting at two of the desks.

"Mr. Doe-would you give our guest Mr. McMartinez, here, a ride back to his office at 969 Trade Avenue? The Center for Missing and Exploited Children?"

One of the two other clones stood up promptly, retrieving a bowler hat from where he'd set it down. "Certainly. Come with me please, sir."

Stake smiled over his shoulder at Jones as he was led out of the security office. "Thanks. Mr. Jones. See you again." He couldn't resist the playfulness of the words. As he accompanied the black-suited Doe to the heliport on the roof, it was as though his escort had never been changed.

The next man on Adrian Tableau's computer screen looked furtive because he was hiding in a toilet stall, and he was hiding in a toilet stall because he didn't want his coworkers to see him take this call on his wrist comp. And he didn't want that, because this man-Gordon Fester- worked for Fukuda Bioforms.

Jones stood by his boss's desk as Tableau spoke to this man, to whom he had approached and offered money shortly after Fukuda Bioforms had assimilated Alvine Products. "I had a terrible thought a little while ago, Fester, and I wanted to run it by you."

"Yeah?" the furtive face whispered. Tableau heard a toilet flush in another stall.

"You know my daughter Krimson is missing. Well, it's come to my attention that a rumor at her school has my daughter stealing a doll belonging to John Fukuda's daughter, one of those blasting kiwi things or whatever they are."

"Kawaii-dolls; yeah. His daughter Yuki's doll got stolen out of her locker, I guess. It's got to be worth a lot to him, because I hear he had a special team make it."

"Some kind of experimental research?"

"Right. The team was headed up by Pablo Fujiwara. Pablo was a designer at Alvine Products, who survived when the earthquake ripped through it."

"So Fukuda is hot to get this thing back." "Yeah. I hear he hired a private investigator to look for it." "Really? Do you know that person's name?" "No."

"Find out. Because the terrible thought I have is this, Fester. If people think Krimson stole this doll, then that means John Fukuda might blame Krimson for it, too. And if Fukuda believes that, then maybe the son of a bitch has done something to my daughter."

On the computer screen, Gordon Fester widened his eyes and nodded in horror at the thought. "Wow. Yeah, I don't know."

"Well look into it! And get me the name of the detective he hired. If Fukuda has done something to Krimson-kidnapped her or… whatever-then he might have hired someone like that as muscle."

"I'll see what I can find out," Tableau's inside man promised, knowing that he'd be well compensated for his efforts.

Adrian Tableau disconnected, then looked up at Mr. Jones, who loomed above him like a statue. "If Fukuda has hurt a hair on her head," he growled, "I'll skin that fuck alive. And I'll skin his daughter alive in front of him, before I do."

A peripheral movement caused Tableau to look up and see a blob of fresh feces splatted against the inner wall of the hominid's cell. It was glaring out at him defiantly.

"Jones," Tableau said, "you know how people crack open the skulls of living monkeys to eat their brains?"

"Yes, sir."

"Find me a chef who can do that."