“Get the drop on the Drips!,” it told him. “A properly sized condom is your only effective protection from sexually transmitted diseases, including Herpes Rangoon.” There was a picture as well, of a peeved-looking rat who stared at an oversized condom covering his groin like a sheet, and of a smiling canine pulling one on that fit just right.
Nohar shook his head and walked up to the reception desk. A bored-looking lepus sat behind it watching some sort of comedy program on the comm set into the desk. Nohar noticed at least three security cameras as he walked up.
“What can I do you for?” the rabbit said without moving his gaze from the screen. He pulled a stalk of celery from a bowl on the desk and began chewing.
Nohar didn’t want to attract any attention. “I’m here to pick up some extra money.” Just the regular crap that they get here every day, Nohar thought. Give them that, and they won’t notice you.
Lepus didn’t even turn his head. He just kept eating his celery and said, “Donation? Fill this out.” With his free hand the rabbit handed Nohar an electronic clipboard with an attached stylus. “You can go to the waiting room.”
That was it. Having done his duty, the lepus ceased paying attention to him. Lepus could have looked up, seen a black-furred feline that was way too big to be a jaguar—or anything else with that kind of coloring—made the decision that his visitor was a mule, and saved the bureaucracy some effort by saying that they didn’t want any from him. But the wonderful thing about bureaucracy was that no one was willing to spend the effort. Lepus would perform his job description even if a pink walked through the door.
Nohar took the clipboard and walked into the waiting room. There were more holo posters here, many warning of the dangers of Herpes Rangoon, a.k.a. the Drips. There were other posters that told people that every donation to the Bensheim Foundation was thoroughly screened for disease, and that no one could catch anything by donating.
Nohar settled into one of the larger chairs and rested the clipboard on his lap. He glanced at the glowing liquid-crystal page and read the first few questions:
“Have you ever been tested for Herpes Rangoon?”
“If so, what was the result of that test?”
“When were you last tested?”
“Have any of your sexual partners been tested for Herpes Rangoon?”
“Have you ever experienced nonhealing genital sores, itching, or difficulty urinating?”
Nohar read the list with a growing incredulity. It seemed to border on obsessive, especially if they were going to test the donors themselves. Nohar looked up from the clipboard’s display. He began noticing how empty the waiting room seemed. He knew that was somehow wrong. The Clinic wasn’t just for insemination, but it was a clearing house for all sorts of genetically related medical help, and it was all pretty much free. This was one of two Clinics in all of LA. The place should be packed, all the time.
There were maybe half a dozen seats taken, less than half the waiting room. Nohar noticed that they were all male, and most filling out clipboards like his.
Nohar looked at the person closest to him, a huge ursine who’d taken one of the five oversized chairs along the far wall of the waiting room. He wore what Nohar was thinking of as the Compton uniform, the pants mostly blousy strips, the vest little more substantial than Nohar’s shoulder holster.
The bear was staring at the clipboard, puzzling over the form.
Nohar cleared his throat. “Ask you something?”
Ursine eyes moved slightly in Nohar’s direction. There was a hint of menace in the bear’s expression. However, it was undirected menace. It only took Nohar a few moments to see that this guy was just a kid, probably just hitting puberty for his species.
It was somewhat scary to think that this kid was going to get bigger with age. He was already bigger than Nohar.
“What you want?”
“Know why this place is so empty?”
“Why the fuck ask me?” The bear turned back to the clipboard.
Nohar sighed inwardly, but he decided that the angle was worth pursuing. He didn’t know what had happened to Manuel, but his son’s job was the one lead he had at the moment. If there was something odd going on with the clinic, he wanted to know—and he couldn’t go harassing the staff here, not right under the Bad Guys’ noses.
“Thought you looked like someone who knows what’s what.” Nohar did his best to stroke the ursine’s ego; the kid was young enough that ego was probably the most important thing in his life. “Want to know if I’m stepping into something here.” Nohar waved in the direction of the poster that proclaimed that no one could catch a virus by donating to the Foundation.
The bear looked across at him again. “So you asking me?”
“See someone better?”
That won the kid over. “Fuck no, got me there.” He laughed and put down the stylus that he’d been filling out his form with. His voice took on a tone as if he was talking to his little brother. Nohar didn’t mind. Even though he was probably thirty years this kid’s senior, he didn’t look it anymore.
“You don’t got no worries. They only stick you to take blood to check if you’re infected.”
“What about . . . ?” Nohar made some stroking motions with his hand—
“Don’t you know anything?”
“First time I’ve been here.” That was the truth. But he said it in a way to sound lost. He figured that the easiest way to ingratiate himself into Bear-Boy’s confidence was to act more naive than Bear-Boy was.
“You thought they let you baste some flesh here or something?”
“Well . . .”
Bear-Boy laughed. “Look, it’s just you and a little plastic cup.”
Nohar did his best to look disappointed. Bear-Boy laughed all the harder and slapped him on the back. The blow ignited pain in the old shoulder injury, but he bore it with good grace. It took him a moment to think of something adequately stupid to say.
Nohar shook his head and asked Bear-Boy, “So that’s why there ain’t no females here?”
“Oh, fuck, are you lost! You never hear about the Drips?”
“You just told me—”
Bear-Boy shook his head at his new friend’s ignorance, and it was all Nohar could do to suppress a smile. “Look, you’ll be fucking plastic ’cause you’re a guy. Female’s got to have the wad of some stranger shot up her quim. Got me?”
Nohar paused a moment and then said, “Oh—”
“See my point?” Bear-Boy lowered his voice a bit and spoke conspiratorially. “Broad gets knocked up here with some hot juice, puts a damper on things.”
“They say they test their donors,” Nohar said, lowering his voice to be even with Bear-Boy’s.
“Like they check them all? Fuck, boy, where you living? They got samples frozen from years before they named the Drips. Word is, females break out with this crap all the goddamn time.” Bear-Boy winked at him. “Not that they admit it, or that their money’s not as good as anyone else’s.”
“Thanks.”
Bear-Boy straightened up, leaned over the clipboard, and said, “By the way, you ain’t a mule, are you?”
“What’s that matter?”
“ ’Cause your come’s dead if you are. They can’t use it. Ain’t going to pay for dead come.”
Nohar put his head in his hands. “Where’s the bathroom?”
“Down that hall, to the right.”
Nohar nodded and went in the direction indicated. He was thankful that Bear-Boy was leaning over his clipboard chuckling. That meant he didn’t notice that Nohar was just on the edge of busting out laughing himself.
Chapter 14
Nohar stayed at the Clinic for a little less than half an hour, filling out the form and surreptitiously watching the employees, looking for possible coworkers of Manuel. Staying longer would seem to b
e pushing things.
He went to the bathroom a couple of times. It gave him a view into the closed-off part of the building through an open door at the end of the hall. He could catch a glimpse of part of a storage area without being obvious about it. He could smell an odd scent or two from there, moreau types he couldn’t quite identify.
It wasn’t until the third trip that he caught sight of someone back there. The guy was in overalls and work gloves, and for a moment Nohar thought that somehow a dog and a rabbit had done the impossible and made a mule kid. Then, when the guy moved, he saw the broad tail and the barely engineered legs—
A kangaroo.
The guy moved so Nohar could glimpse his ID tag. The name was bold enough for him to read, “Oxford.”
Not a difficult character to find again.
After that, Nohar sat and quietly filled out his form. He was especially careful to tell the Clinic people that he was a mule. Just as he wanted, once he handed in the form, they took a few minutes to say to him thanks but no thanks. He managed to get out of there without a single test.
And the Bad Guys hadn’t budged.
• • •
It took Nohar less than fifteen minutes at a public comm to find out where Oxford the Roo lived. There were only so many Oxfords in the public database for Compton and vicinity. He kept connecting to each Oxford’s comm until he came up with one whose recorded message was left by a person of the right species.
His quarry was Nathan Oxford of Lynwood.
Nohar walked away from the comm, and the clinic, and made sure he wasn’t being followed. Only when he was sure that he was out of sight of any pinks did he find another comm and call a taxi to take him to Lynwood.
• • •
Nathan Oxford lived in a ranch-style housing project that was in bad shape. The lawns were dead, and the old brick residential buildings were covered in spray paint. Half the units had windows boarded over, and one set of units at the far end of the complex had been burned out, leaving nothing but a shell.
Nohar spent his first hour at Willow Estates looking for pink surveillance. He watched for a long time at a distance with his camera before he was certain that there wasn’t any physical surveillance of the premises. That was good. If the Bad Guys were watching one random member of the Clinic’s staff, they would be watching everyone.
Even for these people, that seemed a stretch. Nohar still wasn’t sure that the Clinic had anything to do with Manuel’s disappearance. All he was sure of was that the Bad Guys were set upon nailing anyone caught looking for him.
That might mean the Bad Guys were hunting down Manuel themselves, or it might mean that they had gotten him, killed him, and were trying to cover it up.
Nohar’s anger flared when he thought of that. If they had harmed his son—
God help anyone who had touched Manuel then.
Nohar had Oxford’s unit number from the comm, so it wasn’t difficult to head straight there. He walked through the courtyards, listening to the yips of children playing and adults yelling. It was still daylight, late afternoon, and he had about an hour before Oxford would come home from work. More, if he did any overtime.
This place had had security at one point. Nohar counted a half-dozen brackets that used to hold cameras. The one that still held a camera was bent sidewise and dangled a severed power cord.
Oxford’s unit faced the parking lot rather than one of the courtyards. The door was a security model, steel with an electronic dead bolt.
There was little chance of him breaking into the place by brute force. That didn’t concern Nohar much. While the place had once been secure, it had since passed into the bottom tier of such places. Where the buildings were this far gone, the corruption rarely confined itself to the physical structure.
Nohar walked around until he found what passed for the main office. It was two buildings down from Oxford, behind a door that was exactly the same except for the words “Rental Office” stenciled on it. Nohar leaned on the call button until someone answered.
The door was answered by a shabby-looking rat who smelled of beer. “What’cha want? Damn it.” As the rat spoke, his triangular head looked at Nohar’s feet and started traveling up. His gaze never passed above Nohar’s waist, where Nohar held a c-note at the rat’s eye level.
The c-note disappeared and the rat asked, “What you need, my friend?”
“You need to let me into an apartment.”
The rat didn’t even hesitate. “Which one?”
• • •
After two hours, and after Nohar had the chance to go over every inch of the apartment, Nathan Oxford threw the bolts on his front door and walked in. The door was closing as Oxford’s odd, not-quite-canine muzzle sniffed the air. He knew something was wrong before Nohar ever spoke.
Nohar stood at the end of the hall opposite the front door shrouded in the gloom of the windowless kitchen. He held the Vind trained on the roo.
“Don’t turn on the lights. Don’t look at me. Don’t move.”
The door clunked home. Oxford stopped moving. He had stopped while facing the living room, in the act of turning around. Nohar could smell his fear. After what Nohar had seen in the kitchen and bathroom, he didn’t really care what Oxford felt.
“What is it you want, governor? You can have it.” The roo had an accent that had to be feigned.
“Living room, face the wall.”
Oxford nodded and did what he was told. Nohar stood in the entranceway and faced Oxford, well out of range of his powerful hind legs.
“Who are you?” Oxford asked. “What the fuck do you want?”
“I have the gun, Nathan. I ask the questions.”
Oxford nodded.
“You’re a dealer, aren’t you?”
“You want my stash, take it. More where that came from.”
Nohar nodded. “The Clinic’s well stocked.”
“Yeah, sure. Anything you want, we can even special order it—”
What a scam, Nohar thought in disgust. This guy was working in shipping and receiving, and skimming a prime supply of any sort of medication you could name. His kitchen was stocked with everything from methadone to synthetic morphine. He’d been doing it long enough that he could make bookshelves out of crates addressed to the Compton Bensheim Clinic.
Oxford made Nohar sick. Not only was he a dealer, but he was ripping off a charity to keep himself stocked. And he had just as much as admitted that he could falsify orders to bring in whatever he needed.
Something grew cold inside him as he thought that Manuel was involved in this sort of crap. He had to suppress an urge to shoot Oxford. The only good thing about this situation was that there were few guys less likely to call the cops.
“I don’t want your drugs.” The assertion made Oxford smell of more fear.
“Look, you work for Sammy. Look, I’ll quit selling across—”
“Shut up, Slimeball.”
Oxford shut up.
“Say anything more that isn’t a direct answer to a question, and I’m going to give you a twelve-millimeter gelding.”
Oxford shook, and his tail twitched, its mass giving the impression of a coiled spring.
“Understand?” Nohar asked.
“Y-yes.”
“Manuel Limón. You know him?”
Oxford nodded. “Yes.” His accent had slipped almost completely away.
“Last time you saw him?”
“Two weeks ago last Wednesday.”
“At the Clinic?”
“Yes.” Oxford’s voice was becoming shrill.
“I want a straight answer here. Was he ripping off the Clinic, too?”
Oxford hesitated a moment.
“Well?”
“Yes, damn it, everyone does it. It’s not such a fucking big deal.”
N
ohar’s disgust sank into his stomach. His voice lowered to a growl as he asked, “Drugs?” If this trash in front of him had gotten his son into drug-dealing, he was going to personally remove his liver and feed it to him.
“No, he never had the connections for that.”
“What, then?”
“Hospital equipment, electronics, ramcards—”
Nohar didn’t know if he was relieved to hear that or not. “Did he take anything the day you saw him last?”
“I don’t know. That was a while ago.”
Nohar cocked the action on the Vind so it made an ominous click. He could hear the echo from the kitchen. “I want you to think harder.”
“Fuck, okay. I don’t know what it was. Something came in that was supposed to go to the office in Pasadena. It was marked confidential, and he thought he had a gold mine.”
Pasadena. That struck a nerve. The automated van was heading for Pasadena, and the Bensheim Foundation had offices there. Nohar didn’t like the way this was going.
“How big was this package?” Nohar asked.
“It was a security envelope, for ramcards—stuff too sensitive for the net. Courier delivered. Marked confidential. Manuel thought it was corporate stuff that he thought some hacker friend of his could sell.”
Hacking the Bensheim Foundation, Nohar thought. How noble. Though Nohar was beginning to wonder about Doctor Bensheim’s charity.
“Did he?”
“What?”
“Have his hacker friend sell it?”
Oxford shook his head. “He vanished after that. I don’t know. Maybe he did and bought a ticket out of LA.”
Nohar doubted it. “Two more things and you might live through this.”
“What?”
Chapter 15
Oxford’s car was little better than his apartment. Nohar would’ve thought a dealer might have had something a little better than an aging Dodge Python. The oversized red car’s fiberglass shell had been cracked in several places, and fixed with tape. Nohar could fit in it, at least from the legs down, but he had to hunch over to drive.