there?”
“The only exits from the parking lot are onto Michaelson and he hasn’t
come out this way, so unless he fled on foot,”
“In there?”
“all right. We’ve got to nail him before he slides out of the trap with
those diskettes.”
“Nothing worthwhile on the diskettes anyway,” Bobby said.
Decodyne had been on to Rasmussen from the time he applied for the job,
because Dakota & Dakota Investigation which was contracted to handle the
company’s security checks-had penetrated the hacker’s highly
sophisticated false ID. Decodyne’s management wanted to play along with
Rasmussen long enough to discover to whom he would pass the Wizard files
when he got them; they intended to prosecute the money man who had hired
Rasmussen, for no doubt the hacker’s employer was one of Decodyne’s
primary competitors.
They had allowed Tom Rasmussen to think he had compromised the security
cameras, when in fact he had been under constant observation. They also
had allowed him to break down the file codes and access the information
he wanted, but unknown to him they had inserted secret instructions in
the files, which insured that any diskettes he acquired would be full of
trash data of no use to anyone.
Flames roared and crackled, consuming the van. Julie watched chimeras
of reflected flames slither and caper up the glass walls and across the
roof and coalesce there in the form of gargoyles.
Raising her voice slightly to compete with the fire and with the shriek
of approaching sirens, she said, “Well, we thought he believed he’d
circumvented the videotape records of the security cameras, but
apparently he knew we were on to him.”
“Sure did.”
“So he also might’ve been smart enough to search for an anticopying
directive in the files-and find a way around it.”
Bobby frowned. “You’re right.”
“So he’s probably got Wizard, unscrambled, on those diskettes.
“Damn, I don’t want to go in there. I’ve been shot at enough tonight.”
A police cruiser turned the corner two blocks away and sped toward them,
siren screaming, emergency lights casting off alternating waves of blue
and red light.
“Here come the professionals,” Julie said. “Why don’t we let them take
over now?”
“We were hired to do the job. We have an obligation. honor is a sacred
thing, you know. What would Sam Spade think of us?”
She said, “Sam Spade can go spit up a rope.”
“What would Philip Marlowe think?”
“Philip Marlowe can go spit up a rope.”
“What will our client think?”
“Our client can go spit up a rope.”
“Dear, ‘spit’ isn’t the popular expression.”
“I know, but I’m a lady.”
“You certainly are.”
As the black-and-white braked in front of them, another police car
turned the corner behind it, siren wailing, and entered Michaelson Drive
from the other direction.
Julie put her Uzi on the pavement and raised her hand to avoid
unfortunate misunderstandings.
“I’m really glad you’re alive, Bobby.”
“You going to kick me again?”
“Not for a while.”
FRANK Pollard hung on to the tailgate and rode the truck nine or ten
blocks, without drawing the attention of the driver.
Along the way he saw a sign welcoming him to the city of Anaheim, so he
figured he was in southern California, although he still didn’t know if
this was where he lived or whether he was from out of town. Judging by
the chill in the air, it was winter-not truly cold but as frigid as it
got in these climates. He was unnerved to realize that he did not know
the date or even the month.
Shivering, he dropped off the truck when it slowed and turned onto a
service way that led through a warehouse district. Huge,
corrugated-metal buildings-some newly painted and some streaked with
rust, some dimly lit by security lamps and some not-loomed against the
star spattered sky.
Carrying the flight bag, he walked away from the warehouses. The
streets in that area were lined with shabby bungalows. The shrubs and
trees were overgrown in many places: untrimmed palms with full skirts of
dead fronds; bushy hibiscus with half-closed pale blooms glimmering
softly in the gloom; jade hedges and plum-thorn hedges so old they were
more woody than leafy; bougainvillea draped over roofs and fences,