Maybe the cab was an extravagance. We didn’t have a client, and my boss, the great Lucullus Marten, might decide I was wasting his money. On the other hand, my feet were aching, and I could prop them up on the jump seat of the big, roomy Checker cab. People call me Marten’s legman, and maybe they’re right. Mainly, what I do is a lot of footwork, and that’s what I was doing right now — checking libraries to find a copy of the Social Register, walking over to the offices of the New York Chronicle to read back files on the Van Alst family…and to check for any unpublished poop on the Van Alst murder.
Pamela Van Alst had been in Marten’s office just days before, brought in by a friend who didn’t like the crowd the poor little rich girl was running with. Marten doesn’t like young females. He growled at her. Pamela didn’t like opinionated detective geniuses who need a special chair to hold their oversized bulk. She left. Then she turned up dead last night. It was a particularly ugly way to go — she’d been dragged down a country road.
The killing had finally stirred Marten off his big, fat…laurels. Taking the murder as a personal insult, he’d sent me out to gather, as he put it, “the relevant information.”
That’s the Lucullus Marten method of cracking a case. He stays in the slightly drafty, gray stone mansion way west on Seventy-second Street, eating gourmet meals, drinking at least seven bottles of sparkling cider a day, and tending his world-class crop of cacti on the top floor. His trusty legman, Monty Newman — that’s me — goes forth to track down facts, ask questions, and annoy suspects.
I report. He stores the info in a brain at least as massive as the rest of him, and comes up with solutions to the knottiest mysteries.
Unfortunately, the information I was coming home with, while relevant, wasn’t very helpful. I could have dug much the same facts out of the newspaper coverage. And, thanks to the wealthy Van Alsts putting up an enormous reward to find the murderer of their beloved daughter, I’d already encountered several other investigators pushing into the case.
Simply put, the facts were as follows: The deceased had been found on a back road of Alstenburgh, an upstate town where the elite meet to raise property values. The discoverer had been a dairy farmer rushing his milk to market.
Pamela Van Alst had last been seen in the company of Woodrow Peyton, eldest son of a political dynasty. The Peytons had provided the nation with several senators and would-be presidents. Young Woodrow spent his time in Alstenburgh, Albany, Washington…and, often enough, on the more easygoing streets of Manhattan.
Society pages described him as “a young man-about-town.” Newspapers are wary of libel suits. However, when I asked, the staffs of selected hotels, restaurants, and nightclubs called Woodie Peyton a bum — but a bum with a whole lot of money behind him.
I could have figured as much from the rather careful way he was treated in the front-page news stories. So I’m afraid I had more weeds than flowers in the bouquet I was bringing back to Marten.
I stepped from the cab, carefully jotting the fare down in my notebook, and started for the iron- railinged steps of the house I know best in this city.
Then I noticed the beefy character coming out of a parked car, heading my way, and reaching into the light topcoat he wore against the late fall chill.
My own hand slipped under my jacket. I’d learned long ago that murder cases can turn quite unexpectedly ugly. A little artillery can go a long way in meeting some of those surprises.
The beefy man’s meaty fingers emerged with nothing more deadly than a leather case, flashing a badge and an identification card. I hadn’t pegged him as a member of the local law, and he wasn’t. The ID was federal. I had a genuine G-man keeping me from the comforts of home.
“You’re Monty Newman,” he announced.
I shook my head in wonder. “The government’s always right.”
The beefy features contracted into a look that was supposed to scare me. “Let’s say the government keeps an eye open for potential troublemakers. You’ve spent the day asking prying questions about some very important people.”
“I wasn’t aware that was against federal law,” I said. “No state secrets were revealed, and none of us discussed overthrowing the established order. We’re all waiting to see how the next elections work out.”
“Very funny.” The G-man sounded as if he’d been told humor was unpatriotic. “But certain people won’t be laughing.”
“Well, you certainly aren’t,” I had to agree. “I thought they’d managed to weed all you patronage types out of the feds. Certain people might frown on an officer running political errands, Agent Olin.”
I’d already gotten his name when he flashed his credentials. Quick eyes were part of my job. The rest is just the way I am. When somebody pushes, I like to shove right back.
Olin twisted his face out of its previous unpleasant expression into an equally unpleasant sneer. “I don’t think you’ll get far — trying that, or staying on the Van Alst case.”
Whoever he had behind him, Olin obviously thought he had ironclad protection. He had also decided not to waste any more time on me. “Remember what I told you…and pass it along to that fat freak inside.”
I turned my back on this representative of the power and majesty of the law.
“Oh, count on it,” I told him. “But I’ll give you fair warning. You might need reinforcements if you’re hoping to budge Lucullus Marten.”
As the town house door swung closed behind Monty Newman, Matt Hunter disengaged from the computer program. He blinked for a moment, lying back in his computer-link couch. It took a little while to recover from the differences between the created world of the simulation and everyday reality. The sim was set in 1930s Manhattan — far away in time and space from the Washington, D.C., of 2025.
His room was a lot colder than the late fall chill of the sim. He’d left his window open, and the winter breeze coming in was downright freezing. The capital was in the grip of a cold spell. Forecasters were predicting snow, something that D.C. usually handled badly during its rare appearances.
Matt fought back a shiver as he went to shut the window. His jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt were much lighter than Monty Newman’s snazzy wool suit. Right now, he wouldn’t even have minded wearing the unpleasant Agent Olin’s topcoat.
Matt’s usually cheerful face set in a frown at the thought of a federal agent being set up as his opponent — maybe even as a bad guy — in the sim. He knew several FBI people — specifically the special agents assigned to keep the country’s computer networks free of criminals. Olin was nothing like the Net Force agents Matt had
