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"Soon now."
A smooth purring sound grew audible directly above. Jake was
concentrating on the two men who were stalking him and didn't look
up.
Then a sizzling beam of crimson light came slicing down slant i' wise.
It hit the cyborg who'd taunted Jake, cutting him neatly in half at the
waist.
When the remaining assassin saw the two chunks of his associate
!i slap to the ground, splashing blood and innards, he yelled, "Holy
"shit!" Spinning on his heel, shaking violently, he started to run.
Going by on the street beyond the alley mouth was one of the hourly
dragons and fireworks parades that the Little Asia Chamber of Commerce
staged for visitors. A long scarlet, black and gold robot dragon was
writhing and lurching past, breathing out long sparkling streamers of
fire. Firecrackers exploded all around it.
The running cyborg had to ha}t at the edge of the passing parade.
The beam from above came crackling down again and caught him.
It lopped off his head, hood and all. The head went spinning away,
bouncing down on the street directly in the path of the zigzagging
dragon.
"Jeez, it's a good thing I got here when I did," remarked an amplified
voice from above.
Jake, stun gun still in hand, looked up at the rainbow-hued air car
that was dropping down for an alley landing.
5 6
Piloting the multicolored vehicle was a demure-seeming teenage girl
dressed in the green shirt and tan jumper that was the uniform of a
very exclusive private school in the Bel Air Sector. The car settled
down near him and the passenger-side door popped open. The darkhaired
girl leaned and smiled across at him. "I don't think you could' ye
saved your ass without my intervention, Jake."
"Playing hooky today, Mari Alice
"Zish. Is that the thanks I get for pulling your nuts out of the
He told her, "I think I was winning the contest on my own and
"Congratulations on surviving, Jake." Singapore Sammy had stepped into
the alley and was coming toward him with his right hand held out. "Let
me shake your hand."
Jake hopped into the passenger seat. "Take this thing up." "Somebody
you're avoiding?" "Think he's a kamikaze."
"Zish!" She whapped the control panel with one small fist.
The rainbow air car shuddered once, then shot straight up into the
afternoon.
"Is that any way to treat a pal?" shouted Sammy, lumping, shaking a
fist.
When the air car was 200 feet up, Mari Alice put it on hover
"Might as well defuse that schlep" She flipped a toggle."
A beam of intense green light shot down out of the belly of the air car
At the same time the car started to climb higher. Five seconds after
the beam touched Sammy he exploded with an enormous whumping boom. He
was scattered all across the alley, the white suit shredded into
thousands of pieces of flickering cloth confetti, his wiring, circuitry
and tubes spinning in several directions and then slamming into the
alley walls. Smoke, dark and thick, came climbing up from the spot
where he'd been standing.
"Your hunch about him was right," said the girl, giggling. "That
: was sure a kamikaze, Jake."
"He blew a big chunk out of the back wall of the Drug Store."
"Serves them right, doesn't it, for sicking the bastard on you?"
Jake said, "I guess it does at that. What were you doing
hereabouts?"
"I didn't come of my own free will. And I don't much like rescuing
doddering old cops." She punched out a flight pattern. "I'm a
doddering old private detective these days, child."
"That's right, I forgot. Same thing," she said as the air car swung
southward. "My uncle wants to meet with you."
Jake shook his head. "Not just now, Mari Alice I'm working."
"He knows you're working. That's what he wants to see you for.
Catch?"
"Okay, I'll accept the invitation." He grinned and settled back into
the passenger seat.
The Dinelli estate was underwater. Protected by a vast, watertight
plastiglass dome, it covered three acres off the coast of the Malibu
Sector. Leo Dinelli was sitting with Jake on the terrace that
overlooked the tennis court. He was a tall, slender man, greying, and
he controlled the Mafia in SoCal.
There were globes of white light floating at various spots, but the
sunlight that came down through the water dominated and gave everything
a pale blue-green tint.
On the tennis court two pretty blonde young women were playing.
"Androids," explained Dinelli, noticing Jake's glance.
"You can tell the an dies from Uncle Leo's human girlfriends,"
said Mari Alice who was sitting, legs crossed, on the stone railing
that circled most of the flagstone terrace, "because they're over twice
as smart."
"Go do your homework."
"Did it."
"Then sit quietly, be a nice girl, don't interrupt."
"Zish."
Jake asked, "What did you want to see me about, Leo?"
"You've never thought much of me, Jake."
"If he's like most people," put in Mari Alice "he loathes and--"
"Go away," suggested her uncle.
"Okay, sorry, I'll be as silent as one of your mistresses." She a hand
over her mouth, winking at Jake.
"I was a cop when I first met you,7 Jake reminded him. "That
automatically made us opponents."
"Yeah, but right now we have the same enemies--the Teklords." "True,
but that's not a hell of a good basis for a friendship, Leo." Dinelli
leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees. "You know we've been
putting a lot of money into developing Koke," he said. "To our way of
thinking--and market research tends to back this up, Jake--Koke is the
best synthetic drug available today."
"Yeah, but it's still illegal."
"True," admitted the Mafia chief. "Our biggest problem is that
Tek continues to outsell us in every new sales region we enter. My
brother Gig still insists Tek is just a fad that'll fade away, but I
don't agree. Still, with Koke I think we've finally got a product that
makes a good addition to the more traditional hard drugs the Mafia is
noted for distributing."
"If you'd ever bother to watch those Prof Freedon vidtapes I
loaned you, Uncle Leo, you'd realize that there's more to Tek than
simply getting high or--"
"Jake, you did a damn good job against Hokori down in Mexico.
Anything further you can do to help smash the Tek cartels would be"
"Anything I do won't be so you guys can then move in and peddle
Koke, Leo."
"Hey, I'm not asking you to endorse our product." Dinelli looked again
at the tennis game. "Although of all the so-called dangerous drugs,
Koke is the safest. If we could only legally advertise the stuff,
explain to the public that here they have a product which--"
"Is this all you wanted to talk about? .... "No, I got a couple of
other things." He left his chair, went over to lean against the
railing. He seemed to turn a deep shade of blue or a moment as the
fluctuating light from above touched him.
, we've been picking up reports that the Tek bastards have put orders
to have you killed off."
"I already suspected that. Do you know why they're gunning for me?"
"All we know so far is that they want you put out of the way as quick
as possible."
"Does it have something to do with what happened to Sonny?" "Not sure,
but it looks like the orders came out of Japan." "From who?"
Dinelli gave a negative shake of his head and returned to his chair.
He leaned back and gazed up at the brightly colored fish that seemed to
be flying by above. "Can't answer that one yet, Jake."
"What about Winterguild?"
"That son of a bitch. I never got along with him."
"Did the order to kill him come from the same people who want me
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