Detective work is Glamorous

The painter’s bucket in the shower was beginning to overflow. The trick with pay as you go water was to try to save as much as you could when you had the extra money, so when money was tight you wouldn’t experience as drought. Every person was allotted ten minutes of bathing water a day, after that you could pay for more if you needed it. He always seemed to need it.

“Yes double my time.”

“Payment accepted.” He thought he heard a tone of amazement in the computer’s voice.

He still wanted to hear about the case from Jewels so he thought he’d try her home line this time. He hated paying Sally bell's rates on the vidfone, but it really was the best way to reach anyone.

“Hey kid it’s me.” He said looking as distantly as possible into the camera. He wasn’t sure if she would help or not. Not with the way they had left things, plus Sarah had rattled his cage a bit.

“I know it’s been a while, but I could use your help.” He paused for a moment.

“Look I’m not sure if I have a case or not yet, but if I do it’s a big one.  Can you meet me a Dante’s at nine? I think we can talk about it there a privately.” Her voice mailed beeped when he was done instructing him to press 1 for more options.

He hoped she wasn’t in her office when he called, but he figured she saw the ID and didn’t pick up. Either way Dante’s might peak her interest.  They had spent a lot of nights there when they both worked for Star.

The Inferno was a nightclub; where you could get anything and no one ever cared you were there. Everyone knew that most of the city’s illegal deals went down there, but every time someone paid for a warrant, to raid the place, the issuer changed their mind before the warrant could be executed.

He approached the counter at Kwan’s. ‘I’ll have the…”

“You’ll have the number 20; man at table twelve bought your breakfast already.” He looked towards table twelve and could see the well cut dark hair of a young man.

He slid into the booth across from his benefactor.

“You’re fifteen minutes late Mr. O’Neil.” He said wiping his mouth. He was a dainty man maybe in his early thirties neatly groomed and obviously used to luxury.

“I wasn’t aware we had an appointment, Mr…”

“We did not. I was merely commenting on your normal schedule.”

“I had extra shower time this morning.” O’Neil said as he looked down at the number 20, a perfectly grilled steak and two real eggs.

“They told me this was your regular breakfast, and I didn’t want to break your routine.”

“I would have expected a man in your career to have been less routined.  You were terribly easy to find.”

“I find it simplifies things that way.”  He said as he cut into the steak. “What can I do for you? Mr…”

He acknowledged the question this time. “My name is unimportant. What I can offer you however should more than peak your interests.” He sipped his tea gently.

“The gentlemen that have employed me are very interested in something that you may be able to provide them.”

O’Neil swallowed. “And what would that be?”

“How familiar are you with direct human cloning?”

“I know the term, and I know it’s illegal.”

“My clients believe that the laws will be changing soon, and would like to be ahead of their competition when the laws can change.”

“So why tell me?”

“Jor-tech has the edge in direct human cloning, and with your recent addition to their roll, my clients believe you could help us with that edge.”

“I think your clients have been miss informed, I don’t go in for corporate espionage.”

“They will be disappointed to hear that.” He stood to leave, “they had so hoped you were the man for the job.” He bowed politely and turned to leave.

“Mr. O’Neil.” He slid a paper business card towards him. “You can access the account on this card and charge me for your consultation this morning. If you should reconsider, the information we are looking for will be located in the file listed on the card.”

“Thank your clients for breakfast, but I won’t change my mind.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” He said as he left.

“Meat two days in a row, this case was getting really lucrative.” He thought as he ate the last bit of steak. He looked down at the card on the front was a temporary account number, so his anonymity would be protected, and on the back were the letters B.E.R.D.A.C.H.E. He slipped it into his pocket, might come in handy later.

He had arranged for himself and Gorby to set up shop in Chandler’s office for a while, under the auspices of needing to think like Jordan. In fact he wanted to see if Gorby could access the private network. Murty and Sachi had lied to him about the frequency of Chandler’s visits, the DNA dating at least showed he frequented his wet bar before his disappearance. O’Neil wanted to know why if no one could remember him being there, why there was so much junk DNA lying around.

Gorby hooked up his gear and proceeded to hack.  His computer buzzed loudly. “This is going to take a while, they're paranoid round here.”

“That’s okay I’ve got a temporary transdermist to see.” He pulled the digital card from his pocket. The waitress from last night had been an old pro, and it was a good bet if he got the card so had Jordan. He picked up the receiver of the vidfone on the desk.

An attractive young woman answered the phone. “May I help you?”

“Ah yes, I received this number at Fred’s New Life Temple.”

“Funny, you don’t seem the type.”

“So I’ve been told.” He looked sheepishly down as if he was too shy to ask. ” I would like a consultation.”

“Sure, we have an opening today if you’d like.”

“Thank you,” he said. They made arrangements for him to see about becoming a she later that day.

“I always suspected,” Gorby teased.

“You needed something?”

“Yeah but the whole Lola thing is much more interesting.” He smiled at his own joke. “I cracked the system.”

“Thought you said it would take a while?”

“When you think in binary, 20 minutes is a while Betty.”

O’Neil nodded to himself as he made a mental note to turn Gorby in for hacking Star Corp, when he was done. “So is there anything interesting.”

“Not really, our boy did use the place a lot though. Mostly for phone calls and a few file transfers.”

“What kind of phone calls?”

“I’m not sure yet give me a few.”

“What about the files?”

“They’ve been erased, but I can recover them, at least most of them.”

“How long will that take?”

“Uh,” he said distracted now by his computer, ‘maybe an hour, maybe two.”

“I’m going the check out the crime scene. Maybe Jewels missed something.” He gathered up his gear to leave. He showed Gorby the business card. “Check for a file with this name, might mean something.”

The transdermist office was a complete bust; if Jordan had been there they weren’t talking. The crime scene as well had done very little to shed any light on his disappearance. Gorby on the other hand had a very fruitful day. He had recovered several files, mostly contacts at escort services, as well as the file on the business card. The encryption on that file was pretty intense and Gorby thought it would take several days to crack it, so he had taken his gear and headed to the mountains with the hack from SallyBell, this left O’Neil with a case but nothing to go on.

“Hey Jewels.” He said into the desk vidfone. “Look I need everything you’ve got on the Jordan case. I know things didn’t go well, but this is business and I could use your help. I’ll see you at Dante’s tonight.”

His cell phone rang, almost shaking him out of the desk, it was Ms. Jordan. “I’ve been going over Chandler’s affairs and I found something that I thought might help.” O’Neil was grateful for any leads at this point.

“My brother spent a great deal of time at our family’s beach home, not long before his disappearance. I thought it might help if you started looking there.”

“It could be interesting,” He said. “I’ll head out that way tomorrow.”

“The car service is at your disposal.” He could get used to this.

“I appreciate that.” Now he had something to go on, and besides he could use a trip to the beach. Before he could plan the beach trip he needed to take care of a few more things in the city and meet with Jewels.