Chapter 9

After two days the Smart Frame started to spit out little tidbits of helpful information. Until then there were just little teasers that were intriguing but only that. For the last nine or ten months our old chummer Alain de Chateau had been working with Hirohito Nogumi of the Togiwara Corp.

This looked like another of Nogumi's get there quick schemes. Steal the finished product instead of going through all the research to get there. de Chateau had been the 'fixer' for Nogumi. He had been supplying any and everything that Nogumi had needed. It also looked like he was ripping Togiwara off for 'services rendered' that he was brokering cheaper to Shadow Runners. He was charging anywhere from 50 to 100 per cent more for a run than he was paying the runners. Normal 'fixer' fees are only 10 to 15 per cent paid by the Mr. Johnson who contracts for the business. He was ripping them off for an additional 35 to 85 per cent.

That could very well be the reason that he was no longer in bed with the Mafia. They don't take kindly to being ripped off like that. The old time expression for taking care of a problem like that was to 'fit him with a cement overcoat'. de Chateau probably found out that his time was short and left.

The Smart Frame was able to come up with three different addresses for de Chateau. I pulled up the billing and all com calls he had made in the last three months from each of these addresses. There were two to Blake's 'fixer' about the time he had hired us. It looked like he moved around a good bit from the dates of these calls. No two days at the same place. One of the addresses was right here in the Tacoma area.

When I told him, Blake decided we should visit it and see if he left anything behind that might help us. That evening we used the stolen car and went there. It was a place similar to ours. A simple little house on a quiet street. The yards of all the houses in the area were kept up. They were nothing great but they weren't flops either. We pulled into the driveway and turned around. No one got curious about us. We pulled back down the street several houses and stopped, keeping the house in sight.

Dane and I got out of the car and walked back. Her left hand was slipped under my right arm and both of our coats were open. We were trying to create the impression of a young couple just out for a stroll on a quiet evening. Once in a while she would laugh and lay her head on my shoulder like we were lovers. We walked around the entire block. We could spot no one else keeping an eye on the place or who looked like they were waiting to move in as reinforcements.

As we neared the car on the return trip we called Blake on one of the wristcoms. Cain had not spotted anyone keeping an astral watch on the place either. This time we passed the car and walked up the driveway when we came to it. We continued on around to the rear and checked the door. It was locked but opened when Dane used her passkey.

Pulling the Browning I duck walked through the door. Using the infrared of the Smart Goggles I couldn't spot anyone so moved deeper into the room. It was a kitchen with two additional doors leading off of it. Dane joined me and checked out the two doors. One led to a dining room while the other led to a hallway with several doors leading off of it. Off the dining room was the living room. We pulled the drapes and the shades on all the windows in the front and side that we found and then started to check out the hallway with its doors. There were two bedrooms, a bathroom and a den/bedroom. When we could find no one present we called Blake and informed him so he and Cain could join us.

Pulling shades and drapes in the other rooms I turned on the light and started to check out the den. I took any chips I could find and started to look through the desk for any written data that might be there. After careful checking I found that there was a four inch by three foot part that was not accounted for. This desk had a secret compartment!

I finally tickled the right spot and the panel slid out of the way. Inside was a hardcase for a Deck. I pulled the case out along with the three chip holders. There was nothing else in the compartment. I slid the panel shut and started to check the shelves for anything that might help us. Dane soon joined me and except for a couple of credsticks and a couple of hand guns had found nothing of interest.

We packed the weapons, the hardcase and chip holders into a carrysac. I then disconnected the telecom. Dane looked at me questioningly as I placed it into another carrysac. We turned off the lights and took off.

Back at our place I started to check the telecom. First I called up any messages that might have been on the recorder. There was only one. It was dated the same night that de Chateau had been killed. He never received the call because it came while he was on his last run. "Maxie done found out where youse are ya slimy little rat. Youse better hide better dan dat!" Good thing he never received it. I then started to call up everything that he had been holding in the memory of the telecom. First there was a string of names with com numbers, some of these had an asterisk after them. There were several messages that he had stored and some other things that right now didn't make sense.

While I was doing that I had also dropped one of the chips that I had found on the desk into my own telecom and called it up. When I looked back at it the screen was covered with garbage. I ejected the chip and fed it into his telecom and when I pressed the enter key the information came up clear.

"That my lovely Dane is why I took his telecom. Sometimes we sneaky people incorporate a code into these things. What is garbage on my telecom is clear as can be on his. He has the decoding worked into the master memory and it automatically encrypts the chips and then decodes the information as it is fed in. Why don't you fed in the chips and look over the information on them while I start to work over this hardcase and see what I can find in it?"