the mocking program

"She won't put the girl back in a soche. Not for a while, anyway. After the business with the house, they'll go even further underground than they were before." Hyaki went quiet for a moment. "I hope you find 'em before her ex-husband does."

Cardenas nodded gravely. He felt very strongly that if they did not, the discovery-recovery might prove even more disconcerting than it had been for a certain George Anderson-Brummel.

"I wish they'd let me out of here. I'd really like to help on this one." Hyaki flashed the wonderful faux Buddha smile that enchanted children and reassured women. "I don't hold anything against the mother and daughter. It was the house that did this to me-not them."

The Inspector leaned over the tank. "You're not going anywhere until you get your back back. I'll keep you posted." He turned to go.

"Hoy, Angel!" Cardenas looked back. "You know the worst thing about being stuck here like this?" The Inspector shook his head, and his partner explained mournfully, "I hate Jell-O."

It did not take a lot of crunch nor require the services of a box tu

The man's present whereabouts were uncertain, although he was known to frequent residences in Greater Miami, Lala, Nawlins, and Harlingen. That was hardly surprising. A man like Mockerkin would have many enemies and no friends beyond those bought and paid for. By all accounts he was a thoroughly unpleasant character: his rap sheet comprised a copious and detailed catalog of antisoc activities ranging from petty theft as a subgrub to embezzlement, arson-for-hire, assault with and without a deadly weapon, extortion, sexual abuse, up to and including no less than three arrests for murder-one direct and two for hire. Although he had done three separate stints in stir, none had been for any of the significant felonies with which he had been charged.

Interestingly, he was also charged with illegal weapons procurement. This indictment stemmed from his involvement in the Paraguayan Rebellions of '69 and '71. Principally through numerous contacts in Central and South America, he had grown wealthy enough to buy off or dispose of his most serious rivals. Worse still, he was able to afford that bane of all hard-working, honest cops: lawyers whose courtroom skills were inversely proportional to their moral sense. If his sheet was to be believed, he should be in jail right now.

In addition to the long stat list, there were some vit clips. In the privacy of his office cubicle, Cardenas played them back over and over. In surveillance and courtroom recordings, they showed a tall, well-ta

In the course of his career Cardenas had personally made the acquaintance of more than one skew-level antisoc. There was Little Napoleon, and Tipo Repo. There was Fregado Freddy and Azina the Legs, Maria

Or exceptional stupidity.

How much of it had been Brummel-Anderson's idea, Cardenas wondered, and how much Surtsey Anderson-Mockerkin's? Successfully eluding the attention of someone like Mockerkin would take time and pla

Avoiding The Mock's skills and reach would likely entail a good deal of moving around. Cardenas suspected that if he checked the Assessor's records, he would find that the Anderson family had not occupied their recently a

One thing he was able to infer, if not technically intuit, from the available information was the nature of the deceased Anderson-Brummel's occupation. He was a promoter, all right. He had promoted himself into Surtsey Mockerkin's confidence, promoted himself into The Mock's missing money, and promoted himself into at least half a dozen illicit meat banks in this segment of the Strip, where his assorted hastily appropriated body parts would fetch a good price. His death would not be enough to satisfy someone like Mockerkin, Cardenas knew. The Mock would not be content until the absent components of his runaway family were returned to him. In that event, Katla Mockerkin would probably survive unharmed. Physically, anyway.

The Inspector did not dwell on what such a resolution might mean for Surtsey Mockerkin. He had dealt with too many men like Cleator Mockerkin to hold any illusions about how they treated women who betrayed them. The Namerican Federal Police needed to find her, and her daughter, fast, before they were run down by The Mock's minions. It was too bad, he reflected, that those as yet unknown and unidentified individuals had not entered the abandoned Anderson house ahead of himself and Hyaki.

Now mother and daughter were on the run again. Presumably by themselves this time. He doubted someone as adroit as Surtsey Mockerkin would let more than one outsider into her confidence. With their male buffer gone, she would have to do everything by herself. As for Katla, in addition to those talents Cardenas had already learned she possessed, he now added the quality of resilience.

As he was pondering the shimmering depths of the box tu

He saved the augmented macrolice, shut down the vit, and headed upstairs.

Shaun Pangborn had an office. Not a cubicle, not a subdiv sec of multiuse floor: a real office. From its location on the next-to-the-top floor of the Federal Police Headquarters, Nogales Division (the top floor being armored and reserved for ballistics and rapid-reaction deployment via chopter and vertiprop), a visitor could see halfway across the Strip, past office towers and green-garbed codos, past humming maquiladoras and malls, and dream of the distant cool waters of the Golfo California.

The Inspector settled into a chair opposite. He liked Pangborn, and the Captain liked him. They had a lot in common besides age and experience. For one thing, neither was wholly original. Both men sported replacement parts: Cardenas his eyes, Pangborn part of an ear-and other more sensitive areas everyone knew about but were careful not to allude to in his presence. They were senior federales, with a shared sense of right, wrong, and what maybe perhaps possibly sometimes could be done about it.