The American Medical Association was not officially involved with the Biomedica symposium on stem cell funding for artificial blood genesis research. The Red Cross had sent representatives, but they would not rock the boat or ask really tough questions; their envoy consisted of overly eager volunteers headed by a cool professional who would ask the pertinent questions relating to a time line for blood production while the booster club around him encouraged the politicians, officials, and research and clinical doctors to invest their time and money into the projects put forth by Biomedica.
Security on the first day would be the result of a joining of the governor's personal bodyguards and security team and that provided by Biomedica. Aside from the governor's force, supposedly none of the Biomedica security would be armed with more than a walkie-talkie and the requisite nightstick. In liberal California, a symposium on stem cell research drew little of the hellfire and righteous indignation that might have cropped up in other states.
Or, so, the Biomedica website claimed. Gidge forwarded the relevant numbers he'd culled from the e-mails at Biomedica to the crew in San Francisco, just for them to have. The security force there appeared genuinely unaware of what the bosses were up to. As of yet, he had yet to successfully penetrate Leung's personal accounts. Alyssa warned him off it until they were certain of Leung's intentions and skills, though nothing Gidge had put together on him suggested there was cause for concern.
He flipped over to check on their impromptu sting over at the Bank of America branch that had housed the Talos' holdings. Thus far, three properties were gone, revenue redirected from the sale to bank fees and the leftover to Swiss and other offshore accounts, which would forward automatically elsewhere, circling the globe enough times to lose any tracker. He scanned e-mails from the bank, too, to see if anyone had made Whistler and King for fakes. So far, nothing, so it was time to go to the audiotape.
The bugs King planted for him could pick up sound only in a ten-foot diameter around them, but the risk of exposure from a discovered bug was not worth the risk of planting many. Fortunately, King had some intelligence riding backseat to his swagger and had distributed the bugs accurately, with some cunning, and, as yet, unnoticeably. Gidge had pegged King as the more likely to know which employees running around in a busy bank were suspect, and he was not disappointed.
Three hours after the Talos siblings departed the bank, one bug recorded a strange lunchtime conversation. Gidge adjusted the sound setup on his equipment, taking down the ambient noise, amplifying the voices.
"Tony, you coming for lunch?"
"Sorry, got a client doing a callback in a few on his break. Want to take it first. I'll catch up."
There were footsteps, laughter, rude jokes, rumbling stomachs, and the tape grew quiet again, broken here and there by ringing phones, unanswered. Not one soft bleat of an unattended phone cut off midway, and when the person Gidge identified as 'Tony' spoke again, he must have dialed out because the conversation began too obviously on his end.
"This is Tony. Let me speak to Filia…she's going to want to hear this."
A long pause ensued, and Gidge could almost imagine Tony sweating out the wait.
"Filia, look, I'm sorry to call you in the middle of the day like this…yes, yes it's important. The Taloses were just here…yes, I know. They walked out into the bright sunshine, you get me?"
Ah, Gidge smiled to himself. Gotcha, Tony.
"When?" Tony sounded panicked."Jesus, no, I mean, that's what he was in town for? Oh my God…"
Gidge scratched out some notes, marking the approximate time the call had been made, madly clicking on his computer and calling up a service request for the phone company on behalf of…ta-dah…one Tony Baker.
"What should I do?"
"Yes," Gidge confirmed for the operator who'd come on in one headphone while he finished out Tony's panic attack on the other. "I'd like to report a problem I'm having with the caller ID service on my--" he checked the model listed on the bank invoice, "my Rolm450. Yes, I'll hold."
"What do you mean, 'nothing'? What if he's here?"
"When can I expect you? Oh, at my convenience, that's terrific. How's about ten, tomorrow morning? Fantastic, this really saves my ass." He hung up the line, surfed over to the internal network at the phone company and waited for the service request to be processed.
"The guy was tall, I didn't get a good look. Wore a suit, nice one. The woman had dark hair, kind of gelled up funny, spiky heels."
Gidge listened to Tony describe King and Whistler in their guises. He was surprised it had worked at all. Probably, Tony hadn't counted on having to remember their faces until it was too late. His tone began to edge towards the hysterical.
"Yeah, it sounds like them, but this was today…yes, today, as in they left a few hours ago…a week? They've been dead a week? What do you mean 'it's more like two'?"
The service request popped onto the servers. Tomorrow, at ten a.m., a technician by the name of Josh Frank would stop by the Bank of America to fix a Rolm450 telephone for Tony Baker. After a few keystrokes, Josh's itinerary rearranged itself back to the way it had been. Gidge copied the altered form, the one with Frank going to the bank, onto his hard drive and printed it out on triplicate stationary with the phone company's logo.
"Maybe I should get out of here…what? Why not? He's been in the city, they had something on the news about it"
Gidge located suitably plain gray overalls and fished for some labels.
"What about the conference? If he knows about that…right, but, he could!"
Gidge paused, returned to the feed and replayed the last bit, banishing all thoughts of tomorrow's job to concentrate carefully on Tony's unraveling brain.
"What about the conference? If he knows about that…right, but he could! And if he's supposed to be dead…Jesus, we're fucked."
Supposed to be dead? Did that mean the vampire or handler talking to Tony, this Filia, knew the body in the FBI labs was Drake's? He wished the phone had been tapped already; Tony was quiet a long time, probably while his handler explained things to him. When next Tony spoke, calm had returned to his voice.
"The FBI are going to be all over the Talos accounts. They'll probably find these people. But…but who are they, Filia?"
Good question, Gidge mused. That's what he wanted to know about this Filia person. Database search later, definitely.
" 'None of my concern'? Are you kidding? I could be exposed on this…no, I didn't handle their account, but the president…you're telling me to just stay here? Yes, I know, but…fine. I'll keep my eyes open, but they're probably long gone. You might want to check out the conference. If they know about that…did I recognize them? No, I told you, I only saw them on the way out when I heard Vargas talking."
Well, that answered that much. Gidge applied the patches to the jumpsuit. He'd need a patch that read "Frank" and some numbers for the technician's serial. Otherwise, he'd pass muster.
"Yeah. Yeah, sorry. I just thought you'd tell me if something like this…the bright side? That he's moved on? Oh, yes, that's great. He killed Danica, Filia Doesn't that mean anything? Asher, too Is there anything else you're not telling me?"
Plenty, Gidge laughed to himself at Tony's expense. Filia wasn't telling him that Dracula, the progenitor, was dead and gone. That, according the FBI's classified report, the body had decayed into dust when the autopsy had been attempted.
"Fine. I'll hear from you soon? Why only after the conference?"
Damn, that was one Gidge really could stand to know, too.
"Fine. I'll call you."
On the tape, a plastic clicking noise sounded, signaling the end of the phone call. It was enough. Gidge forwarded the relevant information to Stone's computer.
His phone rang, and he let it, watching as the call traced back to a police line. Ah, he picked it up, switching the tracker program to the record function.
"Sheriff Towley?"
"It's me, Mr. Talos. I'm calling with a couple of questions."
"Shoot."
"I was hoping we could talk in person, if you could come back down to the precinct."
"Is there anything new to report?"
"Not really," and Gidge could hear the lie in the easy tone, "but we would like to get more of a statement from you. We'll need it, as will you if you want to fill out the insurance forms."
"Ah, Sheriff, bad news about that, I'm afraid," Gidge threw all his true weariness into his voice until it trembled. "I contacted my agent. It seems highly unlikely I will see any windfall from this mess."
"Not up to date on our fire codes were we?" The police officer sounded smug, as if he had somehow deserved this fate.
"Well, not to their satisfaction. It seems there's a few hundred clauses about flammable materials that they neglected to mention when I bought the policy on the warehouse."
"I'm sorry to hear that, Mr. Talos, I truly am. Still, we'll need you to come down. This has been a very unfortunate accident, and you don't want to make it any worse for yourself, do you?"
"Excuse me, Sheriff, is there something you're not telling me?" Gidge's hackles raised; after the mess the others had described when they liberated Blade from police headquarters downtown, Gidge was not inclined to trust any law officer, even one as essentially honest and good as Towley had seemed.
"It's standard procedure to treat this as a malicious fire, and we will be investigating it as such. You'll need to account for all materials and personnel so we can conduct our investigation."
That presented him with a problem. On the warehouse's employment list were names, names Gidge assigned to the familiars Whistler and King reported taking out. The bodies hadn't been left there, but was it possible the forensics showed someone had been there? Blood, perhaps?
"Sheriff, I haven't accounted for all my staff just yet." He needed to buy time, to divert attention. No way was he going to talk at the station. He'd already gone down there once as was, and, if they were looking into a criminal case, the last thing he wanted was to be stuck in a building full of cops while they looked into his story. "I'm worried someone might have been there at the time. My secretary hasn't been able to get in touch with…oh God," Gidge moaned. "Was someone there? Is that what you won't tell me?"
"Mr. Talos, I think it would be best if you came and talked to us."
"Sweet Jesus, just tell me!"
Sheriff Towley breathed heavily into the phone, weighing his options. "I'll level with you, Mr. Talos. The CSU report included some evidence of blood. No bodies," he quickly backpedaled, "but we're pretty sure someone was there, someone who may have been seriously hurt or might have hurt someone. If there's anything you know that might help us, you need to tell us."
"Jesus," Gidge wailed, choking on a sob. Man, he was good. "I'll be down tomorrow, Sheriff."
"Thank you, sir. Please, if you have names of the people who are missing, we'd appreciate having them."
"I didn't ask who they were," Gidge said, absently. It was too perfect, his act of stunned near-senility. "I'll…I'll ask my secretary."
"You do that. When can I expect you?"
"Tomorrow, say around ten?"
"Right. Again, I'm sorry about all this, Mr. Talos."
"Not as sorry as me, Sheriff. Goodbye." Gidge hung up, sniffed hard to clear his nose, then dialed San Francisco.
"Stone."
"They found blood in the warehouse fire. I'm going to have dodge them on this."
"Anything else?"
"Yeah, someone from the bank contacted someone named 'Filia.' Sound familiar?"
Stone hummed over the line, thinking. "Not off the top of my head. We'll run it by the folks on their way to Sacramento."
"I'm bugging the phone tomorrow."
"Watch your ass."
"Will do."