I don’t remember opening my eyes, just a gradual awareness that the shifting patterns of light before me were coalescing into tangible form. Like a baby shaking off a birth-slap, I could only stare straight ahead as I learned how to focus again. There was a hum from somewhere down the hall, dull and repetitive like a floor waxer, though I couldn’t have told you that at the time. In fact I couldn’t do much but squint and gasp for reasons that weren’t, as yet, clear to me.

I don’t know how long I sat there, reading the name on the door over and over again until my scrambled brains could make sense of it.

Drake Finn Investigations.

In time I decided that I understood all three of those words. This decision was not reached without some gravity and no small measure of relief from my rebooting consciousness. If you can only process a single piece of information, it helps if you can understand it. It makes a fella want to try for more.

A moment later, the revelation came that if I could read the words written in delicately peeling letters on the smoked glass of the door, then it stood to reason that the door must be open. I decided the mechanical hum down the hall might be getting closer and I was clearly in no state to entertain. Closing the door seemed like the best option.

A wave of nausea slammed into me as I tried to lift
myself
from the swivel chair, and it was only the previously unnoticed presence of a desk in front of me that prevented my complete collapse. The desk
was
pressboard with a plastic veneer on it made to look like wood. It was cheap and it wobbled, but it kept me from landing on my fa
ce and today I found that good.

Something on the desk
top pressed hard into my hands as I steadied myself. It felt like it might have been broken glass, but I had other things on my mind
as I
sank
back
into the swivel chair hard. The chair protested this treatment with a metallic squawk
.
I quickly leaned forward, cupping my face in my hands and leaning my forehead towards the desk, fighting to maintain control of my breathing and to regain the basic functions of my body. The nausea began to subside. I took several more deep breaths to be sure. I didn’t know very much, but I felt confident that there was nothing about this situation that would be made better by vomiting.

It was about this time that I became aware of the pain in my head, which by this point failed to take me by surprise. Nor was I astonished when I was at last able to raise my
cranium
to find that my left hand was now covered in sticky, semi-dried blood. A few gentle prods of my fingers
against
my forehead
c
onfirmed my suspicions. There was what felt like an impact wound on and above my left temple, and a lot of blood in my hair. I was not having a good day.

For lack of options, I looked down at the desk. There wasn’t much to see. To my left was an Omnilink keypad and display which had gone into sleep mode
,
presumably sometime after I had. There were small pieces of shattered glass
that smelled of old scotch
scattered around the surface of the d
esk
.

There was a desktop telephone with more buttons on it than an office of this size needed. It had probably been bought secondhand, though I honestly couldn’t recall. The receiver was off and had been for long enough that the line had gone dead. I fumbled with it and returned it to its cradle, in the process activating the speakerphone and filling the office with a loud dial tone. I mashed the keypad on the phone until the noise stopped and took another deep breath.

Near the telephone was a small scratch-pad with heavy yellow paper, unlined. There was nothing written on the pad, but the surface of the desk was littered with pages torn from it
.
Each page bore
stray words or numbers, half of which were underlined as if to suggest importance. But what they could have meant was a little beyond me just now. Several of the papers lay near the keypad crumpled up, as if discarded
and
pushed aside. Three or four were spattered with blood, which I took to be mine. They all might as well have been written in Synth
–
they meant nothing to me.

I pushed my head up a little higher. The office was probably ten by fifteen, maybe a little more. There were two filing cabinets on the wall opposite the door. The walls were cinderblock, plain and painted in a brown that was slightly warmer than the industrial standard but only slightly, as if by accident. There was little on the walls to give it character beyond a number of pages from the scratch-pad that had been thought important enough to tape up. One bore the number of a taxi company. Another said “Good Noodle” and was underlined three times. I couldn’t read the others from my perch but I abandoned the search for clues on the walls nonetheless.

There was no window in the room. There was a small sink in the corner with a mirror above it and a yellow plastic bucket underneath,
perhaps
to catch occasional drips from the pipes. The plastic pail did not look new. Nearby I could see a small refrigerator which had been upset and lay on its side, the motor still humming. The door was ajar and it
was
clear that the unit had held little more than a dozen small packets of mustard and a bottle of soy sauce, which had stained the floor when it fell.

In short, it was a dump, but it told me nothing. It told me that I probably wasn’t rich
, which didn’t seem like much of a revelation.
There was a framed certificate on the wall which declared that Drake Finn was a fully licensed Private Investigator, sanctioned by the city and the state. Without meaning to, I glanced at the still-open door as if for confirmation. It had not changed its opinion.

Drake Finn Investigations
it still read.

“Well, Drake Finn,” I declared to no one in particular, “what the hell have you been doing?”

My head was throbbing like I’d just come off a three-day bender and the
condition
of
the office said that just might be the case. My general
state of
mind didn’t disagree
either
, but the impact wound on the side of my head said otherwise. Whoever’d sapped me had known what they were doing all right, but who were they? I was prepared to accept that I’d been asking for it, but I’d still have liked to know why.

The hum in the hallway was getting closer. It didn’t seem to be a threat, but I could not count the number of ways that I did not want to exchange pleasantries with the janitor just now. Closing the door seemed the thing to do if I could get my legs under me for a minute. I considered the door, and the journey I would need to take to get there. I would have to walk around the desk and a hard-backed chair opposite that I presumed was for clients or other guests, past the filing cabinets, and cross six or eight feet of mostly open floor. It wouldn’t normally have been daunting, but it did mean whoever had tried to brain me hadn’t snuck up on me. This annoyed me. Had I just sat behind my desk and let them waltz right up to me?

My guts churned as I pushed myself to my feet and I could see at once that the answer was “no”. There were plasma burns, two of them, on the wall beside the door, and the air still carried a strong whiff of ozone. All the m
ore reason to get to that door.

My foot knocked against something on the floor and I could hear a small, heavy object rattle as it rolled across the tile, but I kept focused on my goal and
made it to
the door, the smoked glass rattling softly as I
shut it
. As I leaned against the frame, I could see that the burns were still fresh. I looked down and saw what I had kicked on my way to the door. A nice little GAT double-Z hand cannon. I picked it up and flicked the safety on. I could hear the soft whir of the plasma generators powering down. The gun was perfectly balanced. It felt good in my hand. But was it mine? I turned it over and saw at once that three charges were gone. I looked back to the wall and counted the two burns, just to be sure.

I lowered myself to one knee, gingerly. The GAT wasn’t a delicate piece of hardware. It didn’t just burn flesh, it punched a hole right in it. It usually cauterized what it hit, so I didn’t expect to find any blood on the floor. But I
wasn’t that surprised by what I did find
–
a small amount of coarse, grey ash that told me the plasma charge had found flesh. Swell. Without thinking, I slid the GAT into a shoulder holster that I hadn’t been aware I was wearing. Yep. It was mine all right.

I was having a bad day.

I pushed myself back to my feet and
gingerly
made my way to the sink. I turned both taps on full and let the water run. I looked in the mirror at the wound on my head. It was ugly all right, and it would be for quite some time. There wasn’t so much a cut
–
the flesh
had been
torn by the pressure of whatever had hit me. It must have been a hell of a shot. I lowered my head and poured a handful of water over it, biting my tongue as I did so to keep from shouting obscenities at the pain. I repeated this process a half dozen times and dabbed myself dry with a roll of brown paper towels that had been on the floor next to the sink. I looked again at the wound. It was red and purple, and there was a swell bump on its way. The open wound still oozed but didn’t start bleeding again in earnest,
so that
was something.

I looked away from the wound and down to the face in the mirror. It was a good face. Tired, I guess. Fortyish, but fir
m. Some grey around the temples
but nothing that you noticed right away. Good jaw line. Could use a shave, but wasn’t likely to get one. A man, taken for all in all. I had only one objection to the face in the mirror. I couldn’t remember ever seeing it before in my life.

I found it hard to imagine this day getting any worse.

TWO

I almost jumped out of my skin when the telephone buzzed. It was loud and discordant, like something was wrong with the mechanism and it had been cheaper for someone to throw it out than to fix it. I wondered if I'd fished it out of the trash. The journey back to the desk wasn’t one to be undertaken lightly. I went back to dabbing
at my head with the damp towel
without the smallest intention of answering the call. I was more than a little surprised when someone else did.

“Drake Finn Investigations. How can I help you?”
T
he female voice purred as if she were standing next to me
with my hand on her ass
. I looked around quickly and saw exactly what I expected, which was nothing. But the voice had been there, clear as day.

“Good afternoon, Della.” It was a man’s voice now, and I noted with some embarrassment that the speakerphone was still active from my earlier run-in with it. “Always wonderful to hear you.” The voice was naturally deep, but not as deep as it was trying to be. There was a hushed, gravelly tone and an air of mystery that rang just as false. It was the voice of an ordinary man trying to impress a beautiful woman, one whom I still couldn’t see.

I completed my turn back towards the desk but stayed where I was, leaning on the sink for support. The woman’s voice came again, more casual and bemused. “Why hello, Mister Felco. How nice to hear from you.” Her voice was laced with a tone that suggested nothing less than that she was playing with the top button of her blouse at the mere sound of his voice, but was trying not to show it. I could see the green display lights on the phone rise and fall as she spoke and smiled at my own folly, and that of my caller. I might not have recognized my own answering machine, but at least I wasn’t wasting energy trying to talk it into bed.

“I was hoping to speak to your lord and master,” Felco continued, trying to sound like a jovial man-about-town. “Is he in?”

“Oh, I’m sorry Mister Felco,” Della said with what sounded like an audible little pout, as if she were truly disappointed for him. “He’s out on a case right now. Is there anything
I
can help you with?” The pause before she said
“I”
was minute, a fraction of a fraction of a second, but it would have been enough to send his imagination whirring. I could see her myself.
Della
. Brown hair piled up on top of her head, probably with a pencil or two tucked back there for good measure. Horn rimmed glasses unable to hide the fire in her eyes. Full hips and long legs, with an appealing tendency to sit on the edge of my desk and roll cigarettes for me as I thrashed out the particulars of a case. Too damned bad she wasn’t real.

If nothing else, it told me a little something about myself. Cheap office
,
broken second-hand telephone
,
very, very expensive administrative assistant simulation. Felco broke the spell by talking again. I could almost hear the flush in his voice.

“I think I should perhaps leave a message for him, if I may,”
h
e breathed.

“Of course,” she said, as if there were only one thing that could please her more and she wanted it badly, and soon. “Shall I write it down, or send it to his voicemail?”

“I think perhaps the voicemail,” he said coyly.

“Oh dear,” Della purred, as if intrigued. “A man with secrets.”

“Not at all,” he said, as much as possible as if he were, in fact, a man with many secrets. Perhaps an international spy of some sort, but trying to be casual. This was a very sad courtship display. “But I think Mister Finn and I ought to finally meet face to face to finalize our business arrangements.” I could hear his smile, and it was oily. The word
“
business
”
stuck out, almost as much as if he had said
“
legitimate business
.
”
If it had been on the up and up, he’d have just said
“
arrangements
.
”
“Perhaps sometime soon you and I might meet face to face as well, Della.”

“I’d like that,” she almost whispered. I couldn’t tell if it was contempt or jealousy, but I decided that I didn’t like Mister Felco very much. “I’ll transfer you now.”

The machine made three long, old-fashioned rings. The sound was completely different than the actual tone. It was clearly designed to give the listener the impression of a call being transferred in a busy, bustling private detective’s office while I sat behind my laminated pressboard desk and screened my calls. I decided that I must do most of my business over the telephone. I certainly couldn’t be bringing them by the office.

There was a click, and Della’s voice again, this time a little more tinny. A simulation of the answering machine recording an answering machine message. Genius. “Please leave a message for Mister Finn after the tone.”

“Mister Finn. This is Felco calling again,” he began, in a tone that was intended to be more authoritative but rang just as false. “I think it is imperative that you and I meet to finalize our arrangements before your client, Miss Marsland, arrives in town tonight.” There was a tiny, ironic pause before he said the word
“
arrangements
”
that he probably was not aware of, but I was.

“I have been most satisfied with our dealings to this point, but I am sure that you can understand why I might be a little, well… anxious.” I could not, in fact, understand this, but I put that down to my general lack of knowledge
of anything much at the moment.
He continued, with a great deal of effort to sound less nervous, like this was just another day in paradise. “I hope that you will pick up this message and find it… not inconvenient to meet me at the Golden Spider Café outside the Greyside Gates in one hour.” There was a small pause, as if he were unsure of just how much to say. “Events are rapidly coming to a head, and I fear that we are not without some… dangerous competition. In a venture such as this, we must trust one another completely, as I am certain that we will be unable to trust anyone else.” He recovered his composure some,
saying,
“We can speak more privately later. Good day.”

Swell. A new best friend I’d never met and didn’t even remember not meeting, but who would have absolutely no qualms about stealing my girl if she were more than an electronic voice box, which I still counted against him because he didn’t know it.

Whatever I was up to with Mister Felco, it was none too honest, which didn’t bother me that much. But he was enough of an amateur to make that point obvious to a guy with a screaming concussion, and that did bother me. It bothered me a lot. It’s the sort of thing that can get a guy’s brains bashed in, and probably already had.

In any case, it had something to do with an out-of-town client I’d never heard of either, but was soon to meet if reports were accurate. It was all too screwy, and the only part I could confirm was the dangerous competition. I still couldn’t remember who slugged me, or why, or how good a shot I’d got at them first. But I knew I’d never figure it out sitting in this dump.

I walked over to the desk without falling over, or even feeling
like
I might. Progress. I looked at the desk and its mass of notepad slips. I saw one that said
FELCO!
and bore both a phone number and an Interlink address that was clearly a blind box, as it was a random alpha-numeric meant to be hidden from prying eyes at
’
Frame. The sort of dodge that might shield a small-time grifter or a guy with an interest in pornography that was a little too far off the accepted flavors of abnormal, but wasn’t really meant for serious crime. I folded the paper and stuck it in my pocket.

I also spotted three separate notes with the
name
Marsland
on them. One had a number with a New Coast exchange, one with the time 19:44 and another with a long string of numbers that might have been a flight number or might have been missile command codes for all I knew. I stuffed them in my pockets too, for good measure.

I thought about it for half a second and then filled the pockets of the light raincoat I was wearing with every piece of notepaper and stray desktop flotsam that I could see, except for the one that said
:
b
utter, eggs, cheese
. I was pretty sure I could remember that one.
Or at least that it wouldn’t kill me to forget it.

I opened the drawers and saw a QuikSwipe. Fifty credit maximum. I put it in my front pocket and dug around, but couldn’t find the ExchangeStick that should have been there too. Without that main credit code drive, I wouldn’t be carrying much more than pocket change. Was I making too much of this? Was I just mugged? Did that son of a bitch take my ExStick?

I looked for another minute before I started slapping my pockets in desperation. I found a spare charge rod for the GAT and a small paperback book with a picture of a man in a fedora holding a breathless blonde roughly by the shoulders with a look of harsh disdain on his face. The title was
Murder, Sweet Murder
. Deeply professional. The cover was dog-eared and the pages were yellowed. I flipped the pages in case it were actually a notebook, or a concealed carrying place for my ExStick. Nada. It was a book all right. I shrugged. If nothing else, at least I wouldn’t remember the ending.

I tried the last pocket in the coat and came up with a fat wad of cash. Actual bills – paper money. I just stared at it. There had to be ten, maybe fifteen thousand credits worth, and all of it just ab
o
ut
useless.
I put it back where I found it and tried not to think about it. I had enough problems.

My hand was on the doorknob when I remembered the nasty open wound on my head. With a hand cannon practically still smoking under my arm, I didn’t need the attention that would bring. I looked around the room for something that I knew had to be there somewhere. The book was a dead giveaway. I spotted it on top of a filing cabinet – a grey felt hat that looked like it fell out of a black and white picture, and was shortly thereafter run over by a truck. I pulled it on my head. It stung where I’d been hit, and the band sat a little tight. I must be gaining weight. Just another reason to love today.

If I was in the middle of something, it was sink or swim. Maybe this Felco could throw me a line. Only one way to be sure.

At the last moment I realized I had no idea where my keys were, so I left the place unlocked and called for Della to close up when she went home.

She said nothing.

Bitch.

BOOK: Finn's Golem

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