Free Cam - 03 - The Moonpool by P. T. Deutermann Page B

futher-muckers,” I said, looking around. Tony grunted and pointed, and there, across the street, was the Bureau car we’d watched drive away. Apparently, not very far away. The agents waggled fingers at us. Tony rubbed his nose with his middle finger in response. The agent driving the car put his hands up to his face in mock horror.
    “Okay, let’s go back and face the music,” I said.
    “Who’s C.?” Tony asked.
    C., as I’d suspected, turned out to be Creeps himself, minus his ditzy assistant this time. The other agents had followed us back to the house and were now waiting outside, reading magazines. Creeps was standing on the front porch when we got there, so I was pretty sure he hadn’t been inside. The shepherds were in there, staring out the front windows and definitely not looking like Welcome Wagon material.
    I introduced my two helper-bees, and then we all went in. Since Pardee had set up his computers in the kitchen, I invited Creeps to sit in the living room, which meant that he had to fit that gangly, Lincolnesque frame of his into one of the sandy wicker rocking chairs. Wicker apparently is the furniture of choice for a beach house; everything in the living room was made of it.
    “Welcome to our humble rental unit,” I said. Pardee and Tony leaned on opposite sides of the living room entryway. “Have we been bad?”
    Creeps rubbed his hands together while he thought about what he was going to say. “I certainly hope not, Mr. Richter,” he said, “but, given the nature of our last conversation in Wilmington, your Bureau just wanted to make sure you hadn’treturned to investigate Ms. Gardner’s, um, unfortunate demise.”
    “You were quite clear, I thought,” I said. “Back out, stay out, and assist my Bureau in any way I can and should as a good citizen. Right?”
    “Yes, indeed,” he said warmly, smiling his best undertaker smile. Given that he’d signed his little love note “C.,” he had to be putting at least some of that bullshit on. “So: What, may I ask,
are
you doing down here with or for the technical security director of the Helios power station?”
    “A job of work,” I replied, recalling Ari’s quaint phrase.
    Creeps raised his eyebrows in a go-on expression.
    “The details of which have not yet been made entirely clear,” I continued, fudging just a little. “Something to do with overlapping jurisdiction within the plant’s security apparatus. He’s the technical guy, and there’s a separate department that handles physical security. We’ll probably know more tomorrow.”
    Creeps frowned. It took the frown a couple of seconds to spread across that huge, lachrymose face. “How does this bear on the Gardner case?”
    Clever Creeps. You never knew where he was going with his questions, but he probably did, and all the time. “It doesn’t,” I said. “At least as far as we know. Besides, we’re not supposed to get involved in the Gardner case, remember? I guess you could talk to Mr. Quartermain.”
    The frown vanished. “Oh, yes, indeed,” he said. “We’ll be talking to Mr. Quartermain, at some length, I suspect.”
    “Well, while we’re on the subject of Allie Gardner, do you guys think that evil shit came from the plant or some other source?” I saw Tony and Pardee, who were standing out of Creeps’s line of sight, trying to suppress grins.
    Creeps did a tsk-tsk number. “Mr. Richter, really,” he said disapprovingly. “I do hope you’re not intending to mess around with your Bureau. You know how we hate that. Although I can tell you this much: Right now, the NRC people don’t think the radioactive substance did come from Helios.There’s simply no way to do that without exposing the taker to the same radiation that would ultimately kill the takee, if you follow me.”
    “Yeah, that occurred to me, too,” I lied. “But, honestly, I think Quartermain wants us for something totally unrelated. As I understand the politics of the situation,