Read Online Seeker by Jack McDevitt - Free Book Online

“We’d arrange things so you got a finder’s fee.”
    “No.”
    He looked at me, shrugged, and changed the subject. We talked about how nice it was to have an enormous amount of money fall out of the sky, and how the cup was a valuable artifact. The meals came, and we continued in that vein until Alex caught my eye again. I understood what he wanted, and a few minutes later he excused himself.
    Time for girl talk. “Bad ending?” I asked in a sympathetic voice.
    She nodded. “I hate him.”
    “Another woman?”
    “Yeah. He had no right.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said.
    “It’s okay. I let him get away with it a couple times. But promises don’t mean nothing to him.”
    “You’re probably better off. He sounds like a jerk.”
    “I’m over it.”
    “Good.” I tried to look casual. “If he has more of these around somewhere, it could mean a lot more money for you.”
    “I don’t care.”
    “We could handle it so he wouldn’t know where the information came from. It would not involve you. He’d never know.”
    She shook her head. Absolutely not.
    “How about this? If he has any more artifacts like the cup, we’ll keep you out of it, and we’ll make him an offer without telling him what they’re really worth. Then you and I can split whatever we make.”
    That would have been a trifle unethical, and Alex would never have gone for it. Me, I wouldn’t have had a problem. I was beginning to feel some sympathy for Amy, so I had no trouble taking her side.
    She started having second thoughts. “You’re sure he’d never find out? About me?”
    “Absolutely. We’ve handled these things before.” If we could get a name, it would be easy enough to look into the situation without alerting him. If it turned out there were actually more souvenirs from the
Seeker
lying around, then we could go back and negotiate some more with Amy.
    “He would know it was me the minute you mentioned the cup.”
    “We’d be careful.”
    “It doesn’t matter. He’d know.”
    “We wouldn’t mention the cup.”
    “Don’t bring it up at all.”
    “Okay. We won’t. We won’t say a word about it.”
    She thought about it some more. “His name’s Hap.” Her face tightened and I thought she was going to cry again. It was turning into a weepy evening. “Actually, it’s Cleve Plotzky. But everybody calls him Hap.”
    “Okay.”
    “If you tell him, he’ll come after me.”
    “He’s assaulted you,” I said.
    She wouldn’t look at me.
    “Does he live in Andiquar?”
    “Aker Point.”
    Aker Point was a small community west of the capital. Most of the people who lived there were either unable to hold a job or satisfied subsisting on the minimum ration.
    I saw Alex loitering across the room, pretending to examine the artwork. He figured out that the negotiation had ended, lingered another minute or two, said something to a waiter, and rejoined us. Moments later a fresh round of cocktails arrived.
     
     
    Cleve (Hap) Plotzky
did
work for a living. He was a burglar. But not a very successful one. We got that much from the public record. He was good at rigging devices that shut down security systems, but he always seemed to make a beginner’s mistake. Sometimes he got caught trying to move the merchandise. Or because he sneezed and left his DNA on the property. Or because he bragged to the wrong people about his skills. He also had a record of assorted assaults, mostly against women.
    So we went back to see Fenn Redfield. The police inspector had been a burglar himself at one time, sufficiently prone to the profession that the courts eventually ordered a mind wipe. He knew none of this, of course. His memories of his past life, up to about fifteen years earlier, were all fictitious.
    He let Alex look through the court documents regarding Hap but could not show him the police reports. “Against the rules,” he said. “Wish I could help.”
    The court documents didn’t go into sufficient detail about what had been