01. Labyrinth of Dreams by Jack L. Chalker Read Free Book Online

enough breaks to avoid the bulk of the taxes.
    The weakness was that if you knew both ends, you might intercept things. This was known, but, considering the risks involved in bilking that corporation out of fifty bucks, let alone millions, it was considered acceptable, just as the loans Little Jimmy took out were really paid back since otherwise he'd be out of the loan-shark business in a hurry.
    The loan had come in, from Tri-State Savings Fund, one of the bigger banks in the region and one of the first to get into interstate banking in a big way when they dropped the barriers to it, and Little Jimmy had then made his "investments," prudently investing no more than ten percent in any one firm on a list of up-and-coming small companies. The trouble was, the list was given to him by the loan officer at Tri-State; it turned out to be a very different list than the one Little Jimmy was supposed to get. When the real companies started contacting him about not getting their investments, Little Jimmy hit the roof and quickly discovered what had happened. His next problem was to keep his own bosses from finding this out; they would take a dim view of his blind obedience to the system and his failure to verify everything. He quickly advanced two and a quarter million of his own money, but he was only really worth about three million— only!—and much of that wasn't really liquid.
    In other words, Little Jimmy had to take out a real loan to cover the loan. By tax time, there would be much interest in why he'd borrowed five million—partly by mortgaging his house, his cars, and his business—all to sink into speculative companies with short lifespans.
    Of course, when his share came back he'd still have to repay the bank, and that would leave him up to his eyeballs in hock. His godfather or chief corporate officer or whatever might very well not give him more than a scolding since the deal went through anyway; but Little Jimmy knew a lot of names and routings and the like, and would be in a very tight squeeze later on, a squeeze his bosses might just expect him to get out of by making a deal. Little Jimmy remembered what was the ultimate fate of the Reverend Billy. He decided that it might be best if this .. . mistake ... was not reported or revealed to anyone else, and to see if he could get at least some of his money back, not to mention the fellow who was behind all those other dummy companies. He had, of course, put the word out that this fellow was no longer "reliable," but he wanted some of his own working on this. He couldn't trust his own people with the real story—somebody would blab across the river just for brownie points—and so he came to us. Not us alone, almost certainly, but here we were.
    "So what's the name of this guy?" I asked him. "And why can't you find him?"
    Little Jimmy sighed. "His name is Martin J. Whitlock the Fourth, and he is— was— chief operating officer at Tri-State. We're pretty certain that the business-loan officer who set me up was innocent. Just following the boss's orders. He didn't even know it wasn't a straightforward deal. Since then, Whitlock has disappeared, and nobody but me even seems to have noticed."
    Brandy was still suspicious. "Why us? You got resources. You probably got all sorts of folks on this all over."
    "It is a contest, I grant you that, but there's more to it. I think I owe you a shot at it simply because of our unfortunate past associations. Also, Whitlock has certain unsavory avocations in low sections where you two operate so well. And, of course, there's the fact that your cousin, Minnie Slusher, is the Whitlocks' live-in housekeeper."
    "Ten to one he's not even in the country by now," I noted. "This is a cold trail from the start."
    "Indeed, yes, it is somewhat cold, although all this has happened in just the last few days. The moment I learned of it was but three days ago, and Whitlock went" to work that morning and did not return that evening. Trace him. Track