12

"I've said I was a gambler by nature, and that I like to play the odds. But by that I meant that life had always been a game to me, and I'm willing to take chances if the odds are in my favor and the reward for winning is high.

"DiSenzo was different. He was a professional. He made his living playing the casinos, and to him it wasn't a game at all. It was a business. I got into a high stakes game with him in a big casino there in Melbourne, and before I knew what was happening I'd lost more than I could afford. Like a fool, I dug deeper and kept playing, hoping to win it back. He took me for all I had. Between what I wound up owing the casino for the chips I'd given my thumbprint for, and the payments I still owed to the black market mob for the clones I'd ordered, the estate was wiped out.

"I picked up a couple of anonymous clones using my old trick, and started watching DiSenzo. Before long, I figured out how he had beaten me so thoroughly. His game was rigged. Somehow, he had slipped in a marked deck. I got mad enough to risk slipping into DiSenzo's own clone when he had left it.

"Luck was with me there. I got the same one he'd worn to the casino to set up the fix. Complete with pictures. I found out he'd paid off the dealer to make the switch.

"Then my luck turned again. DiSenzo decided he wanted to use the body I was in. He took me by surprise, but of course he was more surprised than I was, and by then I was eager to take him on. This was my game, not his. I took control of one clone after another from him, and drove him back into his Primary. Then I killed him in it."

"You walked in and shut off his nutritank, just like you tried with me."

"Right, Johnny. It was a simple step from the way I'd handled the old man when I took his identity.

"To get rid of the dead Primary I brought my car around, loaded the body into the passenger seat, and drove the car through a bridge rail. Then I dropped all the rest of the bodies of the identity I had been using, and picked up DiSenzo's. The story I gave about the accident was the usual one of a couple of drinking and gambling buddies out for a joy ride wasting a couple of clones. Only this time it was too much for the old man, and his Primary's heart gave out from the excitement."

"And you've been playing the part of DiSenzo ever since. But I still don't get it, Alex. Why the murders? Why this stunt of going after rich Minors and doing them in for the contents of their bank accounts?"

"Don't you see, Johnny? I've been posing as DiSenzo, but like I said, he was a professional gambler. I'm not. Like everyone, I thought he was incredibly rich, but as it turned out he was living right on the edge. And he had contacts everywhere that I didn't know anything about. Wherever I go there are people in the casinos who expect me to work some kind of gambling scam with them. And there are other people who tell me I still owe them from some earlier one.

"Known Majors are banned from casinos as you know, because the operators are afraid of the stunts we might pull. I've tried to work that advantage, and once in a while I can bring in a second clone and read the other hands in a game to give me an edge. But casinos guard against that kind of stuff, because even a Normal can bring along a partner with a signal system. It just hasn't been enough. I've had my own reasons for picking the people I did to rip off, but the main thing was the money. I needed it to keep up appearances as DiSenzo, and to keep ahead of the toughs in this business who think DiSenzo owes them.

"So you see, Johnny, I win after all. It's been good to have someone to tell my story to, someone who can understand it. You called me a man without a country, without an identity, but that's not quite true. I'm a man who can have almost any identity I choose. I just haven't made the right choice yet. I won't miss DiSenzo. Thanks for forcing me to move on."

With that, his body went slack, and those were the last words anyone ever heard from him. Susan told me a guy sitting near her in the casino went limp about the same time, and when we checked it turned out to be a DiSenzo clone.

Haggerty had his people check the rest of them, and sure enough every last one of DiSenzo's bodies had been abandoned at the same time. One of them, he learned, had been to DiSenzo's bank while we were talking, and had drawn out the last of DiSenzo's liquid assets in cash. It was less than fifty thousand dollars. That clone jumped off a bridge. Nobody knew where he left the money.

I wish that were the end of the story, but it's not. What's left is my reason for telling you this much. Alex Linkowski isn't dead, he's just taken another identity. And it may be temporary. So this is something you need to know, especially if you are a Minor, and you live alone, and you don't have any close friends. Alex Linkowski is searching for the right identity. And he might choose yours.