by Vic Robbie
How long had he been out? Headlock couldn’t guess but was relieved he appeared to be alone. And there were no new injuries apart from a painful chin. But the attackers might still be lurking in the lot, and he looked for a weapon to use against them. It was deserted. For the time being, he was safe, and that surprised him. Maybe they considered he’d had enough for now and wanted to prolong the agony. Make him sweat like slow torture.
The air smelled good, almost pure, like stepping outside for the first time in the mountains. Earlier the canopy of smog had been oppressive. Now there was an improvement, and he could breathe as if a giant air-conditioning unit was pumping clean air into the atmosphere. Still, he’d never felt this bad in all his years in the ring, and he wondered how many times he had to hit his head before his brain disintegrated.
A vibrating in his pocket brought him back to the present. Solo’s phone was alive and glowing a dull yellow. He flipped it open and pressed a button. ‘Hello, hello,’ he shouted into the mouthpiece and held it to his ear, hoping it was her, but he heard nothing.
How had she used it the night before?
But it had been dark, and he wasn’t paying attention. After a few minutes pressing every combination of buttons, he gave up, and the phone went dead. Solo might have been contacting him or just trying to locate her phone. He was about to hurl it at the wall in frustration but stopped, remembering it might be his only way of contacting her.
Slipping it into a pocket, he headed for Barney’s with only a cold beer to savour. Everything seemed different this morning, and he felt as if he was floating. It was unreal, as if wearing a shirt that didn’t fit.
How had he got here? His memory faded in and out like video flashes. The youth had been on the point of bludgeoning him; the professionals moving in with guns cocked. Battling to get back on his feet and staggering away from his attackers, but only farther into the alley. Then the image faded.
His head was spinning faster than a washing machine, and he had double-vision. There was a strange echoing in his ears like an old-fashioned radio, and he struggled to determine what was real and what was a dream.
A drink would get him on track. As he pushed open the doors, none of the morning regulars was about, probably taking advantage of the good weather.
‘Good morning, sir. Welcome.’ Barney’s voice boomed, as usual, only there was something changed about him today. He rubbed his eyes, but that didn’t help.
‘Thanks, Barney,’ he said, relieved to see someone friendly.
‘It’s Bernard,’ the barman said with a fake French accent. ‘Bonjour.’
There was no trace of a smile or a wink, and the expression was almost wooden. If this was a joke, he was in no mood for it. He closed his eyes, hoping that when he reopened them, everything would revert to normal.
‘What would sir care for this morning?’ Barney leant on a piano while a guy in a tuxedo picked at the notes like a two-fingered typist and stared at his hair as though something unpleasant lived there. This must be the guy Solo talked about.
‘Just a cold beer, Barney. Sorry, I meant Bernard. And if it’s solid ice that will do nicely. Could use it on my head.’ The wound was still painful to the touch. Wasn’t he supposed to get it checked at the hospital or had he done so already?
Bernard’s look hardened. ‘Sorry, sir. We serve three cordials. And we have a superior range of Qs.’
His patience deserting him, he turned on his heel. ‘No, thanks.’ This wasn’t the time for jokes. He’d go somewhere else until Barney came to his senses.
As he made his way down the steps, a small Japanese-looking man in a rumpled suit and a driver’s hat with the logo Empire Taxicabs approached him.
‘Your car awaits,’ the driver said and pointed to an old Checker cab twenty yards away.
‘Didn’t order a cab.’
Or did I?
The man offered a practised smile. ‘Don’t worry, you be okay with me, man. Let me have phone, please.’
Bewildered, he handed it over. The man opened it, and it sparked into life in his hands, glowing yellow and vibrating. ‘On board,’ the driver whispered into the phone and returned it.
He peered at it and slipped it into his pocket.
Surprisingly, for an old Checker cab, there was no engine noise to interrupt the smooth jazz emanating from the car radio. The cool improvisation of Charlie Parker’s saxophone playing Gershwin’s Summertime was unmistakable. He recognised it as if he’d been listening to it all his life.
It dawned on him that the change in Barney this morning, apart from playing a French fool, was his hair, a luxuriant mane of white. Barney had been bald for as long as he’d known him. He chuckled at the thought of his old friend wearing a wig. Perhaps there was a new woman on the scene.
The cab wound through the city streets, and once again, it was different, but he couldn’t pin down why. He was about to ask the driver where they were going when Solo staring down at him caused him to splutter, ‘What in hell is that?’
‘Oh, the girl? She No.1 billboard model. She all over town.’ And he waved an expansive arm around him.
‘Who is she?’
‘She’s Solo Blue. She very pretty.’ And the driver winked in the rear-view mirror.
Her image smiled out from the top of a twenty-storey building, and he saw more when he glanced around.
‘Never noticed it before, but I guess I never look at the tops of buildings. Too much smog.’
‘No smog here anymore,’ the driver said, waving. ‘Clear skies only now.’
He wanted to contact her, and now he was with someone who could operate the phone he’d give it another shot and perhaps find her contact details.
‘Driver, could you help? Having trouble with the phone. Can’t switch it on.’
The driver shook his head and giggled. ‘You no good with technology? Easy, what you wanna do?’
‘Can’t seem to make a call.’
‘No big deal, man. Pass it over.’
He leant forward, and the man half turned to take it.
‘Good phone, man. This the latest. You pay a lot for this. Much money.’
‘No good if I can’t use it.’
‘No problem, man.’ The driver took his hands off the wheel and appeared to massage the instrument until it glowed and vibrated again. He turned around and giggled. ‘Watch me, I make call. Prove it working okay. Right?’
The taxi progressed through the morning traffic, and the driver was still laughing when the phone exploded in his ear, blowing off the top of his head.
An enormous flash of light blinded Headlock momentarily and strange matter peppered his head as the car took off and flew over the surrounding traffic. It landed with a crunch of metal before flipping on its side and slicing through a department store window.
Chapter Sixteen
It took some time, but once Solo had pieced together all the information after studying news clips, a sense of dread engulfed her. She’d arranged for a taxi to pick up Headlock at Fisherman’s Quay and the news that a taxi had crashed into a department store, killing the driver and several others, grabbed her attention.
A witness claimed a member of the emergency services told him the driver’s phone exploded. And it reminded her of talking with Dr Dring. If they could track her phone and her chip, could they blow it up remotely? Anything was possible. They could have planned to kill her; not aware Headlock was carrying her phone. And she’d put him in danger.
The clips lasted seconds and showed the dead and wounded being loaded onto ambulances. She concentrated on every piece of footage, experiencing a mixture of elation and shock when she caught a glimpse of Headlock being stretchered away. That head of blond hair was recognisable anywhere. He could still be alive.
The injured were being transported to City Hospital, and the casualties had escalated to three fatalities and six injured, two with serious and life-threatening injuries. Dead or alive, he would be there. She must go to him. She owed him th
at at least.
A media melee of television cameras and reporters with microphones and others shouting into their phones surrounded the hospital entrance. The public, some worried about friends and family members and others thrilled to be filming the occasion on their phones, swelled the crowd. And bad-tempered cops tried to stop anyone from entering.
Dishevelled after battling through the crowd, she encountered a large cop blocking her path.
‘Can’t come in here,’ he said, not expecting an argument.
‘Got to get in.’
‘Sorry, lady.’ And he shook his head to reinforce it.
‘Got to get to maternity,’ she gasped, distending her belly. ‘Have an important appointment.’
The cop appraised her.
Faking pain, she placed a hand on her belly and groaned.
Alarmed, he swivelled around.
‘Don’t want to lose another one.’
He stepped back, struggling to decide.
With a scowl of pain, she buckled at the knees. ‘Ooh.’
‘Okay, lady, okay, take my arm. I’ll get you there.’
After ushering her into the revolving door, he guided her through the lobby as her legs gave way again.
‘Sit here,’ the cop said and helped her into a seat. ‘I’ll get help.’
She responded quickly. ‘No need, I’m sure I’ll be okay.’
But he left her and ran for help. ‘Nurse, nurse,’ he called with an element of panic in his voice. ‘Have a pregnant lady over there, she’s not good.’
Solo managed a strained smile. ‘Thank you, sir, for your help. You should get back to your post. Some others are trying to get in.’
A quick glance confirmed the impatient crowd was growing by the second, and he touched his cap. ‘Hope everything will be okay, lady.’
The nurse’s eyes met hers with the hint of a secret smile. ‘Are you okay now?’
‘Men panic about these things. A glass of water would be good, thanks.’
The nurse hurried off and then, called to another emergency, broke into a run.
Once she was out of sight, she stood up and caught the cop looking at her with a questioning stare. She waved and, as if familiar with her surroundings, stepped slowly but purposefully towards the emergency ward where the victims of the blast would be.
Headlock might be dead by now, or one of those with life-threatening injuries, and she wondered what she’d do then. For some annoying reason, he intrigued her. He was different from all the men she’d met, but in a way she couldn’t explain.
A group of people huddled together, crying. A woman burying her head into a man’s chest. A couple of children bewildered and lost. And a doctor placating someone unable to contain their anger.
The injured appeared to be in separate rooms with teams of nurses and doctors rushing from one to the other. She glanced into the first one and caught her breath. Shocked by the patient’s injuries, she had to look away. Whether it was a man or a woman, it was impossible to tell. One of the medical team glanced at her intrusion but went back to work.
As far as she could gauge, there were five or six rooms side by side, and two of them were empty, probably their patients had been taken away for surgery or had died. By the time she reached the last door, she believed he was one of the fatalities. There were no medical staff about just a patient lying on the bed with their back to the door and a sheet covering them.
She entered and was on the point of pulling back the sheet when a voice bellowed behind her, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Sorry.’ She reeled in shock. ‘Searching for my husband. He was taken into the hospital.’
‘Name?’ The middle-aged nurse with grey frizzy hair demanded with a tired expression.
‘Name, name?’ She scrambled to remember. ‘Hartington, that’s the name.’
As if she’d come up with the wrong answer, the nurse shook her head.
‘Hartington,’ she repeated, more assured this time.
‘That helps.’ The nurse seemed relieved. ‘This one is a bit of a mystery. No ID on him at all. No chip either. Irregular if I may say so.’
‘Perhaps they got lost in the blast.’
‘Perhaps,’ the nurse replied, and her expression darkened. ‘But he can’t have lost his chip.’
Without thinking, she felt her hand with the chip. ‘Don’t understand.’
‘When you come into hospital, we read your chip and access your medical records. But we tried, and a doctor examined him thoroughly and said not only did he not have a chip, he’d never been chipped.’ She glanced at the ceiling, looking for an answer. ‘You married him, must have had a chip to get married.’
She was confused. He was different, but this made him unusual in so many ways. Dangerous ways.
‘No chip, no treatment, I’m afraid.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We can’t touch him. If they don’t have a chip, we have to leave them there until they die. That’s the law.’ The nurse turned away. ‘Anyway, it’s out of our hands now.’
‘Why?’
‘We had to inform the StatPol. They’ll be here any minute to take him away. Poor soul, he’d be better off dead.’
Chapter Seventeen
Headlock’s eyes flickered open and blinked several times at the white vision before him. This must be death, and it was another victim of the explosion. He shut his eyes, wanting it to disappear, but when he reopened them, it was still there.
Solo recoiled at his look of horror. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Your white face,’ he sighed. ‘Thought I was dead.’
Hands on hips, she pouted, ‘Yours is no better. Looks like they’ve been throwing darts at it.’
He rolled over, not wanting to talk to her.
‘Must get away.’ She shook him gently. ‘Are you badly hurt?’
Every so often, his sight blurred, and he nodded his head to get it back into focus. Did she exist, or was this another dream? The aches in places he didn’t know felt real enough.
‘Rattling around like a bag of old bones, but I’m not too bad. Lucky, I guess. Apparently, your phone blew up in the driver’s ear, and the headrest protected me from the blast. I was thrown clear before the car crashed into the store.’
She breathed easy.
‘What are you doing here?’ He sat up. ‘Come to finish me off?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You were my only witness, and you deserted me at the cop shop. Why didn’t you tell them I didn’t do it?’
She looked bewildered. ‘Never got the chance. They didn’t speak to me. It was as if I didn’t exist.’
So, why didn’t you insist on speaking to them?
‘I waited for hours for you, but no one came near me again, and I just left. No one stopped me.’
I don’t believe it.
‘Can you walk?’
‘Don’t know. Can’t feel anything. Do I still have legs?’
She pulled back the sheet and counted, ‘One–two. Will that be enough?’
‘What’s the rush?’
‘Cops are coming. Don’t want to mess with them.’
Not again. Not more questions.
Raised voices in the corridor forced her to go to the door and look out. The tramp, tramp of the heavy boots of the StatPol reverberated along the long corridor.
He struggled out of the bed and dressed before joining her. ‘Who the hell are these guys?’
‘Quick, they’re coming.’
Four members of the StatPol, clad in full riot gear with body armour and black helmets with black-tinted glass visors, each carrying an assault rifle, stomped towards them. He blinked in disbelief. It was more like a scene from a Judge Dredd comic than the emergency ward of City Hospital.
‘Got to move. Now!’ She pulled a couple of white coats off a peg on the back of the door, and they slipped them on. Farther along the corridor, a patient on a gurney had blocked the cops’ path, and the
y shouted at him to get out of their way.
Across from his room, an exit led to an emergency stairwell. ‘Down here,’ she whispered and shoved him through.
While she hurried on ahead, his descent was slower as every step jarred, sending shuddering pains shooting through his body. Part of him wanted to sit and rest, and his mind whispered that it didn’t matter what they did to him as it couldn’t be any worse than this. But she ran back and pulled him down.
Carefully opening the door to the lobby, she poked her head out. The chaos of a hospital meant no one paid attention to two people in white coats emerging from a door.
Reaching the exit, she ordered, ‘Give me your coat,’ and took off her own and discarded them. ‘Must walk out as if normal.’
He laughed quietly. ‘A three-legged turtle would be more normal.’
Outside, more media and onlookers swelled the crowd, and they made slow progress, glancing over their shoulders to check if the StatPol were closing in.
A hand fastened on her arm, and she turned in fright.
‘Everything okay, lady?’ asked the cop with a reassuring smile.
‘Yes, yes,’ she stuttered. ‘Everything’s fine now.’
‘Good. All part of the service.’ He offered a mock salute.
‘Getting a cab home.’
‘There’s a rank right over there.’ He pointed. ‘I’ll clear a path for you.’
The cop went in front, shouting, ‘Okay, make way, make way for the lady. Stand back now. Make way.’
Once clear of the crowd, they moved as fast as he could to the taxis. Although the refrigerated air pumping out from the machines on the street corners refreshed him, he felt as if he were floating, and everything about him darkened.
‘Headlock, Headlock.’ The voice seemed distant and he was aware of someone shaking him and then recognised Solo’s sapphire eyes.
‘Where were you?’ she asked. ‘You appeared to be in a trance. Get in the cab.’
As he struggled into the back seat, the cabby asked, ‘Where do you wanna go?’
At first, she didn’t reply then said, ‘Can’t go to my apartment. There are people there I don’t want to see.’