At the time, of course, there had been no opportunity to think. The police had muscled him into the rear cab of the big police copter, revved the motors and lifted up, heading a few miles southwest to the heavily built-up business section of Trenton Sector. They settled down again on the rooftop pad of a central police precinct station, and the procedure, once inside, was standard police procedure, up to a point. Billy was fingerprinted and photographed, then taken into a room to be stripped and searched by a beefy and ungentle police sergeant He objected to removing the shoe from his bad foot, but the sergeant insisted, duly noting the clubfoot deformity down on his report sheet. Finally he was allowed to dress again — but at that point the procedure veered from what Billy had expected. There was no formal booking such as he had experienced on previous arrests, no police interrogation, no threats or blandishments. Instead he was taken to another room, a small cubicle with a single high window, an intercom, a computer console, a bright overhead light, a magazine rack, two chairs and a table, and there he was left to wait.
He waited, uneasy and irritable. On the magazine rack he found a Book of Mormon with the covers torn off, two comic books and a superannuated issue of the Police Gazette. He leafed through the latter, reading the details of an obscure axe murder, then tossed it aside and paced. Outside he could hear the normal commotion of people coming and going in the station, but nobody came near the door. Then finally, after a wait that seemed hours long, the door opened and a heavy-set man came in, wearing a gray business suit and carrying a briefcase. On his lapel was a small Department of Health Control emblem.
“It’s about time,” Billy said.
The man gave him a sour look and sat down at the computer console. From the briefcase came a pile of report sheets, together with Billy’s wallet. The man punched at the computer controls for a moment, glancing now and then at the print-out sheet. Finally he dumped Billy’s wallet out on the table, sifting, with pudgy fingers, through half a dozen phony ID cards. “Interesting,” the man said finally. “Just for the hell of it, what is your name?”
“Billy.”
“Billy what? You’ve got seven cards here with a different name and ID number on each one.” When Billy didn’t answer, the man looked up at him sharply. “Look, we can dig it out with the computer if we have to, but why sit around here for six or eight hours playing games? What’s your real name?”
Billy squirmed and shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said finally.
“You don’t know your own name?”
“Well, if you’d rattled around foster homes for ten years, you wouldn’t know yours either,” Billy retorted. “One place listed me as William Beckingham III, but they could have made it up for all I know.”
“What about your folks?”
“Both gone, killed in the Health Riots when I was a baby. My pop must have been a doctor or a scientist or something. I never did know.”
“But your friends call you Billy Gimp,” the man said. “What’s this with the foot, anyway?” He glanced at the computer print-out. “The record says you had firststage repair of a clubfoot at age two, but the second and third stages were postponed. Under-age for consent, I suppose. But you’re old enough now. Why haven’t you had it fixed?”
“Try and guess,” Billy said.
“Well, it’s your foot.”
“Let’s say I don’t like the price of free health care too much.”
“But you seem to be up to your neck in illegal health care.”
Billy just looked at him.
The man sighed, picked up a police report sheet. “At eleven thirty-one P.M. suspect was apprehended emerging from Apartment Complex Eight Sixty-one, Trenton Sector,” he read. “Suspect had in his possession a flight bag containing the following items: one baggage locker key; six disposable surgical gowns; three surgical masks; two sets of used surgical drapes; one portable suction apparatus;, one quarter liter of vinyl ether; two ether masks; assorted scalpels, hemostats, needle holders and sutures; two tonsil curettes — ” He looked up. “Do I really have to go on with this?”
“All right, I know what was in the bag,” Billy said. “So why don’t you book me and have it over with?”
“Book you? What good would that do? We want to know about your operation, who else is involved. Maybe we won’t even want to book you if you play ball.”
“That I’ve got to see,” Billy said.
“Well, why not give us a try? We’re not police, we’re Health Control. We don’t want you eating up our budget in jail somewhere. All we want is to protect the public from illegal medical practices. Now, where were you using all that stuff tonight?”
“In Apartment Complex Eight Sixty-one,” Billy said.
“Fine. Like what apartment?”
Billy just shrugged.
“All right, who were you with? Which doctor?”
“You don’t really think I’m going to tell you, do you?”
“Well, then let me tell you.” The man pulled a sheaf of typewritten notes from a folder. “This is a surveillance report of your activities during the past twelve hours. About four fifteen P.M. you found a bug in your room and immediately disconnected both your phone and your computer. Went to a public phone booth, used a false ID to place a call. Proceeded on foot to the antique shop of one Jack Masters, more generally known as Parrot. You came out empty handed after thirty minutes, went to your room, went to Lazy Louie’s for dinner, then went to pick up a blue flight bag from locker number seven-four-three-eight at the Two Hundred Ninety-first Street heli-port. Rode the monorail down to Health Control Hospital Number Seven — Do I have to go on?”
“Sounds like you’ve got all the data you need,” Billy said.
“Not quite all. You could fill in some important holes.”
“Sorry.” Billy shook his head.
“There are ways to get the information, you know. If we book you for a grand jury probe, you’d face pretrial drug interrogation.”
Billy sat up, suddenly alert. “Not without a court order, I wouldn’t.”
“So we’ll get a court order.”
“Oh, no, not with what you’ve got. The most you’ve got on me is a misdemeanor, and that’s no grand jury offense. If you had anything more, you wouldn’t be sitting here talking. Now I want out of here. Either book me or don’t book me. If you don’t, I’m leaving. If you do, we’ll have a computer-court hearing right here and now, and it’ll convict me of a misdemeanor and I’ll pay my fine and leave. So quit fooling around and take your choice.”
The Health Control man sighed, gathering his papers together. “You really want things the hard way, don’t you?” he said. “You may not like the computer-court verdict.”
“I’ll take my chances,” Billy said. “If I don’t like it, I can always appeal. Now why don’t you get the sergeant in here to set up a computer-court and let’s get going.”
It was a risky move, and Billy knew it. A computer-court would have the authority not only to convict him but to impose sentence then and there. The computer-courts were new, developed only in the past decade to speed up the handling of minor complaints, traffic violations, misdemeanor charges, and victimless crimes by adjudicating them on the spot on the basis of unchallenged evidence, presented by direct wire from any police station, precinct office, or street-corner hookup. In any case involving a small fine or suspended sentence, the computer-court could consider the evidence, adjudicate the case, and dispose of it in a matter of minutes. What was more, an adverse decision could always be appealed to a jury if the defendant so desired. Thus the computer-court was often used as a screening court to determine whether evidence was sufficient, or the alleged offense serious enough, to warrant further judicial proceedings.
There were problems, however, and Billy knew that too. A computer-court conviction inevitably prejudiced any appeal to a jury, and reversals were few and far between. But the more Billy considered, the more he sensed that he had to take the chance. Something abo
ut this whole stakeout and arrest was strangely spurious. If Health Control really wanted him, they had him, without any further ado. There was enough circumstantial evidence alone to convince a computer-court that he had indeed been involved in an illegal surgical procedure. Yet they dallied and dragged their feet and merely pretended to question him, apparently hesitating even to book him.
At the same time, it appeared that they had carefully ignored any leads that might have implicated Doc, and to Billy Gimp this did not add up. If Health Control knew his movements so closely, surely they knew he had met a doctor at Hospital No. 7, and they probably knew which one. They had to know that it was a doctor who had fled in the heli-cab, and they also had to know that at least one party to the illegal surgery — Molly Barret — had still been in the building when the trap was sprung. But there had been no stakeout to trace Doc’s or Molly’s movements; it was Billy alone they had been trailing, and Billy alone they had pulled in.
However he looked at it, he kept coming up with the same answer: they had sprung the trap on him, but it was not him they really wanted. The one they wanted was Doc — but for some reason they could not, or didn’t quite dare, try to tackle Doc head-on. They were interested in Billy only as a tool to corner Doc in some way — yet they could not use him if he would not testify.
And there, of course, was the hole in the fabric. There was no way that Billy could defend himself against a court-ordered drug interrogation. It was the one risk that he dared not take. And it was for this reason that Billy chose the smaller risk of forcing the issue then and there through a computer-court At best he might be exonerated, though this seemed unlikely. At the very worst, he could appeal a conviction and be released on bail pending a jury trial some months in the future. And at this point it was freedom that Billy needed more than anything else, however temporary it might be — freedom for him to contact Doc and warn him of what was happening, time enough to give Doc a chance to cover his tracks in the face of certain knowledge that Health Control was preparing a strangely devious net for him.
After the Health Control man stepped out to get the sergeant, Billy paced the room nervously. He knew that the computer-court would provide both defense and prosecution, reviewing the police evidence as a basis for prosecution, and any testimony he might give in his own defense. Testimony would also be matched against precedents established in prior cases and stored within the computer’s memory banks. Throughout the “trial,” the defense counsel would seek to minimize the defendant’s culpability, while the prosecution would seek to maximize the penalty. Billy’s past arrests would be data entered into the ligation — but so would his history of past exonerations and charges dropped for insufficient evidence. On balance, he thought, he should not do too badly, and the longer he waited, the more his spirits rose. Then finally the Health Control man returned with an officer and two communication units for the computer console.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” the policeman asked. “You know that whatever goes into the computer can be held as evidence against you, and that you have a legal right to be represented by counsel in a jury trial if you prefer?” As he spoke he typed the warning into the computer’s intake to make it a matter of record. Instantly the statement appeared on Billy’s print-out Billy read it, shook his head, and punched two standard response buttons on his console. DEFENDANT WAIVES RIGHT OF COUNSEL the machine typed out and then, after a pause, GUARANTEED RIGHT OF APPEAL DEMANDED.
The sergeant pushed his response button, and the computer spelled out: RIGHT OF APPEAL GUARANTEED BY COURT. PROCEED WITH CHARGES.
At this point the Health Control man produced a tape cassette which was inserted into the computer console. “Everything’s on there,” he told the sergeant. “Charges, testimony, the works.” Almost at once Billy’s print-out machine began chattering:
DEFENDANT WILLIAM BECKINGHAM (POSSIBLE ALIAS) IS CHARGED WITH ILLEGAL POSSESSION OF SURGICAL INSTRUMENTS ON ROOFTOP APARTMENT COMPLEX 861 TRENTON SECTOR 11:45 PM NOVEMBER 17, 2009
Billy stared at the print-out, waiting for other charges to be added. When nothing happened, he looked across at the Health Control man. “Where’s the rest?”
“That’s it,” the man said.
“Just possession?”
“That’s all.”
Bewildered, Billy looked back at the print-out. In this day and age illegal possession of surgical supplies was about equivalent to a traffic citation; Health Control was ignoring a dozen more serious charges they could press. Puzzled, Billy pushed the button to activate his own defense counsel, and watched with approval as the customary countercharges were printed out:
DEFENDANT PRESSES COUNTERCHARGES AS FOLLOWS: ILLEGAL SEIZURE AND SEARCH BY POLICE WITHOUT WARRANT ON ROOFTOP APARTMENT COMPLEX 861 TRENTON SECTOR AT ABOVE-NOTED TIME.
For a moment the computer was silent; then the typewriter began chattering again:
SURVEILLANCE OF DEFENDANT PRIOR TO ARREST PROVIDES REASONABLE SUSPICION OF GUILT. DEFENDANT’S PAST POLICE RECORD PROVIDED POLICE WAIVER. NO SEARCH WARRANT REQUIRED ON REASONABLE SUSPICION. COUNTERCHARGES DISMISSED. DEFENSE PROCEED WITH TESTIMONY.
A signal light appeared on Billy’s side. He reached and pushed a button indicating no testimony. Instantly the teletype began again:
DEFENSE RECOMMENDS PLEA OF GUILTY IN ABSENCE OF TESTIMONY.
Billy nodded and pushed the consent button to activate the plea. The teletype rattled briefly and the sergeant’s print-out read:
DEFENDANT PLEADS GUILTY.
Now Billy sat back. With a guilty plea, and no testimony to the contrary, the computer-court had no alternative but to convict; all that remained was the sentence. Billy watched the teletype, eager now to have this over with, to pay whatever fine was required and to get back out on the street and into contact with Doc. Even as he watched, the machine began typing rapidly:
DEFENDANT GUILTY AS CHARGED ILLEGAL POSSESSION OF SURGICAL INSTRUMENTS. IN VIEW OF DEFENDANT’S PAST POLICE RECORD, SURVEILLANCE IS NECESSARY TO AVERT REPETITION OF SAME OR SIMILAR MISDEMEANOR CRIME. THIS COURT SENTENCES WILLIAM BECKINGHAM (POSSIBLE ALIAS) TO SIX MONTHS OF CONTINUOUS PERSONAL ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE VIA BROADCASTING TRANSPONDER. SENTENCE TO BE IMPLEMENTED AT ONCE.
Billy stared at the print-out, totally appalled. This, of all things, he had not reckoned with. A broadcasting transponder — a small shortwave broadcasting device clamped and sealed to the victim’s wrist — was a crime-control device ordinarily reserved for hardened and dangerous criminals as a substitute for imprisonment in order to avert further crime or criminal association, for it enabled police to maintain close, continuous, twenty-four-hour computer surveillance over anyone sentenced to wear one. With a broadcasting transponder on his wrist, Billy knew, his movements would be an open book to the police; it would enable them to follow him everywhere he went, to identify every building he entered, every move he made. It could lead police to any underground medical case that he and Doc might undertake and could, if the police wished to monitor him that closely, enable them to identify by time and place virtually every other human being he might come in contact with. The transponder was, in effect, a prison without bars. It would mean that he was effectively out of business as long as he wore the device unless he could find some way to silence its broadcasting, and he was well aware that any interference with the function of a court-ordered transponder was a gross felony offense that could put him behind bars for years.
Billy stood up, shaking his head. “No,” he said. “No dice. There’s no grounds for that, and I’m going to appeal it.”
The Health Control man smiled broadly. “Fine,” he said. “An appeal won’t help, but go ahead.”
“That computer has got to be rigged. The courts never assign a transponder for a misdemeanor offense.”
“They can when a man has a record like you have. There’s plenty of precedent.”
“Well, we’ll see what a jury says about it,” Billy said angrily. He turned to the read-in console, push
ed the button to activate the defense side of the court and then typed out DEFENDANT APPEALS JUDGEMENT.
The print-out clattered briefly, GROUNDS FOR APPEAL?
Without Billy touching the console the defense printed out: CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT FOR MISDEMEANOR OFFENSE. DEFENDANT DEMANDS JURY TRIAL, RELEASE ON BOND PENDING TRIAL DATE. Billy nodded approval; it was the only plausible approach. After a moment the prosecution side printed out: APPEAL NOTED. DEFENDANT WILL BE NOTIFIED WHEN TRIAL IS SCHEDULED. TO BE RELEASED ON SUITABLE BOND PENDING TRIAL.
Billy leaned back in his seat with an audible sigh of relief. But the Health Control man, still smiling, was holding a whispered conference with the police sergeant. Then he tapped out a message for the computer: PROSECUTION PROTESTS CASH BOND ON GROUNDS OF ARREST RECORD. REASONABLE DOUBT DEFENDANT WILL APPEAR FOR TRIAL.
Moments later the court print-out went into activity again. Billy watched as the words appeared on his print-out:
PROTEST SUSTAINED. DEFENDANT TO BE ASSIGNED TO CONTINUOUS PERSONAL ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE VIA BROADCASTING TRANSSPONDER UNTIL TRIAL DATE IN LIEU OF OTHER BOND.
It was incredible and unheard of, but it was there. He was being assigned a transponder whether he accepted the computer-court’s original sentence or appealed it; the net result was exactly the same. As he lurched to his feet the sergeant moved to block his escape and two more policemen came through the door. The sergeant opened a leather case and withdrew a small chrome-plated device that looked like a wrist watch with no face on it. Seizing Billy’s right wrist, he clamped the transponder in place and turned the tamper-proof seal. Then, as Billy stood staring at the device in disbelief, the Health Control man stood up, still smiling, his briefcase in his hand. “Great talking to you, Billy,” he said blandly. “Any time you’d like to shake that thing, just let us know that you want to talk. Meanwhile, don’t do anything you wouldn’t want us all to know about, because we’ll know about it.”
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