Its guts were a dirty mélange of parts ancient and new. Only one mechanic at the station garage dared go near it. The others were either disdainful of the arcane collection of machinery, or afraid of it. Or afraid of what detectives Sykes and Tuggle might do to them if they screwed up the precious pile of ambulatory junk. The two bore an unreasonable affection for their vehicle, even for men working in L.A., where divorce actions were known to sometimes center on custody not of children, but of the family road machines.
The slugmobile hardly ever broke down. Its profile was dangerous, but the old steel sides would turn bullets that would rip right through the flanks of the new carbonfiber composite auto frames. It took good care of the two men who used it to cruise the dark back streets of the metropolis, and they in their turn looked after it.
The alien section of Los Angeles wasn’t all that different from the rest of the great urban sprawl. A little dirtier than most areas, grimmer than many, with only the occasional unexpected touch to remind a visitor that it was populated largely by refugees from another world. Sometimes you had to know just where to look in order to be able to tell where you were. Sykes and Tuggle had been on the street a long time and knew where to look.
Newcomers filled the oversized chairs of a grungy all-night diner. The chair backs and seats had been locally modified to accept their expansive frames. Another Newcomer emerged from a double doorway off on their right as the slugmobile slid down the street. Tuggle noted the inscription on the window next to the doors. The old laundromat had been converted into a night school for aliens.
They passed a city park, still green despite an obvious lack of regular maintenance. City workers weren’t fond of the alien end of town. Weeds had supplanted much of the original grass and had also invaded the cracks in the sidewalk, advancing on the once sacrosanct pavement itself. Despite the lateness of the hour a group of alien families had gathered to enjoy each other’s company. They were engaged in an alien game of uncertain purpose and incomprehensible strategy. Sykes stared and shook his head, trying to make some sense of it and failing utterly as Tuggle pointed the slugmobile up Washington.
“Jeez, they call that organized gang-bang a game?” Tuggle pursed his lips. On the billboard to their right, an exquisite female alien displayed yard-high white teeth while pressing a cold Pepsi to her lips. The billboard was the only piece of new construction in the immediate neighborhood.
Tuggle slowed as they approached the next intersection, the light against them. As soon as they slowed to a halt, a huge palm slammed against the window close by Sykes’s head. He jerked back involuntarily, startled, then relaxed when he got a good look at the hand’s owner.
The Newcomer was a derelict. Mumbling in his own sibilant language, he stood next to the car, weaving in place while fighting to stay erect. Filth and grime coated his face and worn clothing and his eyes were half-lidded and blood-shot. One dirty, broken-nailed fist clutched a quart carton of milk. It looked small as a pint in the massive palm.
Tuggle glanced speculatively in his partner’s direction. Sykes returned a look of disgust, shook his head negatively, then rolled down the window on the alien’s side.
“Can’t you see this is a cop car, buddy? Look, we ain’t in the mood tonight. So take a hike, okay?”
As soon as he finished he caught a full whiff of the derelict’s breath. Wincing, he rolled up the window as Tuggle pulled away. In the enclosed atmosphere of the slugmobile the smell was slow to dissipate.
Tuggle’s eyes took in the rearview. “He’s standing in the middle of the street, waving his arms.”
Sykes didn’t bother to look back. The disgust was still clear on his face, his nose still wrinkled against the odor. “No traffic and it’s late. He’ll move in a minute or two and find himself an alley somewhere.” Digging into his pocket, he found a plastic container of breath mints and popped a couple into his mouth. Tuggle refused the offer of one and the container vanished anew.
“Why’s it have to be sour milk that these guys get wasted on? What the hell’s wrong with Jack Daniels, or Thunderbird, for crissakes?”
Tuggle shrugged, his favorite gesture. He was a lot less flamboyant than his partner, and consciously so. “Beats me. Beats some of the eggheads, too, from what I’ve read about it. The Newcomers’ physiology is full of curves, some of ’em physical, some of ’em chemical. You got to admit one thing: it’s a cheap drunk.”
“Yeah.” Sykes stared out the window, studying lights and lonely streets. “Slagtown. Wonder what this part of L.A. used to be called before the Newcomers moved in?”
“Don’t ask me. I ain’t no history buff.”
Tuggle turned the slugmobile up Broadway, now home to all-night liquor stores and cheap parlor entertainments. The theaters were nearly all closed down, there as yet being no films directed specifically at the Newcomer communities. Hollywood was still working that one out. But a couple of places played the usual, struggling to draw enough Newcomer patrons to stay in business. No comedies. Human comedy was incomprehensible to all but the most sophisticated aliens. The majority preferred action-adventure stories and, oddly enough, love stories. Alien housewives were regular watchers of the morning TV soaps.
Newcomer hookers paraded near the theaters and restaurants, plying their trade. Not all Newcomer habits were incomprehensible. The women were elegant and impossibly tall, Sykes mused. He spoke as he stared.
“Wonder if their plumbing’s the same?”
“It is.” Tuggle spoke in his usual monotone, without taking his eyes off the road. Sykes eyed him curiously.
As he was preparing to ask the inevitable next question a long, lowrider station wagon pulled up alongside the slugmobile, grumbling through its chopped 427 Chevy engine. It peeled off fast at the next intersection, but for all his bravado the driver was careful to remain well within the posted speed limit. He was giving the cop car the vehicular finger, but masking it with caution. Tuggle cruised on, past alien eateries and specialty shops.
Slow night, Sykes thought. Just the usual Slagtown depression hanging like steady rain over the storefronts and dark apartment buildings. Even the bums and thugs moved slowly, tiredly here. He made a quick search of the dash, locating his cup of coffee amidst the rubble of two weeks’ worth of collected embalmed fast food by the steamed circle it made against the windshield. Tuggle was chewing on his lower lip as if trying to decide whether or not to say something. Sykes knew his partner would get around to whatever it was eventually. You didn’t ride with a man for nine years without getting to know him pretty well.
It wasn’t what Sykes expected to hear, however, when Tuggle finally spoke up. Nor was it a subject he wished to discuss.
“So, you gonna go, or you not gonna go?” his partner asked him tersely.
Sykes considered a response as he watched Tuggle expertly scoop up and begin noshing on a triangle of limp, lukewarm pizza. It was a delicate balancing act: driving, eating, and somehow simultaneously managing not to decorate his suit with cheese drippings or tomato sauce. Sykes couldn’t have done it. No matter how hard he tried he always ended up wearing full evidence of his previous days’ meals on his pants and shirt. Tuggle never said a word. He didn’t have to. The looks he gave his partner’s attire after such assaults were eloquent enough.
“How can I go?” he replied, trying to make it sound offhand and inevitable that he not go.
Tuggle wasn’t having any of it. “How can you not go? Don’t give me your excuses. Put on your wash-and-wear suit and your clip-on tie, have your landlady tie your shoes for you, and show up at the church. Simple. Even for somebody like you.” He paused a moment, focusing his attention on the row of illuminated storefronts sliding past on their right. “Me and Carol are going.”
That got Sykes’s attention. “What?”
“Hey, look, you got no cause to say anything. We’ve known Kristin since she was conceived in that cabin up at Big Bear.” He sat a little straighter behind the wheel and tried to light
en the mood. “Remember that night? You and Edie banged the wall so hard, me and Carol were picking plaster out of our hair for a week. I knew we should have insisted on taking the upstairs. But naw, we had to go and be generous, let you guys have the king bed. Some vacation that was. No sleep.”
“Edie and me didn’t sleep much ourselves, but then you already had that figured out.” Sykes’s newly won smile faded rapidly. “Goddamnit, Tug, I want to see Kristin get married too, okay? More than I want just about anything else. But I . . .”
Tuggle finished it for him. “But you’re bummed out because your ex and her husband are paying for the whole thing.”
Sykes started to argue, changed his mind. Tuggle knew when his partner was lying and would be too polite to point it out. That took any fun out of trying.
“Shit, if Kristin had to get married where I could afford it, we’d be holding the reception at Buddy Burgers. So what could I say? Kristin’s marrying money. Can’t say that I blame her. We sure as hell never had any of the stuff.”
“Look at it as Kristin’s money. She’d want you to be there, buddy.”
“I want to be there as much as she wants me to be there, but try and see it my way, Tuggle. Father of the bride, the poor relation. Everybody on the other side giving me those damn pitying looks rich folks reserve for the rest of us who’ll never own one of their colored credit cards. I got too much pride left for that, Tug. It’s about all I do have left.”
“Screw your pride. You should go.”
“Yeah, I know, I know. What’re you, my goddamn fairy godmother?”
“That’s me. Wanna see my wand?”
“What’s to . . .” Sykes broke off abruptly. Only half his brain had been concentrating on the seemingly insurmountable problem of whether or not to attend the wedding of his only daughter.
The other half—the other half continued functioning on standard detective op. Something he saw triggered the automatic alarm inside his head. It also had the virtue of taking the rest of his brain off his pissed-off mood. He nodded out the window.
“Uh-oh. Check it out.”
Tuggle turned responsively, squinting. “Check what out? All I see is dark.”
“Up ahead. By the corner right, two o’clock.”
Tuggle slowed the slugmobile, straining to see whatever it was that had aroused his partner’s attention. Sykes’s night vision was better than his. Rumor at the station had it that Sykes was some kind of nocturnal throwback, that he actually saw better at night than during the day.
Both aliens wore long coats, and it wasn’t that cold outside. Nor were they slouching along like a couple of drunken perverts. Perverts didn’t work in pairs. Other kinds of vermin did.
The coats were different. One was black vinyl, the other a heavy black or dark blue that didn’t look water repellent. Raincoat, as Tuggle immediately dubbed him in his mind, flaunted a zip-up dark shirt tight at the neck and fancy shoes. The other alien was partially hidden by his companion’s bulk.
The two entered a small minimart that occupied the corner of the block, Raincoat looking back to check the street before following his buddy inside.
“Does that look at all suspicious to you?” Sykes murmured thoughtfully.
Tuggle affected an air of mock innocence. “Now whatever would give you that idea?”
He found an empty slot between parked cars and eased the slugmobile into the gap. Sykes had his revolver out and was checking the chambers as his partner cut engine and lights.
Automatically finding the right controls on the radio, Tuggle flipped to the proper channel without taking his eyes off the street. “This is One Henry Seven. We’ve got a possible two-eleven in progress at Porter’s minimart, corner of Court and Alvarado. Requesting backup.”
Sykes was starting out the door. “Let’s do it, partner.”
His friend’s hand came down on his shoulder. “Easy, cowboy. One of these days you’re gonna get your head blown off pursuing justice a little too closely.”
Sykes stopped half in, half out the door, grinned back at Tuggle. “I like to keep close enough to see her backside. That’s what they told us at the Academy. ‘Never lose sight of Justice.’ ”
Tuggle sighed, shook his head, and replaced the radio mike on its hook as the dispatcher sputtered acknowledgment back at them.
The old buildings looming over Alvarado had been built a long time ago, before the heyday of the two-car family arrived in Los Angeles. The detectives were grateful for that. It meant there were few garages, which meant little in the way of off-street parking, which meant plenty of cover as they dodged behind the lines of battered Toyotas and Buicks in their stealthy advance toward the brightly lit convenience store.
Two minutes later they were near enough to see the interior through the dirty plate glass and burglar bars. Porter’s minimart was unimpressive, the shelves sloppily stocked, with none of the neatness familiar from Circle K’s or 7-Elevens. The ceiling lights hung from naked chains, the harsh fluorescents illuminating dirt and dust.
They could also clearly see the aged alien proprietor. He was standing behind the counter conversing animatedly with one of the two aliens who’d just entered. He stopped talking when the taller Newcomer reached into his coat and withdrew a blunt, combat-grade pump-action shotgun and aimed it at his chest. Raincoat extracted a similar weapon from the depths of his black slicker and whirled to confront the deserted doorway. It was hard to make out the Newcomer expressions at a distance and through the glass, but Sykes thought Raincoat looked nervous. The one facing down the proprietor was relaxed and all business.
“Christ, you see what they’re carrying?”
“Yeah.” Tuggle’s expression had gone grim. “Backup better get here quick. Don’t do anything stupid. Or brave.”
“Who, me? You got your vest?”
Tuggle winced as he was reminded of his bulletproof chest protector. “Of course. Nice and safe according to regulation, right next to the spare in the trunk.”
“Yeah, that’s comforting, ain’t it? Mine too.”
They were both tense because of the unexpected heavy firepower the two aliens had produced. Combat shotguns hardly seemed required for holding up mom-and-pop groceries. Maybe the thieves were insecure.
The larger alien was gesturing sharply with the powerful weapon. Though they couldn’t hear anything out in the street, they could see the Newcomer’s lips working rapidly, could see the terror that came into the old proprietor’s eyes. He started filling a brown paper sack with cash from the register.
Tuggle nodded tensely. “Back of the room, rear right.” Flicking his eyes past the pantomime being played out before them, Sykes saw that the proprietor’s wife was standing frozen-faced near a back portal. Out front, Raincoat was hopping from foot to foot to relieve the tension. No human being would have moved in quite that fashion, could have managed quite so perfect a succession of cross-steps without preplanning. The emotions, if not the dance steps, were the same. It only served to remind the two detectives crouched across the street that none of the people inside the grocery were human.
The proprietor continued shoveling money into the bag. It was taking a long time because his hands were shaking and he kept dropping bills. This only made his tormentor angrier, which in turn made the old fellow more nervous still.
Raincoat wasn’t the only participant in the nighttime drama who was getting antsy. Tuggle nodded at a car parked near the market.
“Watch the driver. I’m going for a better angle on the door.”
Sykes glanced down the street, back at his partner. “Thought you wanted to wait for a backup?”
“They’ll be here in a minute. Got to make a move now. The driver.”
Sykes turned back to the street, leveling his pistol. “I got him. Don’t get pinned going in.”
His partner nodded curtly, then took off like a scared crab, running crosswise across the intersection. Sykes waited until his partner was under cover once more before returni
ng his attention to the store.
The larger alien was grabbing up the sack of cash and shoving it into his coat pocket. Bills tumbled to the floor. The thief ignored them. Sykes frowned at that but had no time to work it out. The hair on his neck stiffened as it began. He felt like a man watching a slow-motion strip-tease, unable to react, unable to interact. It was insane. It made no sense.
Madness.
Without any warning of any kind, the robber whipped the shotgun up and fired. At close range the twelve-gauge shell opened up the old proprietor’s chest like a demolition charge, slamming him backward into shelves crammed with cans and packaged goods. He never had a chance. And there was no reason for it, no reason at all.
As if to compound the craziness, as the oldster slid to the floor the thief leaned over the counter and pumped another round into the crumpled body.
“Aw, shit.” Sykes was rising from his crouch.
Tuggle had almost made it across the street when the first shot was fired. He dropped instinctively, then raised his head for a clear look. As he did so a horn blared and both men looked in surprise down the street.
Sedan, late model. The horn howled a second time, a disembodied voice fleeing the pavement. Sykes barely had time to see that the human driver was starting his engine before all hell broke loose.
Reacting to the horn’s shriek, the two aliens inside the market turned in time to spot Tuggle crouched out on the asphalt. They opened fire instantly, blasting through the plate glass. One shellburst struck pavement. Another hit a civilian car rolling through the intersection, perforating its radiator and bringing it to a halt nearby. The terrified alien driver had the good sense to stay inside and out of sight.
Tuggle rose and made a dash for the cover of a nearby lamppost. As he did so, the human driver of the getaway vehicle emerged to level a machine pistol in the direction of the fleeing detective. Sykes immediately turned his attention to this new threat, hoping the two aliens would elect to stay under cover inside the minimart. As the driver fired at him, Sykes was forced to duck down behind the car that was providing his own cover. The rapid-fire machine pistol raked the metal and safety glass above his head.
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