The SWAT commander, running point, leveled his scoped rifle at Radon. As the commander’s men fanned out to get more angles on him, the smile never left Radon’s face. If ever there was a man whose hands were tied, it was a police officer’s, especially before this many witnesses.
Radon never stopped thinking that, even as the bullet slammed into his brain. It locked the smug-satisfaction on his face in place by short-circuiting his neural webs and denying transport of any further idea-generating mechanisms.
***
“What the hell, Perdue?” his right-hand man exclaimed. Purnell had always been a bit stiff-collared for his tastes.
Perdue ripped the earpiece off Radon before he had time to fall face first to the ground. “The technology we need. It has potential cost-cutting benefits I’m sure Robes Pierre will be happy to point out the second I’m back in the van. The legislation necessary to bring this guy to justice, on the other hand, that’s all overhead costs no one can afford.”
“You don’t get to be judge, jury, and executioner, Perdue,” Purnell said.
“Don’t I? If there are no concerned citizens pushing for justice, it’s like that Zen koan. Does the tree in the forest really fall if there’s no one there to hear it?”
“Screw you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Say a few prayers for me.” Perdue gestured to his team to disappear the body and finish wrapping the scene from a forensics perspective, including the shell spilled from his rifle.
Time for a disappearing act all their own.
***
“You telling me you couldn’t find a better use for this thing?” Maloney said, incredulous. He gazed into the empty chamber of the truck, reminiscent of the insides of a police paddy wagon. Maloney was a very capable man, technically proficient, exacting, but he preferred to leave the visionary stuff to people like Hingeman.
Hingeman sighed. “I shopped the idea around, but a portable incinerator that does what cutting edge plasma plants do at a fraction of the cost is still way too expensive for most practical applications.”
“Damn shame.” Maloney struggled to think of some application Hingeman hadn’t before admitting, that was why he was execution guy, not concept guy. Maloney could tell having to repeat the story just ripped his heart out over and over again.
“More than one way to skin a cat.”
“I tell you, if I wasn’t so broke…”
“Relax,” Hingeman said. “They’re mostly Muslim in this end of town. This gets them seventy vestigial virgins to replace the one nagging wife they have.” He waved to move the assembly line along.
Bruder, one of two beefy bullies attending the cars that had been rerouted to the rear parking lot behind the closed, decommissioned warehouse, yanked the latest driver out from behind the wheel, dragged him toward Hingeman. They owed the choice abandoned storehouse location to the fact that no one needed to stock in bulk anymore.
The driver was promptly thrown into the portable incinerator, and the door closed. Thirty seconds later, the door was opened, and poof, the guy was gone, like some cheesy magic act.
Though the incinerator worked fast, the sedans piled up. But the passengers could be kept locked in their vehicles until Hingeman was ready for them with the same car-computer override technology that had rerouted the autos here despite the riders’ best efforts. They stayed away from cars with OnStar, and security systems that could alert officials, unless they could block the outgoing signals.
As for the drivers with guns in their glove boxes, it was the job of the two beefy guys to shoot back. One tragicomic episode occurred with one of the high-end cars they specialized in hijacking. The panicked woman in the coupe fired her weapon at them, and the bulletproof windows ricocheted the bullets, killing her entire family, including two small kids. She was so terror-stricken, she thought her loved ones were falling to the guns in the bullies’ hands who were standing guard at each of the two exits from the car. So she upped her tempo discharging the weapon, until she finally took herself out. A damn shame all around. But Maloney supposed, in the final analysis, killing them prematurely was even more merciful than allowing them to sit in the car before they got their turn in the vaporizer.
One of their two computer guys, Vinny, was tasked with commandeering the cars and getting them to drive into the spider web. The other one, Haply, was tasked with altering the stored information on the cars’ onboard computers to facilitate change of ownership. As to the surfeit of computer guys on their team, Maloney could thank the massive layoffs of computer whizzes with outsourcing to India—starting even prior to the global economy crashing. They had simply gotten hungrier and more desperate since then.
The line moved along nicely. Homeless people were paid like extras in a movie to drive off with the hardtops. Honestly, all they had to do was sit in the sedans, and pretend to drive, so driverless-cars didn’t start turning heads. They were high-functioning homeless people, all the same, who could be counted on to keep quiet for the regular money. What’s more, they were unattached, so Hingeman could keep his operation mobile, hitting one town after another in no predictable pattern, thanks to the randomizing algorithms Vinny ran on his computer.
The two bouncers complained about the workout. They had tossed about fifty people into the back of the mobile incinerator in less than sixty minutes. Taking a break was fine. Hingeman had made enough of a killing for one day, pardon the pun.
Maloney jumped into the last car alongside Hingeman. “A shame, a damn shame.”
“What is?” Hingeman said, as if he hadn’t heard him the first time.
“The down economy. The whole thing. People shouldn’t have to sacrifice their principles like this just to survive.”
“We’re sending them to a better place, no matter how you look at it.” Hingeman turned the engine over and set the all-terrain vehicle in gear.
He’d drive this one himself, with no computer override. Call him a traditionalist.
***
“Robes-Pierre has a line on those car-jackers. Says he picked them up off a satellite feed.” Purnell talked with his mouth full. They were taking their break at the Berkeley marina, enjoying the stunt-kite flyers showing off.
“This should be worth a few laughs,” Perdue said. He signaled for the men to mount up. Break over. Marching toward the van with his rifle held high, he explained, “I’m guessing they’re holding the kidnapped motorists long enough to pass them off to a sex-trafficker, who will stuff them into even bigger cargo containers.”
“Either way,” Purnell said, “when we dispatched Traffic Light Guy, they moved up in priority.”
Perdue grunted. “Traffic Light Guy. We don’t even bother to get their names, anymore. What does that tell you?”
***
Purnell stood alongside Perdue and his men, spread out in a perfect circle by the water, their weapons at the ready. The large empty asphalt-lot had been chosen because it was where the cars had been hijacked. Perdue was out to make a statement.
“Hey, this is like that movie, The Thing from Another World. You know, where they step out the perimeter of the spaceship.”
“Our lives aren’t that exciting.” Perdue pulled back the operating rod on his rifle. “At least not yet.”
He raised his voice to carry to the back of the SWAT van where Robes-Pierre had his work cut out for him. “I’m not getting any younger, Robes-Pierre.”
“This guy’s pretty good.” Robes-Pierre played with his keyboard. “He’s overriding my overrides nearly as fast as I can generate them. Maybe we should recruit him.”
“Maybe you should get smarter in the time you have remaining,” Perdue said.
“Got them!” Robes-Pierre shouted, clapping to celebrate his good fortune.
The stolen sedans streamed towards them, lined up single file against the waterfront as they came to a complete stop.
The van pulled into the center of the circle the SWAT team had paced out. They leveled their guns on the vehicle.
<
br /> The street people were let out of the cars by Robes-Pierre, who overrode the car computers from inside the SWAT van. They jumped into the water without being coaxed. One look at the well-armed SWAT team, and they were suddenly inspired to swim out to Alcatraz and incarcerate themselves.
Perdue walked up to the lead car with the hijackers, noticed the two beefy body guards stuffed in the backseat like a couple of deployed airbags. “Let’s start with car number two,” he shouted to Robes-Pierre.
The door locks popped on car two. Perdue gestured with the tip of his automatic rifle for the two thugs to foot it to the back of the hijack van. Seeing the Easy Come Easy Go logo on the side paneling, and below it, “The Most Effective Waste Removal Ever,” he was clearly tempted to put this van-dematerializer concept to the test.
The two bouncers marched like lemmings into the back of the truck, all too ready to accept it in its made-over guise as a paddy-wagon.
The second the door closed on the two bouncers, Perdue inspected the outside of the truck for levers, a control board, buttons, anything that might help him procure the desired magic.
Purnell arrested Perdue’s hand as it went to depress a red button the size of a walnut. “Let’s think about this,” he said.
“You think too much. Nothing’ll get you killed faster.” Perdue depressed the button. The truck emitted a pleasing blue light and a faint sizzling sound. When they stopped, he opened the back of the van. The two bouncers were gone. Not even any sign of ash. “It’s like a bug zapper. I guess this is what I get for doubting any crazy cockamamie idea that defies all reason isn’t always, and I do mean, always, the most likely answer in this town.” He locked eyes with Purnell. “Go get the ring leaders for me.”
“You bastard.” Purnell knew he was making him do it just to push his buttons. To see if he was ready to mutiny or not. Perdue’s predator’s instincts were too good not to detect the wind change in their relationship.
Purnell trudged to the lead car, glanced up at the SWAT truck.
Perdue gave a shout. “Open the doors on the lead car, RP. Make sure Purnell thanks you later for the reality check.”
Purnell leveled his rifle at the two ring-leaders, who were followed closely by the computer whiz responsible for all the car-computer overrides. He gestured with the gun for them to get in the back of the van.
“You bastards,” squawked the inventor.
“In Berkeley, we let karma settle all debts,” Perdue said on Purnell’s behalf. “Saves on money, and removes humans who are so corruptible from the equation.”
“Maybe you’d rather spend the rest of your lives in a jail cell.” Purnell offered the back of the van as a kindness, as much to forgive himself for his part in all this as to motivate the three ringleaders. He could tell making a break for it was starting to look a lot more appealing, judging by how much their eyes were bouncing between the back of the van and his automatic rifle.
But the three men hopped in, and Purnell shut the doors. Perdue gestured for Purnell to depress the button. “Who’s more guilty, Purnell? The commander giving the order, or the soldier following the order in spite of his own conscience?”
“Damn you!”
“We really have to work on your repartee.”
Perdue smiled with satisfaction as Purnell pressed the button. He pointed his face to the sun and basked to the pleasing blue light and bug-zapper sounds coming from the back of the van.
Perdue opened the back of the van for Purnell, dragged him over, and forced him to look inside. “You’re a hell of a magician, Purnell. Good to have a fallback in this economy.”
“What are we going to do with this vehicle?” Purnell said deadpan, refusing to give him the satisfaction of an emotionally overwrought reaction which he could save for later in the privacy of his own home. “We can’t exactly stow it in the impound yard.”
“No, we can’t,” Perdue said reflectively. He closed the door on the van, took some steps back to better admire his new toy. “Hell, we’ll take it with us. We can’t always count on being able to dispatch bad guys with a bullet to the head. Not in this age of ubiquitous spycams. Bastards did us a solid. See, you can rest your conscience, Purnell. By helping us to rid the world of human cockroaches, they died doing God’s work. You might have saved their very souls. Leastways, you made my day.” Perdue slapped him on the back. “Lighten up, Purnell. You take life way too seriously. Good luck surviving this world with that approach.”
FIVE
Robin surveyed the top of the stairs as if finally ready to summit K-9, before reining in the mental histrionics. He steeled himself with a deep breath and a firm grip on the banister, and started the ascent of this upside down world where his personal hell was always one floor above him.
After arriving at their bedroom, Robin watched Drew dress before the mirror. It was part of their daily ritual for helping him get past his wife going transgender. As morning wakeups went, he couldn’t argue its jolting value.
Drew ran her eyes over him. He knew she was looking for the uniform, missing one of her turn-ons. She still couldn’t help herself after all this time. Since he’d gotten promoted to detective, Drew had had to make some painful adjustments of her own.
“You stand in that doorway less and less. I really hate thinking you’re avoiding me.” Emotional blackmail. Her specialty.
Robin guessed if she was planning to sport a dick where her husband least expected to find one, added leverage probably wasn’t a bad idea.
Robin coughed as he inhaled. He already missed the scent of his favorite perfumes on her, but they had been replaced now by men’s cologne. His reaction wasn’t lost on Drew.
Continuing his descent into his personal hell, Robin watched her don a pair of cufflinks next equal to six months of his pay, and a tie clip that would give the Hope Diamond an inferiority complex. Her gestures at applying both were more rehearsed and refined than the jewels themselves. Even the mirrors basked in the glory of her return visits, doubtless finding life pointless without her. They were only now rebounding from the pained withdrawal caused by the commoners trailing in her wake, himself namely, like those minions who straighten the queen’s cape on the ground behind her as she walks. That thing she did with her hair, folding it up in more swirls than Chinese origami, seemed like something passed down from generation to generation.
The poor never had reasons to pass things on like that.
“Why don’t we take another stab at playing detective?” Drew said.
“Sure,” Robin replied, after some hesitation. He rankled at the condescending remark, considering his chosen profession. All the same, he was eager to capitalize on her aristocratic background for the sensitivity that gave her to subtle body-language cues and things left unsaid. He sometimes resented her Republican outlook on things, but couldn’t deny she was better at the soft skills he needed to survive at his new job.
He sensed she was being manipulative. Drew was no doubt afraid he was pulling away from her. Maybe he was. Leave it to her to find ways to sink her hooks into him. He supposed that was part and parcel of all those people skills. Like the rest of their relationship of late, if he wanted to enjoy the hotdog, best he learn to appreciate the sauerkraut that goes with it. He winced at the unintentional double entendre.
“We still have time before you have to show up at the office.” Finished tying her hair back, she said, “Let’s find a crowded venue that’s hard to filter for the telltale signs you need to identify in your mark.”
“I’m for that.”
***
“What do you see?” Drew asked. “What do you hear?” Robin struggled to distinguish patterns in the chaos, like one of those illustrations hiding faces and figures he couldn’t identify until jumping over to the pattern-recognizing right-side of his brain.
They were standing in the Bay Area Rapid Transit station in the best possible position to watch the gate, and the facing wall which displayed giant edgy posters. Drew nodded at the colle
ge-aged couple as they came through the turnstile. The male teen, wearing a backpack and displaying a flair for Bohemian-chic, led them to the Josh Ellingson artwork.
BART had made it a point of late to draw on the wealth of Bay Area artists to brighten their interiors, Drew recalled reading in The Daily Californian. The piece the couple was fawning over showed a child descending an escalator, surprised to see a deep sea diver in full regalia ascending with an octopus hitching a ride on his back and helpfully holding the BART ticket. They gushed over that for a while before venerating the piece in the “First Ride” series, which featured a kid gaping at the rockets whizzing by the window of the BART train while a miniature toy rocket sits on the seat between him and his mother.
Drew read the subtle body language between the couple and their facial expressions to decode the dynamics of their relationship, and waited for Robin to do the same. He just wasn’t as practiced at reading people. Having not grown up in the hyper-political reality of the rich and famous, he never needed to learn. Not growing up on the mean streets, either, where he would have apprenticed at seeing better what was coming at him next to stay alive, meant life had doubly blindsided him when it came to being a detective. So she waited patiently.
“He’s hoping the shared bond over the artwork will score him points,” Robin said, “and get him one step closer to getting laid.”
“Good. Has he gotten her in bed yet?”
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 4