I thumbed the safety off and peeked around the doorframe in a crouch, looking up a dimly lit hallway. In the ugly light cast by grimy light bulbs I could see a pair of gunmen running my way, the lead guy yelled, “Rex! What did you do?”
When the pair of men made it to ten paces away, I leaned out and opened fire, spraying needles at their faces. The lead guy reached for his face and fell, his partner dropped his weapon and staggered backwards shrieking, also putting his hands to his face. I charged them and as the lead guy started to rise, I clubbed him over the head with the stub of wood. He went limp and collapsed onto the stained tiles on the floor, his legs twisted beneath him. I didn’t stop and I ran at the second guy who was slowly staggering down the hall. I struck him in the head with my club. He fell, then tried to regain his feet. I gave him a fresh one, harder than the first, on the forehead. He went down again and stayed there.
A quick check of the hall and the two goons netted me a 25mm hand blaster and a little pinbeam. I wondered what was becoming of thuggery when two out of the three tough guys were carrying such feeble weaponry. It didn’t really matter, the hand blaster was good enough for the time being. I relieved the men of what they carried, shoving the items into my pants pockets without looking at any of it. I considered going back and checking Rex, but I wasn’t up to it.
I staggered down the hallway, bouncing from wall to wall, wobbly from the exertion of taking down three men. I could tell I was in poor shape. I needed to vacate this place, and fast. The first few rooms I passed were either empty or the doors were locked, so I stopped checking and headed for an open door down the hall with light beaming out. I thought maybe that’s where mama’s boy Rex and the two assholes might have been laid up. I was right.
I lurched into the door with the hand blaster ready in case of trouble, but there was nobody inside. The place was a break room of some sort. I made a beeline for the brown-stained sink and guzzled as much water as I could hold. When I was finished, I stood and noticed my jacket hanging in the corner by a row of cabinets. I made my way there and took my jacket off the hook, then opened the cabinet nearest me. Inside were my shoes, socks, keys, folding knife, M1911 pistol in its holster, my spare mags and my identity card, but no mobile phone, scrip, or credcard.
A door on the other side of the cabinets led to a bathroom. I hobbled my way there and caught sight of myself reflected in the scratched and cracked mirror. I looked like hell, and felt worse. I knew I needed to clean up a little so I would attract as little attention as possible on the way out. I was able to get most of the dried blood rinsed off my face, but my shirt was a lost cause.
I went back into the break room and searched the other cabinets. I came across a t-shirt that was one size too small for me, but it was clean, well, at least cleaner than my blood-soaked shirt in the bathroom. A portrait of that twentieth century mass-murderer Guevara was emblazoned on the front. I thought that might attract some unwanted looks so I put it on backwards. Getting the t-shirt on was a lot more difficult and a lot more painful than removing my other shirt. I knew I was busted up inside, I couldn’t lift my left arm above shoulder level.
I finished dressing, snapped my holster onto my right hip, shoved the hand blaster in the waistband at the back, and decided I had better get moving before somebody showed up. A glance at the mirror told me I still looked awful, but I was never that pretty to start with.
On my way out, I noticed a folded piece of paper next to the phone on a table. I took a quick look at it and found it was a generic room service ticket with nothing on it to identify where it came from. I wadded up the paper and tossed it, the needler, and the pinbeam from the downed goons into the trashcan, and headed for the elevator at the end of the hall. I knew using the elevator was risky, but there was no way I could make the stairs unless I was willing to fall all the way down.
I slapped the call button for the elevator and when the doors slid open, I stepped inside. I learned I was in the Belvedere Hotel by reading the inspection panel on the wall. It was expired. That was no surprise; the Belvedere was a seedy hotel near the Pink Zone, on the clean side, but strictly low rent.
The control display told me I was on the third floor. I’d been in the place a few times and knew the ground floor layout well enough, lobby, conference rooms, and restaurant. I punched the button for the ground floor and hoped there wasn’t anybody waiting for me down there.
When the doors opened, I found I was in the kitchen that provided for the hotel’s room service and the restaurant. I guess I must have been in a service area up on the third floor. I took a right out of the elevator and entered the restaurant without being noticed by any kitchen staff, they looked like they had their hands full.
I found the place was packed. I was just in time for the late dinner crowd. I tried to keep a low profile, but I figured it was a lost cause. How could those people not miss the staggering mess of bleeding meat that was me? I figured wrong. Hardly a soul looked at me, hell there were some guys sitting in there that looked at least as bad as me. Maybe the awful lounge singer had them all distracted.
I pushed through the exit and wobbled my way into the parking lot, knowing I needed to find some transport into the Red Light because I wasn’t going to be able to stay on my feet much longer. I thought I might have to risk a taxi, so I checked my pockets to see what I picked up from the goons in the hall upstairs. Pocket items. Some gum, a pair of nail clippers, some tissue. No identification, no creds or scrip, but there was a set of keys to a ground car or skimmer. I pressed the panic button on the key briefly and heard the alarm sound from not far away. I bounced between cars in the lot until I reached the street and did it again. I saw the lights flash on a late model ground sedan about fifty meters away, parked across the street at the curb.
I made my way to the car and fell into the driver’s seat after unlocking the doors. I activated the controls and set the autodrive mode to the on position. “Preston’s Pre-owned,” I said when the car queried me for a destination. The car started rolling, but I was barely aware of it. When the car stopped at Preston’s I was startled back to consciousness when it sounded an announcement that I had arrived at my destination. I looked out the window to see if Preston was around and saw he was out on the lot and heading my way. He didn’t recognize me at first, but when he did, he looked at me like I had the plague.
“Johnson? What happened to you?”
“I was in a human punching bag competition. I came in second and won this car. You’re going to buy it off me,” I managed to get out.
“Okay... what do you want for it?”
“I’m not here to haggle. Name a fair price. If it’s what I’m looking for we deal. If it’s not I’ll shoot you.”
“Three grand,” he said, not missing a beat.
That was a hell of a lot more than I expected. Maybe my appearance had something to do with it. Maybe he thought I would drop dead before I got off the lot and he’d get his creds back. Either way, I had some bucks.
Somehow, my bruised and battered brain kicked out the thought that I was now a car thief and I wondered if they had a union.
I looked at the vehicle registration in the car before I climbed out. It was registered to Arc Tau Security, out of the Spire. Were they the ones who ambushed Blanc and I? I planned to look into them in more depth if I survived long enough. I felt they owed me some answers.
I convinced Preston to give me a ride into the Red Light and had him drop me off on a street corner five blocks from my office, but I wasn’t going there. After Preston drove away I made my way down a nearby alley and banged on a certain door. Eventually the door cracked open and an eye peeked around the side of the door. The door opened and a man ushered me inside. The door was the back entrance to Dr. Alvin Breedlove’s office.
Breedlove was a semi-disgraced veterinarian. He once worked with racehorses and greyhounds at the track in the Spire, but got caught up in some kind of doping and betting scandal and his fall from grace had landed hi
m in the Red Light. He still did the veterinarian gig, but he’d branched out into unlicensed medical work on humans. If a person on a budget wanted bod mods or brain implants, Breedlove could accommodate. I just hoped he could do emergency medical care on a beat-to-hell PI.
Dr. Breedlove had old-school sockets in his head for modules and add-ins, or moddies and daddies as the wire heads called them. The newer tech versions were the same thing, just smaller. Breedlove owed me a favor or two, and he was the only way I was going to get any kind of medical care without popping up on the grid. I had a feeling I would be calling in a lot of favors before this was over.
Breedlove led me over to a lounger and helped me sit down.
“Rick, what happened to you?” he asked.
“What does it look like? I got worked over.”
“More like ran over. You look like hell.”
“Yeah. You’re going to fix that.”
“And get mixed up in whatever jam you’re stuck in? No.”
“I’m here, Doc. You’re already in the mix, like it or not.”
“Well, I don’t like it. What exactly do you expect me to do for you? This isn’t a hospital, and that’s what you need.”
“That may be what I need, but like you said, I’m in a jam. You do the best you can. You owe me, so plug your doctor daddy in and get to work.”
“Fine, but you’ll owe me when this is through.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I replied. “Just make sure you plug the right thing into your head. I don’t want you treating me like I’m about to have puppies.”
“I’ll try and make sure I use the correct daddy,” he said with a sour look on his face. “What makes you think I won’t sell you out?”
“They won’t be buying, that’s why. They’ll come here and take what they want. They’ll finish with me then work on you to see if I told you anything. If I did or not it won’t matter. They’ll kill anyone they think might interfere with their plans.”
“And what are their plans?”
“I don’t know, yet.”
I paid Breedlove a thousand credits up front and he went to work. I wasn’t too worried. He had a reputation as a very competent veterinarian, and as I understood things, most of his human patients survived with only a slightly higher rate of complications than the patients of actual medical doctors, and I wasn’t having my brain wired.
The tissue and bone menders used in the veterinarian field were very similar to those used on humans, at least that’s what Breedlove said. A broken bone on a canary, or contusion on a horse were treated in pretty much the same way as a doctor in a hospital would treat a human with the same conditions. I just hoped I didn’t wake up spayed or neutered.
~~~:{o}:~~~
Chapter 6
on the QT News Service - Local, High Town
Lounge Singer from Belvedere Hotel Killed
Bobbie McClellan, a lounge singer performing at the Belvedere Hotel restaurant for the last seven years, was found shot to death last night in a Red Light alley. It is unknown at this time if the rat-a-tat review he received had anything to do with his singing act or rumored unpaid debts. McClellan was best known for the song “Tinsel Time Remorse” which went to number 137 on the global charts twenty-seven years ago. A holo-McClellan will perform at the Belvedere until a replacement act is found.
on the QT - If you didn’t like us, you wouldn’t be reading this.
---o---
I woke up the next day. I considered that quite an accomplishment, all things considered. It was late morning and I was groggy. I felt like a puma had eaten me and crapped my remains down a rocky hill, but that was a damn sight better than I felt the night before. I asked Breedlove how many things on my body were broken or bruised.
He replied, “It would be easier for me to tell you what wasn’t damaged. The short answer, very little. You should be able to get up and move around in a couple of days, if your concussion doesn’t kill you.”
He was going to run more treatments on me over the next few days, but mostly I needed rest.
I turned on the vid news and learned Blanc wasn’t dead, at least not yet. He was at Bagwell Medical Center in High Town. They had a lot of experience with all sorts of trauma cases, the Red Light, Riser, and the Midtown districts saw to that. If a person were going to get plugged in the head with a blaster, BMC was the place that would give you the best chance at surviving.
I flipped the channel and learned the police were looking for me. “Officials are looking for this man, R.R. Johnson,” the talking head said as they flashed my picture over her shoulder on the vid screen. It was my PI license photo from almost two decades before. “He is wanted for questioning in connection with the shooting and attempted murder of Detective Robert Blanc.”
Knowing the way local cops work, I figured I was near the top on their list of suspects. I was at the scene of the shooting after all. That would be all a lazy cop would need to charge me if that’s how they wanted it to go down.
By the next day I was able to get up and walk a little. I convinced Breedlove to get me a burner phone. I knew the cops were still looking for me, but I wanted to find out if anyone else was as well.
Most burners wouldn’t show up in call logs like a regular phone. They could be tracked if somebody wanted to sift through phone records, but the telcoms only kept data for 24 to 36 hours so whoever was looking had to be determined, move fast, and get lucky, if they wanted to find out where a call from a burner originated. They also had to obtain a warrant and pay for the search. The cheap bastards in the GCPD only went that route when they felt it was important.
I knew Sarah Morris must have heard about Blanc, and I was afraid she might have called my mobile or my office. I checked my office messages and found she had not called there, so I decided to call her on her mobile.
I got her messaging service and left my current number. A few minutes later, she called me.
“Mr. Johnson? I heard about Detective Blanc. I was worried when I didn’t hear from you.”
“I called as soon as I could. I was injured in a related incident.”
“You two didn’t get hurt because of me I hope.”
“No. I think it was something else. I wanted to make sure you didn’t call either of us from a traceable number.”
“I didn’t call either of you until just now.”
“Good. I don’t think those who are looking for you are getting any closer. I did a little nosing around and I think they might actually be looking up the wrong trail,” I said. I hoped my take on Rex’s questions was right.
“So should I just keep doing what I’m doing now?”
“I think that’s the smart play.”
“Okay. Thanks, Rick.”
Maybe I should have told her the extremes these folks were willing to go to find out who she was, but that might have caused problems.
I called Pete at the Café Texian a little after they opened and gave him a quick rundown on what happened and asked if he knew anything that might help me.
“When I didn’t hear anything out of you after news broke about the young detective getting shot I put out a few feelers,” Pete said. “It looks like three groups are looking for you, the cops, BluCorp security, and an outfit called Arc Tau.”
“How hard are they looking?”
“They’re not going door-to-door and ripping up floorboards, but they are asking around and staking out a few places.”
“Cops are doing stakeouts?” I asked.
“What? No,” Pete said with a tone that told me he thought I was an idiot. “It’s the other guys. There’s a pair of them been in Lacey’s the last couple of days and there are three guys rotating shifts in here. Dickheads don’t think we notice. I hear they are doing the same thing in some other places. If you want, I’ll start a rumor that you were seen in the Crank Case or Dante’s. We’ll see how long they last in those joints.”
I laughed, then cursed Pete for the pain it caused. “Any IA cops been around?”
I asked.
“Internal Affairs? Yeah. A drop-dead gorgeous detective and her fat partner stopped by. I figured her for a fake. Cops don’t look like that, but she checked out. She wasn’t just asking about you. She was asking about that shithead Bartram. I think she thinks he was involved in Blanc’s shooting.”
“She might be right,” I said. I wondered if Bartram might work with an outfit like Arc Tau, and figured probably not.
“What are you going to do, old buddy? You lying doggo or coming into the light?”
“I’m only hiding out until I’m back on my feet. Tomorrow or the next day I think. I have an idea that might get the heat turned down.”
“Okay. You stop in here first thing. You want me to tell Lacey you’re okay?”
“You’d be telling her a lie if you did,” I said. “It’ll be awhile before I get back to the level of okay.”
Pete chuckled. “You know what I mean. She’s sweet on you if you didn’t notice.”
“I noticed, Pete. That’s why I think there must be something seriously wrong with her. Yeah, tell her I’ll see her as soon as I can make sure it won’t be under a hail of gunfire.”
“Will do. You live some life, my friend.”
“No shit. Somebody has to do it.”
I didn’t know what the cops were looking to do with me. Did they simply want to question me, frame me, or something else? I could only guess. Something Pete mentioned gave me an idea.
If Sergeant Blake was suspicious of Bartram, it might help me if there was more heat burning under his ass than mine.
I decided to call Phil Radan who ran on the QT news service. I didn’t really know the guy. We’d met a couple of times, but that didn’t really matter. What mattered was Radan liked stories that showed the powerful abusing the little man, the famous getting caught with their dick in their zipper, or the rich pissing on the poor. Bartram was small potatoes, but he could be used to make the Gulf City officials squirm a little, and Radan just might want to hear the lowdown on Detective Bartram.
The Lowdown in High Town: An R.R. Johnson Novel Page 11