by Jeff Edwards
“Neural feedback loop,” she said. “I can plug you right into my sensorium. You’ll feel everything I feel. Ever wonder how good you are in bed? There’s only one way you can find out for sure. When I get off, you’re gonna know it.”
Suddenly, I got a really powerful visual: young Ms. Perfect Teeth lying in an alley with a hole carved in her chest where her heart used to be. She couldn’t be more than a year or two older than Paula Chapel, the oldest known victim. Two years ago, when the killings had started, she would have been just about the right age to attract the killer’s attention.
I shook my head. “I like my girls young.”
She cocked her pretty head to one side and pursed her lips in a pout. “How old do I look? I’m only sixteen.”
“Sorry,” I said. “You’re at least two years too ripe for my tastes.”
“I’ve got a friend,” she said. “Her name is Jenny. I think you’ll like her. She’s almost thirteen and she loves older men.”
I suppressed a shudder. It wouldn’t be in character with the slime-ball I was portraying.
Ms. Perfect Teeth was looking over my shoulder, scanning the street for better prospects. “I can introduce you,” she said absently. “For a price.”
Again I swallowed my revulsion. I wondered if Ms. Perfect Teeth thought she was doing her friend Jenny a favor.
“No good,” I said. “I like variety. I prefer to pick my girls.”
I pulled out a wad of Euro-marks and slipped her a fifty. “You know of any clubs or houses that could provide a selection of girls the right age?”
“Not for fifty marks, I don’t. For another fifty, maybe I know something.”
I slipped her another bill.
She leaned close to my right ear and whispered. “There’s a place outside.”
“Outside?”
“Yeah. A club, outside the Domes, a couple of klicks east of South Lock. It’s called the Poison Apple. Tell Teddy, the guy at the door, that you’re hungry for some candy. It’s sort of a code-word.”
“Anything else?”
“Are you paying for something else?”
I shook my head.
“Then that’s all.”
She turned and walked away, switching her rump back and forth in an exaggerated fashion intended to make me regret having declined her hired affections.
I hadn’t been outside the domes in so long that I’d gotten out of the habit of carrying protective gear. I’d have to stop somewhere and pick up supplies.
I walked South on Santa Fe, and turned left at Clarendon.
There was a 24-hour convenience store about two blocks from South Lock. It was one of those places where they don’t actually let you inside. I stood in a booth and looked at the merchandise through a bulletproof plastic window. As I spotted the items I wanted, I read the code numbers off the attached placards and punched them into a menu keypad. Eye drops, ear drops, nose filters, and a can of solar block. I thought about contact lenses, but the generic one-size-fits-all type give me a headache after about five seconds. I decided on a pair of mirrored sunglasses instead. It might be dark now, but I had no way of knowing how long I was going to be outside.
I punched the TOTAL key. The purple LEDs at the top of the keypad read €m41.67. I punched the BUY key.
An old Vietnamese man appeared from behind a partition and glided around the store, gathering my selected items. He wore a gray carbon-laminate flak vest over a black silk robe. A well-used riot shotgun hung barrel-down across his back. Despite the cumbersome armor and shotgun, he moved with a boneless grace that suggested that gravity and inertia didn’t apply to him.
We traded money for items through one of those bank-style sliding drawers that only open on one end at a time. The money went through first.
At South Lock, I sprayed the solar block on my exposed skin and squirted protective drops in my ears. I waited till last to do my eyes. I hate giving myself eye drops. I always blink at the wrong time and end up with half the bottle running down my cheeks. This time was no different. I stood around wiping eye drops off my face and blinking myopically until my vision cleared up.
South Lock isn’t really an airlock. It’s more of a pollution trap: three short tunnels strung end-to-end through the concrete skirt of the dome’s foundation, each tunnel beginning and ending with a revolving door.
The graffiti in the first tunnel was built up in layers, like geological strata; the cave paintings of modern culture.
The air in the first tunnel had some bite to it, a hint of things to come.
The graffiti in the second tunnel wasn’t as heavy because the air was worse.
By the third tunnel, graffiti was scarce and the air was harsh enough to make me put in my nose filters.
I stepped through the final door and stood under the naked sky for the first time in years.
Even with the protection of the drops, the air stung my eyes. I made the mistake of breathing through my mouth. Once.
From somewhere to my right came the whine of an air filtration station, the high pitched scream of the wind-rams cutting through the theoretically soundproofed enclosures. Under the blue-white radiance of the dome’s halogen-arc perimeter lights, the turbine enclosures looked like hundreds of huge cement coffins.
The ground vibrated with power as each of the fusion-driven turbines rammed a continuous column of air through five meters of staggered permeable-membranes, forcing filtered air into the dome.
Originally, the dome system had been designed as a closed loop ecology. Hydroponics tanks full of algae, the forest eco-modules, x-number of square kilometers of grass, and bushes, and trees. It was all supposed to generate enough oxygen and recycle enough carbon dioxide to keep our fair city humming along.
The air filtration stations had been installed later, after it had become clear that the system wasn’t going to keep up with the demand. We needed the filtered air that the wind-ram turbines forced into the domes, because we needed to flush our air supply constantly.
The turbines were symbols of our inability to learn from our mistakes. It was not enough that we had fouled our planet and driven ourselves under the cover of plastic bubbles; we continued to pollute the air inside our domes with everything from chemical solvents to cigarette smoke. Even with clean fusion power at our fingertips, we continued to pollute.
A kilometer wide perimeter around the domes had been bulldozed flat, a featureless no-man’s land broken only by the wind-rams. Outside the perimeter lay the rotting carcass of old Los Angeles. It bore little resemblance to the radioactive desert that had become so popular in late twentieth-century fiction. No savage mutants here, no sword-wielding telepathic warlords, and no huge-breasted Amazon warrior-women in steel brassieres. Just a dead city: houses, shopping centers, donut shops, garages, and office buildings, all gone to ruin.
People still lived out here. Not many, but some. Dropouts mostly, on the run from some corporate security group or other. It couldn’t be much of a life, hiding from the sun, breathing tainted air, scrabbling for food.
I walked out past the brilliance of the perimeter lights and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness.
Gradually, details faded out of the shadows until I could see by the light of the stars, not well, but enough to keep from tripping over things. There were no street lights out here, just the occasional cooking fire on the other side of no-man’s land.
The stars were brighter than I remembered and, somehow, colder.
I thought about going home for my night goggles, but decided against it. I wasn’t planning anything serious; I just wanted to check out the Poison Apple and find out a little about Kurt Rieger’s supposed hobby.
I put my back to South Lock, picked a fire in the distance that was more-or-less east of me and started walking.
Just on the other side of no-man’s land, I found a paved road leading into the dead area. I followed it to the fire I was using as a landmark.
The fire turned out to be the car
cass of a mini-van sitting in the parking lot of a gutted convenience store. It was an old style van, the kind with wheels.
Someone had packed the van full of old rubber tires and set it on fire. The burning tires gave off an oily black smoke. The smell was nauseating. From the looks of things, that van had been burned a lot of times. Maybe every night. Was it some kind of signal? A territory marker?
On the side wall of the store, someone had sprayed graffiti in red glow-paint. Huge scrawled letters assured me that the Headhunterz were going to eat my brain.
I didn’t much like the sound of that. It might just be some idiot screwing around. Then again, it might be some three-meter tall psychopath with a machete.
I pulled out the Blackhart. Maybe a bit of an overreaction. Then again, maybe not.
I followed a side street in an easterly direction and tried sincerely to grow eyes in the back of my head. I’d been out here before, but not in years and never alone at night.
A couple of blocks farther on, I came to another fire. A car this time, packed with burning tires just like the van. I kept moving.
Periodically, I heard things in the darkness, sometimes close to the street, sometimes not.
I drew an imaginary grid in my brain and tried to pinpoint the position of each sound, so that I could shoot if I had to.
Four blocks and two car fires later, I found the Poison Apple.
The building had started life as a fire station. The front wall was an enormous expanse of brick, interrupted by four huge metal garage doors and one smaller door at the extreme right end. The entire structure, including the doors, was covered by an airbrush mural of a primeval forest, perhaps intended to suggest the Garden of Eden. Woven into the forest tapestry were numerous scenes of graphic sexual acts, unvaryingly showing adult men and women coupling with little boys and girls.
A concealed laser painted the words ‘Poison Apple’ on the brick above the entrance door in glowing apple-green letters.
The entire area around the club was brightly lit, an island of electric light surrounded by an ocean of darkness.
To the left of the building was a large fenced-in parking lot. The fences were topped with razor wire. I could see at least three guards patrolling the lot, all of them armed as conspicuously as an LAPD Tactical Squad. There were enough high priced hover-cars and limos parked inside to warrant the expense.
I stood in front of the club and tried to swallow. My mouth was as dry as cotton. I suppose I must have suspected that places like this existed, but I had never been slapped in the face with the reality of it before.
Coming here had been a bad idea. I didn’t know if I could walk in that door and hobnob with a bunch of child molesters. I became intensely conscious of the butt of the 12mm cradled in my right palm. I don’t know how long I stood there fighting the urge to walk into that club and shoot every one of those sick bastards. I’d be doing future generations a favor by cleaning up the gene pool.
Eventually, I slowed my breathing to something resembling normal, put away the Blackhart, and walked up to the entrance.
To my surprise, the door wasn’t locked. I opened it and stepped through into a short hallway ending in another door. The hall was a combination buffer zone/pollution trap. Two huge vents exchanged outside air for filtered inside air.
Standing between me and the second door was a two-and-a-half-meter tall homicidal maniac wedged into an off-the-rack suit. The suit made no attempt to conceal either of his two shoulder holsters. This must be Teddy.
He looked at me expectantly.
I realized that my mouth was nearly too dry to speak. “I’m ah... hungry for some candy,” I said.
Teddy looked at me like I was an insect to be stepped on, but he stood to one side and opened the inner door for me.
I stepped past him into the club.
The Garden of Eden motif was continued inside. Ten circular dance platforms were equally spaced around the outer walls. Male and female dancers in varying stages of undress bumped and ground on the platforms to the throbbing rhythm of a psycho-rock tune with a driving beat. The oldest of the dancers was about thirteen, the youngest perhaps eight.
A chill ran down my back. I shook it off and tried to smile. I was supposed to be enjoying myself. The false grin felt wooden on my face.
I sauntered over to the horseshoe-shaped bar and ordered a gin and tonic. They were well stocked with Cutty, but I didn’t want to indulge in any sort of personal pleasure in this place. I hated gin. Maybe I was symbolically punishing myself for belonging to a species capable of supporting a fetish this demented.
The drink was tiny and cost €m50. I took a little sip and tried not to cringe.
I looked around the room. There were about forty customers. Most were men, but there were a few women. At a guess, I’d say there were nearly twice that many children, counting the dancers.
I tried to burn the faces of each of the customers into my brain. God help any of them I ever caught in a dark alley.
There were no empty tables, so I stayed at the bar. I made eye contact with a girl of about twelve, and patted the top of the stool next to mine.
She bounced across the room and plopped down on that stool with the same gangly lack of grace you’d expect to find in any twelve-year-old. Her pink baby-doll nightie and pigtails were no doubt meant to paint a picture of prepubescent innocence. Just the right kind of bait to attract the pedophile crowd.
She gave me her best little-girl smile. “Hi, I’m Minda,” she said. “What’s your name?”
I swallowed a sip of gin and tonic. “Pete.”
Minda dropped her hand to my knee and squeezed. “You need some company?”
I tried to keep smiling. “Okay.”
Minda said, “I’ve never seen you before.”
“It’s my first time.”
She showed me her dimples. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
“Very,” I said.
She glanced around the room. “Prettier than the other girls?”
I nodded. “You’re the prettiest girl in the room.”
“Do you think I should wear makeup?”
“No.”
To her mind, we had apparently made enough small talk to constitute an introduction. She slid her hand a little farther up my thigh and squeezed again. “Want to go see my room?”
“Maybe in a few minutes.”
“Don’t you like me?”
“I like you a lot,” I said. “But right now, I’m looking for Mr. Rieger. Could you point him out for me?”
Minda’s body tensed. “Who?” Her attempt at a casual tone of voice was markedly exaggerated.
I watched her. I couldn’t be certain if she was reacting to Rieger’s name, or to the fact that I was asking questions in a place where none were supposed to be asked.
“Mr. Rieger,” I said. “Has he been in tonight?”
Minda’s eyebrows went up in an overstated display of innocence. “Don’t know him.”
“Are you certain?”
“I’m sure,” Minda said. She narrowed her eyes. “Are you a cop?”
“No,” I said.
“Do you have a gun?”
I decided to tell the truth. If Minda wasn’t too shy to fondle a strange man’s thigh, she definitely wouldn’t balk at feeling around for a gun. “Yes,” I said.
“Can I see it?”
“Not right now.”
Minda exhaled through her nose. “I think you are a cop. I’m gonna have to call Teddy. It’s the rules.”
I shook my head. “I’m not a cop. I promise.”
She turned her head and looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “Can you prove it?”
“How do I do that?”
She tugged the neckline of her nightie away from her chest and held it out like a tent, exposing the tiny swellings of her breasts. “Touch my titties.”
She had me. If I refused her offer, it would prove to her that I was a cop. Not only would I not get any of the answer
s I’d come for, but I’d almost certainly have to take on Teddy the Gorilla just to get out of there alive.
I tried to wiggle out of her trap. “I don’t like to touch,” I said. “That’s not what I’m into. I like to watch.”
“Sure,” Minda said. Her voice had that all-knowing tone that only children can generate. “You can’t touch me, can you? That would be against the law, because I’m under age.”
Well, it wasn’t like I would be violating a virgin. This was a path that she’d been down many times. I slid my hand into the opening she’d created in her nightie. Her skin was cool, still padded with baby fat.
When my fingers brushed her nipple, she closed her eyes and pulled my hand tight against her breast as though it was the most delicious sensation she’d ever felt. Her performance was way over the top.
I left my hand in place for a few seconds and then pulled it away. “See?” I said. “I’m not a cop.”
She opened her eyes and let the neckline of her nightie fall back into place. Her left hand dropped to my lap and gave my crotch a squeeze. “I’m glad,” she said. “Are you mad at me for saying that?”
“No.”
Minda grabbed one of her own pigtails and held the end of it under her nose like a mustache. She giggled. “Are you sure? It’s okay if you’re mad. I know I’ve been a bad girl. Does Papa want to spank?”
“Let’s talk about Rieger first.”
Again, Minda seemed to flinch at the sound of his name. “I told you, I never heard of no Kurt Rieger.”
“Then how did you know his first name?”
She squinted. “What?”
“I never mentioned his first name,” I said. “You filled in that blank yourself.”
She scanned the faces of the other customers. “I have to find somebody to take me up to my room. I don’t want to get in trouble.”
I pulled two twenties out of my pocket and tucked them into the neckline of her nightie. “You don’t like Mr. Rieger very much do you?”
Minda stared at me without speaking. I added two more twenties.
She made a face and shook her head. “He’s scary,” she said. “He likes...” Her voice trailed off.