Montezuma Strip

by Alan Dean Foster

  “He’s okay, ninño.” Wormy whirled. Two big desal guards stood on the catwalk behind him, blocking his escape. “We got him out first. Trespass is a misdemeanor. He’ll be out in a few months.”

  “Had to scrag his junk, though.” The other one made a sniggering noise. “Should have seen him cry over that crap.”

  Wormy knew that that crap consisted of all Taichi-me’s earthly possessions, everything he’d been able to scavenge or buy with his pitiful earnings over the past three years. Junk. That’s how they think of us, he thought. We’re just junk, barnacles to be scraped off the pilings and fed to the bottom dwellers. Garbage.

  One of the men started toward him. “Come on, now, niño. Don’t make no trouble for us, we won’t make no trouble for you.”

  Wormy started to retreat, fumbling for his transmitter as he did so. “Go play in the ooze, pendejos.”

  The man’s expression darkened. “Don’t get smart with me, sperm trash.” He glanced meaningfully at the calm, receptive water below. “You could have an accident.”

  “So could you,” Wormy stammered with false bravado as he desperately aimed the transmitter.

  The man stopped as if he’d run headlong into a ten-ton block of ice. Then he screamed and grabbed his ears. His partner looked on in shock. Wormy turned and ran, sliding down a pipe to the next catwalk below, jumping a three-meter gap to dig his way into a maze of piping and tubing. Security did not pursue. His last sight of the man on the catwalk showed him kicking and moaning as his dazed companion bent over him. After a while he looked over the side of the catwalk, but by then Wormy was away and gone.

  His greatest fear was that they would send a boat out after him. His little inflatable’s radar silhouette was slight enough to be overlooked, but they might trap him with a spotlight scan.

  While almost silent, his craft’s tiny motor was not very powerful. Knowing that they could catch him easily, he was a writhing knot of anxiety until he finally beached the inflatable beneath the massive codos that lined the shore. Without thinking, he went through the motions of deflating and hiding it, wondering as he did so if he’d ever be able to make use of it again.

  He’d hurt a guard, maybe badly. The modification of his transmitter had been driven by a theoretical notion of its potential. Now he had some idea of what it could do. So would the feds once his unfortunate victim was examined. He was no longer just a juvie parasite on the desal plant’s backside. He was a genuine threat. They’d leaven the search for him with some real intensity.

  Hugging the transmitter like an injured baby, he hurried off into the city.

  None of the locals knew Cardenas personally, but he didn’t have to introduce himself. His reputation preceded him. Besides, any federale who survived into his fifties automatically acquired the respect of his colleagues.

  Cardenas wandered into the room, his blue eyes searching. His big black drooping mustache saddled him with a perpetually hangdog expression. Not that melancholy wasn’t present in his personality, but it was a consequence of his job, not his appearance. He considered the doctor, the local lieutenant, and the man lying in the hospital bed.

  They had asked him to come down from Nogales because they had run into something they weren’t familiar with and couldn’t explain. Whenever this happened, people usually found their way to Cardenas. It was a responsibility he accepted with resigned grace. After so many years on the force, he had long since grown used to the attention, the sideways glances, the whispering behind his back.

  At least his unglamorous appearance (he did not look good on the vits no matter how they photographed him) allowed him to maintain a low profile. This pleased him. It was his experience that federales with high media exposure had a tendency to have their careers violently cut short by excitable ninlocos or runners in search of revenge, reputation, or both.

  After thirty years of working the Strip, he’d seen a lot, but nothing quite like the report on this little coastal contretemps.

  He gazed down at the guard. The man was twice his size, massive and muscular. He looked competent enough. Then he spoke to the lieutenant. “Some kid did this?”

  The officer nodded. “That’s what the comedown says. They were excising squatters from the Desal Tres out in the Gulf; the pipes out there are home to antisocs and weirds of every kind. This guy and his partner were in the process of netting another one, when suddenly the ninloco points some piece of box junk at him, and his head goes berserk.”

  “I read the report.” Cardenas looked back at the man in the bed. “Music, wasn’t it?”

  The lieutenant nodded. “Nothing remarkable about that. According to our man here, what he could make of it sounded like your usual babbling contemp trash. It wasn’t the music per se that was responsible for the injury, though. It was the way it was broadcast. Or maybe received. It was more than just directional. His compadre never heard a thing. The lab’s been working on possibilities, but they’re still baffled. Presumably the ninloco knows how he did it, but he got away.”

  “And now he’s out in the city somewhere, and everybody’s nervous he might decide to play with his toy again.”

  “Exactamente, Sergeant.” The officer looked down at his stocky colleague. “The other guard got a good look at him. We’ve got a POV holo out. Interestingly, it coordinated with that of a ninloco booked earlier for murder who was released by mistake from Eastside station.”

  Cardenas peered up at the lieutenant, blue eyes gleaming. “By mistake?”

  The officer made a face. “Bureaucratic foul-up. They were supposed to release somebody else from the same cell. It was late; this ninloco had just been booked in; nobody did their job.”

  Cardenas shook his head. “And he was in for murder?”

  “Sand fight, just a miseria; nobody knows. Found him unconscious with the murder weapon in his hand. Said he didn’t do it, of course.”

  “Of course.” Cardenas returned his attention to the man in the bed. “Anything else?”

  The lieutenant sighed. “Damn little. Kid gave his name as Wormy G, wouldn’t tell us his real name… if he has one. No ID number. No card, no bracelet. Typical ninloco outer. Didn’t look like much. Skinny little twerp.”

  “Dangerous skinny little twerp,” Cardenas added. “Anybody check out his claim that he didn’t kill anybody?”

  “Can’t do much without the prime subject to question.”

  “Questions make these kids nervous.”

  The lieutenant grunted. “If you want to see it, I’ve got the file in my box.”

  Cardenas patted his shirt pocket where the police portable rested. “Already transferred. I’ll call you if I need you.”

  “Don’t you want backup, a cruiser?” the lieutenant asked him.

  Cardenas shook his head. “Not right away. I know Peñasco pretty good. Been here a few times on other business. Be easier trying to find one kid melted into the wallwork if I can melt in a little myself.”

  “Suit yourself.” The lieutenant watched the sergeant depart. He was glad when he was gone. He didn’t much like Intuits, not even department types. They made him uneasy. Knowing how hard it was to lie to one kind of crimped normal conversation.

  He wanted to ask the security guard some more questions, but couldn’t until they were printed up. Because the man in the bed was now stone-cold deaf.

  Wormy kept to the back alleys and the service ways, away from the lights. He spent the next day in a big recycle dumpster, not daring to return to the desal platform. Probably his little cozy had been discovered and vacuumed by now, its hard-won contents dumped into the Gulf alongside poor Taichi-me’s possessions.

  They might as well go ahead and dump him, too, Wormy thought bitterly. The kid was too vit bungoed to last a month in juvie hold. He’d go over the screen inside, never come out intact. He had been the nearest thing to a real friend Wormy had had, and now he was gone, too.

  There wasn’t much left to try to scavenge except maybe a little truth.

>   He found two of them, Carasco and Gray Leena, outside Compieradas’s Emporium. They were leaning against the wall, sharing a sense stick and laughing and giggling. Wormy sidled out of the shadows, nervously watching the street for signs of federales.

  “Hey, Carasco?”

  The big Tesla turned, frowning. “Who asks?”

  “Me. You know me, Carasco.” Wormy stepped farther into the streetlight.

  “Hey, ain’t you the little freak who keeps following Anita around? Paco finds you, he’s gonna grease you good, camarón.”

  “Wait a minute, Cary.” Drogged by the sense stick, Gray Leena was trying to focus on the new arrival. “How come he ain’t in jail?”

  “Yeahhh.” Carasco seemed to remember something. “How come you ain’t in jail?”

  “They let me go.” Wormy looked past them, eyes on the street. “I got to find Anita.”

  Carasco laughed. He was a big kid, full of wildness and the usual juvie sense of misplaced immortality. Nothing could hurt him; nothing could frighten him.

  “Get gone. Waft. Jojobar, camarón”

  “I got to know. I got to ask her something.” As Carasco started to turn away, Wormy made a desperate grab for his shirt.

  Carasco reached around to swat him with the back of his hand, disdaining the effort required to form his fingers into a fist. Wormy went staggering back, stung. The bigger boy’s expression went mean.

  “You touch me again, camarón, and there won’t be nothing left for Paco to grind.”

  Wormy’s lips tightened. He extracted his transmitter. “Tell me where she is. Tell me now.”

  Carasco squinted at the device. “Or what? You gonna grease me with your box?” He took a step forward, reaching out with a massive hand. “About time somebody got rid of that piece of junk.”

  Wormy retreated, holding the transmitter in front of his chest like a shield. “Don’t, Carasco. I don’ want to hurt you.”

  The big Tesla laughed and continued to advance.

  Wormy touched a contact. Carasco suddenly whipped around almost in midair, as if he’d been hit by a heavy-caliber slug, to land screaming on his back holding the sides of his head. Beyond, a couple of patrons about to enter the Emporium had stopped and were staring in the direction of the noise.

  “Jesus!” Gray Leena bent over her neg, who was kicking and crying like an infant. She stared fearfully up at Wormy G. “What’d you do to him?”

  “He was gonna hurt me. Where’s Anita?”

  “Try the Tiburon pier. She said somethin’ about spendin’ the noche out there with Paco.” She touched her whimpering boyfriend, drew her fingers back as though his skin had suddenly acquired toxic properties. “What did you do to him?”

  Wormy spun and ran into the night, leaving behind the lights of the Emporium, the street sounds, and the whine of an approaching siren.

  Tiburon pier extended triple fingers out across a shallow portion of the Gulf. It was a mixing place, old and seedy but full of life and lights, a grand spot to stroll away a hot summer night. Rich administrators and cleanies, assemblers and maskers mixed freely on the pier with ninlocos on good behavior, poor truck farmers from inland, recycle monkeys and spacebasers. On the pier, nobody cared who or what you were. Darkness and damp dissolved away daytime discrimination. All that mattered was the soothing sound of the Golfo Californio slapping against the pilings beneath your feet, the noise and laughter and smell of greasy seafood frying in dozens of tiny shops.

  Wormy was glad of the crowd. While the pier had its own private security force, patrolling federales occasionally put in an appearance.

  It was busy tonight, active as it always was in the summer season. Plenty of touristas as well as locals out trying to beat some of the heat. Good pickings if one were inclined to a little petit larceny. But not this evening. Not for him.

  He found them almost by accident, as he was about to give up and start back from the tip of the southern finger. They were standing to the left of the fishermen who methodically cast their lines over the sides of the pier more for the activity than in hopes of catching anything. Farther out on the dark sea lay the ambulatory stars that marked the location of cruising ships, pleasure craft, and shrimpers orbiting the brighter constellations of the desal plants.

  Paco and Anita’s embrace rendered them oblivious to such sights. Their faces were pushed tightly against each other, lips and tongues pressing, probing. Paco had his hand on the back of her glazed culottes, and she had both arms around him.

  As always, the sight was almost too painful for Wormy to bear. Another time, another night, he would have fled in despair. Tonight he could not.

  He stepped out of the dark place where he’d been hiding, his voice tremulous. “Anita?”

  They separated, startled. Up the pier the fishermen, intent on their lines and conversation, ignored the confrontation. Paco seethed.

  “What do you mean scaring us like that, you stinking little shit?” He straightened slightly, remembering. “How’d you get out of jail?”

  “Luck and accident.” Wormy was watching Anita, not her threatening neg. “I got to know what happened.”

  Paco smirked at him. “You killed a Sangre. Congratulations, camarón. Now waft before I call the feds.”

  “I didn’t kill nobody. You know that.” He was speaking to Anita, who regarded him the way she would something that had just spilled dead and slimy from a fisherman’s pail.

  “The feds think you did,” said Paco. “That’s good enough.”

  For the first time since he’d found them, Wormy locked eyes with his tormentor. “Then you know I didn’t do it. You know I don’t carry a knife. Who did it, Paco? Carasco? Ellioto? Sad Jerry?”

  The big ninloco grinned at him. “Maybe me?”

  “And you put the knife in my hand so the federales would find it.”

  Paco just laughed and shook his head. “You poor camarón. Why don’t you just waft now? Maybe the feds don’ find you if you can make your way as far as Hermosillo.” He took a step forward. “Go on, creep, waft!”

  Wormy raised the transmitter.

  “Don’t come near me, Paco.”

  “I think that’s about enough.”

  The three of them turned in the direction of the new voice. The short man with the mustache who was standing nearby was overdressed for Peñasco’s climate, sweating in his long shirt and sandals and slacks. He looked sad and unhappy, like somebody’s grandfather escaped from a pension home. Older than his years.

  Wormy retreated and pointed the transmitter in his direction, trying to keep an eye on Paco at the same time. “You a fed?”

  “Sí. And you are not a murderer.”

  Uncertain, Wormy lowered the transmitter a little. “How you know that, mister?”

  The man stared back at him, his transplanted blue eyes unblinking. His gaze was almost hypnotic and it held Wormy still. He searched the shadows behind the man, but there was no sign of other federales. It made no sense.

  Then he understood. “You’re an Intuit, aren’t you?”

  The man gestured diffidently. “I have been doing my job. Listening to what all of you have been saying, to the nuances and shadings of your voices. I know you did not kill that other boy.” His voice tightened slightly. “You did hurt that man on the desal rig, though, didn’t you? And the boy back in the city?”

  “What are you talking about, homber?” Paco inquired, lost in the conversation, unhappy at being ignored.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Wormy mumbled. “I didn’t mean to hurt nobody. But they were gonna put me off the platform, and I had to do something, you comprende? I had to do something.”

  “It’s going to be okay now. I promise you. I’ll speak up for you in court. Besides, I know who killed that other boy.” The blue eyes regarded Paco sadly.

  “Hey, fed: you crazy, homber. I don’t kill nobody. You can’ prove nothin’. I don’t care if you are a weird. I heard about you guys. You hear things in other people’s voi
ces, see things in their faces. That’s toro mierde, homber.” He was backing toward the railing that edged the pier.

  “You put the knife in my hand,” Wormy said accusingly. “You did it, Paco. You!” He raised the transmitter.

  Cardenas judged the distance. He was much faster than he looked, but the boy was still far enough away to swing the device around and bring it to bear on him. Having lived six years in the kingdom of the blind, he was genuinely afraid of possible deafness. The biosurges had given him back his sight. He had no desire to go through that again at the expense of a different sense.

  “You nasty little camarón shit! Leave him alone!” Anita stepped in front of her boyfriend. “I put the damn knife in your stinking stupid little hand, who do you think?” She sneered down at him.” Always following me around, like a little dog. I got tired of trying to shoo you away. Then that happened, and I saw a chance to get rid of you and help somebody I loved besides. What did you think I would do?”

  The younger boy stared uncomprehendingly at her. “You put…? But what about our secret? I thought you…?”

  She laughed sharply. “What, those stupid little songs you kept sending through my glasses? You can’t even sing. I always told Paco about them afterward. We had some good laughs.”

  The kid’s voice was as dry as the Sierra San Pedro Martir, a sick, unhealthy rasp. “You told him? You told him my songs, our songs?”

  “Shit, what you think, camarón? Why you think I didn’t have him take that toy away from you and throw it into the Golfo the first time you pull that? Because you kept me laughing. Because you were so funny. But not so funny that I didn’t think you’d look better with the knife in your fingers when the federales congealed.”

  “Oh.” Wormy stood there, swaying a little, as if keeping time to an unheard tune. Then he touched a contact on the top of the crazy, cobbled-together mass of components and wires and wafers he carried, and raised it. Too ignorant to know better, the girl just stood there, as if her sheer beauty were shield enough. Her boyfriend shrank down behind her, trying to conceal himself, trying to hide.