by Ed Naha
A thin mist clung to the ground as he walked to his car. A small gaggle of kids stood nearby. “Hey, cop!” one of them called.
He turned and analyzed the voice. Admiration. Respect. Excitement.
The boy, no more than eight years old, raised a clenched fist. “Way to go, cop.”
Robo nodded. Without computing his response, he raised a clenched fist as well. The kids cheered as he got behind the wheel and drove off into the night.
A strange thing had happened during the past week. People in Old Detroit waited for him to drive by on his nightly rounds. They cheered him, especially the children. Children. Small persons. He stared ahead at both the dashboard grids and the street. A sudden, fleeting image appeared before him, lingering no more than a millisecond. A small boy and a smiling woman. He couldn’t get a good look at their faces. Databank glitch, most likely. He’d tell Dr. Roosevelt about it and have it corrected before his next tour of duty.
A beep-tone focused his attention on the dash. An all-units alert flashed on the VU-screen. The Hunter Etak system pored through a series of maps of the city. A blue light flashed on the map directly over City Hall.
The voice of the dispatch gurgled over the ComLink. “Call all units. Code Three in progress at City Hall. Suspect is armed and has taken hostages. All units in the area please respond . . .”
Robo hit the switches. The TurboCruiser burst into life, sirens and lights activated. “1-Able-44 responding,” Robo intoned.
By the time he arrived at City Hall, a small fleet of TurboCruisers and a SWAT van were scattered beyond the police line. Robo climbed slowly out of the car and surveyed the scene. A half dozen cops and a dozen SWAT team members were hunched behind their open car doors. Their guns were drawn and pointed toward a third-story window, the only window in the building illuminated.
Huge searchlights crawled across the building. Robo turned and saw several hundred spectators and dozens of reporters behind barricades a half-block away. Starkweather and Ramirez were assigned crowd control. Neither one of them was having a good time.
“There’s supercop,” Ramirez said. “I guess we can go home now.”
Starkweather clenched his jaw. “Bag of bolts. I’m filing a grievance with the union.”
“Why? ’Cause he’s too good?”
“Yeah,” Starkweather replied. “Something like that.”
Robo walked to the rear of the police contingent. A sweating SWAT team commander, too young to have any facial hair, was arguing with a police captain old enough to be his father. The SWAT man’s tag read “Lt. Hedgecock.” The captain’s name was Corman.
Hedgecock was driving home a point. “My boys can contain this situation in ten minutes. We go in with gas and plenty of firepower and we’ve got a good chance of saving the mayor.”
Corman wasn’t impressed. “He’s already killed an aide. You go in there with that kind of profile, sonny, and we’re gonna be picking up pieces of hizzoner from here to Chicago.”
Hedgecock bristled. Beads of sweat formed on his upper lip. “Yeah, well, it’s gonna look pretty bad if this joker smokes the mayor while we’re standing around jawboning about what might happen . . .”
Robo placed a heavy hand on the SWAT man’s shoulder. “Keep the perpetrator talking.”
Corman looked up at the sturdy cop. “But . . .”
A round of machine-gun fire burst forth from the third-floor window. Corman and Hedgecock hit the ground as the asphalt around them erupted in small cyclones of grit and debris. Robo stared at the pockmarks appearing directly in front of his feet. He drew his A-9 and walked toward the front door.
Hedgecock gaped at the marching figure. “Who the hell is that?”
“The question is what the hell is that?” Corman replied. The captain shrugged and picked up his megaphone. “Okay, Miller,” he barked. “Don’t hurt the mayor and we’ll give you whatever you want.”
While Corman jabbered, Robo walked calmly up the front steps of City Hall and entered the front door. The perp, Miller, was screaming from the third-floor window. “First, don’t fuck around with me. I’m a desperate man!”
“No problem here, Miller,” Corman called back.
Robo casually walked up the stairs leading to the third floor. He emerged in a highly polished, ornate hallway. He walked down the corridor. The voices were getting louder. He came to a large wooden door marked Mayor. Gazing at it, he activated a command marked thermograph. Vague outlines appeared on the door. The door was too thick for concise imaging.
Robo passed the mayor’s office and walked to the portal leading to the office next door.
In the mayor’s office, a decidedly addled former City Councilman Ron Miller stood, poised, next to the window, a mini-Uzi trained on his three hostages. His business suit was dirty and rumpled. He hadn’t slept in days and one of his eyes twitched spasmodically as he munched on a Twinkie. He tapped his foot nervously. Plastic wrappers crinkled under his shoes. Three dozen of them. Former Twinkie containers.
Mayor Waldo Gibson crouched in the corner with his two remaining aides. His third aide, a fresh-faced kid named Eddie, was still sprawled where he fell an hour ago, his internal organs now external, thanks to Miller’s firepower. Gibson, one of the few black politicians left in Detroit, watched Miller swallow the Twinkie nearly whole. Gibson’s mouth was dry. Watching the cake crumbs cascade onto the floor only made it drier.
“I wish I had some milk,” Miller muttered. “Hey, Corman, you still out there?”
“Yeah, Miller.”
“My second demand. I want some milk. Cold milk. You got it? Not low-fat shit, either. I hate that. I want regular homogenized milk. The low-fat stuff tastes like water.”
“Fine. Milk to go. No problem.”
“Third: I want a recount in the election. And no matter how it comes out, I want my old job back. And I want a bigger office. With a refrigerator. Not a half-size refrigerator, either. A big one. Big enough to hold a lot of milk. And ice cream. And I want a new car, too. And I want the city to pay for it all.”
Corman’s voice emerged from the darkness. “What kind of car, Miller?”
Miller thought hard. “Gimme a minute.”
He turned to Gibson. “You know anything about cars?”
Gibson shook his head no.
Miller shrugged. “Me neither. I never owned a new one. Just clunkers.”
He faced the window again. “Okay. I want something with reclining leather seats that goes real fast and gets really shitty gas mileage. Something big and heavy.”
Corman considered this. “How about a 6000 SUX?”
“Well, okay. But the city has to pay for my gas and all tune-ups.”
Robo crept into the office next door. He scanned the room. It looked solid enough but the walls had been altered during the 1980s. Cheap construction. Overpriced. He twirled his gun and slid it back into his holster. He didn’t think he would need to use it. He walked over to the wall separating the two offices and ran a hand along it. Outside, he could hear Corman attempting to be diplomatic. “No problem, Miller. Let the mayor go and we’ll throw in cruise control, white-wall tires, video games, stereo, whatever you want, buddy.”
At the window next door, Miller reached down for another Twinkie. There were none to be had. He bellowed out the window, “Don’t jerk me off, Captain. People jerk me off, I kill them. Wanna see?”
He walked across the room and yanked the dry-mouthed mayor to his feet, pulling him to the window. Miller pushed the mayor next to the opening and backed off toward the wall, his Uzi now poised for execution.
“Nobody ever takes me seriously,” Miller screeched. “Well, let’s all get serious now.”
On the other side of the wall, Robo adjusted the thermograph. The picture was much clearer now. The computer-enhanced imaging showed Robo Miller’s agitated form nearby. Miller’s finger was beginning to squeeze the trigger of the Uzi.
“Let’s all kiss the mayor’s ass good-bye,” Miller shrieke
d.
Robo pulled his right arm back and then plowed it forward into the wall. The wall exploded outward. Miller began to turn as Robo’s titanic fist appeared from the ruptured wall. Robo grabbed Miller in a choke hold and pulled him closer. Miller squeezed the trigger. A spray of hot lead sizzled through the mayoral office. Gibson and his aides dove for cover as the bullets took chunks out of furniture and plaster alike.
Robo yanked fast and hard. He pulled a shrieking, kicking Miller through the wall into the next office. Miller continued to fire, his bullets spraying into the ceiling. A shower of plaster rained down on the twosome. Miller twisted and turned in Robo’s grasp. He swung the barrel of his gun up at the policeman’s chin, clipping him soundly. Robo barely felt the impact.
He stared at the would-be assassin curiously and cocked his left fist. He sent it slamming into Miller’s midsection. Miller doubled over. The force of the punch sent the councilman flying backward. His body smashed into the window of the office.
Miller screamed obscenities as he exploded out of the third story of City Hall and plummeted to his death below.
Robo walked through the wall leading into the mayor’s office. A very shaken Waldo Gibson stood next to his desk. Robo scanned the office and made sure that the remaining hostages weren’t hurt.
“I am glad you are safe,” Robo announced. “I apologize for any structural damage caused during the apprehending of the suspect.”
Robo nodded and walked out of the room, closing the door gently behind him. “Good night.”
Mayor Gibson stared at the closed door. He glanced at the hole in the wall.
“That’s some tough cop,” he said. He walked forward to help his aides to their feet, crushing discarded Twinkie wrappers as he went.
Outside City Hall, Robo walked placidly toward his car. Revving up the TurboCruiser, he glanced at the crowds behind the police barricades. They were cheering. They were cheering for him.
He would have felt good about that as he drove away . . . but he didn’t know how.
[ 12 ]
Jan Murphy placed the last of her late husband’s clothes into a tattered cardboard box. She sat on the rumpled bedspread and stared at the ten cartons before her. Twelve years of a marriage, a lifetime of a man, sitting in containers that once housed groceries.
She smiled to herself. Murphy would have appreciated the irony. She pushed one of the boxes aside and left the bedroom. She’d been sleeping in the living room since her husband died. She couldn’t stand the thought of lying alone in that bed after so many years of feeling him beside her.
The anger of his death had passed. The sorrow, the heartbreak hadn’t really hit her yet. She was going through a period of numbness. She worried about Jimmy the most. He was taking it pretty hard.
She was torn as to how to handle it. If she coddled him, treated him like a rare piece of china, she’d only make the ten-year-old more aware of the loss. If she tried to get him through each day as if nothing had happened, the boy would think she didn’t care, that Daddy had died for nothing. She walked a hesitant line between the two modes of behavior.
The last of their belongings were almost packed. They’d be out of the house tomorrow. The day after they’d head for the Moon Colony. UniCorp had been good about that. They processed her request as a top-priority item—Murphy being killed in the line of duty and all that. Red tape was cut. People at desks smiled and said things in understanding tones.
She walked through an empty hallway. Jimmy called out, “Hey, Mom. Get a load of this!”
She stopped, puzzled. She hadn’t heard Jimmy this enthusiastic since before the accident. Accident.
She trotted into the nearly bare living room. Jimmy was sitting cross-legged in front of the TV. He was watching the news.
“Wait until you see this,” he beamed.
Jan knelt next to him. Jess Perkins, her hair laminated and sparkling under the studio lights, sat, a serious look on her face, in front of a bit of news footage from the week before. Jan gaped as the body of Councilman Ron Miller exploded through a third-story window and hurtled toward the ground.
“Neat, huh?” Jimmy asked, brightly. “It gets better.”
“Jimmy,” Jan said. “This is a little intense, don’t you think?”
“Wait.”
Jess gazed into the camera, her eyeshadow just the right shade of blue. “It started a week ago with the heroic rescue of Mayor Gibson and two of his aides by a lone police officer . . . his identity a well kept secret.”
The news footage switched to that of a press conference. Two OmniCon executives, a Mr. Morton and a Mr. Johnson, flanked a titanic cop; an armored warrior built like a fullback. “Yesterday,” Jess continued, “OCP put an end to speculation when it unveiled an experimental crime management program. Its name: RoboCop. Today, kids at Lee Iacocca Elementary School got to meet in person what their parents only read about in comic books . . . a real superhero.”
The footage dissolved into a scene at a crowded schoolyard where the Promethean armored man waded through an endless crowd of excited kids and reporters. Jan watched Jimmy grin as the giant lumbered through the crowd. She shook her head sadly. Murphy would have cringed at this media hoopla. He was a by-the-books cop. He did his job. He did it well. He didn’t brag about it. Didn’t complain about it.
A breathless reporter thrust a microphone in front of the Titan. “Excuse me, Robo? Any special message for all the kids watching at home?”
The figure turned and stared at the camera. “Stay out of trouble,” was all he said.
The kids cheered. A commercial for Bixby Snyder’s It’s Not My Problem sitcom came on.
Jan still gazed at the screen. There was something about the mechanical cop’s eyes that gave her the willies. Something half-human. Something familiar.
Jimmy sidled up to her. “Isn’t he great? He’s better than T. J. Lazer. This guy is for real. Do you think they’ll have news about him on the moon?”
“I’m sure they will, dear,” Jan replied. Those eyes looked right through her. She dismissed the feeling. She was still shaky about the accident. It had only been two months since the funeral. OmniCon had pulled out all the stops. Pipers playing “Amazing Grace,” half the precinct there in full dress, classy coffin. Closed. They said Murphy had been pretty badly mangled.
She choked back a sob. Jimmy looked at her oddly. “Are you okay, Mom? Did I say something wrong?”
“No.” She smiled weakly. “No. I’ll just miss this old house. That’s all.”
Jimmy put an arm around her. “I miss him, too.”
The news returned and Jimmy waited, breathlessly, for another glimpse of his newfound hero, Robo. Instead, Casey Wong, crocodile smile in place, appeared over a graphic depicting the futuristic Delta City. “Still no official start date for OCP’s Delta City Project,” he intoned, trying very hard not to sound like the young wimp he was.
“Labor leaders have refused to sanction construction until OCP can guarantee the personal safety of workers in Old Detroit. Robert Morton, vice president in charge of the RoboCop Program, had this to say.”
The thin, nervous man glimpsed on the podium a few moments before with RoboCop now relaxed in a sumptuous office. “Well, I can’t comment on Delta City,” he began, “that’s not my division, but at Security Concepts, we’re projecting the end of crime in Old Detroit within forty days. There’s a new guy in town, and his name is . . . RoboCop.”
The camera slowly moved to the right. There, sitting in the office with the executive, was the supercop. Robo stared at the camera, hard. “I am here for one purpose and one purpose only: to make the streets safe for good citizens and to put the streetscum where they belong; either behind bars or under the earth.”
“Too cool,” Jimmy said as Wong appeared with another story about the threat of nuclear warfare in some country Jan had never heard of. She didn’t hear a word Wong said. She was still thinking of those eyes. Cold, yet passionate. Blank, yet determined. And
beneath the blue visor, they still seemed to be blue. Very, very blue.
[ 13 ]
Morton watched, pleased, as Robo waded through yet another crowd of cheering students. Johnson viewed the scene curiously as the kids reached forward to shake the mighty policeman’s hand. Johnson was quietly amazed at the popularity of the experimental model. Springtime in Detroit was not the easiest season. Even under his bulky pea jacket, he was freezing various vital organs off, yet these kids braved the cold to see their hero with no complaints at all. Yeah, Old Detroit was changing fast.
He glanced at Morton. Morton had changed over the past few weeks, too. His hair was more stylish. His clothes were new and expensive. New glasses. New brand of breath mints. The boy was definitely zooming up the corporate ladder. Yet Johnson had his doubts about all this.
There was Jones to think about.
You didn’t cross a man like Jones and get away clean.
Johnson shrugged. That was Morton’s problem. Morton beamed as Robo worked the crowd. “I tell you, Johnson, within a month, the name RoboCop will be synonymous with modern crime fighting. Since the press conference, OCP’s phones have been ringing off the hook.
“Companies want to merchandise the shit out of Robo. Robo toys, Robo dolls, Robo suits, Robo sheets, comics, guns, games . . . even a Saturday-morning TV show. Do you realize how much money he can bring into the corporation? Not only will he be the most efficient crime deterrent in the world, he’ll be the most popular.”
“Uh-huh,” Johnson said.
“The guy has personality,” Morton continued. “Well, maybe not personality. Basically, I think he’s a lug when it comes to ad-libbing it but he has this certain, uh, macho quality that people seem to respond to. He’s not weak or indecisive. He says what’s on his mind and says it clearly. That crack on the news? Behind bars or under the earth? I almost pissed in my pants when he said that. You should have seen the TV crew. They loved it. The guys considered it a really gutsy thing to say. And the women? They creamed over it. They reacted like he was John Wayne squared. If Robo was human he could make out like a bandit with women. Believe me. He has sex appeal.”