by Ed Naha
Anne Lewis sat sipping coffee in a ragtag doughnut shop. Above her, the stars of early evening slogged their way through a low-hanging cloud cover.
Her body positioned on a seat facing the front window, Lewis watched the Ground Zero Video Arcade across the street.
She smiled to herself as the elfin figure of Hob ambled into the sparkling joint. She picked up a handheld Com device. “Your information was good, Murphy. The little darling just went inside.”
She returned the ComLink device to her pocket and continued to watch the arcade entrance. Then her jaw dropped. Detroit Police Officer Ambrose Duffy, in full uniform, walked casually through the front door. Lewis clutched the miniComLink. “We’ve got problems, Murphy. It’s Duffy. He just went inside. Yeah, Duffy. Officer Duffy! I don’t know what the hell he’s doing in there.”
She pocketed the miniCom, slammed a bill down on the table, and slowly proceeded toward the arcade entrance.
Inside the arcade, it was a typical weekday night. The block-long building was brimming with kids with money to spend. Row upon row of video games illuminated the place with an eerie, spasmodic display of colors. Bloops, beeps, and blatts echoed off the walls.
Children of every age attacked the machines like sharks in a feeding frenzy—when they weren’t pigging out on the latest of junk foods.
Through this electronic orgy waddled Officer Duffy. A sixteen-year-old girl wearing a skintight “NUKE ME” T-shirt sauntered up to him.
“One of these days, will you give me a break, Officer?” She smiled. Her eyes were dull and drugged.
Duffy smiled in return and moved on. He spotted the diminutive Hob attacking a large video game, surrounded by adoring peers. Duffy laid a pudgy hand on the back of the boy’s shirt.
“Time to do time, twerp,” he announced. Hob remained silent as Duffy collared him and led him toward the rear of the arcade. Kids began to stare.
Hob started yelling. “I’m clean, man! I’m clean!”
One of Hob’s arcade cronies, a gargoyle of a kid named Munson, eased himself away from a video game and silently followed the pair toward the rear of the building.
Duffy dragged Hob to a back alley and tossed him onto the ground. Munson emerged, unheard, from the building. The gargoyle-boy said nothing. He simply closed the door behind him and watched.
Hob made sure no one else was around before he got to his feet, brushing dust off his expensive pants. “Okay, Duffy! Jesus! Enough with the reality, okay? You got my clothes dirty and everything.”
“Come on,” Duffy said, his body relaxing. “Set me up.”
Hob smirked at Munson. “Oh, look who’s hurting.”
Duffy ignored Munson. “Come on! I’m due back at the station.”
Munson and Hob exchanged glances. The latter nodded. Munson produced a gold-plated NUKE dispenser. Duffy’s eyes gazed upon the glistening treat adoringly.
“The station . . .” Hob smiled, stalling. “How are things back there? Anything I ought to know about?”
“Plenty.” Duffy nodded, nearly salivating. “They’re canceling patrols from Hamtramck to Highland Park. Just giving up on those sectors. You want to move in? It’ll be wide open.”
The officer continued to stare at the drug dispenser. “Come on . . .”
Hob grinned. “What the hell. We’re buddies, right?”
“Right!” Duffy nodded again, his face beginning to twitch. Munson handed the NUKE dispenser to him. Duffy opened the dispenser clumsily, his fat fingers fumbling with the latch. He removed an ampule and raised it to his neck.
Suddenly he found himself blinded by the fierce white light emitted from a TurboCruiser parked down the alleyway.
Duffy couldn’t see the driver, but he heard a car door swing open and a mighty, metallic foot slam into the macadam with a crash.
“Oh, shit!” exclaimed Duffy.
The two boys stood frozen as the massive frame of RoboCop stepped between them and the car lights, his public-address mode working perfectly. “Nobody move,” Robo’s voice thundered. “You are under arrest.”
Caught in the unyielding glare of the headlights, the trio split up. Hob and Munson darted back into the video arcade while Officer Duffy turned tail and jogged down the alleyway in the opposite direction. RoboCop stared at the arcade, knowing full well that his partner was inside to tackle the two fleeing juveniles.
Robo marched down the alley after Duffy, who had come wheezing to a halt in front of one of the alleyway walls. Glancing about nervously, Duffy spotted a metal ladder and quickly began climbing, his pudgy hands scraping against the wall’s brick surface. He heard the clanging of metallic footsteps echoing down the passageway below him.
Although he was a large man, Duffy skittered up the ladder with the speed of a prodded monkey. The roof of the building was soon in sight, and Duffy breathed a sigh of relief.
He extended his hand to the rooftop.
He felt the ladder lurch.
He gaped at the scene below him. RoboCop extended a hand and, grabbing the base of the ladder, gave an Olympian yank, tearing the base of the ladder out of its brick moorings.
Still using but one glistening hand, Robo jerked the ladder downward, effectively sending all of the metal stairway’s bolts zinging out of the wall. Above, Duffy found the ladder being sucked down out of his grip. He tumbled off the rusting bars and flew helplessly through space, his rotund body hurtling into a pile of garbage stacked haphazardly on the ground. Robo sent the bottom of the ladder crashing down through a reed-thin metallic street grate.
“Give me a break!” Duffy moaned, trying futilely to find his discarded ampule. “Man, I can’t help myself. I’m hooked, Robo, I’m hooked!”
Duffy was yanked to his feet by his collar.
He gazed into the square-jawed visage of RoboCop, trying to ascertain what the cyborg’s expression was telling him. Duffy gulped. It wasn’t “have a nice day.”
Inside the arcade, meanwhile, a nervous Munson and Hob shoved their way through the young crowd, heading for the front door. Lights blinked hellishly all around them, and the heavy-metal music being piped through the arcade’s monolithic speakers was deafening. Hob was the first to come skidding to a stop, causing Munson to slam into his back. “Hey,” Munson exclaimed, “what the heck do you—”
Before them, blocking their exit, was Officer Anne Lewis, her pistol aimed in a crouched, combat stance.
Hob and Munson exchanged furtive looks.
Hob lowered his hand to his side ominously. Lewis glanced about the crowd. “Out of the way!” she yelled at the kids, but the music completely drowned her out. Frustrated, Lewis attempted to find her way clear to a clean shot.
The sixteen-year-old “NUKE ME” girl wandered into her sights.
“Damnit!” Lewis yelled. “I said, move it!”
The girl remained in place, her glassy eyes focused on Lewis. “Oh, wow!” she whispered. “A lady cop!”
Lewis charged forward, shoving the girl out of the way. She stared into the crowd. Hob and Munson were gone.
The arcade crowd surged forward, catching Lewis in the flow. Sheathing her pistol, she found herself buffeted about.
Two rows away, Hob hopped behind a video display.
Lewis continued to fight the crowd, trying to recognize Hob and Munson in the sea of glassy-eyed faces. She twisted her way forward.
She saw one young boy’s eyes widen suddenly, staring at a point behind her.
Lewis whirled as Munson leaped out of an arcade game at her back, his switchblade drawn. With no time to draw her weapon, Lewis extended her right hand forward and, wrapping it around the boy’s extended arms, grabbed it and gave it a firm twist. The knife went clattering to the ground.
Seething now, Lewis took the boy’s arm and wrapped it around his back, shoving him forward toward an arcade game. Howling profanities, the boy was sent tumbling face-first into an arcade screen, his face smacking into the display.
“Tilt,” Lewis said.
She h
eard a feral growl from behind. Before she could pivot, Hob’s elfin body had appeared atop a video game to her rear and launched itself at her.
Hob landed directly on Lewis’s back, expertly wrapping his legs around her torso in a scissorhold. Producing a garrote from his pocket, he crossed the wire-thin rope around her neck and began to tighten it.
Munson, still in her grasp, began to squirm as Lewis tore frantically at the garrote with her free hand.
Lewis angrily shoved Munson forward, and his face shattered the video screen. From inside the unit, Munson began to cry.
Lewis raised both hands to the garrote. No use: It was too thin, already imbedded too deeply in her neck.
Summoning up all her strength, she began to backpedal furiously across the room, Hob still on her back and cackling like a monkey as he twisted and turned the garrote.
Lewis rammed backward into a large metal arcade game, Hob taking the brunt of the blow. The punk’s pixielike features registered a state of total shock as he felt the wind being knocked from his body. His head pitched sideways, smacking into a sharp corner of the game.
Hob emitted a shocked cry, the yelp of a young child in the midst of a bad fall.
He released his grip on the garrote, instinctively reaching for his head. Hob toppled backward, coming to a rolling halt on the floor next to Lewis’s feet. He was out cold.
Officer Lewis fought off dizziness. She dropped to her knees, gasping for breath.
She heard a screech.
She glanced up, trying to regain her vision, as Munson yanked his bleeding face out of the shattered video terminal in front of her.
The gargoyle-child began to laugh like some sort of wounded animal as he picked up his switchblade and approached Lewis. The officer attempted to shake her head clear. Her hands were trembling too much for her to pick up her gun.
Munson was whining nasally as he tossed the knife from one hand to another, a vicious grin on his face.
The boy suddenly discovered that his feet were no longer on the ground.
“Wothafug!” he exclaimed as an oversized hand slammed into the back of his neck and lifted him high into the air, as if he were made of paper.
“Lemme down! Lemme down!” Munson demanded in a high-pitched wheeze.
“As you wish,” RoboCop said.
He flicked the boy high into the air. Munson sailed across the width of the arcade, smashing into a buzzing and undulating wall-sized light display.
An avalanche of brightly colored sparks sizzled out of the wall and across the arcade as Munson sliced across the neon and the wiring. His body writhed as the electrical shocks made their way through his nervous system. Before he hit the ground, the boy had lapsed into unconsciousness.
The lights in the arcade fluttered. Within seconds, the entire hall was plunged into darkness and silence.
The sixteen-year-old tart in the “NUKE ME” T-shirt surveyed the scene. “Wow!” she concluded. “Maximum thrash!”
Robo bent over his partner. “Are you all right?”
Lewis nodded, allowing herself to be helped to her feet. She massaged her neck with her left hand. “Yes,” she whispered. “I may never sing opera again, though.”
RoboCop nodded. “A great loss,” he deadpanned.
Lewis shook her head in Robo’s direction. “I’ve always loved your sense of humor, Murphy.”
She nodded toward the two unconscious punks lying in the debris. “Come on,” she said. “It’s time to pick up the trash.”
She walked to Hob. “And this is just one small mound of the junk pile.”
Robo stared at Hob. “I know,” he said evenly. “I know.”
Anne Lewis shot a nervous glance in Robo’s direction. She didn’t like it when he readily agreed with her. It made her nervous. And usually with good reason.
[ 10 ]
The night shift was fending off fatigue at the Old Detroit stationhouse by the time Lewis and RoboCop returned. Robo dropped a cuffed but defiant Hob onto a bench. “You remain here,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Hob smirked.
Robo disappeared down a hallway as Lewis slammed Officer Duffy, his hands manacled behind his back, into the booking desk. Seated behind the desk, a tired female cop named Estevez barely opened her lids wide enough to survey the scene.
Duffy was shaking, the victim of NUKE withdrawal.
Lewis reached down and yanked Hob off his bench, shoving him up against the desk as well.
Estevez glanced at the two perps. Standing together, they looked like a goose egg and a comma.
“Fun night, huh,” Estevez offered.
“You got five minutes to let me have my phone call or my lawyer will have your ass, bitch!” Hob informed Lewis.
Unimpressed, she gently took the thumb and forefinger of her left hand and placed them on the boy’s right ear. Then she cranked the ear so hard that Hob nearly did a cartwheel. “Settle down, dumpling.”
Hob placed his lips in primo-pout position. Lewis faced Estevez. “Give me a couple of minutes with Duffy here before he goes to detention.”
Estevez sighed. “Lewis, you know the regulations. Put him in the tank.”
“I’m feeling sick,” Duffy pointed out, his face the color of seaweed.
“You know what this is, Estevez?” Lewis said, her patience wearing thin. “This is a hophead cop. He’s been inside. He knows who the NUKErs are and where they are.”
Estevez offered a sad smile. “Rules are rules, Lewis. I’m sorry.”
Estevez’s face suddenly brightened. “However,” she pointed out, “regulations say that before he goes to detention he gets to use the can.”
Lewis grinned at Estevez and shoved Hob into the arms of an awaiting cop. She grabbed Duffy by the shoulder and shoved him forward. “Potty time, Duff,” she whispered.
As they passed Hob, the diminutive thug flashed an icy, in-control stare at Duffy. “You just keep your mouth closed,” the boy advised the trembling cop, “or you’ll pay.”
“Go play in traffic or something, will you, squirt,” Lewis said, patting an irate Hob on the head.
A gaggle of cops were clustered around the door to the station’s men’s room as Lewis dragged a writhing Duffy inside. Lewis eyed the other cops. “Hey, how about giving the man a little privacy, huh?”
The cops grumbled and shuffled away.
Lewis kicked open the door to the men’s room and, hauling Duff toward a stall, shoved the rotund cop butt-first into the urinal cup.
“Hey!” he said, after careful consideration.
“The NUKE, Duffy,” Lewis whispered from between clenched teeth. “Who makes it and where?”
“I’m drug-dependent,” Duffy said, diving into his bag of euphemisms. “Lewis, it’s making me real sick. My guts don’t feel so hot. My stomach is all—”
“Messed up?” Lewis slammed her left fist into the man’s potbelly. Duffy doubled over with a low moan. Lewis grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head up, sending the back of it bopping into the urinal’s flush button. The urinal cup filled with water. So did Duffy’s pants bottom.
“C-cold!” he muttered.
“Who and where, you sorry sonofabitch!” Lewis said, bringing the bad cop back into the investigative loop.
The man began to sob.
Lewis didn’t soften. She knew he’d crack. She had him. She had him good.
A few minutes later, Lewis stood before Sergeant Reed. Reed, a big man with a bigger temper, gazed at a spot somewhere above Lewis’s head. She had seen that look before. It wasn’t a good sign. She felt like a football about to tangle with a place-kicker.
“You’re out of line, Lewis,” Reed began, his voice slowly gaining in volume. “That bathroom stunt you just pulled could get you suspended!”
Maybe it wouldn’t be that bad, Lewis thought. She decided to go for it. “Just give me that assault team and you can suspend me in the morning.”
“It is morning,” Reed replied, getting up from his de
sk and facing a sunlit wall map. The map of Detroit was divided into sectors, with each sector subdivided into neighborhoods. Quite a few of the areas were marked with a red X.
“Are you crazy, woman?” Reed said. “We’re operating with less than a quarter of our force.”
He began jabbing the map. “We don’t go to Cass Corridor . . . or Pingree Park . . . or Pole Town.”
He fingered a section of the map deep in a sector the cops referred to as Forbidden Territory. “And we sure as hell don’t go to River Rouge. We gave up on that shithole before the strike. If your NUKE gang is in there, they have to be armed to the teeth. They’ll chew us up and spit us out. Body bags? We won’t need them. They’ll just use doggie bags to bring us back.”
Reed faced Lewis, a pained expression on his face. “I can’t risk it, Lewis. We’re just going to have to wait until the strike ends.”
“Sarge,” Lewis pleaded, pressing home the point, “the NUKE gang is in there. At the old motor works. Duffy was kind enough to tell me.”
“I’m sure,” Reed smirked.
“Hell,” Lewis continued, “they’ve had Duffy spilling his guts about every move we’ve been making for months. For sure they’ve got other NUKE-heads on the force. If we wait, we’ll lose them for sure!”
“I’m not losing you or anybody else in a move that doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of succ . . .” Reed stopped in midthought, gaping at the door to his office.
There, standing like a well-sculpted pillar of granite, stood RoboCop. Reed gulped. He realized that the cyborg had heard the entire conversation. “Howya doing, Robo?” he muttered.
Robo swung his body around and, turning his back on the sergeant, marched off down the corridor. Reed charged out of his office after him.
“No!” he yelled at the cyborg’s back. “You are not going there, mister! That’s a direct order!”
Robo didn’t bother to slow down.
Lewis shouldered her way past her sergeant and broke into a trot. Reed grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back.
“Look, Officer,” he said, his nostrils flaring with anger, “if he wants to get himself killed . . . fine. But he is not taking you with him! End of conversation!”