by Ed Naha
The striking cops behind him exchanged guilty glances.
To a man, the cops threw down their picket signs and converged on the mangled metallic shell.
They carried Robo into the station as if they were at an official police funeral.
Within the station, there was silence.
An hour went by. The city went to hell.
Within two hours, life was back to normal.
Inside the stationhouse, there was the usual in-strike chaos. Phones rang off the hook. Terrified temps regarded the phones as if they were vipers, poised for a lethal bite. Reed was at his desk, screaming into the phone. An old bloodied woman sitting on a chair near the front desk babbled.
“But Robert doesn’t eat nothing,” she declared. “Just eats what he eats and doesn’t change his clothes or say nothing.”
“Gawd!” a nearby temp exclaimed. “And he has a knife? What’re you going to do? What? Me? Hell? I don’t give advice. I’m no cop.”
Reed barked into his phone. “Try to stay calm, ma’am. That police lock will keep them out. Did you get a good look at them? That’s all right, ma’am. Just try to stay calm. A squad car will be along as soon as possible. Now, if you could just hold . . . Yes, ma’am. Some of us are still working . . . Thank you, ma’am. We love you, too.”
Lewis appeared before Reed’s desk and slammed her left fist onto its top. “REED!”
Reed cupped the phone. “What the hell are you doing here, Lewis? It’s not your shift.”
Lewis practically snarled at the hapless sergeant. “I heard about what happened to Murphy, Reed. And I’m holding you personally responsible!”
She glared at Reed for a moment before she stormed off. Another phone rang. Reed sighed and picked it up. “Metro North. Yeah, this is the police. Yes, there are still police!”
Lewis made her way to the dark dank Robo-Chamber. Upon entering the cubicle, she stopped cold, her eyes widened in terror.
Robo sat upon his perch.
His eyes were wide open but bereft of life. He stared blankly into space. Robo’s torso hung suspended by pulleys, vital fluids dripping from its innards. His helmet was gone. A puppet’s mask encased by circuitry was all that was left of his once beautiful face. Life-support tubes and wires hung suspended from his exposed sockets. Tak Akita and Linda Garcia ran frantically from high-tech machine to machine.
“Is he alive?” Lewis asked.
“The cerebro spinal axis is viable,” Tak admitted, “but all circuits interfacing with the medulla spinalis are shot to shit.”
Lewis felt tears brimming in her eyes. “Please, in English. Is . . . he . . . alive?”
Garcia sighed and faced the lady cop. “His brain is . . . well, we’re still getting a signal from it. It’s faint. If we can keep it going, maybe we can rebuild him.”
“Maybe?” Lewis repeated.
“If we can get the parts,” Tak said. “Which, thanks to OCP’s budget cutbacks, doesn’t seem likely.”
Lewis narrowed her eyes. “What the hell do you mean? Is OCP up to some new shit?”
Tak shrugged. “They said he’s off warranty.”
“Off warranty?” Lewis exclaimed.
“They’ve put a hold on sending any replacements,” Garcia tried to explain.
Lewis blew up. “He’s not just some piece of equipment, damnit! He’s my fuggin’ partner!”
“Hey,” said Garcia softly, “I’m not arguing with you. We’re doing everything we can.”
Lewis felt her heart break and her body sag. “I know. I’m sorry. Can you give me a list of what it’ll take to fix him?”
“What’s the point?” Garcia muttered. “OCP won’t spring for the damned—”
“Just make me the list,” Lewis said flatly.
“It’ll be ready in an hour,” Garcia replied, flashing a sympathetic grin.
Lewis strode past the two flustered robotics experts and leaned close to Robo’s frozen face. “Just hold on, honey,” she said, her lips nearly touching his. “We’re gonna fix you.”
Lewis turned her back on the scientists and left the room.
“That lady’s crazy,” Tak declared.
“Yeah.” Garcia nodded.
“She’s beyond crazy,” Tak added.
Garcia smiled. “So you like her, too?”
Tak focused a mournful look on Robo. “Yeah, goddamnit, I like her a lot.”
Lewis left the RoboChamber, tears in her eyes. She entered the main room of the stationhouse and stopped with a start. Behind his desk, Reed was conversing with a bleary-eyed, heavily sedated Officer Duffy. Duffy was led past the desk by a badly suited attorney who resembled a wharf rat in polyester.
Duffy reeled to a halt in front of Lewis. “Hiya, sweetcakes! Good to see ya.”
His lawyer led him away.
Lewis spun on Reed. “Sarge? What the hell is this crap?”
Reed faced her impassively. “What the hell do you expect, Lewis? You don’t read him his rights, you punch a confession out of him, and you think we can hold him?”
Duffy chuckled, winking at Lewis. “You’re lucky I’m such a nice guy. I could’ve had your badge for you fuggin’ me up.”
Reed glared at the rodent attorney. “Go on. Get him out of here.”
The little man nodded and yanked Duffy away. Reed spun on Lewis. “Nice work, Officer.”
“Perch and rotate, Sarge,” Lewis said, striding out of the station. “I’ve got other things to think about.”
“Don’t you dare!” Reed roared. “There is a time and a place for everything.”
“Screw off,” Lewis whispered.
“What!” Reed demanded.
“I said, ‘hoooo-offff.’ Think I’m catching a cold.”
“You’re gonna catch hell if you start messing around with robotics and OCP junk and politics and stuff I don’t know and don’t want to know.”
“Would I do a thing like that?” Lewis called over her shoulder, slamming through the front doors of the station.
[ 13 ]
The stretch limo pulled up silently before the hospital. A pale green moon shone down upon the scene.
The angular and obviously angry figure of Cain emerged from the back. The equally tall but angelic-looking thug named Gillette walked around the back. Together they hauled the unconscious, still-uniformed body of Officer Duffy out of the trunk and slowly dragged him into the emergency room.
Inside the green-walled hospital, Duffy was stripped, sedated, and tossed upon a gurney.
Expressionless attendants wheeled Duffy into an operating room.
The gorilla, Catzo, dismissed the attendants, pushing a medical cart into the center of the room. Duffy was strapped to a table, his rotund body covered by a sheet. Duffy began to regain consciousness ever so slowly.
His face was badly bruised.
Badly beaten.
His eyes were nearly swollen shut.
He tried to focus his eyes on the harsh ceiling lights. He cocked his ears. Footsteps. Growing nearer. And nearer. And nearer. His body tensed.
Cain and Angie entered the room, both wearing medical garb. Angie walked placidly over to another medical cart.
Catzo left the room.
Cain sidled up to Duffy, beaming in his doctor’s outfit. “I can’t believe you told the cops where I was headquartered, Duffy. I just can’t believe it. You, a man of honor. A man who wears the badge.”
Duffy tried to summon a smile. “I didn’t. That’s not true. Oh, Cain! Jeeezus! It’s not true.”
Cain nodded and chuckled. He glanced at Angie. “Our boy’s lying again, Angie.”
Angie shrugged.
The smile faded from Cain’s face. “He’s lying to me!”
Angie turned to Duffy. “A shame, really,” she said demurely. “All that bitch had to do was sit you in a urinal and punch you in the gut? And you told them where we were? We know all about it, Duffy. You think you’re the only cop we have under our thumb?”
Angie turned h
er back on the captive cop. She removed the covering from her cart. It was laden with surgical instruments straight out of Bride of Frankenstein. The overhead lights made their long, sharp surfaces glisten. Duffy began to whimper. Cain offered him a sincere smile of condolence.
“Sorry, bub.” He grinned.
“Oh, God! Oh, Jeeezus,” Duffy moaned. “I am truly sorry!”
Cain shrugged his skeletal shoulders, rubbing his right hand through his half-grown beard. “It really hurts me that you did what you did,” he said. “It really caused me a lot of pain.”
He turned to Angie, who was fingering the tools. “Stop that! You’ll hurt yourself.”
Duffy ignored the last blast. “Don’t kill me, Cain. I’m begging you, man. I’ll do anything. ANYTHING!”
Cain smiled sweetly. “I don’t believe in revenge, Duffy. I’d even let you go if I could. But my life . . . ah, well, it isn’t all that simple. I don’t have the kind of freedom most people have. So many depend on me . . . And you, through your stupidity, have endangered them all.”
“Please don’t kill me,” Duffy moaned, his body still strapped down onto the table.
Cain retreated. He sat in a large chair.
Angie ran to his side, crouching and stroking him. He nodded at her serenely before facing Duffy.
“No, I won’t kill you,” he intoned. “I don’t kill. I never kill.”
An unshaven, middle-aged fat man stumbled into the room. He donned surgical gloves. Angie smiled and handed Cain a NUKE dispenser. Cain smiled and picked an ampule. He handed it to the fat man. The fat man plunged it into his neck and turned toward Duffy.
“No,” Cain said again, “I never kill. I have people who can do that for me.”
The fat man stared wild-eyed at Duffy.
He raised a scalpel.
Within the blink of an eye, he had sliced Duffy’s sheet open.
Duffy sighed. His skin wasn’t broken.
The fat man picked up another scalpel, his eyes rotating wildly.
Cain watched placidly as the second scalpel slid into Duffy’s ample flesh. He averted his eyes as the cop began to scream.
Angie merely ignored the scene. She plunged a NUKE ampule into her neck and watched the operation while in a blissful state of dull fascination.
Cain continued to watch the carving. What the hell? There was nothing decent on cable these days.
[ 14 ]
The Old Detroit stationhouse was illuminated by a smog-dimmed moonlight glow.
Behind the desk sat a haggard Officer Estevez, as battered cops dropped coins and bills into a cigarbox while either leaving or coming home from their extended tours of duty. Reed marched into the room. Estevez nodded and scrambled out of the seat. She quickly donned her suit of armor.
“Night duty?” Reed asked.
“No,” she sneered, producing a couple of dollar bills and plunking them into the cigarbox. “I’m off to the senior prom.”
Reed nodded placidly.
A rookie cop, his face blood-stained, waddled into the room. He stared at the box. “This for Robo?”
Reed nodded. “Yeah,” he acknowledged. “Lewis figures if we’ve got the money, OCP has got to give us the parts.”
The rookie slammed his money into the box and staggered off.
Estevez faced Reed angrily. “Shit!” she exclaimed. “They don’t give a good goddamn about Robo—or any of us! They pulled this same shit on me when I hurt my knee. They said they were suspending medical benefits until they could accurately ascertain—”
“You want a collection, too, Estevez?” Reed inquired.
“Nossir,” Estevez hissed. “I’ve never been hurt as much as that boy in there. It’s as bad as ripping out a person’s heart, goddamnit!”
Reed lapsed into silence.
He stared at the front door as a contrite figure entered the room. Whittaker, the leader of the police strike force, held his cop hat in his hand. It was filled with money.
Reed glared at the striking cop. “Only working cops allowed in here, Whittaker.”
Estevez managed a snarl. “Back to your picket line, you limp-wristed dick.”
Whittaker ignored it all as he continued marching forward to Reed’s desk. He dumped his hatful of money into the cigarbox before the officer and stared at him sullenly.
“Do me a small favor, Sarge,” he whispered. “Tell Robo that the guys on the line are thinking about him, rooting for him. I only hope this’ll help. We’re all still cops, bejeezus, inside and outside this station.”
Whittaker turned and marched out of the building.
Reed stared at the money in the box. “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” he muttered.
The cops in the stationhouse fell into silence. Even the criminals in the holding cell seemed to have been affected.
Estevez donned her helmet. “Now, if there’s no more sob stories to slobber over, I’m going out onto the streets.”
“Be careful out there,” Reed warned.
“Always am,” Estevez said. “I mean, who cares about cops any more, eh?”
“Only other cops,” Reed whispered.
[ 15 ]
Sunlight glistened through the massive skylights at the Old Man’s private penthouse suite at OCP. A switch was flicked. Golden blinds closed out the sunlight.
The Old Man, in a deep Japanese bathtub, placed a wet finger on a set of high-tech computerized controls. He frowned slightly as the sound of knocking invaded his private chambers.
The Old Man sighed. “Yes, Johnson. Come in. Come in.”
Johnson appeared in the portal as the two gigantic golden doors automatically swung inward. He glanced about. The room was littered with lush, tropical plants. The Old Man tilted his head back into the tub, relaxed and confident.
Johnson ventured forward. “Good morning, sir.”
“Good morning, Johnson.” The Old Man sighed. “What is it?”
“I’m sorry to bother you this early,” Johnson began, his glasses fogging from the steam of the tub.
“But . . .” said the Old Man.
“But,” Johnson continued, “I think we could be facing a serious crisis.”
The Old Man nodded above the swirling waters. “Well,” he ventured, “I think that, over the years, I’ve learned that crises come and crises go. What’s all this about, huh, Johnson, my dear boy?”
“It’s all flummoxed,” Johnson admitted.
“How so?”
“Our position on RoboCop: It’s becoming a severe public-relations problem. All six networks are going after us for keeping RoboCop offline.”
The Old Man nodded, blowing bubbles away from his mouth.
Johnson gritted his teeth and continued. “Now, I know that Doctor Faxx feels it’s time to phase out the existing RoboCop. And with her marketing experience, you’d think she would be aware of the damage she’s doing to our corporate image.”
Faxx, a small clinging towel her only clothing, entered the scene from an adjoining bedroom, well out of Johnson’s line of view. “But,” the poor executive continued, “I really have to question the wisdom of having her in charge of the RoboCop 2 program. I’m worried she may have some agenda of her own that’s not in synch with this company.”
Johnson nearly gagged as the scantily clad Dr. Faxx strutted out before him.
“And what would that agenda be, dear Mr. Johnson?” she cooed, almost exposing her breasts to him with a quick slip of her towel.
Johnson opened and closed his mouth, producing a mere hummuna-hummuna-hummmmmmuna sound.
Faxx let her towel slip lower. “The fact is that I’m well aware of the image problem we have with RoboCop. And I have a solution.”
The Old Man chortled from his bath. “Yes, Johnson. Juliette and I have already discussed it. I’ll be counting on you, dear sir, to help implement her ideas.”
Johnson heaved a dry cough. He felt his bowels trying to strain free. “Of course. Whatever I can do.”
The Old Man raised
a rubber-duckie toy from the bubbles. “Anything else, boy?”
Johnson turned his head right and left, like the slave he truly was. “No,” he muttered. “Nothing else.”
Johnson glared at the woman. He wished her dead.
The Old Man slid further into the tub, taking his duckie with him. “Good.” He smiled. “And now, if you would be so kind as to close the door on your way out.”
Johnson casually daubbed the sweat off his face and backed toward the two towering exit doors. He banged his back against them and left the room, almost in a near bow.
As the doors swung closed, Juliette Faxx dropped her towel and glided into the tub alongside the Old Man. The Old Man smiled, nearly drooling at her.
Within seconds, his rubber duckie had been tossed from the watery scene.
[ 16 ]
Dr. Juliette Faxx sat quietly in her office, surveying the sunlit skyline before her. Two low-level robotics experts stood nervously nearby, holding several large drawings of state-of-the-art weaponry in their hands. Faxx purposely ignored them. Behind her, her administrative assistant, Jenny, appeared in the doorway.
“Officer Lewis is here,” Jenny announced.
Faxx nodded and spun her chair around as Officer Anne Lewis, dressed in civilian clothes, entered the room. She carried a thick stack of printouts under her arm.
Faxx said nothing as she motioned Lewis in with a wave of her hand.
Faxx turned to the sweating executives. “Very striking, gentlemen,” she murmured. “I’m sure the Pentagon would consider it if you could bring the unit cost down three hundred and fifty million. That will be all.”
The two execs backed out of the room like frightened mice. Lewis stood awkwardly before Faxx’s desk.
“Please”—Faxx smiled at her—“sit down.”
Lewis eased herself into a chair.
Faxx eyed the printouts. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Officer. That’s not the list, is it?”
Lewis nodded mutely.
Faxx was handed the printouts, and she began to leaf through them. “I had no idea the damage was so extensive.”