Now, she was working on her own do-it-yourself neon light sign. I don’t know where she found it, but she was busy at work, making a LIQUID COOL sign for the space she designated right on the wall behind her, outside my office. It would be the first thing people would see. She even had another box in smaller neon letters to make DETECTIVE AGENCY. I was impressed.
There was a knock on the door.
I was glad I had turned over office door security to her. I still didn’t know why a paranoid, like me, who checked my car and home doors multiple times with my OCD self, would so carelessly leave my new office door unlocked more than once.
PJ walked to the door and opened it. We hadn’t connected the door buzzer yet, because we still had to get the hallway camera.
There he stood. Dot’s father, Mr. Wan.
He ignored Punch Judy as he walked past her. His eyes avoided me too as he walked in. He casually held his hands together behind his back as he strolled around. First the reception area, then to PJ’s desk, then he walked into my office. PJ and I looked at each other, and then I bolted to my office. Just as I was about to go in, he came out. Mr. Wan strolled to the door, opened it, and closed it behind himself. We looked at each other again.
“That’s China Doll’s father?” Punch Judy asked.
“Yeah.”
“You are not in good standing with him. I would not marry her if I were you. You marry her; you marry him.”
“Don’t say that. I’m trying not to think about it.”
Chapter 25
China Doll
“WHAT’S IN YOUR BATHTUB?”
I sat with my back to the door as I gazed out the droplet covered window, wearing some new headset gadget PJ got me. Normally, people didn’t like talking on the v-phone, unless they could see the other party. Texting was the exception, but you surely didn’t conduct business by texting. The video-phone headset was an eyepiece, a metal band around one side of your head, and a small arm attachment with a microfilm thin video screen. Quality was perfect, but I had PJ return it to get a less than perfect model. I didn’t want them to see my eyes too clearly, so I could look out the window and they’d not realize it.
“There’s a gator in my bathtub?” the woman on the other end of the video-phone said and then started to laugh.
“Why are you calling a private detective? Shouldn’t you call Animal Control?”
“I want to hire you to find out who put this gator in my bathtub.”
“Maybe it just came up from the sewage pipes.”
“Mr. Cruz, this is a seven-foot-long gator.”
“Is it a gator or a crocodile?” I asked.
“Very sharp question, Mr. Cruz. I can’t remember which is which, so let’s stick with gator. Will you take the case?”
“I’d be stealing your money. Believe me, Animal Control will want to find out exactly where a seven-foot gator or croc came from too and how it found its way into your bathtub. They’ll do the detecting for you for free. So here’s what you do.”
“What?”
“Video tape it with your mobile first, send the footage to the local news, and tell them to get there fast before Animal Control. Then, when the camera crew gets there, before you let them in, call Animal Control. You’ll be famous for a day and will have the government find out who put that water reptile in your tub.”
“Boy, Mr. Cruz. You’re so smart. That’s exactly what I’ll do.”
“Liquid Cool is all about helping people. Even when there’s no real case for us to take. Now, go do your video-taping.”
“Yes, sir.”
I hung up the video call and pulled the video call headset off of me. “PJ!”
She appeared at the door laughing.
“I do not want any more crazy calls like that!”
“There’s a gator in my bathtub,” PJ said with her fake American Free City accent, or what she thought people who live in Free City sounded like, and then she laughed.
I SAT AT MY DESK STARING out the droplet covered window with my cup of silk coffee in hand. There was no view, but the line of monolith office tower buildings across the street with their tinted windows. However, I had a deep sense of satisfaction. It was almost like a dream I prayed would never end. I was just some laborer, legacy baby one moment, now I was a self-employed, business owner with an employee.
“Surprise!”
I was startled, but the smile never left my face as I turned around to see Dot peeking into the office from the door. She waltzed right in.
“Look at this,” she said, looking around my space. “This is cool. You have a real place of business.”
I set down my cup as she rushed me, threw her arms around me, and planted a kiss.
“Very impressive, Mr. Cruz,” she said as she looked around again, then back at me. “You are a detective now. How do you like it? Wait.”
She ran over to my door and closed it.
“I don’t want to hear no animal sounds in there!” PJ yelled.
Dot laughed, and I held my laughter in.
“Well, Mr. Cruz?” she asked.
I picked up my cup as I bobbed my head up and down. “Love it.”
She was back next to me. “Is it dangerous?”
“Not at all,” I replied. “Lot of variety, which I like.”
“Oh. Tell me about the corporate case.”
“The Case of the Nighttime Bionic Parts Thieves.”
“Cruz, that’s a stupid name. Your agency is named Liquid Cool. How can you come up with a cool name for your business, but give your cases such pathetic names? What was the name of the case before this one?”
“The Case of the Guy Who Scratched My Vehicle.”
We both burst out laughing.
“That’s what I mean,” she managed to say while still laughing. “Enough! Cool names for all cases going forward.”
“Gotcha.”
“Tell me what happened.”
I had two chairs in front of my desk, but I did like I saw so many other business guys do, like Run-Time and others. In the corner, I had my own arrangement of plush chairs around a glass table, the whole set-up on another neon dark blue rug. Dot and I sat on adjacent chairs.
“It was some case,” I started. “This company makes all these high-end bionic parts, but almost monthly, thieves were ripping off their warehouse. They had tons of security, but all their internal security guys couldn’t figure out how it was possible. They fired a bunch of security heads over it. It was going on for months.”
“How did you solve it then, Mr. Cruz?”
“Well…Mrs. Cruz…since it was the megacorporate world, I knew it had to be an inside job, but I knew they would have checked that right away. So how can a theft be an inside job without being an inside job? Answer. The boss is playing nighttime footsy with his neighbor, who happens to be the VP of his main rival. He thinks he’s scammin’ her for corporate secrets, while in actuality, she’s swiping and copying his access cards while he’s sleeping.”
“Ohhhh,” Dot said.
“Fake trucks, fake uniforms, and all they had to do is drive in and out with a cloned access card.”
“Very good, Mr. Cruz. How did you Sherlock Holmes all that? Are you that good?”
“I am, Mrs. Cruz. Oh, let me get my cup.” I jumped up to grab my cup from my main desk. “What can I get you? I even have my own mini stash in my office.”
The door to my office smashed in as a large man flew past me, knocking the cup from my hand. The thug slammed into the window.
We heard the pulse blast sound from under his jacket. After a second delay, the window shattered as the thug rose from the floor with such a look of menace that I knew that no good was about to come next. The thug glared at me, reached into his jacket, and raised his arm towards me. I didn’t consciously notice the gun, until after I already reacted.
Pop!
My pop-gun popped out and the pulse bullet blew through his neck with a cloud of smoke and blood. His face, with a sho
cked look, fell forward off his body and then his entire body fell back out the window.
PART SEVEN
Intermission
Chapter 26
Officers Break and Caps
I RAN TO THE WINDOW, or what used to be my window, which was a completely idiotic action. At this height, the wind could have easily sucked me out, but my behavior was on auto-pilot. From the corners of my eyes, I saw Punch Judy was next to me on the left. I would later notice she had a layer of sweat on her face and neck; Dot was on my right.
The whole thing was like the proverbial out-of-body experience. I was quite sickened by my behavior, the “stop for the bad hovercar crash to see if there were any dead bodies” behavior, but that’s what I was doing. We wanted to see. Even Dot, who’d ordinarily run the opposite way, was with us, precariously balancing with our legs as we looked out over the edge of the side of the building. Dot, PJ, and I were hanging out to see the aftermath of the carnage. It was the reason people had under-vehicle cameras on their hovercars—not for safety, as was always the claim, but if there was an accident with a return-to-earth crash, they could be an easy spectator, maybe even get to snap a few photos from their mobile.
We barely caught the end of the thug descending to the ground, but at this height and the rain, we would never hear a splat or thud, or whatever our minds were expecting. I felt we were watching an episode of Science Fantastic. Which falls faster, a disembodied head or a decapitated body? Answer: they both hit the ground at the same time!
The tower’s alarms screeched and we all grabbed our ears. If this were a real business district, blast doors would have raised or lowered to cover the shattered-out window. We just stepped back.
Damn! I said to myself. The police would be here at my office again!
“Oh!” I realized. “Dot, stay here!” I bolted from the office.
“Where are you going?” I heard her yell, but I was racing down the hallway to the elevators. For once, I wanted them to arrive fast.
I had to get to the ground and check the body. Another sucker shooter in my place of business. I had to get his ID and figure out who he was before the police arrived. Once they did, it all would be inaccessible.
The elevator arrived!
I raced out the main doors of the office tower into the street. People were already encircling the mess that used to be a human being. Besides my germophobia, I had no tolerance for anything disgusting or nasty, which a splattered body definitely was. I pushed through the crowd and held my hand in front of my eyes to shield my delicate sensibilities from the mess. The rain had stopped. Now when it needed to rain, it wasn’t.
The man used to be a large man. I couldn’t believe I was kneeling in front of the mess, but I had to get his ID. My hand went for his pants pockets and, lucky for me, my fingers found the wallet. I pulled it out and quickly opened it. There was the ID card of my sucker shooter. I pretended my eyes were a camera and I memorized the name, address, phone, and stats.
I paused and felt a wave of panic. The crowd surrounding the body and congregating on the streets was gone. It was like a bad movie where the guy realized he’s the only one on the street and wonders why as he looked up to see Godzilla stomping him with his left foot. I looked around, and my gaze stopped at the reason. Two big street cops were watching my every move. I never even saw or heard their hovercruiser.
Officer Break and Officer Caps—Ebony and Ivory I called them (silently). PEACE in big bold white letters on their chests, but they could kill you in an instant, like all police, if you did the wrong thing.
“You a body snatcher, Mr. Cruz?” Officer Break asked.
“No, officer. I was finding his wallet for his ID, so I could see who exactly assaulted my employee and myself.”
“Body snatching is a felony, Mr. Cruz. Disturbing a dead body is a felony, Mr. Cruz. Taking items off a dead body is a felony, Mr. Cruz.”
“I didn’t take anything. You were watching me. I looked at his ID and put it back. That’s it.”
PJ had arrived on the scene a minute ago and stood next to me with her arms folded. Break looked at his enhanced forearm display screen.
“…says you like to punch people with those bionic arms,” he said to PJ.
“No, he attacked me. He punched me. I’m not allowed to punch anybody. It’s illegal,” Punch Judy said to him.
“But you have done just that at least six times.”
“No, I learned my lesson. I’m not going to jail, anymore. I have a job now.”
“And Mr. Cruz is your employer?”
“Yes.”
“Imagine that,” Office Break said. “Two troublemakers. You sure you didn’t punch that man out of the window?”
“No, I never punched him. In the struggle, he crashed through the window himself.”
“Officers, you can check the body for punch wounds,” I said, not trying to be funny.
The officers gave me a look.
“The man takes a header from 100-stories up and is literally spread out on the concrete like peanut butter and jelly jam, and you want us to check the body for bionic punch wounds into his body. How do you suppose we’d do that?” he asked.
“Yeah, sorry,” I said.
“How did you lose your arms?” Officer Caps asked PJ.
“They were cut off.”
The two policemen looked up. “Cut off? By who?” Officer Caps asked.
“Him,” she said, pointing to me.
In an instant, the entire demeanor of the two police officers changed. They went from Officer Friendly-mode to Judge Dredd-pre-killer mode. Their eyes narrowed and focused on me.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “She was in a terrible accident. Her hovercar crashed, and the entire thing flipped and landed on her. Her arms were crushed and pinned, and the hovercar was on fire. She was already getting cooked alive, and it was leaking fuel so it was going to explode, too. What was I supposed to do? Wait for the ambulance? She’d be burnt alive or blown up. I had a laser cutter in my vehicle, because I do hovercar restoration gigs. I grabbed it and did what had to be done to save her life. Her arms were gone anyway, and it was either them or her life. I did what had to be done. I was as psychologically damaged as she was physically and psychologically damaged, but it had to be done.”
All the while I was reciting what happened, Punch Judy was nodding in acknowledgment. The policemen’s demeanor reverted back to cordial from their “prepare to open fire” expressions.
“Your boss cut off your arms to save your life, and you punched a perp out the window who was trying to harm him.” Office Breaks returned to his line of questioning.
“No, I didn’t punch him.”
“The thug attacked my secretary, Officers, and she was defending herself, defending her person. It was complete self-defense and it was in her legal place of employment.”
The officers grinned.
“Okay, Mr. Cruz,” Officer Break said. “The thing about guys who think they can get away with stuff is they always mess up in the end.”
“Now, don’t blackball me,” I said to them. “Look at my jacket. I don’t even have a ticket. No arrests. No jail time ever. It’s not my fault that private investigation is such a dangerous industry, but I’m the victim. I’m making a legal living.”
“You have any weapons in that office, Mr. Cruz?” Officer Break asked.
“No. None,” I answered confidently.
“A detective without a gun. You really do think we’re dumb doofuses?” Officer Break said.
“You can check…”
“So your secretary didn’t punch the man out the window, and you’re a detective with no guns? It’s okay, Mr. Cruz. We have all the statements we need from you and your secretary. Have a nice day. Two deaths from your office within the span of a month. You may not have been in criminal trouble before, but you are clearly wanting to make up for lost time. You have a very good day, sir.”
The officer gestured for us to
move off.
I could imagine what PJ and I looked like to them. We were two kids standing in front of a parent. The parent knew we did something wrong, but couldn’t prove it. But they knew. And our sheepish “not little ol’ us” expressions only confirmed it.
“We’re going to add your picture on the POI board, Mr. Cruz. You know what that is? Persons of Interest,” Officer Break said to us as we walked back into the office tower.
I was not interested in having the increased police scrutiny.
“You have a good day, Mr. Cruz. We’ll be seeing you again.”
When I got back to our floor, there was the police wrapping the front of my office with police crime tape—again. Dot was waiting in the hallway and gave me a “you’re dead to me” look as she brushed past to the elevators. I was officially in the doghouse.
Danger was always fun when it remained an idea or the stuff of the hottest television shows. When you have to blow some guy’s head off (literally) and watch him fall out the side of a building to keep him from blowing your head off, then danger isn’t so fun anymore.
Dot was scared; that’s all. She needed time to process what just happened, and she didn’t even know this was the third incident involving assaults with deadly weapons on me in my new detective life. I also needed to process what just happened, almost happened, for the third time.
This time, the only way I came out on top was because I had a cyborg secretary acting illegally and my own illegal weapon. Was this what being a detective was all about? Being a borderline criminal to do your job, to stay alive?
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