Liquid Cool

by Austin Dragon

  “You sure no one was snooping around?”

  “You expected snoopers?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, I didn’t see any or funny looking people, except for Phishy. Besides him, I saw no one else not supposed to be in the building.”

  When I was hiding out, post-my birthday, I told no one, not even Dot. So everybody was looking for me. This time, when I exiled myself to the “Box,” I told everyone. I was in a working retreat in my place, and no one was to call or come by, ever, not even if an asteroid was coming to blow up the planet.

  I stopped what I was doing and walked back out into the reception-waiting area. PJ was busy again with her interior design.

  “Is there anything remaining from the paint that was here two weeks ago?”

  I tossed some new hovercar and racing magazines on the lobby table. All the fashion mags might make men think they weren’t welcome. A grinning PJ said, “No.”

  I smirked and walked back into my office.

  “Oh, you can’t throw your wet coat on your desk like that,” she yelled at me. “I’ll order a coat rack. One of those germ-killing, anti-body odor, fabric drying ones.”

  “I’m not sure how to respond to that, since my coat doesn’t stink.”

  “That’s why you need this coat rack, so your new coat doesn’t become stinky. You can’t have clients seeing you without a proper coat rack. They’ll think you’re cheap and won’t hire you. Did I tell you I have all your messages organized and prioritized, so you can start making calls?”

  “And you need to get paid.”

  “Good, you were listening to me.”

  “Detective Friendly,” I said, looking at him on my video-phone. “I didn’t think I’d be hearing from you again.”

  “We detectives have to stick together, you know. I rang for you a couple of times and your secretary said you were away for two weeks. Glad you’re back. I wanted to check in and see if you heard anything new on the Easy Chair Charlie case.”

  “No, why?”

  “You know how legal stuff can be. You want to make sure all loose ends are tied up or the whole legal stuff can take forever. My firm doesn’t get paid until the case, criminally and civilly, is closed.”

  “Is that so?”

  “You’ll soon find that out if you’re getting into the biz.”

  “Well, I was done with the Charlie case like four weeks ago. You’re the only one who has brought it up since then. Should I be looking into it again?”

  “No, no, no. Forget I called. I only wanted to check in.”

  “How did you know I was back?”

  “I didn’t. It’s a Monday, so I took a chance.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thanks for taking my call.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  I hung up the video-phone.

  “PJ!”

  “He called every Monday you were gone.”

  “Why? What did he say?”

  “He wanted to know if I knew where you were.”

  “And?”

  “I told him you were out of town.”

  “He’s obviously watching the offices.”

  “Why do you say that? He’s called every Monday.”

  “No detective does what he does. Checking in with me. Keeping tabs on me is what he’s doing.”

  “Why?”

  “Tell me about Box. What did your research show?”

  “How do you find these people? Box is a scumbag. How can he have a detective license with his record? What do you want with him? He does work for bad people.”

  “Then, I’ll be going to visit Mr. Box.”

  “What about the messages?”

  “I’ll make calls from the road. If it’s promising, I’ll call you, and you can have them come into the office.”

  “Okay, because we need some paying clients in here. I need my money.”

  “You weren’t getting money before.”

  “I wasn’t employed before. When you are employed, you get money. I’m French. We like to shop, so get the paying clients, so you can pay me. But don’t get shot before you do it.”

  Chapter 39

  China Doll

  THERE WERE POCKETS in the city that had vortexes—that’s what everyone called them. Wherever the rain came down between two heat vents, these spiraling circles of water would be created that were fun to look at. Kids loved to run through them, pretending to pass through dimensions or time, like in sci-fi movies.

  Well, there was one right in front of Eye Candy. I came through the vortex with my new tan coat flapping, my new tan fedora pulled down just right on my head, and I could see Dot and the ladies had already seen me. Damn, I knew I looked cool. I opened the door and stepped inside. Dot, her boss Prima Donna, and her fellow fashionistas were standing there, like a pack, grinning at me.

  The real reason for my swagger was the post-Phishy-shooting-me perception exercise, which was a secret I’d take to the grave, when it came to Dot. I felt that my chest was made out of steel. Though, I wished I had a darker complexion like Run-Time or the Good Kosher Man, because that area of my chest was still red and tender, but that was easy enough to hide.

  “Well, look at you,” Prima said. “We were starting to wonder if you had gone off-world and left your fiancée behind.”

  “I knew where he was,” Dot interjected. “So you’re finished with the box?” she asked me.

  “I’m finished,” I answered.

  “And?”

  “And nothing. Other than…tonight is date night.”

  The women laughed.

  “Date night?” Dot asked incredulously. “You lock yourself up in your place for over two weeks, show up at my job trying to look suave, and now it’s date night all of a sudden.”

  “Well…yeah,” I answered. “The hovercab is waiting.”

  Prima glanced at Dot.

  “He’s got spunk, China,” Goat Girl said, half-laughing. “Gotta give him that.”

  “China Doll, you are excused for date night,” Prima said to Dot.

  “Are you sure? Because I’m not sure I’m sure.”

  “She’s sure,” I said. “Guess where we’re going?” It wasn’t just the ladies, but all the customers within earshot wanted to know. “The Booty Shaker.”

  Dot let out a yell, jumped up, and ran to the back room.

  “Why doesn’t my man take me to classy dance joints?” Pinkie asked aloud.

  “I don’t know,” Cyan answered. “Mine doesn’t either. I’m thinking we got the wrong kind of man. Hey, Cruz, you got any male friends of the hetero persuasion, like you, and single? Pinkie and I need to trade up.”

  “Me too,” Goat Girl added.

  “I’ll put the word out,” I said.

  Dot reappeared with her purse, which, as always, matched her outfit exactly. “Let’s go,” she said to me.

  Getting a hovertaxi was like playing Russian roulette. You never knew what you’d get. Would you get a driver who knew the city and would get you where you wanted fast? Would you get a scammer, who’d take the longest possible way to charge you absolutely the most he could get away with? Would you get the idiot newbie, who had no clue where he was going? Dot and I got none of that; we got the rudest bum possible.

  Why didn’t I call Run-Time? One of my corporate clients (who paid his bill promptly) had an uncle. The uncle owned this hovercab company, and it was part of my arrangement to get a good review and more referrals. So here, Dot and I were—the first and last time.

  “Driver,” I said.

  Dot didn’t see it, but I did. There was no reason we should have been in the sky-lane we were in. The guy was either lost or trying to gouge us on fares. We were heading for a bridge and I knew if I didn’t get control of the situation fast, things were going to get very bad.

  “Driver,” I repeated. “I need you to slow down and pull to the side.”

  The driver either was ignoring me or had music playing in his ears.


  Dot saw the approaching bridge and screamed out. The driver reacted and glanced back at us.

  “Pull the cab to the side and stop!” I yelled.

  “What’s happening?” he yelled back.

  Dot’s eyes were closed tight, her teeth were clenched, and she was in the beginning stages of a violent fit.

  “Pull the cab to the side!”

  “Why? What’s happening?”

  My anger took me, and I pulled my piece from my jacket and pounded on the glass partition between the driver and the passenger seats. I grabbed it and slid it to the right, so the only thing separating us was his seat. In the rearview mirror, I saw the driver’s eyes had opened to the size of baseballs, as he knew what I was about to do. He jerked the steering wheel to the right and took the hovercab out of the main sky-lane to the side and stopped, just as I was about to yank his head back through the space between the front and back.

  “Move into the passenger seat!” I yelled.

  “Are you crazy? We’re three hundred feet in the air…”

  “Put it in park!”

  He continued to protest, but I had already opened the passenger door and was out, my foot on the side steps. I clung to the hovercab as I looked down, then kept moving. We were over thirty stories up, hovering in the air, as every kind of hovercar and van whipped past us. I opened the driver side and was ready to pummel him, but he was already in the passenger seat.

  “Don’t shoot me, mister. You can have the hovercab.”

  I jumped into the driver seat and fastened the seat belt. “You bum! Why didn’t you do what I said?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I should shoot you.”

  “You can take it.”

  “I own a classic Ford Pony, free and clear. Why would I want your dirty ol’ hovercab!”

  “You can take it.”

  I disengaged the air-brake, looked into traffic, and pushed the cab into drive. I took the cab down to the lowest sky-lane—one story up, then moved to practically touching the ground.

  “Dot!”

  The driver looked at me and then to the backseat, where Dot was fighting a complete mental collapse.

  “It’s okay. We stopped and we’re close to the ground. We’re close to the club, so it makes no sense to turn around now. Come up to the front and get in your position.” I leaned towards the driver with menace and yelled, “Get in the back!”

  The driver leaped out of the seat and climbed over the seat into the back.

  Dot took awhile to calm down and slowly come out of it. Finally, she opened her eyes and looked around. The driver was quiet as a mouse, but watched both of us. Dot climbed into the passenger seat next to me and reclined it as far back as it would go, as the dumb driver moved behind my seat.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m putting it in drive, but I’ll go slow.”

  The one thing drivers in this city hated more than hoverbikers was slow drivers. They hated them with a passion. They’d shoot them out of the sky or have someone else do it if they could legally get away with it. We were the slow driver. I never exceeded fifty miles an hour with an uproar of honking hovercars all around us. We were far from the fast lane, but it didn’t matter. We were a moving hazard.

  As we passed under the bridge, Dot closed her eyes again and gripped the armrests with all her might. We were under, through, and out. Dot’s eyes opened slightly, and her breathing started to get back to normal. When we were far enough away, I put it in gear, and we were off. I was up and into the fast lane. We made it to Booty Shakers in no time.

  Booty Shakers wasn’t just a dance club. It was one of the platinum dance clubs, and you didn’t set foot inside, unless you planned to dance all night long nonstop and have obscene amounts of fun. No one ever left there unsatisfied and when you did, you were ten to twenty pounds lighter from all that sweating on the dance floor.

  I pulled up to their valet service, self-park was not allowed, and immediately got out before the valet could get to the drivers’ side and opened the back passenger door. I yanked the driver out.

  “Please don’t shoot me. You can take it.”

  I leaned close to him. “When my girlfriend was a little girl, she was a go-cart champion. Won races all over the country. At one of those races, they had this brand new course, the hardest course ever for the kiddies. One of the obstacles was a path that went under a bridge. Well, you can see where I’m going with this story. Those kiddies were going around the course at 80 miles per hour. My girlfriend was in the lead, but she had to win and pushed her go-cart to 100 miles per hour. Her go-cart hit a bump and jumped the course, just as she went under the bridge. She was decapitated. Lucky for her and me, there was a medical team right there, and they were able to save her. Her neck and all down to her shoulder is bionic. So you can imagine what such a trauma like that would do to a child, especially when you clearly remember your head lying on the ground and your entire body in the go-cart ten feet away from you. You can imagine what going under any bridge as an adult could do to you. You could imagine what a driver not stopping his dirty hovercab and ignoring her boyfriend’s call to pull to the side and stop could do.”

  “Mister, your point has been made in the clearest possible way. There’s no charge for the fare.”

  Dot didn’t want to go in the club, and she was in no mood for dancing or any kind of fun.

  “Let’s just go inside and call another cab,” I said.

  “Cruz, I’m not going to fall for it. I’m not dancing. I want to go home.”

  “I understand. Let’s go inside, and I’ll call Flash. He has a spotless cab, and he’s probably on duty now.”

  “Cruz, it’s not going to work. I’m not dancing.”

  “Yeah, I know. We’ll go in and call Flash.”

  “Where’s your mobile?”

  “I left it at home. It’s date night. Where’s yours?”

  “I’m not falling for it, Cruz. I’m not dancin’ and I want to go home.”

  “Let’s call Flash then.”

  We walked inside, and I immediately told the bouncers we were only going inside to make a call. They were fine with that, as long as we paid full price. I handed them my pre-paid tickets, and we were in. Booty Shakers first got you with the beat. The music was so loud the sound waves practically levitated you up in the air, and the beat forced your feet to move whether you wanted to or not.

  Dot and I were dancing maniacs. We each had our own separate hobbies, but this was our hobby as a couple and we were good at it. My Pops always said that couples last longer when there is something that they can do together (besides the obvious one). Not something that either does separately, but that you do together, prefer to do together, something fun. For Dot and I, it was ripping up the dance floor.

  Dot had forgotten she was not going to dance. The music had transported us to the dance floor with the hundreds of other people on one of their many football stadium-sized floors. Through the night, we got to display our dance prowess with all our favorite moves: the Cold Lampin, the Dead Woman’s Hips, the Flava Wave, the Peter Perfect, the Perfect Peter, the Honey Dipper, the Sucka Sipper, the Big Dippa, the Gettin’ Busy… We could do the Booty Rumble, the Swing Slide, the Mad Robot, the Beat Box, the Devo, the Michael Moon Walker, even the Tango Terminator—old and new. We knew them all.

  This was how I passed my first night out of the box, with my girl, China Doll.

  Chapter 40

  Box

  WHEN I WAS IN THE BOX, I did more than just assimilate data. I had to think big picture. Thinking about being different is far different from being different. I couldn’t yell “oh, snaps” one day and ask to do life all over. It was a commitment, and I intended to be the best detective out there—I had to be that internally arrogant—as I had done with restoring classic hovercars. I could only do that by knowing more and doing more than the other guy. Strangely, the two professions were similar in that way. It was about knowledge. Knowing those factoi
ds that no one else knew. Being able to see connections that not even a computer could see. As a kid, I learned every relevant and irrelevant factoid about hovercars, beyond what could possibly be known, which is why my name was always bandied about in the same breath when people asked, “Who’d you recommend for my hovercar restoration gig?” Like me or hate me, everyone agreed on one thing: I knew my hovercars. I had to get to that level with this profession.

  That’s why I visited Compstat Connie. She was a true data Einstein—could see the higher cosmic mathematics, but couldn’t do the basic arithmetic. Well, that myth about Einstein was never true. He could do basic math just fine. And Compstat Connie could balance her checkbook just fine, but she possessed the ability to see through the data and even she admitted, if she wasn’t careful, she’d end up as one of those sidewalk sallies, talking to herself on the corner. The human mind craves order. It seeks it out, even when there is none. It swears by it even when it is an illusion. That’s why those optical illusion tricks work; your mind wants order. Connie could see the real connections in the data and that’s why I visited. She solved my whole case in five minutes and didn’t even know it. My two weeks in the box was to figure how she made those connections. She did it in five minutes. It took me ten days to figure it out, but I did.

  Here I was. It was funny; I called my little mini-isolation retreat in my own place, the Box, and came across my first step in my Easy Chair Charlie case by the revelation of a scumbag detective, named Box.

  It may never have been sunny in Metropolis, but sometimes, the bright neon lights were as bright as the direct sunlight as you came around certain sky-lanes. I zipped along the fast lane in my red Pony, this time wearing my open knuckle driving gloves. I wore them when I wanted to be especially serious about my driving. I wore them to keep me in the right frame of mind, when I needed to do some real hovercar driving. Sometimes, my instincts whispered in my ear I was being followed, so I accepted it was true. With the madness of hovertraffic, someone could tail you for hours, and you would never know. It wasn’t like in ancient days when cars were on the ground, and there was two-way traffic—maybe multiple two-way traffic lanes. Now, it was the equivalent of going from a regular chessboard to tri-dimensional chess. You could hide and follow someone from above them or below them, besides just following directly behind. Only the government and corporatists had the means to pay for fancy anti-tailing security. For the Average Joe, you were on your own.