Liquid Cool: The Cyberpunk Detective Series (2 page)

"This is a public service announcement to remind you that the Metropolis Surgeon General says that you can double your life expectancy by ceasing the use of all tobacco products," said one of the baby-faced agents in a suit, but without a lick of style.

The government's "cigarette police" would stop by every month or two to try to pass out anti-smoking flyers, but were met with howling laughter and men stuffing the flyers--in front of the agents--into their butt cracks or in the front of their jock straps. However, today was one of those bad days and Easy Chair Charlie entered the smoking room as the two meek college kid agents--paid government volunteers--were practically running out as smoking room customers threatened them with obscene gestures, jeers, and curses. The entire establishment was yelling at them to leave.

Easy Chair Johnny chuckled, carrying his two just-purchased boxes--his stash of exotic cigars for the month--from the main store to the sitting rooms.

"Easy Chair Charlie!" a booming voice called out.

Fat Nat, a large pot-bellied man, waved to him as he stood up from a card table of other men. Easy waved back with a smile and then gave him a salute. He walked to the table and set both boxes in the center, on top of the men's cards.

The men grinned at the words on the boxes.

"Havanas, Easy?"
a seated man asked. "How the hell can you afford a box of those? One of those is worth a king's ransom and you got
two
boxes."

"This is Easy Chair Charlie. He knows how to get things so he can sit back easy-like in his chair," Fat Nat said.

They listened
keenly
to the sounds. Easy carefully cut the outer plastic wrapping from one cigar box with his switchblade and asked, "May I perchance offer my good comrades a genuine Havana?"

The men stood from their chairs as Easy lifted open the lid and then slit the inner plastic covering to allow the aroma of the cigars to rise from the box. Each man pulled a glove from a pants pocket and put it on their right hand. One by one, the four men grabbed a cigar and inhaled deeply as they were passed under their nostrils.

"This, Easy...is what heaven smells like," Fat Nat said.

Easy took one himself. One of the men pulled another chair from a nearby table for him. "Easy, set yourself down in an easy chair." Easy smiled as he and the five men sat. Fat Nat pulled a box of old
slow-
matches from his chest pocket and struck one. He lit Easy's first and then each friend's cigar with its steady, slow-burning, tiny flame. He left his for last.

"The first puff of the cigar." Easy leaned back in his chair to savor it.

"Easy is like no other." Fat Nat lifted his Japanese whiskey glass. "Here's to Easy and easy living in this wet, rainy, modern, miserable world."

The men drank.

Easy Chair Johnny stifled a slight burp. "Gentlemen, I may have something for you."

The street knew Easy for his take-it-to-the-bank betting tips, but few knew of his new, more lucrative, racket of the acquisition. Not a finder. They only told you where an item you desired was, but Easy found it and delivered it right to you. Acquisition experts like him were in high demand and insanely compensated. He could make more with the successful acquisition of an item in one year than his old gambling racket. His specialty was acquisition of items from Up-Top--where the wealthy and powerful of the planet lived. That's where the astronomic cash was to be had.

"Something good?" Fat Nat asked.

Easy did a slow exhale. "If I play my cards right, I'll be able to make it all the way to Up-Top myself. Not just get things. And you know how generous I am to my friends."

The men smiled.

"How Easy?" Fat Nat asked.

Easy Chair Charlie leaned back. "How indeed." He took another draw from his cigar like a king. They all heard a low hum. Easy clenched his cigar gently between his teeth, but managed to say. "Excuse me gentlemen, my pants are vibrating."

A couple of the men grinned as Easy stared down at the display of the mobile phone in his hand. He began to answer it as he got up from the table and walked outside.

"Something good must be callin'," Fat Nat said to the men.

From the roof of a skyscraper, a
silver-and-black body-armored
policeman stood with a high-powered binocular attachment over his
visored, half-
helmet, watching. To him, two miles away was turned into five feet away. Easy, Fat Nat and the boys were back at the card table laughing and joking.

From the darkened sky, a policeman slowly descended via rocket-pack, the yellow flames glowing from the double exhaust nozzles. The word "PEACE" was visible on his black chest body-armor. Two more policemen descended from the sky, and then another half dozen.

Foot police arrived on the ground and people crossed the street or double-backed to walk away from them--something bad was about to happen. In mere moments, the busy street was empty except for the police and an arriving police cruiser that appeared, hovering six feet from the ground in stealth mode.

Joe Blows also had its main bar--a big bar. Members always got their first drink free, and all members, besides their love of smoking products, loved to drink. And Joe Blows only served alcoholic drinks. If you wanted coffee, green tea, or another girly-man non-alcoholic, then you needed to get in your hover-car and go someplace else.

"Hyper, waiting on my drink order!" the waitress yelled out.

The bartender behind the counter seemed to float on air as he moved to her with a tray of clear and colored drinks. She smiled and he smiled back.

"Your slowing down, Hyper. Normally you'd have my order before I started my sentence."

"If you say." He continued to get bottles and glasses, pour alcohol into glasses, get trays, and then set drinks on the bar and on trays for pick-up. He moved like a machine.

"I thought you were off tonight--" she began.

A pulse-round of white light exploded her tray of drinks, sending glass and alcohol everywhere. Another blast hit Hyper in the shoulder, knocking him back, and ripped through the wall behind him. The waitress screamed out as more rounds whizzed past, hitting the bar counter and the wall. She stood in place yelling hysterically.

Everyone in the bar dived to the ground for cover.

"Get down, Tab!" Hyper yelled from behind the counter.

Big G was about to throw his card on the table when a pulse-round blasted through his hand and the cards. Fat Nat kicked the table away and pushed his friend to the ground from the chair. All the men were now flat on the ground as the pulse-rounds ripped through the establishment. They could hear screams from patrons and things being blasted apart. One of the old-timers got to his feet and ran to the side entrance.

"Stay on the ground!" Fat Nat yelled.

Another customer jumped up and ran to the main entrance, also in panic; others jumped up, following. A pulse-round ripped through the wall, knocking the left leg off one man's body, and grazed the head of another, sending both patrons to the ground in shock.

"'Nuff of this!" Fat Nat bolted away on all fours.

"Nat, where you goin'?"

Tab the waitress kept screaming, frozen, as multiple pulse-rounds whizzed closer and closer to her head on their way to
blast
the front bar area to pieces. Fat Nat appeared from around a corner, crawling fast. He stopped and pulled his piece from his back waistband. The rifle auto-unfolded, he aimed and then fired at her. The waitress fell, crashing to the ground on her back and her screaming never ceasing.

"You want to get killed!" A round hit the wall just above his head. "Hyper, you alive."

"I'm good, boss. Now I can get that bionic arm that I always wanted--for free!"

"Who's shooting my place to hell!" Fat Nat was red with anger and stood to his feet.

"Nat, get your ass to the ground before you get yourself shot in the head!" one of his card buddies hollered as he was crawling into the bar area on all fours.

Fat Nat yelled at the top of his lungs. "Nuke attack!"

"Emergency Nuclear Blast Doors activated," answered the overhead computer voice.

The sound of several-feet thick alloy walls rose from the ground in a slow rumble as they sealed Joe Blows up like a tomb. The barrage of pulse-fire continued, but were just a melody of taps from outside, rather than projectiles of death and destruction.

Fat Nat stood to his feet with a deep frown on his face to survey the damage. He walked to the bar and peeked over the counter. There was the kid, Hyper, lying on the floor missing an arm, a puddle of blood, but smiling.

"I'm good, boss." He gave a casual salute with his good arm. "The blast cauterized the wound so there's almost no blood."

"Tab?" Fat Nat yelled.

"Yes, boss."

"What's your disposition?"

"I'm shot and lying on the ground."

"Any major damage?"

"How would I know? You were the one who shot me!"

"Would you have preferred to be shot by me and alive, or shot and dead by an unknown bastard gunmen because you were too dumb to put face to floor?"

"Is that supposed to be a trick question, boss?"

Fat Nat continued his inspection of his place. His card-mates appeared and joined him.

"What's Big G's disposition?" Fat Nat asked.

"Big G will be needing a new hand."

"Fat Nat, what are you going to do?"

The other men looked at him and they could see Fat Nat seething as he walked through the establishment--damage, debris, and bodies everywhere.

"Make sure no one's dead," Fat Nat said to his friends.

"What will you be doing, Nat?"

"Nobody shoots up Joe Blows, my place of business, and gets away duty-free. I'll be back."

"No, Fat Nat. Not the Terminator stash. You can't be shooting up the streets with machine guns."

"Nobody shoots up Joe Blows!"

"Nat," said another man. "You can't be running around Old Harlem shooting up bad guys. This is our neighborhood. If it were somebody else's I'd say give me a piece too and let's go. But you don't be shooting up your own neighborhood. What's wrong with you?"

There was one loud muffled metallic knock, then several more pounds from outside. Someone was knocking.

The men looked at each other.

"This is the Police!"

Sweet Street was totally shut down. Thick, neon yellow police tape--POLICE LINE. DO NOT CROSS--cordoned off the entire area and it was a light show of red and blue flashing sirens. People crowded the slick sidewalks and streets outside the tape, while media began to arrive in force. One hover-ambulance after another landed on the scene.

Fat Nat argued with the policeman, but was gently restrained by his smoking buddies.

"I demand to see the body," he yelled again at the policeman.

"Sir, this is now an official crime scene--"

"Yeah, I should know," Fat Nat interrupted. "I was one of the ones inside getting shot at, watching my employees and customers get shot up and my place of business get blasted to hell."

"Sir, I understand you're upset, but we have to maintain the integrity of the crime scene."

"Showing me the body of the supposed one-man, crazy gun man is not going to mess up any crime scene. Let me make it simple. Do you want to show me the body so I can see who this mook was, or should I shuffle my fat self on over to the media cameras and talk about the deep psychological trauma I'm experiencing--yeah, I can feel it coming on. I might need to call my lawyer or a doctor, or my lawyer and doctor at the same time. Lawsuit settlements come right out of the police budget nowadays, never city hall--"

"Wait here, sir."

The policeman walked over to a superior who was talking with three other policemen. After a few moments of speaking, one of the policemen gestured to Fat Nat with his index finger:
Come here
.

The white blanket was lifted from the lone gunman lying dead on the sidewalk.

"Do you know this man?" the policeman asked.

Fat Nat stared at the body for a while. He looked up and said, "Never saw him before."

Fat Nat's smoking buddies also stared at the body.

"What about any of you gentlemen?" the policeman asked.

They all shook their heads.

"We're sorry we were so jerky about this. Sorry we can't identify him for you either," Fat Nat continued. "So this mook shot up the place with pulse machine guns."

"High-powered," the policeman added. "He gave us quite the gun battle."

Fat Nat shook his head. "And this is supposed to be a safe neighborhood. Well, I have lots of calls to make--hospital, insurance, and so on. I got to get my place of business made whole. Joe Blows has never been closed in sixty years, and we're not about to start now. I should have the ambulance guys check me out too."