Liquid Cool: The Cyberpunk Detective Series (26 page)

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 to me that couples last longer when there is something that they can do together (besides the one obvious). Not something that either do 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 completely forgotten she was not going to dance. The music had transported us to the dance floor along 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 was done with restoring classic hover-cars. 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 factoids 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 hover-cars 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 car restoration gig?" Like me or hate me, everyone agreed on one thing: I knew my hover-cars. 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 was able to see the real connections in the data and that's why I visited. She actually 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 no 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, just in case I needed to do some real hover-car driving. Sometimes my instincts whispered in my ear that I was being followed, so I accepted that it was true. With the madness of hover-traffic, someone could be tailing you for hours and you would never know. It wasn't like in ancient days when cars were on the ground and there were 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, in addition to 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.

Whiskey Way was where I was going. Another low-end, high-crime town that I would have preferred not to go anywhere near.

Before I started decorating my own offices, I did a tour of all the detective firms in the city. They all fell into two categories: the high-end, one-hundred man firms that looked and smelled like a high-end legal practice, and the bottom-end, small firms that always seemed to share space with some bail bonds outfit. There seemed to be no in-between and I immediately planned to establish myself in that space, along with taking all kinds of clients--private persons, government, or corporate. Those two things were to make me unique and I desperately needed to be unique in this industry to have any chance to survive.

Box was a one-man outfit, nothing to stand out from any other in the Yellow Pages, but he had a reputation as a licensed private eye who'd do any job you wanted, as long as the price was right. "Any job" was code for illegal. Those who knew the detective biz called him a "scumbag." I had no reason to doubt them.

His offices were at the bottom level of a business tower
in Whiskey Way.
Across the hall was a bail bonds office and as a result there were the smelliest, grungiest, people hanging around. Since it was a common set-up for low-enders, it must have been a mutually beneficial situation for all involved.

I pushed open the front door to enter and the interior was dim and dank. Box's office was not even an office, but a half-office. The other half he shared with some other detective firm. I could see a haze of cigarette smoke hanging near the ceiling.

"What do you want?" a male voice asked.

My eyes finally made out the figure of a man standing at a file cabinet who turned and was looking at me.

"Looking for Box," I answered.

"You got an appointment?"

"Do I need one?"

"That didn't answer my question."

"I'll go to another detective then, where the customer service is a bit more customer-friendly."

"Don't do that. Wait there."

The man closed the file cabinet and disappeared, or I couldn't see him anymore, as I stood there continuing to glance around.

"He'll see you." The man had returned.

I stepped forward even though I had no clue where I was going, it was that dark.

"The office in the back with the light on," the man said.

This was some kind of office. It seemed the lack of light was to hide all the unsightly clutter. I walked back to the only place that had light. I stopped and peeked into the office. There, seated behind a desk, was Box.

"Box?" I asked, even though I knew it was him, but he didn't know that I had been checking up on him.

"You know it's me, so why are you asking?"

I stepped inside and didn't ask as I took a seat.

He cracked his knuckles, then put one hand on his desk, while the other hand was out of sight behind the desk. I put both of my hands on the desk.

"I came to hire you for information."

"Information? I'm a detective. I don't give information. Who are you?"

"I'm a detective," I said.

His unfriendly face turned to solid frown.

"Why are you here?"

"I need a bunch of information from you and I'm happy to pay for the information, if I have to."

"What information?"

I held my left wrist to my face and looked at the electronic wrist pad strapped to my inside forearm. "A Mr. Ergot and his assistant, a Mr. Peri."

I looked up and Box's frown was now accompanied by the squinting of his eyes.

"What did they hire you for?" I asked.

"Detectives don't reveal any details about clients."

"Since both of them are dead, murdered, they won't mind," I said.

Box watched me closely. I could see his scumbag mind racing around trying to figure out how much I really knew.

"I don't know those names."

"Never meet with them?"

"No."

"Never talked to them?"

"No."

"They didn't hire you?"

"No."

"You didn't take a taxi to Mr. Ergot's office
in The Wharf District?"

"No."

"You didn't deposit a check from Mr. Ergot in your bank account?"

"No."

"You weren't at the scene of Mr. Ergot's murder? Where someone fed him to his own piranhas."

"No."

"And threw his assistant, Mr. Peri, to become one with the pavement after a
sixty-sto
ry fall."

"No."

"You didn't receive a call from a..." I looked at my electric notepad, "Red Rabbit?"

"How the hell do you know that?" Box sat up straight. "Mr. Cruz, I don't know what you're talking about."

I smiled. "So you do know who I am."

"Get out of here."

"I want that information. How much money do you want?"

"Nothing from you."

"Why you have to be like that?"

"You can't spend money if you're dead."

"Did you tell Mr. Ergot and Mr. Peri to be especially careful around this Red Rabbit character?"

"I got paid."

"I knew it! You got my brother killed!"

The voice behind us startled us so completely that we both jumped up from our chairs and turned. A man in a white suit fired at Box. I dived to see Box collapse to the ground and turned to see the stranger pointing his gun at me.

By this time, it was all reflex. I flicked my wrist.
Pop!
The shot hit him in the face.

The man in the white suit fell back out of the office, his gun flying from his left hand. He stopped his fall, snatched his gun in mid-air with his right hand, and fired at me.

Oww!

I can't remember if I screamed out loud like a girl or if it was my inner voice, but the blast brushed past my cheek.

I was mad now! Four times I was shot at! Enough!

I rolled away from the doorway as I grabbed my own piece from my jacket, jumped up. Now it was my turn. I fired multiple times and heard a male scream and then footsteps running away. I shot out the light in office and ducked to the floor. All I heard was more shots and then the footsteps running further away.

I waited, crouched down on the ground. More shots flew into the room. Then I heard a beep and feet running again. The elevator had arrived and the man in the white suit obviously ducked into it. With these old towers there was only one elevator and he undoubtedly thought he was getting away scot-free, but I knew something he didn't.

I had psychologically prepared myself to get shot. I didn't prep myself to get grazed by laser blasts. It was like someone took a dull razor and tried to slash the side of my face with it. It hurt bad. But that wasn't why I was mad as I found the exit window. I was thinking about Box. He was a scumbag but that didn't mean he deserved to get killed. I saw the body of the guy who "greeted" me in his rude way on the ground, motionless. He didn't deserve to be dead either. Being a scumbag or rude was not a reason to get killed. Maybe they weren't dead but I gave chase under the assumption that they were. That man in the white suit was mine. I knew I shot him in the face so I don't how he was walking around. For all I knew, he had an inorganic face with no nerve endings from some freak accident. So many people had so many inorganic and bionic parts that they weren't born with. You could never tell these days.

Old towers like this had maintenance sections on their ground floors. It's where the technicians did their communications, cybernet, power, and any other electrical work that needed to be done. It also had back entrances straight to the street.

I burst out into the rain and got my bearings. He was going to come out of the main entrance and I was going to be ready for him. I didn't just have a new hat and coat, but I bought myself some snazzy aqua-shoes specifically for sneaking up or running like a cheetah through the streets without falling on my butt because of the wet ground. I was about ten feet from the corner when he appeared and he instantly saw me. He aimed and fired. But again, I wasn't hit. The victim was an old man next to me. He was hit in the chest and fell back to the ground with a look of pain and terror. His eyes closed but then fluttered wildly to match the shaking his body was doing.

"Hold him down and help me," I called out, but people moved away from us in their black and gray slickers. Some even pretended that they hadn't seen anything.

I was even madder now. I searched the man for his mobile and pressed the emergency button.

"This is 9-11 what is the emergency?" the computer voice said.

I put the mobile back in the old man's pocket and stood up. Most people didn't know that when you called the emergency that you didn't even need to say a word; police would automatically be dispatched. Was he a third man that the man in the white suit killed?