Liquid Cool: The Cyberpunk Detective Series (32 page)

All I knew about this Red was what Box told me, but from the look of the rabbit gang members faces, they agreed completely with what I had just said.

"How can we help?" he asked. "As you can see, Blue Pill isn't a conversationalist anymore because of Red."

I looked at Blue Pill and said, "I only have a few questions. Then I'll get out of here, so you can rest. Third degree burns ain't no joke."

Blue Pill blinked his eyes to acknowledge me. I looked back at his main man.

"Why is Red still alive?"

The question took him by surprise and he looked at Blue Pill for a moment. It seemed that all the rabbit gang members in the room were waiting for an answer, and that's why he was nervous, so I decided to help him.

"I ask because I know you're getting everything ready to finish him off for good, but I don't want to get in between any gang war."

"He's protected."

"Protected?" I asked.

"We don't know how, but he's protected by the Feds."

"How do you know?"

"We have sources everywhere."

"Where did Red come from? Who is he?"

"He was a Rabbit years ago. Always a hot head and untrustworthy. He tried to take control of the gang back them, but White set him straight. Sent Blue Pill after him so that he could 'see things as they really are'." His way to describe the violence.

"Set him straight how?"

"Broke every bone in his arms, legs, and neck," the main man said with pride. I had to remember that I was among vicious human animals.

"You turned him into a cyborg," I said.

The fact didn't please any of them.

"How long was he gone?"

"Seven years."

"Do you know where he was all that time?"

"He disappeared. We never expected to see him again. Then he returns. He wasn't Red back then, but he is Red now. And connected with the Feds. We don't how he did that."

"He's an informant for them?"

"That's what protected by the Feds means."

"Why would he do that?" I asked. "How big is the Rabbit gang that he controls?"

A sore subject for them. "He controls all of it, except for us. We're loyal to Blue Pill and we don't care if he has a hit out on us by other Rabbit crew members. There's going to be Red blood in the streets. I can promise you that."

"If you know he's a police informant, then wouldn't his Rabbit crew members know that? Why would they follow him?"

"Yeah. Why?" the main man asked.

My head was trying to make sense of what made no sense, but I wasn't going to figure it out here as my eye caught the glimpse of a jumbo roach crawling on the ground in the corner.

"My last question--where does Rabbit stay at in Mad Heights?"

"Only outsiders call it Mad Heights. You should at least pretend to be an insider. We can tell you where to find him, but it won't make a bit of difference."

"Why?"

"His lair is so fortified that you'd never get to his front door alive. We can't and we're after him."

"And he's protected by the Feds."

"That only means he'll never be arrested, but that doesn't mean we can't use whatever means to take him out. Isn't that what you said you wanted to do?"

"It is. After I do one thing first."

"What's that?"

"Rescue the little girl that the psycho kidnapped."

"Red is psycho, but no way he'd do something that. Not his style. He kills things. He doesn't kidnap them and keep them around. Your intel is faulty."

"It's in the news or don't you read."

"The news. All the lies fit to print. That's faulty too."

"Tell me where he is and I'll go see for myself."

"Then you're going to need a lot more than good intentions and a couple of fat Hippos to get into Red's lair. Did you pay them yet, your Hippo bodyguards?"

"Why?" I asked.

"You know they're going to leave you behind to die, right?" the Rabbit said with a grin.

They were grinning at me, even half-dead Blue Pill in his bed--with their
stupid oversized rab
bit buck-teeth.

Chapter 46: Chief Hubb

Finally, I could get the hell out of that nasty place. It was interesting how in one part of the world people went about their day with water flie
s flittering around, and in another region the mere sight of a baby jumbo roach or pudd
le slug meant a work stoppage. I was proud to be in the latter group. Everyone in the clinic obviously was born in a barn--if such places existed on the planet anymore.

I made my way down the stairs, going straight down the center of people sitting and smoking or sleeping on either side. I moved as quickly as my legs would allow without tripping and falling. Then dashed though the clinic waiting room because I couldn't see any more nastiness. I was too fragile. Out the main entrance, I sighed a deep sigh of relief as I looked up to the cloudy sky.

Sometimes in life, you are cosmically drawn to a place or person, but you can never articulate why. My eyes shifted to a third floor corner window in the building directly across me. There stood, watching from the open window, a rabbit-masked guy. But somehow I knew it wasn't a Blue Rabbit look-out. I knew that it was Red Rabbit; I'd swear to it.

If Red was here, that could only mean one thing. I couldn't be so lucky that on the same day that I was associating with known gang real members (Punch Judy didn't count) that I was about to get caught in the middle of a gang war.

He was watching me and I knew what he was thinking: why am I staring at him with a look of recognition. Yes, we had never laid eyes on each other before. Then he receded into the darkness of the room and I couldn't see him anymore.

I snapped out of my vigil and looked to see that my two Hippo bodyguards were nowhere near the main entrance. They were gone! I quickly scanned the crowds and glimpsed the two fat Hippos about a dozen or feet away.

"Hey!" I yelled at them.

They knew who was yelling at them and they looked back at me with smirks. They were seriously going to ditch me in the middle of Mad Heights unprotected.

For a brief second I was on the exact page of everyone on the streets, I was running. Then I realized that I was running one way and everyone else was running the other. It was like a twisted game of musical chairs where everyone knew what to do, except for me.

I looked ahead and saw them, dozens of young men with black airbrush paint around their eyes--a tell-tale sign of an animal gang member--and their matty dreadlocks. Just as I noticed it, the Caucasian
Rastafarians
donned their rabbit masks in unison and ran at me, drawing weapons.

Casually, I moved out of the way. I knew they weren't after me. The Red Rabbit Gang was here to wipe out the remnants of the Blue Pill Rabbit Gang. A final showdown. Above me, I heard sounds I had never heard before and looked up. A hover-van was firing at the seventh floor with laser-cannons! I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Immediately, I heard glass breaking, and laser rounds showered the attacking hover-van from the sixth and eighth floors.

My eye noticed something dive off the roof of the tower. I couldn't tell what the black shape was--it looked like a giant black hockey puck. It descended like a stone and crashed on the roof of the attacking hover-van. A second later, the vehicle exploded. The hover-van was a ball of fire with burning bodies falling to the ground along with chunks and fragments of the vehicle. I was not interested in being under metal rain.

Fortunately for me, I had an impeccable sense of direction and decided that I could run to the Hippo hover-van before they could lift off and ditch me. So I ran. Something told me to look behind me and I did. Running right after me was the two street punks my Hippo bodyguards had previously scared off. But now I was alone.

I had no idea what these two planned to do to me. Mug me? I wasn't going to stop to find out, so I turned into the alley the Hippos took me through to get from the dark back alleys to the main streets. I double-timed to the end of the alley just as the two appeared and started after me.

When I was a police intern, I remember one of the instructors saying to us, in one of their many boring classes, "it is never permissible to shoot first and ask questions later." Hell with that! I pulled my piece and shot the first one in the leg. The punk collapsed and the other grabbed and dragged him back the other way and around the corner. Then I heard yelling but I couldn't make out their words.

Behind me was the dim streetlight; the only thing that pierced the darkness. I needed to move closer to see if the hover-van was still there. I turned back to look up the alley and a dozen men appeared, all shooting. One shot barely missed my ear. I pulled myself back and just shot around the corner wildly. I heard yells, grunts, and splashing on the wet ground. I then sent another volley of gunfire their way and ran to that streetlight.

Of course, since it was not my lucky day, the Hippo hover-van was long gone. I was so screwed and all I could think to do was step back directly out of the light. What was I going to do now?

As I stood there trying to think, I had a very strange sensation. I felt I wasn't alone in the secluded dark back-alley. It was more than that. I felt I was surrounded by people--lots of people. It was weird because I couldn't see or hear anything, but the feeling was overpowering.

I couldn't ignore it. I flipped my pop-gun into the dark. The brief second that the pop-gun blast fired showed me that that my instincts were terribly right. Three men were hit by the pop-gun blast and fell back, with grunts. They were all wearing some kind of leather outfit that covered even their heads.

I started firing my piece all around me like I was mad, because I was going mad. Every random shot in the dark was hitting someone! Who were all these people?! I kept firing. I had no idea how many people there were but they were all around me.

A spotlight turned on above me and these dark alley people scattered into the night, but I kept shooting at them. I would never shoot someone in the back, but I ignored my rule in this case. A message had to be sent loud and clear: don't mess with me.

It was the Hippo hover-van. The side door opened and one of them grabbed me and threw me into the middle seat. The door closed and the vehicle jetted away into the night sky.

When you called a woman a hot mess, it meant one thing. When you used the phrase for a man, it meant something different. I was a hot mess, sitting there stewing in my own anger and germophobia. Five words repeated over and over in my head: "I want to go home." I did not want to say or do anything else. But, of course, life was not going to allow any such peace.

We drove a bit until they illegally air-braked the hover-car to the side. I had seen more criminality and violence in this single day than I had in almost 20 adult years of life. No wonder those in the crime world had such a short shelf life. It was amazing they lasted as long as they did. The two Hippos in the front seat turned around.

"You owe us the other half of the money," the one in the passenger seat said.

Here we were, hovering twenty or more stories in the air. They'd pitch me out of the hover-van if they had even an inkling that they wouldn't get the rest of their payment. They didn't care that they gave me only half the bodyguards I hired and left me behind to get killed by three different groups. But they would say quickly, "We came back for ya, didn't we? You're alive, aren't ya?"

"You know where to go," I answered. "The video-booth. I call for your money there."

The Hippos watched me before turning back and around. The hover-van lurched and dipped a few feet before flying forward. I heard a shotgun cock in the seat behind me. If it was meant to scare me, it worked but I kept my composure.

We arrived in
Wharf City an
d pulled up alongside a line of public video-phone booths. I got out and, of course, three of the Hippos got out too and walked right with me. But instead of picking up a phone receiver, I just raised my arm.

A sidewalk johnny nervously appeared from behind the booths with a bag in hand. He threw the bag to me and I threw the bag to one of the miserable, fat cyborgs. The sidewalk johnny backed away. I stood there and watched them with a big frown on my face. One of the Hippos shook the bag as if he could really tell if it was all there with a simple shake.

"Nice doing business with ya," the main Hippo said.

I knew that any words out of my mouth, with the mood I was in, would most likely get me killed by them. I kept my mouth shut; noticing that my sidewalk johnny "friend" had vanished already. The three of them chuckled and hopped back into their hover-van and sped away into the sky-traffic.

I ran.

My sidewalk johnny's other job was to keep a pre-paid hover-taxi waiting and ready, which he did. I ran to it and jumped inside as quickly as possible. We arrived at the Concrete Mama and I ran inside past all the lobby johnnies to the elevator. I ran out of the elevator to my apartment
--9732.
When I was in, with all the locks locked, I could feel my normalcy returning.