Liquid Cool: The Cyberpunk Detective Series (35 page)

"Very not nice," I said.

I didn't wait as I could see the fur of his rabbit head mask start to glow a light red. I had dived just as a blast of blue energy went past. All I heard were screams and shattering. I wasn't even prone on the ground for two seconds when I leapt up and fired my gun at him. Two shots, two misses. The crazy Red had dived out of view.

I leaned back out of the path of the hallway and saw outside the building. The door was vaporized and the two thugs were dead on the sidewalk. The police drilled that rule into me as an intern. "Never stand in front of a closed door at a strange building."

My eyes closed as another flash of blue lighting went past, but much, much closer. They say life should be electric, but this was not what they had in mind when they came up with the saying. The energy blast heated the very air it passed through and though it had missed me, my skin was warm. Red's weapon was so many variations of illegal.

I instinctively fired back a volley of four rounds this time, hitting the wall. But I just needed to distract him for a moment. Inside my inner coat pocket my left hand went, and out came my Mexican jumping beans. I was sure when I wrote my detective memoir like good ol' Wilford G. had, that people would be chuckling, but sometimes the silly can be the most profound and the most unexpected.

I threw them in front of me, counted to three, and there they went. I fired one more shot and bolted. The jumping beans started to pop. Unlike firecrackers, there was nothing to light and there were no sparks. They sounded a lot like gunshots.

It sounded like I was firing at him and Red fired back at me. As I scurried away, all I saw was the entire area light up in blue accompanied by the shattering of another piece of the wall structure.

Blast after blast was all I heard, though the sounds were getting lower as I moved further into the building. I reached a hallway that had a row of ceiling lamps and I waited a moment. I hadn't seen one other punk anywhere. It struck me as impossible that Red would not have anyone else here but the two doofuses to stand watch outside the main entrance. I was missing something, but I had to move forward.

I had reached the basement level. I saw no one and heard nothing, so I moved down the stairs, ninja-like. I stayed very close to the edge of the wall and stopped at the foot of stairs. My eyes locked in on a particular door--it had a padlock on it.

I walked up to the door, standing to the side, but put my ear as close to it without touching it. I leaned back, pointed, and shot the lock off. I threw the pieces to the ground and swung the door open slowly, my body to the side. There was a single ceiling light illuminating the dim room. There she was, the little girl Lutty, curled up in a cot in the corner with wide blue eyes watching me. She was in a two-piece gray outfit with matching frubber leggings, her hood tightly around her head.

"Do you know a woman named Carol?"

The girl nodded.

"She's the one who sent me. I'm a private detective. Do you know what that is?"

The girl nodded.

"Now, have you ever watched American football? Not that other thing. The real football where you actually score points in a game. You know that football?"

The girl nodded.

"I am definitely not carrying you so you have to get up and follow me. Not too close, but close. I'll be your running back and you're running to the end zone for the touchdown. Here, the touchdown is getting the hell out of here so we can get to your mother and the police. As the running back, I won't be tackling anyone, but shooting them. Are we ready?"

She nodded and then slowly got up off the cot. My ears perked up as I held my gun and switched it to another setting. There was no more shooting from upstairs.

She could see that I was worried, which was absolutely the worst thing to do in front of her. I glanced at her and could see all the bravery she had mustered was slipping away.

"Don't back down now," I said. "We got to get outside to your Mom and the police. We're going to be run..."

My head reflexively ducked as something came at me from the corner of my eye. A few of my Mexican jumping beans hit the ground and began popping. The girl screamed out. I pushed her back and behind me as I began firing into the darkness of the hall. All I saw was a red glow and I kicked the door of the room shut. The blue energy blasted the door to smithereens as I pushed the girl to the side.

I heard the crazy rabbit laughing.

"Was this your plan?" he yelled from the dark. "Doesn't look like too good of a plan. One man coming in here, all alone."

"Tell me something Red, why are you up in here alone? Where's your gang? Why aren't they back yet? Why aren't you laughing about that?"

There was only silence.

"I'll tell you why they're not here, Red," I said. "Because they've been snatched up. But not by the police. No, Red, you're big time. No, not from the Feds. You're bigger than that. Interpol has had it with you. You've gone too far. You're one cooked rabbit on a spit. Why aren't you laughing about that?"

All while I was taunting the psycho, I had put away my piece. It was a nice weapon but wholly inadequate for this situation. When you want to smash something, you don't use a precision instrument, you use a big bad sledgehammer. I had unfolded my shotgun. Lutty had been watching me quickly assemble and load it. All I needed was to cock it and shoot. I was already aiming.

"Why so quiet, Red?"

"How did you find me?" he asked from the darkness.

"I'm a detective, Red. And I just followed the breadcrumbs you left me with the trail of madness you left behind. But I'll make you a deal. If you tell me why you got Easy Chair Charlie killed--I know it was you, then I'll tell you how I found you."

"No!"

Red's voice wasn't outside in the darkness anymore but right in front of me. He thought he had tricked me. He thought I would be watching for the red glow before he blasted his illegal electric rifle, but I had been watching his shadow tiptoe to me--yes, he was actually tip-toeing. We both had night-vision, but he didn't see my shades on my face or the new weapon in my hands. I didn't just bring silly Mexican jumping beans, I had brought with me a barrel attachment for my shotgun as super-illegal as his electric rifle.

He fired his weapon, but I fired mine too, after the nanosecond it took me to cock it. The blue blast came so close to the right side of my face and shoulder, that a few inches more and I would have been vaporized. Lutty screamed as she threw herself down to the damp concrete ground. Not smart on my part to leave it to the little girl to dodge the blast by herself, but kids are resilient. She could throw herself out of the way better than I could. Kids are nimble and fast, not like adults where our bigness and superiority can get in the way.

Red, however, got shot point blank in his rabbit head mask by my shot gun.

I had seen the light switch when I shot off the padlock to the room and flipped it on. There was Red standing in the doorway, with his weapon hanging down to the floor. He was in silhouette, but by his labored breathing, I knew his head wound was bad--very bad. He dropped his electric rifle to the ground and that's when I had an urge to cover not the kids' eyes, but my own. I didn't do blood and guts, I tended to pass out from that sort of thing.

Red Rabbit reached for his mask with his metallic arms and just...ripped it off.

I stared at it for a moment, not knowing what the hell I was seeing. The silhouette was a head, but the sight of it showed the top part of a robot head and the bottom half a scrunched up human head with eyes, nose and mouth. There was no way my shotgun had done that. There was a spark--my shotgun
had
done that. Red was a retard with a mechanically-augmented head.

He jumped at me and grabbed my neck with his cybernetic arms. Instinct would have made me drop the shotgun, but I ignored instinct. It was even worse than I could imagine. His deformed head wasn't augmented by machine. His brain was
part machine
, and he stared at me with his freakish face and the snarl of his tiny deformed mouth. He wanted to choke me, but all his hands did was hold my neck. I was sure the message from his brain was to crush my neck like an empty plastic cup, but the six-inch hole in the machine part of his brain-head wasn't quite operable.

I kicked him and he fell over like a mannequin. Lying on the ground with his arms flailing around. His freakish face was disoriented. It was pointless to question him. Red wasn't there anymore. I could tell he didn't recognize me. He didn't know who he was or where he was. He was agitated and panicking at the same time. Even if he was put together, there was no way the police, Feds, Interpol, or anyone else would ever let me near him again. I did all I could do. I took his mobile from his jacket.

"Lutty," I said.

"Yes?"

"Let's go see your Mom." I reached out to her and she held my hand.

We left Red there on the ground as his hysterical head jerking and hand and leg movements became more violent with every second. He kept yelling, but not at us. His body was unplugged from reality and didn't know what else to do.

Chapter 49: Carol and Lutty

All that madness: from Mrs. Easy Chair Charlie to Mad Heights to Run-Times to Police One to here. I learned that I was entirely too good at the violence thing. I had surprised even myself. I never did get to have my nap in my fluffy white sleep clothes after my super-shower. I needed a vacation because my new detective life was absolutely no joke. I also realized that I was probably not going to get a dime in cash for my time and multiple attempts on my life. How stupid was that? I had been the client. And a detective who has a himself as the client is a fool.

But there I was holding the hand of a missing little girl, exiting the bowels of some criminal den. It was surreal--dozens of police cruisers in the air, Metro and Feds, but much more than that was the media. They were swarming around us--on the ground, hovering right above us via jet-pack, or hanging out of their hover-vans for wide-angle filming. You would've thought I was a rock star by all of the attention.

I instinctively shielded the girl from them. She wanted nothing to do with them and we both ignored their barrage of questions. I kept my focus on leading her through the media gauntlet to get her to my awaiting vehicle. If we could even get there. I decided it was better to just to keep walking away from them; the direction and destination were irrelevant.

As if on cue, our prayers answered, police officers descended from the sky by jet-pack and created a circle around us, I recognized Officers Break and Caps immediately among them and couldn't help but to smile.

"They're going to shield us so we can get to your Mom," I said to Lutty. The girl looked up at them and smiled too.

But the media were not the only ghouls waiting for me. Behind them, were all of the law enforcement brass. They stood there sullen and a few were glaring at me. I had embarrassed them and I knew that I had made enemies for life. But so what. The bastards were going to let the little girl die because of their own arbitrary rules on what should and should not be done in terms of the cosmos of life. It's never okay for the bad to get off scot-free and allow an innocent to die in the ditch in my book.

With our police escort, I could watch the law enforcement higher-ups. The rain started up again and my new enemies melted into the dark downpour, but I'd be crossing paths with them again.

Officer Break gestured to an overhead police cruiser and the hover-car descended.

"Why don't we get away from the rain and reporters and get moving on the family reunion," Officer Break said. "What do you think?" he asked Lutty.

She nodded. "I want my Mom."

The cruiser landed and the police pushed the pack of reporters away, who were merciless in their desperation for us to answer their questions.

"Mr. Cruz, do you think this child kidnapping case will make you the leading detective in the city?"

I could feel every employee of the Office of the City Clerk watching my response carefully, but, that aside, I was not going to be goaded into a response.

I kept my mouth shut and climbed into the cruiser after Lutty. Officer Break closed the door and he and his partner got into the tertiary seats in the back.

Officer Caps looked at me. "Don't get used to it," he said. "That could, of course, mean a few things when it comes to you."

Lutty was now looking at me funny.

"Back when I was your age, I was an intern at Metro Police. I went on ride-alongs and rode in a police cruiser a few times," I said to her.

"Ever arrested for real?" she asked me with an askance look.

"No way. That's for criminals."

"Okay." She was satisfied.

The policemen didn't utter any of the wisecracks that I'm sure was on the tips of their tongues.

"What about that Rabbit man?" she asked with a look of fear.

"He's done for and he'll never come at you or your Mom again," I said and leaned forward to her. "What did he think you did?"