Liquid Cool: The Cyberpunk Detective Series (22 page)

"Hold on there, sir," one of the officers yelled. "We are not interested in a strip show from the likes of you!"

He began to furiously slap the cell bars with his shirt and T-shirt yelling at them in Chinese. Then we heard an eruption yelling in Chinese from Mrs. Wan in the holding cells from around the corner. The cops just looked at each other, not knowing what to do.

"Here take my shirt! Take my pants! You the criminals!" Mr. Wan yelled at them.

"Shut up or we'll stun you!" one police officer yelled.

"Stun me!" Mr. Wan yelled and whipped the bars with his clothes.

"Shut up!" the policeman yelled.

"Stun me!" he yelled again.

"Shut up, both of you!"

"Stun me!"

The Wans screaming in Chinese and English was relentless. The only reason I wasn't trying to dig out my own eardrums was because my mind was some place else. It was the reason I was pressed at the outer edge of the cell. Germs! My germophobia wasn't an off-again-on-again figment of my imagination. It was real. At one point in my childhood my parents had considered putting me in those bubble communities--hermetically sealed communal communities for those with no physical immune system to live in the natural world, or those like me who psychologically were the equivalent. What had saved me was a nice child therapist lady who taught me how, in a self-hypnotic Zen way, to re-order my mind. Unfortunately, the technique only worked if my mind didn't cross into that "zone." It was too late--my jitters had started. All I could think about was all the reports of how trash offices are cleaner than the local jail, and how the average prisoner carries ten times more unhealthy microbes than the average person. My mind was fixating on Ebola and every other contagious disease known to man. Then for some reason images of the Nose Chunk Flu came into my mind. I could feel my legs beginning to give way. I closed my eye and tried to summon every nano-unit of composure I had left in me.

Then the Wans stopped yelling all of a sudden. I opened my eyes. There was Dot!

The topless--and pantless--Mr. Wan was frozen. I was already frozen, wedged between the two cell bars. Mrs. Wan was silent.

Dot looked at the main officer and said, "Are they being arrested?"

"We had to hold them until we verified their story, which we have, but they wouldn't behave so we left them in there."

"So I can leave them here?"

"If it were anyone else, I'd leave them there. But I don't think I can take any more of their antics, so I'm going to have to ask you to take them with you now."

Dot turned her back to us and whispered to the officer. He listened and then nodded. With that, she walked out of the station.

It must have been another hour or two before the officers opened the cell door and escorted Mr. Wan and I out. Mrs. Wan appeared with a female officer. The three of us were lifted up by full silver-and-gray peace officers and pushed out of the station into the pouring rain.

"If I ever see you three again, you won't be held pending investigation. You will be arrested, booked, convicted, and jailed for real," one police officer said. "I pity that young lady having any relation to the likes of the three of you. The three of you are definitely cut from the exact cloth. I'm sure the police will be seeing all you again in some capacity. Until then, get out of our sight!"

He were led out of the station with his fellow officers following.

We stood there in the rain looking at each other. There was no Scotty from the Enterprise to beam me up and away from my parents-in-law, so I did the only thing I could do, short of teleportation. I ran away as fast as I could.

My first stop would be the main Disease Control center to sterilize my clothes and give me a full anti-biohazard shower. Something that the average citizen didn't know about, but it was all covered by medical insurance.

Chapter 34: Compstat Connie

I was going to put myself in the "box". It wasn't a real box and it wasn't even a physical thing. It was what I called completely separating yourself from people and any possible distractions to get some major life task done. It was like going off to a secluded island, but you could really go anywhere, even your own place. The key was being able to unplug from everyone and everything to create your own "fortress of solitude" for an indefinite period of time.

But I found out that there was another group of people who liked to put themselves in a "box" away from the outside world and all possible distractions to sit and assimilate a set of knowledge like a machine--gazillionaires. All these CEO, founders, and innovative genius scientists of the greatest corporations seem to do it in their quest to come up with the next "big thing." Unlike normal people, they had island retreats, lunar strongholds, or personal flying cities to go to but it was the same concept--cut yourself off from humanity with a ton of books and no access to the Net.

So the original idea was not my own. Monks were doing that long before the Greeks invented money and there could be gazillionaires. Solitude was a must and often some type of quasi-fasting was involved. There was absolutely no answering the video-phone, texts, or emails. For the hardcore, nakedness sometimes was also involved. They said the purpose of all this was to get to your most primal state so that your "inner child" would not only emerge, but go wild. Well, I wasn't doing the complete full monty nakedness in my place. No clothes with the exception of my boxers is what I did.

Regular eating and sleeping also went out the window. When this primitive process of hyper-knowledge consumption was over, they did have a flurry of new ideas for their next robot, machine, computer system or program, vehicle, or spaceship. I couldn't knock the process when it worked for me too.

I had done it before when I was much younger, when I wanted to know everything there was about classic hover-cars and restoring them. I don't think I left my place for three whole months, as I consumed every piece of data about hover-cars, the technology to make them, the technology to keep them running, and all those ninja tactics that would set me above anyone else doing what I was doing. I was in my twenties and was in all the top classic hover-car clubs in my neighborhood and beyond. Every other member of those clubs, at the time, was at least in their fifties, so I was kind of the "child prodigy". But I wasn't a genius. I simply channeled my OCD tendencies into something productive.

So I was about to do this for my new vocation. I needed to because I was about to jump right back into the Easy Chair Charlie case and the client was me. Easy never touched guns so the notion he went gun-crazy one night was...crazy. I was also still checking around on the Guy Who Got Shot in My Office and the guy PJ threw through the door and I blasted out the window with my pop-gun. Then yesterday, someone showed up at the office main entrance and he looked a lot like the sucker shooter who tried to gun me down in front of my place. Thank God for remote video surveillance. He sniffed around (literally) and then left.

Random violence does happen in Metropolis. Multiple acts of random violence happens all too often too. But this wasn't random. I couldn't prove it yet, but the bigger question was--why? I was going to learn everything possible, and impossible, there was to know about that night of the crime. So before I went into the "box" I had to visit Compstat Connie. She was like the female version of Wilford G.. Megacorporations had machines that knew all there was to know worth nothing. The City had Connie and, lucky for me, I first met her when I was a police intern kid back in school. So that, not my business card, was my introduction to her.

City Hall looked different because of its white marble--with flecks of embedded black paint--interior with huge columns from ceiling to ground throughout. But, of course, it was ruined by the video displays everywhere that showed the Mayor and City Hall meetings, department meetings, committee meetings, ad infinitum.

This was now the second time I had business at the city in the space of a few days. Based on all the referrals the Government Guy gave me, I was going to be here a lot more often.

Downtown Metropolis was the nerve center of the city. I would never say the brain, because that implies intelligence. The city was not that and never would be; it was what controlled. Its monolith towers were no bigger or taller than any other in the city, but they always looked different to me when I flew by in my vehicle. Some said it was its historic architecture of lighter colored paint for its exterior in contrast to the dark hues of all the surrounding towers. But really in the dark rainy skies, no one notices. It had to be a state of mind. You knew it was the center of power, so you intuitively saw that in its buildings when in reality it was the same as everywhere else.

While the City Clerk's office was located in a prominent place in the main city
towers, the Crime Information Center (CIC) of the Police Department was located in what could only be called the basement levels. The Clerk's office had guards and other visible security; CIC had nothing.

Compstat Connie had to be in her late seventies, and she ran the multi-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars division, but when I entered the subterranean offices, there she was at the counter sorting through papers like she was an entry level worker. It was the same with the Government Guy, who was at a counter doing his own work. It seemed in government, unlike the corporate world, you may get the title and the salary, but you did the same grunt work as you did when you were first hired.

It was still unbelievable to me because it was such an important office for the police higher-ups. CompStat (Computer Statistics) was all the crime data that was collected in the city. That was her division and it drove everything that the police did--deployment, budgets, resources, and perso
nnel. The stats made it into every government press conference, including all the way to the mayor.

"Why do you look familiar?" she said, watching me from the counter. It seemed like there was no one else in the office with row-after-row of shelves to the ceiling with file boxes.

We were now sitting in her tiny office. I handed her the "graduation" picture from the last day of my police internship--students and police personnel.

"Well, look at that," she said holding the picture. "Back when my hair had color, other than white. Cruz, isn't it?"

I was amazed. "There's absolutely no way you'd remember me from all those years ago." I laughed. "I wasn't memorable and there were, like, fifty other interns running around."

"No, I remember you. I may be old, but I have a great memory. You hung around my division."

"I interned for you."

"And the uniformed officers, too."

"You do remember me."

"I told you. What can I do for you?"

"I want to become the male version of you."

She laughed. "Meaning what?"

"It was the talk you gave to us."

"I remember people, but I can't remember one of all those silly presentations I gave back then. I couldn't remember it even if it were yesterday. It's always off the cuff, spur of the moment, when I give presentations."

"You told us how everything is connected and your division looks at all the data and after it absorbs every data point, it can see the connections, the trends and patterns. That's the ultimate in crime-fighting tools--those connections."

"I said that?"

"You did."

"And you remember it?"

"I do."

"Why would a high school kid remember a speech like that? You were going to be a cop?"

"No, but it helped me with other occupations I did. Seeing connections where other people didn't. That's why I'm visiting. I want to do that for one specific day."

"A specific day? What day?"

I knew the day and time like my own birthday.

Compstat Connie reached down behind the counter for her mobile computer and started typing.

"What stands out to you about the day?" I asked.

There was a specific reason I asked the question and if Compstat Connie was the same casual human computer that she was before, she'd basically do my work for me--cutting off hours, maybe days, from me being in the "box."

She stared at her screen. "That was the night of the big shoot-out at Joe Blows." She read some more. "And the kidnapping of a little girl at Alien Alley. All the rest of your standard car-jacks, armed robberies, rapes, office invasions, murders."

"But why did you mention those two specific incidents first?"

"They're anomalies. All the rest is normal fare in the city."

"That's what I mean," I said to her. "I need to be able to see anomalies and understand how your mind gets you there. How long will it take you to teach me?"

"Do you have five decades to spare?"

I laughed. "No, but I'll give the time I need to give. Think of me as your returning intern, two decades later."

"I thought you were some kind of car guy."

"I have a new occupation, but don't tell the Clerk's Office."

She chuckled.

"I'm like a private detective."