Liquid Cool: The Cyberpunk Detective Series (40 page)

"I'd like you to meet someone."

"Run-Time, they want me to meet some police widows and widowers."

"I know, but this is important. The big picture shouldn't trump little pictures, but the little pictures shouldn't destroy the big picture either. Where will we be if Metropolis goes up in flames? You and I live here you know."

"Who do you want me to meet with?"

"The Vice President of the Police Watch Commission."

"Ah," I said. "The people who probably orchestrated the murder of Easy Chair Charlie, b
ut definitely
the cover-up."

Chapter 58: Exe

Run-Time ignored my comment. For a second I wondered if he had even heard me.

I was now in a foul mood. The least of which was the fact that a lifelong friendship was on the verge of dissolution. Friends were hard to come by in Metropolis and friends you could count on were even more rare. Losing Run-Time's friendship would be a serious blow. However, I couldn't quite figure out what his involvement was in this whole thing. As a businessman, he had to be friends with everyone--uber-governments, megacorporations, multinationals, the Average Joe and Jane--that's how you not only grew your business in the City, but kept it. But there was a deeper level of involvement here behind the scenes. He didn't tell me and I couldn't guess. That was what annoyed me. Obviously he'd have friends in the city that I hated. That was life, but some of the players in the city were going to try to destroy my life. That's what gave me pause. How friendly was Run-Time with them? Was he going to allow them to just crush me?

His third VP, Mr. "Mick," joined us. I figured I'd be seeing a lot more of him and a lot less of the Lebanese and West Indian female VPs going forward, if Run-Time and I continued any kind of relationship. The Mick had refreshments brought in and Run-Time and I moved to the lounge area of his office to wait for our guest.

Exe (pronounced EX-EE) was brought in fairly soon afterward. She wore a crimson pants suit and matching beret on her head, with a sheer white and yellow scarf around her neck. She had been a member of the Metropolis Police Watch Commission for decades. The lead members rotated thro
ugh the official titles and this term she was the Vice President of the body. She had been its President before and would be again. She was a very gregarious woman and greeted me with a vigorous handshake and smalltalk as if we had been friends for ages. I don't think I ever saw her before, and surely wouldn't recognize any Police Watch member by sight.

The Metropolis Police Department was the largest and most powerful in the world, but it was the civilian Police Watch Commission that kept them in check. Supposedly they were the ones who monitored every single transaction of the police with the public, suspects, and criminals.

It was a strange fact, because they were extremely powerful civilian members of government. Technically, they weren't part of the government at all. But who were we fooling? You hang out with government for so long, even as watchdogs, no matter how aggressive or antagonistic, you become de-facto part of the government yourself.

Exe was one of those natural story-teller personalities. They could sit and entrance you with a tale for hours and you wouldn't once look at a time piece.

"I remember saying 'shoot him.' I was very disturbed by my feelings later on. Spit, curse, then spit and curse again. This big, burly crew-cut cop told me, 'Oh it's nothing. People do that all the time. Would we talk that way to the public? Never, even if we were in a rotten mood. The disrespect is all one way. Towards us. But we see it as a game. Their one time to feel as if they have power over the system; talking crap to us because we're the only part of the system that they can do that to and get away with it.' Wow, I said. Someone spat at me or called me a name, I'd beat them ugly no matter how many cameras were watching. At that moment, I realized what my late mum meant by her crack to me all those years ago when she started calling me 9-1-1 when I first joined the Citizen's Police Oversight Commission, which became the Police Watch Commission. I was some kind of rabble-rouser back then. I had an afro to the sky and I was going to get those police brutality, po-lice goose-steppin', black booters. You think you know so much from outside of the system, but then you get inside and you see things how they really are. My late mum didn't think I was going to become some kind of sell-out. But she knew, long before I did, what was going to happen. You sit there in the Watch Room hour after hour, day after day, and year after year. You see what they have to go through on the streets to protect the City. Someone like me never goes from not loving the people and the community, but after a while, you do get to not liking a lot of them. The community and the police organized into one force. We merged into one entity. They weren't the police anymore. They were my people and I wouldn't hesitate to protect every last one of them. And they would do the same for us. Cops say, 'I got the community on my shoulder and watching my back.' Wow. Metro Police were so violently opposed to body-cams and Police Watch. I remember. We thought we'd get assassinated. We were scared." She began laughing. "All our 'Power to the People' rhetoric and we were actually hiding under our beds, because we were that scared. Now, we've gone full circle. The community says, "You low-life criminal punks better not mess with our cops or we'll stomp your teeth in and down to your ankles. Now the cops say, 'We won't go into the field on the streets unless we're body-cammed with the Police Watch watching our backs.' Full-circle. Before us, nearly 100% of the police brutality cases against the City were settled unfavorably, because they knew if any of them got to trial, the payout could be a thousand times more. Now? You have to go back thirty, forty years to find a police brutality case that got a penny. Actually, I think that was the actual settlement--one penny." She began laughing again. "The trial lawyers were also our very best friends back then and all for body-cams. Now, they hate our guts. Body-cams ended their gravy train forever. You gotta laugh. I remember when the trial lawyers tried to sue us--the Police Watch Commission--for encouraging police brutality. Us, the people.

"You see Mr. Cruz, I was one of those pioneers in creating this coalition of community and police against the criminals. The City is far from crime-free, and there are many parts that are extremely dangerous, and there are plenty of gangs, psychos, and cartels out there. But I was alive back then when you could have ten thousand murders in one weekend. The Average Joe and Jane can't even imagine the level of violence on the streets back then. We ended that all with our community coalition of the people and the cops. But all coalitions are fragile, as these past days have shown us. Police rioting, with people backing them up, against the Mayor and City Hall. We could even have a war--damn, we haven't used that word in centuries--a war against Earth and Up-Top. That's how it's being spun. Accomplishments are oh so fragile. Mr. Cruz, that's where we are. Run-Time told me what you said to him. And based on the look I got from the Police Union leader earlier today, it seems you've been sharing. All I ask is that you give me a chance to prove you wrong, a couple of days is all I need, before you make up your mind. I have a legacy that I can't bear to see shredded before my eyes and more importantly, if such a thing were to get out and people were to believe it, the damage would be catastrophic to the city. It would be a return to those ten-thousand killed in a weekend days, trial lawyers getting the most vicious criminals off, victims and their families getting no justice, judges afraid to convict crime bosses, people refusing to serve on juries..."

Exe had weaved a very, very bleak story for me. How was it that I was in this situation? The fate of Metropolis was in my hands? I was a small-time, newbie private detective. How was this even happening? If I could have seen the feature to this point, even with all my business cards printed, I would have chosen a different path. At least I think I would have.

"What do you say, Mr. Cruz?" she asked.

"Are civilians allowed to visit the Watch Room?"

"I don't see why not."

"Why don't I see what goes on in this Watch Room and meet all your colleagues at the same time. We can shoot two birds with one laser."

"Excellent," Exe said with a broad smile.

Chapter 59: Flash

As the Mick escorted me from Run-Time's office--Run-Time and Exe remained behind to talk. I sure hope they weren't afraid of me. Not me specifically, but what I could do. The only problem was I didn't know what I was going to do. I was not pleased with the situation I found myself in.

"Our limo is yours for the day," the Mick said to me when we exited the elevator capsule.

"Thank you," I said. "Who's driving?"

"Flash. I believe you know him."

I managed a smile, which I hadn't done in I couldn't remember how long. "Flash is good people. Thanks."

"You're quite welcome. However Let It Ride Enterprises can help a friend."

I wasn't sure if his use of the word "friend" had some special meaning. That's what sucked about politics--people never meant what they said and were always playing an angle. However, I had to admit it was no different than dealing with anyone in Metropolis. "Everything is politics," Run-Time once told me. Maybe that's why I was content being a house mouse for so long in the Concrete Mama.

Flash was waiting at a hover-limo in their landing bay. He saw me and immediately opened a door for me. "Thanks, Flash." I hopped in and he closed the door. Flash was my main guy at Let It Ride. He had guarded my Pony so many times that I requested him by name and arranged my own personal schedule for him whenever I ordered mobile hover-car security services.

"They've moved you up to limo duty," I said.

He drove the hover-limo out of the bay and, in moments, we were ascending into sky traffic. "I told them there was no way you were going to drive your vehicle anywhere with all this madness going on. I told them I was on permanent on-call status for you."

"I appreciate that, Flash."

"You've given me a lot of business, so this was the time to give back."

"What is the madness going on out there? I tried to avoid as much news as possible."

"Do you know anything?"

"Cops rioting around Metro Police One and they have all walked off the job. The Police Chief met with top generals and it ended in a shoot-out. Interpol spaceships are stationed above City Hall. Is that basically it?"

"You got the main points, but there's a lot more."

I leaned forward as I moved my hover-seat closer to his compartment. "You can never have too much street intel. How do you see the situation?"

"I did something I never thought I'd do. I got my lady a piece of her own and we've kept the kids home from school."

"It can't be that bad."

"It is. There's no police. The entire 9-1-1 system is down."

"I just thought that buildings would band together and protect their own until the crisis is over."

"We're banding together but so are the gangs. They're consolidating to exploit the situations, so that means they're killing each other. I have never seen the level of intra-gang violence going on. All us taxi drivers are talking about it. A lot of us are not driving most of the city. Once the intra-gang violence is over, then the gang violence against us begins."

"This will all be over before that happens."

"Mr. Cruz, I've known you a long time, not as long as Mr. Run-Time, but a long time. I've never known you to be an optimist."

He was right. I wasn't one. It made me realize that it wasn't optimism, it was avoidance. I was the cause of all the chaos.

"Mr. Cruz, can I be a bit forward with some advice. I never tell a client his business, but..."

"Sure, why not. It's the times we're in."

"Mr. Cruz, I'm not passing judgment, but you started this chaos with that interview and only you can bring us back to order. Only you. You may not want to hear that, or accept it. You're saying 'Hey, I'm a private detective just scraping by in life,' but you need to get wise to the reality fast because a lot of other people already have."

"What others?"

"The cops, the politicians. Up-Top. The gangs."

"The gangs?" I was nervous now. "Why would they care about me?"

"They all know your name, Mr. Cruz."

"Yeah, but why would they care about me?"

"Because you're the only guy who can bring Metropolis back to order."

Now I was scared.

"What do you think they'll do?"

"If I were them," Flash said. "I'd kill you anyway I could."

Chapter 60: Monkey Baker

I had three stops to make. PJ was back at the real office and apparently we had both civilian and police security everywhere, so according to her, it was safe. She told me I had some "high-level" clients waiting. I had no idea what "high-level" meant and she wouldn't tell me on the video-phone. Then I had to meet with the cops, courtesy of Wilford G. Jr. Then it was to the Watch Room to meet the city's Police Watch Commission.