Montezuma Strip (23 page)

Mierde,
I felt sorry for the babies
and
the kittens.

They couldn’t trace nothing to me ‘cause the Zenitrov had been left in Chuy’s car, and when I wafted I took it with me to
Panama. Gave me something to do, play around with. No more yard rifling, though. No more shamming with VR-VW simulations.
But I practiced plenty. I’m an artist, you know?

It’s be nice to share memories and stories and company with Huong and Krying Kilbee. That’s what I call him these
days, and I know he wouldn’t mind it ‘cause we’re both BTS, now an’ perpetual. Of course I can’t do that ‘cause they’re up
in federal penitentiary in Chihuahua, paying their debt to society. They can’t get out of that stone-cold place because they’re
tracked and watched an’ looked after by the most sophisticated automatic antisoc monitoring instrumentation the Namerican
penal system can devise.

They couldn’t possibly be down here with me and Lita, swimming and diving off our little private island, bibulatin’ beer and
siestaing in the sun and troubling the local senoritas. They have to serve their time and homber, that’s just what they’re
doing.

Virtually all of it.

People have no idea the kind and variety of bizarre goods that end up in federale storage. They think it’s all stolen vehicles
and personal electronics. That last acquisition we made, headquarters had a helluva time disposing of. You’d think we could
trace most of the contraband back to the original parents. Except that there were no original parents, so to speak. Test-tubers,
the lot.
In vivo veritas.
Police departments don’t have the loose change to run DNA checks on unclaimed bio-property.

Not to worry. The prospective adopters lined up as soon as the situation was explained. I thought about putting in my own
name. Yeah, I did. I wouldn’t mind having a kid, though at this stage of my life raising one would be a project. I know I
could do it, though. See, I’ve been surrogate papa to plenty of street kids. The straight as well as the crooked.

It’s just that I know how hard it would be on a kid trying to grow up with an Intuit for a father. A kid’s got to be able
to get away with a little fib now and then or they’ll go loco.

You’d be surprised how many people who work up and down the Strip have religion. Some of them, see, it’s
all
they got. Long hours, cold masters, pay that evaporates during the first trip to the allmart or the grocery channel, that
can be taken from them.

But not religion. Usually it’s clean, and it helps. Like most things, I find that you get out of it what you’re willing to
put into it. Religion doesn’t betray people; people betray religion. When that happens it’s the same old, old story. Money’s
usually involved, or sex.

You never know, homber, how reality is going to get messed up on the Strip. I love the contrasts. An old friend who managed
to retire from the force last year with most of his original limbs once said that I live for juxtaposition. Kidding, I asked
him what position, and he told me without hesitating, “The juxta one, of course.” Said it without smiling. I wasn’t sure what
he meant. Still ain’t.

I think it has to do with my work sort of explaining itself.

“God had him killed because he wouldn’t pay off?”

“That’s what the widow told us.” Not a hint of a smile lightened the expression on the captain’s face. It would have seemed
an alien intrusion at best. Pangborn didn’t smile very often.

Cardenas dissected what he’d been told as he gazed absently past his superior. From the office situated midway up the triangular
police tower he could see a good deal of sweltering downtown Nogales and out into the Strip beyond. Interlinked kinks of assembly
and design plants, the muscles of the most powerful industrial connurbation the world had ever known, gleamed fiery chrome
and bronze at eventide.

The relentless southwestern sun shadowed them with red and gold patinas. An occasional clutch of desperate, huddled vegetation
signifying the site of a park or sardonically set-aside riparian zone put forth a feeble green scream against the tidal waves
of heat that were reflected from pavement and
wall. Sinews of program roads and the tendons that were high-volume induction strips knotted the energetic coils of commerce
together.

Amid such relentless mercantile fervor humans ventured fitfully from building to building, corpuscles and cells traveling
via air-conditioned tubes, minuscule individual shapes vital to the continued commercial health of the aggregate organism.
Thanks to the interminable inventiveness and energy of such individuals the Strip had grown to become the engine that powered
a sizable chunk of the world’s GNP.

Inspector Angel Cardenas knew much of it intimately and was completely at home in its smoldering, fevered concourses, where
he but rarely encountered anything or anyone truly likable.

The captain was waiting on him. Not an easily unsettled sort, he looked anxious. Cardenas cleared his throat.

“I’m not a particularly religious man, Shaun. But if I was, I think I’d find it hard to believe in a deity that stoops to
common extortion.”

“Not extortion,” Pangborn corrected him dourly. “Failure to contribute to the support of the poor.”

“Ah yes. To the poor extortionists.” Cardenas’s wry grin minutely lifted the drooping points of his impressive mustache. “Do
we have anything to go on besides the theological rantings of half-hysterical widows?”

“Damn
poquito
.” The captain shuffled through a pile of printouts on his desk like an aborigine digging for edible grubs before finally
shoving a hard copy at his guest. Cardenas took it and read deliberately, his transplanted ice-blue eyes missing nothing on
the tattle sheet.

“Initially there was a flurry of complaints.” Pangborn chewed on a thumbnail. “Then information dried up.”

Cardenas sniffed, wrinkling his mustache. “When the federales can’t keep citizens from being killed, the survivors tend to
go noncommunico pretty quick.” He leaned forward to pass the hard copy back. “This is small squash. Local loco. Why call me
in? I’m not bored.”

Pangborn considered him out of deep-set burnt-umber eyes that had pushed around plenty of bodies before they’d been relegated
to pushing papers. “You’re our best Intuit, Angel. This isn’t your usual cut-and-wasted racket. It looks simple enough on
the surface, but there’s something farking sophisticated going on here, and the mibble on the pave is that it’s spreading.
You know how this kind of protection-extortion works; you persuade or vape a few of the doubtful and the rest soon fall in
line.”

Cardenas nodded understandingly. He reached down to pet the dog that wasn’t there and caught himself halfway, wondering if
the captain had noticed. “Come on, Shaun. Let’s have a little
verdad
here. Why pick on me?”

The captain grunted. “Graveyard shift supervisor at Mondadoroko Tools over in Nog East got a memo on his Dimail telling him
that he and his blessed company weren’t doing their part to help the indigent in his district, and that God was displeased
with this so they’d more or less better shape up and do their share. Fast.”

Cardenas shook his head. “Don’t know Mondadoroko Tools.”

“Precision masking division of Wurtemburg Kraftwerk GBN.”

Which explained everything, Cardenas saw. The local precinct feds would be expected to deal with moderate levels of extortion
on the street level, but when small-time operators started trying to park their kismet on one of the big multinats like Wurtemburg
Kraftwerk, then Regional Enforcement would be expected to start taking them seriously.

“Somebody’s getting a little big for their britches,” he commented.

Pangborn pursed his lips. “If you think you’ve got God on your side, why not try and respirate money out of the multinats?
Why limit yourself to restaurant owners and chip kickers and proteinoaties?”

“They’re starting small,” Cardenas mused. “Maybe they’re not absolutely sure God’s on their side.” He shifted
in the chair, trying to focus on what Pangborn wasn’t saying. “How’d our unlucky monger downslide?”

The captain looked uncomfortable. “He and his wife were solicited twice to contribute. By a cowled Collar. You know, a padre?”

“So why didn’t they?”

“They discussed it with their regular neighborhood priest. He didn’t know anything about this guy or the Order he claimed
to represent.
‘Nuestra Senora de la Machina’.
The priest advised them not to pay, and to call the local fed station. This they did. The padre came back twice. The third
time he warned them that God was angry that they were doing so well while others were starving. They told him to waft.”

“What happened next?”

Pangborn’s tone soured. “Two days later they were locking up around eleven when according to the widow a vision appeared in
the middle of their store.”

Cardenas ticked off possibilities. “Holomage projection. Static optical diffusion. Coherent-confluent VR. Something in their
dinner. There are plenty of plausible explanations.”

“Sure,” the captain agreed readily. “The widow insists it was a woman clad in flowing robes, all in glowing white. The color
and texture of shaded heavy cream, she said. Too soft for sculpture. It wore a sad expression. It floated over to them and
rebuked them for their stinginess. Her husband declared himself unimpressed and insisted loudly that he wasn’t about to pay
good money to protect himself from magic tricks. He turned to pick up the phone to call us.

“The widow says that’s when the image put a hand on her husband’s head and he collapsed.” Cardenas’s eyebrows arched. Pangborn
stared back at him unflinchingly. “Coroner’s report says cardiac arrest. The guy died on the spot. His wife insisted he was
healthy as a horse. His medical records support her.

“The image backed off, steepled its hands as if in prayer, and told the widow that while she was sorry about her husband,
the needs of the poor could no longer be entrusted to the
sluggish whims of mere human agencies. Then it crossed itself and disappeared. “He paused. “I’m no holofield specialist and
I don’t have time to keep up with what’s new in the field, but I’ve only heard of one gizmode that could do something like
that.”

“A tactile projection,” Cardenas murmured. A very small shiver tickled the base of his spine.

Pangborn nodded. “Strictly military ware, and mostly experimental. Except for one official incident, which happened to occur
in our district. Which happened to involve you.”

“I’m not likely to forget,” Cardenas told him. “Have the relevant companies been queried?”

“Both GenDyne and Parabas insist they’ve barely begun to probe the secrets of the subox tunnel you encountered on that case,
much less figure out how to bypass and disarm the guardian tactile systemics their late, lamented, and self-vacuumed specialists
left sprinkled in their wake.”

“Then it sounds like somebody else has learned how to run and project an independent tactile. Military leak?”

The captain shook his head impatiently. “Been checked out.” This time he did smile. “First they insist they’re not working
on anything like that, and then they assure you that even if they were their security’s so tight not even an engraved molecule
of information about what they’re not working on could slip out.”

Cardenas sighed. “So we’re back to hypothesizing an independent Designer. Like the two who vacuumed themselves.”

“Or something else,” the captain muttered darkly. “Something new. Get out on the streets, Angel. Fave the pave. Go down into
the
gordo mucho
and parley the mongrel mongers. Find somebody who’ll talk back. I’m busy enough as it is. I don’t need the Kraftwerks and
Fordmatsus and GenDynes on my back. Nobody my age with my blood pressure deserves that.”

Cardenas rose to leave. “I’ll pray for you, Shaun.”

The beleaguered captain didn’t grin back.

Paily Huachuco had taken a filthy gel-glazed storefront on Twenty-third Avenue and through hard work and pave smarts turned
the rat and roach palace into the modest music nest flamboyantly neoned on the outside as Musik-Niche. That had been five
years ago. Now there were four garish, glitzy Musik-Niches, sited equally between Nogales del Norte and Sud. Currently Paily
was negotiating for store space in the Lochiel and Cibuta malls. A flashman lawyer for a big synergainment syndicate had approached
him with talk of franchising. The offer had been tempting, but the concomitant loss of control that would have accompanied
it was not. Better to be an independent minimog than a high-salaried castrato.

Ten years down the road, maybe he’d think about it some more. Right now he was having too much fun.

Through the one-way polarized he could look down on the main floor of his flagship store where rapido repeaters and workers
and sub-adults and ninlocos on their best behavior jostled with young execs and maskers and assemblers to peruse Musik-Niche’s
unrivaled stock. Max-sensorial holovits gyrated above their heads, enticing male and female alike with tridi images of boobs
and buns and bulges, and sometimes even music.

The execs and assemblers tended to scarf on preprogrammed cubes, while the store’s younger patrons were more eager to experiment.
They swam through the humming establishment’s vast, daily-updated catalog of rhythms and melodies, voices and instruments,
mixing their own according to the latest vogue. Everyone a composer, Huachuco mused. Everyone a singer and musician, arranger
and performer. Like its competitors, Musik-Niche served up a swirling, boiling musical and visual soup from which patrons
could at leisure and in comfort elutriate the bits and pieces of sound that most sweetly vitalized their senses.

Or if you preferred, one of the store’s knowledgeable wandering specialists could help you build your own custom cube.
A teaspoon of reggae, half a cup of tamba, guitar, and juiced samisen to taste, bake in¾ time, stew with drums and synth,
and pour when ready. Sprinkle with lyrics from Musik-Niche’s immense ROM library and you too can be a star.