Wear Iron

by Al Ewing

  Very, very occasionally, when he was bored, he’d ask his straight-laced clone-brother Joe along on a patrol with him. It made for a few sick laughs. Little Joe, the cleanest Judge on the force, who still kept coming around the apartment occasionally to argue or deliver lectures, who’d probably blow his big brother Rico away in a heartbeat if he ever knew the full truth. And hey, wouldn’t that be a kick? Maybe if he ever got so bored that he wanted to quit the whole game, that would be the way to go out: at his brother’s clean hands. It’d be more fitting than any other exit.

  So that same Little Joe, so squeaky clean, would ride right alongside him. He’d be just as violent and brutal and merciless as brother Rico, cracking the same skulls, loosening the same teeth, putting bullets in the same fleeing bodies... but ask Joe after he’d washed off the blood if he thought he’d done wrong—committed a crime—and he’d tell you were joking. Or crazy. Then he’d probably put you on report for unjudicial thinking.

  Not that Rico ever did ask Little Joe about things like that—he’d learned that his brother didn’t enjoy answering questions that troubled his boxed-in little worldview. No, he’d just return to his high-rent apartment, fire up the hot tub, sit back in it with a little shampagne and maybe a lady friend or two—everybody loved a man in uniform—and he’d laugh and laugh and laugh. Laugh until he was sick.

  Of course, the lifestyle he deserved wasn’t exactly cheap. Oh, he had his rackets, his payoffs—the Prince must have his tithes—but while all of that kept him comfortable enough, there was still plenty of room for improvement. The landlord who owned Rico’s block had a penthouse available—right at the top level, a full view of the city, electron showers, two robo-butlers as standard. Everything Rico deserved. The landlord, a slick old skel from the Greek Wastes who knew how the world worked, had hinted to Rico that he could hold onto the property for a little while, in case the ‘anonymous donor’ who paid Rico’s rent every month as a ‘reward’ for his ‘sterling service in defence of the city’ could maybe stump up another half million a month.

  Half a million extra was a tall order, but Rico could probably extend his net of bribes and protection rackets a little further if he had to. Still, that’d take time and increase the risk of scrutiny—it’d be better if he could get the cash together in one big lump. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, he could get himself a decent share of a major-league score—something in the tens of millions...

  Which was about when the Mega-City Munch-Off had entered his life.

  To begin with, it was just one more notice in the first shift’s morning briefing. “Item!” Deputy Sector Chief Koslowski had bellowed, before taking a second look at the printout and rolling her eyes. “Jovus. Now I’ve seen it all. You goofballs are gonna love this one.” Koslowski ran an informal squad room—Rico liked that about her. It allowed him to get away with more.

  “Let’s hear it, Koslowski,” grinned Muttox, a big, half-smart lump of a man—the kind the Academy didn’t want to admit they made any more—around a stick of cheap munce-gum. Rico sat back in his chair, only half-listening. The briefing room bored him—he preferred to be out on the streets, taking calls as they came, with the freedom to do his business in between. And there was a lot of business that needed to be done if he wanted to secure that penthouse.

  “The Mega-City Munch-Off Inaugural Eating Championship of 2080,” Koslwoski had said, sneering and shaking her head. “Some kind of eating contest in the Herc—set for the second Saturday of next month. They figure they’re going to fill it this time.”

  Someone at the back of the room snickered. “Yeah, I know”—Koslowski sighed—“but this nonsense doesn’t seem to be going away. Actually, word from above is maybe it shouldn’t—a fatter cit is a more obedient cit, and all that. So we need to work on the assumption that it’s going to be filled to—” She paused, reading a little further. “Drokk-a-doodle-doo,” she muttered, and Rico leaned forward, paying a little more attention. Could be this was going to be more interesting than he’d thought.

  “No tickets will be sold ahead of time,” Koslowski read, slowly and carefully—as if to make sure she could believe the evidence of her own eyes. “Thousand creds a ticket, cash only. Only the first hundred thousand will be seated. Jovus on a plate.” She shook her head, disgusted, as a murmur went through the room. “You couldn’t come up with a better recipe for a riot if you tried.”

  “Shut it down,” Friedricks scowled. She was a no-nonsense type who’d transferred from Sector 47—word had it that she’d done her assessment while the first bombs were dropping in the war. Rico avoided her—she was a stickler if he’d ever seen one. Almost as bad as his brother.

  And now—if his math was right—she was trying to get in the way of the kind of payout he’d been hoping for. Rico began to wonder if avoiding her had been the right move—maybe he should have taken a more proactive approach. Maybe he should have killed her.

  Like he’d killed Kenner, the invigilator at his assessment, when the old man had started to get wise to what his golden ex-rookie was up to—and what a kick that had been! He’d set the old bastard on fire first, then played target practice—shooting to wound, not to kill, denying the craggy old has-been his mercy shot. And all the time, he hadn’t stopped laughing.

  Good times.

  Rico leaned forward, trying not to look to anxious. Surely this had already gone through all the channels...?

  “It’s gone through all the channels—rubber-stamped from on high. Guess some desk jockey really likes the idea of eating contests.” Koslowski sighed, aggravated. Rico nearly sighed along with her. He could taste his relief.

  “All right. Every single one of you is going to be on crowd control for this thing—probably all of Shift Two as well. I’ll draft Shifts Three and Four in to cover you on the streets, which is probably going to mean a double shift for all of you somewhere down the line...” There was a low rumble of dissent at that, and Koslowski shot the room a hard look in response. “Do we have a problem? Because if you don’t like being a Judge today, I’ve got good news—civvy street is just down the hall. Have fun spending your life watching vid-soaps with the rest of the cits.”

  The murmuring died down.

  “Now, it looks like we’ll need most of our units on the outside of the Stadium, controlling the queues and dealing with whatever backlash we get when the gates close. I figure if we have enough helmets on the ground, we can keep control of the situation and maybe—maybe—shut down any serious trouble before it starts. Friedricks, you’ll be heading up that contingent.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Friedricks said, snapping an unironic salute off.

  “Meanwhile, we’ll do our usual search and sweep job on the gate and in the crowd. That’ll have to be the bare minimum for a crowd that size. I can spare maybe fifty of you, so you’ll be working overtime and then some.”

  Muttox chewed his gum contemplatively—like a cow, Rico thought—and stuck his hand up. “Outside people can help wit’ that. Search the queues—pick out any weapons, drugs, search anybody even smells weird. Then we run a scanner over what’s left at the gate—you know, to make double sure. That way, we got most of the trouble weeded out, and it’s just, uh...” He grinned. “Naturally-occurin’ trouble. Like when any two cits get in the same room.”

  Friedricks looked over at Muttox, impressed despite herself. “Not bad, Hector.”

  “I ain’t just a pretty face,” Muttox grinned, and carefully spat the wad of gum into his palm before folding it up in his spare glove pouch.

  “You just won yourself command on the inside, Muttox,” Koslowski said, then scanned the room. “We’ll come back to this next week, once I’ve got a clearer idea on what kind of numbers we’ll have. In the meantime—any questions?”

  Rico waited, hoping nobody in the room would ask the big question. “Hey, Koslowski, I’m a dumb old street jock without the brains Grud gave a dog vulture, but doesn’t this mean there’ll be a hundred million creds, mostly
in large bills, just lying around the Herc someplace? What are we doing about that?”

  Nobody in the room did. They were all thinking about the riot Koslowski had forecast, planning for the worst—either that, or just anxious to finish up and get back out onto the streets. Rico suppressed a smile, and raised his own hand.

  “Koslowski?”

  “What is it, Dredd?” She didn’t like him, he knew—thought he was a little too full of himself. Luckily, he was too full of himself to care.

  “What happens if a riot breaks out inside the Stadium too?”

  Koslowski looked him square in the eye.

  “Then Grud help us, Rico. So let’s try and make that not happen, huh?” She crumpled the printout and tossed it into the waste receptacle behind the podium. “All right, briefing over. I want to see some good arrest figures today, so all of you get out there and do what you do best.”

  Rico did just that.

  Seven

  “CLOSE THE DOOR, Buddy boy.”

  Bud Mooney froze in the door, and the grocery bag tumbled from his chubby, sweaty hands. Rico—sat in Mooney’s old, battered armchair, which he’d turned to face the hab door—sipped some of the cheap soymash whiskey he’d found in the kitchen cupboard and grinned. It was hard not to take a sadistic pleasure in watching all the cans of off-brand soda and budget mock-choc bars and all the other cheap crap Mooney called a diet spilling out onto the carpet.

  Sure, he could have broken into Mooney’s hab while the fat slob was home, and maybe that would have been easier... but it wouldn’t have been half as fun as seeing the fear in Buddy-boy’s eyes. That was a treat worth waiting for.

  “Now, c’mon there, Buddy boy. You’re not going to give me the simple courtesy of a hello? I already had to pour my own drink.” Rico laughed, drained his glass, and tossed it over his shoulder, enjoying the sound of it shattering against the wall.

  Mooney was down on his hands and knees, pale as a ghost, scrambling to get it all out of the way so he could do what Rico said and close the door. “H-hello, sir,” he stammered, looking at Rico with eyes like saucers, then looking away, as if eye contact might get him killed. Which, Rico reflected, it might at that. Depending on his mood.

  “That’s more like it. So how have you been, Buddy-of-mine? Nice place you’ve got here, by the way. I especially like the view.” He jerked a thumb behind him at the blacked-out windows—he’d set the controls as soon as he’d made his way in. Whatever happened here, he didn’t want any witnesses.

  “Aw, jeez,” Mooney whined, getting up on his knees, pressing his palms together as if praying. Rico liked that. “Please, Judge Dredd, sir, I know I ain’t checked in lately—but it’s like I told you, nobody wants to talk to me any more—”

  Rico smirked at that. It had been one of his more profitable ideas—leaning on this old rummy to get useful information about his peers. It hadn’t taken much—one cracked rib and Mooney had been happy to play the narc, pumping his booze and poker buddies for all the info they had about upcoming scores. Rico let a heist go ahead for ten per cent of the take—a bargain, under the circumstances. Any crew who didn’t like the deal, Rico fed through the proper channels—he was allotted a certain amount of narc money a month for his ‘informant,’ which naturally he pocketed himself, so either way he came out of it ahead.

  As for Mooney, he ran out of poker buddies pretty fast. There might not be honour among thieves, but there is a hell of a lot of gossip, and it tickled Rico to put his ear to the grapevine and listen to Buddy-boy’s fall from grace. In the space of maybe three months, Mooney had gone from being a salt-of-the-earth yegg—everybody’s pal, a joe you could trust with your life, sure, he’s got a couple of health problems, but you try havin’ the luck he’s had—to a lousy, scheming, stinking tub of lard, a twitchy, toothless little rodent who pissed in a bag. We oughtta make him drink that gruddamned bag. Rico couldn’t help but hope somebody had.

  “Some narc you are, Mooney. Why, anybody would think you didn’t want to turn in your friends. Oh, wait—you don’t have any.” Rico laughed, sliding his boot knife out of its sheath on his ankle. Mooney gave a visible start, scrambling back. “Did you just pee yourself there, Buddy-boy? Can you tell when you do that? Does the bag inflate a little, or what?”

  “D-d-don’t kill me,” Mooney pled, tears in his eyes. His twitch was going nineteen to the dozen, making him wink and smirk, as if he was being ironic about it. “Please. Ain’t you already done enough?”

  Not nearly, Rico thought. There was a lot more fun to be squeezed out of a piece of human flotsam like Bud Mooney. It was almost a shame the wretched little creep still had his uses—Rico had never drowned a man in his own urine bag before, and he had a feeling it’d be a kick.

  There was always later.

  “Relax, Buddy-boy. I’m not going to hurt you.” He grinned, flipping the knife in his hand. “Not unless you do something that makes me mad. You won’t do anything that makes me mad, will you, old friend? Old pal?”

  “Please,” Mooney croaked, eyes ready to pop as they followed the knife. “Anything.”

  “That’s the boy,” Rico laughed, slipping the knife back into his boot. He didn’t want to give the asshole a heart attack, after all. “See, before you became... this...”—he waved a hand in Mooney’s general direction, wincing—“I heard you were pretty hot stuff. When it came to the heist game, I mean.”

  Mooney blinked, uncomprehending, and Rico leaned forward in the armchair, steepling his gloved hands. “What I’m saying, Buddy-my-buddy, is that I have a job for you. A little planning work.” He stood up, walking back in the direction of the kitchen to fetch another whiskey. All this intimidation was thirsty work. “Come on, up off your knees.”

  “But...” Mooney blinked, rising shakily to his feet, as Rico cracked a few cubes of ice into a fresh glass. “Wait, what are you saying? You want to be the finger on this?” Rico frowned—his turn to look confused—and poured what was left of Mooney’s whiskey while he waited for the explanation. “When a guy on the inside of a place brings the job, y’know? Like, maybe there’s some shnook working in a bank, and he wants fifty thou to fly down to Cuidad Barranquilla, and he notices how the manager keeps the vault combination in a drawer in his desk so he don’t forget it, and—”

  “Let’s not write a screenplay here, Mooney.”

  “—right, right. Anyway, a guy works in a place sees a weakness, and brings it to a crew in exchange for a share of the job—that guy we call the finger. Finger usually makes ten per cent.”

  “Ha ha ha.” Rico grinned, taking a sip of the whiskey. “Try again.”

  “Uh, thirty? Forty?” Mooney mopped his brow with his sleeve. “Look, Judge Dredd—you know I ain’t gonna say nothin’ about what share you get, but... well, you want much higher than forty, there might not be enough cash left over to make it worthwhile. For the other guys, I mean.”

  “On this, there will be.” Rico smiled, leaning back against Mooney’s refrigerator. “Take is one hundred million—cash. Mostly large bills.”

  Mooney’s eyes grew wide again, but this time it wasn’t through fear. Rico could almost see the cred signs in them. “Y-you robbin’ a casino or what?”

  Rico snorted. “Gambling’s illegal, Bud. Why, you know of any illicit casinos around here? Maybe you’ve been holding out on me?” Mooney opened his mouth to protest, and Rico shook his head with a grin. “Relax, Mooney. You’re too jumpy, you know that? One day you’re going to jump right out of your skin. No, I’m talking about a stadium—the Herc.”

  Mooney blinked. “The—wait, you mean this speed-eating thing? The Munch-Off?”

  Rico drained his glass. “We’ve got one advantage. I happen to know for a fact that every available Judge in a mile radius of the Herc is going to be stopping two riots that day—one outside the building, one inside. That’s to start you off—I want you to work from there and give me a foolproof plan that gets every single cred of that money out of the Herc and int
o our pockets before the dust settles. You’ve got three days.”

  “Three days?” Mooney swallowed hard, looking down at his shoes. Rico was amused to note his bag made a taut bulge against his pants-leg—full to bursting. He supposed he must have made an impression.

  “Three days. Work your magic, Buddy-boy.” He pushed past Mooney, heading for the door.

  “W-what if I can’t?” Mooney whined, trembling. “What if I don’t have what it takes any more? Or if I—if I can’t get hold of the floor plan or something?”

  Rico paused at the door, looking back at the fat man with cold contempt. “Come on, Bud,” he said, as if talking to a child. “You know the answer to that one.”

  Eight

  “THIS IS ALL highly irregular,” murmured Doctor Hoenikker, chief of staff at the Noel Edmonds Institute for the Criminally Insane, as she idly picked the excess varnish from around her fingernails. It wasn’t said with any kind of reproach—just as a simple statement of fact, like it’s a nice day, or I run an asylum, or you’re a bent Judge offering me money, and it’s not enough.

  Rico sighed, popped open the pouch on his belt and withdrew another thousand-cred bill. “Final offer, Doc,” he said, trying to keep the edge of irritation out of his voice. Hoenikker was a pain in the ass, and this was costing him two grand more than he’d figured it would, but this was still the cheapest way to get what he wanted in the time available.

  “Oh, I think I could go higher. But it’d be a risk.” Hoenikker leaned back in her office chair, looking at him critically, head cocked to one side. “You strike me as rather an unstable young man. I wouldn’t want you to harbour feelings of resentment against me or the facility.”

  “You probably wouldn’t at that.” Rico grinned, showing teeth, and handed the money over.

  Hoenikker calmly folded it into the inside pocket of her white coat before standing and briskly walking to the door. “Come with me, please. I think the sort of person you’re looking for will be down on sub-level four—the paranoids.”