Liquid Cool

by Austin Dragon

  His partner had shoulder-length blond hair, tattooed-up arms only, and his shades of choice were glowing black. He sported a goatee and Fu Manchu mustache, meaning it ran down either side of the corners of his mouth.

  “Who are you?” the first man asked.

  “Johnny,” I answered.

  “Johnny?”

  “Yeah, like sidewalk johnny.”

  “You’re a sidewalk johnny named Johnny?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’m standing on the sidewalk. That’s what sidewalk johnnies do.”

  “We’ve never seen you before.”

  “I’m new.”

  “From where?”

  “Dog Town.”

  “They got skater slacker and hackers there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why come here?”

  “I was chased off by the gangs and the cops. I’m tired, so I came here. This sidewalk is as good as any.”

  “You better find another sidewalk to hang at.”

  “What’s wrong with this one? It’s big enough for three of us.”

  “It’s only made for two. And two ain’t you.”

  “Why you gotta be like that?”

  “I’m being like that, so get away from here.”

  “Is this building dangerous?”

  “Why you say that?” the second man asked me.

  “I saw cops patrolling.”

  “Where?”

  “Couple of blocks down. That’s why I came here. They’re congregating or something.”

  The two thugs looked at each other. I pointed behind me.

  “Back there a block. That’s why I asked if this building is dangerous, because if it is, then I’ll move to another sidewalk. But if it’s empty, then I should go inside and dry my feet.”

  The first thug put his joint in his mouth and pointed at me. “You’re not drying your feet in there. Who are you? Get out of here, you sidewalk johnny bum.”

  “My name is Johnny. I told you that already. You two smoke too much dope. You’re getting stupid.”

  “I’m about to stupidly punch you. Who are you? Get out of here!”

  “All right, all right.”

  I marched around them to the door they were guarding, opened it, and closed it behind me.

  I peeked through the peephole of the door, and the two thugs just stood there looking at each other.

  “What did he just do?” asked the first one.

  “He walked right past us and went inside.”

  “How did he do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I leaned back and locked the other locks; each made a loud noise. I looked through the peephole again.

  “Why did he do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He locked us out.”

  “I know.”

  I shook my head. I spent two hours pretending to be a doofus with them, but they were doofuses of the dope kind.

  Inside was dimly lit. The ceiling had low ambient light, but the long hallway was pitch black. At the end, I knew someone was there. I had my night glasses on. I only wore glasses in the dark and I saw him—Red.

  “I see you,” I said.

  “I see you,” Red said, sitting in the dark on a stool against the wall at the far end of the hallway. His voice slightly echoed.

  There was banging on the front door.

  “Open the door!” said one of the two dope doofuses.

  “You were out there quite a while with them,” Red said.

  “I have no interest in you or your two playmates outside.”

  “They’re not my playmates. They’re the hired help. Good help is so hard to find, nowadays. That’s why I have to do all my work myself. So it’s done right.”

  “They have employment agencies you know—even for criminals.”

  “Do they now? Any good workers?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m not a girl-kidnapping criminal.”

  “There it is. You should have played it out longer.”

  “You try standing out in the rain with a couple of doofuses and see how long your patience lasts.”

  “You got a point there.”

  “Give me the little girl, and I’ll be out of here like mice on ice.”

  “Nah, I don’t like that plan.”

  “Why not?”

  “I kidnapped her for a reason.”

  “Is the reason worth dying for?”

  “Who’s going to kill me? You?” Red laughed.

  “That’s not nice. Laughing.”

  Red forced another bout of laughing.

  “Very not nice,” I said.

  I didn’t wait as I could see the fur of his rabbit head mask 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. I only 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, people would chuckle, 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 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 with 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 have no one 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, 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. A single ceiling light illuminated 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 t
ouchdown 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, 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 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 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 popped. The girl screamed. I pushed her back and behind me as I fired 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 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?”

  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 while Lutty watched me. 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 watch 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 tiptoeing. 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 I took 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 shotgun.

  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 kid’s 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 made that impossible.

  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-Time’s to Police One to here. I learned that I was entirely too good at the violence thing. I had surprised myself. I never got 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 detective, who had himself as the client—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 jetpack, or hanging out of their hovervans for wide-angle filming. You would’ve thought I was a rock star by all 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 keep walking away from them; the direction and destination were irrelevant.

  As if on cue, our prayers were answered; police officers descended from the sky by jetpack and created a circle around us. I recognized Officers Break and Caps immediately among them and couldn’t help but 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 was all of the law enforcement brass. They stood there, sullen, and a few were glaring at me. I had embarrassed them, and I knew 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 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 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 hovercar descended. “Why don’t we get away from the rain and reporters and get m
oving 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 would not 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 uttered none 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?”

  “I ran ahead of my Mom down Alien Alley, and he thought I saw him doing something bad. But I didn’t. I didn’t see him, then he attacked us.”

  “I know you didn’t see him doing anything bad. As long as you didn’t tell him what you saw, it’s all over now. No one will bother you again with it. Isn’t that right, officers?”

  I leaned back and watched my Ebony and Ivory “friends” squirm in their seats.

  “That’s right. No one will bother you about it ever again,” Officer Break answered reluctantly.