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  “Have you learned anything?” inquired Hildy. She got hold of the attorney’s arm, guided him over to a glaz slingchair.

  “I’ve learned that nothing can substitute for a mother’s love.” He toppled into the chair, legs sliding wide. “I’ve learned that nothing can touch the heart like the innocent laughter of a child. I’ve learned—”

  “She means about the case,” cut in Jake.

  “Oh, that.” Frisking himself, the rumpled lawyer located another bottle of wine. “This might be more to your taste, Pace. Sparkling Burgandy With Hawaiian Punch & The Minimum Daily Requirements of Vitamins A, B—”

  “Jake’s case,” reminded Hildy.

  “… And sometimes Y and W,” muttered Pilgrim. He sampled the newfound wine, smacked his lips appreciatively and set the bottle down on the carpet. “You have considerable pull in DC, Pace.”

  “Enough to get me out for a week.”

  “Those dippy peas-in-a-pod who call themselves the Presidents of the USA dote on you,” continued Pilgrim. “They know you and the missus will venture where angels and FPA agents fear to tread. Therefore, they won’t allow you to be processed as a convicted sex killer.” He leaned back, smiling, hands steepled.

  His chair tipped over, spilling him on the floor.

  Hildy gathered him up, got him arranged in the chair again. “We can’t count on a pardon for Jake,” she said to Pilgrim. “No, we’re going to have to solve Palsy Hatchbacker’s murder and turn the real killer over to the Feds.”

  Pilgrim laughed. “That’d make Bullet Benton, excuse the expression, dump in his diapers for sure,” he said. “Problem is, you’re going to have to solve the Big Bang Murders as well. Doing all that in a week is a hell of a task.”

  Jake said, “You work with Lost Cause, so you’ve tangled with Bullet Benton before. Any idea why he was in Chi-2 when the Hatchbacker girl got killed?”

  “He wasn’t,” replied Pilgrim. “He was skiing in the Arabian Alps.”

  “He’s the one who arrested Jake,” Hildy pointed out, “and used that damn stungun on him.”

  “Anonymous tip,” said the redheaded attorney, “Benton got a pixcall, scooted to the teleport depot and arrived in Chi-2 in plenty of time to catch Pace with his britches, not to mention his tunic, sox and skivvies, down.”

  Jake sat on the edge of the piano bench. “Any details on that anonymous tip?”

  “Public-minded citizen doing his or her duty, reporting a disgusting crime,” said Pilgrim. “This particular public-minded citizen used a very expensive voicemuffler, meaning there is absolutely no way to get a usable voice print.”

  Hildy asked, “Where was the call made from?”

  “It was a blankscreen pixphone call, made from the Chi-2 operadrome.” He leaned, swooped up the wine bottle to take another long guzzle.

  “Might’ve been the little guy with the carnation,” mused Jake, stroking his chin.

  Gathering up his collection of wine, Pilgrim wobbled to his feet. “I’ve got to pop out to the Dakotas to see an Amerind client,” he announced. “The regional cops claim he’s the Wounded Knee Strangler.”

  Hildy got a grip on his arm. “We appreciate your efforts, John J.,” she said. “I don’t know if there’s anything further you can—”

  “I’ll keep my eyes and ears open,” the freckled little lawyer promised, nearly falling over a floating end table. “I prefer hopeless ones, but even a near hopeless case like this stimulates me. You can always get a message through to me via Lost Cause.”

  When Hildy returned from seeing Pilgrim out, she made a disapproving face at her husband. “You didn’t even wish him good-bye.”

  “Maybe I should’ve launched him with a bottle of Chateau Discount champagne.” He shifted on the bench so he faced the keys. “I didn’t really think my cause was lost until he swam into view.”

  Hildy seated herself in a floating chair, crossed her long handsome legs. “Someone knew you were going to visit Palsy Hatchbacker,” she said. “Looks like that somebody may’ve also tipped the Feds.”

  “Same somebody also knocked off the girl.” Jake, hunched slightly, began noodling out a slow blues on the piano.

  “Do you want me to come along when you visit Skullpopper Smith?”

  “Nope,” he said. “While I’m recapturing my memories of the fateful day, you better skim through all the information Secretary Strump turned over to us.”

  “We already know quite a lot about these Big Bang doings.”

  “But nowhere near enough,” her husband said. “Nobody, for instance, seems to know what the motive is. See if you can spot one.”

  “You don’t think this is purely political?”

  “Do you?”

  Hildy poked her tongue into her cheek. “No, I have a hunch this transcends politics,” she said finally. “Especially since nobody’s jumped up to claim credit for all the explosions, and nobody’s made any demands, outrageous or otherwise.”

  “The killer isn’t a terrorist either,” he said. “Not in the traditional sense.”

  “Who is he then?”

  Jake grinned a thin grin. “Ask me again in a week.”

  CHAPTER 5

  THE DAZZLING PIMP FLASHED open his neofur greatcoat with both beringed hands to reveal his badge. “Feast your peepers on that, daddy,” he invited Jake, smiling grandly with gold-plated teeth.

  The badge was made of platinum, studded with rubies, and it identified its wearer as a member of the Ohio Urban Police.

  “Very fetching,” said Jake, who was leaning his left buttock against the border barrier that was barring his entry to Cleveland’s Ghetto Village area. “Goes nicely with your earrings.”

  The cop touched one of the bangles decorating his black earlobe. “It’s a bit gaudy, ain’t it?” he said. “I tell you, you understand, I ain’t truly a pimp or a panderer. But if you is going to police Ghetto Village, you got to deck out accordingly. Lots of very rich folks reside herein and they insist on accurate detail.”

  “I have an appointment with one of them.” Jake produced his ID packet from an inner pocket of his two-piece cazsuit.

  “You ought to’ve seen me when I was patrolling over in Gay Life City,” said the disguised police officer, motioning for Jake to pass his IDs across the hip-high barrier. “Pace, Jacob. Age 34.” He looked up, squinting, from the packet. “Them eyes don’t look slate grey. … They is more volcanic ash grey if you ask me.”

  “The robot who filled that in had a very poor color sense.”

  “I might even go so far as to dub them orbs mean grey. Special when I contemplate how you is glaring at me this very minute … Odd Jobs, Inc.” He slapped his fur-clad side with the collection of identification cards and plates. “So you is that Jake Pace.” He ran the entire packet through a scannerbox in the barrier post.

  “Yep, mean-eyed Jake Pace of Odd Jobs, Inc. Can I come in now?”

  “No bells rung when I ran your stuff through, so you is okay.” He tossed the packet back, then fished a floppy rod out of an inner coat pocket. “Got to check you for weapons now, daddy.”

  Pung!

  “Stungun,” explained Jake as the nozzle end of the rod made a noise about his armpit.

  “Yeah, that’s right. Stungun goes pung, kilgun goes glump, gasser makes a bloob noise to warn us.” He flipped a toggle that caused the barrier to swing silently aside. “Didn’t I see you on the SatNews last night? You was mutilating a convent girl or something.”

  “That was probably another Jake Pace.” He stepped from spotless plaz paving onto cracked and buckled asphalt.

  “No sir, man, it were you.” The cop nodded to himself. “Said you was a sex killer.”

  “Alleged sex killer.”

  “Well, the box already say you can come in, so I ain’t going to argue,” he said, tapping the scanner with the fat ruby in his pinky ring. “But try not to go pulling any new sex kills hereabouts, you hear.”

  “It’s a deal.”

 
“See, you got to be a pretty well to do mother ’fore you can afford to dwell here in Ghetto Village,” he explained. “What you see before you is all the color and excitement of Black and Hispanic urban ghetto life of half a century ago, but with none of the hazards. Take them hookers yonder, for example.”

  Leaning in a doorway of a seemingly burnt-out tenement a half block away were two black girls in short crimson skirts and tight lime-green sweaters. They both beamed invitingly when the cop gestured in their direction.

  “They’re actually androids,” said Jake.

  “Exactly, daddy. So if you was to get yourself a little of what in bygone days they called jelly roll offen either of them, you could rest assured you wasn’t going to pick up the clap, the gunk or the glop. ’Cause you can’t nohow get no disease off an andy. Further, you ain’t going to get rolled, knifed or disemboweled. Why not? Because any of that would be a violation of the basic rules of robotics. Like I been saying, you understand, when you live here you get the thrills of ghetto life with none of the handicaps.”

  “Live here yourself?”

  The cop laughed, gold teeth glittering in the thin winter morning sunlight. “Me? I wouldn’t live here even if I could afford it. I got me a condo in the Youngstown Sector, all glaz and plaz. Let these rich mothers try to recapture they roots and they history.”

  Nodding, Jake moved on. It was about six minutes shy of ten. All around him rose very convincing redbrick tenement houses, nearly half appearing burned out and falling into ruin. A quite believable black derelict was relieving himself at the mouth of a shadowy alley, a paper-bagged bottle of wine tucked under one skinny arm. Jake could see enough of the label to tell it was a Chateau Discount wine. Farther up the block he passed a narrow restaurant whose dying neon sign advertised Texas Chili. There were two pool halls next, then a ramshackle hotel. In front of the hotel, the Ebony Plaza it was called, three gang-jacketed black youths were stomping a sidewalk Santa Claus. From the third floor of an apartment a woman’s voice screamed for help, the sound rising above the noise of dozens of loud, fuzzy radios.

  “… sin an’ a shame, yes, brothers and sisters, it’s a sin an’ a shame the way you livin’! God don’t like it!” A street preacher was stationed in the gutter, shaking his fist at the loiterers in front of the corner liquor store. “God don’t like your lowdown ways! He don’t like your sinful livin’! He don’t. …”

  Jake continued on his way.

  When he first set foot on Skullpopper Smith’s block, he didn’t immediately sense anything wrong. Up on the rooftop of a grey stone tenement across the street an eleven-year-old Spanish girl was apparently being sexually attacked by seven thickset youths whose neoleather jackets proclaimed their membership in the same gang that was kicking Santa Claus. Another drunk was relieving himself in an alley. At the nearest corner a sidewalk vendor was selling a soft drink to a blind man and overcharging him. All of it was quite authentic and believable.

  Jake didn’t even turn when he heard rusty wheels squeaking behind him. Just another foodcart being pushed along the rutted street.

  Jake rubbed at his nose, slowed.

  “How’d you like some ribs, brother?”

  A large, wide black man was shoving a battered wagon labeled Mr. Ribbs. He was out in the street, some six or seven feet from Jake.

  “Sounds good,” Jake said, grinning in a rather grim way. “Nothing like nice greasy spareribs, thick with fat, to perk up one’s morning. I’ll just tug out my wallet and we’ll make us a deal.”

  “And, oh my, you is going to love this deal,” promised the white-coated vendor as he dipped a big hand into the bowels of his cart.

  Jake’s hand emerged from his tunic first. He held not a wallet but a stungun.

  Zzzzzzummmmm!

  “What you think. …” The vendor jerked back, stiffening. His hand came out of the hole in the cart. He was clutching at a silvery kilgun. After making a few faint gurglings, he collapsed into the gutter.

  “Androids don’t use aftershave,” Jake said to the stunned man. He glanced in all directions, started for the unconscious man.

  Zzzzzzizzzzzle!

  It came from the corner, from the kilrifle the soda man was wielding.

  Jake threw himself flat, went rolling back swiftly across the sidewalk. When he smacked into a porch step, he flipped himself up into a tenement doorway.

  Zizzzizzzzle!

  The second blast of the kilrifle missed him, too. It hit, however, the outcold Mr. Ribbs salesman and his body began to shake and shimmer. In less than a minute there was nothing but gritty dust inside his white suit.

  Sirens were hooting, alarm bells commenced clanging.

  “Get your ass in here, Jake!” suggested an annoyed voice from above.

  Jake glanced up at the opening doorway at the top of the steps. “I’m a few minutes early for our appointment, Skullpopper.”

  “Just look at the kind of lowlife you attract into this lovely neighborhood,” said Skullpopper Smith. “I’m paying a fantastic mortgage payment each and every month so I can dwell in peace and security. Then you come dragging all your rowdy friends into Ghetto Village.”

  “You mean all this isn’t part of the effort to recreate your ethnic past?” He climbed the steps, quickly.

  “There ain’t no wildass sidewalk assassins in my past,” Smith assured him. “Now get on inside before any more folks get slaughtered.”

  CHAPTER 6

  THE ROBOT WHISTLED. “ZOWIE!” he exclaimed, steam hissing appreciatively out of his hearslots. “What a smasheroo pair of gams!”

  “Why, thank you, Bozo,” said Hildy sweetly as she slid the rest of the way out of the idling landcar.

  “Oops,” said the tin-plated parking attendant, clapping a metal hand to his mouthole and clicking off the tiny jets of steam. “Didn’t realize it was you, Mrs. Pace.”

  Smoothing her short spunplaz skirt, Hildy said, “Think nothing of it.”

  “Most of the middle-aged Westport Sector bimbos who come here like a little flattery and crapola,” the robot told her as he arranged himself on the driveseat. “So they got me rigged to spout gross compliments. Even if a broad’s got legs like the pillars in front of a neoclassical bank and knees like a bulldog’s jowls, I got to ogle and smirk. Sometimes I even clap my mitts like a seal in heat. Remember what a seal was? Furry things with flippers that the Japs killed off up in—”

  “Yes, Bozo, I have many fond memories of seals. Right now, I have to see Ross.”

  “Okay, kiddo.” The robot pressed the shift button on the dash. “You really do, by the way, have terrific stems.”

  “Yes, I know.” Hildy went striding across the pink-tinted clients parking/landing lot.

  Bozo roared her car two hundred pink yards into a very tight parking slot.

  Hildy’s low-heel walkshoes made determined clicks on the plaz ramp which went arching out over the sluggish Saugatuck River to the cream-color doors of Wall Street Wally’s.

  A huge lightsign above the portals made a small barking sound. Its numbers jogged ahead and it now read Over 7,600,000 Sold.

  “Impressive,” murmured the auburn-haired Hildy, stepping through the doorway that had silently opened for her.

  The receptionist giggled when Hildy asked for Ross. She was an enormous fat girl, wearing a zebra-stripe sarong. “Oh, heavens, excuse me,” she said, blushing from tip to toe. “Whatever must you think of me, Miss. …”

  “Mrs. Pace.”

  “Whatever must you think of me, Mrs. Pace?” sighed the immense young receptionist. “I’m new here at the Wall Street Wally’s branch, you see, and I still can’t get used to the fact my boss has a silly name like Ross Turd III.”

  “It’s a fine old New England name.”

  “Oh, I know. He keeps telling me Boston has been full of Turds for generations, but that just makes me. …” She let out a whoop of laughter, rested her head on her green glaz desk for a few seconds while she quivered with amusement. “Fo
rgive me, Mrs. Pace. Goodness. I’ll buzz him.”

  “Thank you.” Hildy turned to gaze out the viewall. Several sooty gulls were swooping at the surface of the river.

  “Mr. tee hee hee … Oh, golly, excuse me, Mr … tee hee hee hee … Um. Mr. Turd, sir, Mrs. Pace hee hee hee is here to see you.”

  “Send her right in, Blimpie.”

  “Really, I do wish you wouldn’t call me that, Mr … tee hee hee … oh, the hell with it. Go right on in, Mrs. P.”

  Ross Turd III was an incredibly handsome and sunburned man of exactly thirty-five. He had wavy golden hair, sparkling sky-blue eyes and was five feet four inches high. “That pinhead,” he said, standing up behind his silver boomerang desk. “I wish to hell I could fire her.”

  Hildy sat in a platinum-tinted shapehug chair, crossing her long legs. “Can’t you?”

  “The last time I dumped a fat girl I had Fat Power pickets all over my ramps for weeks. And all seventy-six Wall Street Wally stock and bond shops across the nation were boycotted by the Overweight Liberation Army and the House Committee on Fairplay for Gross and Disgusting People threatened to hold hearings.” He shook his handsome head forlornly.

  “I suppose you’ve thought about changing your name?”

  “What?” He’d been about to sit down, but now he bounced up to his full height. “I’m surprised, surprised and stunned, surprised and stunned and dumbfounded, Hildy, that you of all people could suggest such a thing. After all, you’re a keen and astute student of American history—”

  “I know, Ross, the Turds played an important part in the epic of American—”

  “Important and significant, important and significant and unique,” he said, sitting, tentatively, down again. “There were Turds on the Mayflower, Hildy. A Turd with Washington at Valley Forge. And who can forget Remington’s immortal painting of the Battle of San Juan Hill? There’s a Turd in that one, too.”

  “Even so, Ross—”

  “Ah, but enough of my family pride,” said Ross Turd III. “What can I do for you, Hildy? Is Jake contemplating further invest—”