Water Dictatorship Part 7

Angelo put his gun away. "What can I help you with, today, gentlemen?"

"We're your escort Angelo." Souza said.

"Escort?"

"You're getting the f.u.c.k out of Dodge on the noon stage." Mangar said.

Angelo looked at Souza.

"That's correct. Brown told us to escort down to the airport and onto a plane back north."

"Really? Can he do that?" Angelo asked. He knew very well that it was a violation of his civil rights.

"I can." Mangar snarled.

"Don't make any more trouble for yourself than you have to." Souza warned.

Angelo sighed and counted his options. "All right. Let me pack."

Angelo walked back into the Vista City Police Station the next morning. As he walked through the labyrinthine old building, all h.e.l.l seemed to be breaking loose. Cops were standing around with confused looks on their faces. Suspects and other people were standing around being irritated. Some in louder tones of voice than others.

Angelo observed quietly. He walked around to the back of the building to the old squad room that was the headquarters for the Special Investigation Squad.

Just down the hallway he spotted the Systems Administrator for the Vista City Police Computer Network. She was a short black lady with a funny face and an irrepressibly happy att.i.tude. She was merrily cursing in her native Swahili tongue.

"Hi Uhura. What's going on?" Angelo asked.

Her name was Uhura Young. Uhura from the old Star Trek television show that her parents enjoyed, and Young from their Mormon religion. Naturally, the woman had an interesting point of view on the world.

"Some mis-guided person hacked our system last night." Uhura said. She p.r.o.nounced "mis-guided" to rhyme with "Son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h" but Uhura never cursed in English.

"Well, your computer seems to be working okay." Angelo observed the colors and graphics flas.h.i.+ng on Uhura's screen.

"Yeah, but mine's the only one, and that's because I never let Wild Bill Dornan hoodwink me." Uhura said.

"What does that mean?" Angelo asked.

"Some one introduced a virus that destroys all Geos based programming. It even got my Geos emulators. I run my system on CP/M, and that saved it, but every other computer in the station is down today." Uhura said.

"Any clues about who might have done it?" Angelo asked.

"I don't know, but it was a brilliant piece of coding. I'll give the mis-guided soul that." Uhura bent back to her task. "I'm sorry Angelo, but I have some heavy work to do here, and explaining it step by step slows me down by a factor of ten."

"Excuse me. I'll just be in my office, painting on the cave walls." Angelo said.

"Save me a s.p.a.ce. We're not an effective police force today without the computers." Uhura said.

Angelo walked into the old squad room and took his seat at his desk. An old metal board had been unearthed. Metal pegs had the names of the SIS officers in three columns. There were people off duty, people in the station, and people on patrol. Next to that was a marker board with every one's cell-phone number scrawled on it. Angelo shook his head ruefully. The VCPD was getting a lesson in how important their computers were today. It seemed as though they weren't enjoying it.

Scott Ashby walked out of his office with his cell phone glued to his ear. "No, I don't really need regular reports, Terry...No. That's right. Just if you need back-up or advice. Yes I know. Well, I trust your judgment. Ha ha, well Angelo's back, so I've got to go. Right. Over and out."

Scott walked up to Angelo's desk. "Good morning, Angelo."

"Good morning, Captain."

"Well. where to start? I may have to put you on a uniformed patrol today. The dispatch office was crippled when the computers went down, so they're putting everyone they can out on the street." Scott said.

Angelo sighed and nodded. He'd spent more time in uniform in Vista City than he had since his days at the Academy. but that was part of the job. They were pick up officers and they had to try to be able to do any job that came up. Sometimes pulling extra patrols was the duty of the day.

"First, though, let's talk about your little adventure in L.A." Scott said. His wry tone let Angelo know that there had been some problems.

"Uh..." Angelo said. "My friend's death seemed to have some loose ends. I started pulling and..."

"First we got a call from Ira Johnson, an attorney. He called to check your credentials and than complained of possible unlawful activity and warned us that a lawsuit might follow. That made Moody happy." Scott said.

"I've met him." Angelo said. "He'd like to sue us into the ground."

"Well, I don't want to soak the department for three or four hundred thousand dollars, so let's see if we can avoid the whole lawsuit thing." Scott said good naturedly.

"Are you telling me to abandon my investigation?" Angelo asked. He'd never heard that from Scott, but he was expecting it at any time. Detectives pursued cases, captains killed them, that was the way it worked.

"I'm not quite finished, yet. Later, I got a series of calls from Captain Brown of the LAPD." Scott said. His eyes were bright. "He was highly offended at your presence. He seemed to think that we had plenty to do here giving cows tickets and chasing rustlers."

"I was off duty, Captain. I was operating on my own recognizance." Angelo said.

"Yes, that's why you used your badge to get into the morgue and into the squad room down there." Scott said.

Angelo sighed. He was caught there.

"Well, I really can't say that I haven't done the same thing from time to time, but now I have an appreciation for the consequences of that. That put our name and our reputation behind you, even though we might not have approved of it, Angelo. You committed us in LAPD turf. Believe me, the LAPD is touchy about turf. Now we have no choice but to either cut you loose, or to take the plunge with you. Remember that the next time you flash that badge." Scott said.

"I'm sorry. I guess I'll let it go." Angelo said. It was new perspective for him, too. There were people who worked at the SIS who simply wouldn't be cops anywhere else. Rebecca Stevens had an artificial arm. She wouldn't be accepted anywhere. Sonja Traveler wandered in out of the blue. A lot of her background was hard or impossible to check. Angelo knew this because he tried to check it. Somehow they'd let her stay in SIS, before she decided to move on. Angelo and Marcus should not have stayed cops after the disaster at the Russian Consulate, but thanks to the VCPD, they did.

"Now, I didn't say that." Scott said. "Tell me what you found."

Angelo looked at Scott sharply "I don't understand. Weren't you just saying that I had to be careful with where I took this?"

"True, but on the other side of that there's finding out the truth. What else are we in business for?" Scott said. "I didn't say we weren't going to support you, I was just asking you to try and make certain what you were doing, first. Now, tell me what you found."

Angelo reported what he found to Scott. It took a little bit.

"Hmmm...There's a lot of computer stuff in there." Scott said.

"I don't know that much about it, but it seems as though the computer industry is a large component of the situation." Angelo said.

"Well then, we'll call in our computer expert." Scott said.

Uhura Young looked at the dead screen of Angelo's computer thoughtfully. "Shane Chee was the big thing when he graduated. I'd wondered what was happening with him."

"How might this relate to Randi Aiken-Marlowe's murder?" Alejandro Moody asked. He was the a.s.sistant Chief of Police and responsible for the day-to-day operations of the VCPD.