Fatboy Read online

  She shrugged. “Robbery. He thought he was going to find something valuable, and all he found was dresses.”

  “I take it there was no note, no message, nothing like that?”

  She looked down, her expression hardening. The impulse to tell Dennis everything, appeal for help, flashed into her mind, but she fought it off. She raised her eyes. “I think you should assume that.”

  He cocked his head, a faint skeptical smile on his face. She suddenly saw the police detective, questioning a suspect. Well, this was her show; she wasn’t a suspect. “Do you know something, Dennis? Has this happened to someone else?”

  He shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard. But for your sake, Sara, I’m trying to look at the possibilities. How worried are you? What kind of help do you need?”

  Now he’s going to be sympathetic, she thought; just to totally upset my preconceptions. She got up to avoid his gaze and paced a moment behind the counter.

  “Supposing I did feel the need for some added degree of protection?” she said at last. “What could you offer?”

  “A robot?”

  “You have robots that do personal security?”

  “It’s recent. Since Mancini versus Allied Robots found for the defendants in the Supreme Court, it’s been clear that civilian robots can use non-lethal force against humans in defense of another human. So the producers have put them out there.”

  “Are they expensive?”

  “Not really on a leasehold deal. Three, four hundred bucks a month.”

  “What kind of non-lethal force?”

  “Blocking, as in football. They’re pretty good at that. Chemicals, even the safe knock-out compounds. Robots usually have the advantage, because they’re fast.”

  “I can take it home with me?”

  “Oh sure. Keep it with you all the time.”

  Foster would really like that, Sara thought; a constant reminder that she was in danger, that he was in danger, that his comfortable world was falling apart. She stopped pacing and rested a hand on the counter. “Dennis, I really appreciate your coming over. I’ll let you know about the robot.”

  “No problem.” He stood up and grabbed his case. “Remember, I’m available any time, day or night.”

  He gave her a teasing grin and was gone.

  Chapter Four

  KR was glad to see one of his lieutenants hanging out in the driveway when he turned in from the street. He stopped for a quick conversation, and then went into the house and through to the kitchen. It was a warm, busy place that usually made him feel strong, but he had a lot on his mind and he didn’t like it when war broke out with the Popeyes. It made him feel like he was doing something wrong.

  His youngest sister, Rosa, had her head in a screen and didn’t look up. He frowned at her. The kid was going through a bad time because she thought she was ugly, but that didn’t mean she had to stop talking.

  “Hey, KR.” Dolly’s face, by contrast, was bright and hopeful. He nodded at her. At least his second sister didn’t have to worry about the way she looked.

  His mom left the fruit she was processing and came over and gave him a hug.

  KR took a small, heavy bag from his pocket. “Best I can do right now, Mom.” He went over to an old robot cleaner by the wall and dropped the bag into its innards. The truth was, he shouldn’t be giving her anything; he owed the cops and they wouldn’t believe him about the ups and downs in the fashion drugs market. As for those middle class shysters across the canal, he was going to have to shake them up; still only two had made payments so far.

  “You eating, KR?” his mom said. “I got some chili and some fresh bread.”

  “Yeah, okay. You give something to Herbie?” He gestured at the window.

  “Yeah, he ate.”

  He sat down at the table opposite Rosa. She still didn’t look up. “Hey. You. You got no word for your big bro?”

  Rosa gave a small nod of the head but went on staring at her screen.

  KR reached over and grabbed it out of her hands. “What the fuck you into so deep?”

  Rosa gave a scream of annoyance and reached out for the screen. “Give it back!”

  KR pulled away and stared at it.

  Dolly said, “She likes it because she’s in it.”

  KR tried to make out what the students on the screen were doing. Somewhere downtown. Government offices. “Holy shit, Rosa, you kids still into the government jobs thing? What the fuck did I tell you?”

  “Leave her, KR,” his mom said. “She’s learning. She wants to be a lawyer.”

  “Yeah, well she’s headed for a C-spy, not a lawyer.” He half threw the screen back at Rosa. “Don’t you understand the simple facts of life? Don’t you know why we got no C-spies in this family? Because we play the game. We don’t mess with no government jobs. We square the right people. We do nothing wrong. Nothing.”

  Rosa recovered her screen, glared at KR: “If I get a C-spy, it’ll be because of you and the stuff you get into. You’ll do something wrong and we’ll all get C-spies.”

  KR felt his anger rising. He pointed at Rosa. “You can quit that talk right now. I work my butt off for this family.”

  Rosa dropped her gaze. “I’m not blaming you. I’m just saying the truth.”

  “Truth or not,” his mom said, “we don’t talk about it. Understand? What has to be, has to be. And you, KR, eat your chili.” She put a bowl in front of him.

  He controlled his anger and began spooning the food into his mouth, pausing to grab a piece of bread. “Did that kid come by for his shoes?” he said to his mom.

  “Jimmy Flowers?”

  “The kid in sandals.”

  “I should go by and see his mom. I gave him shoes and a coat, but like as not she sold them.”

  He grunted. He should offer to go with her, but right now he hadn’t got the time. He finished his chili and got up to go.

  Dolly said, “Can I speak with you, KR?”

  “Why not?”

  He waved at his mom and grabbed his leather coat on the way out. Dolly caught up with him when he was half way down the block.

  “Can I take the job?” she said.

  KR kept walking. The weather had brightened, and most of the snow was gone from the sidewalk. “You serious? The dress shop woman offered you a job?”

  “I studied her catalogue. I knew about her dresses. She liked that.”

  “She wasn’t suspicious when you asked questions?”

  “I did it... you know... like someone really interested. Which I am.”

  KR walked another few paces, thinking. He wasn’t really surprised that his pretty sister had made a good impression. He’d used her to reconnoiter a couple of businesses. But stuck there in one of them, working...

  “Please, KR,” she said.

  “This woman ain’t paid us any money, as yet.”

  “I could find out why not.”

  “No. I don’t want you asking any more questions.”

  “But I can listen. Pick things up.”

  Well, KR thought, there could be one or two pluses in that. He stopped and faced her. Her arms were gathered around her against the cold, but her expression was wide-eyed, pleading.

  “You know what worries me? You’ll start to feel bad. You’ll see this woman getting mad because she’s making these payments, and you’ll feel guilty or some damn thing.”

  “I’m not that weak. I know how these things work. I just want to learn something about the business.”

  He gave a sigh. “She doesn’t know you’re a fucked-over nigger from the ghetto, right?”

  “Oh no. I told her I was from Geraldtown. I got a friend over there in case I need an address.”

  He studied his sister for a moment. The truth was she looked more Asian than anything else, and her hair was naturally straight and silky. “Okay, little sister. But don’t do anything stupid. I’m pulling you out of there if it don’t feel right.”

  She patted his chest with both hands and tur
ned to run back.

  That was when KR heard the noise. He reached out and grabbed Dolly by the arm. He held her tight and listened. A low rumble and a distant rattle of something like buckshot.

  “Drive-by,” he said, in answer to her startled look. She nodded. He listened a second longer. “Couple of blocks away.” He glanced down at her shoes: a sensible sneaker with a red stripe. “Run home and get everyone down in the basement.” He gave her a gentle push.

  Dolly had an athlete’s build, and she took off fast, dancing over the grey patches of ice. KR ran the other way, towards the noise. He slipped a couple of times, cursed, recovered. He barked a command and the loop-phone around his neck kinked up into position.

  “Cheech? We got us a drive-by. You heard it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m on my way. Nearly at the Springfield turn. Dig out the cannon.”

  “Done.”

  He concentrated on his footing. As well as the remaining trails of slush, the sidewalk itself was cracked in places. At the crossroad he stopped and looked to his left. He could see the antiquated robot vehicle a block and a half away, no driver cab, just camouflage cowling front and sides, the guns mostly concealed. It was lumbering along at about twenty miles an hour and he could hear the thin scream of the plastic rounds flying towards their targets on both sides of the road.

  Nearer to him, a car was executing a 180 degree turn with the speed that only a robot vehicle could manage. As it sped by him, he saw a couple of old folks cowering in the front seats. He turned right and continued his run, shouting at a teenage boy to get off the streets.

  This was retaliation, of course, for his raid a couple of nights before, which meant the main targets were Fatboy, which it couldn’t find, the auto yard, the corner store, his home, and a few other locations dotted around his territory. The kind of plastic ammunition it was using came in tanks, so it could blast away for an hour or more. At the moment the buckshot noise suggested the projectile shape was small and round and non-lethal, but its controllers could change that if they wanted.

  “Sol? You there?” he said into his phone.

  Sol sounded wound up tight: “Hey, man, the bastards are taking us on!”

  “You down in the basement?”

  “Listen, Fatboy can cream this thing. Blow its tires, cut through to the ammunition feed, kill it stone dead!”

  “No, no, no. No way.” He was close to the auto yard now. He glanced over his shoulder. The armed vehicle was gaining on him. “I don’t want Fatboy outside in daylight. Stay down there and keep it safe. Got that?”

  “This is an opportunity, KR.” His voice was a plaintive wail.

  “No. Leave it to us.”

  He heard the rat-tat-tat of plastic shot hitting a fence behind him, and nearly lost his footing as he skidded round into the yard. Danny and Cheech hauled the crude iron-frame gates across the entrance and threw chains between them. Then all three ran behind the two cars parked as a barrier at the back of the yard, where a rusting hoist stood like a gallows above them. Danny threw him a pair of eye protectors, which he put on.

  The vehicle, its camouflage system bizarrely replicating a palm-fringed desert, appeared a second later, swinging off the road with a screech and plowing straight into the gates, which bounced a few feet forward, taking the fence with them. Gates and fence remained attached, and upright. The vehicle reacted like a frustrated bull, using the traction of its eight tires to jerk backwards and forwards against the gates, as though trying to throw them off. Its high forward weaponry was sending a wild scattering of buckshot in all directions.

  KR shouted something and dropped his hand. Cheech, squatting behind the trunk of the second car, gave orders to the two cannon, which looked like trash cans on wheels, to skim forward and start shooting. KR watched through the car windows, not very hopeful. His ammunition was as low-grade as the Popeyes, and the best the cannon could do was fracture the vehicle’s concealed eyes, or penetrate a tire.

  The vehicle was being stupid about the gates, which it could have carried with it if it continued to ram forward. KR almost laughed: it must have thought the wire netting fence, closing around it on both sides, was a trap, a mechanized force to be reckoned with. Meanwhile, Cheech’s fusillade of sharp plastic was leaving marks on the sandy-desert-colored prow, and suddenly he saw a hole appear in a front tire. The tire was one of a pair, and self-repair mechanisms would have it functional in a couple of minutes, but the vehicle, or its controllers, changed tactics: it jerked back and swiveled around to face the yard side-on, and began to shoot heavier pellets from its biggest guns.

  KR ducked just in time. The windows of both cars shattered, and the pounding on the body work of the cars sounded like hail on a tin roof. He felt the sting of ricocheting pellets on his ankles.

  The next moment, he heard the big engine rev up, and the pounding of grapeshot ceased. He put his head up in time to see the antique military vehicle lumber away. He stood up and shook off the broken glass. Danny and Cheech were swearing and shouting, but they seemed okay.

  KR walked around to the middle of the yard, wincing at the pain in his ankles, and surveyed the damage. There wasn’t much point getting mad, because this was the game they played: but the cars would need windows and a lot of body work, and the fence would have to be repaired. More money he didn’t have.

  He spoke into his phone. “Dolly? You got everyone safe?”

  “Yeah. Rosa’s gone, but Mom’s down here. You okay?”

  “Yeah. Listen, I think it’s coming your way. But it’s not trying to kill people. I don’t think it’ll hit you too bad. Just stay underground.”

  “Okay.”

  Cheech and Danny were trying to push the gates back into position.

  “Dumbass piece of shit,” Cheech said. “Y’all see it fighting with these gates?”

  KR jogged through into the next lot and down the side of the house to the street. He kept a car in a garage here, but he wasn’t going to risk the paintwork while the robot gunship was out there, blasting away. As he jogged towards his home, the sound of the robot vehicle still audible in the distance, he spoke with Tank at the corner store.

  “You got no choice, Tank. You and Daley stay out of it. Play mother hen down in the basement. Odds are this fucked-up museum piece will make do with a redecorating job, just to scare off the customers. In which case, tell them we’ll deliver, okay?”

  One thing for sure, KR thought, the rear-end of the robot now in sight, he couldn’t afford any more incursions like this one. Maybe Sol was right. Fatboy could do the job. One night they’d send it over behind the lines and blow that thing to smithereens.

  Chapter Five

  As Thursday gave way to Friday, Sara felt increasingly lonely and exposed. More snow had fallen during the night, and before entering her building in the morning she tracked down the alleyways on both sides looking for signs of unwelcome visitors. The snow was pristine, untouched. She did the same on the inside, despite the reassurances of her security mice; found everything in order; and at last settled down with her coffee and doughnut and read through her messages. There was nothing unexpected: a couple of enquiries, a couple of bills.

  For the tenth time, she brought up the details of the Nigerian charity on her screen, and tried to remember what the toy minstrel had said. Pay seven hundred bucks, and don’t go to the cops. That was the essence of it.

  She’d checked the charity, and it appeared to be genuine. But the general view in the datasphere was that the rundown in oil production had done nothing to stem the endemic corruption and violence in Nigeria, and such organizations couldn’t be taken at face value. Money paid to them could end up anywhere.

  Seven hundred dollars seemed like an odd amount, as though it might be the equivalent of a nice round sum in another currency, or chosen not to breach some psychologically significant level like anything over four figures. The important thing about it, though, was maybe that it stayed comfortably within the legal range
of electronic payments to unregistered overseas accounts. And left some room for escalation.

  She sat back and finished her coffee. Her resolve not to pay had remained intact, but she had been forced to question just how strong her resistance would turn out to be. She sensed little cracks appearing, moments when she wondered what life would be like if the uncertainty went on day after day after day. Well, she thought, that wouldn’t happen. She’d find answers, deal with it. Even if it meant arming herself with a personal security robot and adapting to a new life style.

  She closed her screen and went into the warehouse to continue work on her catalogue. She longed for the distraction, the reassurance, of customers, but her customers, even the regular ones who came by to say hello and look at her new stock, seemed content to stay at home on this snowy winter’s day. She took a couple of video calls and made a sale to a woman in Florida, and received a delivery of some dresses scouted for her by a friend. These distracted her for a few minutes, but she found nothing to get excited about.

  About mid morning her street door sounded and she went through to the shop to find a pretty young girl with a wide-eyed, hopeful, look on her face standing near the counter.

  “Hi Ms. Barnardi. Do you remember me?”

  “Of course I do,” Sara said, although in truth the excitements of the last few days had driven the girl out of her mind. “You came in, what, a week ago? And we chatted about dresses.”

  “I’m sorry it took me so long to come back. I had to talk to my mom and my brother.”

  “About dresses?”

  “About the job.”

  Shit, of course, Sara thought; she’d offered this kid a job. “And what did they say?”

  “They said sure, it’s okay... you know... if you’re really serious.”

  The girl’s face was brimming over with anticipation, edged with uncertainty. Sara hesitated only for a second. The girl had shown a real instinct for value, she remembered, and she had the kind of looks and presence that customers would appreciate. Oh sure, a few throwbacks might take exception to the girl’s racial mixture, which seemed to include African and Asian elements, but she was obviously a bright kid with a proper family, totally unlike the deadbeats in the ghetto community across the canal, so she wasn’t going to pay any attention to outdated prejudice.