The Paranoid Thief (14 page)

Three days later, as Randolph was repairing
a trash evaporator, two black sedans came to rest at the front of the foreman’s
office. Able to eye the vehicles from within the crude shelter for the unit,
Randolph felt his pulse quicken and wondered why the FBFC would be dropping in.
Surly they can’t know about me?
He
eyed the six men as they vacated their vehicles, dressed all in black, even on
such a sweltering day as this. Randolph leaned on a support beam, wiping his
hands on an old rag, and watched the men adjust their jackets as if to make
certain all eyes in the compound saw the bulging holsters at hip level. As the
group in dark shades acquainted their minds with the landscape, two separated
themselves
and headed for the office building. Unable to
miss the shadows underneath the cars, Randolph pondered the possibility of
escape.
Am I ready? Do I know enough of
the surrounding area to chance a try at getting under one, and dropping off
somewhere along the road?
Randolph knew with a glance the sun had yet to
hit its peak, which meant hours of walking in the desert heat. After only a
moment of weighing the hazards, Randolph wiped his brow and discarded the idea
as too risky.
Others without my patience
would probably have gone for it, but that’s what separates me from the pack. I
am very thorough in my plans.
Randolph turned his back on the possibility
without regrets and began replacing the wiring which had over loaded when a
safety fuse had been circumvented instead of someone spending the 10 credits
for a new one.

Randolph was cussing out the engineers who
designed the unit to squeeze out every credit possible when a pounding on the
side panel caused him to bang his head in alarm.

“
Ow
!” He winced,
not able to rub his head. “What do you want?”

“The boss has a job for you, so pull your
head out of your—”

“But I’m not finished,” Randolph
interrupted the guard’s favorite repartee.

“Then you’ll just have it to do later. Now
move it, rodent!”

Not having a choice, Randolph pulled out of
the cramped evaporator, wiping his hands clean on a rag. “No one had better
turn the unit on.”

Marrowny
, the
burly rule enforcer cut him off gruffly with, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all know
you’re a genius, shrimp. Now shut it and follow me.”

After Randolph obtained the ground, tall
and ugly seized his neck, squeezing to notify him who was boss. “Hey,
ow
, come-on,
Marrowny
, that
hurts!”

“Then mind me as you’re told and keep your
trap shut, you hear?”
Marrowny
said with a mean
smile, holding tight to Randolph’s neck the entire walk back to the offices,
where Randolph soon found himself standing in front of the FBFC boys.

Marrowny
gave
Randolph one last malicious squeeze, causing Randolph to cringe as he looked on
the two men in front of the foreman’s desk.

“There he is Special Agent Zimmer,” the
foreman said evenly, “just as your wanted poster described. Though I’ll admit
he’s not a very imposing figure, he sure knows a lot about electronics.”

Randolph fought down his first instinct to
take flight, reasoning.
Where would I go?
There is nowhere to go but outside and even if I did manage to escape these two
and the trigger-happy men still waiting out in the heat, I have miles under a
frying sun to travel.
Discarding those useless thoughts, Randolph stood his
ground, and upon seeing the metal collar the younger one pulled out from his
jacket, he grimaced.

“It’s true he doesn’t look like much,” that
one admitted in a low voice to his senior partner while opening the neck
restraint and snapping it in place around Randolph’s neck without incident. The
senior agent made no comment to his partner’s remark but instead reached into
his jacket pocket and passed over a credit card to the compound foreman. The
man accepted the card and tapped the display screen, to which he smiled
broadly.

It
appears a bounty for my head has just been paid out,
Randolph surmised,
wondering with a small perverse side of
himself
just
how much his head was worth as wrist restraints were also applied and locked
into place.

The ride to the nearest
Federal Building of Fair Commerce somewhere in the state of Indie, which at one
time had been call Nevada, went by far too quickly.
Only six hours
compared to the ten hours it took going out to the pit in the desert, but then,
who said the FBFC followed any rules
other than their own
.

The black car came to halt two levels below
ground, where Randolph was prodded out, ushered through busy corridors, and
settled in an interrogation room behind three ID check points, the last of
which was only opened after the agents submitted to a retina scan. Seated in a
small square room, looking around at the plain white walls and stainless steel
table he sat behind, Randolph tried to recall all he knew about the FBFC for
clues on how they would proceed.
Let’s
see, besides being a law unto themselves, with governmental backing, they are
slaves to no district or state, which leaves me in deep
kimchee
.
Randolph looked down on his hands, which had been locked into wrist restraints
on the table top, and amended that to
very
deep
kimchee
.
By their locking his hands so,
Randolph was forced to look subservient to them every time he bowed his head to
clear away the sweat rolling down his face, not all of it merely from the
overheated room.

Once an hour of the silent treatment crawled
by, according to his internal clock, the room began to alternate from hot to
cold in seconds of time, during which Randolph received a numbing shock-wave
through the restraints, forcing every muscle to clinch two or three times
before the next weather change. This went on for roughly twenty minutes before
his captors picked a temperature around ninety degrees. The room remained so
till Randolph sat in a puddle of sweat.

“Now then, Mr. McCann,” an annoyed male
voice questioned through a loud speaker behind Randolph’s head, “perhaps you
might like to explain how you came to be in an executive office in the Global
Rift Supply and Demand building in Bakersfield, instead of remaining in the
cardboard box shoved into the city of
Willing’s
crematorium furnace?”

Randolph cleared his hearing with a shake
of his head. “Before I do, could I have a glass of water?” he dared to ask.

“The atmosphere a bit over-warm for you?
Here, let me see what can be done,” the malicious voice replied.

The temperature dropped till Randolph’s
teeth were chattering from the cold. Randolph skipped useless obscenities and
got right to the point of the matter. “Damn your eyes, you needn’t waste your
time in torturing me. I’ll tell you whatever it is you wish to know! Just stop
this crap and get me a glass of water or I will become difficult!”

An hour later, while he sipped at a light
plastic cup of plain faucet water, ever so much wanting to throw it into their
faces—
cheap bastards
—Randolph
supplied the information about Mr. Bennett and his pet project.

My
singing voice may be off key but it isn’t my fault, I caught cold because the
damn fools were having too much fun with the temperature gauge.
Randolph
sat in the now comfortable room with two agents and finished up his unrehearsed
recital. The black-suited men queried Randolph on a couple of points, then
pocketed their mini video recorders and left without a word about what was to
become of him.
I will say I was tempted
to ask my fate, but in truth, seeing their smirking faces on the obvious
outcome of my life would not in the best of times be very pleasant to see.
Still chained to the table, Randolph gave a sigh of relief at their departure,
coughed, and feeling beyond drained both physically and mentally, soon found
himself
escorted through the halls by grim-faced uniforms to
a group holding cell where he was shoved inside.

Here Randolph saw for the men in black,
business was good. As he’d not been offered a handkerchief by his rude captors
for causing his ailment, Randolph was forced to wipe his nose on his sleeve. He
walked unmolested with drooping eyes past the dregs of humanity, whether
dressed in business clothes of the rich or simple attire for the everyday man.
Once amidst the human garbage, Randolph spotted a lone bench against the far
wall and headed for it, holding out no hope for a long prosperous future. Still
wearing the restraints, Randolph coughed in both of his hands and took some
pleasure in seeing the others wore the same jewelry as he, which meant no one
would beat the crap out of him just to prove he was the biggest bully in the
bunch. When Randolph settled on a bench, the two closest to him stood up and
wandered off, whether that was because of his body odor or his apparent
illness, he couldn’t say. But not one to pass up an opportunity, Randolph
readjusted himself so he could curl up in misery on the bench and tried to
sleep, hoping his dreams would take him to a better place for a short time.

Randolph was underground, unable to witness
the passing day or night. Time became irrelevant save for meal time, when the
prisoners were ordered to the bars and handed a plate which couldn’t be drawn
in between the bars. As for bodily functions, a normal result of such
activities, privacy was something he couldn’t even consider. While minutes
passed into hours, Randolph’s misery and depression settled on his shoulders
like a vulture waiting for him to pass on.
Hell,
he thought to himself, sitting with his hands between his legs one afternoon,
I almost wish someone would activate the bomb
in my head. At least that way, I wouldn’t have to go through being executed
again.
But he had to admit the possibility of that happening was about nil.
He was sure the concussion grenade Jill dropped had scrambled the electronics,
because if the device was still operational, Mel would have detonated the mini
bomb long ago. So Randolph wallowed in his misery as time crawled by, marked
only in the occasional removal or insertion of bodies, while the FBFC agents
investigated his story, one he’d told in complete detail with the one exception
of any mention of Jill. Oh
they asked
about her,
he reminisced,
but on that
subject I am unwilling to elaborate. Why did I
refused
?
Perhaps I’m smitten with her playful side or perhaps what she did was not of
her choice and therefore I give her the benefit of the doubt. As they didn’t
peruse it by insisting with more torture, I figure they know all about her and
set the subject aside to keep me talking on other matters they didn’t know
fully or knew nothing about. Oh well, however I feel about her matters not at
all. She’ll be captured with the rest of the group or slide away like she did
when the FBFC charged in on us. Besides, either way we were both living on
borrowed time, so I only hope she makes better time of it then I was able to.

After battling his cold for several days,
Randolph was rousted from sleep by a heavy-handed guard. “
Ow
!
Take it easy, man!” Randolph complained to having his head tapped with a night
stick as if it were a drum.

“Then get your smelly ass up,” the guard
growled as if Randolph had offended his family tree. Then he informed Randolph
of his fate in a loud voice so everyone heard. “You can sleep all you want
after your executed.”

As Randolph already understood his fate,
the cruel verbal acknowledgment did nothing for his enthusiasm for obeying
anyone. But rather then cause himself any more grief in what time remained of
his life, Randolph numbly got to his feet and plodded along like a whipped
puppy.
After all, knowing all along I was
headed to ‘the table’ yet again, I’m not very shocked to his heartless
revelation.
Moved through hallways and security check points to the parking
structure, Randolph was pushed up none-too-gently against the wall at the last
security check point and thumped once on the head for an “attitude adjustment,”
before the necklace and wrist restraints were removed. Once this had been done,
he was released into the custody of a surly looking local city officer; a
rather fat fellow who applied new restraints on Randolph’s wrists then pushed
him up against the same wall and growled into his ear.

“Listen, creep, as I’d rather deliver a
corpse, you best not give me a reason to pull my gun, understand?” As it was
healthier for Randolph to nod, he did so, at which point the officer jerked him
away from the wall and shoved him bodily into the back seat of his squad car.
Once the door slammed closed, Randolph heard the doors lock, and briefly
wondered how he’d already gotten on the man’s bad side.
Or is he always so chipper on duty?
With a mental shrug, Randolph
straightened himself on the seat without help from the rude city cop, who got
in the driver’s side, causing the air cushion to adjust to his heavier frame.
The cop gave Randolph a glare in the review mirror before starting the car and
moving up to street level and their first intersection. He then looked both
ways like any good driver would but somehow missed the fast-moving woman
Randolph caught sight of just before she pulled a very nasty looking gun from
out of her purse! Out of reflex, Randolph ducked and caught sight of a beam of
light melting through the driver window and smelt meat frying near on top of
each other. Randolph turned his face so he could at least see his executioner.

Jill opened the driver’s door and shoved the
275-pound dead weight with some effort over to the passenger side so she could
take his place as if nothing had happened. In quick succession, the door closed
and Jill moved them out into traffic. Unsure if she was there to kill him for
his canary act, Randolph shrank within himself. She tilted her head back and
said with humor, “Hello, partner. Miss me?”