Greenies

outlined in the field training manual — and blows to the stomach were most assuredly not outlined — were subject to intense scrutiny by the department brass and the internal affairs division. Cops had been suspended, fined, fired, and even criminally prosecuted for such things.

'Good thing it's Lieutenant Duran tonight,' Brian, who had overheard the transmission, told her. 'You know how that prick Wilson rants about excessive force.'

Lieutenant Wilson was one of two watch commanders that they dealt with on a weekly basis. He, unlike his counterpart Lieutenant Duran, was firmly in the loop for a rapid climb up the administrative ladder. As such, his every action was designed to show that he was in control of the cops he commanded. Duran, on the other hand, was an older cop rapidly approaching retirement age. She had capped out her climb up the ladder long ago and all she asked of her subordinates was that they not screw up enough to get her fired before her pension was secure. She had also spent many more years working the streets as a grunt before achieving her promotions. This tended to make her much more sympathetic in use of force cases.

'I don't know,' Lisa said worriedly. 'Duran or not, you know how they feel about hitting people. Those fuckin' personal injury lawyers have a field day with that shit.'

'I wouldn't sweat it,' Brian said soothingly. 'He hit you in the face. That was the only way you could react to the situation.'

'If they'd just let us tan those assholes instead of making us wrestle with them,' she said, taking out her scanner.

'I know,' he told her. 'And if ten percent of the working population weren't lawyers, we wouldn't have to worry about any of this shit.'

'But the solar system is what the solar system is,' Lisa said fatalistically, repeating an often heard motto in those times.

'Goddamn right,' Brian agreed.

Once their suspects were searched for weapons and dragged off to the side, the two cops took a look at the victims of the attack. The man with the brains leaking out of his skull was of course beyond salvation and the man next to him, the one that Lisa had rescued with her tanner, was not looking terribly well either. Though there was no actual brain matter visible his entire face was a bloody pulp. One eye was fixated off to the right while the other stared unblinkingly forward. His breathing was ragged and irregular, sometimes racing along frantically, sometimes slowing to almost a halt. The woman who had been choked was in a little better shape. Though she was gasping for air and having a little trouble getting her throat and lungs to work properly, her eyes were open and she was at least able to nod or shake her head to questions.

Now that the excitement of the fight was over, the crowd of onlookers began to react in a predictable manner. 'Y'all took yer fuckin' sweet time gettin' here, didn't ya?' A middle aged man asked angrily. He was a Caucasian descendant and looked like he had put away more than his fair share of Fruity over the years. His bare, hairy stomach bulged alarmingly over the waistband of his shorts and his jowls jiggled with each word he spoke. 'If you'd a been here when we called, them fuckin' dusters wouldn't a killed Jeff!'

'Yeah,' added an Asian descendant woman next to him. She was smoking a cigarette and dipping the ashes on the floor. 'I bet if it'd been someone that had a fuckin' job that'd called, your asses woulda been over here for we got off'n the terminal!'

The other members of the crowd quickly picked up the thread of this argument — a common one in such places. Within a minute the angry shouts and accusations intensified to the point that Lisa and Brian began anxiously looking for the arrival of the two additional patrol carts that were being sent to assist with the homicide investigation. Crowds like this, in which many of the participants were either drunk on Fruity or a little dusted themselves, had a way of getting out of hand very quickly.

'They got fuckin' cops on every goddamn corner down in the Garden,' a drunken African descendant shouted. She was referring to the Garden Grove area of Eden, just outside of downtown, where most of the wealthy and elite resided. 'A duster wouldn't a been able to even get within a klick of one of them buildin's, let alone go an' kill someone in one!'

'Yeah,' added a companion, a Hispanic descendant this time. 'But with us it just: 'be there when we get 'round to it!' Shit, we lucky you showed up at all!'

Lisa, working hard to maintain her composure, faced the crowd with a blank expression on her face. 'I hate this fucking job,' she mumbled to herself for perhaps that tenth time that shift, the hundredth time that week. While it was true that response times to the ghetto addresses and public housing buildings were considerably longer than they were in the areas where employed people lived, this was not due to any apathy on the part of the cops. When a call appeared on their screen, they went to it. It was the same with the other patrol units. The simple fact was that the ghettos were just not staffed adequately enough even though they were the busiest districts in the city by far. Eight out of every ten calls to the police department originated in one of the ghettos. But did the ghettos contain eighty percent more cops? Not even close. The ghetto was staffed with no more units than any other section of the city, except of course for Garden Grove and other areas like it. By contrast, the areas where the elite lived enjoyed the highest per capita ratio of cops to citizens. As the drunken African descendant had so delicately pointed out, there were foot patrol teams on damn near every corner. It was, without question, a serious misallocation of resources that was based upon money and social inequality. But was any of this Lisa's fault? Was it Brian's, or any of the other rank and file cops'? Was it the fault of those high seniority cops that worked in Garden Grove? No. But the inhabitants of the ghetto, who were perpetually plagued by violent street gangs, drug dealers, and poor response times when they needed help, perceived that this problem was because of the line cops. After all, the line cops were the only cops they ever saw. They could not take their complaints or frustrations to the city council or the department brass. So they blamed the most visible members of the organization and in the most angry and sometimes physical ways.

Lisa and Brian were both experienced enough in the realities of their job to know that trying to explain any of this to the crowd pushing in at them would be useless. They did not want to hear explanations or excuses. They wanted to vent. The best the two partners could hope for was that the crowd would stick to verbalizations to achieve their venting and not resort to physical stress relief. Things would get real ugly in a real hurry if that happened.

''Get yourself assigned to downtown', the lieutenant told me,' Brian was muttering to himself, although his words were easily picked up and transmitted to Lisa through the tactical radio link they shared. ''It's a lot mellower than Covington Heights, ' he says. 'The Agricorp building is downtown. Nothing bad could happen near the Agricorp Building, could it?''

'And why the fuck ain't you helpin' those people now?' a Caucasian near the front of the crowd demanded of them. 'First you wait a fuckin' hour to show up and then, after you beat up on the people doin' it, you just fuckin' stand there! Them people's hurt!'

'We have the dip-hoes on the way,' Lisa intoned mechanically, thinking to herself that the Caucasian, who was about her age, though looked ten years older, was going to be the first one she zapped if push came to shove. He had the biggest mouth. 'They'll take care of them and get them to the hospital.'

'Yeah right,' the man said in disgust, taking another step forward. 'And they'll sit there in the fuckin' hall whilst the doctors treats people that have jobs first! They'll let 'em die out there in the hall whilst they take care of people with stubbed toes that have insurance!'

'Yeah,' agreed several members of the crowd. 'You tell 'em, man!'

Neither of the cops bothered to dispute this point. Both knew it was true, had seen it happen just that way more than once. 'That's not my department,' Lisa told him, putting her hand on her holstered tanner. 'But I do need you to step back out of the crime scene!'

'Or what?' he demanded. 'You gonna zap me too? You gonna send me to jail? Fuckin' do it why don't you? I'll eat better and live better if'n I's in jail!'

'Goddamn right!' added the Hispanic who had spoken earlier. 'Them motherfuckers in the jail get private rooms, room service, and better pot. They even get them premium Internet channels! They live like them pricks in the Garden. What kinda fuckin' punishment be that?'

'Step back, now!' Lisa said, raising her voice and locking eyes with the Caucasian. She gripped the handle of her tanner and pulled it upward a little.

The man spat on the ground at her feet, barely missing her boot with a yellow wad of phlegm, but that remained the extent of his defiance of her authority. At last he stepped backwards. The crowd took a step back