Brillo

They went downstairs, Polchik staring and trying to figure out how it was such a massive machine could navigate the steps so smoothly. Something was going on at the base of the robot, but Polchik couldn’t get a good view of it. Dust puffed out from beneath the machine. And something sparkled.

Once on the sidewalk, Brillo said, “Sir, that man should have been arrested. He was clearly violating several statutes.”

Polchik made a sour face. “His wife wouldn’t of pressed the charge.”

“He attacked a police officer with a deadly weapon.”

“So that makes him Mad Dog Coll? He’s scared shitless, in the future he’ll watch it. For a while, at least.”

Brillo was hardly satisfied at this noncomputable conclusion. “A police officer’s duty is to arrest persons who are suspected of having broken the law. Civil or criminal courts have the legal jurisdiction to decide the suspect’s guilt of innocence. Your duty, sir, was to arrest that man.”

“Sure, sure. Have it your way, half the damn city’ll be in jail, and the other half’ll be springin’ ‘em out.”

Brillo said nothing, but Polchik thought the robot’s humming sounded sullen. He had a strong suspicion the machine wouldn’t forget it. Or Rico, either.

And further up the street, to cinch Polchik’s suspicion, the robot once more tried to reinforce his position. “According to the Peace Officer Responsibility Act of 1975, failure of an officer to take into custody person or persons indisputably engaged in acts that contravene…”

“Awright, dammit, knock it off. I tole you why I din’t arrest that poor jughead, so stop bustin’ my chops with it. You ain’t happy, you don’t like it, tell my Sergeant!”

Sergeant, hell. Polchik thought. This stuff goes right to Captain Summit, Santorini and the Commissioner. Probably the Mayor. Maybe the President; who the hell knows?

Petulantly (it seemed to Polchik), the robot resumed, “Reviewing my tapes, I find the matter of the bottle of liquor offered as a gratuity still unresolved. If I am to—”

Polchik spun left and kicked with all his might at a garbage can bolted to an iron fence. The lid sprang off and clanged against the fence at the end of its short chain. “I’ve had it with you…you nonreturnable piece of scrap crap!” He wanted very much to go on, but he didn’t know what to say. All he knew for certain was that he’d never had such a crummy night in all his life. It couldn’t just be this goddamned robot—staring back blankly. It was everything. The mortgage payment was due; Benjy had to go in to the orthodontist and where the hell was the money going to come from for that; Dorothy had called the precinct just before he’d come down, to tell him the hot water had split and drowned the carpets in the kid’s bedroom; and to top it all off, he’d been assigned this buzzing pain in the ass and got caught with a little juice passed by that nitwit Rico; he’d had to have this Brillo pain tell him there was a hassle two blocks away; he was sure as God made little green apples going to get a bad report out of this, maybe get set down, maybe get reprimanded, maybe get censured…he didn’t know what all.

But one thing was certain: this metal bird-dog, this stuffed shirt barracks lawyer with the trailalong of a ten- year-old kid behind his big brother, this nuisance in metal underwear, this…this…thing was of no damned earthly use to a working cop pulling a foot beat!

On the other hand, a voice that spoke with the voice of Mike Polchik said, he did keep that jughead from using a broken bottle on you.

“Shuddup!” Polchik said.

“I beg your pardon?” answered the robot.

Ingrate! said the inner voice.

It was verging on that chalky hour before dawn, when the light filtering out of the sky had a leprous, sickly look. Mike Polchik was a much older man.

Brillo had interfered in the apprehension of Milky Kyser, a well-known car thief. Mike had spotted him walking slowly and contemplatively along a line of parked cars on Columbus Avenue, carrying a tightly-rolled copy of the current issue of Life magazine.

When he had collared Milky, the robot had buzzed up to them and politely inquired precisely what in the carborundum Polchik thought he was doing. Polchik had responded with what was becoming an hysterical reaction- formation to anything the metal cop said. “Shuddup!”

Brillo had persisted, saying he was programmed to protect the civil rights of the members of the community, and as far as he could tell, having “scanned all data relevant to the situation at hand,” the gentleman now dangling from Polchik’s grip was spotlessly blameless of even the rernotest scintilla of wrongdoing. Polchik had held Milky with one hand and with the other gesticulated wildly as he explained, “Look, Dimdumb, this is Milky Kyser, AKA Irwin Kayser, AKA Clarence Irwin, AKA Jack Milk, AKA God Knows Who All. He is a well-known dip and car thief, and he will use that rolled-up copy of the magazine to jack-and-snap the door handle of the proper model car, any number of which is currently parked, you will note, along this street…unless I arrest him! Now will you kindly get the hell outta my hair and back off?”

But it was no use. By the time Brillo had patiently repeated the civil rights story, reiterated pertinent sections of the Peace Officer Responsibility Act of 1975 and topped it off with a precis of Miranda-Escobedo-Baum Supreme Court decisions so adroit and simplified even a confirmed tautologist would have applauded. Milky himself—eyes glittering and a sneer that was hardly a smile on his ferret face—was echoing it, word for word.

The robot had given Milky a thorough course in legal cop-outs, before Polchik’s dazed eyes.

“Besides.” Milky told Polchik, with as much dignity as he could muster, hanging as he was from the cop’s meaty fist. “I ain’t done nuthin’, and just because I been busted once or twice…”

“Once or twice!?” Polchik yanked the rolled-up magazine out of Milky’s hand and raised it to clobber him. Milky pulled in his head like a turtle, wincing.

But in that fraction of a second, Polchik suddenly saw a picture flashed on the wall of his mind. A picture of Desk Sergeant Loyo and Captain Summit and Chief Santorini and the Mayor’s toady and that silent FBI man, all watching a TV screen. And on the screen, there was the pride of the Force. Officer Mike Polchik beaning Milky Kyser with a semi-lethal copy of Life magazine.

Polchik held the magazine poised, trembling with the arrested movement. Milky, head now barely visible from between his shoulders, peeped up from behind his upraised hands. He looked like a mole.

“Beat it.” Polchik growled. “Get the hell out of this precinct, Milky. If you’re spotted around here again, you’re gonna get busted. And don’t stop to buy no magazines.”

He let Milky loose.

The mole metamorphosed into a ferret once more. And straightening himself, he said, “An’ don’t call me ‘Milky’ any more. My given name is Irwin.”

“You got three seconds t’vanish from my sight!”

Milky nee Irwin hustled off down the street. At the corner he stopped and turned around. He cupped his hands and yelled back. “Hey, robot…thanks!”

Brillo was about to reply when Polchik bellowed, “Will you please!” The robot turned and said, very softly in Reardon’s voice, “You are still holding Mr. Kyser’s magazine.”

Polchik was weary. Infinitely weary. “You hear him askin’ for it?” He walked away from the robot and, as he passed a sidewalk dispenser, stepped on the dispodpedal, and flipped the magazine into the receptacle.

“I saved a piece of cherry pie for you, Mike,” the waitress said. Polchik looked up from his uneaten hot (now cold) roast beef sandwich and French fries. He shook his bead.

“Thanks anyway. Just another cuppa coffee.”

The waitress had lost her way somewhere beyond twenty-seven. She was a nice person. She went home to her husband every morning. She didn’t fool around. Extra mates under the new lottery were not her interest; she just didn’t fool around. But she liked Mike Polchik. He, like she, was a very nice person.