Four men, two women. Two of the men in the centre of the room were well-dressed, with burgundy corduroy jackets, grey slacks, and just enough class to pass for the sort of gangsters the dames swooned over. Then again, maybe it was the holes in them that made them look like pretty authentic mobsters.
“Hit and run?”
“Ain’t never that simple,” Sinclair said, nudging open one of their jackets with his foot. A buzzer threw its golden gleam at my face. Dead cops. Long case, then. “The patrons started to run outside after the first few shots, and after the gun went automatic, the place was crazy. Supposedly two Red-eyes tore this place a new asshole. One lunatic pulled apart half the joint before it took off. The other stuck around and got canned by the cops that showed up.”
“Fifth boys, right?”
He nodded. “No other precinct has the stomach for this sort of crime.”
“Where’d the carnage start?”
“Few testimonials said the first Red-eye was up there, shot some poor bastard before throwing him off the landing, fuckin’ up the railing.” Sinclair pointed upward before kneeling on the floor to look the dead cops in their lifeless eyes. “Second one came in through the doors, started spraying Typewriter bullets, and the rest went down. First cops on the scene were Ozzy and Marv. They put down the second Redeye by the door. The first one was able to push past, get out onto the street.”
“Fuck, that’s just bad shit. These the only notable corpses?” I rummaged through the cops’ jackets while Sinclair stood and walked over to another male corpse. The stiff looked like it had been through a blender, and I guessed that he’d had the fortune of being thrown from the rafters.
“Another dead cop here, separate from those ones. Three dead badges is one hell of a haul for the Mob if they were the ones gunning us down. You think they’d use their fuckin’ brains pullin’ something like this. Killing cops will get you a target on your back in this city.”
“Didn’t stop Murder, Inc., and it won’t stop whoever did this. If the 5th can contain this, they better be quick.” I turned over one of the bodies. Thick face, long moustache, clean-shaven everywhere else. The hair on his head was matted down with blood. Even grey and dead, I recognized the stiff. “Shit, I know this fella.”
“Yup, 5th Precinct, worked here since the early days. Name on the badge is Travis Barton. The other one is Bill Ewing. Ya probably ran some raids with him over the years.”
“Never did, but I saw him in the station a while back. What about the third fella?”
“ID says Marco Coons, undercover for the 11th. I gave them a ring. Waitin’ for them now.”
I let the grey head roll back to its relaxed position. It felt weird touching a corpse again. Like touching a robot, but squishier, stranger. Like stepping into a house that had recently been occupied and bustling each day. A husk that shouldn’t be a husk.
The guy from the 11th’s wounds weren’t that bad, all things considered. One shot to the gut, another to the shoulder, and several broken ribs and ruptured organs from the throw. So the first machine hadn’t been as trigger-happy as the second one — interesting.
“There’s hell to pay for a cop killing in the 5th. Everyone in the Lower City knows that, I’m sure. You’ve dealt with cop killers before. Why did you need to call me in?”
Sinclair beckoned me over. In a small corner halfway between the stiffs and the door was a riddled husk of an Automatic, its limbs twisted and mangled, its boxy head dented in all the wrong places, wires poking out, the Tesla Battery inside trying to power the broken machine. He grabbed the lifeless head — lifeless wasn’t the most accurate word to use — and forced it open, revealing the Automatic’s brain. And therein lay the problem: there wasn’t one. The Neural-Interface was missing, which meant that this machine shouldn’t have been walking, let alone shooting up a speakeasy.
“Fuck,” I managed to croak out.
Sinclair pulled out a second dart and lit it, replacing the old stub in his lips, and refilling his lungs with fresh tobacco. And him always saying he’d quit smoking. “Fuck is right. Put it together: dead cops, slaughtered patrons, two Red-eyes, and a dead perp with no head? I’ve heard of cops chasing ghosts, but this is pushin’ it.”
I rubbed the back of my head. I wished I’d stayed in school before the War. Might have learned a thing or two to help me. “That’s one way of putting it. Fuck if I know anything about Automatics. Shouldn’t you defer to Red-eye Law?”
“Red-eye Law still requires a human to be present to take the blame, and a Neural-Interface present to tell us who did it. We have nothin’ other than the shell, which is less than useful. Fuckin’ Grifter capek.” He kicked the empty-headed Automatic, causing it to lurch a bit, then walked around to try to ease the pain in his toe. I was surprised. Sinclair wasn’t usually one for vulgarity.
“What’d the other Automatic look like? Anyone get a description?”
“A few of the patrons got a look, but nothin’ concrete.” He pulled out a small notepad from his pocket. Probably not his, though; he wasn’t the type for writing things down. “Uh … six feet, rusted, red eyes obviously, older model. Some said a Swinger model,
