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  Alice turned toward the elegant, spiral staircase. “Oh yes, George, offer our guest some more Brazilian coffee while you wait for the police. He is quite fond of it you know. Now if you will excuse me, I have a number of phone calls to make. We must see that this sort of security breach does not happen again, and we want to make sure you get to the right prison. Don’t we, Jake? I wouldn’t want you to miss the opportunity to meet my handsome son.” She was humming softly as she glided up the stairs.

  Held in the iron grip of the giant beside him, Jake Roman stared incredulously at her retreating back. He thought he recognized the tune she hummed. It sounded like a nursery rhyme ... John, John, my son John....

  And the Gang’s All Here

  Sarah hurried along the sidewalk with her head down against the stiff breeze, balancing a bag of groceries under each arm. She saw but did not see the hardiest of sickly weeds struggling toward the light between the jagged fissures etched into the concrete.

  Johnny’s small, five-year-old hand clutched her skirt. “Look, Mama, another skeleton.” He pointed with his other hand at the costumed figure lounging against a smog-blackened brick wall. The figure’s shiny black eyes squinted above a red, gaping mouth that leered at them with an eternal grimace.

  “It’s just a Hallows Eve costume, Johnny. Now come on.” She quickened her already fast pace so her son almost had to run to stay beside her.

  Ahead of them, a red devil and a black cat laughed and pulled at each other’s masks. As Sarah and Johnny approached, the cat jumped in front of them and crouched with his razor sharp metal claws extended toward them. “Meow,” he squealed. “Meow. Trick or treat.” He raked the air in front of them.

  Sarah froze. One of the bags crashed to the sidewalk, spilling its contents. Broken eggs leaked onto the pavement. Her heart hammered in her chest. She shoved Johnny behind her.

  “Come on, Bill,” growled the devil. “It’s not time yet. You know the rules. No tricks until at least four o’clock.”

  “Meow,” the cat squealed. “Darn, Jeff, I was just havin’ a little fun. These two wouldn’t be any fun anyway. They’re both too skinny to put up much of a fight.” He raked his claws at them again and laughed as he joined his friend. They began shoving each other and laughing as Sarah grabbed Johnny and rushed on.

  “Mama, the groceries,” cried Johnny as his little legs struggled to match her longer stride.

  “Forget them. It’s all right. It was stupid to go out this late today anyway.” She glanced up at the murky, overcast sky and berated herself for not noticing the time, today of all days.

  Suddenly the warning sirens, shrieking like a million tortured souls in agony, wailed from the street speakers. Johnny slammed his hands over his ears.

  Oh, God! Not yet, she prayed.

  She glimpsed the stoop of their tiny house as she turned the corner. For the first time, she was glad to see the peeling gray paint and broken brick of her front steps.

  All Hallows Eve, the night of amnesty for the uncontrollable gangs, had begun. The police would not be out tonight. This was the night set aside for street gangs to rumble. To reign. In exchange, they agreed to an uneasy peace for the rest of the year. It worked—mostly.

  Her hands were shaking so violently, she dropped her key twice before she got the door unlocked. Slamming the heavy wooden door open and herding her son inside, she said, “It’s four o’clock. Lock the doors. Hurry!” She scurried around closing all the blinds, checking the steel locks on the windows, mumbling under her breath, “No time. No time. They’ll be here. They’re coming....”

  The pop-pop of gun fire in the distance silenced her mumbling. She became a statue, listening, not breathing, eyes wide, head cocked to the side. Her shoulders slumped, she gasped a breath of air and whispered, “Johnny? Johnny, where are you?”

  “Here, Mama. In the kitchen.” He came through the door carrying a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread and an orange.

  “Come here. What are you doing? You know it’s time. I’ve got everything we need. Hurry!” She pushed him toward the stairs.

  “I was hungry, Mom.”

  “You can eat later.”

  Johnny hopped down the stairs to the basement with the exuberance of youth, the bag of bread bouncing on his shoulder. His mother followed and slammed the door shut as the cracking explosion of a homemade bomb sounded from outside. Close. That one’s real close. She snapped all four locks in rapid succession, then leaned against the rough wood with its peeling paint that was once white, but now was the color of urine. The musty smell of old earth and mold assailed her. No matter how much disinfectant I use, I can’t get rid of that smell. I guess it doesn’t matter. Not much matters any more. Except Johnny. She sighed and hurried down the stairs.

  Johnny sat cross-legged on the steel cot against the far wall of the damp room. A single light bulb swung gently from the ceiling, making the shadowy corners seem to shudder. She sat next to him on the scratchy blanket and clasped her graceful hands together so they wouldn’t tremble. She tried not to think about the shotgun waiting beneath the cot.

  “Mama?” Johnny’s blue eyes sought hers. A frown creased his freckled forehead. “Why do they call it All Hallows Eve?”

  She smoothed an indomitable lock of auburn hair from over his eye. His hair immediately fell back to take possession of its rightful place, and she smiled. “I don’t know, Son. I think it has something to do with tradition. When I was a little girl, it wasn’t like this. We called it Halloween, and it was different ... fun. Everybody dressed up in funny or scary costumes, not just the gang members. We carried sacks to our friends’ and neighbors’ doors and yelled trick or treat when they opened their door.”

  Johnny’s eyes went wide. He drew back from her gentle hand on his arm. “You took bomb sacks to your friends’ houses?” he whispered.

  “Oh no. No, Johnny, not bomb sacks. Empty sacks. They gave us candy to fill them with, and people laughed at our funny costumes.”

  “You didn’t shoot them?”

  She gathered his small body protectively into her arms and kissed his head. “No, darling, we didn’t shoot them. It was different then, before the Halloween amnesty law. Then if someone hurt someone, even on Halloween, he was put in jail and punished. But the gangs grew too strong. Every night, they went after each other and anyone else who got in the way.”

  The crashing of splintering wood and heavy feet running across the floor above them silenced the two figures huddled on the cot. The single light fixture bounced and swung in wide arcs as heavy combat boots stomped across the kitchen floor over their heads. She pulled her son closer to her small breasts, covered his mouth with her hand so he wouldn’t scream, and held her breath while she stared at the worn, dark boards above her.

  The light! She reached for the string pull of the dancing bulb and jerked hard. She felt the string coil around her wrist like a feather snake as it broke from the sudden yank. She stuffed her fist into her own mouth, biting hard, to stifle the scream welling up in her throat. She pulled the shotgun from under the bed and laid it gently on the pillow.

  Johnny began to sob softly. “Shush,” she whispered and rocked him gently in her arms.

  An eternity later, the noise upstairs quieted. A crash followed by two, short gunshot retorts and a strangled scream sounded down the street. Through the earthen walls of the basement, the sounds were muffled but discernible.

  Johnny stirred and squirmed out of her grip. His pudgy, dimpled hand patted hers. “Mama, I think they’re gone. I wish Halloween was like when you were a kid.”

  “Yeah. Me too, Honey. Me too.” She listened to the fading sounds of rampaging gangs as they moved on to the homeless section of town. Their stop in this neighborhood was just a warm up. Her shoulders trembled, and fear filled her throat with bile. She felt like throwing up, but she swallowed hard and summoned a thin smile to reassure her son. “You can eat your snack now, but try to be quiet. Okay?”

  “Can you turn on
the light, Mama?”

  “Not yet, Son. Not yet.” She wondered if they had left anything unbroken upstairs and prayed that they had left no bodies for her to find in the morning. She put one thin arm around her son’s shoulders and rested her other hand on the butt of the shotgun. They sat silently in the darkness while he ate his orange.

  Legal Tender

  “Sure I sold my grandmother’s body today. So what? It’s legal tender.”

  Scrawny lips leered at me from this little rat’s face. He reminded me of one—a rat—like the big sewer vermin that the exterminators can’t get rid of.

  Greasy, black hair hung in limp strands over his inky eyes as they blazed defiance at us. He shook his emaciated fist at us and growled. “I needed my Happydaze. Didn’t get enough but for one hit. It’s the government’s fault anyway. If they would’ve made Happydaze legal, it wouldn’t cost so much.” He shoved his dirt incrusted hands into his pockets and glared at me.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “It’s always someone else’s fault. Isn’t it, kid?”

  The rat jerked his hands out of his pockets and shook his fist again. “It is your fault, cop! You made the law that says I can’t have it. You made the law that says selling dead people for their organs is okay. You take the blame for my pore ol’ granny havin’ to be cut up ‘stead of bein’ buried proper like.”

  I grabbed his flailing fist and twisted. “Cuff him,” I told Shelly.

  Shelly twisted his other arm behind his back and slammed the electrons on his wrists. “Shut up, Punk,” she shouted. “I gotta’ read you your rights.”

  She ran the speech through the two way so the little rat couldn’t claim later that he didn’t get fair treatment. The receiver at the station picked it up and recorded it. “Did you hear that, Punk?” she asked.

  He spat through brown stained teeth onto the street just missing her shoes by inches, then smirked at her. “Nice set of jugs you got there, cop.”

  This was her first juvie arrest. I needed to see how she handled it. She thought I was just her partner, not her evaluator. I had to keep up the charade so I pretended to get mad—well, maybe it wasn’t all pretend. I grabbed his track ridden arm in a vise hold.

  “Stop, Gordy,” she said.

  I let go of the street rat.

  Shelly reached calmly for the pressure button on her belt and pressed gently.

  The rat’s arms stiffened as the current ran from the electrons on his wrist up to his armpits. He screamed and fell to his knees.

  She stared down at him with cool eyes. “I said, did you get that?” she asked calmly.

  “Yeah ... yeah ... I got it. My rights,” he moaned. Saliva ran in a rivulet down his grimy chin.

  Shelly stood over him and slowly unbuttoned the top two buttons of her uniform, unpinned the gold badge from her left shoulder and set it squarely onto the third button where it nestled in soft cleavage. She leaned down to the boy kneeling on the street giving him a good look at her chest, pushed the button on her belt again and whispered, “Louder.”

  “I got it, you bitch!” he screamed.

  She released the button, and the rat sighed in relief as the current faded. She replaced her badge on her shoulder, buttoned her shirt and hoisted the kid to his feet. He glared at her with hatred as she loaded him into the police car.

  The girl’s got spunk, I thought.

  “Good job, Shelly,” I said as we crammed ourselves into the front seat of the tiny vehicle. Since the shortage of fuel became so acute, police cars and darn near every other car were manufactured to conserve as much energy and space as possible. With my long legs, I can wipe my nose on my knees while I’m driving, but nobody said being a cop was easy.

  At the station, we herded our rat into the questioning room. We had to wait an hour for two other officers and a Juvie Counselor to arrive before we could question him. Prisoner’s rights laws are pretty strict.

  The rat stared sullenly at us over the can of soda the law says we have offer all suspects to cover us because of the ‘cruel and unusual treatment’ clause. He glared at Shelly then at me. “Why you guys comin’ down on me anyway? Hell, she was sixty-five years old. She wasn’t worth much—skin transplants and experiments—everything else she pretty much already used up. Eyes, liver, heart—nobody wants that old stuff. He stood up and strutted toward the door.

  I grabbed his arm and Shelly reached for the electron button on her belt. I pushed his wiry body back into the chair. The aroma of unwashed skin assaulted my nose.

  “Hey! Cut it out, man. That hurts. I just wanted to walk around a little. You don’t got no call to go shovin’ me around like that. Okay, okay, I’ll sit. Damn, it’s hot in here. Do ya’ have to have all them lights shinin’ right in my eyes?”

  I stared into his cold eyes. “How did your grandmother die? Did you kill her?”

  “What? No, I didn’t kill her. Just gave her the pills she asked me for. That’s all.”

  “How many pills?”

  “I don’t know—ten, fifteen, maybe—I don’t know.”

  “Where did you get the pills?”

  He looked at the Juvie Counselor. “Hey, man, you got a cigarette? No? You got any Happydaze? No, I guess not.” He slumped back into the chair. “Can I go now? Look, I’m only sixteen. You can’t treat me like this. The law says I’m a juvenile. You can’t pin grown-up crimes on me, no matter what I do.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “Ain’t got no parents. My father ran away when I was just a baby. Mama’s dead. Look, I wanna see a lawyer. I know my rights. You ain’t gonna railroad me. I got rights.”

  “The Juvenile Counselor here is your lawyer. Now, what happened to your mother?”

  “You cops are all alike. Always picking on us poor folk. We’re just trying to get along, that’s all. You come in with your big badges and big guns and think we all gonna run and hide like rats run from the light. Well, it ain’t so with me, man. I ain’t afraid of you or anybody else.”

  The Juvie Counselor placed his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Just answer the question, Son.”

  “I ain’t your son, you jerk. Get your paws off of me.” He pushed the man’s hand off like he was brushing a fly. “I done told you all of it. What more you want? Mama’s dead. She’s dead.

  “How did she die?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, man. I just woke up one morning, and there she was. All stiff and white on the floor. All the blood drained right outa’ her skull. Made a hell of a mess. Granny scrubbed that floor for a week and never did get it all out. It didn’t matter though. They kicked us out when Mama died. We didn’t have no more money to pay the rent. Been livin’ on the street since then.”

  “Where is she buried?”

  Ratface glared at me, then shrugged his shoulders. “Couldn’t afford to bury her. Sold her. She didn’t bring much either. Not much left they could use.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “I think Granny did. Two cops just like you two dumbos.” He nodded his greasy hair at Shelly and me and frowned. “Came and asked some questions. Then they left, and we never heard nothin’ else.”

  Shelly moved to stand beside his chair. I strolled over to lean against the door. It was her show now. The counselor started to intervene, caught my glare and stepped back. “Who did it, kid? Who killed your mother? Did you do it?” she asked.

  “How the hell do I know who did it? I ain’t no psychic.” He pushed against the back of the chair pulling as far away from Shelly as he could. He glanced at me, then at the other three people in the room. He stared at the peeling paint on the concrete floor beneath the chair. Sweat ran down his temples leaving smudges on his unwashed face. He mumbled, “Why would I do that to my own Mama?”

  “Happydaze, maybe?”

  “You friggin’ liar! It wasn’t me!” He lunged for her, slamming his knee on the aluminum table leg. The table upended, crashing against the wall with a dull thud. Shelly dodged just as the other two cops fla
nked him and grabbed his arms.

  The mush-mouth Juvie Counselor crammed his pudgy frame into a corner with his arms across his head. He peeked around an elbow while the officers got the rat settled back into the interrogation chair, then in a trembling voice he said, “Wa ... watch it there, you guys. Don’t hurt the kid. He has rights, you know.” Still in his safe corner he squeaked, “You all right, Kid?”

  “Hell, no. I ain’t all right. Get me out of here. That’s your job ain’t it? To protect us poor kids? Make them take these cuffs off. They’re hurting my wrists.”

  The Juvie Counselor looked at me. I hadn’t moved from my position by the door. Shelly and the other two cops were doing just fine. They didn’t need me.

  “Maybe they should take the cuffs off,” said the lardo from the corner.

  I looked at his pellet eyes in his doughboy’s face. Sweat was beading on his forehead. “Why?” I asked.

  “Be ... because they’re hurting him.”

  “You gonna stay in the room if they do? The kid might decide he doesn’t like you either. You want to take that chance?”

  Pudge-face sweated some more, finally he looked down at the floor and shook his head.

  “I thought so. Just a kid, right?”

  Pudge studied the floor some more.

  I looked over at the rat. “Law says we have to notify your family that you’re here. Who do you want us to call?”

  “Nobody. Ain’t got no family. Did have a brother, but he’s dead too. Gang got him while he was diggin’ in the dumpster. Got a good price for his body though. He was in real good shape before the gang got hold of him.” He pinned me with malevolent eyes. “I ain’t done nothin’ wrong. Law says you can sell the bodies. That way the government don’t have to pay for no poor folk’s funerals. Law says.”

  I stared back at him with my best ‘you are scum’ look.

  He flinched, ducked his head, then looked up at Shelly’s chest. “Hell! It don’t matter anyway. The judge will just send me to Boy’s Detention for a few months. He can’t do any more. I’m just a kid. I don’t know what I’m doin’. It’s the law. Couple of months, and I’ll be back home. Shit, I can have all the Happydaze I want while I’m in detention. And a bed too. And three squares.” His insolent eyes traveled down Shelly’s body, then back up to her round face. “Hey, cop,” he laughed. “Why are you lookin’ at me that way? Your face is all red. You look like you just ate a bug, like you’re gonna puke.”