Alan E. Nourse - The Bladerunner (6 page)

One of the police pounced on it while two more moved between Billy and the stairwell. As he struggled to his feet, Billy saw Doc's heli-cab gaining altitude, moving swiftly to the north, with no sign of pursuit. Then a policeman had one of Billy's arms pinned behind his back. "That's all, Buddy," he said. "You'd better come along. We'll worry about your friend there later." His captor pushed Billy forward, and a moment later he was sitting in handcuffs at the rear of the police craft as it lifted from the roof and moved off into the southwestern sky.

It had happened so swiftly and inexplicably that Billy Gimp had had no opportunity to gather his wits. He had moved instinctively, and only when it was all over was there time to sit back and analyze what he had done and what had happened as a consequence. Instinct had told him that the police would have nailed both of them if he had tried to escape with Doc in the heli-cab; only by presenting a moving target on the rooftop had he enabled Doc to break away at all. And instinct had also told him that of the two of them it was Doc's escape that was most imperative. The Department of Health Control could arrest Billy, interrogate him, fine him or harass him in a dozen different ways without creating so much as a ripple of alarm in the complex world of underground medicine; at best the authorities would have apprehended a minor felon who might have his knuckles rapped, but would sooner or later be released to go back unhindered to his felonious pursuits. To apprehend a doctor engaged in illegal practice in the medical underground was quite a different matter. Health Control seldom managed to convict a renegade doctor, but when they did, that doctor's medical career was over for good, as his medical credentials were stripped and he was subjected to fines, criminal prosecution, imprisonment and public disgrace. A captured bladerunner was out of business for a few days at worst; a convicted doctor was out of business permanently, together with any bladerunners and suppliers that might be convicted with him.

Thus Billy's move on the rooftop to allow Doc to escape had not been entirely a selfless sacrifice. Billy had done what
had
to be done at the time even though it meant his capture. It was only later and in retrospect that it occurred to Billy that there was something decidedly odd about the way the trap had been closed.

For one thing, the arresting police team had seemed totally and exclusively interested in
him.
Once they had him in the copter he was handcuffed, searched and relieved of the flight bag and his wallet—yet there was no interest expressed about the apartment building, nor did they even question him about where he had been. Granted that questioning would have done them little good, and searching six hundred apartment units under that one roof would have been manifestly impossible, but the total lack of interest struck Billy as surpassingly odd.

Nor was that all, once he stopped to think about it. They had not only ignored the apartment building but the fleeing heli-cab as well. No alert had been radioed, no cab number turned in, nor any kind of alarm set up. The police, in effect, had closed their net swiftly and efficiently on the little fish, and let the big fish slip away right under their noses—and this, it seemed to Billy, was more than passing strange.

At the time, of course, there had been no opportunity to think. The police had muscled him into the rear cab of the big police copter, revved the motors and lifted up, heading a few miles southwest to the heavily built-up business section of Trenton Sector. They settled down again on the rooftop pad of a central police precinct station, and the procedure, once inside, was standard police procedure, up to a point. Billy was fingerprinted and photographed, then taken into a room to be stripped and searched by a beefy and ungentle police sergeant. He objected to removing the shoe from his bad foot, but the sergeant insisted, duly noting the clubfoot deformity down on his report sheet. Finally he was allowed to dress again—but at that point the procedure veered from what Billy had expected. There was no formal booking such as he had experienced on previous arrests, no police interrogation, no threats or blandishments. Instead he was taken to another room, a small cubicle with a single high window, an intercom, a computer console, a bright overhead light, a magazine rack, two chairs and a table, and there he was left to wait.

He waited, uneasy and irritable. On the magazine rack he found a Book of Mormon with the covers torn off, two comic books and a superannuated issue of the
Police Gazette.
He leafed through the latter, reading the details of an obscure axe murder, then tossed it aside and paced. Outside he could hear the normal commotion of people coming and going in the station, but nobody came near the door. Then finally, after a wait that seemed hours long, the door opened and a heavy-set man came in, wearing a gray business suit and carrying a briefcase. On his lapel was a small Department of Health Control emblem.

"It's about time," Billy said.

The man gave him a sour look and sat down at the computer console. From the briefcase came a pile of report sheets, together with Billy's wallet. The man punched at the computer controls for a moment, glancing now and then at the print-out sheet. Finally he dumped Billy's wallet out on the table, sifting, with pudgy fingers, through half a dozen phony ID cards.

"Interesting," the man said finally. "Just for the hell of it, what
is
your name?"

"Billy."

"Billy what? You've got seven cards here with a different name and ID number on each one." When Billy didn't answer, the man looked up at him sharply. "Look, we can dig it out with the computer if we have to, but why sit around here for six or eight hours playing games? What's your real name?"

Billy squirmed and shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know," he said finally.

"You don't know your own name?"

"Well, if you'd rattled around foster homes for ten years, you wouldn't know yours either," Billy retorted. "One place listed me as William Beckingham III, but they could have made it up for all I know."

"What about your folks?"

"Both gone, killed in the Health Riots when I was a baby. My pop must have been a doctor or a scientist or something. I never did know."

"But your friends call you Billy Gimp," the man said. "What'? this with the foot, anyway?" He glanced at the computer print-out. "The record says you had first-stage repair of a clubfoot at age two, but the second and third stages were postponed. Under-age for consent, I suppose. But you're old enough now. Why haven't you had it fixed?"

"Try and guess," Billy said.

"Well, it's your foot."

"Let's say I don't like the price of free health care too much."

"But you seem to be up to your neck in illegal health care."

Billy just looked at him.

The man sighed, picked up a police report sheet. "At eleven thirty-one p.m. suspect was apprehended emerging from Apartment Complex Eight Sixty-one, Trenton Sector," he read. "Suspect had in his possession a flight bag containing the following items: one baggage locker key; six disposable surgical gowns; three surgical masks; two sets of used surgical drapes; one portable suction apparatus; one quarter liter of vinyl ether; two ether masks; assorted scalpels, hemostats, needle holders and sutures; two tonsil curettes—" He looked up. "Do I really have to go on with this?"

"All right, I know what was in the bag," Billy said. "So why don't you book me and have it over with?"

"Book you? What good would that do? We want to know about your operation, who else is involved. Maybe we won't even want to book you if you play ball."

"That I've got to see," Billy said.

"Well, why not give us a try? We're not police, we're Health Control. We don't want you eating up our budget in jail somewhere. All we want is to protect the public from illegal medical practices. Now, where were you using all that stuff tonight?"

"In Apartment Complex Eight Sixty-one," Billy said.

"Fine. Like what apartment?"

Billy just shrugged.

"All right, who were you with? Which doctor?"

"You don't really think I'm going to tell you, do you?"

"Well, then let me tell you." The man pulled a sheaf of typewritten notes from a folder. "This is a surveillance report of your activities during the past twelve hours. About four fifteen p.m. you found a bug in your room and immediately disconnected both your phone and your computer. Went to a public phone booth, used a false ID to place a call. Proceeded on foot to the antique shop of one Jack Masters, more generally known as Parrot. You came out empty handed after thirty minutes, went to your room, went to Lazy Louie's for dinner, then went to pick up a blue flight bag from locker number seven-four-three-eight at the Two Hundred

Ninety-first Street heli-port. Rode the monorail down to Health Control Hospital Number Seven—Do I have to go on?"

"Sounds like you've got all the data you need," Billy said.

"Not quite all. You could fill in some important holes."

"Sorry." Billy shook his head.

"There are ways to get the information, you know. If we book you for a grand jury probe, you'd face pretrial drug interrogation."

Billy sat up, suddenly alert. "Not without a court order, I wouldn't."

"So we'll get a court order."

"Oh, no, not with what you've got. The most you've got on me is a misdemeanor, and that's no grand jury offense. If you had anything more, you wouldn't be sitting here talking. Now I want out of here. Either book me or don't book me. If you don't, I'm leaving. If you do, we'll have a computer-court hearing right here and now, and it'll convict me of a misdemeanor and I'll pay my fine and leave. So quit fooling around and take your choice."

The Health Control man sighed, gathering his papers together. "You really want things the hard way, don't you?" he said. "You may not like the computer-court verdict."

"I'll take my chances," Billy said. "If I don't like it, I can always appeal. Now why don't you get the sergeant in here to set up a computer-court and let's get going."

It was a risky move, and Billy knew it. A computer-court would have the authority not only to convict him but to impose sentence then and there. The computer-courts were new, developed only in the past decade to speed up the handling of minor complaints, traffic violations, misdemeanor charges, and victimless crimes by adjudicating them on the spot on the basis of unchallenged evidence, presented by direct wire from any police station, precinct office, or street-corner hookup. In any case involving a small fine or suspended sentence, the computer-court could consider the evidence, adjudicate the case, and dispose of it in a matter of minutes. What was more, an adverse decision could always be appealed to a jury if the defendant so desired. Thus the computer-court was often used as a screening court to determine whether evidence was sufficient, or the alleged offense serious enough, to warrant further judicial proceedings.

There were problems, however, and Billy knew that too. A computer-court conviction inevitably prejudiced any appeal to a jury, and reversals were few and far between. But the more Billy considered, the more he sensed that he had to take the chance. Something about this whole stakeout and arrest was strangely spurious. If Health Control really wanted
him,
they had him, without any further ado. There was enough circumstantial evidence alone to convince a computer-court that he had indeed been involved in an illegal surgical procedure. Yet they dallied and dragged their feet and merely pretended to question him, apparently hesitating even to book him.

At Hie same time, it appeared that they had carefully ignored any leads that might have implicated Doc, and to Billy Gimp this did not add up. If Health Control knew his movements so closely, surely they knew he had met a doctor at Hospital No. 7, and they probably knew which one. They had to know that it was a doctor who had fled in the heli-cab, and they also had to know that at least one party to the illegal surgery—Molly Barret —had still been in the building when the trap was sprung. But there had been no stakeout to trace Doc's or Molly's movements; it was Billy alone they had been trailing, and Billy alone they had pulled in.

However he looked at it, he kept coming up with the same answer: they had sprung the trap on him, but it was not him they really wanted. The one they wanted was Doc—but for some reason they could not, or didn't quite dare, try to tackle Doc head-on. They were interested in Billy only as a tool to corner Doc in some way—yet they could not use him if he would not testify.