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.
“What’s the matter, Mike?”
Polchik looked out the window of the diner. Brillo was standing directly under a neon street lamp. He couldn’t bear it from here, but he was sure the thing was buzzing softly to itself (with the sort of sound an electric watch makes).
“Him.”
“That?” The waitress looked past him. “Uh-uh. Him.”
“What is it?”
“My shadow.”
“Mike, you okay? Try the pie, huh? Maybe a scoop of nice vanilla ice cream on top.”
“Onita, please. Just a cuppa coffee, I’m fine. I got problems.” He stared down at his plate again.
She looked at him for a moment longer, worried, then turned and returned the pie on its plate to the empty space behind the smudged glass of the display case. “You want fresh?” she asked.
When he didn’t answer, she shrugged and came back, using the coffee siphon on the portable cart to refill his cup.
She lounged behind the counter, watching her friend, Mike Polchik, as he slowly drank his coffee; and every few minutes he’d look out at that metal thing on the corner under the streetlamp. She was a nice person.
When he rose from the booth and came to the counter, she thought he was going to apologize, or speak to her, or something, but all he said was, “You got my check?”
“What check?”
“Come on.”
“Oh, Mike, for Christ’s sake, what’s wrong with you?”
“I want to pay the check, you mind?”
“Mike, almost—what—five years you been eating here, you ever been asked to pay a check?”
Polchik looked very tired. “Tonight I pay the check. Come on…I gotta get back on the street. He’s waiting.”
There was a strange took in his eyes and she didn’t want to ask which “he” Polchik meant. She was afraid he meant the metal thing out there. Onita, a very nice person, didn’t like strange, new things that waited under neon streetlamps. She hastily wrote out a check and slid it across the plasteel to him. He pulled change from a pocket, paid her, turned, seemed to remember something, turned back, added a tip, then swiftly left the diner.
She watched through the glass as he went up to the metal thing. Then the two of them walked away, Mike leading, the thing following.
Onita made fresh. It was a good thing she had done it so many times she could do it by reflex, without thinking. Hot coffee scalds are very painful.
At the corner, Polchik saw a car weaving toward the intersection. A Ford Electric: convertible, four years old. Still looked flashy. Top down. He could see a bunch of long-haired kids inside. He couldn’t tell the girls from the boys. It bothered him.
Polchik stopped. They weren’t going fast, but the car was definitely weaving as it approached the intersection. The warrior-lizard, he thought. It was almost an unconscious directive. He’d been a cop long enough to react to the little hints, the flutters, the inclinations. The hunches.
Polchik stepped out from the curb, unshipped his gumball from the bandolier and flashed the red light at the driver. The car slowed even more; now it was crawling.