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focused on a page of the Los Angeles Times half buried in the muck at his feet. In the lower right-hand comer was the headline: "GARBAGEMAN ARRESTED FOR COWORKER'S MURDER."
The story went on to relate how Marco Juan San Miguel de Ruiz Gonzales, 25, who was now being held in a holding cell in the Los Angeles County Courthouse, for his own protection, had been arrested for the bizarre skinning murder of his partner, Lewis J. Verbanic, at the Hollywood Disposal Service grounds after the two men had finished their final pickup of the day, from UCLA.
Istoropovich seized the paper, stared at it a moment, then stuffed it excitedly into his coat pocket. He sniffed a lead. Only one thing could have prompted one garbageman to murder another on Tuesday night after a pickup at UCLA. This Gonzalez had to have seen the value of the LC-111 and kept the computer. He had wanted it badly enough to kill, but he was still an amateur, Istoropovich thought as he ran down the filthy mound of the dump toward his car. An amateur with a very short time to live. The LC-111 was strictly for the pros.
Through a mist of Quaaludes and Kool-Aid, Helen Wheels saw several figures rooting through the trove of the Garbage of the Stars. She opened her mouth to speak, but only a belch came out. The figures coming into focus seemed to notice her, and she smiled fuzzily.
Her vision was obstructed by thick crusts of mucus over her eyelids, brought on by hours of drug-induced sleep in the septic conditions of the
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Hollywood Disposai Service grounds. Once the crud was out of her eyes and safely nestled in the folds of her sleeve, she saw that the figures were five or six males dressed in chrome and leather.
"I told you she'd be here," one of the group snickered. "Whatcha doin', Helen? Looking to stretch out with a rotten banana?" The group laughed loudly.
"Hi, Ratman," she said.
"Me and the guys were looking for some action. You know, the heavy stuff."
Helen's voice was a squeak. "I told you, I'm not into that anymore," she said, rubbing her hand over her blue crewcut. "You burned off all my hair the last time."
"We just got kinda carried away. It won't happen again. Honest." He crossed his heart in a broad pantomime the others found uproariously funny.
"You all got girlfriends," she said, trying to raise her rubber legs from the debris.
"Yeah, but they ain't as low as you," another member of the group chimed.
The one called Ratman moved closer. "Listen, fly turd," he said, "You come out here from the boondocks looking for some real men. Well, who takes you in, huh? Who shows you the good times?"
"I didn't have a good time with you, Ratman. You just beat me up and sicced your creepy friends on me and stuck pins through my nose and set my hair on fire. It wasn't like in the movies."
"We're New Wave, fly turd. And you loved it."
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"I didn't." She struggled to her feet. "That's why I ran away from you. I just want you to leave me alone."
"Hey, fellas, she wants us to leave her alone. How 'bout that?"
Someone wearing a row of safety pins in his ears pulled a short, heavy linked chain from inside his jacket. "I don't think I want to leave her alone," he said.
"Ironhand never could stop playing with garbage. Hey, just like you, huh, Helen? Maybe you two garbage freaks ought to get together."
"Go away," she said miserably.
"We'll go away," Ratman said. "But first, we're gonna teach you a lesson about running away from the High Riders."
He grabbed her wrist. She struggled, but another High Rider had her by the leg, and then the whole group was carrying her as she screamed and bucked, to the top of the mountain of garbage.
"You're no High Riders," she yelled frantically. "You're just a bunch of losers."
A fist shot into her abdomen. She looked around in panic. The place was deserted. Helen's fellow scroungers in the Garbage of the Stars had all left for other hunting grounds as soon as the High Riders had appeared. She was alone with the young toughs she thought she had left behind. As the sun blazed high in the California sky, they set her roughly on the debris. One of them picked up an old tin can and scooped it full of dirt. He tossed it in her face.
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They waited until her coughs and sputters died down before the Ratman spoke.
"Now, just so you know what happened to you, in case you pass out or anything, I'm going to lay it out for you now. First, we're all going to take turns doin' you. You'll like that part. Old Smiley'11 be last, cause he got the creepy crawlies. Then we're gonna make sure you don't run away from nowhere again, 'cause we're going to break both your legs and both your arms. Then Ironhand's going to chain you up real good, and ..."
He took out a packet of matches and lit one. Helen swallowed hard as the flame danced in the breeze and burned to the bottom.
"Oh, please, Ratman, please ..."
"The Garbage of the Stars is gonna burn, baby," he said slowly. "And when they find your little red boots, there ain't gonna be nothing in them but ashes."
"Fink ashes," Ironhand said. He moved toward her head, the chain winding tightly between his fists.
"Don't, please don't," Helen uttered helplessly as the chain came down slowly, teasing around her neck. Her body was caught with trembling, and she closed her eyes. Then, for no explicable reason, the cold links of the chain lifted from her throat, and the one called Ironhand was looking away from her into the distance. The others were looking in the same direction. She twisted her head around to see, about ten feet away, a thin man approaching, with dark hair and very thick wrists, and wearing a black T-shirt.
"What's going on?" the stranger asked.
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"We're just having a little fun with the lady," Ratman sneered.
"Suppose you have your fun without the lady."
"Suppose you learn how to live without legs," Ratman suggested, bringing a knife swooping toward Remo's face. The knife missed, arced, and then it was falling to the ground „.because Rat-man's hand had left his body and was succumbing to gravity. He screamed at the bloody stump for a moment, but stopped when two fingers to his windpipe sent him careening back silently into an abandoned refrigerator. The impact made the refrigerator rock and roll backward, landing on top of its contents with a thump.
The one they called Ironhand flashed his chain out in front of him. The sight of the metal chain swooping through the air, making a low hum, terrified the girl on the ground. It caused a thin smile to appear on the lips of Ironhand. Remo thrust his foot out, met the last link of the chain perfectly, and sent it back to its owner with a crack. When the chain lodged between Iron-hand's legs, his smile disappeared. So did his manhood.
Two others charged Remo. They realized that the attack was a mistake as soon as they were two feet below ground level, their heads clearing the earth as they were steamshoveled downward, their teeth leading the way. The others ran.
The girl rose slowly to her feet. "Hey, that was really incredible," she said.
"So's your face." Helen's spectacular makeup had streaked downward, making her look like a mime. Still, beneath the red and black smears, it
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was the face of a pretty girl in her early twenties. The baby smoothness of her cheeks seemed out of keeping with her odor, which reminded Remo of the riper residents of New York's Bowery.
"Suppose you tell me what you were doing in a garbage dump in the first place," Remo said.
"The same thing you are," she answered blithely, searching the ground with sweeps of her hands. "Looking for the garbage of the stars." A few feet away, she emitted a little squeal and ran back, waving a gray rag with elastic across the top.