Mind Prey

turn you over to the feds. The federal penalty for kidnapping is the electric chair, my fine friends.”
    The shorter man now turned his eyes up. He was scared and puzzled. “What? What’re you talking about?”
    The two cops on foot had arrived, while the two squads boxed the van. “Cuff ’em,” Lucas said.
    He walked down to the van, where the driver was slowly climbing out, keeping his hands in sight. He was black. Lucas said, “Shit,” and walked back to the two men on the ground. The uniforms had frisked them and had come up with a Davis .32 and a can of pepper gas.
    “So what are we doing?” asked one of the uniforms, a sergeant named Harper Coos.
    “Aw, they were gonna mug me,” Lucas said. “Probably picked up on the car. I thought it might be the other thing.”
    The cops at the van called, “We got a gun.”
    “Run ’em, and if you can do a gun charge, do it,” Lucas said. “Otherwise, you’re gonna have to cut them loose. I never gave them a chance to actually start mugging me.”
    “Too bad,” Coos said.
    “Yeah,” Lucas said. “Fuckheads had me excited.”
     
    T HERE WERE A half-dozen cars in the parking lot outside the company, and almost every light in the building was turned on.
    “Bring me a sandwich?” The voice floated down out of the sky.
    “Who’s that?” Lucas looked up, but with the brightly lit windows couldn’t see anything in the dark along the roof line.
    “Haywood.”
    “I got an extra sub.”
    “I’d pay a hundred bucks for a sub.”
    “I’ll run it right up.”
    “How about, uh, three bucks? Which is what I got.”
    “You can owe the ninety-seven,” Lucas said.
    Sloan and three young programmers were staring at a single screen, when one of the programmers saw Lucas come in. He prodded the guy working the keyboard, who turned and said, “Ah. Hi.” The screen in front of him went blank.
    “Hey. I’m gonna run this sub up on the roof. What you got going?”
    “Um, just messing around.”
    “Show him,” said Sloan. “He’ll probably make another million with it.”
    “Yeah, show me,” said Lucas, walking over to the group.
    The programmers were all grinning at the guy in the chair, who shrugged and started tapping on keys. “You know those screen savers? The flying toasters, and the tropical fish that swim around the screen, and all that?”
    “Yeah.”
    “And you know how some of the magazines put out, uh, pinups as screen savers?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well…” A pinup appeared on the screen, one leg lifted coyly, but her almost impossibly perky breasts in full view.
    “Yeah?” Lucas waited. The woman was pretty but nothing special.
    Until her breasts took off and began flying around the screen on their own, like the flying toasters.
    “Flying hooters—Davenport Simulations’ answer to the flying toasters,” the kid said.
    “If Davenport Simulations’ name appears anywhere on this product, I’ll be forced to take out my gun and kill you all,” Lucas said.
    “Some people might feel it’s in poor taste,” the kid in the chair conceded.
    “Does this mean you wouldn’t be interested in the swimming pussies?” asked Sloan.
    “I’ll pass,” Lucas said.
    He started away and then turned. “What does Ice think about these things?”
    The programmer in the chair shuddered: “She doesn’t know. If she knew, she’d hunt us down and kill us like vermin.”
    “Which reminds me,” said one of the others. “She called and asked if you were around. She said she’d try you at the police department.”
    “When was this?”
    The other man shrugged. “Ten, fifteen minutes ago. She’s at home—I got her number.” He handed Lucas a slip of paper.
    “Okay.” Lucas stuck the paper in his pocket and walked through the back to the stairs, took them to the second floor, then on up a shorter flight to the roof.
     
    H AYWOOD WAS PACING the perimeter of the building when Lucas came through the roof door.
    “Anything?”
    “A bunch of juvie skaters coming and going, that’s about it,” the cop said. He was wearing a black, long-sleeved shirt and blue jeans, with a black-and-green Tree-bark camo face mask. He’d be invisible from the street. “There’s a little coke getting served outside the Bottle Cap, down on the next block.”
    “Nothing new there,” Lucas said.
     
    T HE NIGHT WAS pleasant, cool, with the stars brighter away from the heavy lights of the loop. Lucas handed him a sandwich and they sat on the wall along the