Wear Iron (6 page)

“I...” Strader’s legs felt weak, jelly-like, as though he was in a dream. Some part of him was already starting to put it together, but the rest didn’t want to believe it. “You were at the jeweller’s. Barry Scott Block. You killed Petersen—“

Dredd cocked his head, giving Strader a hard stare. “No, I don’t think I was there,” he murmured, “I think you might have me confused with someone else.” He smiled again, and Strader had a sudden understanding that he should shut up about that, right now, that he should let this cold, cruel, dangerous maniac in a Judge’s uniform tell him when and where they’d met before—not the other way around.

He was still trying to tell himself that he didn’t know how this Judge, this Dredd, should know him, or why he was doing the rounds in Tony Hart, just a stone’s throw from Mooney’s apartment in Jeff Daniels, when Dredd stuck out a hand, forcing Strader to shake. The grip was firm, hard enough to grind Strader’s knuckles and make him wince in pain, and Dredd smiled that maddening, psychopathic smile as he did it.

“Paul Strader. I understand you’re something of a star turn in the stick-up game. My old friend, Buddy Mooney”—he put a special inflection on the word
friend,
like it was a private joke—“gave me a call and said you were thinking over my little, ah... proposal.”

Strader looked back at him, at the eyes hidden behind the visor. “Oh, Jovus...” He shook his head, suddenly wanting very much to be out of this, wanting to be as far away from this man and his plan as he could possibly get. But he knew it was too late for that now.

“Oh, no.” The Judge laughed, giving Strader’s hand an agonizing squeeze for luck, then letting it go. “Actually, my name’s Dredd.” He indicated the badge. “
Judge
Dredd, to the world at large. But you, Paulie...”

He smiled wider, showing his perfect teeth.

“...
you
can call me
Rico.”

Part Two

Six

R
ICO WAS THE
best.

And Rico knew it.

Mega-city was
his
city—it had been since he’d came out of the tank. When he rode down the street, watching that mixture of love and fear on the faces of the cits, that look he lived for, he felt like one of the kings of old, parading before his conquered subjects. Then he’d see his own face in a mirror—the Father of Justice, young again, strong again—and he’d know that’s exactly what he was, a princeling of Mega-City One, playing games in the city he loved and owned. And he’d laugh.

Sometimes, in his quieter moments, he wondered if there was something wrong there—something wrong in his head. When he was a kid, there’d been an accident on a hotdog run, out in the Cursed Earth. He’d cracked his skull, messed himself up pretty bad—taken a lot of rads in the process. It was comforting, every so often, to blame it all on that—all the cynicism he felt, the growing hatred for the system he lived and worked in, all the blind sheep stumbling around in it, never seeing it for what it was. Maybe he was the problem—wouldn’t that be nice?

He wasn’t, obviously. The system—the Judges, the Mega-Cities, the whole damned circus show—was pure nonsense, straight from the head of some lunatic Grud playing loaded dice with the universe. Justice Department in particular—that was the blackest, filthiest joke Rico could ever imagine, a savage act of dark comedy imposed on a populace who’d never asked for it but didn’t know how to ask for anything else. The party line was that the city was crazy, and that if the Judges relaxed their grip for a second, that craziness would spiral out of control—nobody seemed to be willing to admit that it already had, and the Department was the cherry on the top of the whole sick, sad sundae.

So of
course
Rico was corrupt. The
law
was corrupt—an ugly, festering mess that existed only to squeeze every last drop of dignity out of the people and kick the broken husks around a little for good measure.

And Rico Dredd
was
the law.

Better believe it.

He worked alone, for the most part. It was technically against regs, but then so was the lux-apt he kept in Oldtown, and nobody said a word to him about that. They might have, if he hadn’t been as good as he was—but he knew how to play the game, how to juke the stats, get the arrests. Sure, his bodycount was a little high—and occasionally he’d lean on people a little harder than he had to during interrogation, especially if they were innocent—but so what? His cleanup rate was high and he made sure his record looked clean—or at least not too dirty to let stand—and at the end of the day, that was all the higher-ups cared about.

Very, very occasionally, when he was bored, he’d ask his straight-laced clone-brother Joe along on a patrol with him. It made for a few sick laughs. Little Joe, the cleanest Judge on the force, who still kept coming around the apartment occasionally to argue or deliver lectures, who’d probably blow his big brother Rico away in a heartbeat if he ever knew the full truth. And hey, wouldn’t that be a kick? Maybe if he ever got so bored that he wanted to quit the whole game, that would be the way to go out: at his brother’s clean hands. It’d be more fitting than any other exit.

So that same Little Joe, so squeaky clean, would ride right alongside him. He’d be just as violent and brutal and merciless as brother Rico, cracking the same skulls, loosening the same teeth, putting bullets in the same fleeing bodies... but ask Joe after he’d washed off the blood if he thought he’d done wrong—committed a crime—and he’d tell you were joking. Or crazy. Then he’d probably put you on report for unjudicial thinking.

Not that Rico ever did ask Little Joe about things like that—he’d learned that his brother didn’t enjoy answering questions that troubled his boxed-in little worldview. No, he’d just return to his high-rent apartment, fire up the hot tub, sit back in it with a little shampagne and maybe a lady friend or two—everybody loved a man in uniform—and he’d laugh and laugh and laugh. Laugh until he was sick.

Of course, the lifestyle he deserved wasn’t exactly cheap. Oh, he had his rackets, his payoffs—the Prince must have his tithes—but while all of that kept him comfortable enough, there was still plenty of room for improvement. The landlord who owned Rico’s block had a penthouse available—right at the top level, a full view of the city, electron showers, two robo-butlers as standard. Everything Rico deserved. The landlord, a slick old skel from the Greek Wastes who knew how the world worked, had hinted to Rico that he could hold onto the property for a little while, in case the ‘anonymous donor’ who paid Rico’s rent every month as a ‘reward’ for his ‘sterling service in defence of the city’ could maybe stump up another half million a month.

Half a million extra was a tall order, but Rico could probably extend his net of bribes and protection rackets a little further if he had to. Still, that’d take time and increase the risk of scrutiny—it’d be better if he could get the cash together in one big lump. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, he could get himself a decent share of a major-league score—something in the tens of millions...

Which was about when the Mega-City Munch-Off had entered his life.

To begin with, it was just one more notice in the first shift’s morning briefing. “Item!” Deputy Sector Chief Koslowski had bellowed, before taking a second look at the printout and rolling her eyes. “Jovus. Now I’ve seen it all. You goofballs are gonna love this one.” Koslowski ran an informal squad room—Rico liked that about her. It allowed him to get away with more.

“Let’s hear it, Koslowski,” grinned Muttox, a big, half-smart lump of a man—the kind the Academy didn’t want to admit they made any more—around a stick of cheap munce-gum. Rico sat back in his chair, only half-listening. The briefing room bored him—he preferred to be out on the streets, taking calls as they came, with the freedom to do his business in between. And there was a lot of business that needed to be done if he wanted to secure that penthouse.

“The Mega-City Munch-Off Inaugural Eating Championship of 2080,” Koslwoski had said, sneering and shaking her head. “Some kind of eating contest in the Herc—set for the second Saturday of next month. They figure they’re going to fill it this time.”

Someone at the back of the room snickered. “Yeah, I know”—Koslowski sighed—“but this nonsense doesn’t seem to be going away. Actually, word from above is maybe it shouldn’t—a fatter cit is a more obedient cit, and all that. So we need to work on the assumption that it’s going to be filled to—” She paused, reading a little further. “Drokk-a-doodle-doo,” she muttered, and Rico leaned forward, paying a little more attention. Could be this was going to be more interesting than he’d thought.

“No tickets will be sold ahead of time,” Koslowski read, slowly and carefully—as if to make sure she could believe the evidence of her own eyes. “Thousand creds a ticket, cash only. Only the first hundred thousand will be seated. Jovus on a plate.” She shook her head, disgusted, as a murmur went through the room. “You couldn’t come up with a better recipe for a riot if you tried.”

“Shut it down,” Friedricks scowled. She was a no-nonsense type who’d transferred from Sector 47—word had it that she’d done her assessment while the first bombs were dropping in the war. Rico avoided her—she was a stickler if he’d ever seen one. Almost as bad as his brother.

And now—if his math was right—she was trying to get in the way of the kind of payout he’d been hoping for. Rico began to wonder if avoiding her had been the right move—maybe he should have taken a more proactive approach. Maybe he should have killed her.

Like he’d killed Kenner, the invigilator at his assessment, when the old man had started to get wise to what his golden ex-rookie was up to—and what a kick
that
had been! He’d set the old bastard on fire first, then played target practice—shooting to wound, not to kill, denying the craggy old has-been his mercy shot. And all the time, he hadn’t stopped laughing.

Good times.

Rico leaned forward, trying not to look to anxious. Surely this had already gone through all the channels...?

“It’s gone through all the channels—rubber-stamped from on high. Guess some desk jockey really likes the idea of eating contests.” Koslowski sighed, aggravated. Rico nearly sighed along with her. He could
taste
his relief.

“All right. Every single one of you is going to be on crowd control for this thing—probably all of Shift Two as well. I’ll draft Shifts Three and Four in to cover you on the streets, which is probably going to mean a double shift for all of you somewhere down the line...” There was a low rumble of dissent at that, and Koslowski shot the room a hard look in response. “Do we have a problem? Because if you don’t like being a Judge today, I’ve got good news—civvy street is just down the hall. Have fun spending your life watching vid-soaps with the rest of the cits.”

The murmuring died down.

“Now, it looks like we’ll need most of our units on the outside of the Stadium, controlling the queues and dealing with whatever backlash we get when the gates close. I figure if we have enough helmets on the ground, we can keep control of the situation and maybe—
maybe
—shut down any serious trouble before it starts. Friedricks, you’ll be heading up that contingent.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Friedricks said, snapping an unironic salute off.

“Meanwhile, we’ll do our usual search and sweep job on the gate and in the crowd. That’ll have to be the bare minimum for a crowd that size. I can spare maybe fifty of you, so you’ll be working overtime and then some.”

Muttox chewed his gum contemplatively—like a cow, Rico thought—and stuck his hand up. “Outside people can help wit’ that. Search the queues—pick out any weapons, drugs, search anybody even smells weird. Then we run a scanner over what’s left at the gate—you know, to make double sure. That way, we got most of the trouble weeded out, and it’s just, uh...” He grinned. “Naturally-occurin’ trouble. Like when any two cits get in the same room.”

Friedricks looked over at Muttox, impressed despite herself. “Not bad, Hector.”

“I ain’t just a pretty face,” Muttox grinned, and carefully spat the wad of gum into his palm before folding it up in his spare glove pouch.

“You just won yourself command on the inside, Muttox,” Koslowski said, then scanned the room. “We’ll come back to this next week, once I’ve got a clearer idea on what kind of numbers we’ll have. In the meantime—any questions?”

Rico waited, hoping nobody in the room would ask the big question.
“Hey, Koslowski, I’m a dumb old street jock without the brains Grud gave a dog vulture, but doesn’t this mean there’ll be a hundred million creds, mostly in large bills, just lying around the Herc someplace? What are we doing about that?”

Nobody in the room did. They were all thinking about the riot Koslowski had forecast, planning for the worst—either that, or just anxious to finish up and get back out onto the streets. Rico suppressed a smile, and raised his own hand.

“Koslowski?”

“What is it, Dredd?” She didn’t like him, he knew—thought he was a little too full of himself. Luckily, he was too full of himself to care.

“What happens if a riot breaks out inside the Stadium too?”

Koslowski looked him square in the eye.

“Then Grud help us, Rico. So let’s try and make that not happen, huh?” She crumpled the printout and tossed it into the waste receptacle behind the podium. “All right, briefing over. I want to see some good arrest figures today, so all of you get out there and do what you do best.”

Rico did just that.

Seven

“C
LOSE THE DOOR,
Buddy boy.”

Bud Mooney froze in the door, and the grocery bag tumbled from his chubby, sweaty hands. Rico—sat in Mooney’s old, battered armchair, which he’d turned to face the hab door—sipped some of the cheap soymash whiskey he’d found in the kitchen cupboard and grinned. It was hard not to take a sadistic pleasure in watching all the cans of off-brand soda and budget mock-choc bars and all the other cheap crap Mooney called a diet spilling out onto the carpet.