It was also a hell of a lot noisier than the TV bar. Hot, too. Kids milled around, some of them looking hardly any older than the ones the doorman had sent away, and waitresses dressed in tight-fitting Trekkie-character costumes held trays of drinks aloft. One of them looked like Deanna Troi, another like Tasha Yar. Conversation competed with loud music, all of it merging in a deafening wall of noise.
The music itself was hard to describe. Part raw rock, part disco beat, part synthesizer funk, it seemed to exist solely for the sake of the dancers, who jumped, bobbed, weaved and swayed on the vast floor under yet more swirling galaxies. Arvo noticed a few glazed eyes. Drugs. Ecstasy, probably.
The clientele was an odd mix of cyberpunk — all studded leather and torn T-shirts, shaved or spiky hair, tight black pants or leggings, with a lot of earrings and a more than average percentage of nose-rings — and an occasional computer nerd looking to get laid, badly dressed, with greasy hair, acne and glasses.
It was almost impossible to spot any single individual in such a heaving, throbbing mass of people. Arvo pushed his way to the bar and asked the bartender if he knew where Mitch Cameron was. The bartender just shook his head and went to serve a customer. Either he hadn’t heard through the noise or he didn’t know any Mitch Cameron. Most likely he just didn’t care.
Arvo and Maria were already drawing strange looks from some of the kids, a few of whom quite wisely slunk away from them, maybe to sell their illegal substances elsewhere or flush them down the toilet. No matter what Joe had said, in this crowd they did look like cops.
Had Mitch Cameron been the same size as the man on the door, it would have been easy to spot him, but according to all Arvo’s information he was of average height and rather stocky, muscular. Just because he had had a dyed blond brush-cut a year ago, it didn’t mean he had one now, though dyed blond hairs had been found at the scene of Jack Marillo’s murder.
Arvo and Maria stood by the bar looking over the dancers. The music changed, though not much, and the overhead galaxy started spinning the other way. Searchlights danced over the crowd. A Federation starship passed by on an overhead screen and some of the dancers stopped and cheered.
Then Arvo noticed, over to his left at the far side of the dance floor, a couple of kids facing off. Others were moving away, clearing a space around them. They looked to be fighting over a girl who was standing with them. She seemed to be exhorting one of the kids to mop up the floor with the other, and the more she yelled — though Arvo couldn’t hear what she said over the music and general din — the closer the guys came to throwing punches. Before they got that far, however, the bouncer appeared.
Arvo nudged Maria, who had been scanning the other side of the club.
“That Cameron?” Maria yelled in his ear.
“Could be. Let’s go ask him.”
The bouncer was too busy keeping the two kids apart to notice Arvo and Maria heading toward him. He was about the right size, Arvo estimated, and his hair could have been blond, though it seemed to be plastered down with some kind of gel that made it look darker. He wore it combed straight back, with a greasy ponytail hanging down over his collar.
When they reached him, Maria grasped his elbow and said, “Mitch Cameron?”
Cameron shook her hand off. “Yeah, I’m Cameron,” he yelled without turning around. “Just back off a minute, bitch. Can’t you see I’m busy right now?”
But the tension between the two kids had dwindled away by now. They’d passed the flare-up point and hadn’t caught fire. The girl looked disappointed.
Maria pulled out her wallet and flipped her badge right in front of Cameron’s face. “I think these kids can manage without you for a while, Mitch. Detective Maria Hernandez, LAPD. And my colleague here, Detective Arvo Hughes. We’d like to talk to you.”
Before either Maria or Arvo could see what was coming, Cameron sucker-punched Maria and she went down on her knees with blood pouring down her chin. That drew a gasp from the crowd. Then Cameron took off over the dance floor with the galaxies swirling over him and a couple of Romulan warships casting their shadows across his path. He cut a swathe through the dancers, pushing people aside left and right. Arvo bent to see if Maria was okay and she waved him away. He headed after Cameron.
Cameron was fast, but the crowd between him and the door was thick and it slowed him down. By the time Arvo took after him, he had already cleared a path between the dancers, some of whom were still picking themselves up off the floor looking confused. The music throbbed all around them and the lights went on spinning. Arvo could feel the sweat trickling down his forehead and neck. It was beginning to sting his eyes and he rubbed it from his eyebrows as he ran. He glanced back and saw Maria was behind him now, not more than twenty feet away. She gestured for him to keep chasing.
Cameron broke through the last cluster of dancers and skidded across the few feet of empty space to the door. He was heading for the front exit. Arvo was only about fifteen feet behind him now, Maria maybe thirty.
Cameron collided with a couple of kids walking into the club, but he regained his balance immediately and pushed the front door open. Arvo could almost reach out and grab a fistful of his T-shirt by now, but the heavy door swung back hard and blocked his path for a moment.
Cameron shot out into the street, right into the doorman with the shaved head. The man hardly flinched, and when Arvo and Maria came out a split-second later, panting for breath, he held Cameron up by the ponytail and said, “Take him, why don’t you. I never did like the slimy little cocksucker.” Cameron’s mouth was bloody, and Arvo saw him spit a tooth-fragment on the sidewalk. The bouncer shrugged, raised his eyebrows and spread his hands, dropping Cameron at their feet.
Joe came out of the front door, gun out. “What the fuck’s going on?” he asked. “Couple of kids came running out the back door saying there was some real heavy shit going down inside.” Arvo told him what had happened.
Maria leaned against the car holding a white handkerchief to her mouth. It was already stained red with blood. Joe cuffed Cameron and bundled him into the back of the car. Arvo and Maria got in the front. Arvo put his hand on her shoulder. “Okay?”
She nodded, took the handkerchief away and looked at it. “I’m fine. Bastard split my lip is all. More mess than damage.”
Cameron, who sat twisted forward because of the cuffs, said nothing as they drove to Parker Center. He just kept on staring straight ahead at the taillights on Wilshire, with a creepy smile on his face, and only God knew what he was thinking or seeing.
44
On first impression, Arvo thought, Mitch Cameron wasn’t much different from the white trash he’d arrested any number of times back in Detroit. He had the look of someone who knew how to handle being pushed around. And whatever you said or did to him, it didn’t touch him emotionally because it was nothing in comparison to what he had suffered growing up.
However well he had been treated at the foster home in Eureka, you didn’t have to be told to know that Cameron had endured a deprived and abusive childhood before that. It was in his every sullen, obedient movement, the way he bent with the flow; it was in the smug, cynical smile he wore on his face. Cameron wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t even angry. The habit of abuse had inured him to such feelings of weakness.
No matter what indignities the system piled on him, much worse had been done. And he had done worse himself. Out on the streets, he would be every bit as cruel and vicious as whoever had abused him as a child, yet in captivity he took to the handcuffs, the punches and the shoves just as naturally and as meekly as he would take to the shackles and prison routine. You couldn’t touch him; he could no longer feel a thing. In a way, it gave him power. And it made him a supreme manipulator.