«It … it’s talkin’! Flavio! Demonio!» The wife spiraled toward hysteria again.
«Shall I inform him of his rights under the Public Laws, sir?» Brillo asked Polchik.
«You gon’ arrest me? Whu’for?»
«Brillo …» Polchik began.
Brillo started again, «Assault and battery, failure to—»
Polchik looked annoyed. «Shuddup, I wasn’t asking you to run it again. Just shuddup.»
«I din’t do nothin’! You come bust t’rough my door when me an’ my wife wass arguin’, an’ you beat me up. Look’a the bruise on my arm.» The arm was slightly inflamed where Brillo had grabbed him.
«Flavio!» the woman whimpered.
«Isabel; cállete la boca!»
«I live right downstairs,» a voice said from behind them. «He’s always beating her up, and he drinks all the time and then he pisses out the window!» Polchik spun and a man in Levis and striped pajama tops was standing in the ruined doorway. «Sometimes it looks like it’s raining on half my window. Once I put my hand out to see—»
«Get outta here!» Polchik bellowed, and the man vanished.
«I din’t do nothin’!» Flavio said again, semi-surly.
«My data tapes,» Brillo replied evenly, «will clearly show your actions.»
«Day to tapes? Whass he talkin’ ’bout?» Flavio turned to Polchik, an unaccustomed ally against the hulking machine. Polchik felt a sense of camaraderie with the man.
«He’s got everything down recorded … like on TV. And sound tapes, too.» Polchik looked back at him and recognized something in the dismay on the man’s fleshy face.
Brillo asked again, «Shall I inform him of his rights, sir?»
«Officer, sir, you ain’t gonna’rrest him?» the woman half-asked, half-pleaded, her eyes swollen almost closed, barely open, but tearful.
«He came after me with a bottle,» Polchik said. «And he didn’t do you much good, neither.»
«He wass work op. Iss allright. He’s okay now. It wass joss a’argumen’. Nobody got hort.»
Brillo’s hum got momentarily higher. «Madam, you should inspect your face in my mirror.» He hummed and his skin became smoothly reflective. «My sensors detect several contusions and abrasions, particularly …»
«Skip it,» Polchik said abruptly. «Come on, Brillo, let’s go.»
Brillo’s metal hide went blank again. «I have not informed the prisoner …»
«No prisoner,» Polchik said. «No arrest. Let’s go.»
«But the data clearly shows …»
«Forget it!» Polchik turned to face the man; he was standing there looking uncertain, rubbing his arm. «And you, strongarm … lemme hear one more peep outta this apartment and you’ll be in jail so fast it’ll make your head swim … and for a helluva long time, too. If you get there at all. We don’t like guys like you. So I’m puttin’ the word out on you … I don’t like guys comin’ at me with bottles.»
«Sir … I …»
«Come on!»
The robot followed the cop and the apartment was suddenly silent. Flavio and Isabel looked at each other sheepishly, then he began to cry, went to her and touched her bruises with the gentlest fingers.
They went downstairs, Polchik staring and trying to figure out how it was such a massive machine could navigate the steps so smoothly. Something was going on at the base of the robot, but Polchik couldn’t get a good view of it. Dust puffed out from beneath the machine. And something sparkled.
Once on the sidewalk, Brillo said, «Sir, that man should have been arrested. He was clearly violating several statutes.»
Polchik made a sour face. «His wife wouldn’t of pressed the charge.»
«He attacked a police officer with a deadly weapon.»
«So that makes him Mad Dog Coll? He’s scared shitless, in the future he’ll watch it. For a while, at least.»
Brillo was hardly satisfied at this noncomputable conclusion. «A police officer’s duty is to arrest persons who are suspected of having broken the law. Civil or criminal courts have the legal jurisdiction to decide the suspect’s guilt or innocence. Your duty, sir, was to arrest that man.»
«Sure, sure. Have it your way, half the damn city’ll be in jail, and the other half’ll be springin’ ’em out.»
Brillo said nothing, but Polchik thought the robot’s humming sounded sullen. He had a strong suspicion the machine wouldn’t forget it. Or Rico, either.
And farther up the street, to cinch Polchik’s suspicion, the robot once more tried to reinforce his position. «According to the Peace Officer Responsibility Act of 1975, failure of an officer to take into custody person or persons indisputably engaged in acts that contravene …»
«Awright, dammit, knock it off. I tole you why I din’t arrest that poor jughead, so stop bustin’ my chops with it. You ain’t happy, you don’t like it, tell my Sergeant!»
Sergeant, hell, Polchik thought. This stuff goes right to Captain Summit, Santorini and the Commissioner. Probably the Mayor. Maybe the President; who the hell knows?
Petulantly (it seemed to Polchik), the robot resumed, «Reviewing my tapes, I find the matter of the bottle of liquor offered as a gratuity still unresolved. If I am to—»
Polchik spun left and kicked with all his might at a garbage can bolted to an iron fence. The lid sprang off and clanged against the fence at the end of its short chain. «I’ve had it with you … you nonreturnable piece of scrap crap!» He wanted very much to go on, but he didn’t know what to say. All he knew for certain was that he’d never had such a crummy night in all his life. It couldn’t just be this goddammed robot—staring back blankly. It was everything. The mortgage payment was due; Benjy had to go in to the orthodontist and where the hell was the money going to come from for that; Dorothy had called the precinct just before he’d come down, to tell him the hot water heater had split and drowned the carpets in the kid’s bedroom; and to top it all off, he’d been assigned this buzzing pain in the ass and got caught with a little juice passed by that nitwit Rico; he’d had to have this Brillo pain tell him there was a hassle two blocks away; he was sure as God made little green apples going to get a bad report out of this, maybe get set down, maybe get reprimanded, maybe get censured … he didn’t know what all.
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 remotest 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?»