Marvin, I’m Glad You’re Here
by Victor Kreuiter
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
part 1
Big Marvin was sitting just inside the front door of Miller Racketeering, paging through a magazine when the kid came in and took the chair next to him without saying a word. To Marvin’s left, the receptionist’s desk: unoccupied. Past that, the door into the boss’s office: closed. The sign on the door read: “Randall Miller, proprietor.”
Twenty months ago, before his most recent reanimation, Randall Miller’s legal name had been Allan Pierce. Twenty months ago, Pierce, a registered criminal, took two in the chest from an assailant. Pierce was dead for less than an hour; reanimation took four months.
Slowly returning to the living, Allan Pierce decided a name change was in order. It was, he would tell anyone who would listen, a business decision. When he exited the reanimation facility Allan Pierce became Randall Miller. In a world in which deceit was a skill, did the name change make any real difference? Actually, no, but those engaged in crime believed it could be advantageous.
Coming out of reanimation, most career criminals sought some sort of transformation, as if transition back from death wasn’t enough. A name change? Neither expensive nor expedient, but it had become something of a tradition for criminals in the twenty-third century.
The kid turned to Marvin and said, “You the guy I’m supposed to talk to?” He was tapping one foot at a pretty good pace, trying to appear nonchalant.
Big Marvin nodded. He closed the magazine, dropped it on the floor, held out his hand and said, “Marvin Schoenhorst.”
The kid took the hand and shook it. “Donald Silva,” he said.
Big Marvin dropped the hand and gave Silva the once-over. “You’re a shooter?”
The kid nodded and looked away. Marvin, wary by nature, turned and looked toward the door by which the kid had just entered. Stenciled on the window of that door:
Miller Racketeering
Established 2246
Fully Licensed to Tax # CR2346-48726L
by Appointment Only
Marvin had been working with Randall Miller for forty-some years. They had paired up when Randall Miller was still Allan Pierce. Their “enterprise,” known at the time as Pierce & Affiliates, did whatever it could get away with: gambling and loan-sharking (lots of competition), bootlegging tobacco and alcohol (not particularly profitable and a lot of work), drugs (dangerous), hijacking (very dangerous), and basic robbery (a crapshoot).
They did well during the holidays, handling counterfeit brand name items: perfumes, aftershaves, clothing, handbags, whatever they could get their hands on (profitable but short-lived). Their routine business? Acquiring things. Anything. TV’s. Tires. Silverware. Knock-off electronics. Dishes, computers, appliances, anything not readily available — the preferred maxim was “back-ordered” — in the myriad stores that stocked and sold whatever they could get their hands on. Every class of person used the criminal to acquire what couldn’t be easily acquired elsewhere. It was part of everyday life.
Interestingly, Pierce & Affiliates had never had “affiliates,” and everyone in the business knew it; it was just Pierce and Marvin, scraping along. Like any other criminal enterprise in the twenty-third century, they were penny-ante, like their competition. Like their competition, Pierce & Affiliates spent half of their time fighting off criminals exactly like themselves: hardscrabble hustlers on the lowest rung of society.
Marvin turned his attention to Silva. “Okay,” he said, “let’s get the essentials out of the way.”
Silva looked tired, like he needed a decent meal and a good night’s sleep. Marvin had years of experience with guys like him. They thought filing for criminal status, getting their tracking implant inserted, filling out the required tax forms, it all guaranteed a bright future. They thought getting their first Kill Permit made them tough guys, and they all talked about their first reanimation as some kind of initiation.
Marvin was tired of it. He’d been thinking about getting out of crime for years — decades, really. The decades were piling up, and Big Marvin wanted to be somebody else. He wanted to be somewhere else, doing something else. He knew it was possible. He had a friend who’d done it. How could he make that happen?
Marvin Schoenhorst was 112 years old and had been reanimated three times.
“Okay,” Marvin said. He sighed, put a hand down on one knee and faced the kid. “First thing: have you ever been shot and/or killed?”
The kid shook his head.
“Have you paid for ReTurn® in the event of needing it?” Marvin paused. The kid looked bored. Stoned, maybe?
Silva said. “Yes.”
Marvin looked away, considering what he should and should not say, then decided to go with ‘should not.’
“You have no real experience in regulated crime, right? Yet you want to start out with a hit?” It came out rougher than he’d planned, but these young guys... Had he ever been that stupid?
Marvin bit his lip and slowly shook his head.
The front door of Miller Racketeering opened and in walked a tall, thin man in a long-out-of-fashion suit, dark-rimmed eyeglasses and a fedora. He was carrying a beat-up briefcase. He stepped around the reception desk, put the briefcase on the desk, opened it and pulled out a manila folder. He put the the fedora on the desk then opened the folder and put it right in front of him. He sat down, put the briefcase on the floor next to his chair, pulled a pencil from his pocket, opened the folder then went to work scribbling. He stopped, looked up at Big Marvin and raised a single index finger and wagged it, his standard greeting.
Marvin raised an index finger and pointed it at the kid. “This is the guy Vincent Sozso sent over. Says he’s a shooter.”
The guy at the desk pointed up at the ceiling. Big Marvin looked up at the ceiling, then the kid looked up, too. The guy at the desk went back to scribbling, the kid looked at Big Marvin and Marvin looked at the kid.
“Monitors,” Marvin said. “There’s monitors up there, legally required. Monitors make sure no unregulated crimes are being planned on the premises.”
In the twenty-third century, crime was regulated. Studies had shown it would be significantly cheaper than continuing with failed enforcement. After all the hand-wringing and arguing, after all the studying and negotiating, after all the deliberating and posturing was over, after all nations came to some agreement on what they could and could not agree to, crime was decriminalized. Institutionalized.
New laws regulating and codifying crime were passed; very strict laws. Then, almost immediately, those laws got stricter. Then those strict laws were tightened, quickly and methodically, until crime essentially became criminal-versus-criminal.
Basically, for everybody besides the criminal, crime was swept under the carpet. Politicians of all stripes loved it. Law enforcement loved it. The media loved it. The populace, too. It was win-win for everybody except criminals. Who cared about them, anyway? If and when criminals stepped out of their allotted — and shrinking — slice of the world, the punishment that followed was swift. Few did that.
Donald Silva looked at Marvin and said, “I know all this stuff. I done all the paperwork.”
Big Marvin nodded politely. Is the kid in a hurry? Marvin told himself to slow down, to speak slowly and carefully so the monitors could pick up everything. “Okay, so you’re here because of a sanctioned business opportunity — a possible homicide — and that activity must be in conducted in compliance with all current regulations.”
Marvin stopped. The kid looked at him, wondering if he had to reply. He started to speak, but Big Marvin raised his hand to stop him. “Not yet,” Marvin said. “Give me a minute.”
The kid shrugged again. He was thin and pale. Dark hair, a thin beard and no moustache. He wore a cheap suit. He gave off the faint odor of sweat and... what? Alcohol? Some crazy new pharmaceutical? Marvin couldn’t tell. And Marvin didn’t care.
The chairs they were sitting on were plastic. The reception desk was old and battered. The tiles on the floor were cracked and coming loose around the edges of the room. The light in the room was feeble and yellow; it came from cheap bulbs and cheap fixtures. Such were the glorious trappings of the criminal class.
At the start of the twenty-third century, just after reanimation became widely available to the public, most nations studied, deliberated, negotiated and eventually decided to sanction murder, but only within the criminal class. That worked for everybody, even criminals, who thought that it might improve their chances for success. It didn’t.
Murder within the general population was effectively extinct and had been for some time. Homicide detectives were almost completely unnecessary, but criminals still hung onto murder like a cherished tradition. Over a period of years (2208 to 2214), regulations were carefully rewritten so that murder within the criminal world was licensed ... again, only permissible as criminal-versus-criminal ... and, of course, heavily taxed.
Leading the ‘pro’ side of that change was, interestingly enough, a group of cons. An old crime family, desperate to depart crime, effectively lobbied — i.e., bribed — for that change, and got it. It was no surprise that it was in the best interests of this once-upon-a-time crime family. They had bought the rights to develop and market a form of reanimation strictly for criminals. Marketed as ReTurn®, reanimation for criminals was slower, a bit more painful, and more costly than the reanimation available to the general public, which wasn’t all that affordable either.
Governments were more than happy to implement yet another way for them to benefit from sanctioned murder within the criminal sub-culture: in order for a licensed criminal to murder a licensed criminal, legislation created the licensed kill. So was born the Kill Permit, an expensive yet mandatory purchase allowing governments to make even more money from criminal activity.
Laws governing the Kill Permit were simple:
One: Absolutely no head shots. A head shot made reanimation impossible. ReTurn Inc., whose clientele was one-hundred percent criminal, lobbied for — i.e., bribed — and secured the head shot ban. It proved to be good for business by delivering repeat customers. There was, as part of that legislation, a hard-and-fast punishment for the banned head shot: a head shot.
Two: A Kill Permit had to be purchased prior to any attempt at murder, and the purchase was cash only. Federal and state governments divided up the revenue. Guess who got the biggest share. The punishment for killing without a Kill Permit? A head shot.
Three: A Kill Permit could only be issued to an individual whose position was, according to state and federal employment monitoring, a criminal. Those seeking a permit — known as shooters — were mostly the lowest of the low, the youngest, the newest to crime, the least skilled and the most desperate. The punishment for anyone killing without being registered as a criminal and purchasing a Kill Permit? A head shot.
Four: A Kill Permit could be issued only if the individual to be targeted was, according to employment monitoring, a criminal. The punishment for killing anyone other than a registered criminal? See One, Two, and Three above.
Those simple rules worked. Criminals knew they had to play nice in their sandbox, and they did. Although all nations taxed crime and, particularly, murder at a confiscatory rate, people still chose to become criminals, and criminals still saw murder as a problem-solver. Psychologists and sociologists studying the phenomenon received their grant money from taxes levied on the crime world. Guess what? Studies were still ongoing.
Big Marvin glanced at the guy in the fedora, who was head down, busy scribbling, then turned to Donald Silva and said, “If you’re hired for this job, you gotta purchase a Kill Permit on your own, okay? You’ll get reimbursed, but only the actual shooter is allowed to purchase the permit.”
The kid shrugged, like it was no big deal.
“You do understand,” Marvin said, “that all off-the-books, unregulated criminal activity is no longer an option, do you not?”
The kid shrugged again.
“Let me explain why that is,” Marvin said. He raised his voice a little and spoke slowly. The monitors would record his speech, and he wanted this portion to be perfect if playback was ever required.
“It’s not because criminal activity is taxed at a rate bordering on confiscation. That’s not it at all. It’s not because criminal activity can, and often does, result in out-of-control legal fees as well as seizure of personal assets and, on occasion, bears the penalty of permanent ban of any reanimation opportunities. It’s not that at all. It’s because criminal activity is wrong. Morally wrong.”
The kid did not respond.
“And let me remind you: under no circumstances are you to attempt to execute or actually execute a head shot. Forbidden under law and punishable immediately by termination. And by termination I mean you are dead and you ain’t coming back; reanimation out of the question. Understand?”
The kid nodded.
“So now we want you to understand if you enter into any business agreement with our firm, registered at the state and federal level as Miller Racketeering, and if you perform any act which may at a later date be construed as illegal, by which I mean not a sanctioned crime registered with state and federal authorities, our firm will terminate our association with you immediately. And we will work in conjunction with state and/or federal law enforcement to pursue justice as prescribed in any past, present, or future legislation.” He paused. “You following?”
Big Marvin waited for the kid to nod. It took a minute.
“You understand that Miller Racketeering will not be associated in any fashion with any off-the-books, unauthorized crime, regardless of the degree of illegality. You understand that?”
The kid looked away; no response.
What’s with the attitude? “Say yes,” Big Marvin said. Marvin turned and looked at the guy at the desk and that guy looked at Marvin and nodded, like he was listening.
Big Marvin turned back to the kid. “To express your understanding, please say yes, out loud.”
“Yes,” the kid said.
“Good,” Big Marvin replied.
There was a pause. The kid didn’t say a word. The guy behind the desk? Writing something. Marvin? He wanted all this to be over. He wanted out. His lower back was bothering him all the time. A knee ached all the time.
“You got the money for the Kill Permit?” Marvin asked. “Gotta be cash. They take cash only.”
The kid nodded and Marvin tapped the kid on the shoulder and said, “Follow me.”
Copyright © 2023 by Victor Kreuiter
