THE FEELIES

Ralph's next assault was cut short by the arrival of a golf cart with two clean-cut young men. Ralph noted that although they weren't the two that had taken away the dead stiff, they might just as well have come out of the same mold. The new stiff was on a stretcher on the back of the cart.

"It's another one for your tender loving care."

Ralph scowled. "We'll treat him just like a brother."

"It's not a him, it's a her."

Sam, who had been staring at his fingers, looked up sharply. "A her?"

Ralph gave him a quick sideways leer. "Maybe you are getting like Artie."

Sam went red and opened his mouth to say something. Then he thought better of it and closed it again.

One of the clean-cut young men looked quizzically at them. "What's up with you two?"

Ralph put on a bland smile. "Nothing, just a private joke."

"You vault jockeys get damned odd down here."

"Vault jockeys? Is that what you're calling us upstairs? Who thought up that one?"

The clean-cut man ignored the question. "Where's the cabinet where the stiff died?"

"Back down the row a piece."

Sam looked shocked. "You're not going to put her in there, are you?"

The young man looked at him in blank amazement. "What the hell do you think we're going to do? It's the only empty cabinet in the whole damned vault."

Sam still seemed dully horrified. "It just don't seem right."

The young men weren't interested. They were already reversing the golf cart along the row of cabinets until it was level with the empty one. They jumped out with efficient briskness, disco

Sam and Ralph moved closer. Even Ralph was surprised at the youth of the woman. From what he could see of her face, she was little more than a girl. It was an attractive, doll-like face, with white blond hair like spun sugar. Sam had started to look profoundly unhappy.

When the smart young men had finally finished, they banged down the lid of the cabinet with an air of finality and closed the seal. As they climbed back into the golf cart, the one who had done all the talking couldn't resist a parting shot.

"Try not to let this one die on you, okay?"

Ralph gave them the finger as they drove away. Sam still looked unhappy. Ralph turned on him.

"What the fuck's the matter with you?"

"I was just thinking about that girl."

"You crazy or something?"

"I was just thinking what a girl like that was doing spending the rest of her life in a feelie."

Ralph made an impatient gesture. "Everyone wants to spend their life in a feelie, or hadn't you heard?"

"But she was so young and nice-looking."

"And rich, so what?"

"She must have had so much going for her. What's she want to end up here for?"

"Listen, dummy, she's probably in there being Attila the Hun. No matter what people got, they always think they can get better. That's why feelies got made."

Sam still wasn't happy. "I sure hope Artie doesn't get at her."

DETECTIVE IZZY STEIGER WALKED INTO the squad room of the Ninth Precinct and looked around wearily. Murty and Rojas were sitting behind their desks doing nothing in particular. He dropped into his own empty chair. "You heard the latest?"

Rojas shook his head. "What's the latest?"

"The Seventh busted a bootleg feelie parlor over on Jay Street."

"What the hell is a bootleg feelie parlor?"

Murphy looked up from doing the Post crossword. "I heard of one of those a couple of years back. They started up again?"

Rojas was still looking baffled. "How the hell can some sleazo on Jay Street bootleg a feelie? They definitely don't have the technology."

Steiger picked up a sheaf of arrest reports and then put them back down. The station's climate control was once again out, and it was too hot to work. Out on the street, the temperature must have been over a hundred degrees, with seventy percent humidity. And the president goes on TV to tell everyone that the greenhouse effect is nothing to worry about, he thought. Yeah, right.

"They don't have the technology, but they have some awful stupid customers."

Murphy folded up the Post and placed it on the desk. "It's what you could call voodoo technology."

Rojas got up from his chair and walked over to the water cooler. "So how do they work this?"

Steiger put his feet up on the desk. "Basically it's a con. The guys ru

Rojas crushed the paper cup he had been drinking from and tossed it backhand into the wastebasket.

"So how do they actually do the feelie? What's the illusion?"

Steiger laughed. "In a word, crude. The come on is usually sexual, and most of the marks are men. Once they've got the mark in the coffin, they shoot him full of some crap IV cocktail. Usually it's one thing to put them half out and something else that'll make them hallucinate like crazy. Dust and barbiturate, acid and MPTP, Ser-enax and PCP, synthetic heroin and DMA-I guess pretty much what they can get their hands on."

Murty grunted. "You can get your hands on practically anything down there."

Rojas sat down again. "Sounds like a class act."

Steiger went on. "So once they've got the mark doped out of his mind, they stick a google TV on the front of his face. You know, a Sony Maskman or one of those. They run a porno loop, and at the same time some old whore, one who's probably too fucked up to work the street anymore, gives the guy a blow job."

Rojas was shaking his head in disbelief. "Oh, choice. How the hell does anyone fall for this shit?"

Steiger spread his hands in a don't-ask-me gesture. "What can I tell you? Seems there're fools out there who want to be in a feelie so bad, they'll convince themselves of anything. The experience, if you can call it that, maybe only lasts a few minutes, and they spend the next two or three hours sleeping off the drugs. When it's all over, they wake up with a motherfucker of a headache and no memory but determined to believe that they had a hell of a time."

"What do they pay for all this?"

"Upward of five hundred."

Rojas eyebrows shot up. "Jesus Christ, five hundred bucks for a blow job and a chance to OD."

Steiger grimaced. "And the chance to get any one of a half-dozen retroviruses. The way I heard it, the IVs weren't any too sanitary. Like I say, there's fools out there who'll believe anything. Also you'll be able to hear all about it on the late news. Pictures at eleven."

"Kowalski again?"

"Seems like it. Kowalski of the Seventh, the reporters' friend. I hear he has a smartcard with all the numbers of his press contacts on it. When he wants to tip them off, he doesn't even have to dial."

Murty's lip curled. "Good old Kowalski. I don't know why they don't just make him the official PR of the Seventh Precinct."

Steiger shrugged. "He's better off as he is. If he went official, he wouldn't make as much money."

Rojas was furious. "Kowalski burns my ass. What's with him? He got to spend more time on the phone tipping off the media than doing his fucking job, whatever that might be. Don't he got no dignity?"

Murty spat on the floor. "He's got to supplement his income somehow."