Barry Longyear: The Purloined Labradoodle

“Lolita Doll.” Rita smiled demurely. “Honest, guv. That’s the name I was born with, spelling and all. I’m from Plymouth by way of Land’s End. Thanks for busting me out of that parakeet.”

“You’re not out of the feathers yet, love,” I said evenly. “I’m kind of curious how you wound up in that chip, how that chip wound up inside that bird, and especially how that bird wound up inside a wealthy woman’s estate.”

The image was silent. From his perch atop the screen, Shad said, “Is it just me or is Rita looking just a bit furtive?”

“What’s that parrot saying?” Rita—Lolita—asked me.

“Detective Sergeant Shad opined that you appeared just a tad sneaky, Lolita. I agree you seem less than forthcoming.”

Shad hopped down to the keyboard, did a little dance on the keys, and called up Lolita’s previous in a new frame. “Whoa!” he exclaimed in mock shock. “Lolita,” said Shad, “I’d download your complete criminal record, but this sorry shadow of a computer only has fifteen hundred megagigs of memory.” I glanced at the list. Sealed juvenile previous weighing a third the megabyte weight of her adult convictions. She was a jewel thief primarily, some confidence work, not terribly competent at either. She couldn’t have done much worse if she’d spent her mornings booking cells for her evenings through the Convict Accommodation Association. Did her first stint in H.M Prison and Remand Centre Exeter at the age of nineteen. Back in at twenty-two. Back again at twenty-five. According to the record I was reading she was nearing sixty and more than half of that time had been spent as a guest of His Majesty’s government. According to her library record in the nick, she’d read every piece of children’s fiction in the place. Psych evaluation: Terrific liar; couldn’t change a battery; at risk for becoming institutionalized, which meant she’s been inside so long she’d do almost anything to stay behind walls.

“So you modified a robotic parakeet with a pirated mech AI chip capable of taking a human imprint to sneak past the security systems into some wealthy person’s home,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You do the work yourself, Lolita?”

“Sure.”

Shad whistled a bar from the Woody Woodpecker song. True. If she had been Pinocchio instead of Rita Hayworth she would have had a California redwood hanging from between her eyes by now.

“How could you be sure that parakeet would be chosen by your mark?” asked Shad.

“The robbie was already sold to Annabelle Wallingford,” answered Lolita. “I did work release at Songbirds in Queen Street, Exeter. It’s a tech shop sells robbie birds and accessories. You know, it’s just up from Boston Tea Party, in next to the News?”

“Yes,” I said. “I know it. It’s owned by Frankie Statten, isn’t it?”

“Mr. Statten’s the proprietor.”

Shad glanced at me and I shrugged. “You were on work release?” I continued.

“So?”

“Doesn’t say a whole lot for the rehab program up there,” observed Shad. “The parakeet robbie gimmick, Lolita: What made you think of it?” he asked her.

No answer for a while, then Rita said, “I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

The parrot looked up at me. “Well, Sherlock, I guess she’s got nothin’ to hide.”

I sat down on a stool and looked again at Lolita’s file. The picture of Lolita Doll—taken when her nat was about thirty—although of typical constabulary quality, was not unpleasant. Her photo gave the impression of a lonely, frightened girl trying to look tough and into her third decade of refusing to stand up straight. Her most recent photo showed her sadder, grayer, and a bit more stooped. “Swap your body for the AI chip and imprinting, did you?” I asked, not much interested in the answer, knowing it was going to be a lie.

Rita Hayworth glanced at the window, then looked away. She nodded. “Just another meat suit, wasn’t it. Didn’t like the way I looked anyway. With what I would’ve made off the Wallingford job—I could’ve become … I could’ve become … why, just anybody, couldn’t I.” Rita shrugged and looked down.

“Who would you have liked to become, Lolita?” I asked her.

“What’re you, copper? Bleedin’ Mother Mary?” The sneer Rita had on her face was not attractive at all and was quite contradicted by the tears welling in her CGI’s eyes.

“Listen up, you sorry scrap of plastic and magnetic impulses,” snarled Shad into the workstation’s camera pickup, “You are talking to Detective Inspector Harrington Jaggers of Interpol’s Artificial Beings Crimes Division’s Devon Office, late of the London Metropolitan Police, the cop who’s put away enough blood-and-guts stone killers to fill the recruiting needs of every tattooed and drugged up prison gang in the United Kingdom, Wales, and the Maldives until the next millennium! So unless you want your highly illegal AI chip to accidentally find itself flushed down the Petting Place’s toilet, me girl, you’d best straighten up and answer up, ‘less you want to find yourself up that bleedin’ pile of sand and rock, haulin’ a rucksack full of ruddy flippin’ shot puts!”

He had begun as Jack Webb in The D.I., but at the end had slipped rather badly into Harry Andrews in The Hill .

“Steady there, Shad,” I transmitted.

“Sorry,” he sent back.

Rita was looking rather wide-eyed at the parrot. After a moment her gaze shifted to me. “Sorry, Inspector. Didn’t mean anything.”

I cleared my throat. “Who would you have liked to become?” I asked her again.

Rita was trying, struggling for words, her eyes welling with electronic tears. “I don’t know. I want to be…” She looked directly at me. “I want to be safe.” She nodded to herself. “I’ll tell you, inspector. Safe. Taken care of.” She glanced away for a moment, as though embarrassed. “Had that inside, kind of. You know?” She looked back at me. “Wasn’t happy, though. I do so want to be happy.”

“What about love, Lolita?”

“You having a laugh, guv?”

“No.”

“Don’t mix me up with the picture on the screen, Inspector. I’m near sixty. Love’s something you read about in the romance graphs. Money, now.” She smiled wickedly. “They tells me money can’t buy me love, but it do make the search a heap more comfortable.”

“Spare us the brass, sister. What happened this time?” asked Shad.

She glanced at the parrot and shrugged. “Me own fault. Flying around the place, scoping out the security systems, I ran flat into something. Never saw it. Jammed me up. Froze me solid. Everything but me eyes and ears. Butler found me next morning, put me on a shelf. Auntie shakes her head. Auntie’s brother, Barney Bananas, takes me up to his room and sticks me on top a nine year old slice o’ wedding cake he was saving for his future missus, which give me sticky feet and a good look at his telly. ‘Course he only played this one vid he liked, over and over and over, day in and bleedin’ night out for a year three months a week and four days until Barney Wallingford died right in the middle of Lawrence Harvey gettin’ kissed by his mum for the last time as it turned out. Then they packed up Barmey Barney’s belongings, including me, and stuck us all in the attic for another three years. The last I saw the light ‘til Maddie checked me out to bring me here.”

“Is she lying?” I transmitted to Shad.

“What was the name—” he began out loud.

“ The Manchurian Candidate,” she answered, “Frank Sinatra, Lawrence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury—”

“The dir—”

“John Frankenheimer.”

“Pro—”