SNOW CRASH
the back seat, so she can’t hear anything except squirts and gurgles coming from her own empty tummy, and the glistening crackle whenever she moves her glommed.up hand. She was really looking forward to a Hoosegow meal-Campfire Chili or Bandit Burgers.
In the front seat, the two MetaCops are talking to each other, They pull out into traffic. Up in front of them is a square illumi. nated logo, a giant Universal Product Code in black-on-white with BUY ‘N’ FLY underneath it.
Stuck onto the same signpost, beneath the Buy ‘n’ Fly sign, is a smaller one, a narrow strip in generic lettering: THE CLINK.
They are taking her to The Clink. The bastards. She pounds on the glass with cuffed.together hands, leaving sticky hand-prints. Let these bastards try to wash the stuff off. They turn around and look right through her, the guilty scum, like they heard something but they can’t imagine what.
They enter the Buy ‘n’ Fly’s nimbus of radioactive blue security light. Second MetaCop goes in, talks to the guy behind the counter. There’s a fat white boy purchasing a monster trucks magazine, wearing a New South Africa baseball cap with a Confederate flag, and overhearing them he peers out the window, wanting to lay his eyes on a real perp. A second man comes out from back, same ethnicity as the guy behind the counter, another dark man with burning eyes and a bony neck. This one is carrying a three-ring binder with the Buy ‘n’ Fly logo. To find the manager of a franchise, don’t strain to read his title off the name tag, just look for the one with the binder.
The manager talks to the MetaCop, nods his head, pulls a keychain out of a drawer.
Second MetaCop comes out, saunters to the car, suddenly whips open the back door.
“Shut up,” he says, “or next time I fire the loogie gun into your mouth.”
“Good thing you like The Clink,” Y.T. says, “cause that is where you will be tomorrow night, loogie-man.”
“‘Zat right?”
“Yeah. For credit card fraud.”
“Me cop, you thrasher. How you gonna make a case at Judge Bob’s Judicial System?”