The Probability Broach Read Online Free PDF Page A

another problem, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
    “Something else bugging you?”
    He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. Someday I’d do that, when I was making captain’s pay “Will you be serious? This isn’t funny!”
    “You need a vacation, Mac. Five days a year just isn’t—”
    “Win, listen! I’ve got to take you off the Meiss thing. I’m not supposed to tell you why, but I’ll be damned if—what can they threaten me with? Losing my devalued pension?”
    I nodded grimly. “Especially since you have to put in forty years, now. Times are tough all over. Go on.”
    “The word’s been passed down the line, from god knows how high. There’s more to this than I can tell you, more than I know myself … or want to! Anyway, you’re off the case.” He looked relieved.
    I sat in the pollution, thinking. I’d had hints to lay off before, but seldom anything this arbitrary and senseless. I leaned against the grimy wall, arms folded across my chest, and said so, around my cigar.
    “You’ve got to understand …” MacDonald pleaded. “There’s something big—”
    “Yeah,” I said, thinking of the shiny golden coin in my pocket. “Who is it, Mac, the local Mafiosi—the government, maybe?”
    Mac’s piggish little eyes widened a fraction. “My God, Win, what makes you think there’s a difference? Where have you been the last thirty years?”
    I raised my eyebrows. “Well, you can’t fight City Hall. Want me back on the garage killing?”
    “ Thanks, Win. I don’t think that’ll be necessary. One thing you can count on, tomorrow there’ll be another dozen for you to work on. See you in the morning?”
    “Bright and early. Let’s get out of here and find some oxygen!” I flipped the last half-inch of my cigar into the urinal and swung out into the hall, a billow of smoke preceding me.
     
    BY 6:30, I was sitting in a coffee shop across from the City and County Building, waiting for my bus. The place was full of familiar faces, almost all of them city employees—one reason there wasn’t a gray CLOSED BY ORDER sign on the door. I turned my face to the window, not wanting to talk, idly watching the street. Behind the counter a radio recited body counts from our latest victory in New Guinea. The Papuans should have run out of people three years ago.
    Mac hadn’t mentioned what seemed to me the first order of business: federal preemption. Burgess had been more than happy to mention it. Now I was blackballed without so much as a memo—much to my superior’s relief—by vague pressure “from god knows how high.” Mac’s office was bugged, if you believed him, and his telephone tapped. An ex-security-cleared scientist who rated his own car and a government-issue handgun had been mortally afraid of the very agency he once worked for. The maraschino cherry on top was the fact that said professor had been gunned down with a .380 Ingram—a favorite item of hardware for covert SecPol operations.
    So what was really going on? I’d probably never find out. Tomorrow morning I’d be back on ordinary Capitol Hill muggings.
    Through the window I watched Mac emerge from the City and County Building, briefcase in hand. He paused to straighten his tie and stepped into the street. Suddenly there was a screech as a parked car accelerated violently. Mac turned, annoyance, incomprehension, sudden terror racing each other across his face. He ran, trying to make the median. Too late. The front bumper hit him at knee level—a sickening whump of hollow metal on solid flesh. His body flopped like a rag doll, head and arms draped over the hood, legs disappearing underneath. The car never slowed. I heard the engine race as the pedal was floored. Mac whipped to the pavement, his head smashing into the asphalt as the car devoured him, his outflung hand still visible, gripping the briefcase.
    I was through the door, forty-one in hand, as the rear tires rolled over him and squealed away—a muddy