The Probability Broach Read Online Free PDF Page B

clippers forever, I removed all four tripwire rings and retrieved my housekey. The neck unscrewed, separating firing device from explosive container. I levered the stand out of the wall and looked down inside—enough bread-doughish explosive to make my pension even more academic than it was already
    I sat for a long time cradling the harmless bomb in my lap.
    WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 1987
     
    I skipped breakfast, a little paranoid about what I might find in a cupboard or box of cereal. LSD? Spanish Fly? I ached all over from sleeping on the living room floor: there’d been a second antipersonnel mine under the bed and a thin copper lead running from a bathroom outlet to the shower stall. I slept well away from the furniture and didn’t touch anything.
    When I got up, I treated the place like the minefield it was, doing nothing casually. First, I called in sick—I’d try to get in later. Plausible, considering Mac and all. Next I hung a note out for the cleaning lady, hoping my pidgin Vietnamese was up to warning her away from the deathtrap my apartment had become. All that took forty-five minutes of carefully lifting things like telephone receivers with a bent coat hanger, ducking and flinching.
    I unwired the shower, then thought better of being caught there, naked and defenseless. Showers have never seemed the same to me since Psycho, anyway. I changed clothes and put on my flak jacket, three pounds of multilayered Kevlar back-and-breast, guaranteed to stop a .44 Magnum. As usual, I skipped the crotch piece. Even if it worked, I’d be screaming in a voice only dogs could hear. Six fresh rounds for the Smith & Wesson, and an eighteen-round case of spares. With twelve from the plastic speed-loaders in my jacket, I was prepared for a short war.
    Department policy is against carrying extra guns since there are hardly enough to go around—one reason carrying your own is winked at—and they figure it’s too easy to plant a weapon on someone you’ve blown away in a fit of grouchiness. This wasn’t my day for regulations. My handmade one-shot derringer is also chambered in .41 Magnum—and practically certain to break at least two fingers going off. Under the circumstances, that might be a bargain.
    Late for the bus, I decided to splurge on a cab. An hour later, I jammed myself in with five other passengers, and rode all the way to work with a hand on the firm rubber grip of my revolver. No one was taking me for any rides I hadn’t planned.
    At the office, I didn’t mention the interesting way I’d spent the night; it just might lead to being taken off the Meiss case, now the MacDonald case as far as I was concerned. I ran into a snag at the motor pool—they wanted to know where I was going. I couldn’t just say “here and there” as usual—they’d get upset when they couldn’t reach me by radio. But I didn’t want to end up being tailgated by a dirty white Brazilian station wagon, either.
    I climbed back upstairs to think, and found the day’s reports on my desk. Nothing I didn’t expect—except that Meiss had a mother in Manitou Springs. It was longer than the journey I had in mind, and would cover my ass nicely: Manitou Springs is south on I-25.
    Fort Collins, and Colorado State University, are north.

IV: Second Prize, Two Weeks
     

    —ANAHEIM (FNS) In a surprise 12 to 1 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a ruling of a lower court ordering seizure of Disneyland and Florida’s Disney World due to the corporation’s inability to pay newly passed retroactive taxes on profits from the 1960s and 1970s. Also cited was its “blatantly unjustified waste of America’s irreplaceable energy resources.”
    Spokespersons for the Federal Bankruptcy Administration refused comment on rumors that the theme parks may continue operating for the benefit of 25 million government employees, but did say, off the record, that the “social conscience and public service of millions of selfless, patriotic Americans deserve