The Probability Broach (14 page)

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Authors: L. Neil Smith

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BOOK: The Probability Broach
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Ed exhaled slowly. “Okay, I’ve tightened your perimeter, reorganized the duty squad, and replaced your inside night man. You’ll get my bill. I assume—”
Bertram blinked. “By no means, sir! We’ve no intention of arousing your indignity. On the contrary, we’re simply pointing out the distractions inherent in engaging in more than one enterprise. Would you really leave your job half finished? Have we not worked together harmoniously so far? Very well, then—
find
these miscreants. See that they receive the harshest—”
Ed shook his head. “Bertram, I protect property. I
don’t collect people!”
The Chairman of the Board smiled indulgently. “These things will work themselves out. In the meantime, as irrelevant as it may be, I suppose I can refer you to Dr. Thorens at the University.” He brightened, as if struck by an idea. “In fact, we shall be only too pleased to cooperate.”
 
OUTSIDE BERTRAM’S APARTMENT, I said, “Reminds me of another guy who was ‘only too pleased to cooperate’—in my funeral arrangements. You really heard Bealls’s name last night?”
Ed nodded. “I told you, the voice said, ‘Shut up, Bealls!’”
“Well, there’s plenty of them in the phone book. Could be coincidence. I know something that isn’t, though.”
Ed pushed the lift button. We spent half the descent in free fall. “What are you talking about now?”
“About conspiracy,” I said. “You know, this country could use a few lessons in elementary sneakiness.” The car found us and we climbed aboard. “Didn’t you notice Bertram’s hands?”
Ed looked annoyed. “Sure,” he said, “expensively manicured, moist.”
“You saw the ring?”
“The ring? Oh yes—heavy bronze, matched the fastener on his sporran. Shouldn’t get so angry—makes me forgetful.”
“Sorry ‘We’re simply pointing out the distractions inherent in engaging—’”
Ed cocked a fist back, let it drop and grinned. “Come on, tell me what you saw!” He fiddled with the ignition key.
“Well, while you were doing a slow burn up there, I was busy observing. Bertram’s sporran was Aztec Modern—goes with the building. Hey—I wonder why I didn’t think of
that
before!”
“That?
You going to tell me, or aren’t you? Wish Lucy would get a proper starter for this monster!”
“Clever—a giant Aztec temple. No one would ever associate the two!”
“
Draft
you, Win, the
ring
!”
“The ring? Noticed when we shook hands—you’re right, by the way, they’re damp. Checked it closer on the way out. Hope I wasn’t too conspicuous.”
“Come on, man, the ring!” The hovercraft coughed and rumbled to life.
“Oh. That. It was the Eye-in-the-Pyramid. Thought you’d like to know.”
 
Homo Neanderthalensis
occupied the earth for about 60,000 years during which he progressed scarcely at all; his earliest artifacts do not vary significantly from the last he produced. He was frozen, incapable of intellectual growth or technological innovation. Now he is dead.
We have been here about half that long and have risen from the mud, practically to the stars, and begun falling back already. It has taken government only 200 years to drag us back 400 centuries to the static, futureless level of Neanderthal Man.
 
—Mary Ross-Byrd
Toward a New Liberty
 
We skimmed up out of the parking garage. Before Road Service could offer us another old movie, I grabbed the phone. “Busy! Bertram didn’t waste any time. Wonder how long he’ll keep the line tied up.”
“Hold your wheel, I’ll find out.” Ed noodled with the Telecom.
“Howdy, pard!”
An animated cowboy appeared in full regalia: ten-gallon hat, boots and spurs, a pair of low-slung autopistols. He was also a gorilla. “Western Telephone and Telegraph here. I’m Slim. What can I do y’for?”
“The number I’m calling is busy,” Ed told him, “Can you let me know—”
“Soon as it’s clear, I’ll hook y’right up!”
“Just let me know, okay? I’ll get in touch myself.”
“Any way y’want it, pard. At WT&T, y’pick yer own pizen!” The drugstore simian jerked a little bag from his vest and rolled himself a cigarette. Ed gave him the number. “Thanks a bundle, pard. Be seein’ yuh!”
Bertram’s not-so-subtle Mexican pyramid dwindled in the distance. “Tell me something, Ed. Doesn’t this place seem a little silly, even to you, sometimes?”
He steered us into heavy traffic. “What makes y’say that,
pard?”
 
WE HADN’T HEARD from WT&T by the time we wafted back into the heart of the city. I was driving now, beginning to feel almost a part of Lucy’s paisley monstrosity. Held to a timorous eighty, it was like piloting a vacuum cleaner on ice skates, but with a siren and flasher up top, I’d have felt right at home.
First stop, Valentine Safe & Vault, where the thrifty shopper can get anything from a titanium can that’d hold both Thorneycrofts, to a tiny padlock smaller than a matchhead, guaranteed to withstand a full clip of .375s.
Most Confederate crooks post bond, not to assure appearance in court, but restitution to their victims. Such arrangements are seldom called for, though: Laporte feels safer than London, which made me ponder Clarissa’s lecture all over again. England has very little crime; guns are strictly forbidden. But Switzerland has even less, and
by law,
everybody’s armed to the teeth. Someone said it once: guns cause crime like flies cause garbage.
Valentine was in the hoosegow biz sort of by accident. Some client had ordered up a pair of cells, intended for the rare bird who wouldn’t make bond, then had gone bankrupt before the goods were delivered. Valentine had tried to make up the loss by renting them out. That was a decade ago, and the damned things still hadn’t been amortized.
Penology’s scarcely a science here, but Valentine hadn’t taken precautions any two-bit county calaboose would consider elementary. Our prisoner, subcontracted to Valentine’s by his insurance company, had torn up a bedsheet and hanged himself in the night.
“And this makes money for
me?”
I asked, unsure what Ed was talking about as we bellied up to the counter.
“It better. You put that bullet in his leg, so I listed him as your prisoner.” He fixed the manager with a frosty glare. “It’s just as if he’d escaped.”
“It’s not the same at all!” the proprietor said unhappily, “You should’ve seen him, all purple an’ bulgey-eyed. Word gets around, I’ll never rent that cell again. The things some people think of!”
Ed was inclined to argue. “Jimmy, we’ve been friends too long for this. Look, the guy never identified himself, or gave you an address, did he?”
Valentine looked wary, seeing where Ed was leading. “Nor his insurance company, those tight-lipped, tight-fisted sons of—”
“We needed that information, Jimmy, that’s what we turned over to you for safekeeping. Now where is it?”
“Oh, liver flukes! Since you put it that way, let’s see … standard surety, minus a night’s room and board … comes to a little over two hundred, the way I—”
“How s that again?”
Ed asked quietly.
“Make it three hundred then … and seventeen ounces!” He wiped his hands on his tunic and started pushing buttons. I let my gaze wander nervously over the show-room displays, out the big front window where our polychrome transportation rested idly on its deflated skirt.
“And four tenths,” Ed added firmly, “gold.”
“Nine-ninety-nine fine?” I squeaked.
“What else?” Valentine demanded. “You want credit, or will you eat it here?”
“Calm down, Jimmy. What about his hardware?”
The manager sighed. “You had to ask. I figured, there being no next of kin, and all …” He groped beneath the counter, producing a gunbelt in soft gray suede. The pistol was slimmer than Ed’s, and lighter. Where the bore should have been, it was solid, glassy smooth. The trademark said Walther-Zeiss.
I looked at the lenslike muzzle. “What’s this thing shoot, eight-by-ten glossies?”
“It’s a hand-laser,” Ed grinned. “Just the thing to replace that ridiculous wheel lock you’re—”
“Revolver, not ‘wheel lock!’ And if lasers are so great, how come you’re carrying a slug-thrower?”
He laughed. “Because I grew up with titan-mongery, and I’m almost as set in my ways as you are! That laser’ll do the job, though, believe me. Messy!”
“I don’t know. Always figured a weapon that cauterizes as it drills would … hell, they’d keep right on coming, unaware they’d even been shot.”
He looked at me oddly. “Who mentioned drilling? This thing converts water—ninety-odd percent of your tissue—into superheated steam. Whatever you hit blows up like the Second of July.”
“Fourth,” I corrected automatically. “How about stopping cars?”
“One reason I prefer the Browning. Anyway, the laser’s yours, now …”
“Same rule as the Rezin?”
“Along with the belt and charges,” Valentine replied wistfully. I shrugged. Kill somebody in self-defense back home, and they take
your
gun away. After a decent interval, it usually winds up in some policeman’s hip pocket. “Say, bud, where do you want this forfeit credited!”
“Good question. Ed, where do they send
your
money?”
“Mulligan’s. But hand them a second ‘Bear, Edward W.’ and I’ll never get balanced again!”
I felt around in a pocket for the Gallatin goldpiece. “Then how about the Laporte Industrial Bank?” Congratulations all around, exit stage left.
I still haven’t figured out if it’s blood money.
DICK SCRAGS TWO, DEMANDS PRIVACY
Laporte
(Telenews)—Unknown assailants last night attacked the Genet Place residence of consulting detective Ed Bear, Telenews learned this morning, possibly in connection with gunshots rumored here last week. Witnesses report that Bear, despite head injuries, killed two alleged hoodlums, wounding a third who was subsequently captured.
Invoking privacy, Bear promised full details on completion of his current commission. As usual, the Civil Liberties Association refused comment, pending adjudication.
This is Ted Agnew, All-News, Telenews, Channel Seven-Ten!
 
WT&T’s galloping gorilla rang as we hove to at Mr. Meep’s Spanish Hideaway. Bertram was finally off the phone, after an hour and forty-five minutes. “Sorry, pard, that’s all I can give yuh. Privacy, y’know.”
“A hell of a note!” I complained as we dismounted. “Back home that phone company’d open up in five seconds flat. Or else.”
“Great. How do you tell the freelance criminals from the official ones?” Ed paused in the entrance. “I wouldn’t mind knowing who was on the other end of that conversation, though. Maybe Madison—Hey Meep! Keeping busy?”
“¡Ah, Señor Bear! ¿Que pasa?
Have you seen Telenews? They’re talking about you,
mi amigo!
I show you a nice table, okay—I mean,
con permiso?”
Meep would take explaining in anybody’s universe. A chimpanzee, he’d adjusted his wrist-talker for what he fancied was a Spanish accent, then grafted a gigolo moustache to his upper lip to go with his bolero jacket, Mexican bellbottoms, and one of those off-duty bullfighter hats, the kind with little balls of fringe around the brim. When he lifted it, his hair was dashingly oiled, parted down the middle like Rudolph Valentino.
Culture shock is a terrible thing. Ask the man who has one.
He parked us beside a two-story waterfall and toreadored away. “Last month,” Ed muttered, “it was Herr Meep’s
Gemütliche Bierhefe,
and the month before that, Colonel Meep’s Down-South Barbecue. Wish he’d give the decorators a rest.”
I grinned. “At least he takes a catholic interest in—”
“Kosher, too. Sometime back around December. Best food in Laporte, but it must drive Mrs. Meep crazy. She and the kids run the kitchen.”
“‘Our Food Untouched By Human Hands’?”
“What?”
“Never mind. What’s after lunch? Wanna see where I landed in the park?”
“No—what the plague’s a
tacarito?
—we’ll visit the university, look up this researcher Bertram referred us to so reluctantly. The park’s just across Confederation Boulevard from there, if you insist.”
“What the hell, it isn’t the detective who has to return to the scene of the crime.” While I was punching up a menu, I heard a soft voice calling:
“Cigars, cigarettes, marijuana? Cigars, cigarettes—something for you, sir? We have some excellent Khmer Rouge this week.”
“Sweetheart, I used to arrest people for selling that stuff. Just a cigar, thanks. Anything, Ed?” He tapped his cigarette pocket and shook his head without looking up from the menu. I paid the little chimp, who gave me a curtsey and a complimentary lighter.
Ed took longer finishing his meal than I did—I still say chocolate turkey is a little heavy for lunch. Since I was suddenly wealthy, I decided to pay. The bill popped up on the screen and I turned to my munching messmate: “Ed, is this right, a silver quarter-ounce? That’s only a buck and a half!”
“Mmphl. Probably added in your cigar by mistake. Need some money?”
“No,” I observed absently. “Nor does anybody else around here, apparently.”
He tossed me a suspicious glance. “What are you getting at?”
“Well, it’s been bothering me ever since we left Valentine’s. Ever since I first got here, really. Take Lucy’s car, for instance—”
“You take it. I like my Neova better, even full of bullet holes.” He tore the corner off a
sopapilla
and poured the honey in.
“Her house, then. Or yours. You realize, my old apartment would fit—hell, it’d practically fit into one of Lucy’s hovercraft! Everywhere I go in this town, everyone has lots of cash, and everything costs practically nothing. Where are you hiding your poor people?”
Ed peered critically into the pastry and kept on filling it. “What in epidemic’s name do you think
we
are?”
I started to laugh. “Come on, now—”
“No, you come on! Lucy’s a retired lady; Forsyth, what you’ve been calling a rent-a-cop. And when did you ever know a rich detective?”
“What about Clarissa?”
He bit into the
sopapilla,
honey glopping out past his chin. “A tradesperson, just like any other. Let me ask
you
something: how long did that shoulder of yours take to heal?”
“By standards I’m used to?”
“Fractured bones are a problem we’ve solved, largely with substantial amounts—by standards you’re used to—of scientific and economic freedom.” He took the last bite of pastry and wiped off his chin. “We’ve also solved
hunger,
and by the same means. All you have to do is leave people alone.”
“To die in the streets of old age or starvation? That’s why you need government, Ed, to take care of those who can’t—”
“Wrong way around, Win. Politicians
need
human misery, for their very—”
“Now wait a minute! We spend trillions, just to—”

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