I'd made up my mind.
The next morning I woke up with a thousand overweight pixies tap-dancing on my skull. Dragging my head off the desk, I stumbled through a personal kaleidoscope of light and pain toward the hall bathroom.
Bennie the Dipso lay sprawled there, one elbow in the urinal, snoring merrily. I moved him to a more dignified position and used the convenience for its intended purpose. L.A. smog drifted in through the vent shafts. I was glad I hadn't developed any lung diseases.
I finished up and returned to my office for a breakfast glass of dog hair. I needed a shave and a bath. Or just a quick swim through carbolic acid. Instead, I tucked the .45 Colt Lightweight Commander into my waistband holster and headed for the stairs.
I could feel it this time. Maybe I was anticipating it. A sort of dull agony spread all through me by the time I got to the lobby. I sat down for a moment. It made no difference. At least I finally knew what all those little aches and pains over the past few months had been. I almost felt relieved. It wasn't as if I was getting
-I was merely dying.
I surveyed the ground floor. The lobby served as a repository for all the old, degenerating losers in the Arco slum area. They sat or lay or piled themselves in dirty heaps of gin and old clothing, waiting for that ultimate assassin to fire his fatal round. Men and women left behind by the spirit of uncaring time.
And I was one of them.
I felt like an old sick dog and knew it. I adjusted my foulard-the hottest design ten years ago, as was most of my ensemble-and pulled myself up to my full five-ten to step over the other derelicts.
I beelined to my nearest bank, over on Seventh. This one contained about five hundred thousand Panamerican dollars from a job I did on a senator who'd opposed private ownership of solar power satellites. He'd been one of those quirks you sometimes run across in politics. He wouldn't stay bought.
I'd decided to be poetic on that guy. He was driving up to his cabin in Vermont one summer day. Secluded country road. Lovely.
I was waiting along the way with a dazzlingly polished parabolic reflector. At a sharp bend in the road.
Easy money. Getting it out of the account turned out to be a lot tougher.
The line at the bank stretched almost the length of the building. The tellers had been shut off-a bad sign. Human substitutes had taken their place at tables set up at the far end of the floor. Guards with neural interruptors and backup revolvers formed a threatening line between the customers and their savings.
Even with a staggering hangover, I figured something was slightly amiss. Pulling my newsplaque with yesterday's
from my pocket, I punched up page one, column one. Since I usually started at the comics, then went to the obituaries, followed by sports and finally the news, this minor item had escaped my attention.
There'd been another devaluation.
The lady with the wheelbarrow full of cash should have tipped me off.I sighed and pulled out my passcard-a slip of plastic with the bank's logo on it. I'd been through this before. The feds always called it a 'revaluation.' That's a fancy term meaning 'the shaft' for anyone on a fixed income.
My foggy brain couldn't remember the date of the last deposit. `94? `95? I ignored the babble of impatient customers and the jostle of spectators while waiting my turn.
'Next,' the man behind the table said. Someone leaned too far over the counter, causing him to shout, 'Come on, everyone! Calm down. We're converting all currency. There's no shortage.'
'That's the problem,' someone whispered. 'Too damned
of the stuff!'
I dropped my card onto the table. A gangly youngster in a red jumpsuit took it and popped it into the aluminum box beside his elbow. Yawning, he pulled the card out to hand back to me.
'Any deposit or withdrawal?' he asked.
'All of it,' I said as cordially as possible. 'Now.'
