Crouching Buzzard, Leaping Loon(12)

    Evening builds were supposed to be rare. In the time I’d been around, we’d had one every day, Saturday and Sunday included.

    So while I could understand the programmers’ eagerness to keep on with their work, I realized that someone might have to break the news to them that this afternoon’s build would probably be canceled, and if they didn’t stop arguing with the increasingly red-faced young police officers, they’d probably miss tomorrow afternoon’s build, too, unless the chief allowed them to telecommute from the county jail.

    Beneath the shrill protests of the enthusiastic youngsters, I could also hear the deceptively calm, reasonable voices of some of the older programmers. By older, I meant that they were in their thirties, like me, and had some vague recollection of what life was like before computers ruled the earth.

    I don’t know whether this was true of more mature techies in general or just of the crew Mutant Wizards had attracted, but they were, almost without exception, stubborn, independent iconoclasts with a sneaking fondness for anarchy, entropy, and coloring way outside the lines. My kind of people, under normal circumstances. But these were not normal circumstances. I could hear them calmly and rationally questioning the cops’ authority to be there, disputing the necessity for clearing the premises, and generally causing trouble.

    Chief Burke could hear them, too. Every second he was looking less like somebody’s kindly uncle and more like Moses, working up a head of steam to give some idolaters what for. And if he whacked the pink plush bear against his leg any harder, it was probably going to pipe up with another affirmation and really tick him off.

    I decided to intervene.

“Hang on a second,” I said to the chief. I stepped out into the middle of Cubeland and announced, in what Rob called my drill sergeant voice, “All hands meeting in the parking lot now! I’m not ordering the pizza or the beer until everyone is present and accounted for!”

“That seemed to do the trick,” the chief remarked five minutes later, surveying the nearly empty office.

“I’m putting in the pizza order,” I said, looking up from my cell phone. “How many officers do you have here, anyway?”

“You don’t need to order for us,” he said.

“You’ll be sorry in an hour,” I said. “Do you really want your officers watching everyone else pig out while their own stomachs are rumbling?”

“Nine,” he said. “Counting me; plus two, three others who might show up if the dispatcher ever gets hold of them.”

“That’s more like it,” I said.

    Just then the forensic technician shrieked and jumped up on the reception desk.





    I was impressed with how quickly the four officers who’d been scattered throughout the premises made it back to the reception room with their guns drawn and ready. But I couldn’t figure out which ones made me more nervous: the two whose hands were shaking so badly they could barely hold on to their guns or the two who looked way too excited at having a chance to shoot something.

“What in creation’s wrong?” the chief asked.

“I’m sorry,” the technician said. “I can’t stand rats.”

“Rats?” the chief echoed. “Where?”

“Down there,” the technician said, “Inside the desk. I’ll chase it out.”

    With that, he began pounding his fist on the side of the desk.

“Stop!” I shouted. “It’s not a rat, it’s only - “

“Meg,” my brother said, ambling into the reception area. “Can you come down and - urk!”

    The pregnant cat leaped out of the desk when she heard the door opening, and made a break for freedom through Rob’s legs. Rob, startled, tried to get out of her way and ended up lying on his back, looking up at the four armed officers. I saw the cat disappear into the open stairwell door.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said. “Do you know how long it took Dad and me to catch the poor thing this morning?”

“Sorry,” the technician said, climbing down from the desk. “I really did think it was a rat.”

“What are you people running up here, a pet store?” the chief said as his officers holstered their weapons. “You can get up now, Mr. Langslow.”

“Meg, could you come down and be ready to pay the pizza guy,” Rob said, recovering from his paralysis once the guns had disappeared.

“Put it on the corporate account,” I said.