Which was when the cops rounded the corner, heading my way.
I was hanging about ten feet over the walkway. The bag was maybe eight feet above the ground, but the plastic was stretching thin, descending about an inch per second. With all the cool things science and technology have brought mankind, why couldn’t they invent a tear-proof garbage bag?
It was dark, but not so dark the cops wouldn’t notice a man dangling over their heads. Especially a man dropping dope.
They took their time, strolling slowly, locked in a deep conversation that luckily precluded them paying attention to their surroundings.
“What would you do if you got the reward?”
“I’m a public servant. I couldn’t collect.”
They stopped directly under me. I tried to lift up the bag, but it was stretching faster than I could raise it.
“The president said anyone can collect.”
“No shit? Well, with ten million credits, I’d buy property. Serious property. Maybe even this house here.”
He tapped the wall with his monadnock baton, and it gave off a little spark. I felt my sphincter squeeze closed.
“It’s a nice place. Probably pays a fortune in biodiesel tax, though. And you meet his neighbor?”
“I did. What a dick.”
“I wonder if the wife comes with the house. She’s worth the ten mil, easy. Real redhead, I hear.”
I managed to lift the bag up to my mouth. I held the plastic in my teeth, then reached lower for a better grip and watched in horror as a bud slipped out and began to fall. Without thinking, I peeled away my right hand and reached for the bud. I snagged it and wound up kneeling on the wall at a perfect ninety-degree angle. My legs, abs, and glutes burned like they’d been set on fire. I couldn’t hold this position for more than a few seconds.
“I hear she’s an SLP. Maybe you can get on her waiting list.”
“Chick like that? Couldn’t afford her.”
“Maybe you should save your money, stop giving it all to El Stop Linda.”
“Don’t knock El Stop Linda. She may not be much to look at, but she’s got the vibrating tongue implant.”
“She looks like a guy.”
“You wouldn’t care, once she starts licking.”
Gravity began to beat me down, my upper body starting to sink. Getting caught wasn’t the only threat anymore. If my ass touched my heels, I had no idea how I’d ever get back up.
“You know who she looks like?” The voices were fading. They were finally walking away.
“Who?”
“Stan, in accounting. Except El Stop Linda has more facial hair.”
“I’d call them about even. Stan’s got bigger boobs, though.”
I watched them round the corner. Then I dropped the bud, adjusted the TEV strap, and grunted in agony sitting up into a vertical position again. I couldn’t hold the bag anymore, so I tossed it onto my roof, hoping no one would hear. Then I painfully climbed the two more feet to the edge, hooking my arms over the top, dragging myself onto my lawn.
If I lived through this, I was going to buy a ladder for the side of my house.
After half a minute of rest and recuperation, I fished out my DT and did a quick calculation figuring out the air volume of my home and the parts per million of atomized THC needed to get someone high.
I crawled over to one of my hemp plants and began harvesting buds. When I finished the plant, Chomsky’s garbage bag was full. I dug out the atomizer and moved in a crouch over to my air-conditioning unit, the fan humming. I didn’t bother with unscrewing the top, instead using the Nife to remove the outer housing and hepafilter. Then I placed the ass end of the atomizer above the spinning fan and began feeding it marijuana.
It took fifteen minutes to empty the bag. I waited another five, cutting the hepafilter to mask size and taping it over my mouth and nose. I tapped my eyelid and viewed the infrared. The four cops were still in my house. They all appeared to be sitting down or reclining, two in the upstairs living room, and two in the downstairs den. Hopefully, the pot had put them to sleep, or at least made them so loopy they’d forgotten why they were there.
I slid open my patio door and crept inside, powering up the TEV, which was still set to Teague’s Tesla account. Vicki said a listening device had been found in the kitchen, so I set the lens for a wide angle and got started. It took only a few seconds to tune in to the eighth membrane and less than a minute to find the octeract point and pet the bunny. Once I had a decent image on the monitor, I did a speedy rewind and watched, viewing back in time from an hour ago.
I saw cops, lots of cops, moving in reverse. I went further back, before they arrived, and I saw the skinny, elderly face of Barney the dentist, one of Vicki’s clients, sticking his nose in my refrigerator. I slowed it down, got a close-up. He was eating an apple, the same smug/satisfied look on his face every man wore after being with my wife. I highly doubted he was the one who had set me up, but I followed his movements anyway to see if he planted any bugs. I trailed him, in reverse, out of the kitchen, down the hallway.