Red Thunder by John Varley Read Free Book Online

great." I saw Aunt Maria hurrying toward us, holding Mom's fine
old Mossburg gingerly. Maria doesn't like guns. Mom loves guns, as long
as she's the one pointing and shooting them. I stepped around Mom and
took the shotgun from Maria.
    "Which room, Maria?" I asked.
    "That one, 206. They've had six visitors in the last hour. I thought—"
    "Yeah, it probably ain't a Mary Kay convention. Maria, you and Dak
stay back. Dak, you hear shooting, you press that last 1, okay?"
    "
Loud
shooting," Mom said, holding her pistol pointed at the sky. "This thing doesn't make much more noise than a cork gun."
    She was downplaying it a little, but the revolver really wasn't very
noisy. It was only a .22 but it looked strange, being a match weapon
saved from the days when Mom liked to shoot competitively, and had the
time for it.
    How good was she? If you asked her to shoot a mosquito in the air,
she'd ask if you wanted a head shot, or one through the kneecap.
    She looked at me, took a deep breath, and nodded. We'd done this
sort of takedown before. It was that kind of neighborhood. I moved the
maid cart off to one side so it wouldn't get in our way. Mom rapped on
the door with the gun barrel.
    "This is the manager, Mr. Smeth. Open up, please." Later I got out
the check-in slips and saw he really had signed in with that name:
Homer Smeth. We get an amazing number of Smiths, but this was the first
one who didn't know how to spell it.
    "Buzz off. We're busy."
    Mom knocked once more, got more or less the same answer, and nodded to me. She slipped her master key into the lock.
    I reached up into the brickwork and pulled the little hidden toggle
there. It was connected to a bolt that held the inside chain-lock plate
to the wall. When the bolt was pulled, it looked like the door was
chained securely, but it wasn't. I'd installed that little item on most
of our rooms. Saves having to bust down the door. Lots cheaper.
    I nodded at her, and she turned the handle. The door swung open and
she stepped in, the gun held in front of her. I stepped around her and
did my best to glower at them.
    Homer Smeth was sitting at the desk, a baggie of white powder open
in front of him. He had been busy measuring out doses with a razor
blade and putting each dose into one of those tiny Ziplocs that, so far
as I can tell, are not good for anything but dope.
    Heroin? Probably coke. It made no difference. Neither were tolerated
at the Blast-Off. Sitting on the bed partially dressed and watching
television was Homer's sidekick, the guy he had checked in with a few
hours ago. With him was a girl who looked about fourteen except in the
eyes, which were a lot older.
    "Now we told you when you checked in we didn't allow dealing in this
place, Homer," Mom said. She waved the gun, indicating the door. "Y'all
better pack your things and go."
    Homer just stared at her with his mouth slightly open. It looked
like he had about a pound of powder on the desk. He was mixing it with
baby laxative. The couple on the bed didn't move, either.
    At last Homer seemed to work it all out. He smiled, showing the two
missing teeth I remembered from when I checked him and his scumbag
friend in. He held up one of the little bags of dope.
    "Don't get your panties in a twist, sister. How 'bout a couple snorts of this?"
    Mom didn't hesitate. The gun came up and barked once, and the tiny
plastic bag between his fingertips vanished. Fine white powder floated
in the air like chalk dust. He stared at the empty space, once more too
stoned to quite realize what had happened. All three of them were doing
the stupidest thing a dope dealer can do, which is sample the product.
At the Blast-Off, we didn't even get a very good grade of narcotics
trafficker. And that's a good thing, because with
those
dudes we'd have been in a gunfight, and
those
dudes carried more firepower.
    Still no motion from anybody. I racked a round and raised the muzzle
so it pointed at Homer's chest. That sound, of the slide being worked
on