Richie seemed to be an alright guy when we chatted online. The head shot on his license even looks a bit romantic, if you can call bald romantic with a straight face. Maybe adventurous, is the better word. Anyway, I found him to be a little shorter than I had imagined, and there was that full-diaper kind of walk he had. Kind of came off like a big hairy baby in person, really.

It was rather exciting to help a fellow Investigator out though. I'd been getting mostly boring work from Sally recently. Now that my Waldo was back from repair, it was fun to be out on the streets a little, and worth the money Paul cost me last night. Paul didn't seem so enthused, but a twenty Cr note has the same effect on him as a mackerel on a circus seal. At least he exhibited the sense not to blab to Sally about my little moonlighting excursion.

Sally looked disconcerted. Save for a minor engineering check for a prototype developer this morning, the day had been slow. I took some of the slack time to scramble the letters on Richie's cube.

"You intend to spend the whole afternoon playing around in that Waldo?" Her pencil beat a nervous tattoo on the desktop.

"Just testing it out. Haven't had a lot of time to run it much since it came back from the shop."

Her brown mop lowered back over the paperwork she was fidgeting with, but evidently she couldn't keep her attention off me as I puttered around the reception area. Understandable, as I had modeled the Waldo with an eye towards pleasing the ladies, if you know what I mean. She flicked her gaze wistfully at the petri dish next to the desk, my usual hangout.

"Look, I don't have anything on schedule for you this afternoon, so why don't you take it for a walk in the park, or something. If I need you, I'll get you on the net, okay?"

"If you're sure...I do have some plans that could be brought forward a little, but ..."

"Oh, don't worry about me. I'll be fine. Just go."

Far be it from me to look a gift horse, etc. I could use the extra time hanging around Richie's office, soaking up the ambiance kind of thing. "You need Paul? I could take him with..."

Sally knits her brows and pushes her hand up at my Waldo, like a cop directing traffic. "I have things for Paul to do. Feel free to call him on his own time, if you want. He's off at four today. Taking his mom shopping though, I understand. Whatever, you're both back here at eight tomorrow morning, clear?"

"Clear as glass, mon patrone! Worry not!"

Sally retracts her hand to rub over her forehead...allergies, I guess. "Tomorrow, Mic. Bright and early. Go."

I execute a flawless, flourishing bow with the Waldo, and scoot.

Richie's expected visitors gave me to think it might be wise to tool up a little. There was a magic shop on the way there. Maybe I could snag a pair of cuffs or something on my way down, just in case.

The store didn't seem to have much on display. Likely most of the more elaborate supplies were all special ordered. I do pick up a pair of cuffs and a small bag full of this and that. A little box that issues scuffling noises when the remote is pressed, some itching powder, something called a joy buzzer. The bug-eyed register jockey says it's one of the better built ones, like there was some standard of excellence for moron accessories. Some soap that turns your skin black if you washed with it, caught my eye, and a whoopee cushion. Meat people have the strangest taste in gizmos.

Time is getting on, so I pay up and make my way to Richie's office. Actually, I'm buzzed to be doing this. Working with a real street-wise private dick like Richie. My investigations hover around engineering problems, usually rolling over micro-circuit boards on my bucky ball wheels, troubleshooting, er, investigating problems. At twelve angstroms in length, I have an edge in that area. To my mind, that makes me a club member, so to speak, but its not exactly the gritty life of a detective I read about on the net. Wearing my man-sized waldo though, I could finally get busy on the streets, without having to be carted around by Paul from job to job in a petri dish.

The place is locked, but the key works just fine. With time to waste, I take the Joy buzzer apart. Runs on a small power cell that charges up a tiny capacitor. Evidently when you shake someone's hand, a contact closes, and a low amperage charge is released into the guest's palm. Some kind of social ploy to increase the happiness of chance met strangers, I guess. It also produces a moderate buzzing sound and releases about a half volt of nearly zero amplitude current when pressed. There was a much bigger secondary power cell on the Waldo, and a quite high amperage cap made for running accessories, hard starting motors and such. It only takes a couple minutes to bypass the toy's circuit and wire it directly to the heavy 24 volt, 600 amp capacitor in the Waldo's belly.

I ran the wires up my arm, well, you get the picture. If it was a joy buzzer before, it was a thumping, ecstatic buzzer now. I put the cuffs at my belt and surveyed the look in a reflection from the glass office door. The cuffs gave a real professional look, to my eye. The whoopee cushion didn't do much, just made a raspberry noise if you filled it with air and pressed it. I stuck it under the cushion of the client chair in front of Richie's desk anyway, like the instructions suggested. I put the little noise maker box behind the office door, plop down in the swivel chair behind the desk, prop my feet up, pick up a ratty magazine, and wait for my guests. Should get a beat-up hat like Richie has, I think, getting into the mood.

They arrive about an hour later. I'm early, so they must have been watching the office. Two well tanned fellows. One thin guy and one ape, who knuckles in behind him. Both wore good, if over tailored, suits. The thinner one especially, whose jacket is tight enough to show a flat bulge under the right armpit. No tie though, the colored shirt is unbuttoned to down somewhere out of sight beneath the suit coat. He wears a ring bigger than the phony one fronting my joy buzzer. I do a "guess the monkey's weight" thing on the gorilla and set my charge capacitor's output accordingly.

The thin-man stops in front of the desk, and rests his fingertips on it. "You Wander?"

"Actually I'm more a point A to point B guy. What have you got on your mind?"

The quip goes well over the ballpark fence, to rattle around in the vacant lot behind the stadium. "I'm here to pick up a package off you--in trade for this."

A white envelope appears from his right shirt pocket, under the jacket. I made a spectacle of tearing open the end of it, and inspecting the contents. In doing so, I surreptitiously empty the packet of itching powder into it, shake my head, and leaned forward, stuffing the envelope upside down into his shirt.

"Keep it for your trouble. I got the cube for you. I'd rather know what all this is about. Who was supposed to get it, if not me, and as long as we're on the subject, why was it dropped off here?"

Startled, the talker grabs the envelope out of his shirt, glances at the hundred credit note sticking out of it. He shrugs and pockets it.

"All the same to me, Wander. Just produce the cube. No talk. Moke here gets itchy when he has to stand around. You wouldn't want to get him itchy."

He'll shortly be in good company then. The whole packet of powder was by now well sifted down somewhere near the desk leaner's belt-line.

"I just thought I should get something out of all this."

The thin man's face darkens. His right hand wends its way to his belt-line and disappears under his jacket. "Moke, give the man something extra."

The sideshow exhibit starts around the desk. I grab the cube and tossed it to him. "Here, it's what you came for, take it!"

The gorilla stops, raising his hands reflexively to catch the cube. Meantime thin-guy has both hands busy, one hunching around underneath his belt, the other pulling out a fletchette spitter from under his right armpit, cross-handed. I hit the remote I had pocketed earlier. A scrabbling sound starts up from the vicinity of the door. Thin-guy whirls around, checking for the source. I reached out to Mr. Moke and palm the back of his hand. The joy buzzer goes off with a shriek and an arc welding flash. Moke bellows and drops unconscious, twitching to the floor. My right palm is now devoid of cosmetic plastic, but I console myself that unlike Moke, I at least can't see through a cauterized hole in it. My hand is still plenty hot though, so as thin-guy jerks back to face me, I slapped his gun hand with it. He screams and drops the gun, though I notice his right hand never leaves his trousers. He had managed to squeeze off a round, not that it mattered, and a fletchette dart zipped by my ear. I pull the cuffs from my waist and slap one on his wrist, the other on the chair arm.

A mistake. Thin guy grabs the chair, despite his evident pain, and swings it at me, still trying to tug his right hand free. A slap across the face with my Waldo's metal paw solves that though. Thin guy tumbles onto the capsized chair and collapses. The links of the cheap cuffs came apart during this. I righted the chair and dropped him into it. Surprisingly, the whoopee cushion hadn't come out from beneath the cushion, and went off with a gratifyingly long raspberry.

I took a good look at thin-guy's ring, and patted him down, hoping to gain something to show Richie. Both were still breathing, so I called the cops, reported a break-in and left them there. Thin guy still had one hand shoved down his pants, and as things turned out, they kind of looked as if they had molested each other. I left, and made for uptown. I don't think it was what Richie had expected to happen, but he would have an alibi, and certainly wouldn't fit the description these two might give the police, so he should be clear. I did leave them the cube and the whoopee cushion. The soap came with me though. It was only three O'clock, so I had several hours to kill. There was a bowling alley around here someplace. Never tried bowling. Understandable, since about a billion of me wouldn't normally fill a thumb hole of a bowling ball.