The Year of the Jackpot — Robert A. Heinlein
The Year of the Jackpot — Robert A. Heinlein
At first Potiphar Breen did not notice the girl who was undressing.
She was standing at a bus stop only ten feet away. He was indoors but that would not have kept him from noticing; he was seated in a drugstore booth adjacent to the bus stop; there was nothing between Potiphar and the young lady but plate glass and an occasional pedestrian.
Nevertheless he did not look up when she began to peel.
Propped up in front of him was a Los Angeles Times; beside it, still unopened, were the Herald-Express and the Daily News. He was scanning the newspaper carefully but the headline stories got only a passing glance. He noted the maximum and minimum temperatures in Brownsville, Texas and entered them in a neat black notebook; he did the same with the closing prices of three blue chips and two dogs on the New York Exchange, as well as the total number of shares. He then began a rapid sifting of minor news stories, from time to time entering briefs of them in his little book; the items he recorded seemed randomly unrelated among them a publicity release in which Miss National Cottage Cheese Week announced that she intended to marry and have twelve children by a man who could prove that he had been a life-long vegetarian, a circumstantial but wildly unlikely flying saucer report, and a call for prayers for rain throughout Southern California.
Potiphar had just written down the names and addresses of three residents of Watts, California who had been miraculously healed at a tent meeting of the God-is-AII First Truth Brethren by the Reverend Dickie Bottomley, the eight-year old evangelist, and was preparing to tackle the Herald-Ex press, when he glanced over his reading glasses and saw the amateur ecdysiast on the street comer outside. He stood up, placed his glasses in their case, folded the newspapers and put them carefully in his right coat pocket, counted out the exact amount of his check and added twenty-five cents. He then took his raincoat from a hook, placed it over his arm, and went outside.
By now the girl was practically down to the buff. It seemed to Potiphar Breen that she had quite a lot of buff.
Nevertheless she had not pulled much of a house. The corner newsboy had stopped hawking his disasters and was grinning at her, and a mixed pair of transvestites who were apparently waiting for the bus had their eyes on her. None of the passers-by stopped. They glanced at her, then with the self-conscious indifference to the unusual of the true Southern Californian, they went on their various ways. The transvestites were frankly staring. The male member of the team wore a frilly feminine blouse but his skirt was a conservative Scottish kilt, his female companion wore a business suit and Homburg hat; she stared with lively interest.
As Breen approached the girl hung a scrap of nylon on the bus stop bench, then reached for her shoes. A police officer, looking hot and unhappy, crossed with the lights and came up to them. “Okay,” he said in a tired voice, “that’ll be all, lady. Get them duds back on and clear out of here.
The female transvestite took a cigar out of her mouth.
“Just,” she said, “what business is it of yours, officer?”
The cop turned to her. “Keep out of this I” He ran his eyes over her get up, that of her companion. “I ought to run both of you in, too.”
The transvestite raised her eyebrows. “Arrest us for being clothed, arrest her for not being. I think I’m going to like this.” She turned to the girl, who was standing still and saying nothing, as if she were puzzled by what was going on.
“I’m a lawyer, dear.” She pulled a card from her vest pocket.
“If this uniformed Neanderthal persists in annoying you, I’ll be delighted to handle him.”
The man in the kilt said, “Grace! Please!”
She shook him off. “Quiet, Norman this is our business.”
She went on to the policeman, “Well? Call the wagon. In the meantime my client will answer no questions.”