Killer Calories

her feet and takes initiative? Of do you want a mindless robot, who’ll follow your every order without question and—”
    “The robot! No doubt about it; I’ll take the brain-dead robot. At least it won’t take stupid chances and get its transistors shot out.”
    That did it. Tammy’s lower lip protruded, and she began huff and puff like an asthmatic Pekingese. “Okay,” she said. what I did was so stupid, then I’m not going to tell you at cool, awful things I saw in his room.”
    “How cool?”
    Extremely cool.”
    “How awful?”
    “ Awful awful .” She shuddered. “I was totally grossed out. Let’s just say, the first thing I did when I left his room was find a sink and wash my hands.”
    “Tammy, you get grossed out over earthworms and fly droppings. I don’t know if you’re the most reliable judge of grossness.”
    “Okay, so I don’t like creepy or crawly things. But, believe me, what I saw in there was a whole other category of gross .“
    “And you aren’t going to tell me what it was?”
    “Nope. Not until you take back the ‘stupid’ comment .“
    “Would you settle for ‘less than wise’?”
    Tammy considered that for a moment, grinned, and nodded. “I guess.”
    “So, what did you see? Was it really that good ?“
    “Yeah. Even better.” She literally shivered with excite ment, looking like a kid who was hoping for a new red bicycle on Christmas Eve. “ Wanna be ‘less than wise’ and go check it out with me?”

    “You’re absolutely sure Lou Hanks gets a massage every evening at seven?” Savannah said as they stood outside the back window of Josef Orlet’s apartment.
    “Every evening for as long as I’ve worked here .“
    “Which has been...?”
    “About three months.”
    Three months wasn’t long enough to put Savannah ’s completely at ease. Without the benefits of gun, badge, ^ backup, she found she was a lot less feisty about entering residences of known violent criminals.
    But then, if she’d had a badge, she would have had to get a search warrant, and she certainly didn’t have enough legal cause for that. So, being a civilian wasn’t without its advantages.
    “How did you do this earlier?” she asked as she toyed with the window, trying to ease it upward.
    “It was stiff at first, but I just gave it a good push... like this...”
    Tammy grabbed the sill along with Savannah , they both shoved, and the window shot to the top with a resounding whack that sounded like a firecracker going off.
    “Great!” Savannah whispered. “Now that we’ve alerted the whole complex—”
    They waited to see if there would be any negative repercussions, but, if anyone had heard, thankfully, they weren’t concerned enough to check it out.
    “What’s directly beneath the window?” Savannah asked as she tested her footing on top of a water meter near the ground.
    “His bed.”
    With one hike, she raised herself to the sill and swung her leg inside.
    “Hey, pretty good,” Tammy remarked. “It took me three tries.”
    “You don’t have to be a size zero to be light on your feet, you know,” Savannah told her as she swung the other leg inside and stepped on Josef Orlet’s unmade daybed.
    She offered Tammy a hand up, then waited for her eyes to adjust to the semi-darkness of the room. It didn’t take long for her to see that the small studio apartment was filthy.
    “Not exactly Johnny Homemaker, is he?” she said as she took in the piles of dirty, smelly dishes and empty food containers on the kitchen counter and the heaps of soiled laundry on the floor.
    The television and VCR were practically buried in stacks of videotapes—obviously Orlet’s favorite pastime. Most appeared to be the X-rated variety.
    “Did I tell you it was gross, or what?” Tammy said.
    Savannah had the unpleasant thought that Tammy might have persuaded her to break into Josef Orlet’s apartment just to see what a lousy housekeeper he was.
    “Yes, you did,” she said. “But, I’m sorry to say it isn’t that much worse than your all-American firat house apartment. Surely, that wasn’t what you had in mind when you said—”
    “No, of course not. I wanted you to have a look in that drawer.” She pointed to a small chest in the far corner of the room.
    “Which drawer?”
    “The bottom one. The only one that’s closed.”
    “ Mmmm . It is the only one closed. Do you think that has significance?”
    “Oh, I think so. If I were him, I wouldn’t want anyone seeing