Free Callahan's Place 09 - Callahan's Con (v5.0) by Spider Robinson Page B

brain.”
    “What, you mean like a lobotomy?” Doc Webster asked.  
    Willard’s grimace was a grin, now.   “Way subtler.   And way nastier.   A permanent hand-eye coordination problem.   When Her Ladyship was done with Tony, if he tried to hit somebody, he always missed.   By at least an inch.   The same if he tried to shoot them, or stab them, or throw something at them, or even just grab them.   You might say he always aimed to please.”   His wife jabbed him with an elbow, but he was expecting it.
    I was awed.   “I can see where a maximum security prison would be an unfortunate place in which to have a condition like that.”
    Willard nodded wordlessly, and by now the whole front of his head was mostly grin.   Maureen was trying to suppress her own grin, and failing.   “Especially for someone too stupid to unlearn a lifetime of aggression and arrogance,” she agreed.   “I can’t imagine he survived long, and death was probably a blessing when it came.”
    “Anyway,” Willard said, “the other upshot of the whole business was…the other two upshots were, that I decided to give up screwing people for a living and become an honest prostitute instead…and that Maureen consented to park her cotton balls under my bathroom sink.”   They kissed.   “So things worked out in the end.”
    “Only it wasn’t de end,” Fast Eddie said.
     
    *   *   *
     
    Willard and Maureen stopped smiling.
    “Apparently not,” he admitted.   “Whatever the nature of Lady Sally’s mojo, either it was not hereditary, or—far more likely—Tony had already spawned by then.   The man who just left here did not seem as though he’d ever had much trouble hitting anything he wanted to.”
    “You’re sure he’s your Tony’s kid,” I said.
    Willard looked at me.   “Jake, can you picture random chance producing a set of genes like that twice ?   Not only am I sure that was Little Tony Donuts, I’m prepared to wager twenty bucks that every single gene his mother tried to contribute to the mix was a recessive, that died waiting for reinforcements.”
    “Another twenty says she died in childbirth,” Maureen said.   “Nobody has that kind of pelvis anymore.”
    “He resembles his father so closely that even though my forebrain knew better, my hindbrain kept insisting he was Tony Donuts.   I kept turning my face away so he wouldn’t recognize me.”
    “Me too!” Maureen said.   “Somebody like Tony, you see him again thirty years later, you expect him to look absolutely unchanged.   Like Mount Rushmore.”
    “This,” Alf said, “is an interestingly tricky situation.”
    “How do you mean?” fellow quadruped Ralph asked.
    “You people have to fight a guy even the Mafia is scared to mess with.   But not only can’t you kill him…you can’t even let him try to kill you.   For the same reason: it’d cause talk.”
    “Aw, this is Key West,” Long-Drink argued.   “People are reasonable, here.   Nobody’d mind too much if we put down dangerous wildlife like a Tony Donuts Junior.”
    I had to side with Alf.   “The deer’s right, Drink.   Sure, the community might well decide Little Nuts needed killin’…that’s not the point.   The point is, even this place isn’t so laid back that it’s safe to display paranormal powers here.   If Tony kills one of us and we don’t die, it might take a week or two, but sooner or later we’re all gonna find ourselves talking to somebody from Langley, Virginia.”
    “I think you’re all overlooking something,” Erin said.
    If it seems strange to you that a thirteen-year-old girl got the respectful attention of a barroom full of adults, remember that most of them watched her save the entire macrocosmic universe back before she had a single permanent tooth in her head.   “Yes, honey?”
    “You keep assuming that just because you can’t be harmed by gunfire or explosion, you can’t be harmed.”
    “ Oh .”   She had a point.