Free Trueman Bradley - Aspie Detective by Alexei Maxim Russell Page B

guy’s got some serious jerk magic going!”
    “What is jerk magic?” I asked.
    “Oh, it’s an expression I invented,” she said. “Some people seem to know the worst, most inconvenient time to appear. It’s as if they do that on purpose, because they’re jerks. It’s as if they can magically predict where to be at any given time of day, to ruin something for somebody. It’s like they have magic powers. So I call it ‘jerk magic.’ That guy who sped past in the sports car, he’s got a lot of that jerk magic!”
    “That’s not real magic, is it?” I asked.
    “Of course not!” she said. “I just made it up.”
    “Oh, I see,” I said. “Well, even if it was real, we could easily defeat the magic powers of these ‘magic jerks.’”
    Nora started laughing.
    “Magic jerks,” she said. “I like that. But what do you mean, defeat them? I’m trying to jump up to the fire escape without being seen, but these magic jerks keep coming. You’re saying there’s some way we can avoid them?”
    “Sure,” I said. “I do it all the time. It’s a game I would play in my room at home, in Heartville. I sat at my window and watched the cars and pedestrians pass by. I counted the time it took for a pedestrian or a car to come and I made an algorithm to fit the data. This algorithm can predict when the next disturbance will come.”
    “What’s an algorithm?” she asked.
    “It’s a kind of logical structure,” I said. “A set of mental instructions. The steps in the algorithm are composed of Bernoulli probabilities and Bernoulli trials and…”
    “Wait, Trueman,” she said. “I don’t understand any of this. Can you speak to me in clear, understandable English?”
    “Oh,” I said. “Usually I’m the one asking people to speak clearly. Okay, I’ll explain it simply. I can use a calculation to determine if someone will arrive in the near future.”
    “Really?” she asked. “And it’s always correct?”
    “Well, about 75 percent of the time,” I said.
    “That’s good enough for me,” she said. “So I’ll get ready to jump and you use that algorithm to tell me when no one will be coming for a while. Then I’ll jump. Ready?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    I closed my eyes and concentrated on the algorithm. I could see it in my mind, as if it was a physical thing in front of me. I remembered all the data I’d collected about the pedestrian traffic in this area of East 13th Street and calculated when the next person or car would arrive.
    “After this old lady walks past us,” I said, “then we will probably not be disturbed for four minutes and two seconds.”
    The old lady was walking past as I said this. I guessed she heard what I said because she stared at me. I turned my head so I couldn’t see her. Suspicious stares always make me uncomfortable. I talked to Nora while I waited for the old lady to go away.
    “I used to call this equation the ‘disturbance detector’ because I would use it to determine when loud sirens would pass our house. Loud sirens make me nervous if I don’t expect them. But now that we’re using it to defeat the magic of magic jerks, I think I’ll call it the ‘jerk magic detector.’”
    Nora laughed. “I like that name,” she said.
    The old woman went into a neighboring apartment building.
    “Okay, now it’s safe!” I said.
    Nora ran to the apartment building and jumped up to the fire escape. She grasped the bottom of the ladder with both hands and pulled herself up to the fire escape. She looked down at me and winked, then she walked into the second floor window.
    I smelled smoke from a Winston brand cigarette. I could see Eddie leaning out of a window. I looked at my wristwatch.
    “Oh, Eddie’s here,” I said, to myself. “That’s a disturbance. He would have seen Nora if he came to the window a few seconds sooner. I was wrong. It was only thirty-two seconds before a disturbance came, not four minutes and two seconds. Well, my jerk magic detector is