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Show 107 pioneers he wasn't so much ruining their fun as creating more fun. One night after all the Pioneers left and Red went back in the house Karl took me down in his xxxxxxx basement and showed me his latest project, a thick iron tube welded £a on either side a to heavy steel triangles. "What do ya think?" said Karl. "I'll be deadly for a two mile radius." He had his hands on his hips and grinned wide enough to show all the teeth he didn't have. I rubbed my chin like Willie. I could tell him he v/as crazy, but he knew that enough already. I could ask him what he needed a cannon for in the middle of quickly developing slum in the center of town, but that v/ould be the stupidest question because it was the only one. "Yeah," I said to Karl, "that's really great." "This is just a working model," said Karl. "Eventually I'm going to build myself a little Howitzer." "You aren't worried about the Russians, are you?" I asked him. "What Russians? Are there Russians moving in on top of Danger's?" "No. Puerto Ricans." "Shit," said Karl. "Parrots." "I thought you might be teaming up with Funster," I said. "Funster's okay," he said. "Little paranoid. Just a little nuts, you know? But at least that shelter's got him off the damn roof for awhile. He was making some of the Pioneers a little nervous." Karl sat down on the cannon. "We can make one more hit before the holiday season, I figure. I haven't seen anything in the xaxx papers and that's good, but the police take care of those people, you can believe that. They'll all be heading down to Florida or Jamaica for Christmas and that's when cat burglars are supposed to strike, so we won't. We'll sit out the winter. What you think?" I thought that was a fine idea. We'd only cased about three houses really well anyway and I already had more money than I knew what to do with, more than I could spend, more than I could give away. It just gave me a tremendous feeling to get inside those houses with everybody gone, look in the bathrooms with the saunas and whirlpools and all the plush nifty towels lined up so neat, and the nice perfumy woman's section of the bathroom with iax lots of plastic bottles with flowery names, the hamper with sli™ and silky Panties. And I liked the rooms with the stuifed |