Big Bang

by Ron Goulart

  Jake casually picked up the top folder pertaining to the missing professor. “Picture of the lass in question in here?”

  “Hey!” Bullet snatched it out of his grasp.

  A triop snapshot fluttered free, fell to the grass at their feet.

  Jake got it first. It showed a thickset, grey-haired man in a one-piece labsuit. He was smiling, modestly triumphant, and holding up a beaker flask with something greenish and foamy within. There was a young girl in labclothes on either side of him. The one on the professor’s right was Palsy Hatchbacker and the one on the left was Trina Twain. Both of them were about five years younger.

  Jake put the picture in the hand Bullet had been grabbing for it with. “The one with the dark hair was his sweetheart?”

  “She worked with the old goat back then, came back to do grad work,” grumbled the cop. “She and the professor dropped from sight last year. You figure it out.”

  “Didn’t know about her connection with him.” Jake frowned.

  Stuffing the photo safely away, Bullet said, “Did you know they still have the death penalty out in Utah?”

  “I did, yes.”

  “And do they hate sex killers out there,” he went on. “I remember when Kevin the Ripper went on trial—”

  “Even you can’t get me tried in Utah for a crime committed in Illinois, Bullet.”

  Bullet laughed. “Venue,” he said as the bench ceased shaking. “I think I can get a change of venue. Either try you in Utah or, if I’m really extra lucky, Nevada. Now in Nevada, Jake, they don’t exactly have a full-time death penalty but they got murder bingo. You take a chance and end up with anything from death in the gas chamber to $400,000 in cash and prizes. Fate decides.” He bent, grunting, and gathered up the material he’d beaten Jake to. “If we can wait a few months, it looks like Hawaii is going to vote the DP back. Over there in that tropical paradise they let six guys with machetes go after you. Nice and messy.”

  “I figure to solve this whole thing by the end of the week,” Jake assured him.

  “No, you won’t, buddy.” He rumbled to his feet. “I am going to make sure you get tagged for this one. I owe it to you and the missus. So long now, nice talking to you.”

  “Always is.”

  When the large Fed had disappeared around a bend in the grassy corridor, Jake moved his foot.

  Hidden under it was something that had fallen from one of the plyosax.

  “Some helpful clue,” said Jake, when he’d picked up the object and examined it.

  What he had in his hand consisted of two circles of gold-tinted plaz held together with a screw. There were numbers on the larger outer circle and letters on the smaller inner one. Emblazoned in gloletters across the center of the smaller circle were the words, Captain Texas Secret Decoder.

  Jake stood up and dropped the thing in his pocket.

  The lightsign over the saloon doors halfway down the corridor flashed The Beer Joint (R) (C) 2002, 2003 by Foodopoly. One of 7,626 identical dives serving needs of the college youth of America and of the civilized world in general. It was a fairly large sign.

  What attracted Jake to the college hangout, as he was making his way along the underground hallways of Poorman’s Harvard toward the AdminPlex, was not the multicolor sign but the raspy singing and offkey piano-thumping that was blaring out.

  “Oh, I ain’t the teleporter, mama, and I ain’t the teleporter’s son,” piped a smeared voice. “But I can move you, baby, till the teleporter comes.”

  Jake pushed inside the place, which smelled, thanks to the aircirc system, like stale beer and the latest prohibited drugs.

  “Oh, I ain’t the soy nutritionist, mama, or the … Ah! The very personage I am seeking.”

  John J. Pilgrim, the tipsy attorney, was seated at a glaz piano in the center of the dim-lit saloon. He had a derby tilted at a rakish angle and a beer mug was making foamy rings on the slick glaz top of the upright.

  Five beautiful young ladies, dressed in scanty two-piece sophsuits and froshsuits, were gathered around the rumpled little lawyer.

  “Don’t cease your playing,” pleaded one.

  Jake went striding through the mostly empty tables. “Is that one of my derbies?”

  Pilgrim whipped off the topper, gazed inside. “No, it is apparently the property of a gentleman entitled Crazy Otto.”

  “It is one of mine.” Jake yanked it out of his hand. “Do you know what an authenticated Crazy Otto brought at the last Parke-Bloomingdale auction of Pop-Jazz Memorabilia?”

  “$1924,” said one of the lovely coeds. “My Cousin Nels bought it. Who are you?”

  “It’s best you don’t know, Marigold,” advised Pilgrim. He left the piano bench, intending to stand. Instead he fell over into the believable sawdust. “Don’t mix Chateau Discount Burgandy Blended with Diet Pepsi and Storm Trooper Light Ale.”

  “Wise words.” Jake jerked him up off the saloon floor. “Were you looking for me?”

  “Got my client off earlier than I expected. Proved he couldn’t be the Wounded Knee Strangler because he was actually the Deadwood Peeper. Ironclad alibi. Voyeurism trial a week from Tuesday in the Dakotas Municipal Law Arena.”

  Jake guided the wobbly little man into a dark corner. “Have you come up with something?”

  “Bullet Benton has confiscated all the official background material on the deceased Miss Hatchbacker.”

  “Yeah, that’s what he told me when we had our recent chat.”

  “You shouldn’t talk to any FPA agents, Pace. Let me do the … oops!” He tipped over, landing in a sitting position in a booth. “Well, may as well have one more little pitcher of—”

  “Do you know anything else?” Jake sat opposite. “Otherwise I’ll continue on my way to the administration people and see if—”

  “I have something.” Pilgrim held up a forefinger, noticed it was smudged and examined it. “Imagine that, the black rubs off the piano keys. Inferior modern craftmanship. I doubt the immortal Crazy Otto ever had to—”

  “What do you have? Besides a sooty finger?”

  “Wait, be patient.” He was searching himself and arraying the contents of his saggy pockets on the tabletop. “There’s the murder weapon from a famous murder case and—”

  “That’s a beer opener.”

  “If it were just a beer opener, Pace, it wouldn’t be labeled Exhibit B. Also have a pair of lace pants with the day of the week embroidered on them in what an expert witness swore is Serbo-Croatian. Piece of toffee with cat dander stuck all over it. Piece of lint. It’s odd to find lint in a sincloth suit, unless they’re putting it in to fool the … Ah, here we are.” He pushed a crumpled slip of paper across.

  Written on it in a scrawly hand was: See LS-2 Grady Sunbloom. Re: Palsy. Obsessive Infatuation. “What’s this mean? Does this Sunbloom know Palsy?”

  “No.”

  “Then why—”

  “I defended Sunbloom last year for allegedly harassing Princess Lulu of Monaco-3,” explained the lawyer. “He suffers from what is technically known as a Worshipping From Afar Compulsion. In the case of the zoftig Princess Lulu he was not, during a spring vacation from Poorman’s Harvard, afar enough to suit her.”

  “What’s it got to do with Palsy?”

  “She is also on this gent’s list,” explained Pilgrim. “I only realized that sometime after you heaved me out into the snow at your palatial estate in—”

  “What list? This Sunbloom guy keeps a list of the ladies he idolizes from a distance?”

  “Exactly. Common symptom in our media-goofy society. I defend one of these poor mutts every three or four months.”

  “Does he know something about her murder?”

  “He knows everything about her,” replied the little lawyer. “He fell for her when she was an undergrad at this very college. Never spoke to her, but began to collect data on the lass. See? He has more info on her, including bootleg copies of everything the old U has, than Bullet B made off with right under y
our snoot. Sunbloom’s even got—”

  “And he’s still here at PMH?”

  “He’s always going to be here.” Pilgrim made an exasperated face. “That’s what LS-2 means. Lifetime Student, Second Class. He has a scholarship forever.”

  “I remember now,” said Jake. “Before our enlightened US Government dreamed up Flago, they had Schoolo. The top ten prizes were lifetime scholarships to the school of your choice.”

  “Sunbloom won one of them in ’93. He’s stuck down here for the rest of his natural life.”

  “I’d like to talk to him.”

  “All arranged. I told him that as soon as I located you I’d escort you to his digs.” Pilgrim executed a swaying rise from his bench. “Come along, Pace. The game’s afoot!”

  He took three wobbly steps and fell over.

  CHAPTER 10

  HILDY WAS IN A glaz booth that floated high above the audience, a thousand strong, in the immense outdoor Texas theater. Down on the stage the Plainklothes Khorus was finishing up a hymn and up here in the control room the producer and the director of the Hour of Supremacy were sobbing.

  “Whenever they come to them lines about motherless children havin’ a hard time,” said the chubby blond producer, “it just ’bout tears my heart clean out.”

  “Me, too,” blubbered the director, a lean young man in a white buckskin suit. “And I’m a test-tube baby born of a surrogate mother. No reason for me to be sentimental at all.” He dabbed at his tiny little eyes with a polkadot bandanna.

  “I had my mom committed to a Home for the Annoyingly Old just a scant month ago,” said the snuffling producer. “Couldn’t stand the ol’ bimbo. But, wowie, when I hear that song it whops me right in the guts.”

  “Fascinating,” murmured Hildy, making a note in the large notebook perched on one handsome knee.

  The producer glanced away from the monitors to scowl at her. “I don’t want to see nothin’ about me snarflin’ like a babe in print, lady,” he warned.

  “Nor I,” said the director, pushing back the brim of his white Stetson with his thumb. “We don’t want anybody to get the idea we is softies.” After blowing his tiny nose on the bandanna, he hid it away in a fringed pocket of his jacket.

  Down on the stage the Reverend Gully Lomax was striding out of the wings to join his guests for today’s show. He was a large fleshy man of fifty-one, clad in a three-piece white bizsuit and white cape. Glowing on his breast pocket was a scarlet cross and the familiar PKK logo. His silver hair was a nest of gentle waves.

  “What’s comin’ up, brothers an’ sisters? What day of days is almost upon us?” he was saying into his silver tokstik. “Oh, an’ it’s gonna be a glorious day tomorrow! A glorious day that celebrates the birth of a great man, the greatest man in the world, present company excepted. Yessir, it’s comin’ up on the birthday of Jesus Christ!”

  Everyone of his thousand followers sighed, “Amen!”

  “Now, what ought we to do? What, Lord, ought we to be thinkin’ about? On Christmas Day each an’ ever’ one of you miserable sinners got to fall down on your worthless knees. That’s right. On your knees an’ thank the Lord you was born with a white skin. ‘Oh, Jesus, thanks a million for makin’ me white on the outside an’ on the inside. Thanks for this white skin. I could do without this wart on my nose an’ these little zits on my chin, but all in all, thanks for ever’thin’.’ Once you get that out of the way you still got time to examine your soul an’ ask, ‘What in the dickens am I gonna send to the Reverend Lomax for his Xmas present?’ You still got time to get me somethin’ by tomorrow, if you ship via UPS-Telepax. I’ll be givin’ you some broad hints on what sort of stuff to send me in awhile. But right now let’s meet our blessed guests on today’s Hour of Supremacy!”

  “Heartwarming,” sighed the producer.

  “Give me camera two,” said the director. “Pull back, Leon.”

  There were three guests awaiting the reverend in the mock living room set at the center of the stage.

  “Praise the Lord,” said Lomax, sitting between a buxom blonde young woman and a gaunt old man of ninety-six. “I got to tell you, Sister Tandem, that the Good Lord surely blessed you plenty when it came to tits. Wow, you got a socko set of ’em!”

  “Amen!” said the entire audience.

  Tammy T. Tandem glanced down modestly at her impressive breasts. “I thank the Lord for all my gifts, Reverend Gully,” she said. She was wearing a seethru plaz two-piece cowgirl suit and a glaz sombrero. A glaz guitar filled with goldfish rested next to her chair. “Ever’ time one of my tunes hits the top of the charts, I just get down on my pretty ol’ knees an’ give thanks.”

  “You got a hit what is toppin’ the lists right now, ain’t you, hon?” asked the reverend as he patted one of her knees.

  “I do,” she admitted shyly. “According to Fascist Billboard and White Downbeat, my new vidcaz of ‘I Ain’t Gonna Marry No Honkytonk Man Nor Any Jigaboo!’ is right up there close to the ol’ top.”

  “Praise Jesus.”

  “Amen.”

  The old man was ticking in his chair, blinking and frowning. “You’re not Gary Nixx,” he accused Lomax.

  “Nope, I ain’t, Mr. LaRue. I am the Reverend Gully Lomax, founder and director of the PlainKlothes Klan and host of the highly rated Hour of Supremacy,” explained the wavy-haired video evangelist. “Now allow me to introduce you to our vast audience. Brothers and sisters, we’re honored to have with us a man who dedicated his noble life, up until the time they went an’ impeached him in 1991, to servin’ this great land of ourn. Let’s have a nice hand for Former Vice-President Slick LaRue, ninety-six years young, an’ here to tell us about his new book that deals with his service to our nation. It’s entitled … what is the dang title, Mr. LaRue?”

  “How I Screwed America,” answered the ancient Vice-President. “But you aren’t Gary Nixx.”

  “I still ain’t, no.”

  “Then this can’t be Nutrition On The Barricades!”

  “It surely isn’t.”

  The old man slumped in his chair. “My fool public relations firm told me I was scheduled to do Gary Nixx today,” he whined. “I’ve been nibbling on nothing but carrots since dawn. I sat around in your halfwit green room munching on bran flakes before shambling out here.”

  “Wellsir, the Lord wanted you to be on our show today, Mr. VP. An’ here you is.”

  “I loathe carrots. Bran gives me cramps and worse.”

  “Just lemme intro our final guest of the day.” The reverend leaned across Tammy T. Tandem to pat a fat middle-aged man on the knee. “Direct from the Right Sort Of People Only University in Orange Sector, Greater Los Angeles, is Dr. Leon ‘Cookie’ Cookson. He’s gonna tell us about his latest book, which is called I Oppose Teleportation As A Means Of Enforcing School Integration And While We’re At It I Don’t Think Much Of The Theory Of Evolution Either. Wow, there’s a title that lays it on the line.”

  “It’s catchy,” put in Tammy. “You can just about sing it.”

  “Cookie?” The Vice President scowled. “What sort of name is that for a grown man to have?”

  “It’s no worse than Slick,” sneered the doctor.

  “Certainly it is. Slick is manly and devil-may-care. Cookie, on the other hand, is a pantywaist’s name,” said the old man. “Why, when I was a boy growing to manhood in Minnesota, I had a little runty pup named Cookie. He was a pansy, too.”

  “At least I didn’t boondoggle this country out of seventy-two billion dollars!” shouted Dr. Cookson, rising from his chair.

  “It was sixty-five billion and not one penny more!”

  “Gents, gents,” said Reverend Lomax amiably.

  “Give me a close-up of the old bastard,” requested the director.

  “Whiles we are waitin’ for ever’body to settle down some,” said Lomax, “lemme get back to tellin’ you what I want for Xmas …”

  “You giving him the front cover of Pure, Miss Miller?” the produ
cer asked Hildy.

  “Oh, yes,” she responded, smiling and lowering her decspecs the better to flutter her eyelashes at him. “That is, if I ever get my chance to interview him.”

  “This background stuff, seein’ us at work up here, that’ll be invaluable,” the producer assured her.

  “I’d like to see Reverend Lomax’s home as well,” said Hildy. “I understand it’s a transplanted Gothic cathedral.”

  “Yep, right. Teleported her over from England, from Barsetshire, at great expense. All the funds donated by the reverend’s devoted and vast video flock.”

  “Fascinating,” she said. “And this cathedral-home serves as his headquarters as well? That is all the PKK records and such are stored therein?”

  “It’s the hot dang hub of the PKK,” said the producer.

  “Fascinating,” said Hildy.

  CHAPTER 11

  JAKE HADN’T BEEN INTENDING to visit CalSouth.

  This is how it came about.

  After interviewing Grady Sunbloom, the eternal student, Jake had returned to the skycar. The car was in a parking dome up on Boston Common and as he went walking toward it a flock of robot carolers came rolling toward him.

  An even dozen of them, three feet high and gilt-painted, broadcasting seasonal music out of their voxgrids and flashing their charity slots. Help The Brazil Vets! pleaded the flashsign on the clittering chest of one. Rehab Caffeine Addicts! begged another. Junk Food For Africa-26! Glaz Eyes For The Needy! Doles For Fictioneers!

  “God-rest-ye-merry-gentlemen. …”

  “Here, here, here,” said Jake, stuffing one-dollar Banx tokens into each of them. “Now, scoot.”

  “… let-nothing-you-dismay …”

  Snow was falling out in the twilight. The flakes hit the dome high above the lot, hesitated, melted, were replaced by new ones.

  Jake went through the identification and delocking routine that let him into the Odd Jobs, Inc. skycar.