Laugh Lines

by Ben Bova

  “Objection!” shouted three of the five defense clones in unison.

  “Overruled,” snapped the judge. “The witness will continue.”

  The lawyer prompted, “So this electronic book gadget, this . . . thing they call Cyberbooks, will result in the whole sales force being laid off?”

  “That’s right,” said Woody.

  “In your professional opinion,” the lawyer amended.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Junior slouched farther on the hard wooden pew. Mom and Dad have pinned everything they’ve got on this Cyberbooks idea, and the sales force is going to stop it cold. Then what happens? They can’t fire Woody or anybody else; they’ll be back in court before you could say “prejudice.” They won’t be able to work with Woody or the rest of the sales force; too much hard feeling.

  No, Junior concluded, the company’s doomed. Finished. Mom and Dad are going down the tubes.

  Which only made him smile more. Because I’ve been smart enough to take the money I have and invest it wisely. In one of the biggest multinational, diversified corporations in the world. My fortune isn’t going to depend on some crazy invention, or on a lawsuit by my own employees.

  Two days earlier, P.T. Bunker, Jr., had taken every penny in his trust fund and sunk it into Tarantula Enterprises (Ltd.). He had not merely acted on his own, nor did he trust a stockbroker with his money. Junior had first bought the latest computer investment program, and used his own office machine to examine all the various possibilities of the stock market.

  Tarantula Enterprises was a great investment, the computer had told him. In order to fight off an unfriendly takeover bid, Tarantula was buying its own stock back at inflated prices. Although this had removed most of the stock from the open market and made the price for Tarantula shares artificially high, the computer program predicted that the price would go even higher as the takeover battle escalated. So Junior instructed his computer to automatically buy whatever Tarantula stock was available, and to keep on buying it until he told it to stop.

  Glowing with self-satisfied pride, he told himself that he could even retire right now and just live on the dividends.

  Lt. Moriarty, meanwhile, was causing no end of anguish among the staff tending the intensive care unit at St. Vincent’s Hospital.

  The usual routine was to keep ICU patients calm and quiet, sedated if necessary. Usually such patients were so sick or incapacitated by trauma that there was little trouble with them. Generally the intensive care ward looked somewhat like a morgue, except for the constant beepings and hums of monitoring equipment. Except when there was an emergency, and then a team of frantic doctors and nurses shouted and yelled at one another, dragged in all sorts of heavy equipment, and even pounded on the poor patient as if beating the wretch would force him or her to get better.

  No one knew how many times a screaming emergency at bed A had resulted in heart failure at bed B. No one dared even to think about it.

  Moriarty was different, though. All the monitors showed that he was in fine fettle, and since he had been in the hospital less than twenty-four hours, the nurses could not even claim that he was too weak to be allowed to get out of bed. But the hospital rules were ironclad: no one got out of the intensive care ward until their physician had okayed a transfer or release—and his insurance company had initiated payment for the bill.

  Moriarty insisted that he was detoxed and feeling fine. They had removed the IV from his arm; the only wires connected to him were sensor probes pasted to various portions of his epidermis. He wanted out. But Dr. Kildaire was out for the day; he would not return until the midnight shift started. And the accounting department, its computer merrily tabulating hourly charges, absolutely refused to discharge a patient whose insurance was provided by the city.

  Threatening bodily harm and a police investigation produced only partial results. The head ICU nurse, a slim Argentinean with a will of tempered steel, at last agreed to allow Moriarty to sit up and use a laptop computer.

  “If you stay quiet and do not disturb the other patients,” she added as her final part of the bargain.

  Moriarty reluctantly agreed. He had to check out a thousand ideas that were buzzing through his head, and he needed access to the NYPD computer files to do it. The laptop was not as good as his own trusty office machine, but it was better than nothing.

  For hours he tapped at its almost silent keys and examined the data flowing across the eerily blood-red plasma discharge screen. Yes, all of the victims had indeed been Tarantula stock owners; most of them had owned shares for years, decades. But he himself had only recently purchased a few shares. So new owners were just as vulnerable to the Retiree Murderer as old ones. The murders had nothing to do with being retired, the victims were owners of Tarantula stock who lived in New York.

  Which meant that the murderer was connected in some way to Tarantula. And lived in New York. Or close enough to commute into town to commit the murders.

  Pecking away at the keyboard, Moriarty used special police codes to gain access to the New York Stock Exchange files. What happened to the stock of the murder victims? Who was buying the shares?

  It was impossible to trace the shares one for one, but there was a buyer for the shares of the murder victims. Within weeks after each murder, the victim’s shares were sold—and bought immediately. But by whom? Tarantula shares were traded by the thousands every day of the week. Who was buying the shares of the murder victims?

  For hours that question stumped Moriarty. Then he got an inspiration. He asked the NYSE computer if any one particular individual person was acquiring shares of Tarantula on a regular basis.

  The stock exchange computer regarded corporations as individual persons, and gave Moriarty a long list of buyers that included corporations headquartered in New York, Tokyo, Messina, and elsewhere. It was almost entirely corporations, rather than human beings, who were regularly buying Tarantula stock.

  Again Moriarty stared at a blank wall. But slowly it dawned on him that Tarantula Enterprises (Ltd.) was itself one of the largest regular buyers of its own stock. The corporation was buying back its stock wherever and whenever it could. Not an uncommon tactic when a company was trying to fend off an unfriendly takeover, and if Moriarty read the data correctly, Tarantula was fighting savagely to beat off a takeover attempt by a Sicilian outfit.

  The Mob? Moriarty asked himself. Could be.

  Then could it be the Mob that is knocking off these little stockholders and buying their shares?

  Not likely, he concluded. The Mafia-owned corporations were buying Tarantula stock in big lots, tens of thousands of shares. Not the onesey-twoseys that the Retiree Murder victims had owned. Moreover, there hadn’t been much selling to the Mobsters over the past several months. Tarantula was buying back its own stock pretty successfully and preventing the Mafia from gaining a controlling interest.

  So who’s buying the murder victims’ stock? Moriarty asked himself for the hundredth time that afternoon. The computer could not tell him.

  It takes two talents to be a good detective: the ability to glean information where others see nothing, and the ability to piece together bits of information in ways that no one else would think of. Perspiration and inspiration, Moriarty called the two.

  He had sweated over the computer for practically the entire day. It had told him everything he asked of it; a most cooperative witness. But it had not been enough. Now he had an inspiration.

  While the nurses were making their rounds, replacing the IV bottles that fed the comatose patients in the intensive care ward, Moriarty asked the computer for photographs of the members of Tarantula’s board of directors. Maybe. Just maybe.

  The pictures were slow in coming. The simple laptop computer, with its limited capability, built up each photo a line at a time, rastering back and forth across the screen like the pictures sent by an interplanetary probe from deep space.

  The chief nurse herself brought Moriarty a skimpy dinner tray and laid it
on the swinging table beside his bed with an expression on her face that said, “Eat everything or we’ll stick it into you through an IV tube. Or worse.”

  Moriarty actually felt hungry enough to reach for the tray and munch on the bland hospital food while the computer screen slowly, slowly painted pictures of Tarantula’s board members, one by one, for him to examine.

  It wasn’t until the very last picture that his blood pressure bounced sky high and his heart rate went into overdrive.

  “It’s him!” Moriarty shouted. “I’d recognize those eyes anywhere!”

  He flung back the bedsheet and started to get to his feet, only to be surrounded instantaneously by a team of nurses and orderlies that included two hefty ex-football players. Despite Moriarty’s struggles and protests, they pushed him back in the bed. The chief nurse herself stuck an imperial-sized hypodermic syringe into Moriarty’s bare backside and squirted enough tranquilizer into him to calm the entire stock exchange.

  “You don’t unnerstand,” Moriarty mumbled at the faces hovering over his suddenly gummy eyes. “There’s a life at stake. Whoever bought Tarantula stock . . . his life’s in danger . . . .”

  Then he fell fast asleep and the team of nurses and orderlies left, with satisfied smiles on their faces.

  Weldon W. Weldon was forced to call a recess to the board of directors meeting after the orderlies had finally cornered the all-singing, all-dancing Gunther Axhelm and carted him away. The conference table was a scuffed-up mess, and several of the older directors needed first aid.

  He sat in his powered chair, Angora blanket across his lap, and watched the maintenance robots polish the table and rearrange everyone’s papers neatly. The conference room’s only door swung open, and a malevolently smiling P. Curtis Hawks stepped in. His red toupee was slightly askew, but Weldon said nothing about it.

  “You wanted to see me?” Hawks snapped. He self-consciously planted his fists on his hips, just above the pearl handles of imitation Patton pistols.

  “Yes I did,” Weldon replied, adding silently, You stupid two-faced idiotic clown.

  “Well?”

  “Close the door and come down here,” said Weldon. “What I have to tell you shouldn’t be shouted across the room.”

  Hawks pushed the leather-padded door shut and slowly walked down the length of the long conference table, avoiding the robots that were industriously polishing its surface back to a mirror-quality sheen.

  Pulling up a heavy chair and sitting directly in front of the Old Man, Hawks slowly took the pacifier from his mouth and said, “You forced me to do this.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes you did,” the younger man said, his voice trembling just a little. Like a little boy, Weldon thought. A little boy who’s mad at his daddy but knows in his heart that he’s being naughty.

  Weldon said carefully, “You thought that I sent Axhelm into your operation to destroy you.”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No. I sent him to Webb Press because the operation had to be cleaned out before we could transfer to electronic publishing. And you wouldn’t have the kind of cold-blooded ruthlessness it took to clean house.”

  “Clean house? He’s driven us out of business!”

  “Not quite,” said Weldon. Then he added with a smirk, “Your losses are going to save Tarantula a walloping tax bite next fiscal year.”

  “Webb Press shouldn’t be run as a tax loss . . . .”

  “And it won’t be,” said Weldon softly, soothingly, “once you’ve converted to electronic publishing.”

  “You mean you . . .”

  “Haven’t you been paying attention to the industry news?” The old man was suddenly impatient. “Haven’t you seen what’s happening at Bunker Books? Their own sales force is suing Bunker over Cyberbooks.”

  Hawks gaped at him, uncomprehending.

  “I had to clean out Webb Press,” Weldon explained, “before you could even hope to start with electronic publishing. One thing I’ve learned over the years, never expect a staff to change the way it does business. If you’re going to go into a new venture, get a new staff. That’s an ironclad rule.”

  “So you were going to get rid of me, too,” said Hawks grimly.

  Weldon felt exasperation rising inside him like boiling water. “Dammit, Curtis, you can be absolutely obtuse! I told you your job was safe! I told you I wanted Webb to lead the world into electronic book publishing. What do I have to do, adopt you as my son and heir?”

  Hawks thought it over for a long moment, chewing hard on his pacifier.

  “It would help,” he said at last.

  Now it was Weldon’s turn to go silent as he thought furiously. This is no time for a split on the board. The Sicilians will take advantage of it and move in for good. Yet—Hawks has already risen to his level of incompetence. If I promote him one more step . . .

  The old man smiled at his erstwhile protege, a smile that had neither kindness nor joy in it, the kind of smile a cobra might make just before it strikes, if cobras could smile.

  He wheeled his powered chair up to Hawks’s seat and reached out to pat the younger man on his epauletted shoulder.

  “All right, Curtis,” Weldon said softly, almost in a whisper, “I’ll do just that. Make you my heir. How would you like to take over the responsibilities of chief executive officer of Tarantula Enterprises?”

  The pacifier dropped out of Hawks’s mouth. “CEO?”

  Nodding, Weldon said, “I’ll remain chairman of the board. You will still report to me. But instead of merely running Webb Press, you’ll have the entire corporation under your command.”

  Hawks looked as if he were hyperventilating. It took several gasping tries before he could say, “Under . . . my . . . command!”

  “I take it you accept the offer?”

  “Yes!”

  “Fine. Now let’s get the rest of the board in here and finish our business.”

  Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Hawks agreed, “Right. Let’s tell them the good news.”

  Weldon smiled again. Chief executive officer, he snorted to himself. I’ll let you enjoy the office and the perks for a few months, and then out you go, my boy, on your golden parachute. Or maybe without it.

  Hawks was grinning ear to ear. Chief executive officer! From that power base I’ll be able to get rid of the Old Man in six months and take over the board. You’re a gone goose, Weldon W. Weldon, only you don’t know it yet.

  Telephone Transcript

  Harold D. Lapin: Hello, this is Lapin.

  Mobile Phone: (Sounds of street traffic in background) Yes, I can hear you.

  Lapin: The trial adjourned for the day, just five minutes ago.

  Mobile: Justice only works a short day, eh?

  Lapin: It will resume tomorrow at ten o’clock.

  Mobile: Okay, okay. So how did it go today?

  Lapin: The plaintiff scored all the points. Judge Fish seems to be leaning over backwards in their favor. I don’t think Bunker has a chance.

  Mobile: Good. Good.

  Lapin: Bunker himself did not show up. His wife and several of his editorial employees were present. And the inventor, Carl Lewis.

  Mobile: He didn’t recognize you, did he?

  Lapin: No, certainly not. I sat in the last row, while he was all the way up front. I’m wearing a false mustache and an entirely different style of clothing.

  Mobile: Good. Good.

  Lapin: Bunker Junior was there, too.

  Mobile: What did you find out about him?

  Lapin: It wasn’t easy. I had to bribe three members of the family’s personal law firm.

  Mobile: But what did you find out? Has he made out a will or hasn’t he?

  Lapin: He has not.

  Mobile: So if he should suddenly die, he dies intestate.

  Lapin: That’s right.

  Mobile: His estate will be tied up in probate court for months, maybe years.

  Lapin: Yes.

  Mobile: And t
he Tarantula stock the little fool has been buying will be tied up along with everything else. No one will be able to vote the stock. Not even the Sicilians.

  Lapin: I believe that means his proxies will automatically be voted by the corporation, isn’t that right?

  Mobile: I’m not sure. The lawyers will have to look into it. But at least the Sicilians won’t be able to get their hands on it.

  Lapin: If young Bunker should suddenly die.

  Mobile: When he dies, yes. When he dies.

  Twenty-Two

  Scarlet Dean ran a lovingly manicured blood-red fingernail along Ralph Malzone’s hairless chest and all the way down to his navel.

  “Don’t stop there,” Ralph said, pulling her closer to him.

  She giggled girlishly. They were in Scarlet’s apartment, where Malzone spent almost every night. It was a spacious room in an old Manhattan building that had once been used as the setting for a horror movie. But although the outside of the building was dark and ornately Gothic, it had been completely modernized inside. The only way to tell it was an old building, from the inside, was to realize that no modern building would have such high ceilings. Nor such elegant moldings where the walls and ceiling met.

  Scarlet’s bedroom was completely mirrored. All of the walls, including the closet doors (where roughly half of Malzone’s haberdashery was stored) and the high ceiling. On the rare occasions when sunshine made it through the polluted air and grime-covered window, the room dazzled and sparkled. It was like being inside a gigantic jewel.

  But now the window blinds were drawn tight, and the only light was a dull red flicker from the artificial fireplace.

  “Do you still love me?” Scarlet asked him.

  Malzone turned his rusty-thatched head to gaze into her emerald eyes. “You bet I do.”

  “Even though our romance started with chemical warfare?”

  It was by now a private joke between them. “I don’t care how it started, Red. It started. And I never want it to end.”