“Oh, lots,” Boyd said. “And all in the same pattern. The FPM, for instance, literally dropped one in our laps.”
“Literally?” Malone said. “What was the Federation of Professional Musicians doing in your lap?”
“Not mine,” Boyd said hastily. “Not mine. But it seems that some secretary put a bunch of file folders on the windowsill of their second-floor offices, and they fell off. At the same time, an agent was passing underneath, slipped on a banana peel and sat down on the sidewalk. Bingo, folders in lap.”
“Wonderful,” Malone said. “The hand of God.”
“The hand of something, for sure,” Boyd said. “Those folders contain all the ammunition we’ve ever needed to get after the FPM. Kickbacks, illegal arrangements with nightclubs, the whole works. We’re putting it together now, but it looks like a long, long term ahead for our friends from the FPM.”
And Boyd went to his desk, picked up a particularly large stack of papers. “This,” he said, “is really hot stuff.”
“What do you call the others?” Malone said. “Crime on ice?”
“The new show at the Winter Garden,” Boyd said blithely. “Don’t miss it if you can.”
“Sure,” Malone said. “So what’s so hot?”
Boyd smiled. “The police departments of seven major cities,” he said. “They’re all under attack either by the local prosecuting attorney or the state’s attorney general. It seems there’s a little graft and corruption going on.”
“This,” Malone said, “is not news.”
“It is to the people concerned,” Boyd said. “Four police chiefs have resigned, along with great handfuls of inspectors, captains and lieutenants. It’s making a lovely wingding all over the country, Ken.”
“I’ll bet,” Malone said.
“And I checked back on every one,” Boyd went on. “Your hunch was absolutely right, Ken. The prosecuting attorneys and the attorneys general are all new men—all the ones involved in this stuff. Each one replaced a previous incumbent in a recent election. In two cases, the governor was new, too—elected last year.”
“That figures,” Malone said. “What about the rest?”
Boyd’s grandiose wave of a hand took in all the papers on the desk. “It’s all the same,” he said. “They all follow a pattern, Ken, the pattern. The one you were looking for.”
Malone blinked. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “I’ll be doubly damned.”
“And how about the Russians?” Boyd said.
“You mean the Meeneestyerstvoh Vnootrenikh Dyehl?” Malone said.
“Now,” Boyd said, “I’ll be damned. And after I practiced for days.”
“Ah,” Malone said. “But I was there. The Russians are about as mixed up as a group of Transylvanian villagers with two vampires to track down and not enough flambeaux for all. Here, for instance, is just one example: the conflicting sets of orders that were given about me and Her Majesty and L—Miss Garbitsch.”
Briefly, he outlined what had happened.
“Sounds like fun,” Boyd said.
“They were so busy arguing with each other,” Malone finished, “that I have a feeling we hardly needed the teleportation to escape. It would just have taken longer, that’s all.” He paused. “By the way, Tom, about the stakeout—”
“Luba Garbitsch is being protected as if she were Fort Knox,” Boyd said. “If any Soviet agent tries to approach her with a threat of any kind, we’ll have him nabbed before he can say Ivan Robinovitch.”
“Or,” Malone suggested, “Meeneestyerstvoh—”
“If we waited for that one,” Boyd said, “we might have to wait all day.” He paused. “But who’s doing it?” he went on. “That’s still the question. Martians? Venerians? Or is that last one Venusians?”
“Aphrodisiacs,” Malone suggested diplomatically.
“Thank you, no,” Boyd said politely. “I never indulge while on duty.”
“Thomas,” Malone said, “you are a Rover Boy First-Class.”
“Good,” Boyd said. “But, meanwhile, who is doing all this? Would you prefer Evil Beings from the Planet Ploor?”
“I would not,” Malone said firmly.
“But I have a strange feeling,” Boyd said, “that, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, you do not hold with the Interplanetary Alien Theory.”
“Frankly,” Malone said, “I’m not sure of anything. Not really. But I do want to know why, if it’s interplanetary aliens doing this stuff, they’re picking such a strange way of going about it.”
“Strange?” Boyd said. “What’s strange about it? You wouldn’t expect Things from Ploor to come right out and tell us what they want, would you? It’s against custom. It may even be against the law.”
“Well, maybe,” Malone said. “But it is pretty strange. The difference between what’s happening in Russia and what’s happening here—”
“What difference?” Boyd said. “Everybody’s confused. Here, and over there. It all looks the same to me.”
“Well, it isn’t,” Malone said. “Take a look at the paper, for instance.” He tossed the Post at Boyd, who caught it with a spasmodic clutching motion and reassembled it slowly.
“Why throw things?” Boyd said. “You sore or something?”
“I guess I am,” Malone said. “But not at you. It’s—somebody or something. Person or persons unknown.”
“Or Ploorians,” Boyd said.
“Whatever,” Malone said. “But take a look at the paper and see if you see what I see.” He paused. “Does that mean anything?” he said.
“Probably,” Boyd said. “We’ll figure it out later.” He leafed through the newspaper slowly, pulling thoughtfully at his beard from time to time. Malone watched him in breathless silence.
“See it?” he said at last.
Boyd looked up and, very slowly, nodded. “You’re right, Ken,” he said in a quiet voice. “You’re absolutely right. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
“And that,” Malone said, “sounds like an insult. It’s much plainer than that. Suppose you tell me.”
Boyd considered. “Over here,” he said at last, “there are a lot of confused jerks and idiots. Right?”
“Correct,” Malone said.
“And in Russia,” Boyd went on, “there’s a lot of confusion. Right?”
“Sure,” Boyd said. “It’s perfectly clear. I wonder why I didn’t see it before.”
“That’s it!” Malone cried. “That’s the difference!”
“Sure,” Boyd said. “It’s perfectly clear. I wonder why I didn’t see it before.”
“Because you weren’t looking for it,” Malone said. “Because nobody was. But there’s one more check I want to make. There’s one area I’m not sure of, simply because I don’t have enough to go on.”
“What area is that?” Boyd said. “It seems to me we did a pretty good job—”
“The Mafia,” Malone said. “We know they’re having trouble, but—”
“But we don’t know what kind of trouble,” Boyd finished. “Right you are.”
Malone nodded. “I want to talk to Manelli,” he said. “Can we set it up?”
“I don’t see why not,” Boyd said. “The A-in-C can give us the latest on him. You want me with you?”
“No,” Malone said after some thought. “No. You go and see Mike Sand, heading up the International Truckers’ Union. We know he’s tied up with the Syndicate, and maybe you can get some information from him. You know what to dig for?”
“I do now,” Boyd said. He reached for the intercom phone.
* * * *
Cesare Antonio Manelli was a second-generation Prohibition mobster, whose history can most easily be described by reference to the various affairs of State which coincided with his development. Thus:
When Cesare was a small toddler of uncertain gait and chubby visage, the Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States canceled out not only the Eighteenth Amendment, but the thriv
ing enterprises conducted by Manelli, Sr., and many of his friends.
When Cesare was a young schoolboy, poring over the multiplication tables, his father and his father’s friends were busy dividing. They were dividing, to put it more fully, husbands from families as a means of requesting ransom, and money from banks as a means of getting the same cash without use of the middleman, or victim. This was the period of the Great Readjustment, and the frenzied search among gangland’s higher echelons for a substitute for bootlegging.
And when Cesare was an innocent high-schooler, sporting a Paleolithic switchblade knife and black leather jacket, his father and his father’s friends had reached a new plateau. They consolidated into a Syndicate, and began to concentrate on gambling and the whole, complex, profitable network of unions.
And then World War II had come along, and it was time for Cesare to do his part. Bidding a fond farewell to his father and such of his father’s friends as had survived the disagreements of Prohibition, the painful legal processes of the early Thirties and the even more painful consolidations of the years immediately before the war, young Cesare went off to foreign lands, where he distinguished himself by creating and running the largest single black-market ring in all of Southern Europe.
Cesare had followed in his father’s footsteps. And, before his sudden death during a disagreement in Miami, Giacomo “Jack the Ripper” Manelli was proud of his son.
“Geez,” he often said. “Whattakid, huh? Whattakid!”
At the war’s end, young Cesare, having proven himself a man, took unto himself a nickname and a shotgun. He did not have to use the shotgun very much, after the first few lessons; soon he was on his way to the top.
There was nowhere for Cesare “Big Cheese” Antonio Manelli to go, except up.
Straight up.
Now, in 1973, he occupied a modestly opulent office on Madison Avenue, where he did his modest best to pretend to the world at large that he was only a small cog—indeed, an almost invisible cog—in a large advertising machine. His best was, for all practical purposes, good enough.
Though it was common knowledge among the spoil-sport law enforcement officers who cared to look into the matter that Manelli was the real owner of the agency, there was no way to prove this. He didn’t even have a phone under his own name. The only way to reach him was by going through his front man in the agency, a blank-faced, truculent Arab named Atif Abdullah Aoud.
According to the agent-in-charge of the New York office, Malone had his choice of two separate methods of getting to Manelli. One, more direct, was to walk in, announce that he was an agent of the FBI, and insist on seeing Manelli. If he had a search warrant, the A-in-C told him, he might even get in. But, even if he did, he would probably not get anything out of Manelli.
The second and more diplomatic way was to call up Atif Abdullah Aoud and arrange for an appointment.
Malone made his decision in a flash. He flipped on the phone and punched for a PLaza exchange.
The face that appeared on the screen was that of a fairly pretty, if somewhat vapid, brunette. “Rodger, Willcoe, O’Vurr and Aoud, good afternoon,” she said.
Malone blinked.
“Who is calling, please?” the girl said. She snapped gum at the screen and Malone winced and drew away.
“This is Kenneth J. Malone,” he said from what he considered a safe distance. “I want to talk to Mr. Aoud.”
“Mr. Aoud?” she said in a high, unhelpful whine.
“That’s right,” Malone said patiently. “You can tell him that there may be some government business coming his way.”
“Oh,” she said. “But Mr. Aoud isn’t in.”
Mr. Aoud wasn’t in. Mr. Aoud was out. Malone turned that over in his mind a few times, and decided to try and forget it just as quickly as possible. “Then,” he said, “let me talk to one of the other partners.”
“Partners?” the girl said. She popped her gum again. Malone moved back another inch.
“You know,” he said. “The other people he works with. Rodger, or Willcoe, or O’Vurr.”
“Oh,” the girl said. “Them.”
“That’s right,” Malone said patiently.
“How about Mr. Willcoe?” the girl said after a second of deep and earnest thought. “Would he do?”
“Why not let’s try him and see?” Malone said.
“Okay,” the girl said brightly. “Let’s.” She flashed Malone a dazzling smile, only slightly impeded by the gum, and flipped off. Malone stared at the blank screen for a few seconds, and then the girl’s voice said, invisibly: “Mr. Willcoe will speak to you now, Mr. Melon. Thank you for waiting.”
“I’m not—” Malone started to say, and then the face of Frederick Willcoe appeared on the screen.
Willcoe was a thin, wrinkle-faced man with very pale skin. He seemed to be in his sixties, and he looked as if he had just lost an all-night bout with Count Dracula. Malone looked interestedly for puncture marks, but failed to find any.
“Ah,” Willcoe said, in a voice that sounded like crinkled paper. “Mr. Melon. Good afternoon.”
“I’m not Mr. Melon,” Malone said testily.
Willcoe looked gently surprised, like a man who has discovered that his evening sherry contains cholesterol. “Really?” he said. “Then I must be on the wrong line. I beg your pardon.”
“You’re not on the wrong line,” Malone said. “I am Mr. Melon in a way.” That didn’t sound very clear when he got it out, so he added: “Your secretary got my name wrong. She thinks I’m Mr. Melon—Kenneth J. Melon.”
“But you’re not,” Willcoe said.
Malone resisted an impulse to announce that he was really Lamont Cranston. “I’m Kenneth J. Malone,” he said.
“Ah,” Willcoe said. “Quite amusing. Imagine my mistaking you for a Mr. Melon, when you’re really Mr. Malone.” He paused, and his face got even more wrinkled. “But I don’t know you under either name,” he said. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk to Mr. Manelli,” Malone said.
“But Mr. Aoud—”
“Mr. Aoud,” Malone said, wondering if it sounded as silly to Willcoe as it did to him, “isn’t in. So I thought you might be able to arrange an appointment for this afternoon.”
Willcoe bit his lip. “Mr. Manelli isn’t in just now,” he said.
“Yes,” Malone said. “I didn’t think he would be. That’s why I want to arrange an appointment for later, when he will be in.”
“Does Mr. Manelli know you?” Willcoe said suspiciously, the wrinkles deepening again.
“He knows my boss,” Malone said carefully. “You just tell him that this is something that ought to be worth time and money to him. His time, and his money.”
“Hmm,” Willcoe said. “I see. Would you wait a moment, Mr. Mel—Mr. Malone?”
The screen blanked out immediately. The wait this time was slightly longer.
And the next face that appeared on the screen was that of Cesare “Big Cheese” Antonio Manelli, the nearly invisible cog.
For a cog, the face was not a bad one. It was strong and well-muscled, and it had dark, wavy hair running along the top. At the sides of the face, the hair was greying slightly, and behind the grey two large ears stuck out. Manelli’s nose was a long, faintly aquiline affair and his eyes were very pleasant and candid. They were light grey.
“Aha,” Manelli said. “You are Mr. Malone, right?” His voice was guttural, but it was obvious that he was trying for control. “I regret announcing that I was out, Mr. Malone,” he said. “But a man in my position—I like privacy, Mr. Malone, and I try to keep privacy for myself. Let me request you to answer a question, Mr. Malone: do I know you, Mr. Malone?”
“Not personally,” Malone said. “I—”
“But I’m supposed to know your boss,” Manelli said. “I don’t know him, either, so far.”
Malone shrugged. “I’m sure you do,” he said, and dropped the name almost casually: “Andrew J. Burris.”
&nb
sp; Manelli raised his eyebrows. “So that’s who you are,” he said. “I ought to have known, Mr. Malone. And you want to talk to me a little bit, right?”
“That’s right,” Malone said.
“But this is no way to act, Mr. Malone,” Manelli said reproachfully. “After all, we understand each other, you and me. What you should do, you should come in through channels, in the correct way, so everything it would be open and above the board.”
“Through channels?” Malone said.
Manelli regarded him with a pitying glance. “You must be new on your job, Mr. Malone,” he said. “Because there is an entire system built up, and you don’t know about it. The way things work, we sit around and we don’t see people. And then somebody comes and presents his credentials, you might say—search warrants, for instance, or subpoenas. And then we know where we are.”
Malone shook his head. “This isn’t that kind of call,” he said. “It’s more a friendly type of call.”
“Mr. Malone,” Manelli said. The reproach was stronger in his voice. “You must be very new at your job.”
“Nevertheless,” Malone said.
Manelli hesitated only a second. “Because I like you,” he said, “and to teach you how things operate around here, I could do you a favor.”
“Good,” Malone said patiently.
“In an hour,” Manelli said. “My place. Here.”
The screen blanked out before Malone could even say goodbye.
Malone got up, went out to the corridor, and decided that, since he had time to kill, he might as well walk on down to Manelli’s office. That, he told himself, would give him time to decide what he wanted to say.
He toyed at first with the idea of a nice bourbon and soda in a Madison Avenue bar, but he discarded that idea in a hurry. It was always possible for him to get into a tight spot and have to teleport his way out, and he didn’t want to be fuzzy around the edges in case that happened. Trotkin’s had showed him that, under enough stress, he could manage the job with quite a lot of vodka in him. But there was absolutely no sense, he told himself sadly, in taking chances.
The Second Randall Garrett Megapack Page 106
