The Labyrinth Of Dreams

by Jack L. Chalker

  It was a credit card slip.

  The thing was hard to read and seemed to be fairly old, but I could read the name and the number and the expiration date, and it was still current. Amanda W. Curry, and a card good until the end of this year. Now, for the first time, we had a name and a way to track them. Whitlock just wasn’t the type to go around packing suitcases full of cash, and he could hardly walk in and ask to buy two and a quarter million bucks in American Express traveler’s checks without attracting a little attention. He would keep most of the money in dummy accounts probably spread all to hell and back, and contract with a money manager to pay the bills on this new set of credit cards. Little Jimmy had provided me with a sample of Whitlock’s handwriting, and I took it out of my wallet and compared it. The charge slip was definitely signed in a woman’s hand, yet there were certain similarities in the way the letters were formed, particularly the W. I handed them to Brandy. “If it’s not the same, then they grew up together and learned from the same teacher,” I noted.

  She squinted, then said, “Yeah, that’s right. I can’t figure this out yet, but it sure is strange. Every time we figure we’re dealin’ with one person, we find two. Every time we figure two people, it looks like one. Don’t make no sense at all.”

  I handed her the other prize from the junk trove, a crumpled and torn business card. She examined it carefully, but I had the strange feeling she wasn’t reading it. “Just how bad is your vision?” I asked her.

  “Good enough.”

  “Uh huh. Then read that card.”

  She sighed. “Okay, so I can’t. So I’ll blow some of this money on new glasses, all right?” She handed it back. “Now what’s it say?”

  “General Ordering and Development, Inc.,” I told her. “McInerney, Oregon. Never heard of the place, but it sure doesn’t sound very big. No address. Two phone numbers, though. One of ’em’s been circled, sort of, in old pencil. Funny, too, there’s ho name on the card. Just ’Western Distribution Center.’ ”

  She thought a moment. “Kind of crazy, but that name seems familiar, somehow.”

  I shrugged. “I wonder if they call it GOD, Inc., around the plant?”

  She snapped her fingers. “Yeah! That’s it! The Amazing Stork Knife!”

  “Huh?”

  She was rolling now. “And the Motorized Minnow, and Pet-er-cize, too!”

  “Slow down. If you can’t manage English, try it phonetically.”

  She looked excited. “You don’t watch enough TV.”

  “We hocked the TV months ago,” I noted.

  “Hell, this has been around for years! You know all those ads for all those crazy junk things that come on in the middle of the late show, or are all over cable TV? Things like pocket fishing gear, steak knives, and exercisers, disposable telephones, stuff like that?”

  I nodded. “As much as I tried to avoid them, yes.”

  “Well, right down at the bottom they got to say who’s really selling them. Not the TV station you send the money to or the eight-hundred number you call, but the real company, down in fine print. They made ’em do that after there were so many phonies getting into the act. Well, General Ordering and Development is one of the biggest!”

  This was beginning to get interesting. “So they sell a thousand products by buying cheap, late-night ads from Hong Kong distributors and junk makers. If this is one of the biggest, then it’s a multimillion-dollar company at the very least. You say it’s been around awhile?”

  “Years, anyway. They came in with a roar and bought up a bunch of the smaller outfits who started this whole thing. Why?”

  “Well, those companies borrow money to buy the junk in huge quantities, and those are short-term, high-interest business loans. The bigger you are, the more banks you need behind you, if only to guard against the inevitable turkeys you get stuck with and can’t fool even the sleepy public into buying. Big banks. Banks like Tri-State.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “I see . . . But why the western division? Why not the east?”

  “It doesn’t matter to a bank where it is, so long as it’s a good risk, and some banks at some times have more money to lend at better terms than others that might be close-by. In these days of quick flights across country and instant mail delivery and electronic funds transfers it doesn’t really matter. The trouble is, we don’t know if this is anything or not. It might just be that Whitlock met with a guy the day he came over here, and lost this.”

  “That’s probably it,” she agreed, “but at least we have a name. Wonder what a check of the airlines for the past two days might show?”

  The funny thing about that was that it was so simple to do. Guys like Whitlock have secretaries and agencies to make their plans, and they tend to have corporate deals that keep them to just a couple of airlines. Even if he was sneaking off, I had a hunch he’d still fly his favorite, and I knew from his abortive Sunday tickets west what airline he favored. His idea of a real fooler might be to fly coach, but I was even wrong there. Curry, Mr. and Mrs., first initials M. and A., were flying strictly first class.

  “Still San Francisco,” I noted. “Why?”

  “Simple. You can get real lost in a city like that, and they would have connections with the underground set through their friends here. When did they leave?”

  “They landed two hours ago,” I told her. “Might as well be two days or two weeks.”

  Brandy thought for a moment. “Want to play a wild hunch? Maybe an expensive one?”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Well, I was just wonderin’ how you get from San Francisco to a little burg like McInerney, Oregon, strictly first class.”

  “You know the odds of there being any connection between that business card and what’s happening now?”

  She stared at me with those big brown eyes. “I know what the odds are unless there is a connection. You wanna call Little Jimmy and turn the rest back in, or do you wanna see San Francisco, maybe a little of Oregon, too, all on him?”

  I had to admit that she had a real point there. “All right; then, we’ll spend a little time here this evening seeing if we can get some descriptions of them and some impressions, then we’ll fly off after them tomorrow if we can figure a way to do it quiet.”

  “You gonna call Little Jimmy and the feds?”

  “Yeah. Little Jimmy I’m gonna call from a phone booth in a few minutes with the whole thing. The feds I’ll call a little later. We’ll give ’em the apartment and that’s it. I think we’ll keep this charge slip and business card for ourselves.”

  She thought a moment. “You got to figure the feds have been doggin’ our trail all along, maybe Little Jimmy, too. How we gonna explain San Francisco if you don’t give ’em the name? Or stop ’em from keepin’ on following us?”

  “I been thinking about that. We’ll have to come up with something, and fast.”

  I saw that evil smile on her face. “Maybe we just gotta take a leaf from old Marty Whitlock.”

  “Forget it,” I told her. “I’m not shaving my legs and I’m not wearing any dress.”

  There weren’t many people to canvass by the time we left, but we found a few. They knew little about the occupant—singular—of that apartment, but they knew what she looked like. Real butch, right down to the haircut, usually dressed real mannish, too. Kept to herself, had a few visitors and no close friends, and was away a lot. One couple thought she was a guy, although they’d never talked to her or seen her close-up. It was more of the same androgynous pattern, only this time from the other end.

  The major asset Brandy had during that period when she tried to keep the agency afloat after her father had died, and even in tracking down his killer, was the number of relatives her mother had all over the metropolitan creation. Cousin Minnie had been just one of these; there were many more, and while she was close to none of them, it was true that blood was thicker than water. We didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of time, and we had an awful lot to do.

/>   My old bum disguise was out; not only was it pretty well known, but it’s kind of conspicuous for a bum to buy an airline ticket at all, let alone with either cash or a credit card. Instead, I dyed gray the hair I still had, and added a matching false moustache and my reading glasses, although they actually limited my vision for all but reading, and I usually just carried them in my pocket. In fact, just looking in the mirror I felt old, and I didn’t like it. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was staring at the not-too-distant future. Adding a small and worn hat and a very rumpled blue suit, and walking a little bent over and carrying a drugstore cane, I was pretty sure that nobody who didn’t come straight up to me and examine me would recognize me.

  Brandy slipped out of the apartment while it was still dark. She had a more extensive makeover to do, and we agreed to meet later, having set up a system with her cousin Lavonia, who happened to be a cabbie. Lavonia was perhaps more distant than any of the other cousins, but it was amazing how sweet and loyal she could be when presented with unregistered cash. Still, we could take no real luggage with us. All that nice stuff we’d bought had to be abandoned for now. We’d have to buy what we needed when we got there.

  I left the apartment house at nine in the morning on a bright, sunny day, after spending an hour making sure that I looked and acted correctly and consistently. About a block down I finally spotted the feds’ tail, sitting there in his car sipping coffee and reading the newspaper. He gave me half a glance when I walked by directly across the street from him, but nothing more. I couldn’t spot Little Jimmy’s tail, if it existed, but I was reasonably confident that if the feds ignored me when they knew I’d had a reputation for disguises as a vice cop, Little Jimmy’s cretins would be even more easily fooled.

  Lavonia was sitting in her cab where she was supposed to be, and I walked up and opened the back door.

  “Fuck off, geezer! I’m off duty!” she shouted at me with the usual tact and diplomacy of a cabbie.

  “Take it easy, Lavonia; I’m the one you’re waiting for,” I responded, and got in and shut the door.

  She turned and stared at me suspiciously for a moment through the bulletproof glass partition separating her from her fares. She looked nothing like Brandy; light-complected, skinny, and with a face that was born hard and mean. “That really you, Horowitz?”

  “Yeah. Let’s get going. There’s a fed just around the corner, and who-knows-who-else looking around.”

  She switched on the ignition and pulled out into traffic with the usual disregard for traffic, pedestrians, and stationary obstacles. I often think that there is a factory someplace that makes all the world’s cabbies. They all look different, have different accents, but deep down they’re all the same person.

  She dropped me at one of those motels on the north side of the city that rents rooms by the hour and asks no questions. I would have to stay pretty much on ice for a few hours until Brandy was ready. We had decided to fly out of Newark rather than Philly because there wasn’t any use in taking chances on people stationed there, and also because Newark had a couple of cheap airlines flying cross-country where you basically bought your seat on the plane. That made it damned difficult to get an advanced passenger list, and by the time they found out the reservations were in assumed names, it would be too late. The trouble was, it took extra time. It would take maybe ninety minutes to get up there, add an hour to make sure you got there in time to keep them from giving away your seat, and the earliest you could figure on was a flight at six-thirty in the evening.

  I got lunch at a diner down the street, keeping in character—though having a tough time when the waitress kept calling me “Pops”—but it wasn’t until after two, when my nerves and patience were really thin, that somebody knocked at the door. It was Lavonia.

  We drove over to a row-house area that had a number of small businesses in the basements, stopping in front of one that looked older and in worse condition than our building and had a weathered sign that read New You Salon and Beauty Parlor. They sure as hell lived up to their name. I wouldn’t have recognized Brandy, just passing her in the street, and that’s saying something. Only when she approached and then got into the cab was she unmistakably my Brandy.

  Most dramatically, they had given her a very short haircut, then fitted her with an enormous and very natural looking wig of slightly curly reddish-brown hair. Cosmetics had been neatly applied that subtly changed the way her face looked, topped off by crimson lipstick and long and complicated golden earrings. She was also wearing a fancy-looking sleeveless top with a leatherlike dark-red vest and a skirt of the same material, slit a bit up the sides, as well as matching boots with the highest heels I’d ever seen. It couldn’t disguise the fact that she was chubby, but the whole thing used that to minimize it, or actually make it something of an asset. I was stunned. “You look absolutely beautiful,” I told her.

  “Yeah, and you look like hell,” she returned. “In a way, it ain’t fair. I got to suffer with this damned girdle and you get to look like an old slob.”

  We went over to the turnpike and headed north. There were no evident tails, but you could never be sure. We wanted to cover all the bases, though, so this would be our only opportunity together until we got to San Francisco. I would be dropped a block from the place in East Brunswick where you got the airport van, and Brandy would do the same from Union. From that point we wouldn’t know or acknowledge each other until we got outside the airport terminal at the other end. Nobody was going to get the chance to remember a salt-and-pepper couple, or think it odd that a young comer would take an inordinate interest in an old white geezer.

  “You found the place and got some contact names?” she asked me.

  I nodded. “McInerney is in the mountains east of Bend, so if they would fly up, they’d go there. That means either a commuter line out of San Francisco or Oakland, or a hop to Portland and then a line over to Bend for a pickup. It’s one of those old logging towns that almost blew away, and I’m told that this company more or less bought the whole place. It was always a company town; just now it’s a different company and different business. It’s a small town, but we’ll stand out as much or more than they would. There’s not much anybody else could tell me from here, except that this General Ordering and Development corporation is big but no Fortune Five Hundred affair. It never lacks for money or credit, though, so there’s somebody big behind it. I didn’t have time to run down the corporate officers—it’s officially a Delaware corporation, although that’s just a mail drop—but there was nothing immediately dirty or suspicious about them. The home office is actually in Iowa, with branches for the west, central, east, and south. They sell a lot of stuff, but they make most of their money with their regional phone hookups. They take orders for just about everything from just about everybody.”

  She sighed. “Yeah, I know it’s a long shot that they would run there. There’s no reason for them to run there, I guess. Still, it’s the only thing we got. What about contacts?”

  “A few phone numbers of people out there, mostly in California. Nobody had much for Oregon. I had to use pay phones for all of this, so we’ll have to do most of our follow-up once we’re there. A P.I. in Oakland and a couple of contacts who were associated with our friends down on Sansom.” Those were long shots, of course, just in case this Oregon thing was as blind as it seemed to be.

  I had called the feds from our apartment the night before, and they’d gone to the north Philly address and done their thorough job. Kennedy, in fact, had actually called back, quite pleased with what he was getting from me, and given me another of those crazy facts. They had found only three clear sets of fingerprints in the apartment among, of course, the thousands of smudges and useless partials. One set was mine, one was Brandy’s, and the third was undeniably Whitlock’s. That satisfied them, but left us with even more of a problem.

  “Did she wear gloves all the time or something?” Brandy wondered aloud. “I mean, if his prints were there, and he w
as only there some of the time, then hers just had to be there, too. I could take it more if they’d found hers but not his.”

  It bothered me, too. I was dead certain now that we were after two people, Whitlock and this Curry woman or whatever her real name was. There were enough signs in the background information we’d developed and the witnesses we’d interviewed and even in the apartment itself, not to mention that two people had taken that San Francisco flight. Everything pointed to there being two, and to an incredible scheme to make it seem like there was only one, a scheme totally out of character for Martin Whitlock IV, and not one he was likely to have come up with on his own. Yet, too, there was that closet of women’s clothes in his house that Minnie had seen, and that album showing him dressed as a girl through a fair portion of his life. None of it made sense, and the prints made even less sense. They expected to be long gone and buried in new identities and locales by the time anybody discovered that apartment, if anyone ever did. Why weren’t her fingerprints all over, more so than his, in fact?

  The flight out wasn’t much fun, either. These discount carriers were more like cattle cars with wings than real airlines, to begin with, and that was only the start of it. I sat up forward in nonsmoking, while Brandy sat near the back smoking away again, and every time I’d look back she was surrounded by guys, mostly young, black, and handsome and full of muscles, and she seemed to be having a wonderful time.

  Okay, okay, so call me jealous. I guess it’s more a deep-down insecurity. She’s young and cute; I’m a decade older, white, balding, and paunchy. Everybody was real solicitous to the old guy, meaning me, but I mostly growled and sulked.

  We took off late and we landed later, but at least neither of us had to wait for luggage. I walked past baggage claim and noted that she was having some problems getting rid of her entourage. The lady had no bags, and everybody wanted to carry them for her. She finally took the last refuge of choice and walked to the ladies’ room, and when she emerged she’d removed the wig and some of the cosmetics, as well as the vest, and stuffed them into her big purse. It wasn’t much, but the change was dramatic enough that nobody waylaid her as she walked outside and stood next to me. Without the wig, though, she didn’t look at all terrific. In order to allow her to use any sort of wig with minimum problems, they’d cut her hair so short you had to look close to see any hair there at all.