A Hard Act To Follow

by Troy Conway

  “Yep. Now what’s your answer.”

  He stood and walked slowly to the cell window. His fingers clutched at the bars and his knuckles went white.

  “Well?” I prodded. “what’s your answer?”

  “You know my answer. What else can I say? you’re holding aIl the cards.”

  I patted him fraternally on the shoulder. “I know what you fell like chum , This is the same way I got into the spy business. Now let’s adjourn to someplace more comfortable, and fast We’ve got a lot of things to talk about and I want to get you out of here before any of your chum.realize where you’ve been.”

  Marbello brought us to a conference room on one of the upper floors of the building and managed to scare up a tap recorder. Egbert didn’t like the idea of putting his words on tape, but I insisted. I wanted Walrus-moustache to have something concrete to show to that Cabinet officer who seemed convinced that The Big Freak-Out was just something we spy-types had dreamed up to keep ourselves busy. I explained my thinking to Egbert, and he consented. The machine whirred to life. We began talking.

  “When did all this Big Freak-Out jazz start?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve heard stories, but I don’t know anything for sure.”

  “let’s talk about some of the stories.”

  “Well from what I hear, the whole idea was Swami SWahili’s.”

  “The Black Muslim?” I remembered the name from my conversation with chiquita.

  “Yeah. He and The Big Head were great buddies for a while. They used to turn on together every night, and Swami used to have a part in the show at The Church of the Sacred Acid. He used to be on stage with The Big Head and Chiquita during the love demonstration bit. They played the race angle, I guess-showing everybody how love transcended color and creed.”

  “And The Big Freak-Out was his idea?”

  “Yeah. That’s the way I hear it. Like I said, he and The Big Head used to turn on together every night. According to what I hear, they used to sit around talking about what a great world this’d be if everybody loved everybody else and all that The Big Head always used to say that if he could persuade everybody in the world to try acid just once there’d never be any problems because everybody’d suddenly discover how important love was and they’d all put aside their materialistic hang-ups and get down to the essentials It was the sort of thing he’s always talking about But of course he didn’t have any idea about how to make it happen. Then one night Swami came up with the idea.”

  “You mean polluting the Washington water supply?”

  “More or less. At first he wasn’t quite so practical about it. He and The Big Head talked about polluting the oceans, or polluting all the rivers in the world, or dropping the stuff into clouds so the rainfall would be polluted. You know, stuff like that, all very impractical. Then Swami said something like, ‘Man, we can never pull off this kind of jazz Why don’t we put our heads together and come up with something we can really pull of?’ So they put their heads together, and Swami, being a Muslim and having a pretty militant way of looking at things, figured out the bit about polluting the Potomac and staging a coup while Washington was freaked out. Anyway, That’s the way it was explained to me.”

  “What happened next?”

  “I don’t know. I gum they talked about it for a while with a lot of different people, because I heard about it—and this was long before anybody asked me to be a part of it.”

  “How did you hear about it?”

  “I was at a party one night and Swami and The Big Head were there. As usual, everybody was taking about acid and how the world would be a lot better off if everybody took it Then Swami said some thing about polluting the Potomac. He didn’t say it that the plan was actually in the works. He just mentioned it as though it’d be a great idea Everybody agreed with him, then we started talking about something else.”

  “When was the next time you heard the subject Wig brought up?”

  “A Few months later when The Big Head asked me to join in on the plot.”

  “He asked you personally?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said something like, ‘Remember that jazz Swami Swahili was talking about one night? That business about getting Washington freaked out and staging a coup? Well, we’re going to go through with it. You want in?’ I still didn’t think they were serious, and I didn’t really care too much one way or the other. But I must’ve been high or something because I said yes.”

  “What happened then?”

  “Nothing. Not for a while anyway. When I said yes, The Big Head said he’d talk to me later. Then we went our separate ways and I forgot all about it. A couple of weeks later he looked me up and started talking about it again. I was sober this time, and I told him that I really didn’t want to get involved. But he kept after me. He saw me every day for nearly a month, and he kept talking to me about it. The more he talked, the better I liked the idea. I mean, let’s face it, Damon, the country is screwed up. I mean, there’s the Black Power thing and the Vietnam thing and the riots and the income tax surcharge and all that crap. I figured that any body’d be able to run things better than the joker we got in The White House now—Jeez, I shoulddn’t’ve said that on tape. The bastard’s liable to hear it and I’ll get shot. Erase it, will you?”

  I stopped the tape and maneuvered the reel back to the point where he was saying, “. . . the better I liked the idea.”

  He resumed, “Anyway, I got interested. Like that Oliver Wendell Holmes cat said: if a guy doesn’t get in on the action and the passion of his time, he hasn’t lived. I figured, what the hell, the world is going to pot, I might as well take a shot with this thing and see if I can do something to make life better for the next guy, you know what I mean?”

  I nodded. “So you joined up with The Big Head. What happned after that?”

  “We had meetings Lots of meetings We were the meeting-est bastards in New York.”

  “Who attended the meetings?”

  “The people who were in on the thing.”

  “For example?”

  “You want names?”

  “Every one you can remember.”

  “Jeez it’s hard to remember who was in it way back then and who came in later. let’s see There was The Big Head, of course. And his mistress And—”

  “His mistress? You mean Chiquita?”

  “No. This was before Chiquita came on the scene He had mother mistress then. Her name was Francine.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know. She faded out when Chiquita faded in. I heard she went out on the coast some where.”

  “Okay. Back to the meetings. Who attended besides The Big Head and Francine?”

  “Well, there was Swami Swahili of course. And Dave pricehe’s a guy who runs a bookstore on East Eighth Street. And a guy named Louie, from Boston. I never got his last name And a guy named Jimmy, from Philadelphia I didn’t get his last name either. And a guy named Manny Holland. He lives up on Seventy-Third Street. And. . . .”

  He reeled off a dozen more names, none of which meant anything to me. I had him identify each person as precisely as be could, knowing that Walrus-moustache would chase down all the leads as soon as the tape was in his possession. Then I asked what was discussed at the meetings.

  “The big problem at first,” Egbert replied, “was figuring out how much acid we’d need to dump in the water supply and how to keep it from evaporating before the people drank it. The Big Head said he’d get together with some professors he knew back when he was teaching school and see what he could find out. Eventually he came up with an estimate of how much stuff we’d need. But we still were nowhere near figuring out how to keep it from evaporating. And another problem was where to get the LSD. The Big Head had good contacts, of course, and he could buy it a lot cheaper than any of us could. But the amount we figured we’d need would cost more than ten grand, even at the rate The
Big Head was paying for it.”

  “How were these problems finally solved?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that one day I went to a meeting and found that none of the old crowd were there anymore. There were only five or six guys, and The Big Head explained that we were going to hold our meetings in smaller groups from now on for security reasons. He told me that he had set up a plan of attack for the coup and that I was going to be part of a platoon that knocked off the Treasury Department. The platoon leader was going to be a guy named Ray Devaney, an economics professor from one of the colleges The Big Head used to teach at. When our crowd finally took over, Devaney’d wind up as Secretary of the Treasury. Another guy was going to be the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, another guy the chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission, and so on I was just going to be one of the flunkies. I felt pretty put out about this, especially since I’d been in on the plot from almost the beginning. But when I said so to The Big Head, he just told me to stay cool and not worry about anything because if he wanted to he could leave me out of the deal completely.”

  “And nothing more was said about how to get the LSD and how to keep it from vitiating?”

  “No. I asked The Big Head about it once, and he said not to worry because all that had been taken care of. But he didn’t give me any details. After that, the only meetings I attended were the Treasury Department meetings. Ray Devaney taught us the plan of attack The Big Head had set up, and we rehearsed it, using maps of Washington and floor plans of the treasury building The guys who were going to be big shots in the deal, like the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, studied the duties of the officials they’d replace once they took over. The rest of us just hung loose.”

  I asked Egbert to spell out the Treasury Department plan of attack Devaney’s platoon, he said, would be quartered in two apartments in Arlington, Virgina There would be eighteen men in the group, two of whom had already gone to Washington as part of an advance guard. The remainder would get there the day before A-Day. But A-Day hadn’t yet been set. The only instructions Egbert had received were to keep prepared because the order to move could be given at any moment and he’d have to be prepared to swing into action immediately.

  Next I prodded him for details about the battle plans of the other platoons. He said that he only knew that there were twelve platoons, each assigned to a different governmental department. One was assigned to the White House, and The Big Head presumably was its leader. No one had said so specifically, but it was generally assumed that when the smoke had cleared he would be president Other platoons were assigned to the Pentagon, the State Department, the Justice Department and other agencies. Egbert had no idea who was in charge of these units or where they would be quartered a how they would attack.

  I asked about the plotters’ general headquarters. He replied that the original plan had called for it to be located in Chevy Chase, Maryland, but that the plan might have been changed after the group had been broken down into platoons. He said that since the breakdown into platoons he had communicated only with Ray Devaney and other members of the Treasury Department platoon, and that whenever he tried to discuss The Big Freak-Out personally with The Big Head he had been told not to talk about official business except through the chain of command.

  As he spelled out the details of the platoon setup, I could see why he had been so ready to believe that I was one of the conspirators. But I could also see that I wasn’t going to get any up-to-date reports on overall strategy from him. Ever since the platoon breakdown, he had been kept in the dark about all matters outside his immediate bailiwick. I shifted the questioning to subjects about which he might be more knowledgeable.

  Subject Number One was The Big Head. Unfortunately Egbert didn’t know much more about him than I did. After the platoon breakdown, the high priest of The Church of the Sacred Acid and would-be President of the United States had kept his own counsel. He had continued to fraternize with his hippie friends, but he had maintained a studied aloofness.

  I asked, “Do you think he’s the brains behind the operation?”

  Egbert replied, “Not anymore. It might have started as his idea, but it seems to have gotten away from him.”

  “Do you think he’s taking orders from somebody?”

  “I don’t know, but I doubt that he set this all up on his own. He never was the type of guy to make elaborate plans for things. I think he has a few partners now—maybe the people who staked him for the money to buy the LSD to pollute the water supply, or the people who figured out how to keep the stuff from evaporating before it reaches the people.”

  “Is he a homosexual?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, man. He acts kind of swishy sometimes. I heard that he doesn’t make it with his mistresses, but he never came on to me. And he never came on to any guy I know.”

  Subject Number Two was Swami Swahili. Egbert seemed to know only that the Swami had vanished nearly two months ago and hadn’t been heard from since. Everyone agreed that the supposed originator of The Big Freak-Out was a talkative guy, and this had led to the speculation that he had been murdered. The speculation was lent force by the fact that half a dozen other talkative hippies who were believed to be conspirators had been murdered in New York and other major cities in recent weeks. However, Egbert had heard from a source he considered reliable that the Swami was presently living on a Caribbean isle called Karlota. The isle was owned by a cult of free-love enthusiasts who had emigrated from the United States and set up a commune there.

  Subject Number Three was the murdered hippies. Egbert said that he knew none of them personally and only one of them by name. However. he was convinced that all of them were connected with the plot and had been murdered because they talked about it. He recalled that after the second of New York’s victims had died, Treasury Department platoon leader Ray Devaney had told him that “this is what happens to guys who can’t keep their mouths shut.”

  Subject Number Four was the last New York garrote victim, James Hartley. Egbert said that he hadn’t known who this most recent victim was, only that a fourth New Yorker had been garroted. He added that he hadn’t read the newspaper accounts of the crime and that the name James Hartley, which be heard for the first time from me didn’t ring a bell. I asked if he thought be might be able to identify Hartley from the photograph which had appeared in the newspapers, and he allowed that be might I made a note to get him a copy of the photo as soon as possible.

  Subject Number Five was Corinne LaBelle. I described her and pointed out that I remembered her as the one girl at the LSP party who hadn’t undressed. Egbert said that he remembered a girl who fit my description at the party and who hadn’t undressed while he was around. But the name Corinne LaBelle didn’t mean anything to him, and the girl he had seen at the party wasn’t one of the regulars among the Sacred Acid crowd. I made a note to obtain the photo of Corinne which Walrus-moustache had shown me and show it to Egbert at the first opportunity.

  Subject Number Six was Chiquita. Egbert knew only that she had appeared on the scene about six months ago, that she lived with The Big Head and that she had an insatiable sexual appetite. He said that he had been to bed with her, as had all the other members of The Decline of the West with the exception of Lola, as had most other males in the Sacred Acid crowd.

  Subject Number Seven was Carla Egbert had seen her with Chiquita only once. She had been introduced to him as Chiquita’s sister, but he knew nothing more about her or the other members of Chiquita’s family.

  Subject Number Eight was Lola. Egbert said that she was “a straight chick” and “a real nice kid.” He was positive that she was in no way connected with the conspiracy.

  I had no further questions, but I did want to ask all of previous ones over again just to make sure Egbert told the story the same way both times.

  I brought him back to the beginning and reworked the same terrain. We rehearsed the origin of The Big Freak-Out, the meetings of the Conspirators and the plat
oon breakdown. Then we went through the cast of characters. There were a few minor discrepancies in his account, but by and large it was the same tale.

  For safety’s sake I did another rerun. This time I posed the questions differently and tried to feed him confusing leads. He stuck to his guns.

  Satisfied that he was telling me the truth, I flicked off the tape recorder. “And now, Egbert old buddy,” I said, “let’s get down to business. I’ve got a date this afternoon with Chiquita and another date tonight with The Big Head. I don’t know what I’m going to find out, but I’d like to talk to you again after I’ve seen them. Where should we meet?”

  His eyes took on a fearful look. “Jeez, do we have to? I mean, I was with you last night at my buddy’s apartment and the night before at The Ink Well. If any of those piano-wire guys happened to be watching, they might put two and two together.”

  “That’s the chance we’ll have to take.”

  His brow furrowed thoughtfully. “Suppose that when I leave here I get hold of Ray Devaney and tell him you’ve been following me around asking all sorts of questions. He’ll think I’m on the up-and-up, and he won’t be suspicious if you keep on my tail Meanwhile, take the names and addresses of two other guys in the Treasury Department group from the tape. You can rough them up, and if you feel like it, you can rough up Ray himself. That’ll really confuse the hell out of them.”

  “For a guy who just became a spy a couple hours ago,” I confessed admiringly, “you show a remarkable aptitude for the work.”

  He grinned. “Well, if you hang around. you gotta learn something.”

  “Okay. so we’ll meet tonight. Where?”

  “The Decline of the West is playing at The Rusty Flange on Bleecker Street Stop in any time between ten and three.”

  “I’ll try to make it, but just in case something comes up and I can’t get them by three, where can we meet afterwards?”

  “I’m going straight home after the gig. I’ll be there until tomorrow afternoon Then I’m going to Tompkins Square Park for the smoke-in.”