A Hard Act To Follow

by Troy Conway

  “Smoke in?”

  “We’ve been having them all summer. it’s a civil disobedience demonstration against the laws against pot-smoking There should be a couple thousand people there. If you want to read about what’s been happening so far, get a copy of this week’s Tompkins Park Blast. There’s a fullpage article on the subject.”

  I stood up and began rewinding the reel on the tap recorder. “Okay,” I said, “Ill see you sometime between the gig tonight and the smoke-in tomorrow. Meanwhile, think back on everything That’s happened from the first time you heard about The Big Freak-Out until now. If you come up with anything we missed, let me know about it.”

  He did a mock salute. “Roger. Anything else, chief?”

  “Yeah. Get the hell out of here. I’ve got work to do.”

  He scurried out the door. I found the spot on the tape where he had listed the names and addresses of the members of the Treasury Department platoon. I memorized two of them, along with the address of platoon leader Ray Devaney. Then I rewound the reel, put it in an envelope for Walrus-moustache and told Detective Marbello to hold the envelope until his commanding officer told him to release it.

  The tape then in good hands, I beelined to a phone booth and placed a call to Aunt Matilda. I briefed her on the latest developments and asked that a photo of Corinne LaBelle be forwarded to me immediately. Then I hailed a cab for the first of the three addresses on the list I had memorized, the address of platoon leader Devaney.

  He was a balding paunchy, middle-aged, horn-rimmed-glasses sort who looked like the last guy in the world anyone would ever suspect of having a part in a conspiracy. His apartment was an inexpensive but well-kept walkup in the West Eighties. I found him sitting on the stoop, smoking a pipe and thumbing through a well-worn copy of The Economist.

  “Good afternoon, Mister Secretary,” I smiled. “How’s dances of my getting a job at the mint after you take over.”

  His mouth popped open and his pipe fell out. He tried to catch it, and in the process, lost his glasses. When he bent to pick them up, two pens and a pencil fell from his shirt pocket I chuckled at the plight of the blundering bundle of blubber who had allogated to himself the custodianship of the nation’s finances. Then, taking advantage of his confusion, I whipped out my wallet and flashed my driver’s license under his nose, hoping he wouldn’t notice what it really was.

  “Detective Marbello, U. S. Marshall’s Office.”

  By the time he had collected his pens and pencil, retrieved his pipe and got his glasses back on his nose, the wallet was back in my pocket. He stared at me dumbfounded.

  I said, “We just had a nice long talk down at headquarters with your buddy, Worthington Matthew McGee, alias The Big Head. He spilled all the beans. We knew you were a pinko, Devaney, but we never thought you’d get hooked up in something like this. What happened to your marts? You should know better than to play games with a bunch of acid-heads. Or are you on the stuff yourself?”

  His fat face was shaking like an electric vibrator. The glasses slid down his nose, and the hand with which he tried to readjust them trembled so badly that he finally gave up the effort and let the specs lie where they were.

  “I know my constitutional rights,” he sputtered.”I won’t make any statements until I’ve had an opportunity to confer with my lawyer.”

  I brought my index finger to his nose and pushed the glasses back up to his eye. You’ll haw plenty of opportunity I’m not going to arrest you just yet. you’re more valuable to me running loose. I’ve got your phone tapped, and I want to get the names all your buddies when you call them to report what’s happening.”

  “Evidence obtained by a wiretap,” he said lamely, “is not admissible in court.”

  “What a shame. But it’ll be fun listening in an your calls anyway. Bye, now. And give my regards to all the other freaks in The Big Freak-Out.”

  He was still shaking like a leaf when I turned the corner and ducked into the subway.

  My next stop was a well-kept garden apartment in what used to be the hangout of the Roaring Twenties’ equivalent of today’s happies—Greenwich Village. The man I was calling on was the would-be Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Sanford Weiss.

  He wasn’t there, but his wife was. She said she’d give him the message.

  Tell him Antoine came by,” I drawled. “I’m one of his buddies in The Big Freak-Out”

  She looked at me as if I were Speaking a foreign language

  “Y’all might not know what that means, Mrs. Weiss, but you just tell Sandy and Ah’m sure he will. Ten him that Ray Devaney sent me. Ray said to tell him that The Big Head blabbed to the cops, and there’s gonna be arrest warrants out for all of us. Ray thinks you and Sandy oughta get out of town as soon as y’all can.”

  I turned on my heel and left her as speechless I had left Ray Devaney.

  Stop Number Three was a roach-infested dive in the East Village, just two blocks from my own pad. The man I had to see was a scraggly, bearded type named Jeremy Slaitt. His profession was sculpting—or so said the sign on the door. Actually he welded together bent scraps of metal and other debris, then sold the crap to people who’d buy anything that Time said was “in.”

  I found the metal-bending Mr. Slaitt in his “studio”—meaning the unfurnished living room of his three-room apartment. The door was open and he was hard at work bending an automobile exhaust pipe, one end of which was imbedded in a pail of cement.

  I knocked on the doorframe. He looked up with a scowl and said, “Whatcha want, man?”

  “I wanna talk, man,” I replied evenly.

  He turned back to his exhaust pipe. “So talk,” he said.

  I crossed the room and positioned myself alongside him. “I like people to look at me when I talk.”

  He didn’t look.

  “I said,” I repeated, “l like people to look at me when I talk.”

  He still didn’t look.

  “What do you know about The Big Freak-Out, Slaitt?” I asked.

  He looked.

  I promptly hauled off with a tight cross that sent him somersaulting through one of his latest creations, a conglomeration of steel and other junk built around a rusty alto saxophone and labeled “Ode to Bird Parker!

  I was on top of him before he could get to his feet. My fingers clutched at his adam’s apple. My knees pinned his biceps to the floor.

  His face turned red. I squeezed harder on his adam’s apple.

  His face turned purple. He thrashed around with his feet a few times I squeezed harder still, and he stopped thrashing.

  I loosened my grip. “Start talking,” I said.

  He gasped for air. “What do you want to know?”

  “Eve—I’m not going to let go of you till I hear it”

  “I don’t know much,” he said.

  I tightened my grip again.

  “O-okay,” he wheezed. “I know a lot.”

  I loosened my grip. “let’s hear it.”

  But it didn’t come out.

  Jeremy Slaitt opened his mouth, muttered a few syllables, then went limp. Hi eyes rolled back under their lids. His head fell to one side.

  I brought a finger to his jugular vein. The pulsebeat was strong. He wasn’t dead; he’d just fainted.

  I got up and brushed off my clothes.

  I knew that he’d talk if I waited until he came to, but I could delegate his interrogation to one of Walrus-moustache’s other people. Meanwhile, five p.m. was fast approaching, and pretty Chiquita was waiting to play the piano for me.

  I hadn’t told her that I’d definitely visit her, but the more I thought of it, the better the idea seemed.

  With all the action I had generated during the past few hours, The Big Head and his general staff were sure to be making like Napoleon during the last days at Waterloo.

  What better way to check up on the results of my meanderings than by calling upon the mistress of The Great Man himself?

  CHAPTER 8

 
How do you like it?” Chiquita asked, leading me into the apartment.

  I did a triple-take. Judging from the company she and The Big Head kept, I had expected to find a dingy dive with floor cushions for chairs, an orange crate for a table and four walls plastered with psychedelic posters. Instead, I found a neat and wen-appointed two-bedroom apartment complete with wall-to-wall carpeting, ceiling-to-floor drapes, Naugahyde chairs and a baby grand piano.

  “I guess,” I observed, “that Dr. McGee is among the hippies but not of the hippies.”

  Chiquita smiled. “Being a hippie is a state of mind, Damon. The accoutrements have nothing to do with it.”

  My eyebrows arched. “Accoutrements?”

  “Yes You know. Accessories The clothes, the furniture in their apartments. . . . “

  “I know. But what’s a girl like you doing using a word like accoutrements? They didn’t teach you that in your high school English course at San Juan, did they?”

  Her smile broadened. “Damon, you’re so suspicious! You should’ve been a spy, not a sex researcher!”

  “I happen to be both, member? A sex researcher for the League of Sexual Dynamics, a spy for the conspiracy of which I’m a part, and which plans to Knock hell out of your conspiracy if The Big Head doesn’t give us a piece of the action.”

  “Not my conspiracy, Damon. The Big Head’s conspiracy. I’m just his mistress.”

  “And when the smoke of battle has cleared, you’ll be the First Lady of the Land, right?”

  “If The Big Head wants me to be.”

  Well, we’re making progress anyway. Last night you wouldn’t admit that there’s a conspiracy.”

  “I’m still not admitting anything. I’m just not denying it, That’s all.”

  “And you still haven’t explained where you learned a word like accoutrements.”

  She chuckled. It was a high-pitched, tinkling chuckle—very sweet and very sexy. “I probably learned it from The Big Head. He doesn’t exactly speak in monosyllables, you know.”

  “MonosyIlables! There’s another! My aren’t we being sesquipedalian this afternoon!”

  “Sesqui—what?”

  “Forget it.”

  She chuckled again and did a neat little pirouette that sent the hem of her minidress swirling up to her hips. I looked closely, but the hem went down again just before I could determine for sure whether or not she was in her usual lingerie-less state. “But let’s not just stand here like two strangers,” she said. “After all, we’re old friends now. Come in and sit down. I’ll make you a drink.”

  I found a chair with its back flush against a wall—the better to stave off a garroting, m’dear—and flopped down in it. “Scotch and soda,” I said.

  She pirouetted toward the kitchen, and once again the hem of the minidress went swirling. This time it swirled a shade higher than before. I was able to get a quick but tantalizing glimpse of the bottom curves of her unclad buttocks.

  They were the size, shape, consistency and approximate color of a pair of golden honeydew melons. It occurred to me that Walrus-moustache’s people ought to put the bite on the national panty-manufacturers’ association to subsidize the cost of the campaign to foil the hippies’ plot. If the hippies actually got into office, the manufacturers would find themselves with loaded warehouses.

  But I had more on my mind than panty-wearing.

  For example: piano wire.

  I could tell from the way Chiquita was pirouetting around that she didn’t plan to let the afternoon pass without a little sex-play.

  What better time for a guy with a garrote to put The Big Squeeze on me? If I happened to be on top of her when we were making it, he could get me before I even had a chance to see what he looked like.

  Not that I really cared what he looked like. But I’d have to make sun I was completely safe before I let my guard down.

  Chiquita came back from the kitchen carrying two drinks. She handed me mine, then did another bottom-revealing pirouette and raised her glass in a gesture of toasting. “here’s to sex, Damon. Your business and my pleasure.”

  It was a stale line, but I decided not to make an issue of it. “To sex,” I echoed, hoisting the glass to my lips.

  Then I stopped short. I couldn’t help wondering if Chiquita had spiked my drink. It was a hokey bit I knew, and no self-respecting spy would dream of really using it, but I tipped the glass upward and faked a swallow, keeping my lips shut Lowering the glass and feigning uneasiness, I said, “Chiquita, this drink tastes kind of funny.”

  She regarded me uncertainly. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. It just tastes funny.”

  “I used J #38; B scotch and Canada Dry soda water. It should be all right-unless maybe the glass was dirty. Here, give it to me. I’ll make you another one.”

  “No, don’t do that. Just taste this one.”

  “Huh?”

  “Taste it, Chiquita.” I thrust the glass at her.

  “But why don’t I just make you another one.”

  “Taste it!” I snapped. “Now!”

  Her brow furrowed. Then her face broke into a glowing smile. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Damon! Do you think I poisoned your drink?”

  “Just taste it.”

  She took the glass, brought it to her lips and polished off a third of it with a single swallow. “There!” she aid. Handing it back to me. “Now you can drink it without worrying.” Pouting prettily, she added, “I’ve heard of lousy manners, Damon, but yours are ridiculous.”

  “Better safe than sorry,” I clichéd.

  She flashed a grin that said all was forgiven, then threw herself into my lap. The firm hemispheres of her un-pantied buttocks sat expertly on my manhood. She gave a little wiggle to let me know that the positioning hadn’t been accidental. “Now that you’re not suspicious of me anymore,” she purred into my ear, “why don’t we play awhile? Or would you rather hear me play the piano first?”

  Actually I was very much in the mood for play, and not of the pianistic variety, but I still wasn’t convinced that I should let my guard down. “Before we do anything,” I suggested, “how about giving me a grand tour of your apartment?”

  She wriggled again. My manhood got the message. “Certainly,” she cooed. “let’s start with the bedroom.”

  “Okay. But remember, I want to see the whole place, including the closets and behind the draperies and under the beds and anywhere else a guy with a strand of piano wire might be hidiig.”

  “Boy, you are suspicious. And you’ve really got a fetish for piano wire. I told you before, Damon, the only piano wire I own is in my piano. Take a good look at it. None of the strings are missing.”

  “I’d still like a grand tour of the place. You know, sort of to put me in a more relaxed mood.”

  She sighed exasperatedly. “you’re impossible, Damon. I never met a more suspicious man in all my life.” Then she grinned. “But I’m in the mood. and if it takes a grand tour of the apartment to get you in bed with me, I’ll give you a grand tour of the apartment.”

  I made it a really grand tour. I started in the bedroom, then worked my way through the two bathrooms, the kitchen, The Big Head’s study and the living room. I checked behind every drape, under every bed, in every closet and over, below, around and behind anything else that might concal a human body. I locked each window and bolted the door. Then I stacked some pots and pans in front of the door just in case someone should unbolt it silently while I was busy in the bedroom.

  “You don’t miss a trick, do you?”

  “I try not to.”

  “Okay, so now we’re safe and sound.” She smiled. “Come on over to the piano. I want to play for you.”

  My eyes did a quick tour of her body. The hem of her miniskirt was hovering provocatively at mid-thigh. The long, luscious legs beneath it were begging to be kissed and caressed. “let’s play beddie-bye first,” I suggested. “You can play the piano later.”

  Her lips pursed up in a sex
y little gesture of resistance. “Piano first, bed second.”

  I glanced at my watch. “Look, Chiquita. it’s almost six. I’ve got a date with The Big Head at seven, and I don’t believe in keeping people waiting.”

  “don’t worry about your date with The Big Head. He told me to tell you that you don’t have to show up. He spoke with his partners, and their answer is yes. They’re going to cut you in on The Big Freak-out.”

  I gulped. “Why didn’t you tell me before?

  “You were too busy making me taste your drink and looking behind draperies.”

  “Well, what else did he say? When do I get to meet with everyone to work out the details?”

  “The day after tomorrow.”

  “No sooner?”

  “They can’t make it before then. Some of them are in different cities, and they’ve got a lot of things to keep them busy. But the day after tomorrow all the principals in the plot will fly to Washington. you’re supposed to come here to the apartment the same afternoon. Bring all your partners with you. The Big Head will meet you at two, and all of you can fly out to Washington together. The meeting will be at eight that night, and you and your group can come back to New York with The Big Head right after it’s over.”

  I whistled under my breath. I had expected that my little power play with The Big Head would have produced some results, but I hadn’t dreamed that things would be handed to me on a platter.

  Or were they being handed to me on a platter?

  Maybe not.

  Suppose The Big Head and his people had something up their sleeve?

  Suppose that when my partners and I arrived at the apartment we found a reception committee waiting to gun us down?

  It would be easy—if we were suckers, enough to show up all together in the same place.

  Or suppose that The Big Freak-Out had been timed to break the day after tomorrow?

  My crowd and I would be in New York twiddling our thumbs while The Big Head and his people were taking over Washington.

  I masked my misgivings and favored Chiquita with a grateful smile. “It looks like your pal really set things up for me good. I think I’ll stop by The Church of the Sacred Acid tonight and thank him personally.”