A Hard Act To Follow

by Troy Conway

  “While Hartley and the rest of The Big Head’s crowd were trying to figure out how to translate their dreams of The Big Freak-Out into reality,” I continued, “Corinne LaBelle was in Hong Kong on a mission for my agency. I’m just theorizing, now, but it’s my guess that Hartley contacted her with the hope that she, as a biochemist, could help solve the problems surrounding the pollution of the Patomac with LSD. She found out about The Big Freak-Out and became interested in it herself. She was militantly anticommunist and she saw The Big Freak-Out as an ideal vehicle for luring the United States into war with Communist China. She was rather certain that the hippies couldn’t overthrow the U. S. Government and operate the c o w for any length of time. but she felt that the United States could be persuaded into thinking that the Red Chinese were responsible for the coup. She hoped that the hippies could hold the city long enough for her to give the order, via the platoon which took over the Peatagon, for a nuclear attack on China and also for her to encourage, via the platoon which took over the State Department, an attack on mainland China by Chiang-Kaishek’s Formosa-based army. But she was hedging her bet. She realized that the immobilization of Washington by the coup might inspire the Red Chinese to launch a nuclear offensive of their own, which the United States, of course, would reply to by bombing mainland China off the map. And she felt that, even if no bombs fell, the United States, believing the coup to be Red China’s doing, might revise its policies to the point of taking aggressive action of some sort against Red China, probably through Chiang.”

  “Sheet,” observed Swami Swahili. “This chick must be really down on them Red Chinese.”

  “But,” I went on, “Corinne soon found that the hippies lacked the organization and stability to pull off the coup on their own. They talked too much and to the wrong people. And they tended to go off on tangents. She had given them a great deal of money—pilfered from the foundation under whose cover she was conducting her Hong Kong spy mission—and she had given them the all-important formula which would insure that the LSD dropped into the Potomac wouldn’t vitiate before it was consumed by the people of Washington. Still, the coup wasn’t getting off the ground. So she decided to take things in her own hands. That’s when Chiquita and Carla came on the scene.”

  “If I didn’t take things in my own hands,” Corinne reminded me, “things would still be at the same point as a year ago.”

  “I don’t know where she met them or how,” I continued, “but I know they were just as militantly right-wing as she was. Chiquita had dropped all sorts of hints at me that she was Cuban rather than Puerto Rican, because she wanted me to believe she was a Castro Cuban who was infiltrating the hippies on behalf of the Chinese Reds. Actually she was a Batista Cuban, exiled from the island shortly after Castro took power, and she was infiltrating the hippies on behalf of Corinne and—as events later will showsome Nationalist Chinese.”

  “I met them at a meeting of the John Birch Society,” Corinne said. “That was back while I was in Philadelphia. I had kept in touch with them through the years, just as I had kept in touch with James Hartley. They’re not sisters, by the way. Chiquita just made that up for your benefit. But you theory is amazingly accurate so far. I’d like to hear more.”

  “Chiquita came to New York and pretended to be The Big Head’s mistress. Actually she was the brains behind the New York operation, pulling the string, while he went through the motions. I don’t know whether he accepted her gladly or reluctantly, but I’m sure that her grip on him was quite tight.”

  “Quite,” agreed Corinne. “And he accepted her quite gladly. He couldn’t do the job, and he was glad to have someone around who could.”

  “While Chiquita was in New York,” I continued, “Carla was somewhere else—perhaps San Francisco.”

  “Miami,” said Corinne. “I had a different girl in each city. They were all friends who shared my political views.”

  “In any case, the girls ran the show hen in the United States and Corinne went about her business in Hong Kongdiverting money from the Coxe foundation, turning in fallacious reports about Red Chinese infiltration of the hippie movement. Also, she established liaison with some extremists among the Nationalist Chinese, who were more than happy to come in on the caper.”

  “How did you know about that?” Chime asked.

  “The Big Freak-Out required a lot more money than you had been able to pilfer. Since everyone else connected with the operation was low on lucrative contacts, the fundraising job fell on you. I’m guessing that you approached the most obvious source first and that you got a four-star welcome.”

  “Right on both guesses.”

  “Anyway, once the Chinese moved in, the movement became even more efficient. Some Chinese agents came to this countrygetting in was easy, since the U. S. honors Nationalist China passport and went to work behind the scenes. Others stayed in China and conducted fund-raising drives. The Chinese who were here M t mix with the hippies themselves. But they did coordinate things between the girls who were in charge of the operations in individual cities, and they set up the Washington headquarters.”

  “Right on all counts.”

  “They also became very security conscious. Previously, hippies had been rather loose-mouthed about the whole affair. The Chinese promptly put an end to that. Hippies who had taken bad trips and visited public health clinics were garroted. Swami Swahili also might’ve been garroted as a result of his loquaciousness, except that he was The Big Head’s lover and the conspirators feared that they’d lose their grip on The Big Head if his lover was killed. So he was exiled to Karlota and told to lie low until he was sent for again.”

  “I went to Karlota all right,” put in Swahili, “but I wasn’t no Big Head’s lover. What do you think I am, whitey? A faggot?”

  “Easy, Swami,” cooed Corinne. “There’s nothing personal about all this. Go on, Damon.”

  “It was shortly after the murders that I came on the scene. You learned about me, Corinne, at the LSP party, and when you discovered I was a sex researcher, you suspected that I was spying for the agency. The reason you suspected it was that my cover was so very similar to yours. It was then that you told Chiquita to play up to me and give me clues that she was a Cuban. You hoped to confirm the agency’s suspicions, planted by you, that The Big Freak-Out was a communist plot. Chiquita overplayed her part, but of course you had no way of knowing that she was doing so.”

  “You always were an unsubtle bitch, Chiquita,” Corinne chided her good naturedly.

  “Still, the ploy might have worked. But here’s where that ‘textbook solution’ business I was talking about earlier comes into play. You, Corinne, had assumed that I’d work like most agents would work. you’d assumed that I’d fish around for information and follow up on every lead that came my way. But you never dreamed that I’d try to generate action on my own by bluffing The Big Head about a counter-conspiracy that planned to take over his conspiracy. I bluffed both him and Egbert here, whom I later coerced into telling me everything he knew.”

  “How did you coerce hi?”

  “I had him picked up on a Federal n d a rap, then released on the condition that he’d work along with me. He might not have, except that your Chinese buddies, by garroting talkative hippies, had scared him into thinking that he was damned if he did talk and damned if he didn’t.”

  “Very smart.”

  “When I started playing havoc with your New York underlings, you rapidly called in some of your Chinese pals to reinforce the weak links in the chain At the same time, Chiquita drugged me to keep me from meeting with The Big Head. I couldn’t understand why she wanted to prevent such a meeting, but after you murdered him it became clear. When The Big Head found the Chinese on the scene, he realized that The Big Freak-outas he had envisioned itwas out of hand. Up until that point, he had been duped into believing that you were supporting rather than controlling him. He also believed that the coup would be successful and that he actually would run the country. Now h
e suddenly found that he was a figurehead. I think he suspected that the Chinese Nationalists were behind the show. If not, he still knew that he was the tool of a foreign power. And he wasn’t at all in favor of a take-over of the United States by an enemy, whether communistic or Fascist. He wanted to straighten the country out—distorted though his ideas might have beenbut not to sell it out. I doubt that he threatened to blow the whistle on you. I think he was too weak for that. But you were afraid that if I kept hammering at him I might get him to crack. That’s why you tried to stall me by setting up a fake meeting in Washington involving my partners and his partners. That’s why Chiquita drugged me. And That’s why you eventually killed him. With what he knew about the way things were going, he was too dangerous to let live.”

  “Amazing, Damon,” said Corinne admiringly. “I never dreamed you’d’ve figured that out.”

  “I think that was Hartley’s problem too, more or less. I think that Hartley realized what was happening long before The Big Head realized what was happening. I think you suspected that he might go to the police, so you killed him.”

  “Hartley was weak,” said Corinne. “When he learned about the hippies who had been garroted, he said the conspiracy was getting out of hand and that he didn’t want any part of it. I think he suspected that the Nationalist Chinese were involved, and for him that was the worst part of all. He was a pinko from way backeven when it was unfashionable to be a pinko. I was sure he’d go to the authorities with what he knew. So I made the decision. He had to be eliminated. He was weak.”

  “Still,” I said, “despite all this, I might not have known the nature of your involvement, Corinne, except for a trivial item about Hartley. You see, when Egbert was describing Hartley’s relationship to The Big Freak-Out, he told me that he hadn’t seen Hartley since the time when the group was broken up into platoons. Egbert was assigned to the Treasury Department platoon. Why wasn’t Hartley, who was an accountant and therefore a logical choice for the platoon, also assigned? I thought about it, and my conclusion was that he wasn’t assigned because he occupied a position high in The Big Freak-Out hierarchy, far above the platoon level. Up to this point, I would’ve been willing to believe that you were an unwitting victim of the conspirators or perhaps that you had been brainwashed by the Red Chinese. But the fact that Hartley was no mere underling meant that you were no mere underling. When I had that figured out, everything else fit into place.”

  “My compliments, Damon,” she told me. “A brilliant job of deduction. There’s not much about us that you don’t know.”

  “Only two things,” I smiled.

  “Which are?”

  “The location of your headquarters and the location of the barge That’s going to dump the LSD.”

  She smiled. “Well, naturally you don’t know that! Those are top secret!”

  “Originally, I how, the headquarters was supposed to be in Chevy Chase. It impressed me as a stupid place to locate, being far out of the center of action. But I suppose you had your reasons.”

  “As a matter of fact, Chevy Chase was The Big Head’s idea. That was before I began drawing up the plans. My idea was for a centralized headquarters, one right in the heart of——“

  “Corinne!” interrupted Chiquita, alarmed. “Are you going to tell him where the headquarters is?!”

  Corinne chuckled. “Certainly. What does it matter. He can’t do anything about it. he’s our prisoner.”

  “But still—“

  “Oh, don’t be silly, Chiquie. An hour from now hell six the place anyway. Where else would we hold him prisoner except where we are?”

  “If it was up to me,” observed Swami Swahili, “I’d give him a bullet right between his faggot white eyes.”

  “Swami,” scolded Corinne sweetly, “is that any way for the future President of the United States to talk?”

  “Uh, people,” I interrupted, “not to, uh, be rude, but, uh, wasn’t Miss LaBelle here about to tell me the location of the conspiracy headquarters?”

  Corinne smiled. “Would you believe the Shoreham- Norman hotel, Damon?”

  I gulped. “The Shoreham-Norman? But how in the world could you get them to rent to you?”

  “Well, silly, we didn’t just walk up to the desk and say, ‘Look, fellas, we’re conspiring to overthrow the government and we’d like to set up headquarters here.’ We simply had four very respectable looking Chinese businessmen rent four adjacent suites. isn’t that practical?”

  “Very. And I’ll bet you even had the good sense to take the penthouse floorso you’d be way up where nothing could interfere with your radio transmissions!”

  “We couldn’t get the penthouse,” she smiled sadly. “We had to settle for the twelfth.”

  “Well, something is better than nothing. But if there’s radio blockage, how will you get word to the man on the barge in the event that you want to change the prearranged timing of your LSD drop?”

  “The timing isn’t prearranged. The LSD won’t be dropped until I personally give the word at the Shoreham-Norman. I’ll merely tell the man who’s assigned to the detail that it’s time to make the drop.”

  “Meanwhile, who’s watching the acid?”

  “it’s under guard, of course. But the guards are underlings. I wouldn’t trust them with the final responsibility for making the drop.”

  “Very efficient,” I enthused, feigning profound admiration. “And I’ll bet your choice of a location for the barge smacks of equal brilliance.”

  “To be quite candid, I think so too. I’ve picked”

  But she didn’t quite finish the sentence.

  No sooner had she begun than the plane went into a steep dive.

  All six of us passengers were hurled out of our seats and against the roof.

  Then, with a horrendous groan of straining metal, the dive stopped.

  All six of us were thrown onto the floor.

  What happened next took only a split second.

  I saw Chiquita’s gun hand lying in the aisle.

  My right hand closed around her wrist.

  My left pried her fingers from the stock.

  I picked up the gun.

  And I aimed it at my fellow travelers, all of whom were still so shook up from the dive that they didn’t realize fully what had happened.

  “Nothing to worry about,” cams our pilot’s voice over the loudspeaker. “It was just an air pocket.”

  I smiled.

  “Egbert,” I said, “stand in the aisle here between our friends and the cockpit. If one of them starts toward me, give out a yell.”

  “Roger, chief,” he snapped, moving into place.

  I walked to the front of the plane and slid open the cockpit door.

  Dr. Hsin turned around. “Nothing to wor“ he began. Then his words caught in his throat as he saw the piece of gleaming steel I had pointed at his face.

  “don’t make any sudden moves, Hsin” I told him. “I know how to fly a jet, so I’d shoot you without thinking twice about it”

  “Be calm, Dr. Damon,” he replied. “don’t get tense, or you might involuntarily tighten your finger on the trigger. I’m a reasonable man.”

  “Put the plane on auto-pilot,” I said.

  He did.

  “Now both of you put your hands on top of your heads.”

  They complied.

  “Now stand up.”

  They stood.

  I backed into the aisle. “Now come out here one at a time and put your hands against the wall.”

  They were obedient to the letter.

  I took the snub-nosed thirty-eight from Hsin and a .32 Mauser from his copilot. Then I had Egbert tie them up with their belts.

  Next I had Swahili and the three girls tied up. Then, giving Egbert the thirty-eight, I retreated to the cockpit.

  I’d never flown this specific plane before, but fortunately I’d had enough experience flying Air Force jets that it didn’t take long to figure out the cockpit. I took over from the autop
ilot, got the feel of the plane, tested all my equipment, got my bearings and reset the auto. Then I radioed ahead to Washington that I was coming in with my very hot cargo.

  The tower controller balked when I asked him to phone a message to Aunt Matilda in Arlington. But I told him it was a matter involving the life of the President of the United States. He changed his tune in a hurry.

  My message was brief and to the point. “Arriving one p.m. with planeload of conspirators. Big Freak-Out head-quarters is at Shoreham-Norman, twelfth floor, four suites rented to Chinese businessmen. don’t worry about rates. See you soon Love, Damon.”

  The rest was a breeze.

  The flight went smoothly.

  The control tower let me in without waiting my turn in a holding pattern.

  And a trio of police cars rushed out to greet the plane.

  I waved triumphantly from my cockpit window at Walrus-moustache and the sexy brunette who was snuggled at his side. Then I lowered the gangway and strode down to meet the cheering throng.

  Well, they weren’t exactly cheering.

  They were just sort of smiling bewilderedly.

  And they weren’t exactly a throng.

  There were just six cops, Walrus-moustache and the brunette.

  Ah, yes. The Brunette.

  Would you believe Dim Grey?

  “what’s a nice girl like you doing m a place like Washington?” I quipped.

  “Jeez, Damon,” she shot back, “when’re you gonna learn a new opening line?”

  Walrus-he cut though our exchange d pleasantries long enough to give me a hearty handshake. “Splendid job, Damon. Splendid job. We raided the Shoreham-Norman and picked up the whole crew. Then we raided the platoon headquarters and got everybody there. All told, there were more than five hundred of them. We don’t have jail space to hold them. We’ve got them quartered temporarily at the National Guard Armory.” He shook his head disbelievingly. “More than five hundred of them I never saw so’ much hair in my life!”

  “Glad to be of help,” I said archly. “All of which brings me to the next question: what’s a nice girl like Dina Grey doing in a place like this?”