The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK

by Phyllis Ann Karr

  “Why Kokyo?” Theda sounded slightly envious.

  Keiko’s voice came through, “Because I want to see for myself!”

  “I understand the feeling,” Theda agreed.

  Val’s voice returned. “Besides, she’s Independent. All they can do is declare her persona non grata on Pi territory and maybe talk the other Greek houses into doing the same. Mendoza says he might not be able to stop the brothers from getting ... uh ... ‘cruel and unusual’ with one of their own pledges.”

  Thinking how ironic it was that Keiko should be safe from them while April, who was equally an Independent, wasn’t, I asked loudly, “Why the fire truck or ambulance? Why not the police or sheriff’s office?”

  Theda replied for Val, “Because the whole idea is to save April, not turn her in!”

  Right. The Japanese hadn’t had an actual genocide policy complete with death camps—Keiko wasn’t a third-generation criminal against humanity. April was, and that put her in as much danger from the civil authorities as from Fairchild and his boys.

  “Anyway,” Theda told her wristphone, “we’ve got Thursday and Tomlinson, and we’re coming up on the stoplight at Eighth and King ... Rats! It’s going red. Well, we’ll still be there in three minutes. Good luck! Anyway,” she went on to us after breaking the phone connection, “what Struwwie didn’t know, because Kokyo and I never mentioned it, was that Val had been with us. I’d talked him into smuggling us into the forbidden parts of the house, convinced him it was time for him to make a little pledge raid on the place, you know. He’d gone to another room before Struwwie caught us. Of course, we didn’t know he’d gotten away clear. We couldn’t very well ask without letting on that he’d been with us. We only knew he didn’t get locked in the cabin with us. Meanwhile, he met Mendoza and told him about seeing Struwwie put Keiko and me into the purple Shadowduster and head west on Madden Drive. The Rose has three fraternity cars—”

  “The purple Shadowduster, a blue Cougar, and a red Sparrowhawk,” I observed.

  “Right! But none of them was in the garage, and Mendoza’s own car has been in the shop all week, so they had to get Val’s. They hovered around the cabin for hours, keeping out of Struwwie’s sight, until all of a sudden he left, just about sunset. Then they got us out, Ramon having keys and/or voicelock codes to all the Purple Rose property. We hiked back to where they’d hidden Val’s car, and got back to town.”

  “Why Aunt Cherky’s house?” said Cagey.

  “Because Ramon was already worried about April. It turns out he’s with Amnesty Universal, and he’s been spying on this whole situation in the Purple Rose for years, ever since the Fairsquare became faculty father. He knew that Fred Fletcher was tailing you two around town, because for a while he—Ramon—was tailing Fred and you both—”

  “It would have been right neighborly of Mendoza to warn us about Fletcher when he approached us and volunteered more info on Czarny,” my lieutenant remarked.

  “Yes, but he couldn’t be sure whose side you’d fall in on. But neither could Fairchild and his boys, and Ramon was afraid that, now you’d come into the picture, Dr. Fairchild would hurry and pull in his net before you could interfere. Well, when you and April split up after lunch and she headed out to the rest home, Ramon couldn’t follow her without a car, and then when you two drove away to wherever, he couldn’t follow you anymore for the same reason, so he came back to the Rose house to see if he could pick up any further trails there, and that’s where Val met him, out in the yard, where I guess Val was trying to look innocent while he worried about Keiko and me.”

  I said, “The red Sparrowhawk was on our trail, Lieutenant! I kept getting rearview glimpses of it all the way down to Eau Claire and back.”

  “Probably driven by M. Stale Clearwater Drinkwater,” said Cagey. “Who ended by following us into the restaurant and finally depriving us of the pleasure of Czarny’s company. Meaning that at that point the dracula had become more important to them, for some reason, than we were. Well, our friend Drinkwater might have been overconfident in letting us see him take Czarny. He would’ve played it cozier by waiting and grabbing him outside. But if it was Fletcher rather than Drinkwater trailing us in the beginning, then when we split up after lunch ...”

  “Fletcher went after April!” I finished the thought, feeling my fingers tighten on the steering wheel. “In the blue Cougar?”

  “That’s what we’re afraid of,” Theda confirmed. “Especially when we found out that April still wasn’t back from the nursing home. That’s why Ramon told April’s aunt to start packing. We were about to head over to the Pi Rho house anyway, when your call came. And Ramon saw a chance to test his theory.”

  “If you need a getaway car,” said Cagey, “we’ll give you the keys to this one.”

  “They’re planning to use Val’s, but thanks anyway.”

  I asked, “What about the old man?” (He was already dead by that time, but we had no way of knowing it until later.)

  “Ramon says Amnesty Universal will do all it can, but right now the immediate priority is to get April out of danger and out of the country.”

  We were pulling up in front of the Purple Rose. Another car was already parked there on the margin of Madden Drive. Residential-area night lights were already much dimmer by legal guideline in the early ’40s than they’d been in the ’20s, but we could make out that it was a dark station wagon.

  “Struwwelpeter’s?” asked Cagey.

  “No,” Theda replied. “That would be parked in the garage, anyway. It isn’t Val’s, either. His will be somewhere around in back. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one before.”

  “I think I have,” said I, squinting at it. “Plaid? License plate AVERTZ-9. Yes, recently, too. But where?”

  Cagey said, “Did the rentawreck people give us two sets of keys to this jalop, Sergeant?”

  “Affirmative, Lieutenant,” I answered, still puzzling over the station wagon.

  “Then give our friend Hari the extra set. Just in case.”

  XXI

  (The Pi Rho house)

  It had been 19:43, almost a quarter to eight by oldfashioned circular clocktime, when Maklowski and Hartwick reached the Pi Rho house, after finally getting two copies of a provisional death certificate on the old man, driving back to town, checking Fairchild’s residence, finding it dark and locked, deciding to come on here, and missing out on dinner all along the way, not counting the coffee and seaweed crackers the rest home people had grudgingly supplied. The Secret Service men were tired, hungry, snappish, and even Hartwick’s White Knight idealism seemed to be tarnishing around the edges. Jason Maklowski, who hadn’t had any idealism since middle school, would have cheerfully traded the whole of Operation Bloodline for a junkburger and milkshake.

  At the house a smiley fraternity infant who obviously didn’t have the least glimmer of intelligence about Bloodline—Fairchild had warned them that most of the “brothers” didn’t—let them in and informed them that no, the “Pater” hadn’t been seen at the house tonight and wasn’t expected, unless he was in on whatever Inner Circle business was going on in the basement, which was closed off to all uninvolved parties.

  “Come on,” Maklowski told his partner. “Let’s drop this document here for his lordship and go find ourselves dinner and a motel.”

  But the freshfaced university lad insisted that he could whip up a meal for them right here, even find them beds in the house; and Hartwick seemed dubious about leaving a copy of the old man’s death certificate anywhere that any freshfaced university lads could steam the envelope open for an unauthorized peek. Doc Fairchild had strictly cautioned them to watch what they said and did around anybody but him and his two right-hand men.

  The upshot was that pretty soon both Hartwick and Maklowski were collapsing into overstuffed furniture in the overdressed living room of the Greek house, Maklowski feeling ever
y line, wrinkle, and gray hair of his nine years with the Service.

  And there they sat for all of ninety seconds before somebody screamed.

  Hartwick sprang bolt upright. “That was a woman!”

  “Basement, I’d say.” With a grunt, Maklowski, who had just been thinking about taking his shoes off as soon as he could muster the energy, hove himself to his feet. “A woman, you’d say? Sounded unisex to me.”

  “I tell you, that was a woman! Probably a young one!”

  “All right, all right, we’ll go check it out. We’ll probably find out it’s some kind of silly Greek stunt, and nobody will thank us for butting in. Kick us out in the cold without dinner, more likely. But we’ll go check it out.” A restaurant meal would probably be better than anything the freshfaced infant could whip up, anyway.

  It was like the hare and the tortoise, Hartwick darting around every corner, his hand hovering near his holster, while Maklowski, plodding along by homing instinct, made it to the kitchen first. The freshfaced kid was quietly batting boxes of microwavable food around in a half-emptied cupboard.

  “Didn’t you hear it?” Hartwick demanded, pushing in past Maklowski.

  “Oh, that?” The kid turned and smiled at them all over his face. “Yeah! Sounds like we’re getting a new pledge.”

  Maklowski grumbled a quaint old expression he’d picked up from his grandpa. “Oh, fer cryin’ out loud! Okay, Hartsy—”

  But the Lone Ranger was not to be turned aside so easily. “A new pledge? A woman?”

  “Couldn’t have been a woman,” said the kid. “Women aren’t allowed in our basement. Ever. Creamed peas and beets sound okay to you floaters?”

  “With what?” Maklowski asked, revolted but intrigued.

  “Uh ... let’s see…got some barbecued turkey here ...”

  “Are you two stoned?” Hartwick demanded. “Good Lord, there’s a woman—or somebody—in trouble down there, and—”

  “Oh, no, sir, not in trouble.” The kid looked around and grinned again. “A little bit of pain, maybe, but that’s just—”

  “This the basement door?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  Hartwick rattled it. It rattled back at him. “Hey!” he shouted at it.

  A babble of voices, including another scream, came back at him, too muffled by the door for them to make anything much out of the words except a couple of deep “Go away’s.”

  Hartwick started to throw himself at the door, shoulder first. Maklowski caught him.

  “Hey!” said Maklowski. “Think! Either it’ll just throw that shoulder back at you, or if the door actually opens, they’ll be picking up your pieces at the bottom of the stairs. Come on, let’s leave the kids to their fun and help our host here coordinate us some kind of a dinner.”

  Hartwick glared around and said, “Where’s your fire ax?”

  “But—” the kid began.

  “Your fire ax, grammit! You’ve got to have a fire ax! Safety guiderules—”

  “Hold on, Hartsy, I’ll have a look,” Maklowski said, thinking, If I find it first, I can keep it away from him. Maybe even keep myself from using it on him.

  It’d probably be in a glassfronted box outside, where most fire axes were, on the principle that people inside a burning house could usually find other ways to open the doors and windows than smashing them in. Maklowski stepped out the kitchen door into the night, started to take a deep breath, and heard someone shout, “Hey!”

  He looked around. Down near the corner of the house, another kid was standing in the light of a set of open stormcellar doors, waving both arms at him. “Hey! Help!” the kid repeated, and suddenly disappeared as if somebody else had jerked him down.

  Maklowski shouted, “Okay, Hartwick!” and sprinted. Hazing was one thing, a clear and specific call for help another, and the stormcellar doors were closing.

  Hartwick dashed around him—must’ve been halfway out the kitchen door already himself in time to hear the kid, Maklowski should’ve saved his breath—and reached the doors a step ahead of the heavier man.

  Hartwick kicked. Maklowski flopped down and scrabbled. Somebody was trying to padlock the doors from inside.

  “Don’t kick, dammit, these doors open out—” Maklowski started to say, when his compatriot delivered a kick that almost caught him on the fingers. Someone howled below, the padlock rattled out of the rings and fell away with a series of clanks, and Maklowski got his fingers in and hauled up on one of the doors, Hartwick taking charge of the other.

  They got them wide open and squinted in. The basement was full of people. In the light of a big wagonwheel mock chandelier with four electric candles burning, Maklowski recognized Fairchild and a hefty dark lad holding a taller, leaner, even darker young man—Spanish-looking type. Then there was a broadbeam character grappling with a Butterscotch youth—no, girl. And two more lads wrestling at the foot of the stairs that led down from the stormdoors. From the holos Fairchild had shown them awhile back, Maklowski guessed the guy helping the prof hold the tall fellow was Clearwater and the one holding the girl was Spuds Bartlett Struwwelpeter, the one of Fairchild’s three helpers they’d been warned not to say too much in front of. One of the youngsters immediately below the doors had to be the one who had just been calling for help, the other one resembled the holo of Fred F. Fletcher.

  “Okay!” Maklowski snapped in his best tough voice. “What’s going on here? Who screamed?”

  The Butterscotch girl began, “Whoever they’ve got in—”

  “Let me introduce you all,” Fairchild cut in, “to M.’s Jason Maklowski and Lancelot Hartwick, the pride of our own Secret Service—”

  “Heil S.S.!” screamed the girl, trying to pull an arm free. “Heil Hitler! Heil the S.S.!”

  “Our Secret Service!” Fairchild shouted at her. “Our own R.S.A.—”

  “What’s the big fat difference?”

  That was only the exchange between Fairchild and the girl. With a lot of other voices feeding into the confusion.

  “QUIET!” Maklowski hollered.

  They quieted. Not completely to his gratification, since he was pretty sure he’d heard Fairchild echo him with a similar command.

  “And let the lady go!” said Hartwick.

  “Yeah, let the lady go,” Maklowski repeated heavily, coming down the stairs with Hartwick on his heels. Getting to the bottom, he noticed that Fairchild had one granddaddy of a welt or bruise on his left cheek. Even looked like it had bled a little. Yeah, there must have been quite a scrabble down here. “Let go her arms, anyway,” Maklowski went on. “She isn’t actually going to go anywhere till we get things straightened out. Are you, M.?”

  Struwwelpeter having released her, she shot her right arm out in the old straightarm salute familiar from historic movies, and repeated, “Heil!”

  “Yeah, you might not be far wrong, at that,” Maklowski agreed wearily. “They say there was a time when we just went after counterfeiters.”

  Hearing him, she dropped her arm and waited, looking a little puzzled as well as a lot angry.

  Hartwick began, “But this can’t be Wulf Wagner’s great-granddaughter.”

  “Daughter,” said Fairchild. “No, this one isn’t Wagner’s daughter, but—”

  “Wipe it, Professor,” Maklowski told him. “Sure, we checked out your crazy theory, just for laughs. If old Wulf Wagner ever found the secret of eternal youth in the middle of that death camp, then I am King Tutankhamen feeding pigeons in Madagascar. Wulf Wagner and his grandson, M. Greenhill’s father, were two completely different and separate entities, and both of them are dead as Dickens’ doornails. So is Adolf Wagner, alias Donald B. Baxter. Checked out as soon as we tried to arrest him. We left them still fussing over his body at the rest home ...”

  Maklowski paused. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he might have just heard a ti
ny little sound like a stifled sob. He glanced at the far wall, noticed the bolt across one of the doors, decided to ask about it in a minute, and, seeing a lot of emotions in the faces around him, but none of them deep grief, he went on, “If you hustle, you might just be able to claim the embalmed corpse to sit up in the defendants’ box a couple of years from now.”

  “This is a serious loss,” Fairchild began, “but at least we still have the daughter—or great-granddaughter, if you insist, but—”

  “A little thin,” Hartwick said dubiously. “Fourth generation ...”

  “Third,” Fairchild corrected him. “The Wolf Cub of Dachau was still of the first generation.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Maklowski said, wondering whether Hartwick would even have brought up a doubt about it if Greenhill had been male. “Okay, we’ll pick her up, and they’ll probably even swing a conviction on her, and then make it a pardon as soon as the publicity dies down ...”

  The Spanish-looking fellow said coldly, “After having robbed her of years of her life. Years awaiting trial, with all the mental anguish—”

  “Mendoza,” Fairchild interrupted, “you fail to understand—”

  “No, let him go on,” Maklowski said quickly, before another round of mob noises could break out. “I’m kind of interested.”

  Mendoza went on, “Then putting her through the humiliation and disgrace of a public monkey trial for propaganda purposes, imprisoning her more years, and finally ‘permitting’ her to sneak quietly away with the Mark of Cain forever on her forehead and the threat of some new propagandist raising an outrage about her pardon to haunt her the rest of her life. Yes, by all means, O Ye Keepers of the World’s Conscience, arrest her and go away patting your own backs for delivering her up to ‘justice’!”