“You have your car?”
“No,” Cisco chuckled. “Hey, I just asked you if you needed a lift.”
“You ought to work on that material. It shows promise.”
“Promises were made to be broken,” Grumpo said. “I have a car, John, and you’re welcome to it, if you can get it back from the finance company.”
Cisco snorted. “He’s always kvetching about how hard up he is. Bullshit — he’s rich.”
“Bullshit, I’m rich.”
“Go on, you’re rolling in it. I’m the one with the sob story. I lost fifty grand at the track last year.”
“And that was after taxes,” Grumpo said. “You know, Morris —”
The brothers (fraternal triplets) always called each other by their proper names.
“— just the other day someone said you were dumb.”
“Yeah? What did you say?”
“I said, ‘He’s shit.’”
“Well, thanks, I appreciate it,” Cisco said.
“If you can’t stick up for your brother, who can you stick up for?”
“Stick it up your ass.”
“Don’t knock it if you haven’t —” Grumpo turned to one of the chorines, who was convulsed. “You can choke to death that way, honey. Spit that corned beef out.”
She swallowed and gagged. Grumpo slapped her bare back.
Carney checked his watch again, then gave a glance back to the maitre d’s station.
“You seem a little nervous, John,” Heppo remarked.
“Maybe I am.”
“Well, take it easy. You’re among friends.”
“With friends like us,” Grumpo said, “he needs all the enemies he can get.”
“Don’t listen to this guy. Momma always said his mouth would take him to the top, and then right back down again.”
“Momma didn’t raise any mute children, except you.”
“I know my limitations. I can’t talk for sour beans. Shoot a Moogie —”
Heppo made a grotesquely comical face.
“— that I can do. There was this guy below our place when we were kids, ran a fix-it shop. When he worked he screwed up his face like this.” Heppo did it again. “His name was Mort, but they called him Moogie, for some reason. Anyway, I been cashing in on him ever since.”
“An artist uses the material of everyday life,” Carney said.
“And a comedian buys his gags from a good gag writer,” Grumpo said.
“Grumpo,” Carney said, “your best gags are your own. In fact, you’re eponymous for the quick retort. Grumpoisms.”
Grumpo looked rueful. “I wish I was a surgeon. Or a dishwasher. Anything but a professional wiseguy.” He seemed to mean it.
The meal went on, the talk gravitating to show business. Carney decided to stay put for now, as he was reluctant to take a cab alone. Not because he feared an ambush — if one came it could be a litmus test by which to judge the possible outcome of the evening — but because the cabby might get hurt.
At some point, Cisco threw down his half-eaten sandwich. “Let’s get out of here. It’s late and I’m tired.”
“Spoken like a trouper,” Grumpo said. “Let’s vamoose. John, you’re welcome to share a cab with us.”
“Thanks, I will.”
Grumpo picked up the check and looked it over. “This is outrageous. John, if I were you —”
Carney’s fifty was already in the tray, and the sight of it spoiled Grumpo’s punch line. All he could do was grin awkwardly and say, “That’s decent of you.” Grumpo was not known as the world’s fastest check-grabber.
Outside, Cisco herded the girls into a cab and waved goodbye to them.
“I’m bushed,” he said. “Besides, I think they’re both virgins. They’re from out in the Midwest somewhere.”
“Yeah, Virginia.” Grumpo said.
“No, from some farm state.”
“Aren’t they all? Virgins are a cash crop out there. They ship ’em all east to the Boulevard.”
“How about Studio City?” Cisco asked.
“Studio City? Virgins? Are you kidding?” Grumpo appealed to Heppo. “He’s gotta be kidding.”
A cab pulled up. Carney had been vainly searching up and down the street.
“Coming, John?” Heppo said.
“Yeah.” Carney got in.
The cab pulled away, and Carney settled back, unsure of what to do.
“Where are you going, John?” Grumpo asked.
“Hellgate.”
“Driver,” Grumpo yelled. “East Seventieth and Bennington, then over the river for this gentleman here.” He turned around on the little flip-down seat. “We’ll pay the fare since you were stupid enough to pick up the check.”
“Forget it. Hellgate’s a long way.”
“Well, if you insist,” Grumpo said affably. “I like arguing with this guy. You always lose to your benefit.”
Cisco turned the conversation back to virginity and related matters, and was in the middle of a story about a sporting house up in Eindhoven with an employee whose specialty was something akin to fruit arrangement, when Carney spotted a gray Leland parked on the street.
“She takes these pineapple slices see …” Cisco was saying.
“Stop here, driver,” Carney called.
“Sounds so good I’d probably eat it myself,” Grumpo said. “Are you getting off, John?”
“Good night, boys.”
“Well, don’t take any wooden Indians. Whatever that means.”
“Take care, John,” Heppo said.
Carney got out and watched the cab move off. The street was quiet. He walked back to the parked sedan.
Tony and Velma were intricately entangled, his hand lost in her dress.
He tapped on the glass.
Tony jumped. He rolled down the window. “Boss! Hey, we got tailed. They wouldn’t quit, so I pulled over to wait ’em out.”
Carney gave the street the up-and-down. “Looks like they were convinced. You can stop the verisimilitude now.”
When Carney got in, Velma was reapplying lipstick and Tony was wiping it off his face.
“Sorry about that, boss,” Tony said.
“You could have phoned the restaurant.”
“I didn’t want to leave Velma.”
“Forget it. But I’m docking you a hundred out of your pay.”
Tony was silent for a moment. He put away his handkerchief. “Gee, boss, I’m sorry as hell. I feel like such a finòcchio. I really shoulda figured some way to phone.”
“I said, forget it. We lost them. Now let’s get moving.”
Tony started the car.
Velma gave Carney an enigmatic smile conveying a suggestion that she had meant to do some mischief and was delighted to have succeeded. But it was only a suggestion.
“Go up to Dutchtown,” Carney said.
“Dutchtown? I thought we was going to cross the river.”
“Later. I need to get in the spirit.”
“Check.”
The car moved off into the night.
Chapter Twelve
Ville-Des-Morts
The street was dark and deserted, decent people being in bed, sleeping or otherwise, at this time of night. There was, however, a fingernail-clipping of a moon that served to limn the cobblestones in a faint bluish light.
Linda, Gene, and Snowclaw kept to the shadows. They passed through alley after alley, sending gray ghosts of cats scurrying. Every so often they encountered a lighted window — someone sick, perhaps, or a literate citizen (in these neighborhoods quite rare) up with an absorbing book.
They did run across the odd person up and about, and twice, a group of rowdies. The rowdies they hid from, but in neither case did they suspect the passers-by of being members of Ragueneau’s private police force.
They moved on through the old city.
“We could go through the sewers,” Gene suggested.
“Yuck,” Linda said. “Do you know your way around down
there?”
“Nope. But I thought it would lend the right note of romance. Orson Welles in The Third Man. Zither music, you know?”
“Right.”
“Wait.” Gene stopped Linda with an outstretched arm. Snowclaw halted.
Voices up ahead. Gene motioned toward the mouth of an alley. With a light tread, they ran.
The other end of the alley gave onto a winding street. They turned left and proceeded until they heard more voices, these off to the left. They hurried.
They came running around a bend and into full view of three men talking in the middle of the square. They skidded to a stop.
One of the three walked toward them. “You there! Let’s see your papers.” He wore, as did his mates, the telltale purple brassard of Ragueneau’s auxiliaries.
“Papers?” Gene said innocently.
The man kept coming. “Idiot! Your identification papers.”
“No need to get personal.”
“Eh? What’s your name?” The man’s right hand went to his sword hilt.
“Jose Ferrer. And we don’t got to show you no stinkin’ papers.” Gene drew his rapier.
The man drew his weapon almost simultaneously, but backstepped until the other two arrived. Gene and Snowclaw went to meet them. Gene engaged the first man while Snowclaw, sans weapon, faced down the pair.
They didn’t know what to make of him. Snowclaw kept advancing purposefully, and, momentarily intimidated by his size and his inexplicable behavior, the two men failed to stand their ground. Then one of them lunged for Snowclaw’s massive chest. The point made contact; the thin sword bowed into an arch, and the astonished attacker withdrew.
“Ouch,” Snowclaw said, stopping. He opened his shirt and examined his right pectoral. “That broke the skin, darn it.” He sprang toward the culprit. “Now you’re going to get it.”
Both men dashed away.
Gene and his opponent were mixing it up rather well. Snowclaw stood by and watched imperturbably, but Linda gnawed a knuckle, giving a little shriek when Gene had to retreat from a killing lunge.
When the man realized he was alone, the fight went out of him. He backed off, looked over his shoulder, gave a weak, embarrassed smile, then turned and ran.
“You guys are good,” Linda marveled.
“Get hurt, Snowy?” Gene asked.
“Nah. There’s only one or two spots on me that those pointy things can jab into, but they haven’t found ’em yet.”
“Amazing,” Linda said.
Gene poked him. “Snowy must have some kind of layer of cartilage under his skin. At least that’s how I —”
Running footsteps came from beyond the bend, approaching.
The threesome took off down the street. They made a left at the next crossing and followed a narrow street lined with buildings fronting on the pavement. The sounds of pursuit remained at their heels. They ducked into an alley, ran along it. Snowclaw collided with a pile of debris and made a racket. Linda stubbed her toe, suppressed a curse, and went limping along. Gene was first into the street on the other side, and looked to the right. Five of Ragueneau’s henchmen came spilling out of a courtyard. Gene jumped back into the alley, snagged Snowclaw before he blundered out, and turned Linda around. She grabbed onto him.
“Go back! Can you walk?”
“I think I broke my toe.”
They worked their way slowly back up the alley. For all Snowclaw’s caution, however, he stumbled over the same pile of junk, raising as much racket as before.
“I thought you could see in the dark,” Gene growled.
“Who ever said that?” Something breakable shattered. “Darn it, anyway.”
“Snowy, quit that!”
“I’m not doing it deliberately! I can’t see a thing.”
In fact, Snowclaw’s eyes were designed to temper the harsh arctic glare of sun on ice and snow. The lenses of his eyes were like polarized sunglasses, and thus made for poor night vision.
A shadow appeared at the end of the alley.
“You there! Stop where you are!”
They turned and tried to run, but Linda could do little better than limp along. When they reached the other end of the alley, Ragueneau’s goons were waiting to meet them.
Gene waded in, sword long since drawn, and engaged no less than three of the five. One grabbed Linda, but Snowclaw snapped his neck straightaway. The fourth goon tried to run Snowclaw through, but got his rapier broken in two and himself thrown through a window.
More of the Legate’s henchmen came rushing out of the alley like hornets out of a disturbed nest, in numbers more than even Snowclaw could effectively deal with.
By that time Gene had skewered one opponent and punctured another’s sword shoulder. Those two incapacitated, Gene took on two more, ran one through immediately and nicked the other’s forearm. He fought furiously, his blade whipping back and forth from one opponent to the next. Steel clashed and rang.
But it was no use. Eventually Gene was surrounded and the fight was over.
Gene lowered his sword. “Snowy!”
Snowclaw was busy with an experiment: Could a man’s leg be stuffed into his own ear? Not easily, as it turned out. Seven other goons were desperately trying to restrain him.
“What?”
“Give it up, Snowy. They got us.”
“Aw, heck.” Snowclaw dropped his slightly rearranged victim.
One of the captors, presumably the leader, swaggered up to Gene and took the rapier.
“Eugéne de Périlleux, I presume?”
“C’est moi all over.”
“His Eminence, the Legate, craves the honor of your company,” the man said with an ironic sneer. “But on the morrow. For tonight, deluxe accommodations await you at the Tower of Tears.”
Gene muttered, “Yeah, I hear the Triple-A gave it five stars.”
“Take them away.”
Gene heard gasps and turned in Snowclaw’s direction.
No longer did Snowclaw look human. In fact, he looked not unlike an upright-walking polar bear dressed in seventeenth-century costume. But of course he looked more fierce than any bumbling bear; no bear ever had such elaborate dentition or yellow eyes that glowed in the dark.
He growled. The goons backpedaled away.
“Pay no attention to my friend, here,” Gene said. “His therapist says he’s getting better.”
“Sorcerers!” one of them said, quailing.
Snowclaw tore off his clothing and threw the rags aside. “Boy, that feels better.” He was a mountain of white fur.
“A devil!”
“Not really,” Snowclaw said. He held up one pawlike hand. Gingerly, he touched the middle of the palm with one finger. In an instant bone-white claws, two inches long and wickedly sharp, sprang from the ends of his fingerlike digits. “But I like kicking a few butts now and then.”
They all ran.
Gene picked up his sword and sheathed it. “You had to go and spoil the fun.”
“Sorry,” Snowclaw said.
Linda let out a windy breath. “Oh, was I scared.”
“We would have figured out something,” Gene said. “Come on, let’s get to the portal. How’s your toe?”
“It’s all right. Just stubbed. Gene, what’s the Tower of Tears?”
“Oh, a prison, with a very good apprentice-torturer program.”
“Get out.”
“No, it’s a sort of teaching hospital in reverse. Clients get personalized service.”
“I’m not going to think about it.”
“I really am sorry,” Snowclaw said, tagging after them.
The portal was in the crypt of a collapsed cathedral that had never been rebuilt. The stairs descended into darkness. Gene went to a nearby niche, slid out a stone, and took a candle and matches out of the cavity. He lit the candle, handed it to Linda, then slid the stone back into place. The threesome went down the winding stairwell single file.
“I’d stash a flashlight, but I worry about
it being discovered,” Gene said. “Besides, batteries corrode. Never rely on a higher technology when a lower one will suffice.”
They walked along a corridor with doorways opening off to burial crypts at either hand. Gene led the way into the third chamber on the right.
The far wall was pierced with a pointed archway, through which light spilled. They passed through it and entered Castle Perilous, stepping from one world to another as if it were nothing. And it wasn’t much at all, as far as they were concerned.
Linda did an orchestra conductor’s flourish. Her seventeenth-century outfit vanished, replaced with her usual castle duds. Gone also was the blond beard.
“Sheesh! Am I glad to get out of those. I wouldn’t make a very good guy.”
“I wouldn’t touch that line with a fork. Do you think Dolbert and Luster are up in the graving dock now?”
“They sleep up there. We should go up and see what gives.”
“It’s only three floors. Let’s take the escalator.”
The escalators were a new feature, tricked up by Linda, Sheila, and a few other adept castle magicians. They seemed to be fairly permanent so far, subject only to minor fluctuations and uncertainties. The devices hummed and clanked satisfactorily, and they actually worked.
“Even if Dolbert manages to get the Voyager running again,” Gene said as they ascended, “we still have the problem of locating Melanie.”
“We need the locater spell. Osmirik has it in one of his dusty books.”
“It works on Earth. No telling how effective it is elsewhere. Besides, she could be in any one of a million universes. It could take years to find her.”
“Then we have to come up with a spell that will locate her quicker. That’s all.”
Gene had no answer.
They found their way through the immense castle with the ease possible only to veteran castle Guests. Still, it was a long walk to the lab.
On the way they heard something ringing ahead. They turned a corner to find a pay telephone on the wall.
“Have you ever seen a phone in the castle before?” Linda asked, amazed.
“Can’t say that I have,” Gene said. “Going to answer it?”
Linda picked up the receiver. “Hello? … Yes, it is …” She listened for a moment, then said, “Just a minute, please.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece. “Do you know anything about a Land Surveyor?”
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