and beneath contempt. Wister, being a senior, holds ROTC rank of lieutenant but that's not Regular Army and we ain't even sworn into the service, thank God. But when we graduate, and Wister is sworn in, Wister will be an army officer and I swear to Pete, Miss Joy, the colonel doesn't even consider us up to a Regular Army buck-(bleep) private-beggin' your pardon, ma'am. He'll never grant this, probably even assign punishment drill. I wouldn't advise you presenting this. You could blow the whole show."
Two plump black women in the seat behind me were looking over my shoulder at the viewer interestedly. One said, "I didn't know they were doin' no rerun of Sophia Loren in the morning, but that sure as hell is Marcello Mastroianni."
"Naw," said the other, "that's Humphrey Bogart, plain as the nose on your face, woman. But I didn't know he played with Sophia Loren and that sho' as hell was her voice."
"Look at that," said the other, "you don't see her face, only what she's lookin' at. I know a Hitchcock film when I see one, only it's in color. Did Hitchcock ever direct Sophia Loren?"
I ignored them. Riffraff.
"Now, this could be a little dicey, Bang-Bang," said the Countess Krak. "You park right there and be ready for a fast getaway."
Bang-Bang, in alarm, said, "You be careful!"
"Oh, indeed I will. This could be very dangerous."
Bang-Bang groaned.
"No, that ain't Sophia Loren," said one of the black women. "That's Lauren Bacall and Bogart. I'd know her voice anywhere."
"You're right," said the other. "I jus' got the names mixed. I know this film. It's the one where Bacall gets killed, but I didn't know it was in color."
"Yah, Hitchcock directed it, all right. You only see what she's looking at. Horror film."
The Countess Krak took an envelope out of her purse. She wrote on it From Lieutenant Wister, ROTC. She put the leave request in it. Then she produced a little glass bubble and inserted that in the envelope. She sealed the flap. The action startled me. What was this vicious female making? A letter bomb? Was she going to kill the colonel?
"You won't change your mind?" pleaded Bang-Bang.
"You keep that motor running," said the Countess Krak. "Get ready to make those tires scream if this goes wrong."
She got out of the cab, and using the window as a mirror, she fluffed her hair and straightened her jacket. She walked in through the entrance.
There was a huge sign there. It said:
REGIMENTAL DANCE MARCH 28
Full Uniform Bring your girls, girls, girls
"Hmm," said the Countess Krak. "So this is Lieutenant Wister's life in the ROTC."
There was a sergeant at a waiting room desk. When she entered, he stood up and blinked and looked like he was going to offer her a chair.
She paid no attention to him. She sailed right on past him, heading for the door marked Colonel Mark Q. Tanc, United States Army. She opened it and marched in.
Colonel Tanc was sitting at his desk, surrounded by flags and cannon shells. He looked the very proper officer-tunic, shirt, tie, eagles on the shoulders and campaign ribbons by the score to account for his bitter and disapproving face.
The Countess Krak had the envelope in her hand. Her thumb and forefinger crushed the glass bubble inside it and it made a tiny crack.
She handed it toward the colonel and he, glaring, would not have touched it at all if she hadn't used the magician's forcing twitch of the hand which makes people take things.
The colonel, removing his baleful glare from her face for a moment, read the inscription. "Wister?" he snarled. "Do I have a man named Wister?" He began to open it.
"Oh, indeed you do," said the Countess Krak in a lilting voice. "And I have the honor to be his sister. He could not come himself, today. His poor, dear grandmother lies dying in Sleepy Hollow, ready to leave him a million bucks if he avoids the wolf and comes out of the woods in time with a basket of lunch on his arm."
The colonel stared at her and began to read the leave request. A strange look of pleasure began to creep over his face.
The Countess Krak continued. "Oh, I am sure that you will excuse him from his classes and drills a couple weeks. For if you don't, why, then I shall refuse to dance with you at the Regimental Ball, March twenty-eighth."
The colonel's face was becoming flushed. He looked at her with hungry eyes. He said, "Oh, Christ, we can't have that!" He hastily endorsed the request for leave.
She extended her hand and took hold of the paper to draw it away.
The colonel's fingers amorously clutched her wrist. He said in an emotion-charged voice, "Come with me to my room, my little pigeon!"
With an expert twist of her arm she unlocked his clutching paw. She got the leave request away.
The colonel lunged across the desk toward her, panting, face suffused.
The Countess Krak sped out of the room. The colonel was pursuing.
She threw the endorsed order at the sergeant and shouted at him as he caught it, "File this!"
She raced out of the orderly room.
The colonel was close behind her.
She glanced back. Suddenly the sergeant had joined the chase with hot and panting cries.
The Countess Krak got to the cab.
She glanced back. The two army men were closing the distance, arms outstretched clutchingly, crying cries of beasts in heat.
The Countess Krak leaped into the cab, inches ahead, of capture.
The motor roared!
Tires screamed!
She got the door closed and looked back.
The two men were pounding after them along the road.
Bang-Bang fed the cab more gas.
The pursuers were lost in the cloud of fumes behind them.
"JESUS!" said Bang-Bang, taking a weaving and rapid escape course from the neighborhood. "What was all THAT about?"
"She made it!" said one black woman.
"Yeah, and right in the teeth of the Army, too!" said the other.
"Did you see that colonel slaver?" said the first. "Great actor, Charlton Heston."
"(Bleep)!" said the other. "That didn't take no actin'. Not when you realize he was chasing Lauren Bacall!"
The Countess Krak said, "You and Jettero got your two weeks leave."
"What's the repercussions?" said Bang-Bang.
"No repercussions," said the Countess Krak mildly.
"Miss Joy," said Bang-Bang severely as he drove, "the Regular Army here is knee-deep every day in pretty college girls. Colonel Tanc and that sergeant looked like they wanted to swallow you whole. I know that look in army guys: not as bad as marines, but they meant business!"
The Countess Krak had taken a torn wrapper out of her purse. She was reading it.
Eyes and Ears of Voltar
Item 452: An emotional stimulator perfume capsule. Crush in contact with paper or cloth and
avoid. Causes a person to become
amorous so that he can be arrested for
making improper advances.
She muttered, "They ought to warn you that this stuff is STRONG!"
Bang-Bang said, "Miss Joy, Jet would kill me if anything happened to you. I know you're beautiful and I can understand that back there, up to a point. But did you DO something?"
"Me, Bang-Bang?"
"Miss Joy, I have just done an intelligence summary and estimated the dangers of this projected campaign. I think I better take you home."
"Bang-Bang," she said firmly, "drive to Hairytown, New York."
Bang-Bang turned north. He muttered, "Now I'm being a (bleeped) fool, too! It's awful what a beautiful woman can do!"
One of the black women behind me said, "This is where I get off. I want to catch the rest of that film at home on the TV. I love the part where she gets killed."
I smiled grimly to myself. I said, "So will I!" And I continued on downtown to make the final arrangements.
PART FORTY-FIVE
Chapter 1
At the Boyd's of London U. S. office on Wall
Street, the fellow sat there in a black cutaway with dandruff on his shoulders and said, "But I say, old chappie, this is a special rate."
"A five-day minimum at a thousand dollars a day for a measly twenty-five-thousand-dollar policy is NO special rate," I snarled.
He waved his cigarette holder in an airy way. "Hit men are hit men," he said. "And I must say the actuarial statistic shows that they themselves get hit. NOT what you would call a profession without risks. Rifles backfire, husbands take reprisals and," he fixed me with a beady eye, "cases have not been unknown where beneficiaries did a bit of hitting themselves, eh, what?"
I shook my head.
He took another approach. "It is not that your man is inexperienced. According to his record here, when he worked for Swindle and Crouch, he executed his contracts in quite a satisfactory way. It's just that records show he has a twist. A personality quirk, let's say. But I will tell you what I will do. Business has been slow today. Make it five thousand dollars for five days and I'll write the policy for seven days. It's the very best we can do, old chap."
I had to take it. It was the only way I had to hand to get Krak killed.
They wrote the policy with lots of scrolls and made his mother beneficiary. I paid them from my hard-earned hoard and I was on my way.
En route to Dr. Finkelbaum's I stopped off in a white-arm lunch, one of those places where the table is the arm of the chair. I took from my pocket a sheet and envelope of Apparatus self-destruct paper. You write on it and then spray it lightly and fold it and ten hours after it is opened it simply evaporates. No evidence left.
Disguising my handwriting, I wrote:
Find $850 enclosed. Your policy is clipped to the envelope so you can give it to your mother. Get a rifle. Get a car. Get to Hairy-town, New York. They're in an orange-colored cab, old style, unmistakable. Phone me at the number at the bottom of the page as soon as you have something to report.
X
I added Miss Pinch's number.
I sprayed the paper. I took a five-hundred-dollar bill, three one-hundred-dollar bills and a fifty, and wrapped the note around them: I didn't want them to get lost, for aside from thirty dollars they were all the money I had left. I put them in and sealed the envelope against air.
Not even finishing my bitter coffee, I sped for Dr. Finkelbaum's.
Arriving, I peeked in and, sure enough, there sat Torpedo.
I entered the waiting room with elaborate casual-ness. I picked up a two-year-old magazine from the table. I sat down. Unobserved, I slid the envelope and policy into the magazine while I pretended to read. Then, very casually, I rose, laid the magazine down in the chair beside Torpedo and walked out. Very smoothly done. Right by the manual.
I lurked around a corner, eyes fixed on a reflective shop window across the street. I saw Torpedo come out reading the letter.
Wonderful! The Countess Krak would soon be dead!
I raced down into a subway and was on my way home, conscious of pride in my organizational skill.
The moment I got home, I raced into the back room closet and put the viewer down.
I had expected by this time that they would be in Hairytown, for it is less than twenty miles north of Empire University, straight up the Hudson and right on the street or highway named Broadway.
I had only slightly misestimated. They were not yet into the town. They must have paused briefly somewhere for a bite of lunch. The Countess was watching torrents of air traffic going up and down the Hudson a mile west from their road.
Krak was saying, "This cab certainly rides roughly when you use it as a ground car, Bang-Bang. Why don't you take it off this bumpy cart track and fly it?"
"Jesus, Miss Joy," he said over his shoulder as he bounced along, "it won't do that."
"Is it broken or something? I see other vehicles flying up and down, way out there over the river."
"Those are choppers, Miss Joy. This is a cab: it ain't supposed to leave the ground."
"Are you afraid of the police?"
"Yes, MA'AM!"
"I am appalled, Bang-Bang, at how overregulated this planet is. It doesn't seem to reduce the crime rate any, either. Listen, Bang-Bang, I can fix it with any cop who stops us. I'm tired of the jolting. Take it into the air."
Bang-Bang said helplessly, "My chopper license isn't up-to-date."
"Now we're getting someplace," said the Countess Krak. "You should have told me and I could have made the parole officer renew it. Bang-Bang, you should understand here and now that you can trust me."
"Yes, ma'am," said Bang-Bang miserably.
She was looking at the road expectantly. Then she saw, apparently, that the old cab was not taking off the way any ordinary airbus would have. She said, "Well, get it into the air!"
"Ma'am," said Bang-Bang, with a sigh of relief, "we're here. There's the city limits sign of Hairytown."
"Good," said the Countess Krak. "But when we leave, make sure we don't have such a rough trip back. There's a shop. Stop and I'll go in."
"I'll keep the motor running."
"Oh, this isn't dangerous. I'm just asking for directions on how to get to Miss Agnes' house."
He stopped and she got out. There was a sign. It said:
ANTIQUES Priceless Artifacts
of
Sleepy Hollow Country
Washington Irving Slept Here
SALE TODAY ON HEADLESS-HORSEMEN
"Well, I never!" said the Countess Krak. "This is the place I'm supposed to be from, according to my passport."
Bang-Bang, sitting behind the wheel, blinked. "Isn't your passport right?"
"Government documents are never right. You wait right there-I won't be long."
She went into the shop. A very old, spindly man was drilling wormholes in a chair. He looked up.
"I'm supposed to be from around here," said the Countess Krak, "but I have gotten lost. Could you please direct me to the house of Miss Agnes?"
He stared at her. His eyes went round. Then he turned aside and spat. He went out the back door and didn't come back.
The Countess Krak went back to the car. She got in. "Drive on further."
Bang-Bang turned left onto Main Street. The Countess Krak apparently didn't see anything she considered inviting. They went about three-quarters of a mile and Bang-Bang turned right onto something called Beekman Avenue. A sign pointed to North Hairytown. As they approached it, she spotted a place that said:
Sign Painting House Numbers
She had Bang-Bang stop.
"They ought to know in here," she said. She entered the shop.
A middle-aged woman was at the counter. She looked up with the usual smile accorded to a customer.
"I have lost my way," said the Countess Krak, "could you please direct me to the house of Miss Agnes?"
An instant scowl replaced the welcome. The woman looked closely at the Countess. Then she shook her head. "My dear," she said, "what the hell would a beautiful girl like you be wanting with a God (bleeped) shrink?"
"Shrink?" said the Countess Krak.
"And with that God (bleeped) shrink in particular! Dearie, if somebody referred you to her, you just go back from whence you came and forget about it. There ain't no limit to what these God (bleeped) doctors will do to earn dough, even send somebody to that (bleepch)."
"You know her, then. Could you please give me her address?"
"No way," the woman said and walked out the back door, slamming it.
The Countess Krak went back to the cab. "Jettero said the natives repelled landings. Drive on, drive on, O Bang-Bang. We'll find Miss Agnes yet!"
They drove through North Hairytown. A street sign said:
Sleepy Hollow Road
"According to my passport," said the Countess, "I was born up that street somewhere. Do all American children get this lost?"
"Miss Joy," said Bang-Bang, "as long as we're into this and probably outflanked, there's an Octopus service station up there. If we're on the trail of some
thing connected with Rockecenter, remember that he owns Octopus."
"Look," said the Countess. "There's a sign to Pokan-tickle Hills! We're within a couple of miles of the palace. Maybe we should go straight there."
"NO, ma'am. Because we were going to see the
parole officer, I didn't bring a single thing for a fire fight. We're going to stop at this service station."
He pulled in well away from the islands. He got out and threw his cap on the seat. He went over to the office. The Countess Krak followed him.
The man in the office was a hard-bitten, grease-spattered, service station manager type. He looked up from his accounts.
"We're from civilization," said Bang-Bang. "We're looking for Miss Agnes. So where is she?"
"Oh, you mean Dr. Morelay," the man said. "You must be the people coming to see about the land yacht. And it's about time! She wanted to park it down here but I was scared stiff something would happen to it. She said just yesterday she didn't think you were coming at all, so you better be tactful. We have to be careful of her because of him. Now, let me give you a word of warning: Don't get impudent with her the way you city people can be. She's a power in this area and can have you held under the insanity laws by just snapping her fingers. I don't want her getting upset and screaming around here, blaming me, if I send you and you get impolite. All right?"
"We'll show lots of respect," said Bang-Bang, feeling nervously under his armpit where he obviously didn't have a gun.
"I'll be (bleeped) glad to get this thing settled, so just come outside and I'll point out how you get there."
Standing on the island and pointing and showing turns with his hand, he told them exactly how to get to the Morelay Estate, as he called it.
He went back into the office muttering, "Well, that's one (bleeping) headache off my plate."
They drove away.
r
It was perfect sniper country: open and unobstructed shots available. Bang-Bang was unarmed. I felt sure Torpedo would soon be on the scene.
And then that would be the end of the vicious Countess Krak!
Mission: Earth Death Quest Page 8
