Tomorrow's Crimes

by Donald E. Westlake

  The big old man at the desk said, “You’re Malone?” His voice was hoarse and scattered, as though he’d had a very strong deep voice and had overworked it.

  I said. “Yes. Rolf Malone.”

  He said, “Phail tells me you’re willing to cooperate.”

  “Yes.”

  He said, “How much?”

  “What?”

  “How much do you want? What’s your bargaining price? You want a percentage, I suppose.”

  I said, “Could I have antizone?”

  Everyone reacted to that. Phail blanched, and looked frightened. All the others seemed surprised. Only Malik and Rose maintained their impassivity.

  The old man said, “What do you mean, you want antizone?”

  “I want to blot everything out,” I said. “If I could have an injection of antizone, and then you could send me back to the mine.”

  The old man said, ‘Where did you hear about antizone?”

  I pointed at Phail. “He told me about it.”

  Phail started shaking his head, but when the old man twisted around and glared at him he stopped. The old man said, “You threatened him.”

  “I had to do something,” Phail said defensively. He motioned at me. “You see how he is. I had to try and reach him.”

  “You’ve got him doped?”

  “No, sir. I swear I haven’t.”

  The old man studied me, squinting at me with those burning eyes, and said, “He isn’t normal. He behaves as though he’s doped.”

  One of the other young officials, the one who had asked me if I was Malone back at the mine, said diffidently. “Excuse me. General?”

  The General was the old man. He turned in the chair and said. “What is it?”

  “Malone was at the mine four years, sir. I’m told that very often has a permanent effect on a man, makes him more . . . placid. Almost like a vegetable sometimes.”

  The other young official said, “I’ve heard that too, sir. It’s almost like giving a man a lobotomy.”

  The General turned back and studied me some more, and now I could see distaste in his expression and I felt ashamed of myself again. The good opinion of others meant much more to me now that I no longer deserved it than it ever had in the past.

  The General said, “If that’s what he’s like, how do we know he’ll be any use to us?”

  Phail said, eagerly, “All we have to do is try. General. It can’t cost us anything to try.”

  The General turned to glower at him once more, saying, “You’ve mishandled this affair from the beginning, Phail. It isn’t over yet. Taking this man out from under my nose, hiding him down here, refusing to answer when I called—”

  “Our radio was out,” Phail said quickly. “We didn’t realize it ourselves.”

  “A frail lie,” the General said.

  Phail said, “And we didn’t come down here to hide from you, sir. that’s the truth. Ice had found out about Malone, when the UC tracer went out. They were looking for him. I knew they’d look at Prudence, and at our installations to the east, because that’s where the site is, so I thought if I took him down here, we’d be—”

  “All right,” said the General, “‘that’s enough.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “At least this time,” the General said, grudging the point, “you weren’t trigger-happy.”

  “I’ve learned from my mistakes. General,” Phail assured him. It was odd for me to be watching how his arrogance turned itself into servility when he talked to the old man.

  “I’m not sure there’s time left for you to learn,” the General said, with a heavy kind of thoughtfulness. “Time will tell.’ He turned back to look at me, distaste on his face again, and said, ‘As to you, you say you’ll help us if you can.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If afterward we agree to give you an injection of antizone.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He nodded briskly. “Agreed.”

  I smiled. I was ashamed of the smile as I felt it spread across my face, but I couldn’t help it. I smiled.

  The General made a face, and looked away from me. “Triss,” he said. “You take over. Work with him.”

  Triss was the one who had called me Malone at the mine. He nodded and said, “Yes. sir.”

  “Elman,” said the General, “you take charge of the ship. We’ll put in at Cannemuss.”

  Elman, the third of the young officials, said, “Yes, sir.”

  The General said. “Phail. you will go to your rooms and stay there, until I decide what to do about you.”

  Phail bowed his head. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Go now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  On his way out, Phail gave me a look that no one else could have seen. In the look, he promised me death.

  XXX

  I was alone with Triss, who said to me, “You might as well sit down at the desk.”

  I went over and sat, where the General had just been. I said, “Should I get out the paper and pencils?”

  Triss seemed surprised. He said, “Well, I suppose so, yes. You know where they are?”

  “Yes.” I opened the drawer, and showed him.

  Triss seemed younger than the other two. Phail and Elman, and looked at me always as though he were trying to understand me or connect himself with me, as though he wanted to feel things as I felt them in order to comprehend me. I could remember having seen the same thing in his eyes that time at the mine, when he had looked at me and found my brother in my face and called me Malone.

  Now, as Triss went to the safe and opened it, I found a vague and impersonal curiosity fretting in the comers of my mind. Under what circumstances had Triss and the others known Gar? Why had Malik and Rose tried to kill me the first time, if now I was being kept alive by their employers in order somehow to be of help? But the effort needed to obtain such knowledge was more than I could produce. I sat quietly at the desk, waiting to see what would be desired of me, and Triss came over to me carrying in his hands the package that Phail had been about to show me just before everyone else had arrived.

  Triss said, “Before we get down to it, I want to say something. Will you listen to me?”

  I was surprised at the question; it implied choice. But Triss seemed to require an answer, so I nodded and said, “Yes.”

  “I hope you’ll change your mind about the antizone,” he said. “It’s a terrible thing to do to yourself. I know you’ve been through a great deal, but the future can be very much better for you, particularly if you solve this.” He held up the brown paper package. Then he lowered it again and said, earnestly, “I’m sure the General would let you reconsider, change the agreement. Will you at least think about it?”

  I could have explained it to him. I could have said. While I live I have a responsibility and a purpose, and they require of me strengths I no longer possess. It is not permuted me to stop with the job undone, but I cannot go on. And none rescues me from this dilemma. I embrace antizone with the last of my will.

  But the explanation itself was too much for me. I merely nodded and said, “Yes. I will.”

  “Good,” he said. He then placed the package on the desk and carefully unwrapped it.

  Inside there was a notebook with a yellow cover. There were no words on the cover. Triss pushed the brown paper to one side, placed the notebook directly in front of me, and said, “This was your brother’s. He kept personal notations of various kinds in here, some just written out and others in code. It was his own private code.”

  I said, touching the yellow cover with my fingertips, “This belonged to Car?”

  “Yes.”

  I wanted to ask how this notebook had come to be here, but I was afraid; to ask anything, to think about anything, was only to open it all again, drive me once more into the struggle. Beneath my fingertips the yellow cover seemed warm, as though Gar himself had just put it down and gone away. I took my hand back and put it in my lap.

  Triss said, “T
oward the back there is a passage in code, headed by the word ‘strike.’ We know that on his last trip beyond the rim your brother made an important mineral find. The details of that strike, and the location of the site, are given in that code section. So far. no one has been able to break the code; it apparently had some specific personal equivalents for your brother that no cryptographer could possibly know or guess at. But you are his brother; it is just possible you will be able to give us the equivalents. I know something about cryptography, and will be able to help you to an extent. When we get to Cannemuss tomorrow our crypto experts will be down from Ni, and they’ll be able to help even more.”

  I said. “I don’t know anything about codes.”

  “But you knew your brother, that’s the important thing.” He flipped the notebook open. It lay on the desk in front of me, and he stood leaning forward and flipping the pages. “It’s toward the back,” he said.

  I sat and watched the pages as they turned. It was Gar’s writing; I recognized that neat and economical hand. Some pages had lists, others had long notes, still others merely had sequences of numbers.

  I put my hand out and placed it flat on the notebook and stopped the flipping of the pages. “Wait,” I said. I had seen my own name on one sheet as it had gone by.

  Triss said, “It’s toward the back.”

  “Wail,” I said. I turned the pages toward the front again, two pages, three pages, and there it was, a long paragraph with my name at the top of the page.

  It read:

  ROLF

  I am going to have a second chance. This time, I have to do what is right with Rolf. I must not make believe nothing is wrong. I must not try to hide everything under the rug. He has just come from jail and we both know it.

  I know he’ll be all right, but I must be strong. I wish I had Rolf’s ability to face unpleasant facts. Maybe I can learn from him, and he can learn patience from me.

  I still think it’s best to tell Colonel Whistler the truth, even though that means Jenna will find out. But the question is, should I tell Rolf? It’s ridiculous for me to think of protecting him, he’s always been the one to protect me, but this rime it might be better to keep silent, at least for a while. Let Rolf not have to put up that strong silent front he affects when he’s embarrassed.

  I must keep Rolf away from Jenna. She would push just to see him explode.

  We’re a couple of emotional cripples, Rolf and me. He’s too involved with life, too volatile, too emotional, too caught up in everything, and I’m too bloodless, too remote, too bound up in my own inadequacies. Maybe this time Rolf and I can cure one another. God knows I owe him at least a good try, after all he’s done for me.

  I wish I hated Jenna.

  Triss said, “We don’t have time for all that now. You can keep the notebook when we’re done, and read it cover to cover if you want.”

  Life will not leave us alone. Weariness draped itself on me like a blanket. Despite everything. I still must act.

  I looked up at Triss. If I could have felt anger toward him, or his superiors, or anyone connected with him, it would have been so much easier. But I couldn’t, there was no fury in me at all. There was only the responsibility.

  I reached out and closed my hand around his throat. I said, “You will tell me about the notebook.”

  XXXI

  It was difficult to get the story from him. Each rime he recovered from my attentions he tried to scream for help, so that I finally had to adjust him and make it impossible for him to speak above a whisper. Then his recital was marred by general inconsistency and interrupted from time to time by faintings and bubblings up of blood. But I eventually did get the story and rearranged it into sensible and chronological order:

  Behind the name Sledge was an inter-star corporation named Kemistek, an operation quite similar to the Wolmak Corporation and in fact in direct competition with Wolmak. Both Kemistek and Wolmak maintained spies in the other’s employ, and two such Kemistek spies working for Wolmak were Lingo, the entrance guard at Ice Tower in Ulik and Piekow Lastus, the man who had accompanied Gar on his last trip.

  Lastus had no technical education whatever. Although he’d been with Gar when Gar made his last important strike. Lastus could nor subsequently have described what the strike was nor how to get back to it. All Lastus could do was secretly radio to Sledge, which he did.

  Phail and Triss and Elman were sent to intercept Gar at Yoroch Pass. Triss insisted they were not sent to kill Gar but merely to bribe him if possible, or if bribery failed to attempt intimidation. I believed him, since those three were not by nature or occupation killers. If Gar’s death had been requested or anticipated, Malik and Rose would have been the ones sent.

  But death should always be anticipated on Anarchaos. where all legal and social restraints on individual behavior have been stripped away. Gar refused to be bribed, nor could this trio of puppies successfully intimidate him. Phail waved a gun around. Phail grew increasingly angry. It was surely significant that Phail had recently suffered personal problems, involving a woman on his home world whom he had not seen since coming to Anarchaos fifteen months before. All at once, Phail was shooting. Before anyone realized what was happening. Gar had been shot dead and Piekow Lastus himself was wounded and down on the ground.

  At that point, Triss and Elman managed to disarm Phail and keep him from finishing the job on Lastus. Phail wanted Lastus dead because, in the shocked reaction to his deed, he wanted no witnesses. Triss and Elman, frightened of their companion by now, definitely wanted Lastus alive; so long as Lastus lived, surely Phail would not be thinking of killing Triss and Elman.

  As to Lastus, he swore never to tell. And why should he tell? To do so, he would have had to admit his status as seem agent for Kemistek. Besides, Kemistek would not pay him a pension, in addition to the disability pension he would be eligible for from Wolmak.

  Phail and Elman and Triss all helped bury Gar, and then took the notebook and left. General Ingor, the top Kemistek executive on Anarchaos, was furious when told what had happened, but chose to do nothing. A Kemistek executive, while acting for Kemistek, represented the company in anything he chose to do, so that the General was forced to support Phail’s action at least to the extent of maintaining silence about it. This silence was made easier by the fact that Phail had apparently gotten away with it.

  The only thing that did not appear to resolve itself satisfactorily was Gar’s notebook. The code he’d used in it proved to be unbreakable. It was perhaps this as much as anything else that influenced the General to punish his three young executives by extending their stay on Anarchaos indefinitely. (In the normal course of events, all three of them would have been assigned to other and surely more pleasant worlds by now.)

  In any event, the whole affair seemed safely and permanently closed, and then I turned up. When I asked Lingu for Lastus’ address, Lingu immediately reported to Sledge. Phail was the executive who received the information, and he promptly panicked, afraid I would get the truth from Lastus. It was Phail who sent Malik and Rose to kill me, and incidentally to shut Lastus’ mouth for good and all.

  This time, when the others learned what Phail had done, there was increased displeasure, beginning when General Ingor pointed out that I might have been able to shed light on my brother’s personal code. But it seemed too late to do anything about it, and except for the fact that Phail seemed to have assured himself a dim future with Kemistek everything remained unchanged.

  It was three years later when they were on the tour of the mine and first ran into me. (Three years! I reach back for the time, and my memory seems to fall into a hole. Three years, gone forever.) None of them thought of the implications until much later, when it struck Elman that possibly Gar Malone’s brother hadn’t been killed, that possibly the man who had looked like Gar Malone had been Gar’s brother after all, Phail refused to consider the idea when it was presented to him, and Triss was doubtful, but General Ingor thought it best to follow it up.
By then, of course, I had already made my escape. Still, they had seen me once, and they had a description of me—including the missing hand—and when the story went around Sledge Tower at Prudence about the crazy bearded horseman who had waved a hand less arm in fury and chased a helicopter while riding a hairhorse, Phail quickly guessed who the horseman might have been.

  Once again, Phail was first. It was he who put feelers out for me everywhere it seemed to him that I might go, including the UC Embassy, and he who sent Malik and Rose to get me and bring me to him.

  His initial idea was merely to turn me over to the General, but then he saw a way of regaining lost favor by spiriting me away, putting me to work on the notebook, and eventually going to the

  General with the code completely broken, the message read, the site of the great lost strike pin-pointed precisely. In having me taken away from Prudence to the Sledge research ship in the Sea of Morning, he was hiding me primarily from his own people.

  But not exclusively his own people. Just as Kemistek had spies at Wolmak, so Wolmak had spies at Kemistek, and these spies at last became aware of some comers and edges of what had been going on. Additionally, the UC request for information on a man named Rolf Malone had piqued Wolmak’s interest. Colonel Whistler and his people did not yet fully understand what was going on, but they knew that something was afoot and that Phail was involved in it. Wolmak was currently trying everything in its power to learn Phail’s whereabouts.

  So. The simple facts that I had been seeking were now mine. Gar had been betrayed by Lastus into the hands of Phail, who killed him out of irritation. This murder was aided and condoned by Triss and Fiman and General Ingor. The trails back from Gar’s murder led one way to the woman on another world who had been abrasive with Phail’s emotions, and led another way to the rivalry of two mining and chemical corporations for new caches of raw materials.