by Ron Hubbard
Mr. Bury.” Then there must have been a long speech. Stupewitz gave Maulin an evil grin and nodded to him. Then he said into the phone, “No. No records or copies of anything here. The local police know nothing and we won’t even report it to the Director.” He nodded as though Bury could see him. And then, all over again he gave all the identifying details and home addresses of himself and Maulin.
Stupewitz ended off with, “Yes, Mr. Bury. And you can be very assured that D.J.R.’s son is perfectly safe here in our hands; there won’t be a whisper to the press or anyone. We are, as always, completely at the service of Delbert John Rockecenter. You got the idea, Mr. Bury. Good-bye.”
He rose beaming from the phone. He and Maulin did a war dance round and round, laughing.
Maulin said, “And we were going to retire in a few years with nothing but our pensions!”
And Stupewitz said, “He’ll hire us for sure. No other option!”
I was flabbergasted. These two crooked agents were using this case to forward their own advancement! They were blackmailing Delbert John Rockecenter! And what made it all the more criminal was that D. J. Rockecenter practically owns the FBI anyway!
And what made it even more stupid was that they actually thought they really had Delbert John Rockecenter’s son.
Lombar’s planning had taken a new twist!
But wait. This didn’t get Heller off the hook. I hadn’t worked it out yet just how, but there was real death in Heller’s future now.
Chapter 4
The phone rang and the two crooked agents stopped their war dance and Stupewitz answered it, said something back and hung up.
The two came into the room with Heller. He had been sitting there quietly, his eyes occasionally straying to a bloodstain on the wall. I doubted he could have heard the phone conversation in anything like the clarity I had, if at all, and he must be wondering what they were going to do with him.
Stupewitz said to him, “Listen, Junior, that was your old man’s personal family attorney, Mr. Bury, of Swindle and Crouch, New York. Your dad is over in Russia, bein’ wined and dined and he won’t be home for a couple of weeks.”
Maulin said, “You just sit tight, Junior. There’s a little delay before you can go.” Maulin sat down at his desk and looked into a basketful of reports. I understood now that this was his office and the other one was Stupewitz’s. They must be pretty highly placed in the FBI to have private offices.
Stupewitz went to the door to leave. “I’ll handle the rest of this,” he said to Maulin. “You keep your eye on the kid.” He started to leave again and then stopped. He called back to Heller, “You can stop worrying about that hooker. She’s dead.”
My viewscreen seemed to jolt. Heller said, “Why did you have to kill her?”
“Kill her?” said Stupewitz. “She was D.O.A. at Georgetown Hospital. Heart attack.” Then, innocence itself, he said, “You’re lucky it was in the ambulance or you could have been charged with conspiracy to murder.”
Maulin said, “Big H killed her, Junior.”
Heller said, “I been meaning to ask somebody. What’s a ‘fix’?”
Stupewitz started for the door again. “Oh, this kid is too much for me! You grab it, Maulin. I’ll get the rest done.” He was gone.
With a weary shove at his basket of papers, Maulin leaned back and looked even more wearily at Heller. “No (bleep), kid. You don’t know what a fix is? What the hell did they teach you at…” He had Heller’s certificates on his desk and looked, “…Saint Lee’s Military Academy? How to tat and knit?” He glanced at his watch and then shoved his basket further away with a detesting hand. “We got lots of time to kill, and as you’ll be giving orders to this place yourself someday, I might as well begin the education of an All American Boy! Come along.”
Pushing Heller ahead of him, Maulin plowed along down stairs and through halls. “Don’t talk to people,” he warned. “I’ll answer any questions they ask.”
Evidently, the building was huge. It was a long way down one corridor. Heller was clickety-clacking along.
“For chrissakes, Junior,” said Maulin, annoyed by the noise. “Why are you wearing baseball spikes?”
“Comfortable,” said Heller. “I got blisters.”
“Oh, I get it. I got corns myself. Here we are.” And he halted Heller at a door marked Drug Lab and shoved him through.
They were faced with yards and yards of wall racks on which assorted glass jars rested. A technician was crunched over a table, heating some water in a spoon, needles lying about.
“Now the Drug Enforcement Agency handles drugs,” tutored Maulin in a gravelly voice, “but we still got our own drug lab. We’re really in charge of the government and sometimes we even have to shake down the DEA. There’s practically every known kind of drug in these jars.”
“Do you sell them?” said Heller.
The technician looked up in alarm. He said, “Shh!” Then he looked closer at Heller and said to Maulin, “What are you doing bringing a smart (bleep) kid in here, Maulin? This isn’t part of the public tour.”
“Shut up, Sweeney.”
The technician bent back over his Bunsen burner grumbling. Maulin said, “Now, kid, the trick is to know all these drugs by sight and smell and taste. Just start at this bottom row and go along in, jar by jar, noting the labels. But for chrissakes, if you do any tasting, spit it out! I ain’t going to be accused of turning you into a drug freak.”
Heller went down the rows, doing as he was told. A couple of times, Maulin made him rinse his mouth out at the sink, holding him by the back of the neck the way you do a willful child.
Heller, being Heller, was making very rapid progress. But I was worrying. It was obvious they were detaining him and, knowing the FBI, it had skulduggery in it — stupid skulduggery but skulduggery just the same.
“Hello, hello, hello!” said Heller. He had a big can with brown powder in it and was examining it. “What’s this?”
“Oh, the label’s off it. That’s opium, kid. Asiatic…” Maulin looked at it closer. “No, Turkish.”
Now, at any other time, I would have freaked out at Heller being shown just that. But I was sort of dulled by the shock of events.
“What does Afyonkarahisar mean?” said Heller, startling me out of my wits.
“(Bleep), I don’t know,” said Maulin. “Where’s it say that?”
“Here on the side,” said Heller. “It’s kind of dim.”
“I didn’t bring my glasses,” said Maulin. “Sweeney, what does Afyonkarahisar mean?”
“Black opium castle,” said Sweeney. “Western Turkey. Why?”
“It’s on this can,” said Maulin.
Sweeney said, “It is? There’s some black balls of it in the next jar from the same place. And that white jar down the line contains some of their heroin. (Bleep), now you got me lecturing.” And he went back to work.
“You see,” said Maulin learnedly, “there is a flower called a poppy and it has a black center and they scrape it and get a gum. They boil that and they get opium. They chemically process it and they get morphine. Then they chemically process that and they get heroin. The white heroin is Turkish and Asiatic. The brown heroin is Mexican… Sweeney, where’s some of that drug literature? No sense me wearing my lungs out.”
Sweeney pointed to a cabinet and Maulin opened it. “(Bleep),” he said, “they been using it for toilet paper again.” He seemed baffled. Then he had a bright idea. He was reaching in his pocket. “Sweeney, go on out to the newsstand and get me one of those paperbacks on drugs.” Then he suddenly stopped fishing in his pocket. “Hell, what am I doing? Here I am standing next to the U.S. Mint and was about to spend my own dough. You got any money, kid?”
Heller reached in his pocket and drew out his roll. The way he did it was the first indication I had had that he was rattled. He had tripped into a preconditioned habit pattern. Voltar gamblers — and Heller sure was one, as I knew to my grief — have a mannerism in handling mo
ney. They insert a finger in the center of the roll and let the two ends of the bills come up through their fingers and it looks for all the world as though they are presenting exactly twice as much money as they are actually holding.
Maulin looked at it. “Jesus,” he said. Then, “I suppose this is your weekly allowance for candy.” He plucked at the presented fistful. “Let’s see. The book is about three bucks. Add two for Sweeney for his trouble. I’ll take this fiver. No, on the other hand, you are probably hungry, so Sweeney can bring back some food: I’ll take this sawbuck. No, come to think of it, Sweeney and me are also hungry, so I’ll take this pair of double saw-bucks.” He apparently couldn’t think of anything else, so he threw the money at Sweeney whose former hostility seemed to have evaporated.
“What do you want to eat, kid?” said Sweeney.
“Beer and a hamburger,” said Heller, apparently recalling Crobe’s diet advice.
“Aw, kid,” said Maulin, “you are a con man. You know God (bleeped) good and well we can’t buy beer for a kid your age. Tryin’ to edge us into a felony? Bring him milk and a hamburger, Sweeney. I’ll take a steak sandwich and beer.”
Sweeney was gone and Heller went back to learning the more than two hundred different types of drugs on the shelves.
I had resigned myself to Heller knowing now what we did in Afyon. What I was worrying about was why they were delaying Heller. The FBI was totally out of character, so it was some kind of a ploy. They had something else going.
Sweeney came back with the required items and shortly Maulin and Heller were back in the former’s office. Maulin ate his steak sandwich in one large bite and washed it down with beer.
Heller sat nibbling his and looking at the book. It was titled Recreational Drugs and it said it contained “everything you need to know about drugs.” It said it was recommended by Psychology Today, so I knew it must be totally authoritative. There was everything in it from aspirin to wood alcohol.
So Heller, being Heller and a long way from knowing enough to put on a show the way a real spy would do, simply started “reading” it which, for him, was ingesting a page the way Earth people ingest a word. He still had a sip of milk left when he came to the end of two hundred and forty-five pages. He put the book in his pocket and finished his milk.
Maulin said, “What the hell? Oh, I guess you’re just too nervous to read. I can understand that.” He looked at his watch and seemed worried. Then he had a bright idea. “Tell you what, Junior. They have public tours through this building every hour or so. But we won’t wait for one of those. I’ll take you on one.”
Why were they delaying him? They were using the approach “Detain subject without arousing his suspicions.”
Maulin took him down to the exhibit of gangster guns and weapons. I was interested myself, thinking I could pick up some pointers. Maulin even took some out of their cases.
“Are all these weapons chemical?” said Heller.
“Chemical?” blinked Maulin.
“I mean, none of them electrical?”
“Oh, you dumb kids. Reading a bunch of Buck Rogers comic books! If you mean do gangsters have any laser weapons, no. We caught somebody trying to sell us some a few years back and I think he’s still doing time. They ain’t legal, kid. Besides, powder is best. Now, you take this sawed-off shotgun: it’ll blow a man in half! Completely in half, kid! Ain’t that great?” He picked up a burp gun. “Now, you take this: point it down a crowded street and it mows down dozens of innocent bystanders. Totally effective.”
They moved on to some views of modern bank robberies and Heller inspected them. Maulin showed where the bank security cameras were placed, told him about marked money packs, alarm buttons, alarm systems, police techniques and how the FBI always, without fail, caught each and every bank robber that had even tried to shortchange a teller. And Heller was so interested that Maulin even got an alarm system and showed him how it was rigged and could be disabled. “Your old man, being your old man,” he said, “has a vested interest in all this, so I hope you got it.”
Heller had gotten it, no doubt of that!
Maulin showed Heller, next, the FBI laboratory and all the most modern scientific investigative techniques including those on the drawing board. I didn’t like that as it was edging over into things Lombar had forbidden us to teach Heller. And I was relieved when they came off of it.
The erratic “tour” was certainly not the scheduled public tour, even to the point of Maulin shouldering through a couple of small mobs of sightseers to show Heller something of special interest.
They finally came to the “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” and Heller got an education on how people were spotted and traced. And how the FBI never, never failed to find them every time.
Shortly, Maulin had him back for an out-of-sequence look at the gangsters of the 1930s. “Now,” he said, “here were the real gangsters. They weren’t the cream puffs you find around today. They were really, really gangsters. And you got no idea how hard it was to catch them. But Hoover solved all that.”
Maulin pointed at a death mask and a display of photos. “Now, take Dillinger there. He never had any record at all. Just one minor charge. But Hoover made him a famous man.”
He got around in front of Heller and wagged a huge finger at him. “Hoover had the greatest imagination in history. He used to dream up,” said Maulin proudly, “the God (bleepest) dossiers for people. Total inventions! Right off the top of his head. Pure genius! And then he could go out and shoot them down! In a blaze of glorious gunfire! A master craftsman! He taught us how and we are left with the heavy responsibility of carrying on this magnificent tradition!”
Heller waved his hand to include all of the most advertised criminals in history. “He got all these the same way?”
“Every one,” said Maulin proudly. “And he included the general public, too, so don’t think this is complete.”
“Hey,” said Heller. “There’s a really vicious one!” He was pointing.
Maulin blew up. “God (bleep) it, kid, that’s HOOVER!”
He was so upset that he simply stalked off. Heller clickety-clacked along behind him. Then, fitting his mood, Maulin went down some stairs and shoved Heller through another door. It was a firing range!
I was apprehensive. I knew they were up to something. I hoped it wouldn’t include shooting Heller on the premises!
There were targets at the other end of the room and guns and ear protectors on the counter. I held my breath. I prayed to Heller not to get any notion of grabbing a gun and shooting his way out of the building.
“Where’s the agent that does the public demonstrations?” demanded Maulin of an old man that was cleaning some guns.
“Hey? Oh, there ain’t any more public demonstrations today.”
Maulin socked some ear clamps on Heller and picked up a gun. He fired a round at the targets and it seemed to make him feel better. He turned to Heller. “You’ve classified on revolvers, of course.”
“I’ve never shot one of those,” said Heller.
“Military school!” snorted Maulin. “I knew all they taught was to tat and knit.” But he proceeded to instruct Heller. “This is a Colt .457 Magnum revolver. A shot from it will go through a motor block and then some.” And he showed Heller how to swing its cylinder, inspect it, load and unload it, and even how to carry it. Then he picked up a Colt U.S. Army .45 and showed Heller all about that.
Maulin looked at his watch and frowned. Obviously he had to delay Heller longer. “Tell you what, Junior. I’ll give you a little demonstration of real marksmanship. Now, first, I take a look at a wanted poster here. And then several targets jump up and I have to select which one is the wanted man and put a bullet in his heart. If I shoot the wrong man, I get another chance.”
He picked up a poster, glanced at it. He drew his own gun. He had the technician push some buttons. Face after face popped up. Maulin fired. He shot the wrong man.
“I told you to see an eye doctor, Ma
ulin,” said the old man.
“Shut up,” said Maulin. “Hit the buttons again.” He gripped the butt of the gun with both hands. He sighted carefully. He shot the right man.
“Here, Junior. You try it. You’ll see it ain’t so easy.”
Gods, all Heller had to do was shoot the two of them and walk out. In the spot he was in, it was the textbook solution.
Heller looked at a wanted poster and put it down. The targets popped up. Heller fired and hit the right man, dead center. Nothing marvelous for a Fleet blast-gun expert.
“No, no, no,” said Maulin. “Jesus. Don’t ever pull a trigger before you raise the gun to eye level. But I don’t blame you for being nervous. And don’t get cocky about accidental hits. They don’t happen in real battles. Now hold the gun in both hands, spread your feet apart to get steadiness. Now sight carefully down the barrel. Good. Now we’ll give you another chance. Hit the buttons, Murphy.”
Heller with great pains did exactly as he was told. He hit the right target dead center.
“There, you see?” said Maulin. “That’s what happens when you get good instruction. Now you want to try this Army Colt?”
Heller fired an assortment of weapons and finally, with a sigh of relief, Maulin, looking at his watch, said, “It’s time we went back to my office.” They left but Maulin used the whole long route to lecture Heller about the power and majesty and total world dominance of the FBI. It was just an act to cover up what they really intended. For I knew that, by now, whatever trap they were party to had been arranged.
Chapter 5
Maulin, puffing a bit from his exhaustive lecture on the glories of the FBI, had no more than entered his office when Stupewitz’s phone rang. Maulin pointed to a chair and used the hand signal with which they order dogs to sit down and rushed to answer.
I didn’t need to turn up the gain. “Maulin here,” he bawled. Then, in an extremely polite tone of voice he said, “It’s all right to tell me. I am Agent Stupewitz’s partner. I think he gave you my name.” Then he grabbed a pad and started to write. Finally he said, “Yes, Mr. Bury. It’s all under control here… Oh, he’s fine, Mr. Bury… No, he hasn’t talked to anybody else… Yes, Mr. Bury… Yes, Mr. Bury. Thank you, Mr. Bury.” And he hung up.
