“Um,” grunted Hardy. “Rather young, ain’t he?”
I do have the misfortune—which will be an asset in about twenty years, if I live—to look like a slender blond sophomore. Maybe that was why I took a dislike to this customer. Or maybe it was his broad, carefully barbered and massaged face, or the overly elaborate hairdo. He made me think of a shark at some Friendly Loan Company where they make you put up your wife’s services for a year to borrow a thousand. A bit of investigation next day was to confirm my hunch. However, a job is a job, so I merely sat down and waited.
“Suppose you explain the situation yourself, Mr. Hardy,” suggested Swanson.
“Well…all right…if you guarantee this boy…
“The union guarantees nothing except an honest effort to fulfill the mission,” said Swanson gently. “If we lose our men on it, you’ll need a fresh contract to try again.”
“Unless,” I said nastily, “you want to try for yourself.”
“Don’t give me that,” snorted Hardy. “I’m a businessman—vice chairman of the board, Teamsters’ Union, Inc. I don’t do my own kidnappings any more than I do my own cooking in one of our restaurants.” It was a proper comeuppance for me, but I didn’t enjoy his tone. Arrogance ought to be more courteous, a principle they understood back in the Renaissance.
“So it’s to be a snatch,” I said. “The season…no, wait, kidnapping season did open yesterday, didn’t it? Okay, who’s the goat?”
“A Miss Marie Dulac,” he answered. “You’ve heard of the Dulac family? He’s head of the Chemicals Union Trust. They have a summer home out at Lake Minnetonka, and are there now.”
I suppressed an impulse to whistle—yanking a girl from the house of her trillionaire father! But there must be a chance of doing it, or Swanson wouldn’t have me here. “Seems I’ve heard of the wench,” I said. “But we can’t lift her; she’s a minor.”
“Turned twenty-one last month,” said Swanson. “I checked the public records myself. She hasn’t taken out first-class citizenship, so she’s immune to murder, beating, or criminal assault; but anything else goes.”
“How come you want her?” I asked.
“Business reasons,” said Hardy.
“I have to know why,” I explained. “I’ll need the whole picture. Professional confidence applies, of course.”
“All right,” grumbled Hardy. “A simple matter of pressure on her old man. Both our unions are trying to merge with the Federated Nuclear Scientists. If I hold his daughter, he’ll back out and let me have them.”
That was a very big picture indeed, and I felt more and more cold as I realized how well that house must be guarded. “Any details on the girl herself?” I queried.
“Not too much,” said Swanson. “I can’t say how she’ll react. Chuck, so you’d better handle with care and this side up. The Dulacs are French Canadian, mother died years ago, and she’s been raised in a convent way to hellandgone in Quebec. Only sprung last month, and her debut is going to be pretty soon.”
Good. The confusion of preparing an orgy would help me. But old Frédéric Dulac hadn’t gotten where he was without some hard and shrewd fighting. He was known to be a fair, even gentle boss, but when his goons had to shoot they only intended to shoot once.
Hardy produced the license, and I scanned it carefully to make sure everything was in order. It certified that on payment of the usual (high) fees and filing of the usual notice of intent, he was hereby authorized to kidnap Marie Dulac within a period of not more than from six weeks from date and to hold said person for a period of not more than one year from date, and was further authorized to use such force as necessary and legal on condition of paying the proper weregild for all. damage done…etc., etc., etc. They had changed the form since I last saw one; there was now a boldface notice that breach of the regulations governing any capital-crime license meant full outlawry—anyone could kill you without penalty, and if the cops didn’t get you first the gangsters would for the sake of their own good name.
Hardy had already made a contract with our local. Now he signed the license over to me and I was committed. The fee, I knew, would be terrific, but I wondered what use money is to a dead man.
“You have my card,” said Hardy. “You can deliver her to my New Chicago office.”
“Nothing doing,” said Swanson. “We’ll keep her.”
“What? But—”
“If you haven’t read the union code, Mr. Hardy, it’s your own fault. In a case like this, we retain the victim to make sure no harm comes to her. Otherwise we’d occasionally find ourselves accessories to something illegal, like torture or white slavery.”
I was pleased to see Hardy looking apoplectic. It was going to inconvenience him. Old Dulac might just be tough enough to wait a year till we had to release his girl. No—it would depend on how tough she was; if her father knew she could stand a year’s comfortable arrest…
We got rid of our client after a while and settled down for a drink, smoke, and talk. Everybody knew that Dulac employed the American Freebooters’ Labor Union. It’s practically a mirror image of our own Criminal Industries Organization; I’ve bought drinks for many of their boys off duty, and some people wonder why the crooks don’t merge. But then attack-defense-riposte would become impossible; you wouldn’t fight your own brothers, would you? Dulac had to have his chance to guard or recover his daughter. Competition is the lifeblood of American free enterprise.
A job like this takes information, planning, and rehearsal, and the plan must be imaginative. Some locals rely on games theory computers, but there’s still no good substitute for the skilled human brain. A machine can’t enjoy thinking.
A week later we had our scheme fairly well rigged. Axel Nygard and I made reservations at a lakeside hotel and drove down. The rest of our boys had been trickling into the area for days, under various names and faces. We ourselves didn’t bother with surgery, because Intelligence had told us the Dulac goons rarely went scouting. The old man relied on his fortress-like estate, where you didn’t get in without a retinal scan and a frisking. Just to add to his confidence, we’d sent a squad that made a deliberately bungled attempt on his home. No casualties except some flesh wounds on our side; if I had been in charge of Dulac’s defenses, that would have made me suspicious, but Swanson said his chief goon had an honest, straightforward mind. Both of them were prominent Rotarians, so he ought to know.
It was a pleasant drive once we got past the housing projects. Nygard is a big, burly chap, but he shuddered a trifle as we zoomed through. The tenements rose up on either side of the freeway; they seemed to have faces in every window, and the pedestrian levels below us were like a disturbed anthill.
“Christ!” he muttered. “Can people really live this way?”
“Sure, they’re doing it,” I told him. “They’ve got to. Isn’t much space left in the world. They’re still eating, at least, and amusements are provided.”
“But the crowding—How many to a room?”
“Oh, not more than three or four. It’s normal for them; they don’t know anything else. I grew up in a housing project myself, and it really isn’t so bad. Of course, my father had a good job, technician in a rocket factory. For twenty hours a week he was alone in a big roomy building with only a dozen other men. So he was a peaceful sort, didn’t even take out a crime license. Our neighbors were the usual working stiffs, and beguiled their leisure by robbing each other. Nice people. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to do something constructive for them and their kind.”
“It sounds like perpetual motion,” said Nygard suspiciously. He was new to gangster work. “Bill robs Joe who robs Peter who robs Bill…but dammit, money represents material goods and services. Transferring it that way is sheer lost energy.”
We went by a protein factory, processing the algae from Lake Superior. “Not so,” I sajd. “Work in places like that keeps the belly satisfied. But what makes you a man, instead of another machine, is what you do off duty. The Ch
inese failed to make the adjustment to the present phase of history, overpopulation cum technics, and are huddled up like hogs in a pen. The Russians spend their time bickering between a hundred religious cults. The South Africans march around with their rifles, knowing the Peace Authority won’t let them go beyond their own borders and taking it out on any white person they happen to find.” At a distance I glimpsed a man talking to a woman—an obvious hetaera—on an upper-level ramp, while a boy picked his pocket. All three were smiling. “I think we’ve got it better.”
We left the city and had only a short drive to Minnetonka. It’s a fair-sized lake, and by piping their water from elsewhere they’ve kept it that way. That’s expensive, and so are the several acres of trees and the fish they keep the lake stocked with; so it’s a high-priced resort, the banks lined solid with hotels and summer cottages and fun houses. Coming in to Dirty Joe’s Lodge, we passed the Dulac estate: a fabulous five acres between high walls, the house underground except for a sundeck. Little more than that was known about it, but Dulac had filed intent to shoot down any aircraft besides police or Peace Authority that went over his place, so he must have added guided missiles to his other defenses.
Dirty Joes was about a mile farther down the lake. We turned our car and a $500 tip over to the uniformed attendant and strolled into the lobby to register. The lodge lives up to its name with a backwoods, logging camp atmosphere: plastic knotty-pine paneling, only one casino, the girls in the bar putting on their clothes to the accompaniment of folk ballads, and so forth. We were posing as young executives from the politicians’ union. My studies make me talk like one, and Nygard was taciturn. The bellhop showed us to a twentieth floor room and asked if we wanted girls right away. “Later,” I said, testing the taps. The Scotch faucet yielded a brand about as good as one can expect since the last of the great distilleries was wrecked in those clan feuds.
“Swanson won’t like what the local fillies are gonna do to the expense account,” said Nygard when we were alone.
“Well, we have to maintain our character for a day or two while we case the joint,” I laughed.
Which we did, and had a fine time in the process. There was an undercurrent of tension, naturally, a watchfulness and an awareness that in a short while we might be just another three hundred or so pounds of material for the fertilizer plants. But once you get used to it, once your apprenticeship has scrubbed off nervousness and youth, you are seldom so much alive as when preparing a job. When I got my doctorate, I was going to hang up my guns—another phase of life outgrown—but I’d not be sorry I had worn them.
The rest of our band were elsewhere in the area; we saw them from time to time and exchanged a few quiet signals. It was on a Wednesday morning that I set the machine going with a single call.
As we’d been doing, Nygard and I hired a boat to go out on the lake fishing. We had seen that Marie Dulac went for a swim each day before noon. There were guards in her craft and another boatful next to it, and they never went far from their private beach. Nor did they allow anyone else within a hundred feet. The old man was careful, all right; but it seemed unfair to pit artists against him.
The lake was as crowded as usual with boats, their wakes creaming its carefully blued waters, and with swimmers. Overhead was always the maximum permissible number of rented copters. Today, I knew, one of them was ours—that took substantial bribes to arrange—and not at all what it seemed to be.
Nygard and I steered to within fifty yards of the Dulac party and let our motor idle. Marie stood up in the bow of her vessel and peeled off her clothes. She was a tall slim girl with a vivid, tilted face, merry dark eyes, blue-black hair falling below her ears. From afar, I had seen her laughing and decided I liked her. She hit the water in a clean dive and came up whooping, happy simply to exist.
“Now?” asked Nygard.
I took a small swallow of whisky, a good relaxer, and nodded. “Have fun,” he said.
“Same to you.” I was already stripped, and went over the side. We were trailing a net full of cold beer, but had laid an additional package in it. Working fast underwater, I got out the aqua equipment, adjusted it to my face, and breathed gratefully. Then I strapped the tank on my shoulders, slipped the paddles on my feet, and buckled a two-gun belt around my waist: a .30-caliber automatic and a sonic stunner. We had to assume nobody would notice I didn’t come up again after my dive…
I swam easily, untensed, not allowing myself to think the job might go sour. The water was clear; I could see the boats wavering against sun-dazzle above me. Another aquaman glided by, nodding to me. I felt a pulsing as Nygard steered away. His task was to divert attention by having a minor crackup with some other vessel. Then he was to head for the timber before Dulac’s men started serious investigations; they would not be gentle if they caught him or any of us.
Now! I saw the two craft, like whales basking. The splintered sunlight made a roof immediately overhead. I slipped upward, a few feet below the surface. Through the water I felt as much as heard the blunt shock of Nygard’s collision. There would be angry voices raised for a minute, until urbanity returned with the recollection that a man can always take out a shooting license, and people would be watching…
She trod water, head and shoulders invisible to me, the rest graceful and faintly unreal. I drew my stunner and pulled her down with my free hand. She got a shock dose good for about half an hour and I let the gun sink, having too much else to do. My hands closed off her mouth and nose to keep water out—the metabolism is lowered by sonic so you can go several minutes without breathing—and my feet kicked us toward the middle of the lake.
With luck, I’d have done it quietly enough that her disappearance wouldn’t be observed for several seconds. Without luck…but it was pointless to think about that. I worked my legs hard, trying to keep all muscles not concerned at ease, trying to keep my mind calm. The girl’s body was cooling fast in my arms, I could feel the chill creep through it, her eyes were open and blank. She wasn’t hurt, but I felt guilty, somehow. I told myself that this was the price you paid for being wealthy and having five landscaped acres to roam about in, but she looked pathetically young and murdered.
Here…I stuck my head out of water, keeping Marie below, and looked around. An uproar lifted a hundred yards back, the Dulac boats circling with engines ahowl, goons threshing the lake and cursing, people spilling out of the housegates. The boys in our copter had been watching through binoculars and saw me emerge. They swooped low, churning the water with the airwash, and snaked down a rope. I raised Marie’s head into the air, transferred one hand to the cord, and hung on.
A winch pulled me up as the copter mounted skyward. I swung like a bellclapper, seeing brief crazy images below me, gaping faces, a guard shaking his fist but not daring to shoot. I heard a siren begin its clamor, then I was drawn up with my cargo and the hatch clanged shut behind me.
That was a special vehicle. It shed its rotors and a false rear end the moment I was aboard. I hoped they wouldn’t do any damage as they fell; it would be a proud record for me if I could pull an important job without having to pay any claims. Our concealed jetpipe was now free and acceleration tugged at me as we got going.
Two other men were aboard, a pilot and a doctor. The medic bent over Marie and started artificial respiration in case she’d swallowed the lake after all. I shed my aqua stuff, jumped into the gun turret, and peered back. Two copters were lumbering up from the Dulac estate, but now that we were a jet we could show them our heels. What we had to do was shake any radar there might be, then streak for the hideout where Marie was to be kept.
“Nice job.” The doctor poked his head into my turret as Minnetonka vanished. “Very neat. I’ve given her a reviver shot and put some clothes on her. She’ll be fine.”
I shivered. “I could use some clothes and a shot too,” I said, “though maybe not the same kind of shot.”
He took the gun while I obtained the necessary. Marie was strapped into the bunk.
She was wearing a coverall which gave her an even younger look, like somebody’s kid sister. A touch of color had returned to her cheeks and I could see her breathe.
“We’re going to stop outside Duluth and transfer to another plane,” said the doctor after I resumed my post. “Three gets you five old Dulac has a description and a reward offer broadcast inside half an hour.”
“Better not make such odds if you don’t have a crooked-gambling license,” I grinned.
We were flying illegally low to avoid radar, though of course we had a temporary permit to break traffic rules. Now and then a tree or a building whisked past us. I relaxed, feeling the alcohol glow within me, and fumbled out a smoke.
When I looked through the bubble again, I nearly swallowed the cigarette. A regular jet was after us, a Delta-wing job with the Dulac colors. “Judas priest!” I yelped. “What happened?”
Our pilot cursed and opened up his engine. That buggy could fly rings around us. But where did it come from? There wasn’t a runway long enough for it in-
It neared, I could hear it whistle down the sky, and I made out a hook attachment. The old man had been more careful than we realized; he’d posted a mother ship in the stratosphere above his place, piggybacking this one.
Our communicator beeped and the pilot switched it on. I couldn’t see the screen from where I was, but the voice came clearly: “You there in that fakester! Land or I open fire!”
“Oh…it’s you, Bob,” said my pilot. “How’s every little thing?”
“Pretty good, Jack.” I gathered our opponent was an off-duty friend of his from the other union, in Dulac’s pay. “Damn nice try you made there, but not quite nice enough. Land and turn over the girl, and we’ll call it quits. I’d hate to make Martha a widow.”
“Oh, I’m not married to her right now,” said my pilot. He was being pleasant, stalling for time as we whined northward at five hundred per. I knew he must be operating the call button for all he was worth so that HQ would be aware of our plight. But it would take some time for our interceptors to scramble at Twincity and get here.
Seven Conquests Page 17
