Death Quest

by L. Ron Hubbard

  “I pay the bills you owe, $5,000 and expenses, and that’s as high as I go, Torpedo.”

  He shook his head. It was all the money I had—more, actually, if the expenses came to much.

  It was an impasse.

  “I’d get in trouble with the union if I cut rates on a hit,” he said.

  “You’re getting $4,900 plus $5,000 plus expenses,” I said. “Since when did hits go higher than $10,000?”

  “There’s insurance. A hit man is high-risk insurance. It costs a thousand a day. My god (bleeped) mother wouldn’t let me leave this house again unless I was insured. She keeps yelling down the stairs to go out and get a job but I know her. She’s treacherous. You’ll have to up the ante.”

  I shook my head. Impasse. We sat there. I don’t like uncomfortable silences. I said, “Why don’t they like to hire you, Torpedo?”

  He shrugged, “Oh, it’s nothing really. Silly prejudice. Mr. Bury was the only one who didn’t mind. And since he won’t employ me anymore, I been out of work. Word gets around, you know.”

  “About what?” I said.

  “Well, they think it’s a twist. But it ain’t. It’s perfectly normal and I been told so on good authority. In fact, it was good authority that started it.”

  “Started what?”

  “Oh, I might as well tell you if you haven’t been told already. It’s the sex thing.”

  Oho! Maybe I could use this. “You better level,” I said.

  “Well, no reason not to. It began about six years ago when I was doing a stretch in the Federal pen. I underwent behavior modification therapy. Great stuff. The prison psychologist in charge of organizing the gang rapes was a great guy. I was in for consultation with him one day and he said he’d noticed I never joined the rape line in the showers and he was worried about me.

  “He said how could he modify behavior to greater criminality if I wouldn’t participate in group therapy? He said the prisoners ran the prisons but the psychologists ran the prisoners and if I wouldn’t cooperate, he’d have to turn me over to the prisoner committee as unreformable. He was a nice guy, very understanding, and he said he didn’t want to do that. So I cooperated.

  “He worked and worked with me—the usual prison psychology treatments: having me (bleep) him and him (bleeping) me in the (bleep). And that’s when he discovered what was really wrong with me.

  “I had never been able to get an erection and even couldn’t with him. He felt sorry for me. He really did. Here he had all these other prison cases to modify and he even took time off from (bleeping) them to talk to me. Real nice guy.

  “I confessed to him I’d never been able to do it at all to a girl or a guy or anything. He asked me if I ever wanted to (bleep) my mother and was pretty shocked when I said that, what with her beatings and all, it just had never occurred to me. I had to tell him right out that when you’ve got somebody beating you and screaming about philandering, it’s almost impossible to get your mind onto (bleeping) the person.

  “Well, he thought and thought and finally he came up with a solution. Had I ever (bleeped) a dead woman? Well, I flat-out had to confess I’d never done that. So he told me I better get a dead one and make sure she was still warm. He said it was just basic psychology, a perfectly normal thing. And he told me how to do it in detail. There was a hitch, though. It was a male pen and there were no dead women around. But he stamped my parole card to show my behavior had been modified anyway and he recommended they let me out on the public. So I got out of prison. Really a fine fellow.

  “So, anyway, I never thought much about it until six months later. The mob didn’t have any hits at the moment and Personnel sent me down to New Mexico as a gunner on a dope run. One night in the desert the truck convoy was hit by hijackers and in the shootout all the rest of the guys run off. A lot of lead had been flying around and I heard this moaning and I crawled over, and (bleeped) if there wasn’t a Mexican woman lying there with slugs in her.

  “She gave a couple of kicks and died. And, suddenly, it occurred to me that I ought to test this basic psychology out. So I pulled up the skirts on this stiff and, Jesus Christ, I’ll be (bleeped) if I didn’t get an erection. So I got it into the corpse and carried on full blast. I (bleeped) like crazy. It was something about her dead eyes staring at me. And she couldn’t say a single word about how no good I was, her lips all pulled back like that from the death agony.

  “Man, I really poured it in. Six god (bleeped) times! But then she had cooled off and begun to stiffen and it wasn’t any good anymore. The corpse has got to be warm yet to really do it right. But while it lasts, you can call them anything you want and they don’t say a word. They just lie and let you pour it in. The best part is the dead eyes.”

  I was totally engrossed. That master psychologist in the prison had created a real, honest-to-Gods necrophile! “Did you ever write the psychologist to tell him of the success?” I said.

  “Well, no. You see, there’s a part of it I don’t understand. When the others come back from wiping out the hijackers, they seen me standing over the dead woman with my (bleep) hanging out and they added up what I’d been doing and the (bleepards) first wanted to shoot me and then not a single one of them would ever talk to me again. Word got around and not even the Faustino mob would hire me. Only Mr. Bury laughed about it and would use me on jobs. But now he’s off of me, too.”

  “Let’s talk about this job,” I said.

  “No more to say. I got to have my bills paid, $10,000 and expenses. I’d be in real trouble if I took less.”

  I got ready to deliver my shot. “This contract,” I said, “is on a woman!”

  An electric shock seemed to go through him. He stared at me, jaws going slack.

  “A young and beautiful woman,” I said.

  His breath was suddenly rapid and his mouth began to quiver. Then he said, “And as soon as I kill her I can (bleep) the corpse?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  His eyes were blazing with excitement. When he could master his emotion, he said, “Mister, you got a deal. You pay my bills, you pay me $5,000 and expenses and I get to do what I want with the corpse.”

  “You can (bleep) her to your heart’s content,” I said.

  Oh, but he was eager and excited.

  As I left the house, his mother said to me, “Can’t you arrange to get that (bleeping) (bleepard) killed on this job?”

  “Not on your life,” I said. “He’s priceless.” And I took from her the hospital bills so I could pay them.

  I strode down the street, treading on air. Torpedo was a competent hit man for the purpose. And with the promised bonus he would be as eager as a snake after a rabbit.

  The thought of not only killing but degrading the corpse of the Countess Krak pleased me immensely.

  It was just exactly what she deserved. And I knew it was the only way anyone but Heller could touch that pure and noble body. Touch her that way alive and you’d be dead!

  There were some things to do and to arrange. I’d have to get her pattern of moving around so I could set it up when she was alone. I had to get a rifle, preferably with explosive bullets.

  I had my hit man. And what a hit man! A necrophile!

  COUNTESS KRAK, YOU’LL BE NOT ONLY DEAD BUT THOROUGHLY DEFILED.

  PART FORTY-FOUR

  Chapter 3

  After all my unlucky vicissitudes, things were suddenly beginning to run my way.

  I no more than got home and got the viewers on than I beheld good fortune staring at me with its evil grin. A map of Florida!

  It was spread out on the floor of Heller’s office and Izzy and Heller were going over it with Krak looking on.

  “Now, are you sure you secured the property?” said Heller.

  “Miles and miles of Everglades,” said Izzy. “Nothing but the purest swamp. Over your head in muck the way Florida real estate usually is. Knee-deep in alligators. Nothing living there but Florida crackers, and they’re not wide awake enough to count.” H
e showed Heller on the map. It was a large area toward the south of the state, way inland from the sea. The map said swamp, swamp, nothing but swamp.

  Izzy was hauling out some deeds. “It’s a former retirement estate but the alligators ate the old folks they sold it to. Then the CIA bought it as part of a training program for a secret army to invade Jamaica but they got defeated by some small boys with slingshots on the beach, so they sold it, according to the records search, to the Saint Petersburg Grimes, who used it for a place to hide out their reporters when people wanted to shoot them. But the people were so successful that the area was not much used. Then the Grimes went bankrupt and I bought it mud-cheap with fifteen leftover reporters thrown in, including a woman reporter named Betty Horseheinie.”

  “A woman?” said the Countess Krak.

  “Yes,” said Izzy. “And she was a problem, too. The alligators tried to eat her and got so sick the conservationists raised hell. We sent her to an insane asylum near Miami but she drove the patients so crazy we got a permit from the government and disposed of her as contaminated waste. She’s miles deep in the continental trench now, but they do say all the fish are dying there. However, she’s not around.”

  “Good,” said the Countess Krak.

  “We had a little trouble with the state government,” continued Izzy. “The name of the corporation we are using is ‘Beautiful Clear Blue Skies For Everyone, Inc.’ and they thought it might be a religion. For some reason they want only criminals in the state, and anybody trying to do good drives them up the palm trees in horror. But we pointed out that ‘blue sky’ is also a criminal term for worthless stock and that fooled them. They welcomed us with open arms. But the thing I’m worried about is the Indians.”

  “Indians?” said the Countess.

  “Wild savages,” said Izzy. “Every time I go to the movies I can hardly sit through it when they show Indians. They torture and burn and make the most awful sounds. Look right there: a Seminole Indian Reservation! I looked it up and they only signed a treaty of peace a few decades ago and I don’t think it will hold. They eat dogs, you know. And they might eat trappers and frontiersmen, too, from the way they look. That’s why you won’t find me going outside New York City: at least we bought this island fair and square for a bucket of beads. So you take some beads with you, Mr. Jet, in case those Seminoles dispute your title.”

  “Bang-Bang,” said Heller, “add a bucket of beads to my luggage, will you?”

  I hadn’t seen Bang-Bang before because nobody had looked at him. He was sitting at the bar pouring Scotch into a saucer for the cat. “Got it, Jet. I’ll add a few bombs as well.”

  “So much for the land. Have you called all the contractors?” said Heller.

  “They’ll meet you at Ochokeechokee. It’s the remains of a town and there may even be a hotel there. They’re all hot onto it. They got their logistics worked out and all their estimates are firmed. But, Mr. Jet, don’t you think a billion dollars is an awful lot to spend on just clean air? And why for a bunch of Florida crackers?”

  “It’s necessary, Izzy. The pollution in the atmosphere will heat this planet up in time. I’m putting in the spores production plant in the Florida area because it’s hot and will save fuel. The spores will rise into the trade winds, hit the stratosphere and circulate to both hemispheres. The spores will convert noxious gases into oxygen and it will take an awful lot of them. I’m sorry if you think it is unprofitable.”

  “Oh, no, Mr. Jet,” said Izzy. “I certainly would never dream of criticizing you. You wound me to think so. Besides, I maybe forgot to tell you, but when you said you were using mud electrical-breakdown for fuel, I enlarged the power plant a little bit and contracted the excess to the City of Miami Power Company for a quarter of a billion dollars a year: they use an awful lot of air conditioning there. Here’s the contracts. I forgot to mention it.”

  “Well, I’m glad we’re going to show a profit,” said Heller.

  “No, no, that’s not where the profit comes from,” said Izzy. “That just retires the project off the books in four years. The profit comes from this other corporation. I’m sorry if I forgot to mention it. I reactivated the original retirement estates corporation and we’ll have a campaign to ‘retire on your own alligator farm.’ They were selling like hot cakes even before we got the place subdivided.”

  Bang-Bang spoke up. “The deal is, they feed the tourists to the alligators and sell the alligator hides made up as purses, belts and shoes to the tourists. Perfect perpetual motion machine.”

  Izzy said, reprovingly, “That’s not true.”

  “That’s what you told me,” said Bang-Bang self-righteously.

  “Don’t listen to him, Mr. Jet,” said Izzy. “I was just trying to sell him one of the farms, and what does truth have to do with salesmanship? Actually we make our profit out of constructing posh retirement houses out of the mud we dig from the scenic canals we’re going to make to raise the alligators in. So don’t you worry about the cost, Mr. Jet. You worry about those Indians.”

  “All right,” said Heller, getting up off the floor. “Now you, Missy,” he said to the Countess Krak, “have you got your clothes together? Sun helmets and bikinis and things?”

  “What?” said Izzy. “You’re not taking Miss Joy! Mr. Jet, there’s alligators, Indians, mud—oy! A beautiful creature like Miss Joy in a horrible place like that? Forgive me, Mr. Jet, but I think you haven’t thought this through. Florida just plain isn’t civilized enough.”

  “I’m not going,” said the Countess Krak.

  “What?” said Heller, aghast.

  “Much as I don’t want to be apart from you,” said Krak, “we’re in a hurry to finish everything up and I have other things to do.”

  “Such as?” said Heller.

  Her smile was enigmatic. “I want to pick an item up that I haven’t found. It’s going to take a lot of search.”

  “Oh, shopping,” said Heller. “Well, I’ll admit that I certainly didn’t look kindly at the idea of you in all that mud and up to your knees in alligators. I won’t be gone too long. Just to get everything staked out and the contractors started. I’ll miss you. But I can see your point. It’s all right.”

  He was frowning a bit. Suddenly Heller turned to Bang-Bang. “Listen, Bang-Bang, and listen good. You keep an eye on her. You make sure she’s safe at all times!”

  “You needn’t say the rest of it,” said Bang-Bang. “If I don’t you’ll take me to ten thousand feet and drop me with no parachute.”

  “Precisely,” said Heller.

  “You didn’t have to threaten,” said Bang-Bang. “Jesus—beggin’ your pardon, ma’am—I’d booby-trap my own head to blow it off if anything happened to Miss Joy. Only, you tell her that. She’s sort of got a way to arguing around my very best reasons.”

  “You mind what Bang-Bang says,” said Heller to the Countess Krak.

  She smiled her enigmatic smile. “Of course, dear,” she replied.

  PART FORTY-FOUR

  Chapter 4

  I was flabbergasted at my tremendous luck! Of course, I’d known for some time that Heller was doing something with spores to clean up the planet’s air, but I hadn’t realized he was going away so soon. I just sat there gaping. The Gods had decided to smile on me at last! Bang-Bang I could discount. Without Heller to guide him, he was nothing. I could hardly believe it. I was actually going to be able to get the Countess Krak killed without any trouble at all! Not only killed but her dead body raped!

  I was so engrossed, Miss Pinch had to call me twice to tell me the first lesbian couple was ready.

  With great aplomb and confidence, I went into the living room. I gave them the treat of watching me take off my clothes.

  The husband was named Ralph: short-haired and thin of face. She was lying under a sheet, eyes on me, bright and alive.

  With the air of a professional connoisseur, Miss Pinch watched me get into bed.

  The other lesbian flinched as her husband let
out a scream.

  Candy grinned, eagerly nodding in rhythm.

  Ralph’s mouth opened in a convulsive yell. Then she stiffened and her eyes, wide open, rolled back into her head. She lay there very still. I was staring into blank eyes!

  A wave of horror hit me.

  I thought that she was dead!

  I offloaded quick and went into the back room.

  Feeling very strange, I stood there staring into the back garden.

  Was something wrong with me? I felt sort of ill. I couldn’t understand it.

  Fifteen minutes or more I stood there. Finally, Miss Pinch came in. She said, “The other girl is waiting, Inkswitch. What the hell is going on?”