Norvell contemplated the ration-jack bottle with distaste. He got to his feet, weaving slightly. “I—I think I want some air. Excuse me.”
“Certainly,” said Virginia, not even looking at him. As Norvell went out the door, he heard her ask Shep, “This blonde you shot—was she pretty?”
XII
MUNDIN was not followed from the Stock Exchange. He got to Belly Rave by late afternoon, his share of G-M-L Common securely tucked in a pocket.
“Ah!” exclaimed Ryan, coherently jubilant. “One share voting. The meeting is tomorrow—and accessory before the fact to simple assault. A good day’s work, Counselor.”
“I hope this share is going to be enough to get me in,” Mundin said anxiously. “What if it isn’t entered or they challenge it?”
“They can’t. Id certum est quid reddi potest, Counselor.”
“But affirmantis est probatio, you know.”
Ryan grinned amiably. “Score one for your side. If they won’t let you in, we’ll have to think of something else, that’s all.”
“You’ve been right so far, though.” Mundin stood up and took a turn around the dingy room, tripping over Don Lavin’s feet. “Sorry,” he said to the sprawling youth, trying not to look at the staring, shining eyes. There was an excellent chance, he realized, that what had happened to Don Lavin might, sooner or later, happen to himself if he persisted in sticking his nose into the corporate meatgrinders.
Mundin asked, “Nothing new about Norma?”
Ryan shook his head. “You’ll have to pry her loose from them tomorrow. Wish I could go with you . . .”
“Oh, by all means, come along,” Mundin said sarcastically. “Love to have you. You’ll like Morristown—it’s so much like Belly Rave.”
“I’d never stand the trip. You’ll have to play it yourself, Counselor. I have confidence in you. Just keep your head and remember the essential nature of a great private utility corporation.”
“A legal entity. A fictive person.”
The old eyes were gleaming in the ruined face. “Forget that. Think of an oriental court, a battlefield, a government, a poker game that never ends. The essence of a corporation is the subtle flux of power, now thrusting this man up, now smiting this group low. You can’t resist power, boy, but you can guide it.” He reached shakily for the battered tin of pills. “Oh, you’ll manage. The thing for you to do now is to vanish. Get lost. Don’t be seen until you turn up at the meeting. And don’t go to your office or apartment.” He glanced meaningfully at Don Lavin and Mundin cringed.
“What then?” Mundin demanded. “You want me to stay here?”
“Anywhere out of sight.”
Mundin looked at his watch. If he could only go to bed now and wake up just in time to start for the meeting! But he had nearly twenty-four hours to kill. Twenty-four hours in which to think and get nervous and lose the sharp edge of determination.
“I’m going out,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll see you before the meeting or not.”
HE said good-by to Don Lavin, who didn’t notice him, and wandered through the growing dusk of Belly Rave. He changed direction a couple of times when he caught sight of what looked like purposeful groups of men or children ahead, but there was actually small chance of attack before the Sun went down.
He found himself nearing the General Recreations recruiting station and felt somewhat more secure in the shelter of the inviting, pink-spun-candy-looking structure. General Recreations policed its area with its own guards.
Mundin studied the gaudy posters and the shuffling, gossiping men and women. It was the first time he had come really close to the raw material that Stadium shows were made of and he felt a little like an intruder. He had seen the shows themselves, of course—plenty of them. He had gone religiously to the Kiddies’ Days back in Texas. As an adolescent, he had been a rootin’, tootin’ red-hot fan, as able as any to spout the log-book records on hours in combat, percentage of kills, survival quotients.
Naturally, his enthusiasm had quieted down when the Scholarship people approved his application and he entered law school and he had never picked it up again. Nothing against the games, of course, but an attorney was expected to go in for more cerebral forms of amusements.
Like dodging creditors, he told himself bitterly.
Somebody called from the mob, “Hey, Mr. Mundin!”
He started, half ready to run.
But it was only whatsisname—Norvell Bligh—the client Dworcas had sent.
But so shabby!
Then Mundin remembered. Bligh had lost out on his contract—with General Recreations, ironically enough. But still, to find him here!
The little man panted up to Mundin and wrung his hand. “My God, it’s good to see a friendly face! Were you—were you looking for me, maybe?”
“No, Mr. Bligh.”
Bligh’s face fell. “I—uh—thought perhaps you might have a message for me—as my attorney, you know—maybe the Company . . . But they wouldn’t, of course.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” Mundin said gently. He looked around. He couldn’t stand the little man’s misery, nor could he hurt him by walking away. “Is there any place we can have a drink around here?”
“Is there! Mr. Mundin, the things I’ve seen in the week I’ve been here!”
He led off, with Mundin following. It was only half a block to the nearest blind pig. Bligh knocked. “Shep sent me,” he told a bitter-faced woman through a peephole.
INSIDE, the place reeked of alcohol. They sat at plank tables in the wretched living room and, through the sloppy curtains, Mundin saw the gleam of copper tubing and shiny pots. They were the only customers at that hour.
The woman asked tonelessly: “Raisin-jack? Ration-jack? Majun? Reefers? Gin?”
“Gin, please,” Mundin said hastily.
It came in a quart bottle. Mundin gasped when she asked for fifty cents.
“Competition,” Bligh explained when she had gone. “If it was just me, she’d have sold it for twenty-five. But, of course, she could tell you were only slumming.”
“Not exactly,” Mundin said. “Health!”
They drank. Mundin felt as if somebody had smashed him on the back of the head with a padded mallet.
Hoarsely, he asked Bligh, “How have you been getting along?”
Tears were hanging in Bligh’s eyes. “It’s been hell, only one day of hell after another, and no end in sight. I wish to heaven I—” He stopped himself, sat up straighter. “Sorry. Been drinking the whole afternoon. Not used to it.”
“That’s all right.”
“Mr. Mundin, you can help me. Please! A big lawyer like you, candidate for the council and everything—I don’t expect a contract and a G-M-L. I had them and I was a fool—I threw them away. But there must be some kind of a job, any kind, enough so I can get out of Belly Rave before I split right down the middle and—”
Mundin, thinking of his appeal to Willie Choate, said sharply, “I can’t, Bligh. I don’t have a job to give.”
“Nothing I can do for you here, Mr. Mundin? I know the ropes—ask me!”
It was a new thought. Mundin said uncertainly, “Why—why, as a matter of fact, there just might be something, at that. I’ve been trying to locate—a friend here in Belly Rave. A girl named Norma Lavin. If you think you could help me find her . . .” Bligh looked at him expressionlessly. “You want me to find you a girl?”
“A client, Bligh.”
“I can do it, I bet! I’ve got friends—contacts. Just leave it to me. I’ll handle it. You want to come along?”
Mundin hesitated. Why not? His job was to stay out of sight. Until the stockholders’ meeting, at least.
“Certainly,” he told Bligh. “Lead the way.”
BLIGH led him through the growing dusk to a vacant lot, the burned-out site of one of Belle Reve’s finest 40-by-60-foot estates. And then the little man cupped his hands to his mouth and hooted mournfully into the twilight, “Wa-wa-wa-wa-wabbit twacks
!”
Mundin, stupefied, said, “What . . .?”
A small figure oozed from the dusk. It asked suspiciously, “Who wants a Wabbit?”
Bligh proudly introduced Mundin. “This gentleman is looking for a young lady.”
“Cack, buster! Us Wabbits don’t—”
“No, no! A young lady who has disappeared.”
Mundin added, “Norma Lavin is her name. Disappeared a week ago. Lived at 37598 Willowdale Crescent Drove an old Caddy.”
“Um. That’s Gee-Gee territory,” the shrill young voice informed them. “We got a Grenadier PW, though. What’s in it for the Wabbits?”
Bligh whispered to Mundin, “Ten dollars.”
Mundin said promptly, “Ten dollars.”
“For a starter?”
“Sure.”
“Come on.” The Wabbit led them a desperate pace through a mile of Belly Rave. Once, a thick-set brute lunged at them from a doorway. The child snarled, “Lay off. Wabbits!” The man slunk back. There had been a flash of jagged bottle glass in the little fist.
They moved on. Then, a mounting chorus down a street, rhythmic and menacing: “Gah-damn! Gah-damn! Gah-damn!”
“In here!” The Wabbit darted into a darkened house. A startled old man and woman, huddled before the cold fireplace, looked once and then didn’t look at the intruders again, having seen the busted-bottle insigne. The Wabbit said to Mundin, “Patrol. This is Goddam territory.”
They watched through cracks in the warped boards that covered the splintered picture window. The Goddams, still chanting, came swinging past, perhaps fifty of them, expertly twirling improvised maces. Some carried torches.
The Wabbit, frowning, muttered, “That’s no patrol. War party, heading west. No noise. There’ll be a rear guard.”
You could barely see them. They were black-clad. Their faces and hands were darkened.
“All right,” the Wabbit said at last, and they slipped out. The old man and woman, still ignoring them, were munching rations and bickering feebly about who should chop up the chair to start a fire.
THEY dived into a house like any other house, except that it was full of pale, snake-eyed kids from eight to thirteen.
“Who’re these?” a girl asked the Wabbit.
“Hello, Lana,” Norvie Bligh said tentatively. She shriveled him with a glance and turned again to their guide.
“Customers,” he said shrilly. “Missing person. Ten bucks. And something important: War party of Goddams heading west on Livonia Boulevard, the 453-hundred block, at 7:50. Fifty of them with those hatchets of theirs. Advance guard and rear guard.”
“Good,” she said calmly. “Not our pigeon; looks like a crib-house raid. Who’s the missing person?”
Mundin told her.
Like the Wabbit guide before her, she said, “Um. Goeririg Grenadier territory. Well, we have one of them in the attic. Want us to ask him, mister—for fifty bucks?”
Mundin paid.
The Goering Grenadier in the attic was an eight-year-old scooped up in a raid on the headquarters of the Grenadiers itself. At first he would only swear and spit at them. Then Lana took over the interrogation. Charles left abruptly.
The Grenadier was still crying when Lana joined them downstairs and said, “He talked.”
“Where is she?”
“Fifty bucks more.”
Mundin swore and searched his pockets. He had thirty-seven dollars and eighty-five cents. Lana accepted twenty-five on account.
She said, “Seems there’s a Mr. Martinson. He has jobs for the Gee-Gees now and then. He told Grosse Hermann—that’s their boss—that he wanted this Lavin dame picked up and doped. They were supposed to deliver her to some place on Long Island. The kid didn’t go along, so he doesn’t remember just where. Says if he heard it, he’d . . .”
Mundin was tearing upstairs. To the weeping child, he barked, “Room 2003, Administration Building, Morristown, Long Island?”
“That’s it, mister,” said the kid, sniffling. “I told her I’d remember!”
MUNDIN went back into the living room and leaned against a wall, brooding. So Norma was being kept on tap for the stockholder’s meeting. Why? More conditioning? A forced transfer of her stock? No—Don Lavin’s stock; she didn’t have any. She was the legatee—her brother Don had the stock, having her irrevocable proxy.
So they would knock off her brother.
Mundin said to Lana, “Listen. You saw that I have no more dough right now. But I need help. This thing is big. There are—well, thousands involved.” What a fool he would have been to tell the truth and say billions! “It’s big and it’s complicated. First, can you throw a guard around 37598 Willowdale? I think your friends the Grenadiers are overdue to kill a young man named Don Lavin.” He didn’t wait for an answer, but went right on, “Second, can you get me to the Administration Building in Morristown? You’ll be taken care of if this thing breaks right.”
Lana measured him with her eyes. “Can do. We can haggle later.”
She barked orders. A silent group of children collected their broken bottles from the mantel over the wood-burning fireplace and slipped out.
Lana said definitely, “The Gee-Gees won’t get to your friend. As for Morristown—well, if the Gee-Gees can make a delivery there, I guess I can. Frankly, I don’t like it. Morristown’s tough. But we have an arrangement with the Itty-Bitties there. They’re rats; they use guns, but . . .”
She shrugged helplessly. You gotta go along, her shrug said.
Mundin found himself escorted to the door. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I want to hole up somewhere for the night. I’ll meet you here in the morning, but what about right now?”
Bligh volunteered, “How about my place, Mr. Mundin? It isn’t much, but we’ve got bars on the windows.”
Lana nodded. “That’ll do. In the morning—what now?”
One of the Wabbits had slipped in the door. “Gee-Gee scouts,” he reported. “We got one of them, but there’s a couple more around. Might be a raid.”
“We’ll fix them,” Lana said grimly. “Guess they want their boy back. Come on, you two—I’ll have to convoy you out of here.”
She led the way. The street was black and silent. Before they had taken three steps, Lana was invisible. With some qualms, Mundin followed Bligh’s confident stride.
LANA melted back out of the darkness and said, “Hold it! There’s one of the Gee-Gees under that fence.”
Her bottle glimmered. Bligh choked and tackled her from behind as she was about to slice into a pudgy young-girl face. Lana floundered on the ground, swearing, while Bligh snapped at his stepdaughter, “Sandy, get the hell out of here. These are friends of mine. I’ll see you at home!”
Alexandra, wriggling as he clutched her arm, said philosophically, “Sorry, Norvell. That’s the way the little ball bounces.” She threw back her head in a barking, strangling yell: “Sieg—heil! Sieg—”
Norvell held off Lana with one hand and, with the other, measured the distance to Alexandra’s jaw. He knocked her out, heaved her over his shoulder and said, panting, “Let’s go, Mundin. You tag along, Lana.”
After ten minutes, Mundin had to relieve the little man of Alexandra’s weight. By the time Mundin’s knees were buckling, the girl was coming to. He put her down and she trailed sulkily along with them.
Mrs. Bligh tried to raise hell when the four of them came in. “And,” she screamed at Norvie, “where have you been? Out of here without a word—gone for hours—we could have . . .”
Norvell said it was none of her business. He said it in such a way that Alexandra gasped with indignation, Lana with admiration. Mundin blushed at the language, but reflected that Belly Rave was doing things to little Mr. Bligh. And the things were not all bad.
“And,” Norvell concluded, “if I see any more monkey-business between that hairy ape Shep and you, there’s going to be trouble!”
“Hah!” snorted Virginia Bligh. “I suppose you’ll beat him up.”
“He could break me in two. I’d wait until he went away and then I’d beat you up.”
Lana said sweetly, “I’m going now. What about this little stinker?” She jerked a thumb at the sullen Alexandra.
“I’ll take care of her,” Bligh promised. “She didn’t know any better, that’s all.”
Lana gauged him. “Okay. Be back in the morning.” She was gone as Virginia Bligh, regaining her breath, started in for the second round.
Mundin said, “Please! I’ve got a hard day tomorrow—can I get some sleep?”
XIII
THEY spent the morning in Old Monmouth, Mundin and Lana and Norvie Bligh, who tagged along in a sort of vague secretarial capacity.
First, they stopped by Mundin’s bank, where he plugged in his key, punched Close Account and scooped up the bills that rolled out.
He counted morosely. Two hundred thirty-four dollars, plus eighty-five cents in change. Lana looked hungry and Mundin recalled that he still owed her twenty-five dollars balance from the night before. He gave it to her and said, too cheerfully, “Let’s get something to eat.” They ate in Hussein’s. Lana said, “I’ve been here before. That ward-heeler Dworcas is across the street, isn’t he?”
Startled, Mundin said, “That’s right. What were you doing here?”
“Things. Look, here comes a friend of yours.”
It appeared to be one of Mundin’s Ay-rab constituents-to-be. He said, “Effendi, I confess it. I was drunk when the day came and the judge insulted me.” Mundin said patiently, “I ought to tell you, Hamid, that I’m withdrawing from—” He stopped in time. Careful, he warned himself—better let things ride until after the stockholders’ meeting. He amended it to, “I mean what’s the trouble?”
“The inheritance from my father,” the Ay-rab said bitterly. “It is a matter of Clark v. Allen, 91 L ed (Adv 1285), 170 ALR 953, 67 S Ct 1431.” He was reading off a sheet of paper. “What this means, I do not know, but the judge insulted me.”
“I’ll look it up,” said Mundin, taking the slip of paper with the annotation number on it. “What were you doing in court?”
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