Gladiator-At-Law

by Frederik Pohl

  Mundin said dubiously, “You’ve been right so far, I suppose.” He stood up and took a turn around the dingy room, tripping over Don Lavin’s feet. “Sorry,” he said shortly to the sprawling youth, trying not to look at the staring, shining eyes. Don Lavin gave him the willies. And there was the 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, I suppose?”

  Ryan shook his head. “They won’t slip up, Mundin. You’ll have to pry her loose from them tomorrow. Wish I could go-with you ——”

  “Oh, by all means do,” Mundin said. “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, boy. Just keep your head, and remember the essential nature of a great private utility corporation.”

  “A legal entity,” guessed Mundin. “A fictive person.”

  “No, boy.” 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,” he said. “The thing for you to do now is to vanish. Get lost. Don’t be seen anywhere until you turn up at the meeting. I wouldn’t go to my office or my apartment if I were you.” He glanced at Don Lavin, and Mundin cringed.

  “What then,” Mundin demanded. “You want me to stay here?”

  “Anywhere. Anywhere out of sight.”

  Mundin looked at his watch. If he could sleep——if he

  could go to bed now, and wake up just in time to start for the meeting. But it was far too early for that;^and besides, he would scarcely be able to sleep. He had nearly twenty-four hours to kill. Twenty-four hours in which to think and get nervous and lose the sharp edge of his determination.

  “I’m going out,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll see you before the meeting or not.”

  Mundin said good-by to Don Lavin, who never noticed him, and wandered through the growing dusk of Belly Rave. It was relatively safe until dark; 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; it was a good place to get a cab to go into Monmouth City.

  But there was no hurry. Mundin studied the gaudy posters and the shuffling, gossiping men and women. It was the first time he had got 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, in his time. 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 logbook records on hours in combat, percentage kills, survival quotients and so on. Naturally, his enthusiasm had quieted down when the Scholarship people approved his application and he started law school, and he had never quite picked it up again. It didn’t seem to go too well with membership at the bar—nothing against the games, of course; but an attorney was expected to go in for more cerebral forms of amusement.

  Like dodging creditors, he told himself bitterly.

  Somebody called from the shuffling mob, “Mr. Mundin! Hey, Mr. Mundin!”

  He started, half ready to run.

  But it was only whatsisname—Norvell Bligh, that was it The client Dworcas had sent. But so shabby!

  Then Mundin remembered: Bligh had quit on his contract

  A contract with General Recreations, ironically enough—and then to find him here!

  The little man panted up to Mundin and wrung his hands. There was moisture in his eyes. “Mr. Mundiny 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. Almost inaudibly he said, “Oh. 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 wound him by walking away cold. He said, “Is there any place we can have a drink around here?”

  “Is there!” Mundin thought he was going to cry. “My God, Mr. Mundin, the things I’ve seen in the week I’ve been here——”

  He looked around to get his bearings and led off, Mundin following. It was only half a block to the nearest blind pig. Bligh knocked on an unlit door. “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 careless 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 said, “Fifty cents.”

  “Competition,” Bligh explained when she had gone. “If it was just me she would’ve sold it for twenty-five, but of course she could tell you were just slumming.”

  “Not exactly,” Mundin said. “Health!”

  They drank. At first Mundin thought that somebody had smashed him on the back of the head with a padded mallet. Then he realized it was the gin.

  Hoarsely, he asked Bligh, “How have you been getting along?”

  Bligh shook his head, tears hanging in his eyes. “Don’t ask

  me,” he said bitterly. “It’s been hell, one day of hell after another, and no end to it. How have I been deiegTJt couldn’t be worse, Mr. Mundin. I wish to heaven I——” he stopped himself, on the verge of breakdown. He sat up straighten “Sorry,” he said. “Been drinking all afternoon. Not used to it.”

  “That’s all right,” said Mundin.

  BHgh said, “Sure.” He eyed Mundin with a curiously familiar expression; Mundin, trying to place it, heard the words come tumbling out as Bligh abruptly clutched his sleeve and said, “Look, Mr. Mundin, you can help me. Please! You must have something. A big lawyer like you—working for the County Committee and everything—you’ve got to have something! I don’t expect a contract and a G.M.L. I had them; 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, holding back the recollection of himself and silly Willie Choate, said sharply, “No! I can’t, Bligh. I don’t have a job to give.”

  “Nothing?” Norvell cried. “Nothing I can do for you here, Mr. Mundin? Ask me. 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—ah—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 ghi?”

  “A client, Bligh.”

  Bligh shrugged. “Sure, Mr. Mundin.” Eagerly. “I can do it, I bet. I’ve got friends—contacts—you just leave it to me. You want to come along? I can get to work on it right now. I’ve learned a lot in a week; I can show you the ropes.”

  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.”

  Mundin thought at first that the little man had taken leav
e of his senses.

  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-wab-bit twacks!”

  Mundin, stupefied, began: “What——?”

  Bligh put his finger to his lips. “Wait.”

  They waited. Two minutes; five. Then 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 particular young lady. She has disappeared.”

  Mundin added, “Norma Lavin is her name. Disappeared a week ago. Lived at 37598 Willowdale Crescent. Drove an old Caddy.”

  “Um. Gee-Gee territory, that is,” the shrill young voice informed them. “We got a Grenadier POW, 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, mumbling. The child snarled, “Lay off. Wabbits!” The man slunk back; there had been a flash of jagged bottle glass from the fist of the Wabbit.

  They moved on. Then, a mounting chorus down a street rhythmic and menacing: “Gah-damn! Gah-damn! Gah-damn… “

  “In here!” the Wabbitt said shrilly, darting 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 meagerly 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; one gangling boy in front bore a tall pole decorated with—with——

  Mundin covered his eyes with a cry.

  He was ignored. The Wabbit, frowning, muttered, “That’s no patrol. War party, heading west?*~——’

  Mundin said tightly, “My God, kid, he was carrying——”

  The kid moved fast. The jagged bottle-edge was at Mundin’s throat, which closed tight as a submarine hatch. “No noise, friend,” the Wabbit murmured. “There’ll be a rear guard.”

  There was.

  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 perhaps thirteen.

  “Who’re these?” a girl asked their Wabbit.

  “Hello, Lana,” Norvie Bligh said tentatively. She shriveled him with a glance and turned again to their guide.

  “Customers,” he said shrilly. “Missing persons. 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 cribhouse raid. Who’s the missing person?”

  Mundin told her.

  As the Wabbit guide had said before her, she said, “Urn. Goering Grenadier territory. Well, we have one 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 him downstairs and said, “He talked.”

  “Where?”

  “Fifty bucks more.”

  Mundin swore and searched his pockets. He had thirty-seven dollars and eighty-five cents. Lana shrugged and accepted twenty-five with good grace. She said:

  “Seems there’s a Mr. Martinson. He has jobs for the Gee-Gees now and then. He told the 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; 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 if——”

  Mundin went back into the living room and leaned against a wall, brooding. So Norma was being kept on tap for the stockholders’ meeting. Why? More conditioning? A forced transfer of her stock? No—not her stock, she didn’t have any. Don Lavin’s stock. She was the legatee; her brother had the stock——

  So they would knock off her brother, and they would have the owner.

  As simple as that.

  Mundin said to Lana, “Listen. You saw that I have no more dough, not right now. But I need help. This thing is big— bigger than you might think. 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? I swear you’ll be taken care of if this thing breaks right.”

  Lana measured him with her eyes. Then she said: “Can do. We won’t haggle right now.”

  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 arrangeraenfwith the Itty-JJitties 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. 111 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.”

  Lana nodded. “That’ll do. In the morning—what now?”

  One of the Wabbits slipped in the door and reported to her. “Gee-Gee scouts,” he said. “We got one of them but there’s a couple more around. Might be a raid.”

  “Well 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. Mundin followed Bligh’s confident stride with some qualms.

  Lana melted back out of the darkness and said, “Hold it! There’s one of the Gee-Gees under that fence. 111 get her——”

  Her bottle glimmered. Bligh choked and tackled her from behind as she was about to slice into a pudgy ten-year-old face. Lana floundered on the ground swearing while Bligh addressed his stepdaughter, “Sandy, get the hell out of here. These are friends of mine. Ill 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, h
eaved her over his shoulder and panted, “Let’s go, Mundin. You tag along, Lana.”

  In 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.

  Bligh addressed her quietly and seriously, rubbing his knuckles the while. After that 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 for little Mr. Bligh. And the things were not necessarily bad.

  “And,” Norvell concluded, “if I see any more monkey-business between that hairy ape Shep and you, there is going to be trouble. I’m warning you!”

  “Hah!” sneered Virgina Bligh. “I suppose you’ll beat him up.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Bligh said. “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,” she said. “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?” ť

  Chapter Fifteen

  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 Out 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 reluctantly.