"Hmm," said the Countess Krak. She tagged along but I could tell her mind was not on it.
I needed no additional evidence to harden my firm resolve to act. But what had just passed between them, in fact, left me no alternative.
It was as plain as day to me that the Countess Krak was now intent on killing Bury and blowing up Pokan-tickle Estate at Hairytown, to say nothing of the Octopus Oil Building at Rockecenter Plaza. She was DANGEROUS!
As she drifted through the exhibits in front of Heller, 1 chose several spots in her unprotected back where a lethal bullet could finish this.
I glanced at my watch.
I was almost late in seeing Razza.
I HAD TO GET THAT SNIPER ON THE JOB QUICK!
Chapter 2
Razza Louseini, consigliere of the capo di tutti capi, Faustino "The Noose" Narcotici, sat imperially at his desk awaiting me.
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"Now," he said with great satisfaction, "we can get those God (bleeped) computers straightened out."
Into the waiting hand of the accountant who was standing by his desk, I counted out two thousand hard-earned dollars. I was given a receipt and the man rushed off to untangle the accounts department computer brains before they sold Manhattan back to the Indians.
"And now," said Razza, the scar that connected his mouth with his left ear taking on a peculiar corkscrew look, "here is your hit man." He was extending a white card that had a black hand in the upper corner.
"Wait," I said. "Don't I just go down to Personnel and have them call the man and send him to me?"
"Look at the card," said Razza.
I did. The middle finger of the silhouette was extended higher than the rest—the Italian symbolism for "up your (bleep)" or "you been (bleeped)."
Never trust the Mafia! "You haven't kept your bargain!" I yelped.
"Oh, yes, I have," said Razza. "But the way you got the last two snipers wasted, nobody here has any confidence in you. Bad planning or you just shot them yourself for kicks. Turn the card over and you'll see an address. Take the card there, present it and you'll have your hit man. You can make your own arrangements, buy his insurance and, probably, bury him or not as you please."
"Wait," I said. "Something tells me there's something wrong with this guy."
"Well, frankly," said Razza, "there is. He's such a dirty, rotten (bleepard), nobody will hire him anymore unless they are so God (bleeped) mad at the victim they want something awful done. Lawyers won't hire him anymore. He's got a twist. Filthy."
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"What's this hit man do?" I said, startled. If somebody was too bad for the Mafia it must be pretty awful.
"Find out for yourself," said Razza.
"But I have to have somebody who can shoot straight and will kill."
"Oh, he'll do that, all right. It's how he does it that turns your stomach. But there's your hit man, Inkswitch. Exactly as agreed. And if you get this one wasted, you'll be a (bleeping) hero. So good-bye, Inkswitch, good-bye."
The address was way out in Queens and I rode endlessly on subways getting there. The neighborhood had not ever seen better times: it had been built originally in total decay. The house was on a side street and apparently part of it was rented out. I picked my way over a broken walk, I walked up some broken stairs, I rang a broken bell.
My presence had been detected. With a yank which almost blew my hat off, the broken door burst open.
An enormous woman was standing there. She had a mustache like a cavalry sergeant. She glared. I gave her the card defensively. She looked at it and then swept me into the hall with it and closed the door.
"So you want to see my no-good, worthless son, do you? You'll find him in the basement with the rest of the rats."
I don't like rats. I said, "Can't you ask him to come up so I can talk to him?"
"Blood of Christ, no! He's hiding out!"
"From the police?"
"The rotten filth isn't even that respectable. Bill collectors! Every day, bill collectors! I can't look out a window I don't see bill collectors! But will he go out and get a decent job? No. Will he support his poor old mother that suffered to bring him into the world? No. All he do
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is hide in that basement! So what the Mafia want with him now? I thought they through with him and good reason."
I was a bit staggered by this huge monster. I said, timidly, "I may have a job for him. Then he can pay his bills."
"Hah! You give him money, he no pay his bills. He go out and philander. Just like his no-good, rotten father that's joined the angels, God rest his rotten, stinking soul! Philander, philander, philander, that's all he good for, the filth. I beat him and beat him. I bring him up right. But he got rotten, putrid blood in him. The blood of his rotten, putrid, no-good father! So you give him a job. He sneak out and blow the money. But he can't get out. The bill collectors!"
"What are these bills?"
"The God (bleeped) hospital. Five hundred dollars a day they throw away saving his worthless life. Oh, I sneak him out when I hear but not in time. He owe $4,900 already! And just a lousy auto accident! He got enough sense to get shot like his no-good father? No! He's got to get himself in an auto accident and he hasn't even got the sense to get himself killed."
I had an inspiration. "I could give you the money and you could pay the bills and then he could work for me."
"I don't take no blood money! You think I want blood money on my soul when I go to my final reward? Any bills paid, you pay."
"Well, let me talk to him, at least," I said.
"On your responsibility, not mine. I'll be no party to the rotten things he does. You want to talk to him, go down through that door. And if you want to shoot him, I close my ears."
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I went down some dusty, grimy stairs into a dusty, grimy basement. Back of a dusty, grimy furnace, on a dusty, grimy bed, lay a man with penitentiary stamped all over him.
He was cowering back, holding a double-barrelled leopard trained on my chest!
TORPEDO FIACCOLA! The sniper Bury had used to try to hit Heller at the Brewster Hotel, the very hood that Heller had sent crashing off the Elevated Highway last fall. Oh, this was good! He'd have a grudge to settle!
"Hello, Torpedo," I said.
His gray face went grayer. "How come you know me? I don't know you."
"I saw you working for Mr. Bury," I said.
"Jesus!" he said. "Don't tell Bury where to find me. He thinks I falsified the evidence and collected the hit money without making that contract! I didn't! The (bleepard) trapped me and must have collected it himself. And believe me, if I knew where to find him, I'd hit him for nothing! The (bleeper) didn't even carry out the threat to waste my mother!"
Better and better. "Put down the gun, Torpedo. Razza sent me here to offer you a job."
"Then it must be a pretty risky hit or Razza wouldn't have thought of me. That (bleepard) wants me killed."
"It's an easy job," I said soothingly. I sat down on a box. Torpedo, gradually reassured, laid the leopard aside and sat on the edge of the dusty, grimy bed. "I'm listening," he said.
"I'll pay the bill collectors and give you another $5,000 when the job is done."
"Another $10,000 plus expenses," he said. "I ain't even got a rifle anymore."
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"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
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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 un-reformable. 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
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I
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
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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.
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." He 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 conservation-ists 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
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I
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?"
Mission Earth 6: Death Quest Page 5