"See you tomorrow afternoon," said Heller.
It made me anxious. This was going to be close. I promptly sent Torpedo out, rifle cocked and eyes hot, to visit every Bogg I had located.
Torpedo came back late. He had not connected. He was screaming with frustration.
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"You got to get it," Torpedo whined, "to really understand what I've got to do. All day now I've known I have the clap."
"What?" I said, aghast.
"Yeah, that (bleeped) black corpse in Harlem. I wondered at the time why it was so juicy. Now I know. She had the clap. Now I've got it. But I know how to handle it. The prison psychologist always told all us cons the only thing to do with it was spread it around fast. So, God (bleep) it, where is the target? Where, where, where? I got to find her and do it, now that I got the clap. I need a bloodhound!"
It was an unfortunate remark. I suddenly went into alarm. "A bloodhound?" I said. "Is that anything like a Great Dane?"
"Same color. Just a little smaller, that's all."
Oh, Gods, the full implication of this hit me like a club. That woman, Bucket!
If the medical advice was to seek a bloodhound when one had the clap, then this would also include Great Danes!
Had that Great Dane had the clap?
Had Bucket had it?
Did I now have the clap?
I told myself how irrational it was. But I couldn't shake it and I sat there at the window through the night, watching for the land yacht, trying miserably to accept the fact that I probably was not only going to go crazy because of goats but also would cave in and have my bones rot from dog-carried clap. It was an awful thing to have to face. I knew my career was probably coming to an end. But I would be true to duty to the last and, crazy and rotted away though I might be, still an Apparatus officer.
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At least I could put a crown on my shining record by ridding the universe of a scourge known as the Countess Krak. But somehow it didn't help. Somewhere in my career, had I gone wrong?
Was there somebody else I had failed to maim or kill? I was being punished for something, I was sure. But it was not because I had not tried to do my Apparatus duty always, like now. I was sure of that. It was just that the Gods are treacherous. They had it in for me.
Chapter 7
In the afternoon of the fatal fourth day, after a ceaseless and worried vigil of the highway, with Torpedo twitching and whining on the bed, I walked over to the viewer and there she was!
She was looking at the same blue-misted mountains she had been gazing at, at noon on the first day!
She had not shifted location in all that time!
And there was Bang-Bang's voice, "Miss Joy! Miss Joy! I found him!"
She turned and I listened intently. This was the clue I needed so crucially to reach her and kill her before Heller arrived.
Bang-Bang was scrambling up the rocky path. He was all out of breath. He sank down on a rock near her, trying to get his wind so he could talk.
"Oh, Bang-Bang!" said the Countess. "This is wonderful news. We can get this done before Jettero arrives. He'll be so proud of us! But come on, tell me."
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"Can't get my breath," he wheezed. And then he said, "He wasn't in a rest home or retirement home. No wonder it took five hundred calls. He's in a private hospital owned by a doctor friend. He's sort of hiding out. But we better hurry, 'cause they say he may not have long to live."
He paused to catch his breath and ease a stitch in his side. I gritted my teeth at this delay. It was Krak who didn't have long to live if I could get that address. That was where she'd keep her rendezvous with death.
He fumbled in his pocket for a paper scrap. He read it to her. "He's in Room 13, Altaprice Hospital, Redneck, Virginia. That's only thirty-five miles west of here!"
"Quick," said the Countess. "Race back and tell the crew to pack it up and get the show on the road! We're on our way!"
I grabbed my maps.
I had her!
She was SOUTH of me! Those (bleeped) retired Greyhound bus drivers had cannonballed her down here to her operating area in what must have been eight hours from Hairytown! She must be in the Smith Mountain Lake resort area southeast of Roanoke, Virginia. And she had been phoning, phoning, phoning from there in comfort while I tore all over the Middle Atlantic states! How she must be laughing!
She deserved to be killed and defiled at once!
It would be easy! There was ample time before Heller could arrive. Redneck was only twenty miles south and east of where I was.
I turned to give Torpedo his orders. I would not accompany him on the actual kill. But it was too easy, now.
I opened my mouth to speak.
There was a knock on the door!
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The blanket I was using to hide the viewers had fallen to the floor. I was trying to untangle it.
Torpedo sprang up like a ghoul off the bed and opened the door.
A cop was standing there! He had on a black plastic jacket and white motorcycle helmet. He glared at Torpedo. "That your black Ford out there? It's the same license registered to this room. You left it parked out on the highway verge. It's an offense! Move it before I give you a ticket!"
He turned his back on Torpedo to point to it, stepped toward the balcony rail to do so. It was a fatal action.
Before I could move or call out even if I would have, Torpedo acted!
The hit man snatched a knife out of his belt!
His left arm reached out and grabbed the cop's throat to stifle any cry.
He plunged the knife to its hilt in the cop's back!
He dragged the cop back into the room. He dropped him. He closed the door.
The cop kicked a couple of times and was dead. The knife must have cut his heart in half from behind.
Torpedo turned the body over on its face and, before my horrified gaze, unfastened its belt and began to pull down its pants.
"No, no!" I cried.
Torpedo's hand snaked to the dead cop's holster and I was suddenly confronted with a cocked gun. "You try and stop me!" snarled Torpedo.
I pzed in horror at what he was doing. And then the idiocy of his action hit me.
"You (bleeped) fool!" I screeched at him. "Your target is right south of here. She's in your grasp! Shoot her and do it to her! Get out of here! She'll be arriving
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at Altaprice Hospital, Redneck, Virginia, in just an hour or two! Get going!"
"I got to test this out," he panted.
He finished what he had begun.
I expected to hear calls outside or sirens.
"Oh, would that prison psychologist love this!" chortled Torpedo. "(Bleeping) a screw! Clap and all!"
"Get out of here!" I screamed.
He got up grinning ghoulishly. "That just whetted my appetite. Now I can go for a real kill!"
He grabbed his rifle case and bullets.
He tore out of there.
A moment later, I heard the Ford starting up. Torpedo was on his way.
I looked at the dead cop on the floor. I didn't want to touch the corpse, disease contaminated as it was.
I was paralyzed with the thought of being caught here with that. I opened the door a crack. There was no one in the parking area. The dead cop's motorcycle was sitting there.
Acting swiftly, I hauled the corpse outside. Masked by the railing and its covering vines, I dragged it down a short flight of stairs and dropped it. I pulled up the pants. I left the knife in the back.
Carefully, I made sure there was no trail of blood, eradicating the few spots that I found. I put my room to rights.
The dead cop lying out there with his sightless eyes made me sort of frantic.
I had no transportation. I could not ride that motorcycle. I was not going to abandon my baggage.
&
nbsp; (Bleep)! What a thing to happen in the middle of a hit!
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Inspiration! I went out to the motorcycle and picked up its radio. I called the dispatcher.
"This is Inkswitch. I'm a Fed. Someone seems to have killed your motorcycle cop. You better come and get him. This is the Mucky Motel."
Minutes later squad cars were there. They looked at my credentials. "The suspect is a black man," I said.
"We knew it!" said their chief.
"I found this poor fellow lying here," I said. "I saw the black man racing away on the other side of the field. He has this officer's gun. I knew I should call you to form a posse."
"We'll get the (bleepard)," said the chief.
"I'm on a secret Federal case, myself," I said. "So keep me out of it."
They didn't really hear me. They were already tearing off across the field, obliterating the absence of the footprints.
I joined them to make it look good.
After an hour, they took my description of the black man, carefully photographed the corpse and cleaned the area up.
That handled, I went back to the real business of the day: the hit on the Countess Krak.
PART FORTY-SIX
Chapter 1
Heller's viewer was blank. I knew what must be happening. That (bleeped) Raht was shifting the 831 Relayer from Florida to Virginia, which told me that Heller must be on his way.
The viewer of the Countess Krak was totally flared out with interference.
I sat there restively. My nerves were in pretty poor shape after the cop murder and rape. I wondered why these things were having such an effect on me. By psychology theory, there was neither limit nor personal penalty to crime unless it happened to oneself. Nothing had happened to me yet. Why was I reacting? Psychology and psychiatry surely couldn't be wrong. That was unthinkable. Man was just an animal that had no conscience or soul, just a rotten beast, in fact. So, of course it shouldn't affect me, no matter how many rotten things I did.
To take my mind off it, I began to wonder at the possibility that maybe, when he had made the hit, Torpedo might be crazy enough to just go on straight home. You could only depend upon him to kill and rape. He might get the idea cops would come and be waiting for him because of the motorcycle patrolman's death.
I went out and surveyed cars and a getaway route. Yes. There was an old car sitting there that in emergency I might use. They apparently utilized it to haul manure,
r
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the way it looked, a sort of passenger car cut into a truck.
I made some other precautionary arrangements.
Feeling more secure, I went back to my viewers.
Krak's was still flared out.
But what was this on Heller's? An electrical disturbance? I watched intently. Yes! It was becoming a flare-out. Raht must have come up last night by commercial plane and bus. He must have Heller bugged or watched to know where he was going.
The viewer suddenly went all wavy and then came in very clear. Raht must have turned off the switch of the 831 Relayer.
I was looking at a patch of ground below the skids of a freight helicopter. There was a patch of asphalt surrounded by low trees. It made me dizzy to look down.
A ladder was unreeling below the chopper. The beat of engine and blades came through the door that Heller was holding open.
Heller looked at the sky: although clouds were still bright with sunset glow, dusk was gathering on the ground. The time was about 5:45 in the afternoon. He moved toward the pilot and gave him a pat on the shoulder. "Thanks for the lift!" he yelled.
"Any time, Mr. Floyd," the pilot said.
Heller had closed the door. He edged back to the front of the cargo cable area. He lifted a small musette bag he was carrying and put the strap around his neck. He gave his black engineer gloves a tug at each cuff and looked down.
The swaying ladder dwindled away toward the square of asphalt. The helicopter dropped lower.
Heller didn't bother to put his feet on the rungs. With one hand on the cable which made up one side of the ladder, he swung into space.
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Releasing and tightening his grip, he slid about five feet at a time down the ladder. It made me dizzy and feel even sicker than I already was.
He got to the bottom of the swaying ladder. The pilot dropped a few more feet. Heller simply let go and fell lightly the last two yards.
He looked up at the chopper and waved his hand. It spun away into the sky.
Heller looked around. It was dusky dark. Lights suddenly flashed on. Plastic, colored twirlers. Lines of cars around the edges of the asphalt. A big sign:
HARVEY "SMASHER" LEE'S BARGAIN CARS
FOR TRUE VIRGINIANS MONEY BACK SOMETIMES
Oh, this was good news to me. Heller must have forgotten he was wanted in that town! Or maybe he thought the FBI reports had wiped it out. Or maybe he thought he could trust the friend of the late Mary Schmeck, Harvey Lee.
And that was who came out of the sales office. Big, plumper than ever, Harvey Lee stepped into the lights, ready to say what the hell is going on dropping in by chopper. He didn't say it. He saw Heller. He stared. His flabby face went sort of white. He almost ran back into the office.
"Hello, Harvey," said Heller. "Got any cheap cars?"
That stopped Harvey Lee. Nervously he came closer. "Is ... is Mary with you?"
"There's nobody with me," said Heller.
"Oh, well," said Harvey Lee. "You want a car?" He was doubtless remembering the way Mary Schmeck had
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whittled him down on that Cadillac Brougham Coupe d'Elegance.
"Something cheap," said Heller, "something I can just use and throw away."
A look of cunning came into the used-car salesman's eye. He pointed to a strange-looking car: the top came up to a point like an idiot's head. It was badly beat up. "That one there. It's a freak. It's attracting too much attention. It's a French Karin. You can recognize it a mile away. Nobody wants it. It runs. You can have it cheap."
Heller glanced into it. It had a very wide front seat and a lot of room behind it.
"The French put it out," said Harvey Lee, "as their dream car. But folks around here think it's more like a nightmare. But it runs okay. It's just that it looks so odd."
"How much?" said Heller.
"How much you got?" said Harvey Lee with a cunning look.
"Three hundred dollars" said Heller.
"I'll take it," said Harvey Lee promptly. I really blinked. The French Karin might be a dog—for all French cars are—but I just couldn't imagine Harvey Lee letting go of a foreign luxury car for pennies like that. Then Lee said, "But at such a cheap price I can't throw in any registration or bill of sale. Paper work costs money."
"I only need it for a few hours," said Heller.
"Well, then I'll be glad to buy it back, so let's make it two hundred and seventy-five," said Lee, but there was a peculiar look in his eye. "No use doing the paper twice."
"All right," said Heller and handed over three one-hundred-dollar bills.
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Heller got in and examined the oddly placed controls. He started up the car and ran it to the gas island. Harvey Lee filled it up and checked the oil. It needed a quart.
Counting out the forty dollars for the service, Heller said, "Now, where can I find Stonewall Biggs?"
Lee thought a moment. Then he swivelled his eyes sort of sideways. He said, "Stonewall Biggs is at the courthouse."
"Isn't this kind of late for him to be there?" said Heller. "The whole town looks like the sidewalks have been rolled up."
Lee sort of floundered. Then he recovered. He said, "Well, since it burned down, he comes in evenings and tries to do some construction work. It's just a temporary shed now. So he's there all right."
Heller got the ca
r started again after a couple tries and rolled down to Main Street, past the bus depot, and then climbed the hill to the courthouse.
There was very little left—just a gaunt, charred shell. But a temporary building had been put up behind it to house, probably, the vital functions of the county and possibly the town. The dusk was very thick and the temporary building was all dark.
Heller killed the engine, which was already suffering. He got out.
Instantly, from a pile of rubble close behind him, came a loud and deadly voice. "Hands up! One false move and you'ah daid!"
Heller whirled. The only thing in view was a handgun, levelled and cocked, aimed straight at him.
Another voice from in front of the car. "It's him, all raht! Keep him covered, Joe! You'ah undah arrest fo' stealin' a cah Turn Hahvey Lee!"
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I chortled in glee. Clever Harvey Lee. He must have phoned ahead and alerted these cops! Now he not only could keep the three hundred but he'd also get his car back! And what an ally for me to suddenly acquire! They'd hold Heller and it would leave the Countess Krak wide-open for Torpedo!
"Lean up against that cah!" said the cop in front, walking into view. "Watch him, Joe!"
"I don't have time for this," said Heller. "Can't we put this off until business hours?"
"So you tryin' ta squirrel outa it! What else have you stole?" The cop in front advanced threateningly.
"I give up," said Heller. "It's all in the back seat!"
The cop made Heller move forward and bend over the hood. Then he pulled the Karin's door wide and leaned into the car.
Heller moved suddenly!
He kicked the open door.
It flew inward, crashed against the cop's legs!
The door recoiled open again.
Heller was behind it.
Joe fired from the rubbish pile!
The bullet hit the door!
The cop with the bruised legs screamed, "Don' shoot, Joe!"
Heller had the cop by the collar.
He threw him at Joe!
There was a crash by the rubbish pile.
Heller was onto them in a single dive. He reached down, grabbed collars and bashed their heads together.
After the dull clunk of skulls, the cops were inert and quiet.
Heller opened the temporary courthouse door. He located a small closet.
Mission Earth 6: Death Quest Page 12