“No, he wasn’t a transvestite. In fact, he wasn’t comfortable the way he was. He’d even married the same woman, but they’d divorced and had no children. It was pretty bitter, and Bobbie—his Bobbie—exposed him. She used a private detective to find his assignations and document them. You might appreciate that, Mr. and Mrs. Morality. He kept most of his money, but he lost his job, position, social standing, that sort of thing. He became one of those rich bums with no aim or goals in life. The Company tracked him down, recruited him, prepped him, and we even tested him out experimentally. Nobody noticed. Bobbie—my own wife—knew. She had to. Meeting the both of us at once was a shock, but they can really razzle-dazzle you with their power and influence. She bought it, and the kids were both away. He was me while I trained, and old Whitlock never missed a phone call. Then, of course, I came back, and you can guess what he thought by then.”
I nodded. “He liked being back in his old position, having his old family, prestige, contacts, and the like. He didn’t want to give it all back.”
“Right. Oh, they had a world for him, as a reward, that was right up his alley, a world where he didn’t have to pretend anything, but he saw no reason to start again when he already had it. We didn’t know it at the time, but he’d already started the ball rolling in his favor. Somehow, while I was away, he managed to discover somebody in the criminal end who was working for the opposition and could get word to others with access to the Labyrinth. He got back and dropped from sight, and we couldn’t find him. That’s when we came up with this insane plot. I didn’t, but some big airbrain at corporate headquarters did, and just like the rest, I was trapped by that time, so I had to go along. I think it was because they had two other versions of me that I was recruited in the first place, but because of that, some think tank at headquarters—composed of people who never had to live this kind of stuff—came up with using one of them, who, of course, differed from me in one even more vital way.”
“Enter Amanda W. Curry—the W for Whitlock, I assume,” Brandy said, nodding.
“Right again. We set up a command post in the apartment up in northeast Philly, with special scramblers and devices and remote phone hookups and all the rest. We couldn’t use private detectives, because we had no idea where the other Whitlock was or what he was planning, and they’d always wind up fingering me. What we knew was that eventually he had to come to me. We used the mob, of course, to be our eyes and ears. Just told them my evil twin brother escaped from the asylum and was out to replace me.”
“And they bought that?” she asked skeptically.
He shrugged. “Hey—these aren’t exactly the intellectual cream of the crop. Mandy controlled the network, but I was director of operations, so it was my baby to control, and I knew the Company was mostly watching to see how I handled it. Of course, the way we had to give anybody the slip was the crazy one the boys back at headquarters invented. Mandy and I had the same parents, same society family and blue blood, same general aptitudes, so she was a natural to be their overseer on the project. When I needed to disappear, I’d walk over to Sansom, use a prearranged little hole there to get into deep disguise, while at the same time Mandy would also be there. Then she’d walk out as the drag queen Whitlock, and I’d get up to the apartment or out to track down leads I couldn’t do publicly. My double worried me, but our big task was to find who the traitor was who’d given him the means, method, and opportunity for all this. That traitor was the key to finding him first, and also to making sure we were secure in the future. Mandy was about two inches shorter than me, but fingerprints don’t lie, do they? And she was close enough to me in facial structure and the like to get away with it.”
“She convinced almost everybody,” I told him. “Confused the hell out of us, too. Still, the more I think of it, the less wild the idea really was. They didn’t want to risk another double, but a female Whitlock was somebody different enough they could feel reasonably confident about; and you said she inherited your position, stock, and aptitudes, so she could run an intelligent investigation, understand your business and what you talked about and to whom. Still, in the end, it didn’t quite work, did it?”
“No,” he sighed. “They were too clever. I could be two places at once, but Mandy could never take my place in the office. When whoever the traitor was found out I was closing in on him, he moved. Left me a whole complicated string of red herrings that were very time consuming and very hard to unravel. It took time, so I arranged for a business trip as a cover—the Company’s handy for that—and dropped out for ten days. As soon as I did, though, my double walked in—the very next day—and said the trip had been cancelled, and took up my spot in the bank. They prearranged this whole dope business—I would never have been directly involved in anything like that myself—and nabbed the two and a quarter million bucks that brought you into all this. We got the word almost immediately, but that put us in a bind. What could I do? Walk in and confront the bastard? You see what his plot was. Steal the money and vanish, which would bring me back with Nkrumah right on my neck. I would have to liquidate a lot of assets and cover the losses myself to save my own neck. He’d have made his point, and I would be as good as blackmailed. He could do anything he wanted to me. Ruin me, get me killed, anything. He could have it both ways. Be me whenever he wanted to, and be a bum playboy entirely on my assets when he didn’t.”
“And, if he ever got tired of it, he could bump you off anytime and replace you,” Brandy added. “But I don’t get why he didn’t just bump you off in the first place. I mean, your wife knew, so she couldn’t know if it was legit or not.”
“Uh huh. I wondered, too, until I realized it was that crazy masquerade. Mandy confused them. They weren’t sure if it was me or if it wasn’t. We’d laid a pretty good foundation going back quite a ways, using Mandy’s old family album pictures and stuff like that, so the servants weren’t so sure, either. See, if Mandy was just me, it was a complication, but if Mandy was an alternate me then the Company would know the day after the switch was pulled. If he went along and dressed up as Mandy, and Mandy was really somebody else, then the jig was up, but if he didn’t, then it was a radical change in behavior that would also be noticed, since Mandy was intimate with a lot of the gay and transvestite communities, and that was one part of my life he didn’t share and couldn’t fake. So, he finally decided half a loaf was better than none, and that he could find out the truth later and make decisions then. Either that or give it up—costing me a fortune, messing up my credibility, and running away with all that money as an untouchable. See what I mean?”
“But you didn’t let him get away with it,” I noted. “You pulled his plug instead.”
“I saw no other way. I called in the federal bank people with a phone call—anonymous—to just the right people with just the right information. He had to skip before they caught him and hung him up to dry. His only chance then was to get me first. If I turned up dead, it would be a gangland revenge slaying, he’d be legally dead, and free to spend the money. Better than before, since he had contacts with the opposition, access to the Labyrinth somehow, and, being dead, he could hardly be disgraced. All he needed was my body, and all I needed was a trail far away from me that he would follow. That, however, necessitated using the fourth me—another female version, as you well know, because we needed a female me then. I made a fuss over getting the clothes from the lesbian center, which got them suspicious enough to follow me. I tell you, they were so incompetent I had a lot of trouble not losing them! Then we cleared out of the apartment, leaving the card. Right at the start, before I even called the feds, I called and made that Sunday reservation for San Francisco just to give an extra signpost and make it easier to find the pair going west.”
“Uh huh.” It was pretty much as we figured, but the fine details were now falling into place and it didn’t make me feel too great. The guy had almost drawn us a map and detailed instructions, and we thought we were hot shit to have sniffed him along! It was pretty humbling.
I nodded. “Yeah. You knew we came from Nkrumah or somebody in that organization, but you didn’t know if we were the hitters instead of the other Whitlock, or if we maybe were setting up the girls for the kill.”
“Exactly. Little Jimmy initially just figured you to draw the heat away from his boys, but you got results and he let you run. We couldn’t figure you—except that we could trace you to Little Jimmy’s corner of the world, and that was good enough. The trouble was, we took our eyes momentarily off the ball while we, too, followed you. We figured you had to be with the opposition, knowingly. And because everything was concentrated on you, we let my counterpart and a contract hood who was free-lance but had done a lot of work for Big Tony’s family get by. That hood knew his business. A real pro. No phone, no lights, and the girls in a room with no back exit in the middle of a concrete block of motel units. I was a crack shot in the Marines, and so, of course, was the other me. He would nail them in the room, or keep them pinned down until the hood could get right up to them and just shoot them down—all before security could get there, thanks to the train. Then you stepped in and saved them.”
“I got the hood on sheer luck,” Brandy told him. “I was blind as a bat, at that distance. Guess he just didn’t figure we had that kind of firepower. One of your girls got—you—with a rifle.”
“You can see, though, how it looked to security when they arrived. They still didn’t know which side you were on, or whether you’d nailed the hood because there was no way he could tell which was which in the dark and at that distance. They figured the girls sounded the alarm, not you, Mr. Horowitz. Nothing was really clear, so they just rousted you until they could treat the girls and get the full story. By the time you reached our judge, we knew you’d saved them, but we didn’t know why, or what game you were playing, so it was decided to buy time. Trap you there until we could find out everything about you, and what was going on and where you stood, and go from there. We just hadn’t realized how resourceful you could be.”
It made sense. It all hung together. Case solved. Except for a number of very puzzling details.
“You still don’t know who that traitor was, then? He’s still in place there, someplace?”
Whitlock nodded. “Yes.”
Brandy frowned. “Yeah, but who called off the feds and scared shit out of Little Jimmy so’s he fired us and scrammed? Who could have that kind of power and clout?”
“Good question. And everything in the east is stuck in limbo until we find out. Little Jimmy got out clean. We haven’t been able to trace him at all. We didn’t think he’d run, considering we offered to cover his losses. He must have had that escape route plotted for years. Either that or he’s in a concrete barrel a mile down off Cape May.”
I grinned, my memory going back what for me was more than a year, although to Whitlock it was still current events. “I think I can find him, if he actually got away and wasn’t hit right then. I don’t think he was. I don’t know why—maybe—” I snapped my fingers. “Sure! Big Tony! Somehow he fed ’em Big Tony on a platter before he split. He tied up the mob for a day or two on that, and tied up any possibilities of Big Tony’s mob making the hit then. He bought time that way. No wonder he was scared to death! He was so scared I doubt if he even realized it, but he told me where he was headed, generally speaking. I think I could find him, if he was telling the truth—and I think he was.”
“Big Tony, of course, was a tool I sometimes used, but he had no direct knowledge of the Company and its reach. They would hardly use Big Tony’s mob to hit Nkrumah—or would they? They had motive—the missing money—and they would be the perfect foils to do the opposition’s dirty work with no traces. Hmmmm . . . ” Whitlock paused for a moment, thinking. “Interesting. You know he left clean. Didn’t take the money. Hell, the paperwork wouldn’t be done on it by now!”
“Clean . . . No, not clean, and not with a slush fund, either, although I think he has one. Somebody else agreed to cover him first. That means he knows something.” I had an unpleasant thought. “Once well away, though, they could hit him without it even making the papers. Save themselves money and a leak. They just got him out so he wouldn’t turn stoolie to the feds. But the feds’d give him protection, and no money. He took the offer of a hideout and money from whoever it is, instead, but he’s asking for a bullet now, if it hasn’t been done already.”
“You think he wouldn’t guess that and maybe run somewhere else?”
Brandy laughed. “Sure, he’d take all the precautions, but he wouldn’t run no matter how scared he was until he had the money. Money is life to Little Jimmy.”
I thought a moment. “You know, if I don’t shave, he wouldn’t recognize either of us right now. Nobody drops a hundred pounds in this short a time, or grows a full real beard. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance they haven’t hit him yet, want to let things cool down first, up in Philadelphia; distance the hit from the rest of the stuff.”
Whitlock smiled. “You are interested in the job, then.”
Brandy held up a hand. “Uh uh, baby. Wait a minute. Yeah, we’re interested. Real interested. But this is strictly free-lance right now. You can hire Spade and Marlowe, but you can’t buy ’em. Not yet.”
“Fair enough. Unlimited expenses, but one condition.”
“Yeah?”
“Jamie goes along. You tell her what you need and she’ll get it. She’ll be the comptroller and contact on this. For obvious reasons I can’t show my face anywhere right now, and I can’t dare even try to clean up this mess until everything’s tidy. I love my wife, you see. I love my children, too. I don’t want them endangered or pulled into this, but I miss them. You have the vast resources of G.O.D., Inc. at your disposal. Find Nkrumah, if he’s alive. Find that traitor. Let me go home.”
I looked at Brandy, and she looked back at me and winked.
By God, the game was afoot!
8
Taking on the Competition
We still didn’t quite know what to make of Jamie, other than the obvious fact that she was holding our leash. We could pretend we were independents with a client again, but we knew better. We were there because Whitlock needed us; because all his money and power and fancy resources couldn’t take him into the neighborhoods and classes where we worked best. What I mean is, you couldn’t really penetrate Jamie’s masks. She could accept without a qualm working for a company that at least aided and abetted half the crime in the Western World, yet she detested the crime-ridden cities and the atmosphere of fear that such activities helped promote. She seemed perfectly at home in our world, yet was a native of a place that had old-time steam trains, castles, baronies, and no electricity or working toilets. She had also seemed quite mannish, maybe more than a little butch, back in her own world, yet seemed girlishly feminine now. She was a bundle of contradictions, and when you saw that, you knew y
ou never saw the real person at all, just whatever act or mask they wanted you to see at any given time.
Identification and papers were no problem; they’d brought all our stuff to the Bahamas as well, including our driver’s licenses, P.I. licenses, and the like. I would have preferred ones with aliases, but we just didn’t have the time. I certainly expected that if I found Nkrumah at all, he’d be stone-cold dead, but every minute wasted was one that might guarantee that fact. At least the Caymans weren’t very formal, and we were already sort of in the Caribbean. Of course, I had no real idea of where the Caymans were, but I remembered hearing they were pretty loose and pretty poor.
I’d always wanted to fly as a passenger in one of those luxury business jets, sipping martinis at twenty thousand feet, but all they had on their island was a glorified Cessna with cramped quarters and seats that looked designed for the Army. The pilot was a big, black Bahamian man who looked like he’d been everywhere and seen everything and had never been impressed. He was very well paid, and he asked no questions of his passengers that had anything to do with business. He said to just call him Mike.
We flew over long stretches of water with just occasional tiny islands for hours, then came up on a huge landmass. Brandy leaned forward and shouted at Mike over the incessant engine noise, “What’s that below we’re flying toward?”
“Oh, dat’s Cuba, m’um,” he responded casually. “We hav’ta land there to get enough fuel to take us the rest of the way.”
“Cuba!” both Brandy and I exclaimed at once. “You can’t land there! We’re Americans!” I had visions of being forced down by Migs and getting thrown in a Cuban jail for a year or two.
“No, m’um,” Mike replied, sounding unworried. “You are passengers on a General Corporation plane on Company business. The government, dey see eye to eye with de Company on lots of t’ings. You bring hard currency, you be surprised how nice dey be down dere.”
The Labyrinth Of Dreams Page 20