“No, Shell.” He smiled finally. “I know you didn't blow up City Hall, or whatever all that was. But, brother, it was nearly overpowering. What in hell got the world so down on you?"
And that jarred my brain. Yeah, what had? It wasn't the world, of course. It merely seemed like the world. It was, in fact, a set of circumstances and only three people—but those three were people whose opinions went into the ears and noodles of millions of other people. Millions of others, among whom, unfortunately, were great chunks who got many of their “facts” from those three people.
And those three opinion-molders were liars. Ulysses Sebastian, Mordecai Withers, and Gary Baron. They had lied with ease and ooze, with expertise and aplomb, with conviction. They had, I knew, convinced a lot of people. I had the cold feeling that this might be one I wouldn't get out of. You can erase evidence; it's hard to erase brains.
But I wasn't about to lie down and die. I hadn't been Duerfed yet.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I had reached a sanctum, a temporary refuge. It was called Brown's Motel. It was a little dump, old, clear out on Adams Boulevard. I guess it was owned by Mr. Brown. But I had me a room.
And you know what I was thinking? After all the night's misery—and the night not over yet?
I was thinking: Oooh, I'm hungry! And the night not over yet!
It's true. When you're starving, life and death fade into insignificance. Of course, I knew that people had fasted, gone without eating for days—ten, twenty, fifty. It hadn't killed them. Not usually. But it hadn't been fun.
So my thoughts went. Aside from the horrible, gnawing emptiness, which you wouldn't believe, going without food sometimes does weird things to your thinkpot. I hoped mine held up until I got out of this mess.
It didn't look too good.
I'd used two pay phones on the way here, both times to call Samson. When I hung up the second time I had told him the whole story—the true story. Sam got it and believed me—especially since he knew what had gone before, on Benedict Canyon Drive and the rest of it. But he insisted that I come in. I insisted I wouldn't. And there followed this bit of communication:
“Sam,” I said, “I know you've got your job to do, and you'll get me if you can. But not with my help—my job's to save my hide. If you toss me in the clink I'll be cleared, sure—in time. But by then what do you think Baron and Withers and Sebastian, and anybody else who's on their side, will have done to me? I shudder to think—"
“I can't help that, Shell."
“I know it. But I can't come in, either.” I paused. “So, Sam, old friend, it kind of looks like it's going to be you against me."
He said quietly, “Yeah."
“I won't wish you good luck. Remember all the names, Sam—including Bill Bonchak."
After that I found the motel. I chose it because there were small individual garages with sliding doors next to each unit. I wanted not only to hide myself but to conceal Ferris’ car, too. There'd be a call out on it by now, I imagined.
There wasn't any trouble getting in. Sleepy clerk, I had a hat on, signed illegibly with my left hand, went along into the room. No trouble getting in. That's usually the way; usually it's tougher getting out.
Before leaving my Cad with Ferris, I'd transferred everything I thought I'd need from it to his car, and since then brought the stuff into my motel room. It was a dismal array. Some cartridges for my Colt; a makeup kit—which might help; a flowing false beard I'd once worn to a party—which was ridiculous; a hat to cover my hair. That was it. Not much.
There was TV in the room. After showering, I watched it from bed. No point describing the news; it just got worse. It seemed to me the news was all about three things: Tuesday's elections; the queerly linked deaths of Charley White, Johnny Troy, and Sylvia White; and me, the menace to the republic.
Then I turned off the TV and lay awake thinking about the case. I was stumped. Consciously, at least. The subconscious mind has all the answers we ever need, if we could just reach down into it and get them. That's the trick; and I didn't know the trick.
Finally I rolled over and went to sleep.
* * * *
I guess it was sleep. It was queer, weird, crazy. It was sleep and dream and thought, too, half-waking alternating with half-sleeping, which isn't quite the same thing. I dreamed, all right. It was nutty. Some of it melting, shifting, like abstract paintings spinning ... some things in rhyme ... even singing.
I thought at first I was waking up, but strangely realized I was only dreaming I was waking up. They'd caught me, I was sentenced to be tarred and feathered, set on fire, then hanged in the gas chamber.
Everything swirled, swam, then swish, I was in a huge courtroom. I was condemned, but I had a chance. They were giving me a sanity hearing combined with a trial to decide the nature of my death. Evidence was being given, at first almost normal—but then in rhyme, all in rhyme.
The witnesses sang.
The words were in rhyme, the speeches in rhyme—even my thoughts were in rhyme.
I was standing before the bench. The judge, in black robes and white wig, was—Ulysses Sebastian.
The foreman of the jury was Joe Rice, and in the jury box were eleven other living and dead hoods—Bill Bonchak. Tony Anguish, Booby, Snag, and other mugs I'd shot years ago. They all held submachine guns, and had knives in their teeth.
The court reporter was Gary Baron. On my left was Horatio M. Humble, the vigorous D.A.
On my right was David Emerson, attorney for the defense.
Suddenly Humble left his place on my left and marched to the jury box. He was waving a lot of bottles, marked “Fluorine,” “Serum,” “Vaccine,” “Goodies.” There he made his opening remarks, which apparently had nothing to do with me; it was a political speech. It was a typical Humble speech, only it was all in rhyme, and he sang it in a very nice voice.
He did a little dance, whirling about, one-two-three-kick, then alternately to the jury and then the courtroom—filled with people I couldn't see behind me—he sang; and after every verse he did his little dance again, and laughed a little laugh.
"We've put fluorine in the water
And stamped out tooth decay,
We've Salksabinized the water
And made polio passé;
Now we'll put toothpaste in the water —
We think of everything, we do —
So we'll put into your water
Everything that's good for you!”
(One-two-three-kick) “Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!”
"We have this wondrous weapon
And therefore we must use it;
You'll simply have to take our word
That we will not abuse it!
For after all, we know what's best,
Which naturally means:
The smallpox, largepox, chickenpox,
And the pox-on-you vaccines!”
(One-two-three-kick) “Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!”
"When there's all this in the water,
To assure a healthy nation,
We'll put Ex-Lax in the water
To stamp out constipation!
Then having fixed up everything
From cancer to dentition,
We'll put food into the water
and stamp out malnutrition!”
(One-two-three-kick) “Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!”
"And if water won't go through the pipes
Because it is too dense,
We'll replace the pipes with bigger pipes
At federal expense;
With everything from soup to nuts
Your government will fill you;
We'll make you happy, safe, and well—
Even if we kill you!”
(One-two-three-kick) “HA-HA-HA-HA!"
Then Emerson sang in a mellow bass
A look like Ralph Waldo's on his face:
"I'm opposed to a federal cure!
For God's sake, leave our water pure—”
But his voice was drowned by
hee-haws and moos,
By a chorus of catcalls, whistles, and boos,
Rising and falling like the hiss of the surf—
And I knew: Every man in the crowd was a duerf!
Then Mordecai Withers was on the stand;
He took the oath, he raised his hand,
He looked at me and sang, “This kid
Is out of his skull, he's flipped his id!”
Sebastian leaned toward the jury box
And sang: “On you, Shell Scott, a pox!
The facts are plain, your goose we'll cook,
It's time to sentence you, you crook!
Oh, hoodlums of the world, unite!
Together we will win the fight!
Divided they fall, united we stand,
So give your judge a big black hand,
For I find the defendant guilty, and
I sentence him—to Cuckooland!”
Emerson cried out: “Your Honor!
I object, the D.A.'s fooled—”
Wham, Crash, Blam, Smash!
"Objection overruled!”
"Your crimes are monstrous, they're immense!
What say you in your defense?
Have you anything to yack
Before we send you to the rack?”
It was my big moment; it was up to me!
I'd make such a speech they'd set me free!
I threw my arms wide and braced myself—
And publicly disgraced myself:
"I confeth, confeth, confeth!
I'm cuckoo, beathtly, bad!
I committed what you thaid—
And I'm glad, glad, glad, glad, glad!”
That's what I said! I had no choice:
It was my open mouth, but Sebastian's voice.
Then those twelve mugs in the jury box
Aimed their guns at me and said:
"He's a ninny, pooh to him!”
And shot-shot-shot me dead.
I woke up in a cold sweat, mumbling, “I didn't do it, I didn't do it, I'm innothent!"
But—finally—I realized I was awake, really awake and not just dreaming I was. I was clammy, sweating, the sheets wet beneath me. The dream filled my noodle. Wow, I wondered, could I be nuts? I might be the last to know. Off I go—to Cuckooland.
Hell, no. I was as sane as the next one. Ah, but that next one. What kind of shape was he in?
Man, I thought, I want something to eat!
I got up and showered, dressed, and felt pretty well back to normal. I had lots of aches and pains and twinges; but that's normal. I was as ready as I could get for whatever the day might hold. But, frankly, I wasn't much looking forward to it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
That dream stayed with me. Not troublesomely any longer, but persistently. As the morning wore on I thought about it a lot. It didn't even seem crazy any more. It was starting to make sense.
Despite the cuckooisms of Freudian analysis and Duerfianalysis, Siamese twins hatched from the same rotten egg, I still believe that somewhere within reach of a man's subconscious mind is all knowledge, all power, all the answers. In a strange and not yet understood way, men can use that power and knowledge, only we can't just press our navels and turn it on.
Even so, it's known that most of the work in any creative endeavor or problem-solving routine goes on beneath the surface of consciousness. In the “subconscious.” And when the work is done, bang, it's presented to the conscious mind. And sometimes the presentation is sneaky. Sometimes it's done in dreams.
Freud had something there, until he gucked it up with weirdly sick sexology, private parts, incestual hangovers and other such idiocies—just as he had his hands on a lot of valuable things which he finally mangled, apparently because of a delusion that everybody else was as sick as he was. Maybe the best thing Freud did was also the worst: He made men aware that they had a subconscious mind; and then he convinced them it was a chamberpot of horrors.
It's that, sure; but there's the whole rest of the mansion, too. It's as if Freud saw only midnight and darkness. But the hell with Freud. Take it from me: The sun comes up every morning.
It was up now. In the night I'd had a dream, and there'd been some horrors in it—but daylight in it, too. In other words, the answers. It was a funny thing, but I knew all of the answers—all of them—were in that dream, if I could just find them. Enough at least to show me the way to go, what to do. More; enough somehow even to get me out of this horrendous pickle.
And, friends, it was a pickle.
I'd had the TV on most of the morning. I'd ducked outside, very speedily, swiped a newspaper and read it—then tossed it back; no matter what they say about me, I'm not all bad.
But that's not what they were saying.
My flight was virtual proof of guilt. It was known I'd shot at lots of people, and so on. I'd been in some peculiar situations in the past, and they were brought up again, including a few somewhat erotic episodes. There was more about Sylvia. I was known to be a man of violence, and so on. It was more than a little ugly. No point in covering it all; you can guess. Nobody came right out and said I'd scalped Custer, disguised as an Indian.
There were columns and columns of it, TV words and radio words and, no doubt, millions of mouth-to-mouth words. The whole off-key jazz was on the wire services, coast to coast. It had started yesterday with mention of my name in the stories about Johnny Troy's death. Now my story was almost crowding Troy off the pages.
If it hadn't been for the Troy thing itself, and the once-in-four-years Presidential elections, the Shell Scott story would have been even bigger. But, after all, the big thing, way above all else, was: tomorrow.
Because this was Monday, the first Monday in November. Tomorrow, Tuesday, the people voted.
For Emerson—or Humble.
For Self-Reliance—or Duerfism.
That, I'd decided, was what it boiled down to. Because during these last two days, and especially last night and this morning, it had become clear—to me, at least—that the basic philosophy of Duerfism—whatever's wrong with you, it's somebody else's fault; something-for-nothing is really something; there is a free lunch; the world owes you a world; I'll pull myself up by your bootstraps; we'll scalp Samsons to make wigs for bald weaklings; criminals aren't crooked, they're just sickly; there's no such thing as a bad bad; we must have tolerance for everything, including evil; and all the political claptrap and analytical chop-chop stirred together into Duerfism—was basically Humble's philosophy.
He called it doing good for the people—by taking some good from other people; he called it Welfare when most of the time it was simply stealing, and crutches for uncrippled people; he called it compassion, sympathy, pity, but he didn't even know that the man who wants your pity doesn't deserve it. He had so many wacky ideas, it was a problem of infinite proportions to figure out how his brain held them all. And how he could talk about trusting Communist leaders, of the Soviet Union or anyplace else, considering the very nature of Communism, its avowed goals—and the scores of broken treaties, millions of executions, lies and subversion and deceit, the murders of men and rapes of nations—was something that simply paralyzed my comprehension. And Humble was running for President of the United States.
Running—and likely to be elected.
Actually, Horatio Humble was just about like the Humble of my dream. Take the verse away; take the exaggeration away; it was the same old “The government will do it for you, even if you can do it yourself. Even if you'd rather.” The welfare-state philosophy. Socialism. Or in another word: collectivism. Some would call it Creeping Communism.
Humble—or Emerson. Well, we'd know tomorrow night.
* * * *
At noon I turned the TV set on again.
I was damned near ready to pop open. No telling what was going on out in the world. But I couldn't simply stalk out of here with no plan, no goal, no idea of what I was going to do.
But I couldn't stay here forever, either. In time, maybe very littl
e time now, somebody was sure to find me. Either the police or some hood. I had six slugs in my gun, so I could take maybe six hoods if it came to that. With cops, of course, I'd go peaceably. I like cops. I just didn't want them around right now.
I'd turned the TV on because I was stumped, and also because I was about to climb out of my skull. There was something bubbling in me, trying to break through. A queer ferment, sizzling. The TV sound came on. Starting at noon were a pair of half-hour segments, the final kick in the ‘68 election campaigns. The speeches—first Humble, then Emerson on another channel—would be repeated again tonight. Watching the speeches wasn't the thing I wanted to do more than anything else in the world, but it should give my mind a rest—at least, Humble's was sure to.
He was just coming on, starting his address with his usual opening, “My dear friends....” I couldn't concentrate on it. I paced the floor, itchy as hell—and, of course, dreaming part of the time of rare, juicy, foot-thick prime ribs.
I caught a phrase from time to time. The same old your-government-will-do-this-and-that jazz. Humble can do more for you. Bigger pensions, bigger checks, bigger health services, bigger aid to education, mastication, everything but fornication—and it wouldn't have surprised me if he got around to a little of that before his half hour was up—just in case that wasn't what he was doing.
I may not have impressed you enough with this: I had intended to vote for Emerson.
I didn't agree with what Humble said, but I sure agreed with the way he said it. That warmly oozing voice poured out over the land like music, like a song, as chummy as if he were crawling into bed with humanity. He was compelling, almost hypnotic. I'd thought it before: he was to politics what Johnny Troy had been to show business. The most glamorous personality, the most magnetic, with the most charming voice.
The trouble with Humble was that he had no common sense in him. If he had even a nodding acquaintance with logic, he had only nodded once, but because his voice made love to ears he was able to sink his verbal fangs into the collective noodle and pour into millions of brains his honey, or venom, depending on your point of view.
The Trojan Hearse (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 13