"Who pays you?" said the Countess Krak.
She might hit paydirt with this!
"Cash in an envelope."
"What's on the envelope?"
"Nothing."
Her foot was tapping faster with impatience. "Is there anything IN the envelope except cash?"
"Only the receipt I sign and give back to Ed."
"And what is on the receipt?"
"The amount. And I initial it."
"Anything else?"
"Only the letters F.F.B.O."
"What do they stand for?"
"I don't know," came the muffled reply.
"F.F.B.O. That's all?"
"That's all."
My hair was standing up. F.F.B.O. stood for Fatten, Farten, Burstein and Ooze, the advertising and PR giants that handled the Rockecenter accounts and employed J. Walter Madison for this particular black PR campaign. Oh, the careless, stupid fools! Their accounts department was out-security!
And then I was greatly heartened. I had just remembered what Bury had told me. You had to be in the advertising world itself to know what F.F.B.O. stood for. It was even a test of being a professional advertising man!
The Countess drilled some more. But that was all she learned.
Satisfied at last, she got on to other work. "Now, you are going to do something," she said. "You are going to go into Superior Court and stand before the judge and you are going to state that every crime Jerome Terrance Wister is supposed to have done, you did. You owe it to the honor of your family. So you will do it without fail. You will state this in such a way that Jerome Terrance Wister will be absolved of all past charges and any current ones. It is YOUR face that is known on TV and in pictures and you will convince the judge that this is so. This includes marriages and adultery and the rape of a minor. And if anybody tells you to do different, you won't. Understood?"
"Yes."
"Now, you will also write a full confession that this is all a put-up job and will begin the moment you awake and I give you paper. Understood?"
"Yes."
"Now you will forget you have been kidnapped or hypnotized and will think you came to me with this as your own idea and you will stay with us and not run away until you appear in court. Understood?"
"Yes."
She clicked off the helmet and removed it from his head. He was looking around dazedly, trying to find something.
The Countess untied him. She gave him pen and paper and sat him at a small table in the van and he began to write.
She put the helmet in her shopping bag. She went outside.
I was wringing wet with sweat. What could I do to keep my world from totally caving in?
Bang-Bang was sitting on an old box, the cat beside him.
"Bang-Bang," said the Countess Krak, "what does 'F.F.B.O.' stand for?"
"I dunno," said Bang-Bang. "Some deodorant maybe?"
"Is there any Mafia mob with those initials?" said the Countess.
"Nope," said Bang-Bang. "But when they ship things, they go 'F.O.B.' It means 'Freight On Board.'"
"That's not it. What did you do with his wallet?"
"Right here," said Bang-Bang. "Nothing in it. Just a few bucks and student cards."
The Countess went through it. She shook her head. "Well," she said, "we'll get busy and find out. It must stand for something"
"There's Peegrams V.O. Scotch," said Bang-Bang. "And the cat and I could use some."
"Not yet," said the Countess Krak. She sat down on another box and took a pad out of her purse. "Poor Jettero must be going mad out there, wondering. I'm writing a radio message calling the yacht in. We've got the double and tomorrow he'll appear in court. The yacht won't be in until after that occurs, so it's perfectly safe. So you send this radio to Captain Bitts and tell him to dock in New York. What was the pier he said? Oh, yes. Pier 68, West 30th Street. By the time he gets there it will be tomorrow evening and the phony Whiz Kid will be on his way to jail."
She wrote it. She handed it over. Bang-Bang walked away.
I could not believe my luck!
She didn't recall Judge Hammer Twist would not be in court tomorrow! He'd be at the Aqueduct race track! Or she thought foolishly he would return for an important case the way they would on Voltar. But no Earth judge would ever put his duty before his pleasure.
Oh, thank Gods for this sloppy, slow court system! Heller would not only be picked up but would be safely in Bellevue and maybe even dead before she ever got her confession before the judge!
The seizure of Heller would drive her out of her mind! And if they killed him, she'd be so grief-stricken, she'd be no menace to anybody!
I might not know where she was. But I was saved after all!
I reached for the phone to call Grafferty.
That yacht would be MET!
Chapter 2
The next morning my eyes hurt and I only gave Heller's viewer a quick glance. He was staring at the ceiling, apparently still in his bunk, and I thought, go ahead and daydream, Heller, it will turn into a nightmare before sunset today.
I had something else to do before we met the yacht. It is always best to play things safe.
If the Countess got to Madison before I got to Heller, J. Warbler would undoubtedly identify me and I would be dead.
My bandages had been changed: Adora had been certain that I would scare the lesbians last night if I had a boot-blacked face. I dressed in some khaki outing clothes, hoping somebody would think I was a veteran from the wars or maybe some street shoot-out.
I grabbed a cab.
At Madison's 42 Mess Street offices, all was at the usual high hubbub.
It was not a good time to try to persuade Madison to go into hiding. He was in utter euphoria. They had a huge blowup on the wall. It said:
SEX-STARVED BEAUTY
KIDNAPS WHIZ KID
TRAINS CAT TO
EFFECT SNATCH
In front of 50,000,000 American housewives, the notorious sex outlaw Wister...
"Mad," I said, trying to get his attention, "I've got to talk to you about something important."
"Don't bother me, Smith. I'm handling the hottest story since Julius Caesar raped Cleopatra in a rug. Empires could fall on this."
"I'm sure they could," I said.
"What if it turned out to be the president's wife!" he said ecstatically. "Hey, Hacky! I just got an idea!" And he went rushing off to stir things up in his already earthquaking staff room.
I could only hang around. They wrote up tomorrow's headlines wherein all the wives of Washington joined the wives of Kansas in demanding the Whiz Kid be given diplomatic privileges in their beds, cancelled that in favor of mobs of minors in California lining up in hope of being raped by the Whiz Kid, abandoned that and got out new headlines to the effect that a nationwide cat hunt was going on to find the cat and get him to tell all. They put that on the wire.
"The animal angle always gets them," said Madison, sinking down at his desk, utterly spent but happy. "The day after, the cat will tell all in the most sexy details you ever imagined!" '
"Madison," I said, "I have to warn you that danger is in the air. Would F.F.B.O. tell anybody who it was who handles this account on the Whiz Kid?"
"Oh, I doubt they would," said Madison. "Professional jealousy. It would be giving my name a plug, you see, and they are too consumed with envy to do that. The answer is 18 point NO."
"Nevertheless," I said, "it might leak out that you were the account executive. Mad, there are some things you don't know about the REAL Wister. He has killed fifty-five men since he has been around here."
"WHAT?"
"Fact. I've counted them up. He added fifteen just the other day by blowing up the docks at Atlantic City. Fifty-five dead men, Madison. And you could be number fifty-six."
"Holy gunsmoke!" said Madison. "Billy the Kid only killed twenty-one! Say, do you realize that the real Wister is sneaking up on Wild Bill Hickok's seventy-six? Lord above, that Wister really is outlaw pot
ential! I thought I was stretching his capabilities. Now he's stretching my credulity! Fifty-five men. Wow! Smith, I think I really can build this man up to immortality. No doubt of it at all!"
"Mad," I said, "please listen to me. I will spell it out. Your life is in danger!"
He was thoughtful. Then he said, "It wouldn't be the first time my life has been threatened. It sort of goes with the job of a PR."
"Mad," I said, "this isn't just a threat." I looked at him. I had a sinking feeling that I was getting no place. Then I had a brilliant idea. "You want to know how dangerous this fellow is?"
"Yes, indeed! Might make good copy."
"All right," I said. "Call Narcotici's personnel department and try to buy a contract on the real Wister."
"Hey, that makes a good headline: 18 point Contract Out On Whiz Kid..."
"Mad, not phony headlines. This is for real. Get a solid bottom under your news for once. Make the call."
"Novel idea," said Madison. "I'll do it." He reached for the phone and connected with the personnel department. "Personnel," he said, "this is F.F.B.O. I'd like a quote for a contract on Jerome Terrance Wister.... Yes, I'll hold." He turned to me, "For some reason they're shifting the call." He returned to his phone. "Yes, that's right. A contract on Jerome Terrance Wister."
I couldn't hear the other end of the call. Madison was listening. Then his eyes went round. Then he went white. He hung up, staring into space.
I said, "Well, what did they say?"
His attention was very hard to get. I had to repeat my question three times.
Finally he said, "We're in trouble. They shifted my call to Razza Louseini, the consigliere. He wanted to know if I was the one who pushed their men on to Wister last fall. I didn't know they'd lost nineteen of their mobsters and a million bucks. They're furious. I hope they didn't recognize my voice."
"How so?" I said, secretly delighted at his depressed state.
"Razza Louseini said that if they found out who had gotten them into that mess, they had orders to put a contract out on him!"
"You see?" I said triumphantly. "Wister is dangerous."
"Oh, I think I could handle the real Wister," Madison said. "I've met him and talked to him. He's a nice fellow, really. What I'm worried about is the Narcotici mob." He stirred himself and focused his eyes on me. "Look, Smith. Promise me you'll keep it secret that I was the one behind it. You can't live in New York or even the U.S. with the Mafia gunning for you."
Oh, I promised him faithfully that his secret was safe with me. But only the bandages on my face could hide the glee I felt. I now knew how to persuade Madison to make himself scarce if I had to. He was sitting there, kind of white, glancing uneasily out the window. Then he took his finger and loosened his collar which must have seemed too tight. The hand was shaking.
Chapter 3
A call to Grafferty's office elicited the information that, according to the harbor traffic control, the Golden Sunset would dock at 1600 hours at Pier 68 and all was going smoothly.
I wanted very much to be on hand and witness Heller's downfall as he stepped ashore into the waiting arms of police. I wanted to see his face as they shoved him in the wagon and whisked him off to Bellevue and mental extinction.
Accordingly, I was very much on time.
Two squad cars and the wagon were parked well out of sight in the warehouse. Cops were behind boxes of cargo with riot guns. The usual Federal services of immigration and customs were all that were in sight, and even though the yacht had not been foreign and really didn't have to clear in, they were on hand in their usual capacity of maximum annoyance and in this case served as cover.
I spotted Grafferty.
"I want this (bleepard)," Police Inspector Grafferty said. "I spotted him in a sex-pervert lineup three years ago and have just been waiting for him to make his first misstep. And now he has: He's brought himself to the attention of a psychiatrist. Fatal every time. And speaking of psychiatrists, what happened to your face?"
"Skateboards at point-blank range," I said.
"Oh, yeah. I remember now. You're the Fed that tipped us off about the Skateboard Bandits. I never forget a face. We never caught them, you know. But thanks for the tip. I wish this yacht would hurry up and come in."
"Busy day?" I said.
"Yeah, I've got to organize a police escort for the mayor's wife. She's going to make a speech tonight on the subject of mental health and she always drives the audience crazy. There comes the yacht now."
The Golden Sunset was coming up the Hudson. A tug got a line aboard her and took her in tow for the last quarter mile. She was a beautiful ship, all white with gold scrolls, more like a cruise liner than a yacht. The red Turkish flag with its yellow star and crescent floated out from her taffrail in the Hudson River breeze. Gulls were spiralling around. Helicopters from the nearby heliport added to the busy scene.
The tug, with many toots going back and forth from the yacht bridge to the tug pilothouse, nudged her into the berth. Ye Gods, she was big. I hadn't realized how large two hundred feet and two thousand tons of ship could be.
They were getting a gangway into her opened rail and the Federal mob swarmed aboard to suspect things and annoy people. They weren't in on what we intended. They all came off after a while, bitterly disappointed to have found no Chinese being smuggled in and thwarted in their efforts, by a vigilant crew, to plant contraband.
Now was our chance. People could come off.
Instead of that, two people went on. They were the butler from Heller's condo and Krak's lady's maid.
We watched the gangway and the hawsers. Nobody could get off that ship without our seeing it. We knew better than to go aboard, only to have the quarry sneak ashore behind us.
The butler and the lady's maid, assisted by several crew members, were bringing the Countess Krak's bag-gage to the pier and waiting taxis.
"Where is this guy?" said Grafferty, growing restless.
And there came Captain Bitts.
At the bottom of the gangway, Grafferty stopped him. "You have a passenger. And you better tell me where he is and that he has to come quietly."
"A passenger?" said Bitts. "Oh, you must mean the CIA man."
I lurked behind crates on the dock. I did not want to be seen. Also, I wanted to be out of the road of gunfire. I knew Heller's habits.
"I mean this man!" said Grafferty, displaying a blowup of Wister.
"Yeah," said Captain Bitts. "That man." He gazed back at the ship. "Well, he wanted us to teach him how to shoot dice. I don't know how he did it. He won back his marker. Then he won all my cash. And then he won all the crew's cash. And finally, he offered to bet us all he'd won against our putting him ashore if he could shoot five sevens in a row. Of course, that's impossible, so we made the wager."
Grafferty was impatient. "Well, WHAT HAPPENED?"
Bitts sighed. "The worst of it was, we afterwards sawed the dice in half and they weren't even loaded. So we put him ashore last night on the Jersey coast. By the way, as you're a cop, could you let me have two bits so I can phone the credit company and get some money? There's not a dime left on the ship. We're cleaned out."
I drew back quickly. Grafferty was raving about illegal landings and Bitts was replying about New Jersey wasn't New York, and when did the CIA become illegal aliens? It was pretty messy. I got out of there.
The dirty, filthy sneak! Typical of Heller!
That ceiling I had seen him looking at early this morning must have been a motel! And Gods knew where.
Oh, this was not going well!
As I grabbed a taxi at the West 30th Street Heliport, close to hand, I looked back at the yacht.
Suddenly, just like that, I got a terrific PLAN!
Even if all went wrong, left and right, I was not lost after all!
The plan was utterly brilliant!
Chapter 4
The evening stint was only made endurable by the fact that I had an out.
Teenie came by to b
rag about how well she was doing in school and how wonderful it was to have a competent lot of instructors at last.
"There's nothing like a proper education," she told the two lesbians of the evening as she helped them undress. "Some men find the passive mode most inviting. When you see them naked, you fall back and look exactly like you are dead. You "
"GET HER OUT OF HERE!" I roared.
Adora was upbraiding me instantly. "You unfeeling brute. One must encourage the young in their school work! Not bellow at them! There, there, Teenie. Did he hurt your feelings?"
"Nothing that a new skateboard wouldn't heal," said Teenie. "He dented it and bent a wheel. I've got to go to a night class on advanced orgiastics. There's a sporting-goods mart open, and if I leave right now I'll have time to get a new skateboard. It's only two hundred dollars."
Anything to get rid of her. I grabbed out the two hundred dollars and threw them at her. Before I could put my roll back she slipped off another twenty. "There's tax," she said, and sailed away, spinning the books upon their strap and laughing gaily about something I could not make out.
"What a little dear," sighed Adora. "And such opportunities are opening up. Before you came home, Candy, she was telling me that she had a Hollywood offer to star in a picture of her own, / Was a Teen-age Porno Queen"
I was about to say that I'd heard lies before but that was probably the biggest yet. But I stopped myself in time.
The two lesbians had stripped by now and lay upon the bed. One of them said, "Passive mode? Let me see if I can do it." And she laid back like she was dead.
That did it. It took two bhongs before I could perform on the first one and another before I could even touch the second.
Finally I managed it. I felt stoned but relaxed. The walls were sagging in and going away while Adora made her sales pitch to the now ex-lesbians. It was nice to be so detached.
And then suddenly I wasn't.
The wife member of the team had just said, "Oh, this real thing really is good. I never in my life thought anyone could get that much bang out of a bang. But I don't think once in three weeks is often enough."
Mission Earth 07: Voyage of Vengeance Page 9