by Barbara Paul
Then came the tricky part. Snooks instructed Algren to countermand all posthypnotic instructions—his instructions to change the shipping arrangements for Lipan, to respond to both the recall trigger and the reinforcing lines of poetry.
Algren started by repeating an address in New York. “Do you recognize the address?”
“Yes,” Megan said. “It’s a warehouse where I’m to route the second shipment of Lipan.”
New York? Not Los Angeles? Oh, sure, Gus thought. If everything had gone according to plan, the Los Angeles warehouses would have been burned by now. That was where Megan was to send the domestic shipments; the New York address must be for the overseas consignment.
“When will you reroute the Lipan shipments?” Algren asked Megan.
“When I receive a message over the phone.”
“What is that message?”
“Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.”
“Hamlet,” Gus said promptly.
“Clever,” Snooks murmured in appreciation of Algren’s technique. “Getting her to recall the trigger phrase herself.”
“You will not redirect the Lipan shipments to the New York warehouse. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“When you receive the message over the phone, it will mean nothing to you. ‘Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind’ is just a line of poetry, nothing else. Listen carefully. ‘Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.’ What does that mean to you?”
“It’s a line of poetry,” Megan said.
“Anything else?”
“No, just poetry.”
Literary bunch of crooks, Snooks thought. And Algren was a damned good hypnotist. What a waste.
Algren repeated the process with the full-fathom-five lines, and then went back over the whole thing once again. When he’d finished, Snooks instructed him to do it a third time.
All that was left to do was to test it. Snooks said to Algren, “Instruct her that she will remember everything that’s happened during this session.”
Algren did as he was told.
“Now bring her back.”
“I am going to count backward from five,” he told Megan. “Before I reach the number one, you will be fully awake. You will remember everything that’s happened. I’m going to start counting now. Five, four, three—”
“Yes, yes,” said Megan. She looked disoriented for a few seconds, but quickly turned her attention to Algren.
Then she went for him.
But Snooks had anticipated her. She interposed her big body between Megan and Algren. “Don’t,” she said sharply. “You’ve already had one whack at him tonight. He’s just the hired help anyway, Megan. Save your anger for Sperling.”
Megan turned away, said nothing.
Snooks cleared her throat. “Full fathom five thy father lies.”
“Can that, Snooks. It’s over now.”
Snooks and Gus exchanged a grin. Gus said, “Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.”
“Gus, I tell you it’s over,” Megan said. “I remember it all. I remember that horrible plastic apartment in Sewickley. I remember Sperling, and the other man, Ferris, the driver. Ferris went out for food. They made me eat things I hate, they wouldn’t let me wash. They made me wait when I needed to use the bathroom. Sometimes they kept me standing in one spot for hours.” She shuddered. “Horrible people.” Gus went over and patted her shoulder.
Snooks gave a big sigh. “We still have him to take care of. Since I don’t have facilities here for holding prisoners, I think we’d best send him home.” She turned to Algren. “Where did you park your car?”
“It’s in the garage. For repairs.”
“How did you plan on getting home?”
“Taxi.”
Gus went to the phone and called a cab.
Snooks told Algren he would wake up in the cab on the way home, and he wouldn’t remember what had happened during the evening. He’d remember leaving his office and walking to the elevator, where he’d wait for the car alone. He’d remember riding down in the elevator, alone. Then he’d remember getting into the cab. Nothing in between—not the bar called Out in Left Field or Snooks’s office.
“Cab’s here,” Gus said from the window.
“There is a taxi waiting for you out front,” Snooks told Algren. “You will give the driver your home address. Go now.”
Without a word Algren rose and left the office. Snooks and Megan joined Gus at the window, where the three of them watched Algren get into the cab and ride off.
“It’s over?” Gus said. “It’s really over?”
“Our part is,” Snooks said. “Megan’s mind is her own again.”
Megan put her hands on the psychiatrist’s shoulders. “How can I even begin to thank you?”
“Name your next drug after me.”
Gus walked over to the tape recorder and removed the cartridge. “So now what do we do with this? Take it to the police?”
“No,” Megan said, reaching for it. “To a man named Ziegler.”
CHAPTER 15
The two men listened to the tape in horrified fascination. One was Sid Ziegler, dressed in suit and tie even though the hour was getting on toward 4 A.M. The other man was less formally attired; he was one of Glickman’s attorneys, a man named Payton, summoned at Megan’s insistence.
Megan had put her career on the line when she called Mr. Ziegler. She’d had to tell him she had evidence Dillon Laboratories was trying to sabotage Glickman’s release of Lipan on the European market. When he heard that, he’d agreed to meet her immediately in spite of the hour. All five of them were in Mr. Ziegler’s office; Megan and Snooks and Gus had taken turns telling the story, editing out all the events of Thursday evening. They capped it by playing the tape.
When the tape came to an end, there was a silence. Then Ziegler remarked, “I always knew Lloyd Sperling had a devious mind. But to think up something like this.…” He shook his head in wonder.
Payton said, “You know that tape can’t be used as evidence in court.”
“I know,” Ziegler said. “We have to keep the tape from the police anyway.”
Of the five, only Gus was surprised. “Why?”
“For one thing,” Megan said dryly, “I’d prefer not to go to jail for kidnapping and assault.”
Snooks added, “And I’d like to hold on to my license a little longer, if you don’t mind.”
That was something Gus hadn’t allowed himself to think about yet. Automatically he looked to the legal expert in the room.
“They’re right,” Payton said. “Algren could bring charges against all three of you and make them stick.”
“In spite of what he did to Megan?”
“Two separate cases, Bilinski. You could charge him with kidnapping and mental assault—but once you tried to introduce that tape, he’d have you. The tape would be the basis of his suit against you, and he’d win. And without the tape, you have no case against him.”
“Jeez.” Disgustedly. “So what do we do?”
Ziegler said, “Let’s consider our options. Since we’re agreed we don’t turn the tape over to the police …?” He paused, looked politely to Gus.
Gus shrugged, nodded.
“Option number one. We send Sperling a copy of the tape, let him know we’re on to him. We say we’re going to turn it over to the police—unless he agrees to certain terms.”
“Wouldn’t work,” Payton said. “He’d know we couldn’t use the tape without incriminating Ms Phillips and her friends.”
“But he wouldn’t know we were unwilling to incriminate them,” Ziegler said smoothly. “We could make it clear that we’d send them to jail if that’s what it took to nail Dillon Laboratories—”
“Why do I suddenly feel uneasy?” Gus blurted out.
Ziegler shot him a quick, practiced smile that did nothing to reassure him. “Don’t worry, Bilinski, we have no intention of letting you go to jail. But Sperling doesn
’t have to know that. He—”
“Hold it,” Snooks interrupted. “No private deal. I can’t agree to that. I don’t know what you have in mind, Mr. Ziegler—taking over Dillon Laboratories, perhaps? Okay, that’s fine by me. But there’s only one thing I want out of this, and that’s to see Harrison Algren discredited publicly. I don’t particularly have any strong yearning to see him behind bars—”
“I do,” Megan muttered.
“—but I want to make sure that man is never again in a position to do to someone what he did to Megan. That means I want the full machinery of the law set in operation against him. You can’t have that and a private deal too. You want to get Sperling, I want to get Algren. We are going to have to bring the police in.”
“Hey, Snooks,” said Gus, surprised. “What made you change your mind?”
“I didn’t want the police brought in until we got Megan deprogrammed,” Snooks explained. “They might have provoked Algren into doing something drastic to her. But now it’s a different story. Megan’s free of Algren—so let’s put him away.”
“Dr. Snooks,” Mr. Ziegler said with a great show of patience, “in the first place, there’s no way we can take over Dillon Laboratories just by applying pressure to Lloyd Sperling. He’s the executive vice president, not the sole owner of the firm. All I had in mind was reaching a working agreement that would be of benefit to Glickman.”
“Blackmail,” Snooks said.
Ziegler didn’t bat an eye. “In the second place, how can you bring in the police without getting yourself into trouble? That tape was obtained illegally—”
“I didn’t mean give them the tape. I meant find some other way of getting the police involved.”
“How?”
“I don’t know—I was hoping you’d have some ideas. But any private arrangement you’d make with Sperling and Dillon would let Algren go free, and that just won’t do.”
“I understand your concern, but—”
“I’m not sure you do, Mr. Ziegler. Sperling’s the instigator, but none of this could have happened without the services of a skilled hypnotist. If Algren could be bought once, he can be bought again.”
Megan frowned; Snooks wasn’t saying the right things. “Mr. Ziegler,” she interrupted, “what will happen to Dillon Laboratories stock prices if what Sperling did is made public?”
“They’ll drop. Slightly. Not enough to do Glickman any good. One sour apple in a firm the size of Dillon won’t sink the ship,” Ziegler said, mixing metaphors with indifference.
“But that’s my point,” Megan persisted. “You know Sperling, don’t you? What kind of man is he? Would he have initiated something like this on his own?”
Ziegler leaned back in his chair, one finger across his lips. Thinking.
“No,” Payton said unexpectedly. “He’s too careful.”
Ziegler sent him a look of faint surprise. “I didn’t know you knew him.”
“We were both with Upjohn at the same time, nine or ten years ago. He might have thought it up on his own, but he wouldn’t have taken a unilateral risk. He’d have gone to the president or the board chairman first.”
“So?” Megan asked. “Is he the kind of man who’d talk to save his own neck?”
Ziegler and Payton exchanged a look, and nodded in unison. “He is,” Ziegler said. “And if hypnotizing you was a corporate decision, Dillon shares will plummet. Especially if we can get a conviction.”
“Also, we shouldn’t overlook the publicity value,” Megan said. “What better way to demonstrate the value of Lipan than to show a competitor committing criminal acts to stop our distribution?”
Ziegler waved a hand dismissively; that was the first thing he’d thought of.
“I think Dr. Snooks is right,” Megan pressed on. “Making this whole thing public is the best weapon we can use against them.”
Snooks raised an eyebrow; she hadn’t said that. Oh well—Megan seemed to know what she was doing.
Ziegler had one reservation. “That’s all very well and good, if we can bring it off.” He turned to Payton. “Do we have a way of interesting the police without giving them the tape?”
The attorney had been thinking. “I could have a word with Margaret Wallace in the District Attorney’s office. She could order an investigation—I don’t know how thorough it’d be, though.”
Snooks sighed. “Same old problem. How are the police going to get any evidence?”
“Through interrogation, probably,” Payton said. “They’ve got three people to work on, remember. Sperling, Algren, and the driver—Ferris? It’s not likely they’ll find anyone at this late date who’ll remember seeing any of the three with Ms Phillips, but they might be able to locate the Sewickley apartment where she was taken. There’ll be fingerprints, other signs—”
“Too iffy,” Ziegler said. “If we go public on this, I’d like to have something more to go on than just the chance that the police might find something. Not the tape, of course. But something.”
Payton was shaking his head. “Don’t know what it could be. There isn’t anything. We’re going to have to depend on regular police procedure.”
“No, we don’t,” Gus said unexpectedly. “There’s something we can do.”
Four heads swiveled toward him. Snooks said, “Gus, you were always the one who wanted to call the police.”
“I mean there’s something we can do with the police.” Gus sounded froggy; he stopped to clear his throat. “I don’t think there’s any way to prove what they did to Megan or why. But if we could trick them into doing it again—and then catch them in the act—”
“What are you talking about, Gus?” Megan asked.
“Well, look. Right now Harrison Algren is at home sound asleep. When he wakes up in a few hours, he’s going to have a bad headache—but he won’t have any memory of what happened last night. As far as he knows, Megan is still programmed to respond to his instructions. So say the next time he calls her to reinforce the hypnotic suggestion, she doesn’t respond the way she’s supposed to. What would Algren and Sperling do then?”
It was Ziegler who answered. “Start all over? Rehypnotize her …”
“Now, wait a minute!” Megan protested. “You want to use me as bait? Make me go through all that again?”
“Not all of it, Megan,” Gus said. “Just enough for the police to get their evidence.”
“Well.” She looked at him indignantly. “Thanks a lot, friend.”
“Aw, Megan.”
Payton said, “You know, it might work. It just might. You’d probably have to go to Sewickley with them—if they take you to the same place. But once you’re there—”
“You’re pretty damned cavalier about sending me back into that nest of hornets!” Megan protested. “Do you realize what you’re asking me to do? I’ll have to let that ghoul inject me with a drug and hypnotize me, and then Snooks will have to hypnotize him to deprogram me again, and—”
“That may not be necessary, Megan,” Snooks said. “There’s another way. Remember the law of temporal precedence? When two contradictory hypnotic suggestions are given, the one that’s given first is the one that’s obeyed. I can give you a posthypnotic suggestion to resist all suggestions made to you by Harrison Algren—it’ll act as a kind of block.”
The other four were all staring at her. Then Gus laughed and leaned over and patted her on the shoulder.
“Will it really work?” Megan demanded.
“I can’t guarantee it, of course, but it should work.”
“But the drug, Snooks—he used a drug on me.”
“I can use the same one. Algren said he used sodium pentothal—stop making faces, Megan, it won’t hurt you. I’ll take you down as deeply as I can. I’m about as sure as I can be that you’ll be able to resist everything he tells you.”
Megan looked so miserable that Gus decided she needed a pat on the shoulder too. “You won’t have to go through the whole weekend again, Megan. It won’t be like
the last time.”
“It’s a terrible thing to ask of you, Ms Phillips,” Ziegler said. “If you can’t bring yourself to do it, no one is going to force you.” He did not say the next sentence, the one that started with But.
Megan looked at him and thought: Vice President of Marketing and Distribution. Hell. Hell and damnation. “All right,” she sighed. “I’ll do it.”
“Thank you,” he smiled. “You can be sure the board will learn of your contribution.” Ziegler turned to Payton. “Your contact in the District Attorney’s office—will she go for the plan?”
Payton grinned broadly. “She’ll eat it up.”
“You’re sure,” Megan said to Snooks.
“Pretty sure,” Snooks answered.
Payton had some instructions for Megan. “Don’t answer the phone until Sunday night. We don’t want them coming after you at home. If he calls Sunday night, give wrong answers—they won’t be able to do anything until the next day. The police will have a better case if Algren kidnaps you out of Glickman’s offices instead of your home. Monday will be the earliest—that’ll give the police time to get set up.”
Once the decision was made, all five of them simultaneously became aware of the lateness of the hour and their own fatigue. Megan and Snooks and Gus stood to go, but Ziegler wouldn’t let them escape without the obligatory stroking.
“Megan, I have to tell you I’m impressed by the way you’ve handled this whole frightening affair,” he said. “Impressed but not surprised—I’ve felt all along you’d be good in a crisis.”
So it was Megan now instead of Ms Phillips. “Thank you, Sid.”
Snooks was next. “Dr. Snooks, without your expertise we’d never have learned the truth of this matter. You’ll find we’re not ungrateful. By the way, have you ever considered doing psychiatric consulting work for industry?”
“I have indeed.”
“Perhaps we can talk when this is over?”
“I’m in the book.”
Gus shifted his weight nervously and cast a longing glance at the door. His turn.
“Mr. Bilinski, what can I say? Your resourcefulness and perseverance are astonishing—qualities we admire here at Glickman. We’re always on the lookout for bright young men like you. How would you like to come work for us?”