Hail Hibbler

by Ron Goulart

  “Um … excuse my bringing this … delicate subject up in front of you, Hildy.” The Secretary of Big Business studied his wide knees. “It seems Kazee had a hobby. He … um … I know this sounds strange and unusual. The man videotaped all his … you know, when he went to bed with anyone … with a lady, I mean, since there was nothing that unusual about him … he made a video cassette of it.”

  Hildy said, “Lots of people do that, Roots.”

  “They do?” He stared, blinked at her. “You folks don’t. Do you?”

  “We don’t, no,” she replied. “Though it isn’t my idea of bizarre.”

  “Well, Kazee’s valet told the GLA police that just four of the cassettes were stolen after the murder.”

  Jake asked, “Four out of how many?”

  “Four out of 7,008.”

  Hildy made a small whistling sound with her tongue against her teeth. “Seven thousand, that’s bordering on the bizarre now.”

  “All the missing cassettes are devoted to the same girl?” said Jake.

  “Yes, exactly,” answered Stackhouse. “Every single one which featured this one particular young woman is missing, but no other.”

  “We ought to find the girl,” suggested Jake, “and talk to her.”

  “That’s what the three agents who got killed were up to,” the Secretary of Big Business told them.

  CHAPTER 3

  “SHE CAN’T POSSIBLY HAVE a nose like that.”

  “Agreed. This particular GLA police artist used to be a cartoonist.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Hildy, returning her full attention to the controls of the skycar.

  Jake responded, “Recognize his style.”

  “I keep forgetting you’re an expert on American graphic humor.”

  “World graphic humor,” he modified. “Bet you the guy who did this comp sketch of Angel Tolliver is the same one who used to do a comic strip about a turnip. Thing was entitled Produce and—”

  “Angel Tolliver’s nose does have a certain turnipness about it.”

  “This artist also did the Klassik Komix adaptation of Ellison’s Rockabilly a few—”

  “In all that microfiche material Roots dumped on us, that’s the only picture of the girl?”

  Jake glanced away from the fiche reader mounted in the dash of his side of the cabin. “Rosy-fingered dawn.”

  “Hum?”

  “I was waxing poetic about the sunrise.”

  Hildy gave a small yawn. “About Angel?”

  “The only known pictures of her are in the four missing vid cassettes,” said Jake. “This drawing, complete with silly nose, was put together from descriptions from the few living people who saw her.”

  “Fax central doesn’t have a thing?”

  “Nope. According to them there is no such person as Angel Tolliver.”

  “She used an alias when she slept with Kazee.”

  “Yeah, but Fax ran this sketch through the Match File and didn’t come up with any possibles. Under any name.”

  “Little wonder, with such an inept picture.”

  “Could also be somebody’s trying to erase her identity and all records of it.”

  “Expensive.”

  “People involved in vast conspiracies usually have big budgets.”

  Jake punched the scanner’s shift button, causing several more frames of microfiche to pass in review.

  Their skycar continued westward at an altitude of slightly over 5,000 feet, speeding into daylight

  “Funny,” said Jake eventually.

  “Someone else with a whimsical nose?”

  “This shot of Kazee’s body.”

  “Don’t start criticizing his dimple. The poor guy is dead and gone so—”

  “No, it’s the way he’s laid out”

  Hildy glanced over at the foot-square screen. “You mean the arm?”

  “Left arm folded across his chest.” Jake hunched forward, squinting at the color shot. “Reminds me of somebody’s MO.”

  “A ritual killer?”

  “Hired killer, expensive one.” He settled back in his seat. “Can’t get the name dredged up, but I know there’s at least one assassin I’ve heard of some place who always leaves his victims in that position. Have to check.”

  “Any other hunches?”

  Jake straightened. “I don’t have hunches. Odd Jobs, Inc., works on facts.”

  “Based on the facts, what do you think’s going on?”

  “We can assume State Kazee really had something this time. The killing doesn’t look like the work of an irate husband or boyfriend. Too big a budget. Hiring an assassin, sabotaging Government records. Takes dough.”

  “A rich irate husband could swing it.”

  “Let the GLA cops chase that angle.”

  “Seven thousand irate lovers is going to take some time.”

  “Some of the ladies probably appear on more than one cassette.”

  “Oh, then they only have to inquire of maybe 3,000 or so.”

  Jake gazed out into the growing dawn brightness. “Suppose Angel Tolliver, whoever she may be, was the source of Kazee’s forthcoming exposé,” he said. “That’d explain why she’s missing, along with any evidence she existed.”

  “Seems to me just as likely she killed him,” said Hildy. “She was with him the night he was killed, she had a perfect way to get within his walls.”

  “She wasn’t the killer.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s not the one I’m trying to dredge up, the one who always leaves ’em this way. It’s a guy.”

  “So Angel gets into the place, then lets the killer in.”

  Jake shook his head, pushed the reverse button on the dash scanner. “Something back a few pages. Yeah, here.” He tapped the faintly green screen. “According to the butler, the girl made her four visits over a period of three months. First visit, then a lapse of a couple months, then three visits in little over a week. Wouldn’t have taken that long to set him up.”

  “Okay, Angel might have been a legit girl friend who got approached by the people who wanted to bump off Kazee.”

  Her husband fiddled with the reader again. “Let’s consider this, Hildy.” He stopped at the police sketch of the missing girl. “The girl may really have a funny nose.”

  “So?”

  “Then why was Kazee sleeping with her?”

  “She’s a great lay.”

  “Or maybe he wasn’t going to bed with her at all.”

  “You really are chock full of old-fashioned notions, Jake. Do you think only raving beauties have the right to—”

  “I think the top-rated newsperson in the country would only put the boots to great-looking broads, yeah,” Jake replied. “If he wanted to interview this girl on the sly, though, he might well have set things up to make it look like just another shack-up. He even stashes the interview material in with all his conquest cassettes.”

  “Wasn’t too good a hiding place. Whoever killed him got the tapes.”

  “He obviously wasn’t expecting that. He figured—”

  “Rocky Mountains,” said Hildy suddenly.

  “I’ve seen them. Let me concentrate on—”

  “We’re heading right down into them.”

  Their skycar had tilted its nose, was plummeting straight for the jagged mountain range 5,000 feet below.

  Jake grabbed hold of the alternate controls, struggled. “Fooey!”

  “My sentiments exactly,” said Hildy. “The damn crate isn’t responding.”

  “Controls are dead. We … hush a minute.” He cupped his ear.

  “What?”

  “Faint whir. Hear it?”

  “All I hear is this skycar rushing us to our doom.”

  Jake unbuckled, swung out of his seat. “Apparently our security system is not without flaw.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Somebody with a big budget outfoxed it.” He snatched a tool kit off the cabin wall, sprinted to the emergency hatch
in the ship’s floor.

  “You’re telling me someone managed to plant a parasite control box on us?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’d be telling you if I had time.” He strapped the kit to his chest, knelt and popped the hatch. The lid dropped open. “I can hear the damn thing whirring under here.”

  “Jake, don’t get killed. Okay?”

  The Rockies continued to rush up toward them.

  “That’s high on my list. Stand by to pull us out of this dive soon as the controls unfreeze.” He lowered himself swiftly through the hole in the cabin floor.

  Dangling under the down-rushing craft, Jake felt like a flag in a windstorm.

  You ought to be able to come up with a better simile than that, he mentioned to himself while reaching to catch hold of the landing gear.

  There was an incredible roar all around him; an enormous elevator-drop feeling had hold of him.

  “Ha!” He spotted the parasite. A small circular metal box clamped to the hull some five feet from where he dangled.

  Jake worked his way toward it, using both hands to clutch the rods of the landing gear.

  When he was close enough he read the warning neatly stenciled on the box.

  This dingus is rigged to explode if you fuck around with it, buddy!

  The Rockies were speeding ever nearer.

  Jake got the tool kit open one-handed, fished a tool of his own invention out of a slot. Slamming the lid, he made a swing with the six-inch metal rod.

  “I’m wondering now if I field-tested this disabler near enough. Well, we’ll see.”

  The parasite box began to whir much louder the instant he applied the buzzing rod to its shell.

  Jake temporarily shut off his breathing.

  The whirring grew even louder. Then the box made a huge rattling click.

  The skycar pulled free of its dive. Jake’s insides felt as if they were practicing acrobatics.

  Waiting until the skycar had climbed and leveled off, he eased back up through the floor hole.

  Hildy had come down to give him a pull up. “Got it on automatic.”

  Jake rose into the cabin, turned a deft somersault and stood on his feet.

  Hildy shut and fastened the emergency hatch. “A very impressive performance,” she said.

  “It was,” agreed her husband.

  CHAPTER 4

  JAKE POPPED A PINKISH square of gum into his mouth. “Not exactly cozy,” he observed.

  “For a hideaway, it’s not bad.” Hildy tossed her suitcase across the threshold of the roofless room which had been set up in the center of the vast warehouse. “By the way, since when did you—”

  “Maintain a discreet silence,” he advised in a low voice. “Go in, unpack, freshen up.”

  “Something?”

  “Gosh, what a fascinating setup,” Jake said loudly. “Think I’ll take a look around. Imagine, my dear, all the exhibits from the old Cowboy Wax Museum have been stored here. What a wealth of memorabilia.”

  “Um” Hildy, left eye narrowed, followed her luggage into the room made of flats and prop furniture.

  Jake, hands in pockets, teeth slowly working on the wad of gum, strolled into the shadows. “My, just look at this. Here’s Don ‘Red’ Barry. Never saw anything so lifelike.” He paused to inspect the Western-garbed wax figure, one of dozens which cluttered the warehouse.

  The wax statues represented most of the motion-picture cowboys of the last century. A few were missing limbs, ears or noses, others wore the wrong Stetson.

  “Golly, here’s Sunset Carson, Tom Tyler, Will Bill Elliott, Big Boy Williams, Wally Wales, Tim McCoy, Ken Maynard, Buck Rainey, Rex Lease and … a ringer!”

  “Who was that last one?” his wife called from their hideaway bedroom.

  Jake had meanwhile lunged, grabbing the cowboy off his low pedestal.

  “Ouch, ouch, hey, lay off!” protested the figure.

  “Statues don’t breathe,” Jake pointed out as he tugged the young man’s arm behind his back.

  “I was holding my breath.”

  “Not quite well enough. Who the hell are you?”

  “Oh, merely a cowboy nostalgia buff.”

  “Dressed in chaps and sombrero?”

  “Doesn’t it seem logical for a fanatic to dress like this? I mean, being goofy over the cinema cowpokes of yesteryear, I’d naturally—”

  “Haven’t got time for bandinage.” Jake spun the young intruder around so he was facing him. Then he exhaled into his puzzled face. “I’m chewing a special sort of gum I invented. What you’ve just had a whiff of is a powerful new and irresistible truth gas.”

  “It smells like spearmint to me.”

  “Wouldn’t be subtle to have it smell like truth gas.”

  “You could fool me, since I’ve never sniffed real truth … no, take that back. That’s an outright lie. Once when the Federals broke into my grandmother’s candy store to question the old girl about her dealings in illicit brainstimmers, they gave the old bimbo a good whiff of the stuff. Out of a spray gun. Never much liked Granny. Fat old broad with a mole the size of a rat’s nose right here on her—”

  “I’m interested in more recent truths. Who are you?” inquired Jake, giving him another exhalation. “What’s your name?”

  “I’d rather not tell you.”

  “C’mon, you have to. You’re under the spell of a powerful drug.”

  “Hey, I am at that,” the glassy-eyed young man realized. “Now don’t laugh when I tell you my name. Okay?”

  “Agreed.”

  “Well, my name is Harlow Titts.”

  Jake didn’t laugh. “You could always change it.”

  “Family pride rules that out,” replied Titts. “See, as a lad I got heavily involved in my family roots. The Titts have played a prominent part in our nation’s history. Because, however, we’re stuck with such a silly name, the history books have glossed over the Titts’ heritage. That’s why Titts’ Midnight Ride is so little known, as well as Titts’ Gettysburgh Address, Titt’s Last Stand, the Titts Doctrine, the Message to Titts and—”

  “Who sent you?”

  “No one.”

  “Who do you work for, Harlow?”

  “The Columbia Wallvision System.”

  “CWS,” said Hildy, who’d joined Jake near the spurious statue. “That’s Statz Kazee’s network.”

  “I was Publicity Director for Statz’s Muckcast,” admitted Titts. “I believe there’s a lot more to his untimely death than meets the eye. I’ve been nosing around on my own. When I learned you folks were going to be holed up here during your visit to CalSouth I snuck—”

  “Whoa now,” put in Jake. “Roots Stackhouse arranged for us to stay here, assuring us nobody would even be told about it. How’d you tumble?”

  “A leak in Stackhouse’s office.”

  “Who?”

  “Sunny Lincoln.”

  “Christ, Sunny Lincoln’s the other genealogy-crazed idiot on Roots’ staff.”

  “If Abraham Lincoln had raped your great-great-great-grandmother,” said Titts, “you might well be interested in your family tree the way Sunny—”

  “Who else knows we’re here?”

  “Me, Sunny, Mr. Stackhouse, Emily Sue Bunnbridge, Count Hugo Bentencourt, a Mr.—”

  “Who might they all be?” asked Jake.

  “Emily Sue’s my confidential secretary. The others happened to be waiting in the reception room to try out for a new CWS show called Almost, dealing with people who just miss being great and signif—”

  “How come they know?”

  “Well, there was some sort of foul-up with my phone, it’s been quirky all week,” replied Titts. “Sometimes the pix show up out in the reception room on the big view wall. This was one of—”

  “Let’s get back to Kazee,” said Jake, scowling. “Who do you think knocked the guy off?”

  “Powerful forces.”

  “Such as?”

  “Don’t know yet. I’m still dig
ging. Angel Tolliver was providing Statz with some very startling info.”

  “You know what it was?”

  “No, except it was something which would shake the foundations of the entire business community, screw up the economy and play havoc with life as we live it.”

  “Those missing cassettes,” asked Hildy, “did you take ’em?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Do you know what was on them?”

  “Startling info. Everything Angel had reported to Statz up until his death.”

  Jake inquired, “Do you know where the girl is?”

  “Gone to ground somewhere.”

  “Not dead?”

  “I have a very strong hunch she’s al—”

  “I get my own hunches,” Jake interrupted. “Did you know the girl?”

  “Met her once, at Statz’s.”

  “Was she pretty?”

  “Sure, except for the fake nose.”

  “Fake?”

  “The nose was a very believable plaz fake,” said Titts. “See, before I went into PR, I worked for a drivein-flyin plaz surgery shop in the Tijuana Sector of GLA. I know all about fake noses, as well as fake ears, fake chins, fake elbows, fake—”

  “Angel was disguised then. Any notion who she really was?”

  “None. Although her real initials might have been A.H.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, she left a pillbox behind at Statz’s once, with those initials on it.”

  “Where’s the thing now?”

  “Gone. I hunted around for it after the murder. No luck.”

  Glancing at his red-haired wife, Jake said, “Further?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  Jake guided Titts over to a cracked and dusty saddle which rested on a realwood sawhorse. After propping him in it, he advised, “Stay here until you recuperate, then go home.”

  “I could tell you lots more about how I loathed my granny.”

  “Not too pertinent.” Jake took Hildy’s bare arm, led her some feet off until they were in the shadow of Randolph Scott and Hoot Gibson.

  “Easy, Jake, you almost shoved me into Tex Ritter on the way over here.”

  “We are going to have to relocate,” he told her. “And we won’t tell Stackhouse where well be operating from while in CalSouth.”