The illuminatus! trilogy

by Robert Shea; Robert Anton Wilson

  “Without private property there can be no private decisions.”

  “So we’re back where we started from?”

  “No, we’re one flight higher up on the spiral staircase. Look at it that way. Dialectically, as your Marxist friends say.”

  “But we are back at private property. After proving it’s an impossible fiction.”

  “The Statist form of private property is an impossible fiction. Just like the Statist form of communal property is an impossible fiction. Think outside the State framework, George. Think of property in freedom.”

  George shook his head. “It beats the hell out of my ass. All I can see is people ripping each other off. The war of all against all, as what’s-his-name said.”

  “Hobbes.”

  “Hobbes, snobs, jobs. Whoever. Or whatever. Isn’t he right?”

  “Stop the motor on this submarine.”

  “What?”

  “Force me to love you.”

  “Wait, I don’t …”

  “Turn the sky green or red, instead of blue.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  Mavis took a pen off the desk and held it between two fingers. “What happens when I let go of this?”

  “It falls.”

  “Where do you sit if there are no chairs?”

  “On the floor?” If I wasn’t so stoned, I would have had it by then. Sometimes drugs are more a hindrance than a help. “On the ground?” I added.

  “On your ass, that’s for sure.” Mavis said. “The point is, if the chairs all go away, you still sit. Or you build new chairs.” She was stoned, too; otherwise she’d be explaining it better, I realized. “But you can’t stop the motor without learning something about marine engineering first. You don’t know what switch to puil. Or switches. And you can’t change the sky. And the pen will fall without a gravity-governing demon rushing into the room to make it fall.”

  “Shit and pink petunias,” I said disgustedly. “L. this some form of Thomism? Are you trying to sell me the Natural Law argument? I can’t buy that at all.”

  “Okay, George. Here’s the next jolt. Keep your asshole tight.” She spoke to the wall, to a hidden microphone, I guessed. “Send him in now.”

  The Robot is easily upset; my sphincter was already tightening as soon as she warned me there was a jolt coming and she didn’t really need to add that bit about my asshole. Carlo and his gun. Hagbard and his gun. Drake’s mansion. I took a deep breath and waited to see what the Robot would do.

  A panel in the wall opened and Harry Coin was pushed into the room. I had time to think that I should have guessed, in this game where both sides were playing with illusion constantly, Coin’s death could have been faked, artificial intestines dangling and all, and of course Mavis and her raiders could have taken him out of Mad Dog jail even before they took me out of course, and I remembered the pain when he slapped my face and when his cock entered me, and the Robot was already moving, and I hardly had time to aim of course, and then his head was banging against the wall, blood spurting from his nose, and I had time to clip him again on the jaw as he went down of course, and then I came all the way back and stopped myself as I was about to kick him in the face as he lay there unconscious. Zen in the art of face-punching. I had knocked a man out with two blows; I who hated Hemingway and Machismo so much that I’d never taken a boxing lesson in my life. I was breathing hard, but it was good and clean, the feeling of after-an-orgasm; the adrenalin was flowing, but a fight reflex instead of a flight reflex had been triggered, and now it over, and I was calm. A glint in the air: Hagbard’s pistol was in Mavis’s hand, then flying toward me. As I caught it, she said, “Finish the bastard.”

  But the rage had ended when I held back the kick on seeing him already unconscious.

  “No,” I said. “It is finished.”

  “Not until you kill him. You’re no good to us until you’re ready to kill, George.”

  I ignored her and rapped on the wall. “Haul the bastard out,” I said clearly. The panel opened, and two Slavic-looking seamen, grinning, grabbed Coin’s arms and dragged him out. The panel closed again, quietly.

  “I don’t kill on command,” I said, turning back to Mavis. “I’m not a German shepherd or a draftee. My case with him is settled, and if you want him dead, do the dirty work yourself.”

  But Mavis was smiling placidly. “Is that a Natural Law?” she asked.

  And twenty-three hours later Tobias Knight listened to the voice in his earphones: “That’s the problem. I can’t remember. But if you leave me alone for a while maybe it’ll come back to me.” Smoothing his mustache nervously, Knight set the button for automatic record, removed the earphones and buzzed Esperando Despond’s office.

  “Despond,” the intercom said.

  “The CIA has one. A man who was with the girl after Mocenigo. Send somebody down for the tape—it’s got a pretty good description of the girl.”

  “Wilco,” Despond said tersely. “Anything else?”

  “He thinks he might remember the name of her next customer. She mentioned it to him. We might get that, too.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Despond said and clicked off. He sat back in his chair and addressed the three agents in his office. “The guy we’ve got—what’s his name? Naismith—is probably the next customer. We’ll check the two descriptions of the girl against each other and get a much more accurate picture than the CIA has, since they’re working from only one description.”

  But fifteen minutes later, he was staring in puzzlement at the chart which had been chalked on the blackboard:

  DESCRIPTIONS OF SUSPECT

  First Witness Second Witness

  Height 5′2″ 5′5″

  Weight 90-100 lbs 110-115 lbs

  Hair Black Blond

  Race Negro Caucasian

  Name or alias Bonnie Sarah

  Scars, etc. None Scar on throat

  Age Late teens Mid-twenties

  Sex Female Female

  A tall, bearish agent named Roy Ubu said thoughtfully, “I’ve never seen two eyewitness descriptions match exactly, but this …”

  A small, waspish agent named Buzz Vespa snapped, “One of them is lying for some reason. But which one?”

  “Neither of them has any reason to lie,” Despond said. “Gentlemen, we’ve got to face the facts. Dr. Mocenigo was unworthy of the trust that the U.S. government placed in him. He was a degenerate sex maniac. He had two women last night, one of them a Nigra.”

  “What do you mean that little sawed-off bastard is gone?” Peter Kurten of the CIA was shouting at that very moment. “The only way out of his room was right through that door, there, and we’ve all had it under constant surveillance. The door was only opened once when DeSalvo took out the coffee urn to have it refilled at the sandwich shop next door. Oh…my…God…the…coffee…urn …” As he slumped back in his chair, mouth hanging open, an agent with a device that looked like a mine sweeper stepped forward.

  “Daily sweep for FBI bugs, sir,” he said uncomfortably. “I’m afraid the machine is registering one under your desk. If you’ll let me just reach in and…uh…that gets it …”

  And Tobias Knight, listening, heard no more. It would be a few hours, at least, until their man in the CIA was able to plant a new bug.

  And Saul Goodman stepped hard on the brakes of his rented Ford Brontosaurus as a tiny and determined figure, dashing out of the Papa Mescalito Sandwich Shop, ran right in front of the fender. Saul heard a sickening thud and Barney Muldoon’s voice beside him saying, “Oh Christ, no …”

  I was at the end of my ropes. The Syndicate I could see, but why the Feds? I was flabbygastered. I said to that dumb cunt Bonnie Quint, “Are you a thousand percent sure?”

  “Carmel,” she says. “I know the Syndicate. They’re not that smooth. These guys were just what they claimed. Feds.”

  Oh, Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus with egg in his beard. I couldn’t help myself, I just hauled off and bopped her in the kisser, t
he dumb cunt. “What’d you tell them?” I screamed. “What’d you tell them?”

  She started to snivel. “I didn’t tell them nothing,” she says.

  So I had to bop her again. Christ, I hate hitting women, they always blubber so much. “I’ll use the belt,” I howled. “So help me, God, I’ll use the belt. Don’t tell me you didn’t tell them nothing. Everybody tells them something. Even a clam would sing like Sinatra when they’re finished with him. So what’d you tell them?” I bopped her again, Christ, this was terrible.

  “I just told them I wasn’t with this Mocenigo. Which I wasn’t.”

  “So who did you tell them you were with?”

  “I made up a prescription. A midget. A guy I saw on the street. I wouldn’t give the name of a real John, I know that could come back against you. And me.”

  I didn’t know what to do, so I bopped her again. “Go away,” I says. “Be missing. Let me think.”

  She goes out, still blubbering, and I go over to the window and look at the desert to calm my head. My rose fever was starting to act up; it was that time of year. Why did people have to bring roses to the desert? I tried to contemplate hard on the problem and forget my health. There was only one explanation: that damned Mocenigo figured out that Sherri was pumping him and told the Feds. The Syndicate wasn’t in it yet. They were all still running around the East like chickens with their legs cut off, trying to figure who rubbed Maldonado, and why it happened at the house of a straight like this banker Drake. So they hadn’t got the time yet to find out that five million of Banana Nose’s money had disappeared into my own safe as soon as I heard he was dead. The Feds weren’t in on that at all, and the connection was circumsubstantial.

  And then it hit me so hard that I almost fell over. Besides my own girls, who wouldn’t talk, there were a dozen or two cab drivers and bartenders and whatnots who knew that Sherri worked for me. The Feds would get it out of somebody sooner or later, and probably sooner. It was like a light bulb going on over my head in a comic strip: TREASON, AIDING AND ABEDDING THE ENEMY. I remembered from when I was a kid those two Jewish scientists who the Feds got for that. The hot squat. They fried them, Christ Jesus, I thought I’d vomit. Why does the fucking government have to be that way about somebody just trying to make a buck? Even the Syndicate would only shoot you or give you a lead enema, but the cocksucking government has to go and put you in an electrical chair. Christ Jesus, I was hot as a chimney.

  I took a candy out of my pocket and started chewing it, trying to think what to do. If I ran, the Syndicate would guess I was the one who emptied the till when Maldonado was rubbed, and they’d get me. If I didn’t run, the Feds would be at the door with a high treason warrant. It was a double whammy. I might try to highjack a plane to Panama, but I didn’t know nearly enough about Mocenigo’s bugs to make a deal with the Commie government down there. They’d just send me right back. It was hopeless, like trying to fill a three-card inside straight. The only thing to do was find a hole and bury myself.

  And then it was just like a light bulb in my head again, and I thought: Lehman Cave.

  “What does the computer say now?” the President asked the Attorney General.

  “What does the computer say now?” the Attorney General barked into the open phone before him.

  “If the girl had two contacts before she died, at this moment the possible carriers number,” the phone paused, “428,000. If the girl had three contacts, 7,-656,000.”

  “Get the Special Agent in Charge,” the President snapped. He was the calmest man at the table—ever since Fernando Poo, he had been supplementing his Librium, Tofranil and Elovil with Demerol, the amazing little pills that had kept Hermann Goering so chipper and cheerful during the Nuremberg Trials while all the other Nazis crumbled into catatonic, paranoid or other dysfunctional conditions.

  “Despond,” a second open phone said.

  “This is your President,” the President said. “Give it to us straight. Have you treed the coon?”

  “Uh, sir, no, sir. We have to find the procurer, sir. The girl can’t possibly be alive, but we haven’t found her. It is now mathematically certain that somebody hid her body. The obvious theory, sir, is that her procurer, being in an illegal business, hid the body rather than report it. We have two descriptions of the girl, sir, and, uh, although they don’t tally completely they should lead us to her procurer. Of course, he should die soon, sir, and then we’ll find him. That’s the Rubicon of the case, sir. Meanwhile, I’m happy to report, sir, that we’re lucking out amazingly. Only two definite cases off the base so far and both of them injected with the antidote. It is possible, just possible, that the procurer went into hiding after disposing of the body. In that case, he hasn’t contacted another human being and is not spreading it. Sir.”

  “Despond,” the President said, “I want results. Keep us informed. Your country depends on you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tree that coon, Despond.”

  “We will, sir.”

  Esperando Despond turned from the phone as an agent from the computer section entered the room. “Got something?” he snapped nervously.

  “The first girl, the Nigra, sir. She was one of the pros we questioned yesterday. Her name is Bonnie Quint.”

  “You look worried. Is there a hitch?” Despond asked shrewdly.

  “Just another of the puzzles. She didn’t admit being with Mocenigo the night before, but that kind of lying we expected. Here’s what’s weird: her description of the guy she says she was with.” The computer man shook his head dubiously. “It doesn’t fit Naismith, the guy who said he was with her. It fits the little mug, the dwarf, that the CIA grabbed. Only he said she was the second girl.”

  Despond mopped his brow. “What the heck has been going on in this town?” he asked the ceiling. “Some kind of sex orgy?”

  In fact, several kinds of sex orgies had been going on in Las Vegas ever since the Veterans of the Sexual Revolution had arrived two days earlier. The Hugh M. Hefner Brigade had taken two stories of the Sands, hired a herd of professional women, and hadn’t yet come out to join the Alfred Kinsey Brigade, the Norman Mailer Guerrillas and the others in marching up and down the Strip, squirting young girls in the crotch with water pistols, passing bottles of hooch back and forth and generally blocking traffic and annoying pedestrians. Dr. Naismith himself, after a few token appearances, had avoided most of the merriment and retired to a private suite to work on his latest fund-raising letter for the Colossus of Yorba Linda Foundation. Actually, the VSR, like White Heroes Opposing Red Extremism, was one of Naismith’s lesser projects and brought in only peanuts. Most of the real veterans of the sexual revolution had succumbed to syphilis, marriage, children, alimony or some such ailment, and few white heroes were prepared to oppose red extremism in the bizarre manner suggested by Naismith’s pamphlets; in both of those cases, he had recognized two nut markets that nobody else was exploiting and had quickly moved in. Even the John Dillinger Died For You Society, of which he was inordinately proud since it was probably the most implausible religion in the long history of humanity’s infatuation with metaphysics, didn’t earn much less per annum than these fancies. The real bread was in the Colossus of Yorba Linda Foundation, which had been successfully raising money for several years to erect a heroic monument, in solid gold and ten feet taller than the statue of Liberty, honoring the martyred former president Richard Milhous Nixon. This monument, paid for entirely by the twenty million Americans who still loved and revered Nixon despite the damnable lies of the Congress, the Justice Department, the press, the TV, the law courts, et al., would stand outside Yorba Linda, Tricky Dicky’s boyhood home, and scowl menacingly toward Asia, warning those gooks not to try to get the jump on Uncle Sammie. Beside the gigantic idol’s right foot, Checkers looked adoringly upward; beneath the left foot was a crushed allegorical figure representing Cesar Chavez. The Great Man held a bunch of lettuce in his right hand and a tape recording in the left. It was all most
tasteful, and so appealed to Fundamentalist Americans that hundreds of thousands of dollars had already been collected by the Colossus fund, and Naismith planned to hop to Nepal with the loot at the first sign that contributors or postal inspectors were beginning to wonder when the statue would actually start rising on the plot he had purchased, amid much publicity, after the first few thousand arrived.

  Naismith was a small, slight man and, like many Texans, affected a cowboy hat (although he had never herded cattle) and a bandito mustache (although his thefts were all based on fraud rather than force). He was also, for his nation at this time in history, an uncommonly honest man, and, unlike most corporations of the epoch, none of his enterprises had poisoned or mutilated the customers whose money he took. His one vice was cynicism based on lack of imagination: he reckoned most of his countrymen as total mental basket cases and fondly believed that he was exploiting their folly when he told them that a vast Illuminati conspiracy controlled the money supply and interest rates or that a bandit of the 1930s was, in a sense, a redeemer of the atrophying human spirit. That there was an element of truth in these bizarre notions never crossed his mind. In short, even though born in Texas, Naismith was as alienated from the pulse, the poetry and the profundity of American emotion as a New York intellectual.

  But his cynicism served him well when, after reporting certain strange symptoms to the hotel doctor, he found himself rushed to a supposed U.S. Public Health Service station which was manned by individuals he quickly recognized as laws. This is an old Texas word, probably an abbreviation of lawmen (Texans don’t know much about abbreviating) and is as charged with suspicion and wariness, although not quite so much rage, as the New Left’s word pig. Bonnie Parker had used it, eloquently, in her last ballad:

  Someday they’ll go down together

  They’ll bury them side by side

  For some it means grief

  For the laws a relief

  But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.