by Craig Rice
“Professor Wadsworth! You know Security! That door must be kept locked except in an emergency.”
“This is an emergency, Biddy. Where are my aspirin?”
“I sent a page. She must be loitering.”
“What are you doing? Hazing another of these poor children?”
“It is not in your province to question my activities.”
“Oh, come off it, Biddy! You’re indispensable and we love you dearly, but stop taking yourself so seriously!”
Miss Penrose was struggling for self-control. Wadsworth’s attitude—amused condescension—was obviously infuriating to her.
Wadsworth ignored her wrath, acted as though it did not exist. He had a lean, cadaverous horse-face and it twisted into a satyr-like smile as he turned his eyes on Helene. “You’re new here, aren’t you, child?”
Helene, who considered herself a mature young woman, suddenly felt like a teenager. “I started this morning.”
“I have a daughter about your age, dear. In fact, you look a little like her.” His eyes turned pleasantly vague. “She’s getting married next week—to a bruiser with an athletic scholarship at some school or other. I shall probably have to spend my latter years supporting them.”
A new face appeared in the inner doorway: a keenly alert young face, one that was a contradiction in that while it was round and pink and pudgy, it gave a first impression of sharpness. Helene decided it was his eyes. In his otherwise placid face, they seemed to maintain a high level of excitement,
“Miranda’s given us some answers,” he said.
“Miranda,” Wadsworth explained, “is our computer.”
“I was hoping we could get to the evaluation,” the young man said, “I’d planned to take the afternoon off.”
But Wadsworth seemed in no hurry. “Mercedes,” he said, “you might unbend and introduce the new member of our little family.”
“This is Mrs. Helene Justus,” Miss Penrose replied pointedly.
Wadsworth sighed. “All the beautiful ones are married. Mrs. Justus, this is Felix Bassett.”
Bassett extended his hand. “Just call me the Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” he said.
Wadsworth added, “He’s my assistant. He considers it a compliment, referring to me as a sorcerer, but I’m not so sure.”
“Your reputation certainly justifies it,” Helene said.
“Without Miranda and the others of her breed to chew up data and spit out information, I’d have a hard time justifying that reputation,” Wadsworth said. “The computer makes the human brain look feeble by comparison.”
“But the human brain created the computer.”
Turning to Bassett, Wadsworth said, “For heaven’s sake, son. Stop writhing like a small boy who has to go to the toilet!”
Mercedes Penrose was outraged. “Professor Wadsworth! Please stay within the boundaries of decency!”
“Fiddlesticks,” Wadsworth answered. “All right, Felix. Let’s go see what Miranda has decided.”
The door closed. Helene and Miss Penrose were alone. “Do not delude yourself,” the latter said, “that Professor Wadsworth has offered you a friendship you can presume upon. The next time you see him, he will probably pass by without even recognizing you.”
Helene could take no more of this. “What reason have you to believe I would presume on a friendship?”
“That will be all.”
“Why would I need to?”
“I said—that will be all.”
Helene left with no further comment and returned to her cubbyhole. I’ll probably be bypassed, she thought. I don’t know why that woman hates me, but she does. Now she’ll probably let me sit here twiddling my thumbs, hoping I’ll walk out.
Helene had planned to leave at noon, but she changed that plan. It was all right for Blane to tell her not to let Penrose get you down, but there was a limit. Then Kent Fargo was standing in her doorway giving her his easy, charming smile.
“I hear Biddy Penrose handed you a hard time.”
“I was called to her office—yes.”
“Don’t mind her. She’s got an efficiency compulsion. Nothing personal in her attitude. She treats everybody that way. Don’t waste time being mad at her.”
“I’ll try not to.”
He leaned against the door and the smile faded as he turned serious. “I think maybe, though, before long, you’ll be completely out of Biddy’s reach.”
“Is that so?”
“I’ve got an idea. I’m entitled to a personal secretary, but I’ve never gotten around to selecting one—too busy getting this place running right.”
That had not been the reason at all. Fargo liked to play the field. In order to do this with the greatest freedom, he’d remained unfettered, feeling that an “office wife” might cramp his style. But he’d decided Helene might justify his giving up this freedom.
“Would you like to be my personal secretary?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“I think we ought to talk it over. How about my apartment tonight?” His smile implied that they already shared intimate secrets. “Strictly business, of course.”
“I’ll try to make it.”
“Fine. Why don’t you take your coffee break now?”
The girls were filing out, and Helene followed, looking forward to a dull afternoon with Miss Penrose bypassing her because of the humiliation she’d suffered during their interview. Helene had planned to leave early, but now she determied to stick it out for the rest of the day.
A small, pleasant, round-faced girl tried to welcome Helene to the group, but Helene was in no mood, and after five minutes she returned to her cubbyhole. She found that she had not been bypassed. There was a brown envelope in her box. It was smaller than the one she’d received earlier and contained a single tape.
Helene put the earphones on and prepared to do the letter. She started the tape recorder. The voice was somewhat muffled, but it came through clearly enough:
“Confetti—confetti. There is a bag of confetti and a yellow ribbon—yellow ribbon—in the lower right-hand drawer of your desk. Take the confetti and put the yellow ribbon in your hair and keep your appointment. Also, put this tape and the envelope it came in into your bag and take it with you. Go now …”
A slight glaze appeared in Helene’s eyes as she obeyed the orders meticulously. She left her cubbyhole and moved down the corridor. But she turned toward the front door, not the time-clock entrance, and as she moved through the reception room, Professor Wadsworth was just entering through a side door.
“Calling it a day already, Mrs. Justus?”
Helene ignored him even as she passed some three feet in front of him.
“I say—Mrs. Justus—”
Helene kept on walking. She did not turn her head. Wadsworth stood there, staring after her. Then he glanced at the receptionist, shrugged, and went on his way.
In the parking lot, Felix Basset had the same surprising experience with the new typist. He was walking toward his own car from a doorway that gave directly out of the restricted portion of the building after having had his briefcase checked by a guard.
“Playing hooky the first day, Mrs. Justus?”
He stared as Helene walked past him. The slight frown remained on his face as he followed along and continued to speak to her. Helene ignored him. He stopped, finally, and watched her maneuver her car out of its slot. Then, apparently still intrigued, he quickly got his own compact car moving and tooled out into Grand Avenue behind her. Still frowning thoughtfully, he turned in the direction she had taken, toward the Loop, and tagged along behind.
But only for a few blocks. As he pressed the accelerator at an intersection, as the light changed to green, nothing happened. The car shuddered and sat there.
Swearing under his breath, Felix Basset turned his mind toward his own problem—a broken-down car….
Chapter Eleven
Von Flanagan squinted wisely at the fast-lowering gin bottle on his host�
�s desk and said, “Malone, people don’t put out contracts on other people for no reason.”
Von Flanagan never got drunk as the term is generally defined. On the contrary, alcohol sharpened his faculties and cleared away any confusion that might have existed prior to his tippling. It also generated in him an agility of mind that allowed him to leap nimbly from subject to subject—sometime faster than more ordinary, less alert minds could follow.
Malone said, “I know damn well people don’t—”
“She’s a very pretty dish.”
“What the hell—?”
“Helene Justus going to Barnhall doesn’t mean anything. He’s a what-do-you-call-it.”
“A headshrinker.”
“A vogue,” von Flanagan said triumphantly. “He’s in. Everybody and their uncle’s crowding to get on his couch.”
“That may be,” Malone growled, “but I still think everything’s tied together. Helene’s—wait a minute!” Malone gaped at the far wall. Von Flanagan looked and saw nothing. He looked back at Malone.
Von Flanagan said, “A guy drinks too much, he sees things other guys don’t see. That’s bad.”
“I just remembered something I forgot to remember before. I’m sitting here and it just came to me.”
“Like you forgot to pay the rent?”
“Helene Justus told me something—just passed it off casually—at the Casino last night.”
“Yeah. You mean about going to work?”
“Something else—about a friend from New York. A chemist in town to work at the same place. Her name is Vivian Conover.”
“Okay, where does that get us?” Von Flanagan showed his lack of interest by scowling at the fading daylight through the window and muttering, “Where are those two clowns? I put in the call an hour ago.”
“The name didn’t mean anything.” Malone said. “But I remember something else—or at least I think I do.” He left his chair and went to his knees in front of the open safe beside his desk. He dug inside and came up with a lady’s watch. Von Flanagan blinked at the flash of diamonds on the case. Malone laid the watch on the desk and peered at it. “Come here,” he said.
Von Flanagan lumbered over and peered also.
“What do you see?”
“Initials, but you can hardly read them.”
Malone tilted the watch so that it caught the light from the window, and von Flanagan read: A D to V C. So what?”
“V C. Vivian Conover.”
“Maybe—maybe not.”
Malone was disgusted. “How did you ever get to be a cop? You’ve got to have faith in something!”
“Me? I got no faith in nothing nohow no more.”
“You’re just going through male menopause,” Malone said indifferently.
Von Flanagan was looking down toward the open safe. “What’s that?”
Malone looked also. “Another tape.”
“The copy you made?” von Flanagan asked eagerly.
“Uh-uh. There were two tapes in the loot. That one’s not important.”
“I’d like to hear it all the same.”
“Okay. Put it on the machine.”
As von Flanagan complied, Malone, his mind elsewhere, got up and went to the window and looked out at the squalid, smoke-blackened view as though it helped him to concentrate. “You answer one question and you get six new ones,” he complained. “Why would Vivian Conover spy on a headshrinker named Barnhall—where her friend Helene Justus is having couch sessions? Is she Helene’s friend, or isn’t she?”
“Malone—this is crazy. What do you think it means?”
“It’s nothing,” Malone said absently, without turning. “Just some dame that’s tired of having fun in bed with her husband.”
“But there’s more.”
Malone turned while von Flanagan ran the tape back. “The dame spouts about her love life. Then there’s a gap and this crap comes on.”
Malone waited through some silent spinnings of the tape. Then a new, male voice said: “The code is confetti—the control is yellow ribbon. Conditioned during several sessions, the patient proved to be an ideal subject, as I told you she would.”
Another male voice: “Can we depend on it?”
“Of course.”
A female voice: “I think it’s insane!”
The second male voice: “Shut up.”
The first male voice: “This technique was developed to its high degree of efficiency by the Russians during their experiments in brain-washing …”
Von Flanagan grunted. “Sounds like a pompous son-of-a-bitch.”
“He’s the same guy you spilled your guts to,” Malone reminded.
“He sounded different then,” von Flanagan growled.
“… Using this method, the subject can be put under control for various periods of time—sometimes for several hours. The releasing code word in this case is petticoat.”
A female voice: “How odd.”
“It is important to find a word not commonly used. But now that I have prepared your subject for you, isn’t it about time I was given a little more information?”
The second male voice: “You’re being paid.”
“But with all the care and effort going into this project, it’s possible I’m not being paid enough.”
There was a pause before the second man spoke again. Then he said, “You’ve come a long way since your old con-artist days on South State Street. You’re fat and prosperous. Why not leave it that way?”
The menace in the voice carried through the tape recorder and out into the quiet office. Malone and von Flanagan glanced at each other. They waited. But the tape ended there.
Von Flanagan said, “We’d better not bother to prowl his office. We better just walk in and have a little talk with that bastard.”
Malone seemed to be in a vacuum. This was merely an illusion, however. A motionless body did not necessarily go with a motionless mind. He was planning strategy, and he believed the correct procedure was to always do the right thing for the right reason. He had not always succeeded in this. There had been times when he’d done the wrong thing for the right reason, and the right thing for the wrong reason, and had caused himself and others a lot of trouble.
His thinking was interrupted at this moment by the arrival of Scanlon and Kluchesky. Von Flanagan regarded them with a scowl. “Where you been? I phoned over an hour ago.”
They both seemed hurt at such a brusque greeting from a boss they hadn’t seen for a week. “We were on duty,” Scanlon said. “We hadda wait ’til Captain Spence got back from lunch,” Kluchesky added. “I think he eats in Milwaukee,” Scanlon finished.
“Well, let’s get going,” Von Flanagan said.
Malone was heading for the door. “You boys stay here,” he ordered. “I’ve got to go somewhere.”
“What do you mean?”
“A little thing I have to attend to. There’s another bottle of gin in the drawer. Give the boys a drink. The party’s on me.”
He left.
Malone had reached a point where he had to start swinging from the shoulder and smash something or somebody. He was tired of wandering around in the half-dark of partial knowledge. He had to find out what was going on, and the way to do this was to talk to people who knew.
The Craymore Hotel. He hadn’t been in the dump for a long time. Not since he’d had a client who had cut his hand in their dishwasher and Malone had had to get an interpreter to tell him the story. The hotel manager had told the little Puerto Rican he was fired for damaging the dishwasher, but he’d settled with Malone for five hundred dollars. As he entered the lobby, Malone remembered vaguely that he hadn’t gotten any of that five hundred, stupid jerk that he was.
Then he forgot that case as something else caught his interest. He’d checked for Vivian Conover’s phone number and was just stepping into the elevator when it hit him; something or someone he’d seen—or had not seen—he wasn’t sure which. He paused to do a double-take and then step
ped out of the elevator backwards onto the foot of an aristocratic-looking woman. But she was no aristocrat. She snarled. “Watch your damn feet, shamus!”
Malone had been taken for a detective before. Some said he had the look. So he wasn’t surprised into saying anything more than, “Sorry, sister,” as he got out of the way.
He didn’t barge right back into the lobby. He moved casually along the wall and looked out from behind a potted palm at the bellhop’s bench. There was a joker sitting on it, a slim, dark hop who had stirred something in Malone’s memory. As Malone stared, the stirring continued, and suddenly the pudding was done.
The little bastard! There he was. Bold and brazen. Right out in public.
Malone was well-known as being the forgiving type. He might blow up and rage around and raise hell, but when it was over, it was over. He was willing to shake hands.
But not with that little son of a bitch!
It had been one of Malone’s softer moments—so long ago. But not long enough to forget. A nice looking kid named Zalek had been hailed in on a mugging charge. Late at night on Clark Street, the cop said he’d pulled an old man into a doorway and was cleaning out his pockets when apprehended.
But Malone hadn’t believed it. The kid just wasn’t the type. It was a bum rap. Malone was a realist and would have defended young Zalek even knowing him guilty, and would have no doubt fought for a suspended sentence and a new start for the kid. But he wouldn’t have put up the five thousand bail—five grand he didn’t actually have—if he’d thought him guilty.
Malone’s biggest mistake had been playing the sucker roll. He’d bailed the kid out, but only to get a long-distance phone call from him the next day.
“This is Tony Zalek, sucker. I’m on my way. You serve out my sentence for me. I’ll send you cigarettes.”
And to add something even more to the insult and the injury, the call had come collect.
Now Malone smiled and watched Zalek as a cat with a cigar in its mouth might watch a mouse that wore a bellhop’s uniform and posed as a human being.
Malone looked around for the house detective, preparatory to pouncing. With the statute of limitations not yet having run out on Zalek, Malone was looking forward to a pleasant interlude.