An interlude. Then an authoritative rap on the door. The Countess Krak opened it.
Standing there was the shabby man in the shabby coat with the shabby hat pulled over his eyes. He thrust a paper at the Countess Krak.
“You’re not Hisst,” she said.
“Madam, as a member of the household of Wister, I give you this. He has been served.” He jammed the paper into her hands and fled.
Confused already by the false announcement, she opened the paper.
And there before her gaze was the Toots Wister née Switch suit and all its gory details legally phrased.
She took a grip on the side of the door. The paper began to shake.
A wounded cry escaped her lips.
She read the paper again.
She had trouble walking back into her room.
She just stood there for a while, her head hanging down, a posture of betrayal and blighted hopes.
She let the paper fall to the floor.
She walked toward her bathroom and then stood there, propped against the door, a hand across her eyes.
Then she turned and stumbled to her telephone. She pushed the buttons. She got them wrong and pushed them again.
“President Mamie Boomp here,” came the voice.
“Mamie,” said the Countess brokenly, “he was already married.”
“Oh, my God!” said Mamie. “Oh, you poor dear thing! Well, Jesus Christ, that’s the way with sailors.”
“Mamie, what can I do?”
“Do?” said Mamie. “Well, honey, you don’t want to be messed up in that. They lie. You pack your bags, honey, and you come down here where your friend Mamie can look after you. The place is knee-deep in millionaires. Arab princes, too. You just come down and cry on Mamie’s shoulder and I’ll get you through it some way.”
“All right,” wept the Countess Krak.
She hung up. A young woman in a maid’s dress had entered the room. “Did you call, ma’am?”
Other staff were at the door.
“No,” said the Countess. “Yes. Pack my clothes.”
She stared a long time at the phone.
Oh, it was a mortal blow all right. I was beside myself with glee. I knew she was debating whether or not to call Heller at his office and tell him goodbye.
She must have decided against it. Listlessly, she pushed a button that opened up a phone number book. She pressed an automatic dialing letter.
“Bonbucks Teller Central Customer Purchasing,” a voice said.
The Countess Krak dully gave the number of the Squeeza credit card. Then she said, “I have to go to Atlantic City.”
“Quickly or in a leisurely fashion?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Will you be staying long? Is it a round trip?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Would you like to go by bus? By train? By limousine? By helicopter?”
In an introverted, weeping voice, she said, “If I only had my own ship I could go home.”
“Well, madam, I’ve just checked your credit rating here and it’s unlimited as always. I had a note here just this morning. . . . Yes, here it is. The Morgan yacht has just come on the market. It is two hundred feet, twin screw, fully found and ready to go to sea. She has roll and pitch stabilizers, five salons, two swimming pools and gold fittings in the owner’s cabin. At Atlantic City she could lie in the Gardner’s Basin Maritime Park quite close to the casinos or cruise about to other anchorages in the numerous bays. It would save you the fatigue of having to live in one of those casino hotels. The captain and crew were protesting being paid off. My clerk here on the other phone says the Golden Sunset—that’s her name—could be standing by off the Hudson Harbor, 79th Street Boat Basin, in about an hour if that’s suitable.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the Countess Krak.
“Well, very good, ma’am. I’ll give the orders for the sale transfers and all that to be drawn up in our legal department and assign an adequate allowance from your credit card to care for her expenses and she will be standing by for you. It is a pleasure to be of service, ma’am. And I hope the nice sea voyage will relieve your tedium.” He hung up.
I was on the verge of fainting. How much did a yacht cost? And hadn’t I heard that Morgan had once said that if you had to wonder about how much the upkeep of such a vessel was, you didn’t have any business owning one?
I was certain that I had just seen my half-million credit card guarantee, that had been held by Squeeza, go up in a puff of funnel smoke.
I was torn between the glee of seeing the Countess Krak crushed and the horror of knowing that Mudur Zengin was quite likely to do anything villainous he could think of now!
I watched the viewer but there was nothing much to see. The Countess Krak was just sitting there, staring at the floor. Only in her peripheral vision could I detect her lady’s maid packing up her clothes and the fatal legal paper lying, walked upon occasionally, in the center of the rug.
But Fate was not through playing with me that day. Stamping on me would be a better term. Fate was getting ready, as the hours passed, to do a ghoulish dance step.
The Countess Krak’s baggage had been shifted to the 79th Street Boat Basin by cabs. The white expensive length of the resplendent yacht was standing by in the river, and two flag-streaming speedboats were curving ashore from her, throwing fans of spray, ready to pick up the Countess, her baggage and her maid and carry them away.
It suddenly occurred to me that she could shortly be out of range of the activator-receiver. She would be on a yacht and might take it into her mind to go anywhere, and I had no way to keep tabs on her. Well, never mind. Maybe the yacht would blow up and sink. I had to look on the brighter side of things.
Just as the grizzled old captain in all his gold braid was gallantly assisting the listless Countess to step into the speedboat, I heard the front door of the apartment open.
I covered up the viewers. I did not go out.
A certain amount of fear had been with me since my return to the apartment. Miss Pinch and Candy were not talking to me but their whispers to each other, I was certain, boded no good.
And I was right.
Miss Pinch and Candy had not taken off their coats. They came in. Miss Pinch was taking off her gloves.
They both sat down.
“Listen, you,” said Miss Pinch, severely, “we have to talk.”
“What about?” I said in fright.
“The children when they are born,” she said.
“No, wait,” I said. “Rockecenter sends anyone who gets pregnant to his abortion clinic. There’s no reason both of you can’t go. You’ll get fired if you don’t.”
“That’s just it,” said Miss Pinch. “Psychiatric Birth Control is for the (bleeps). So all they say of childbirth must be as well. We are determined to experience the joys of motherhood. There is only one way we can’t be fired.”
The hair began to rise on the back of my neck. It always did when she fixed her eyes on me like that.
“Candy and I are agreed,” said Miss Pinch. “There is no other way.”
“Than?” I pleaded, expecting the worst.
I got the worst.
“You have to marry us,” said Miss Pinch.
PART FORTY-EIGHT
Chapter 2
When Miss Pinch brought me to by throwing a glass of water in my face, I sat there transfixed, eyes staring sightlessly.
I tried to speak. I tried to tell myself my name was not Heller. I tried to tell Miss Pinch that her name was not the Countess Krak.
Apparently, I wasn’t making any sounds at all.
Candy said to Miss Pinch, “He seems to be stricken dumb, Pinchy. Let’s have a bite of supper and let him recover a bit and then you can tell him the rest of it.”
They went off.
I sat there.
After about half an hour, Miss Pinch came in. They had apparently finished supper but she still had a fork in her hand. She used
it to prod me into the living room. Defensively, I sat down on the sofa. My legs wouldn’t hold me up very long. I knew more was coming.
Candy said, “Let’s put him in the mood.” She went to the clamshell stereo and put a platter on the turntable. “I’m sure you remember this song,” she said. “You played it the first time you raped us.”
The song started up, very emotional crooning:
Sweet little woman,
Please marry me,
Man and wife together,
How happy we will be.
And then we’ll have some kiddies,
Maybe two or three,
So here’s the ring and there’s the church!
Oh, come, my honey be!
I found my voice. “Turn it off!” I begged. I felt I knew what this was now. A sadistic and evil revenge for all the favors I had done for them.
She turned off the record but in doing so turned on an FM radio station. It was pumping electronic pop music. You couldn’t understand the words, so that was better.
“You must think,” said Pinch, “that we’re trying to do you in, Inkswitch. This is not the case. It is a simple arrangement. You marry us and then we won’t get fired if we have these babies. We can show that we are actually married. Be reasonable, Inkswitch.”
I sat there, still stricken.
“I’ll tell you what we will do,” said Miss Pinch. “You have signed quite a few blank invoices. So the original money of yours is almost intact in that safe.” She pointed to where it stood, covered now so as to look like a rock wreathed in sea foam. “You’re always bleating around about money.”
I flinched at this reference to goats.
Miss Pinch smiled thinly. “If you give us your word to go through with this without giving us any trouble at all, no matter what, I’ll give you the combination to that safe, and also you can draw whatever you want from petty cash thereafter. I will simply bring it right home to you and drop it in your lap. That’s around sixty-five thousand from the safe and unlimited drawing thereafter. How can you lose, Inkswitch?”
Inkswitch! It was not my real Earth name. I clutched at a straw and also at the funds necessary to make it possible for me to flee at the earliest opportunity. Still, marriage? I shuddered to the depths of my soul. I unclutched.
She saw my hesitation. She said, “We don’t want to use the alternative of suing you,” she said.
The horror of Izzy’s description of the legal system reclutched at my throat.
Words stuck in my voice pipe. I forced them out anyway. “All right.”
“What?” said Miss Pinch.
I realized I had spoken in Voltarian and with a Fleet accent, too! I choked and finally made it in English. “All right.”
She smiled grimly. Candy clapped her hands.
The only trouble was, Candy did the hand clapping in rhythm to the song that had just come on. It was one of those rare modern songs where one could understand the lyrics. It said:
I’m dying,
I’m dying,
I’m dying!
I’m rolling all over the ground.
I’m dying,
I’m dying,
I’m dying!
A poor devil that you’ve downed.
I’m dying,
I’m dying,
I’m dying!
You’ve got me up a tree!
I’m dying,
I’m dying,
I’m dying!
And never more will be!
Ill and spinning, I got out of the front room and back to the rear. I closed the door to shut out the awful electronic music. But the drumbeats kept coming through like thuds of doom.
PART FORTY-EIGHT
Chapter 3
It was more by chance than design that I saw what happened at the condo. Heller’s voice, “Dear?” The blanket had slipped off the viewer and I, sitting there, staring with dilated pupils, noticed that Heller was looking into Krak’s room.
Boxes were thrown about but the place was otherwise cleaned out.
The butler was in the door, looking very unhappy.
“Where did she say she was going?” demanded Heller.
“She didn’t say, sir. Her maid packed for her and went with her. But she did not take the car. She called a fleet of cabs and they loaded her baggage and left.”
“Didn’t she leave any note?” said Heller.
“No, sir. She wasn’t talking to anyone, sir. The maid even called the cabs.”
“What cab company?”
“I don’t know, sir. I’m terribly sorry, sir. She did make a phone call and at the time I thought it must be to you. Otherwise I would have phoned you myself. She seemed very crushed, sir. I thought perhaps there had been a death in the family.”
“She made a call,” said Heller. Then he snapped his fingers. “Mamie Boomp!”
He grabbed the phone. He punched the automatic button.
“President Mamie Boomp here,” said the voice.
“This is Wister. I must contact Joy. She’s gone.”
Mamie’s voice was sniffish. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Look,” pleaded Heller. “Please tell me where she is or where she will be. I am very worried.”
“Young man, I get pretty tired of you good-time Charlies. You can push it on the short stretch but never on the long haul. I think you’ve horsed that poor girl around enough. Now go find yourself a floozy that’s low enough for the likes of you and leave good women alone!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Heller.
“They never do,” said Mamie. “All take and no give. Have you ever even handed over a diamond?”
“No,” said Heller. “Miss B——”
“I thought not,” said Mamie. “Thought the promise of the little gold ring was enough. Even when you knew you couldn’t hitch up to run double and knew it god (bleeped) well. The old story!”
“Miss Boomp,” said Heller, “if you know where she is, for Gods’ sakes, tell me. I’m out of my mind with worry.”
“You were out of your mind to think you could pull a raw stunt like that and get away with it, sailor. She’s better off without you. And just to keep you from runnin’ up the phone bill—since it’s no pleasure at all to talk to a lying, two-timing cheat—I do not know where she is except that she has left you. And that is final. Don’t call me again, you would-be bigamist!” She hung up.
Heller stood there. He turned to the butler. “This doesn’t make any sense. No slightest idea what cab company?”
“No, sir. I didn’t think it was important. Actually, the staff thought she was going to her family somewhere. She has been crying lately. We thought someone was dying.”
Heller turned to the phone. He called Central Airline reservations. He demanded to know if any reservation had been made on any airline for Miss Heavenly Joy Krackle. The answer was negative. He called charter aircraft clearance. No such name on any charter.
He called Twoey in New Jersey. No, Twoey knew nothing except she hadn’t turned up for lessons lately so he could teach her more about pigs.
Heller called Izzy. Negative. He had Izzy ask Bang-Bang. Negative.
He said to the butler, “She wouldn’t touch a train as she hates them and with all that baggage she couldn’t take a bus. She must have gone to a hotel somewhere in this very city. Now, listen, think hard. Did anything happen just before she left?”
“Well, yes. A man came and insisted that he see her. And then the man ran away. Isn’t that the paper there, sir? Under that box?”
The butler picked it up and Heller grabbed it.
He stared at the legal paper. He read it. He stared at it again. Then he crumpled it up with a savage closure of his hand.
“Blast them! I understand now,” he said. He slumped down on the bottom of the bed. Then he said, “The poor kid. The people who keep this rotten legal system going should be killed. Oh, the poor kid.” And he was crying.
PART FORTY-EIGHT
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Chapter 4
After a horrible night, I awoke to more horror.
I had had constant nightmares in which I was Heller being sued by Meeley, my old landlady on Voltar, for counterfeiting a marriage to the dead mistress of the colonel of the Death Battalion who had been strangled by Torpedo.
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