He was PERTURBED!
I turned back the strips. Yes, Heller had been summoned by Geovani when he had reached the office. Geovani had simply said, "You better get over here, kid, but I advise you not to come." That voice was very tense.
Heller was in trouble!
Ah, PR, PR, what a beautiful tool for trouble. I realized now that nobody was safe from such a weapon. It might strike anywhere at anyone. There was no predicting it at all! One minute he had been happily going about his business and then, bang, through no action of his own, he was shot by PR. And he didn't even have any inkling it was a shot. Maybe he thought it was just how the world ran: that newspapers were unreliable or made mistakes or simply catered to the public taste for sensationalism.
An expert in hand-to-hand combat, a Fleet combat engineer that could blow up fortresses and bases without a single scratch, Heller was a leaf in the wind before the mighty hurricane of PR, just a chip to be exploded at will by a master like Madison. And Heller not only didn't know, there was absolutely no one he could fight, nothing whatever he could do about it! Madison had reduced him, with a few paragraphs, to a helpless pawn!
All Heller knew was that he was in trouble. He drove that way. He had even ignored a disguise when he left New York.
Just a pile of paper. A pile that could be burned with a single match. But that pile of paper was on its way to wrecking Heller!
I could tell it just from Geovani's voice.
At Babe's he parked the cab.
Geovani met him in the elevator. "Kid, I wouldn't go in."
Heller handed Georgio a tan, leather trench coat and cap but Georgio wouldn't take it. It fell to the floor.
Heller knocked on the living-room door. It did not open. He turned the knob and went in.
No Babe.
Some sounds were coming from beyond another door across the room. Heller went over and opened it.
It was a sort of den. It had a fireplace but there was no fire in it. A crucifix hung on the wall. The rug was black.
And there sat Babe. She was crumpled up on her knees. She had a sackcloth over her head. She had taken ashes from the fireplace and was smearing them on her face.
"Mia culpa," she moaned. "Mia magna culpa. It is my fault, it is my great fault."
She was crying.
She sensed someone had entered.
She looked up, tears coursing through the ashes on her face, making two clean streaks.
She saw him.
"Oh, Jerome," she groaned. "My own son a traditore!" She bent over, weeping. "My own son, my own son!"
Heller tried to walk forward to her. "Mrs. Corleone, please believe me...."
Rejection was instant. Palms flat toward him, she blocked his further approach with a gesture. "No, no, do not come near me! Somehow, somewhere you have tainted blood! You have stained the honor of the family! Do not come near me!"
Heller dropped to his own knees, distant from her. "Please, Mrs. Corleone, I did not have..."
"Traditore!" she spat, scuttling back to get away from him. "You have broken your poor mother's heart!" She made a grab at the fireplace. She took out a newspaper that was only partly burned. The face of Faustino could be seen. The movement fanned the sparks that clung to it. They fanned into sudden flame as she shook it in the air.
"You have brought dishonor to the name of Corleone!" she cried. "My own son has turned against his family!"
She cast it out from her into the fireplace. "I have tried and tried to be a good mother to you. I have tried and tried to bring you up right! And what thanks do I get? What thanks, I ask you! The mayor's wife was on the phone!" Her voice rose to a wail. "She said I was such a stupid fool I did not even know I had a traitor in my own camp! And she laughed! She laughed at me!"
She was trying to find something suddenly. The fire tongs! She threw them at Heller. "Get out!" They landed against the wall with a clang.
She got the poker and threw it. "Get out of my sight!" It bashed into a chair with a splintering thud.
She grabbed the shovel and pitched it. It almost struck Heller in the face. As it clattered against the floor, she was shrieking, "Go away!"
She got hold of the stand they had been in. She threw it with all her might. It smashed against the door! "Go! Go! Go! Get out, out, out!"
Heller backed up. He went out of the room.
The sound of her renewed weeping was like a dirge. Heller walked slowly to the hall.
Neither Geovani nor Georgio were in sight.
He picked up his coat and cap from the hall floor. He got into the elevator.
At the cab he slowly got in and drove away.
Oh, my Gods! Madison had done it! With just a simple trick of paper and ink and newspaper influence, out of whole cloth and without even an ounce of truth, he had turned Heller's most powerful ally against him!
What genius!
What a beautiful tool!
And Heller did not even suspect who was shooting at him! Or that anybody really was!
But this might still take a turn for the worse. Heller was tricky, too!
Chapter 8
Heller drove to the Gracious Palms. He parked the old cab in its usual stall.
He took the elevator up. It was still early in the day and there was no interference on my viewer. I could see what he did. There were two whores in his suite. They were practicing ways to undo a wristlock. One of them asked, "Pretty boy, is it the thumb you use in this grip or the first finger? Margie says... Why, what's the matter?" She saw something must be very wrong when she looked closely at Heller's face.
He was opening cabinets and getting out suitcases. He was beginning to pack.
In alarm the two whores ran out. I could hear one pounding on doors down the hall, one door after another. The other whore was on the hall phone talking quickly.
Heller just kept on packing.
When he turned around, there were numerous women standing in the door in different states of undress. They looked alarmed. A high-yellow came forward, "Pretty boy, are you leaving?"
Heller didn't answer. He just went on packing.
There were more girls at the door. They were beginning to cry.
Heller was getting out the racks and racks of clothes and binding them with cords.
There was a commotion at the door. Heller looked up. Vantagio had shouldered his way through the mob of weeping girls.
"What the hell is this, kid?" said Vantagio.
Heller said, "Has Babe called?"
Vantagio said, "No," in a puzzled voice.
"She will," said Heller. "She will."
Vantagio said, "Oh, kid. Babe sometimes gets upset. I should know. She gets over it."
Heller reached into his inside pocket. "Have you seen the morning papers?"
"I just got up," said Vantagio. "What have the morning...?"
Heller had handed him a ripped-off front page of the New York Grimes.
Vantagio stared at it. He took it in. He went white. "Good God!"
Heller was indicating the piles of clothes. "These are no good to anybody else. What would you say the bills were?"
"Oh, kid..." said Vantagio, sadly.
"How much were the tailor bills on these clothes?" demanded Heller.
"Kid, you don't have to..."
"Fifteen thousand?" said Heller.
"Five," said Vantagio. "No more than five. But kid..."
"Here's five thousand," said Heller and began to count out the bills. "My safe downstairs is empty. Now there's the matter of the old cab. Bang-Bang will need it so he can still say he has a job. He's on parole, you know. And he has to go on with my military classes at Empire University. So how much is the cab worth?"
"Oh, kid..." said Vantagio. He himself was beginning to look teary-eyed.
"Five thousand," said Heller. "We'll call it five thousand. It was expensive to rebuild. Now, was there anything else I owe here? ..."
Vantagio didn't answer. He had his face buried in a silk handker
chief.
Heller took his hand and put the ten thousand in it. He finished up stuffing things into his bags.
There were girls all around him, pleading with him. "Don't go, pretty boy, don't go!"
They were tugging at him.
He asked them to help carry his clothes. They would not touch them. He had to go get a cart himself. He loaded it.
"Kid," said Vantagio, pleading. "I think you are making an awful mistake. If she had intended you to go she would have called."
Heller said, "She intended."
He pushed the loaded cart to an elevator.
He went down to the basement. The girls, bare of feet and crying, came down in the other elevator.
Heller loaded the cab.
He looked back at Vantagio and the crowd. Two security men were standing there, looking sad, shaking their heads.
My viewer was misted.
Heller had tears in his eyes!
He drove away from the silent crowd. He could still see them in the rearview mirror. Then they were out of sight.
At the Empire State Building, he parked in a cab rank and got a hand truck. A cabby friend offered to take the old taxi to its nearby lot.
Heller wheeled the handcart to his office.
There was a side resting room there and he put some of his luggage in it. He put his toilet kit in the bathroom. He didn't have room for his clothes and he piled them on the sofas.
Izzy came in, saw the clothes. He didn't speak. He just looked aghast.
"I'll be living here," said Heller.
Izzy finally spoke. "I knew it would come to this. Fate has a way with it, Mr. Jet. And it always has more tricks waiting up the path."
"Is there something else wrong?" said Heller.
Izzy twisted around. Heller pressed. Izzy finally said, "The IRS won't wait. They're demanding everything we have. I wasn't able to make enough on arbitrage. Word just came in from the IRS District Office.
They're going to impound every corporation whether it is legal to do it or not. I didn't want to tell you. I saw your morning press. But that's not all of it, I'm afraid. When IRS finds they are not going to be paid, they'll turn their public relations people loose, smear these corporations all over the media. It's ruin. Unless a miracle happens, we won't even have this office in another month."
He left mournfully.
Heller sat down at the desk.
The cat had been following him around from the moment he had come in. It jumped up now and took its place underneath the desk lamp. It sat there studying him.
Heller said to the cat, "You picked the wrong guy to be responsible for." He sounded beaten.
VICTORY!
I had won!
PR!
What a totally effective assassin's tool! And how painful, too!
And better: nobody, neither the victim nor the public, ever knew where the bullets had come from!
Suddenly, I understood the power controls of Earth. So this was how even empires were broken and made. By the PRs. And then the PRs even wrote the history books!
In one deadly blast, Madison had stopped the mighty Heller cold. With a few lines of ink, based only on his imagination, Madison was directing the destinies not only of Earth but of Voltar! No wonder Bury considered him so dangerous!
The PRs were the true Gods of this planet! Gods of wrath and misery. But Gods nonetheless! What a weapon they wielded! What destruction they wrought! Magnificent!
Chapter 9
I had been so fascinated with the glorious weapon, PR, that I had not realized that time was passing, every instant of which might spell deadly danger to me. After all, I had not turned up at Miss Pinch's last night. Also, Bury would not be pleased at all and might even send another phone-call team: I was in no condition to withstand the U.S. Army Signal Corps, much less a flank attack by snakes.
It was getting on toward noon. I painfully dragged myself out of bed and tottered in the direction of Utanc's room.
The suite's side door was open! This had never happened before.
Scenting a new disaster with an experienced nose, I peered in.
Her room was empty!
No trunks. Nothing in the closet or drawers.
She was gone!
I didn't know what plane!
I didn't have a ticket!
I had only eighty or ninety dollars! Nowhere near enough to get me out of New York.
Then I realized she would probably call when she had picked up the tickets. Of course, that was it.
My hands were bandaged. So was much of my body. It hurt to move. But I knew I had better pack. Struggling and fumbling, I went to work, screaming slightly every now and then.
It was very exhausting. Before I could strap anything up, I had to rest. I sank down in a chair.
There were newspapers scattered about the floor. My jaded eye landed on a news story. I was surprised that the paper contained any other news than the Whiz Kid's capers. The story said:
IRS SUSPECT COMMITTED
Arginal P. Pauper was today committed to Walnut Lodge Nut House by Internal Revenue Service routine desk-agent order.
Pauper is alleged to have failed to file an income tax return.
The IRS order also required that Pauper be electric-shocked, given a prefrontal lobotomy and thereafter tortured for life in the institution.
"He needed professional help," the IRS spokesman said, "and only our psychiatrists can give him that.
"He claimed he had spent the sixty cents in question on stamps to mail his return." However, all returns not sent by registered mail and delivered by a Rolls Royce painted blue with yellow stripes are, of course, waste-basketed, so the defense is preposterous."
Pauper's widow and orphans have been ground into meatballs to pay the tax penalties.
IRS N.Y. District Chief Stoney T. Blood issued a public statement: "IRS uber alles! And let that be a lesson to you, you dumb suckers!"
Over 300,000,000 Americans are said to be tax delinquent each year.
I knew it was PR. I knew it was simply a planted story to frighten people into paying their taxes. But in spite of knowing all that, it scared me spitless!
Having already seen that day the havoc PR could wreak, it stood my hair on end!
I had no more than finished reading it when the phone rang.
Thank heavens! It must be Utanc to tell me what plane. I answered.
A gruff voice said, "Inkswitch?"
I was so startled, I said, "Inkswitch."
"Good. This is the IRS New York Delinquency Office. Just a routine verification that you are there." He hung up.
My hair was not only standing up, it was crackling!
Oh, I had to get out of here! Three years in a Federal pen with homos even worse than Miss Pinch would make a brain operation welcome!
I locked all my suitcases. Then I noticed that I had forgotten to get dressed. I didn't have the energy to unstrap everything. Lying in the wastebasket was the suit I had worn at the last visit to Miss Pinch. Frantically, I pulled it on.
I sneezed!
It stunk violently of red pepper, Tabasco and mustard!
There was no time. I would have to take what clue I had. Utanc had said a four o'clock plane. I would flee to the airport!
I called down for a bellboy and a cart and told them to get a cab at the door. This might be a close thing. Police always verify if you're in before they knock down the place with battering rams, so IRS would of course do even worse!
The bellboy piled my luggage on his hand truck. He pushed it to the front of the elevator door, waiting for the car to come up. Somebody must be coming up in that lift!
Some sixth sense told me to be cautious. The stairwell door was close to hand. I faded into it, holding it open a crack.
The elevator arrived and the door opened.
Two of the toughest-looking men I have ever seen stepped out into the penthouse foyer! They had black hats, gray overcoats, huge shoulders and great, black mustaches! M
ean!
They knocked like thunder on the sitting-room door!
Oh, thank Gods for Apparatus training! I fled down the stairwell, unmindful of the agony every movement caused.
Speeding, I went down all thirty stories of the hotel!
I burst into the lobby.
The doorman recognized me. He beckoned. The cab was sitting there.
My bellboy and baggage had already arrived. It was being put in the cab. So slow, so slow!
My eye was pinned on the elevator doors in the lobby.
In desperation, I waved a ten-dollar bill at the bellboy.
He stopped to make sure it wasn't counterfeit!
The manager was coming out. I thought it was to tell me the bill wasn't paid. Instead, he shook me by the hand and said, "Congratulations on your leaving, Mr. Inkswitch. Please use another hotel when you return." I was so relieved to realize Utanc had paid the bill.
The delay was nearly fatal.
The two tough guys came out of the elevator!
I leaped into the cab and screamed, "John F. Kennedy International Airport!"
The driver sped away.
I was looking back.
I had beaten them!
We battered our way through congested traffic. We plunged down into the Queens Midtown Tunnel. We emerged into the flowing traffic of Route 495. I looked back. For a moment I could see the UN fading. I was making it! What a relief!
Wait. Many cars behind us. A gray vehicle was threading its way closer! I stared with my face pressed more closely to the glass.
THE TWO TOUGH MEN!
Not only that, they seemed to have recognized me! One was waving frantically for us to pull over and stop.
I didn't have much money. But I leaned forward. "A twenty-dollar tip if you lose that gray car!"
"Fifty dollahs," said the cabby.
"Fifty dollars!" I said.
We sped forward. We swayed and tire-screeched around trucks. We cut desperately in front of cars whose brakes shrieked as they stamped down to miss us.
Every sway was agony to my tortured and bruised body. Gods, would I be glad to get out of New Yorkâif I made it!
We got onto Woodhaven Boulevard. We roared through the wintry Forest Park. We rocketed past Kew Gardens. We blasted by Aqueduct Race Track.