Accordingly, I had dinner in my room and, carrying my case, at 8:45 PM stood once more in the lobby of the apartment house.
It had worked once. It would work twice. I boldly pushed the button of Margarita Pompom Pizzazz.
The voice on the phone. “Well?”
I opted to be charming. “I was in too much of a hurry last night. I was impolite. Could you let me in again?”
The door clicked. In I went and up I went in the elevator. I headed for the emergency exit. Her door was cracked open again.
“Roof inspector,” I said.
“And?” said the voice in the door.
“And nothing,” I said. “Roof inspector!”
The door really slammed!
I went up the stairwell, picked the lock and shortly there I was, training the telescope on Heller’s walls.
He was up!
Unfortunately, as a swift side glance showed, the target closet was shut tight. I swiveled the telescope back.
Heller was sitting on the couch reading something. Bang-Bang was watching TV. Heller got up and got himself a Seven Up. There was a knock on the door.
Vantagio came in. He had a girl by the arm. She was in street clothes. “This is Margie,” said Vantagio. “The girl I phoned up about.”
“Have a seat, Vantagio,” said Heller.
“No, no. Busy night. Listen, kid, I just want you and Bang-Bang to break this Margie in. She just came on. She doesn’t know. She’s new.”
Oho, so Heller broke in the new girls, did he! Oh, Krak would love to know about this!
Heller looked at the girl. “You really want to do this? It’s kind of rough the first time.”
The girl said, “Oh, yes! I heard you really had something big going!”
Bang-Bang said, “I’m leaving. I can only stand to do this just so often! It wears me out. I get sore!”
Vantagio said, “Shut up, Bang-Bang. Please, kid. Just one more girl. It helps their morale. The other girls feel pretty cocky when you’re through with them.”
Bang-Bang was trying to leave. “Stay right where you are, Bang-Bang,” said Heller.
Vantagio said, “Do you want her stripped, kid? Lying down or standing up?” He turned to the girl. “Take off your coat and skirt.” He started to help her.
Heller said, “Vantagio, you better watch it or I’ll use you!”
The Sicilian got the girl’s skirt off but he withdrew to the door. “No, you won’t. I’m getting too old. I’m going right now,” he said and left.
Heller turned to the girl. She was standing there in her slip now. She was looking at Heller adoringly. “Sit there,” he said. “Now, how much experience have you had?”
The girl sat down, her knees apart. She decided she had too much on and shucked the slip over her head, leaving herself with just panties and a bra.
“Oh,” she said. “A few boys in Duluth. Just high-school stuff, mainly. In a car, back of the gym. One or two professors. And my brother, of course. Nothing important.”
Heller said, “Ever get battered around?”
The girl thought it over. “Oh, yeah. Once. A drunk raped me.”
Heller said, “Now we’re getting somewhere. What did you do?”
“I tried to hold him off and then he just knocked me out, ripped my clothes off and raped me.”
“Okay, Bang-Bang,” said Heller. “Start to rape her! You get started. I’ll finish up.”
Bang-Bang groaned. But he got up. He grabbed the girl by the arms and threw her down on the floor. He ripped her bra off. He grabbed the band of the panties and pulled them down and off and threw them away.
Heller said, “That’s enough. Now listen, Margie. Why did you let him do that?”
“You told him to,” said the girl.
“No, no, no!” said Heller. “Now you grab Bang-Bang’s arms and start to rape him!”
The girl rose up and seized Bang-Bang with a will.
Bang-Bang simply threw his wrists up and the girl sailed halfway across the room!
Heller caught her in midair. He put her down and said to her, “Now, you do that.”
Bang-Bang grabbed her. The girl threw her wrists up the same way Bang-Bang had. Bang-Bang went staggering.
“Hey!” the girl said. “He couldn’t keep hold of me!”
Heller sat the girl down in a chair. He said, “Now, listen. The main trouble whores have is getting abused physically. Getting beat up.”
“According to Vantagio,” said Bang-Bang, “it makes them amortize too fast. But he never thinks of guys like me!”
Heller ignored him. He said to the girl, “Now, what we’re going to teach you first is how to shake any grip any man can put on you. Then we’ll teach you how to attack. It’s not easy.”
“Especially on me,” said Bang-Bang morosely.
Heller said to the girl, “With practice you can not only learn those things, you can also learn to appear to be under a man’s control but actually remain completely able to handle him, drunk or sober. Get it?”
The girl’s eyes were gleaming with enthusiasm. “Oh, yes! I promise I will study and practice hard! The other girls here absolutely love it! They say they never get beat up anymore.”
“It’s only me that gets beat up,” said Bang-Bang with a groan.
Heller went over to pour them some Seven Up. The girl said to Bang-Bang in a low voice, “I should think he must have invented these tricks himself just to beat off all the girls. He’s awful cute, Mr. Bang-Bang. Is it true like they say he’s a virgin?”
I was in total, utter disgust. How Heller was conning them! Pretending these were things he had dreamed up! He was teaching them Voltarian unarmed combat! And he was a dithering fool, too! A whole houseful of beautiful women and he had been wasting his time teaching them how to protect themselves! A traitor to all men everywhere! How about all those who only got their kicks beating up whores? How about them? Thoughtless (bleepard).
A man must be masterful!
A tiny sound behind me!
My head whirled away from the telescope!
Standing on the roof just outside the access door, bathed in red light from below, was Margarita Pompom Pizzazz!
She was in a flowered bathrobe!
She looked like a sixty-year-old Demon from Hells!
What was that in her hand? A huge, lethal-looking weapon! A BB pistol!
She saw she was detected!
She raised the BB air gun!
In a snarling voice of hate she said, “Put up your hands, you Peeping Tom! This is your last chance or I’ll shoot! Trifling with my affections! Breaching your promises!”
She gestured ferociously with the BB gun. “You’re finished! I phoned the police there was a sniper on the roof! A SWAT team will arrive any minute and blow you to bits! So this is your last chance!”
I flinched. There were huge, standing air-conditioner units in place all around on the roof. If I could withdraw behind one . . .
I moved back!
She fired!
The pellet struck the side of the fragile telescope! Sparks from its electronics flew!
So did I!
I backed in a flash behind an air-conditioner stack.
She fired again!
I held on to the telescope. I might need it as a weapon!
Going crabwise, I drew further away, taking advantage of every square inch of cover!
She was following me up!
My head was in view for an instant.
The deadly pffft! of the air pistol coupled with the clang of the pellet striking sheet metal right beside my head!
She was a deadly marksman! A killer! Maybe a hit woman in her youth!
I skittered further! I took another peek. Bathrobe flaring like the cloak of an avenging horseman, she was following me up!
Another lethal pffft! and deadly clang!
Oh, this called for top Class A strategy! And a SWAT team on its way? This called for Joint Chiefs of Staff Maximum National Emergency Pla
n Triple X! Maybe atomic bombs!
I drew back in a wide circle through the maze of air conditioners.
In full cry, shouting, “Surrender now, you (bleepard)!” and “Geronimo!” each time she shot, she was following me up.
To get back to the roof-access door and escape, I had to cross three open spaces. I screwed up my courage. I dashed across the first one!
She fired! A miss.
I poised to cross the second. She was circling away from the access door to get a cleaner shot. I measured my timing perfectly. I dashed!
She fired! A miss!
I crouched behind an air conditioner. I looked at that last open area. Dangerous! I was taking my life in my hands! But I couldn’t stay on that roof with this yowling Demon!
I braced myself. I dashed!
My rump was struck a mighty blow! It stung!
Seeing I had not received a mortal wound, I leaped into the stairwell!
I got the door closed just as another BB crashed against it!
I locked it from inside. Six steps at a time, I flew down the stairs!
Hammering on the roof door above! Frustrated howls of rage! They lent wings to my feet!
Twenty-two flights down, I burst into the lobby.
There was no one there. The commotion was all upstairs.
I snatched the door open, thankful that they were never locked from inside.
Into the dark street I sped. I crossed it.
Police cars!
Three abreast they were coming up the street!
My way was blocked!
I dived into a handy basement stairway.
Only then did I dare look up and back.
She was standing on the roof edge! She had the pistol in one hand and was waving something in the other. The telescope case! I had forgotten it! She looked like some Demon twenty-two stories up against the sky.
She was screaming something. Too far away to get the words. She had spotted me crossing the street! She was pointing and howling.
I still had the telescope in my hand. Evidence! It was ruined. I hastily dumped it into a garbage can close by and resumed my cover.
She had seen me again!
I couldn’t tell what she was screaming. She was pointing down toward me, waving the case and pistol.
The SWAT team!
They spilled out of the cars. They rushed into position.
I recognized the man in the third police car! It was Inspector Bulldog Grafferty!
This required triple think! That demented creature up there was pointing down at me. She could still see me! She was waving the BB pistol and the telescope case.
Genius came to my rescue. At the top of my lungs, I shouted, “Take cover! That’s Mad Maggie, the Times Square Sniper!”
The SWAT team scattered like a puff of dust!
There was a shattering blast of rifle fire!
Margarita Pompom Pizzazz, riddled with bullets, came off the roof in a long, slow, high dive and went thunk on the pavement.
You can always count on the police to do their duty. Particularly when they think their own necks are out!
Grafferty made sure there were no other snipers on the roof. Then he walked up to the corpse and turned it over with his foot.
“Fellow citizens,” he said with a hand bullhorn to the empty street in general, “you can come out now and go about your business. The first interest of the police is to protect its taxpayers. The streets are safe once again, thanks to Bulldog Grafferty.” Was he running for office or just getting ready to hit the town for higher pay?
I sauntered off.
Some Earth poet once said that Hells had no fury like a woman scorned. He must have had Margarita in mind.
It was a bit hard to saunter with that BB in my butt.
PART TWENTY-SIX
Chapter 6
It was time for strong measures. The hour had arrived to bring in the troops, the tanks and the artillery. It was plain that Heller was dangerous beyond belief. Even trying to put his room under surveillance was as much as your life was worth. My behind attested to that. Until I got to the privacy of my hotel bathroom I was certain the wound was near mortal, and I had envisioned a tender scene of getting Utanc to draw the lethal bullet out while I stoically groaned just a bit. But unfortunately the pellet had not penetrated flesh, and simply dropped out of my pants when I took them off. But it was bruised! Tender! The red spot was a quarter of an inch in diameter!
No, I couldn’t go around risking death on Heller’s account. So, sitting lopsided in the ornate hotel chair, I picked up the ornate white and gold phone and called Rockecenter’s office.
That produced quite a spin at the hotel switchboard. I told them who I wanted to speak with and they didn’t believe me. They acted like I was trying to call a God.
Finally the hotel switchboard supervisor got the telephone company emergency-assistance supervisor who got onto the chief information supervisor of the city of New York. They kept saying one had to call the Octopus Oil Company in Ohio. I argued this down and they said you called the Octopus Oil Company in New Jersey. They were arguing with one another over the phone like it was a conference call. After a while somebody thought of getting the emergency-assistance information supervisor of the Continental Telephone Company and he got the idea maybe the International Phone Company would know. More and more people kept getting added on to this conference call. It appeared no one had ever before tried to telephone Delbert John Rockecenter and they weren’t sure that it wasn’t sort of sacrilegious.
Eventually they included in an Arab emergency-assistance supervisor in Saudi Yemen and in broken English he said they should query the local operator at Hairytown, New York, because he had heard his king went there once, and he had had to phone him about a palace revolution. So that local operator got added to the babble on the lines and she said, why, yes, she’d ask the butler at the Rockecenter Estate near there—Pokantickle, it was called—and maybe he’d know how you could phone Delbert John Rockecenter. The fourth assistant butler got on the line and said, in a lofty tone, that if it wasn’t Miss Agnes calling, all such calls should be referred to the attorneys, Swindle and Crouch of Wall Street.
So the receptionist at Swindle and Crouch was added and she was horrified. Nobody ever called Delbert John Rockecenter! It should be reported to the police!
I had an inspiration. In a tough voice I said, “Put Mr. Bury on the line!”
She said, “Oh, I am sorry, but Mr. Bury is at his special office in the Octopus Oil Building at Rockecenter Plaza. He has an appointment with Mr. Rockecenter at ten and won’t be in today.”
A wheeze of relief went from New York to London to Saudi Yemen. They had run God to his lair. I am sure most of them had a coffee break to celebrate the instant they went off the line.
The hotel switchboard girl said, “That’s only a few blocks down the street! I’ll connect you.”
Magic. The fourth assistant receptionist in Mr. Bury’s Octopus Oil Building office had an open moment at one o’clock sharp and would see me.
Of course, I took a bath, put a Band-Aid on the red spot to cushion it and got all dressed up in my most Federal-looking investigator suit. I polished up my credentials and at one o’clock sharp was sitting, slouch hat in hand, before the iron-barred and bulletproof glass-protected desk of the fourth assistant receptionist in Mr. Bury’s special office in the Octopus Building. At one-fifteen he came in from lunch.
I lifted my credentials up so he could see them through the glass.
He sat down at his desk. He said, “I’m sorry. We don’t have any orders for the Senate today.”
I said, “You better let me see Mr. Bury or you really will be sorry!”
He looked closely at my credentials again.
“The servant’s entrance is in the basement,” he said.
“I want to see Mr. Bury,” I said firmly.
“Mr. Bury has just come back from an important appointment,” he said. “He is exhausted! I’m
scandalized that you would presume such a tone!”
I said, “You get on that blower, sonny, and tell Mr. Bury that Delbert John Rockecenter will be the one that’s scandalized if I don’t get to him.”
“Are you threatening me?” He was pushing a buzzer. Two armed guards, carrying riot shotguns at port, burst in the door behind me.
“You tell Bury that I came here to avert a scandal!” I said, “or it will be bursting all over the papers!”
The guards grabbed me.
“What kind of a scandal?” said the fourth assistant receptionist.
“Family!” I said, struggling.
Hastily the fourth assistant receptionist held up his hand to the guards. It was time, too. They almost had me out the door.
Magic!
Two minutes later, the guards had me standing in the middle of Mr. Bury’s office.
Mr. Bury was even more dried up. Life was being hard on him. He had more wrinkles than a prune.
“Now, what’s this about a scandal?” he said.
I glanced either way at the guards. Bury nodded. They frisked me and took my gun. They left.
“Cheap fuel,” I said.
“That’s not a family scandal.”
“It will be if I don’t get to see Delbert John Rockecenter. Cheap fuel could wipe out the whole family fortune.”
The Wall Street lawyer thought it over. “That cheap?”
“Cheaper,” I said. “The dastardly plot was revealed in a long and careful investigation.”
“Who knows about it?”
“Twiddle and me. And he knows no details. I came straight to headquarters with it when I was sure.”
“What is this fuel?”
“That’s what I’ll tell Delbert John Rockecenter.”
“No, no,” said Mr. Bury. “You tell me and I’ll tell him.”
“That’s what everybody says,” I grated. “This stuff is as cheap as sand. You think I’d tell anyone else? Would Rockecenter want me to tell anyone else? It violates the old family policy, ‘Trust nobody!’”
“Ah,” he said contemplatively. “I see what you mean. Mr. Rockecenter is a stickler in adhering to family policy. But what’s your own payoff? I’ve got to be sure this is honest dealing.”