It started the moment I stepped out of Rockecenter’s place of self-worship and back into the office of Miss Peace.
“(Bleep)!” she said, raising her pretty head, “It’s five o’clock and I’m overdue at the abortion clinic! You sure took your god (bleeped) time!”
Discipline, tight schedules! That’s what it takes to make a great empire!
“Open up your god (bleeped) shirt!” she ordered. She had her hat and coat on. She was tearing through her desk, throwing things in all directions. “Where’s the god (bleeped) stamp!”
I had my shirt open. I was studying her every move. She found what she was looking for under a stale peanut-butter sandwich. What a cunning way to hide a secret stamp!
It was a big disk with a handle and a trigger. She brought it up and, with a bent paper clip, shoved furiously at the changeable letters on the front of it.
I could read what she was making it say: Rockecenter Family Spi. It had a date and initial space. How efficient!
She started to advance upon me with such speed and fury, for a second I was alarmed. Her finger was on its trigger. “Are you sure,” I began, “that ‘spy’ isn’t spelled with a y, not an i?”
“Don’t you question codes!” she snapped at me. “When that light panel,” she gestured toward a flashing board in the wall, “flashes purple with twelve dots, he means ‘Sworn in family spi.’ You ain’t going to get very far, buster, if you start questioning him! Hold your god (bleeped) shirt out of the way!”
Well, what could I do? A code is a code. I opened my shirt wider.
She slammed the stamp against my bare chest and pulled the trigger. It stung!
She grabbed a weird-looking stylus off her desk and, with her tongue gripped firmly between her teeth to the side of her mouth and concentrating very hard, she jammed the stylus into my chest and very laboriously wrote what must be her initials. She stepped back and threw the stylus over a peg on the coatrack.
I looked down at my chest.
There was nothing on it!
Well, it wasn’t up to me to question. Buttoning my shirt, I started to move toward the door with the huge teeth.
“No, no, Christ!” she said in exasperation. “They’ve all gone home. Use this door!” And, muttering something about new, unindoctrinated staff, she herself went through a side door. I followed but she was going so fast I lost her at once.
I was in an ordinary office building hall, crowded with people going home. They sure kept tight schedules here. I made a note of the anxious strain on the faces as the employees sought to get away.
Thinking perhaps I should report to Bury, I wandered through a rush hour of people quitting work, pouring out of building after building. What an enthusiastic tide of humanity! What a thrill to see how well they kept their schedule!
By the time I had battered my way through the torrent to the Octopus Building, it was locked up tight!
As I was now a dedicated Rockecenter employee, I realized I would now be expected to enthusiastically rush home. I did. Fortunately, it was not far, as the security men had taken the five hundred dollars I had had in my wallet, leaving me only with my gun and Federal ID.
After a bath to get the stench of antiseptic off of me, I spent some time in front of the mirror trying to see the stamp. Nothing there at all.
I called a bellboy to take away the antisepticized clothes and he called the public health service which sent a special truck. I dug some money out of the mattress and tipped him five dollars. He was very grateful.
As Utanc was nowhere to be seen, I had a huge and splendid dinner in my room, watched some TV and gratefully went to bed.
It had been quite a day, but I was duty bound now to be fresh and alert to report in at nine sharp the following morning.
Things were in motion now. Not even the Gods could help Heller!
PART TWENTY-SEVEN
Chapter 2
At 9:00 AM sharp, nattily dressed in a brand-new suit and slouch hat, I presented myself at Mr. Bury’s special office.
Nobody was there.
I waited for some time in the hall.
About 9:45, a janitor opened the door to clean the place up and I went in. I sat in the waiting room. About 10:00 a security team came in to check the offices and make sure they were safe. They didn’t speak to me.
About 10:30, the fourth assistant receptionist came in, turned off the burglar-alarm system, unlocked his barricaded, bulletproof cage and sat down to read The Daily Racing Form.
At 11:00, I approached him. “I think I’m supposed to see Mr. Bury.”
“Well, why cry on my shoulder?” he said. “Bad luck is bad luck.” He went back to reading his racing form.
At 12:00 I heard a tremendous rush in the hall. It sounded like a riot! Alert to my duties, I sped out. It was a horde of people pouring out of offices going to lunch. I almost got trampled in the stampede. Dutifully, I went to lunch.
At 1:00 PM I came in. The fourth assistant receptionist entered about 1:15. He eyed me with distaste. He went into his cage and pushed a button.
Five security guards came crashing through the door, guns drawn. The fourth assistant receptionist was pointing at me. So were the guns of the security guards!
“Wait!” I yelled. “My name is Inkswitch! I’m supposed to see Mr. Bury!”
The chief security man pointed through the glass of the fourth assistant receptionist. “Is he on that wanted list?”
It was hard to see what was going on because they had me with my palms flat against the wall, feet outstretched.
I heard the fourth assistant receptionist say, “No, he ain’t on the wanted list. I can’t understand it. Must be some mistake.”
“You got another list there,” said the chief security guard. “Is that a hit list?”
“Well, well,” said the fourth assistant receptionist. “It’s a note from Bury.” He yelled at me through the glass. “Hey, you dumb (bleepard). You were due in Personnel at ten o’clock! Can’t you get anything straight? You’re late!”
The security guards rushed me over to an office marked:
Personnel
They dumped me inside and left.
“Inkswitch?” said a girl. “You’re not on the combat team list for Venezuela. What are you doing here? Don’t you realize that government is supposed to be overthrown by 4:00 PM?” It really caused an upset. The personnel manager himself came out to see what the flap was all about, snarling that he couldn’t hear his favorite radio program with all this babble going on. He straightened them out. The Venezuela job had been turned over to the Russians. The staff looked very contrite that they had not been informed.
The personnel manager pushed a button. Six different security guards rushed in. The personnel manager was pointing at me. “He upset the whole office!”
They seized me.
“Wait a minute!” I screamed–my voice was sharpened by them pulling my arms up behind my back and trying to lift me to throw me out. “I’m an employee! I was just signed on by Mr. Rockecenter himself!”
They dropped me in a pile in the middle of the floor. The leading security man said, “I’ll bet!”
The personnel manager said, “You’re on! Five dollars!”
The leading security man said, “You’re on! Rip open his shirt!”
They did, with buttons flying about.
A security man got out a strange-looking light. He shined it on my chest. I looked down.
Glowing in fluorescent green was Rockecenter Family Spi with date and initials.
“Jesus,” said the leading security man. “You lose, Throgmorton.”
“No, you lose,” said the personnel manager.
They got in a dreadful wrangle. Somebody called the Psychiatric Department and a psychiatrist came in and told them they had both lost and were overreacting. He made them pay each other five dollars and then, sort of absently, took both bills and left.
I found myself with a personnel consultant in a cubicle. She was
punching out computer cards. It was very lengthy. She was taking the data from my Federal credentials.
Finally she pushed all the cards into a computer. She pressed a test button to recall the data to a screen. Nothing happened. The screen remained blank.
“So that’s that,” she said. “You’ve been processed.”
“Wait,” I said. “The computer screen stayed blank.”
“Of course,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to have your cover blown, would you?”
I left.
Mr. Bury’s office door was ajar. I pushed it open and walked in.
“Where the hell have you been?” he said. “They’ve been waiting for us for an hour!”
We rushed out and got a cab.
At last things were happening!
PART TWENTY-SEVEN
Chapter 3
As we rode along, blocked from time to time with traffic jams, Mr. Bury seemed very quiet. Once in a while his eyes flicked at me.
Finally, he spoke. “How much do you know about this Wister?”
“Not as much as you,” I lied. “I just saw you were taken aback so I covered for you.” No use to have Bury gunning for me because I knew too much.
“Hmmm,” he said. “I don’t like this way of handling this Wister thing, Inkswitch. The right way is usually pretty tortuous but in this case, a direct hit would seem more like it.”
I stiffened with alarm. I did not have that platen. And I sure wasn’t going to get myself blown up in a Voltar invasion. With the planet in this state, they’d wipe out every living thing on it, rebuild an ecology and colonize. That “every living thing” included me.
How could I handle this? Ah. “Torpedo Fiaccola wasn’t very lucky,” I said.
It was his turn to stiffen—and Wall Street lawyers are pretty expert at hiding their feelings—what feelings they have, that is, if any.
“Jesus!” he said. He was looking at me in sort of shock. Then curiosity got the better of him. “Did the (bleepard) talk to you?”
“No,” I said. “Wister sent him to the North Pole. Probably all he can talk now is polar bear.” It was time to take his mind off me. “It was Wister that collected the hundred Gs, not Fiaccola.”
“JESUS!” said Bury.
“Yes,” I said, pleasantly. “Wister is using your hit money to finance this cheap fuel invention.”
“Oh, my God!”
“I know,” I said, “that you are thinking that if that got back to Mr. Rockecenter, he would do something awfully nasty.”
Bury was staring at me in horror. I might as well drive it home.
“But, there is something you can tell me,” I said. “Why is Mr. Rockecenter so dead set against having a son?”
His face looked like a white prune.
Finally he said, “He’s impotent. Just a voyeur. He’s been unable to perform for years.”
“Oh, come, come, Mr. Bury,” I said. “Let’s not squirm around. I stood up for you in his office when I could have let you have it to the hilt. Now admit that that shows you can trust me. There’s more to this than that.”
“Inkswitch, I do not know how in hell you have gotten any information you have. But it is VERY dangerous information. I would betray professional confidence if I told you one word more! The defense rests!”
We rode along through two more traffic jams. Then he looked at me and smiled a sort of wintry smile—a twitch at either corner of his mouth below bleak eyes. “Inkswitch, after taking consultation with myself, I have come to the conclusion that you’re one of the wiliest, craftiest sons of (bleepches) I have ever met. No, let me enter a correction on the record. You ARE the wiliest, craftiest son of a (bleepch) I ever met. I think our partnership will justify the findings of the highest court!”
“And you, Mr. Bury, are the most vicious, conniving (bleepard) I have ever had the privilege of working with.”
We shook hands solemnly in mutual admiration.
We had arrived at our destination. “Now,” said Mr. Bury, “let’s go get this Wister’s life so (bleeped) up and ruined, he’ll never again be able to lift his head! Let’s do it beyond any appeal and carry it straight through to total condemnation!”
With what enthusiasm we alighted!
Bury lifted his hand slightly, indicating the skyscrapers which reared imposingly all about us. “We are in the advertising center of the world. We are about to call on FFBO, the largest advertising and public relations firm in America. Let me do all the talking.”
“FFBO?” I said. “What does that stand for?”
“Fatten, Farten, Burstein & Ooze. It is the prime test of the qualified advertising man to be able to say it quickly and without stammering. That means you’re in the know. But, I repeat, let me do all the talking. As I’m a lawyer, they can’t hold me for perjury or defamation.”
We went into a huge, ornate lobby. Metal fish swam around the murals. They appeared to be suckers.
Our elevator shot up. It spilled us into a small room. There were no chairs. People were idling about, obviously not belonging there, looking frustrated. A high, bulletproof glass cage was in one corner with a single girl behind the maze hole. The walls of the room were dark red. There was an upper port and I could see a sawed-off shotgun muzzle with an alert eye behind it. There were no signs or directions.
Bury took a card out of his wallet. He put it against the bulletproof glass. The girl flinched.
“Foreign public relations vice president,” demanded Bury.
The girl snatched a phone. She barked into it hysterically. She instantly shouted through the maze hole, “Floor fifty! Go right up, Mr. Bury!”
The people in the room flinched, crowded back to get out of our way.
We got into an elevator. Out of the corner of his mouth, without moving his lips, Mr. Bury said, “I didn’t like the slow response. I understand their corporate delay tactics very well: there’s something wrong here. This may require the third degree. Pull your hat down over your eyes. Now, when I cough, look very tough. When I stamp my foot, put your hand inside your coat as though you are going to draw a gun. Got that?”
I was learning the world of corporate expertise. I said I had it.
Bury suddenly added, “But on no account draw or shoot anybody. We own the insurance company that has their policy and we don’t want to be paying damages. Let any recourse to mayhem be theirs. Then the policy will lapse.”
We had arrived. The elevator door slid open. A beautiful waiting room stretched on either side.
Two girls, scantily dressed like ushers, had a roll of carpet between them on a rod. The carpet was red. Marching backwards, they began to unroll the carpet so that we could walk forward on it.
Two flower girls, dressed in gauzy white, leaping this way and that, daintily strewed flowers from their baskets in our path.
Two violinists in Hungarian costume walked along with us playing seductive melodies.
“I hate these (bleeped) advertising formalities,” said Bury.
“Do they always do this?”
“No. Only for me. They know I despise it.”
We went down a long hall. Two young men with herald’s trumpets blew a blast, then made an arch of their trumpets.
A girl in a lamb’s costume prettily opened a door that said on it:
J. P. Flagrant
Vice President
Foreign Public Relations Department
The office was banked with flowers.
A rather fat man in a scarlet tuxedo was bowing and scrubbing his hands. “I am J. P. Flagrant, Mr. Bury. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.”
Three little girls raised their angelic faces on the other side of the room and began to sing:
Happy welcome to you,
Happy welcome to you.
Happy welcome, dear Mr. Bury,
JELO scrubs and rinses, too.
They bowed and tripped prettily out, throwing kisses and doing a shuffle-off-to-Buffalo at the same time. Difficult.
Flagran
t scrubbed his hands some more. “Now what would you like, Mr. Bury and guest? A Havana Havana Havana cigar? Some 1650 Vintage Raire Champagne? Or perhaps a nice, ripe secretary to refresh you? That door leads to a bedroom and there’s one in there now all waiting in JELO!”
“If you will tell this court to recess,” said Bury acidly, “we can get down to business.”
Flagrant slapped his fat hands together and, still beaming, made shooing motions. The violin music stopped. People in the hall scattered frantically in all directions.
Bury picked a flower petal off his dark suit as though it were smut. He dropped it on the floor and cleaned his fingers on his handkerchief. He said, “We are here to retain you as a public relations account. But we demand the right to select our own public relations man.”
“Oh, my goodness, Mr. Bury. We are honored. Anyone from the Rockecenter interests has only to command us and we will do anything, anything, anything at all to be of total satisfactory and agreeable service number-one position to you.”
He swatted his hands together.
A secretary raced in with her notebook ready for dictation in one hand and a bag of contraceptives in the other.
Flagrant swatted his hands three times. A young man in a severely cut Ivy League suit raced in holding an enormous book. At Flagrant’s command, the young man, holding the book to us, began to show us smiling photographs of PR men with graphs and biographies.
Bury coughed.
On cue, instantly, I looked my toughest.
“We want, on this case,” said Bury, “no other than J. Walter Madison.”
The young man flinched.
The secretary flinched.