PART FIFTY-FOUR
Chapter 3
A call to Grafferty’s office elicited the information that, according to the harbor traffic control, the Golden Sunset would dock at 1600 hours at Pier 68 and all was going smoothly.
I wanted very much to be on hand and witness Heller’s downfall as he stepped ashore into the waiting arms of police. I wanted to see his face as they shoved him in the wagon and whisked him off to Bellevue and mental extinction.
Accordingly, I was very much on time.
Two squad cars and the wagon were parked well out of sight in the warehouse. Cops were behind boxes of cargo with riot guns. The usual Federal services of immigration and customs were all that were in sight, and even though the yacht had not been foreign and really didn’t have to clear in, they were on hand in their usual capacity of maximum annoyance and in this case served as cover.
I spotted Grafferty.
“I want this (bleepard),” Police Inspector Grafferty said. “I spotted him in a sex-pervert lineup three years ago and have just been waiting for him to make his first misstep. And now he has: He’s brought himself to the attention of a psychiatrist. Fatal every time. And speaking of psychiatrists, what happened to your face?”
“Skateboards at point-blank range,” I said.
“Oh, yeah. I remember now. You’re the Fed that tipped us off about the Skateboard Bandits. I never forget a face. We never caught them, you know. But thanks for the tip. I wish this yacht would hurry up and come in.”
“Busy day?” I said.
“Yeah, I’ve got to organize a police escort for the mayor’s wife. She’s going to make a speech tonight on the subject of mental health and she always drives the audience crazy. There comes the yacht now.”
The Golden Sunset was coming up the Hudson. A tug got a line aboard her and took her in tow for the last quarter mile. She was a beautiful ship, all white with gold scrolls, more like a cruise liner than a yacht. The red Turkish flag with its yellow star and crescent floated out from her taffrail in the Hudson River breeze. Gulls were spiraling around. Helicopters from the nearby heliport added to the busy scene.
The tug, with many toots going back and forth from the yacht bridge to the tug pilothouse, nudged her into the berth. Ye Gods, she was big. I hadn’t realized how large two hundred feet and two thousand tons of ship could be.
They were getting a gangway into her opened rail and the Federal mob swarmed aboard to suspect things and annoy people. They weren’t in on what we intended. They all came off after a while, bitterly disappointed to have found no Chinese being smuggled in and thwarted in their efforts, by a vigilant crew, to plant contraband.
Now was our chance. People could come off.
Instead of that, two people went on. They were the butler from Heller’s condo and Krak’s lady’s maid.
We watched the gangway and the hawsers. Nobody could get off that ship without our seeing it. We knew better than to go aboard, only to have the quarry sneak ashore behind us.
The butler and the lady’s maid, assisted by several crew members, were bringing the Countess Krak’s baggage to the pier and waiting taxis.
“Where is this guy?” said Grafferty, growing restless.
And there came Captain Bitts.
At the bottom of the gangway, Grafferty stopped him. “You have a passenger. And you better tell me where he is and that he has to come quietly.”
“A passenger?” said Bitts. “Oh, you must mean the CIA man.”
I lurked behind crates on the dock. I did not want to be seen. Also, I wanted to be out of the road of gunfire. I knew Heller’s habits.
“I mean this man!” said Grafferty, displaying a blowup of Wister.
“Yeah,” said Captain Bitts. “That man.” He gazed back at the ship. “Well, he wanted us to teach him how to shoot dice. I don’t know how he did it. He won back his marker. Then he won all my cash. And then he won all the crew’s cash. And finally, he offered to bet us all he’d won against our putting him ashore if he could shoot five sevens in a row. Of course, that’s impossible, so we made the wager.”
Grafferty was impatient. “Well, WHAT HAPPENED?”
Bitts sighed. “The worst of it was, we afterwards sawed the dice in half and they weren’t even loaded. So we put him ashore last night on the Jersey coast. By the way, as you’re a cop, could you let me have two bits so I can phone the credit company and get some money? There’s not a dime left on the ship. We’re cleaned out.”
I drew back quickly. Grafferty was raving about illegal landings and Bitts was replying about New Jersey wasn’t New York, and when did the CIA become illegal aliens? It was pretty messy. I got out of there.
The dirty, filthy sneak! Typical of Heller!
That ceiling I had seen him looking at early this morning must have been a motel! And Gods knew where.
Oh, this was not going well!
As I grabbed a taxi at the West 30th Street Heliport, close to hand, I looked back at the yacht.
Suddenly, just like that, I got a terrific PLAN!
Even if all went wrong, left and right, I was not lost after all!
The plan was utterly brilliant!
PART FIFTY-FOUR
Chapter 4
The evening stint was only made endurable by the fact that I had an out.
Teenie came by to brag about how well she was doing in school and how wonderful it was to have a competent lot of instructors at last.
“There’s nothing like a proper education,” she told the two lesbians of the evening as she helped them undress. “Some men find the passive mode most inviting. When you see them naked, you fall back and look exactly like you are dead. You—”
“GET HER OUT OF HERE!” I roared.
Adora was upbraiding me instantly. “You unfeeling brute. One must encourage the young in their schoolwork! Not bellow at them! There, there, Teenie. Did he hurt your feelings?”
“Nothing that a new skateboard wouldn’t heal,” said Teenie. “He dented it and bent a wheel. I’ve got to go to a night class on advanced orgiastics. There’s a sporting-goods mart open, and if I leave right now I’ll have time to get a new skateboard. It’s only two hundred dollars.”
Anything to get rid of her. I grabbed out the two hundred dollars and threw them at her. Before I could put my roll back she slipped off another twenty. “There’s tax,” she said, and sailed away, spinning the books upon their strap and laughing gaily about something I could not make out.
“What a little dear,” sighed Adora. “And such opportunities are opening up. Before you came home, Candy, she was telling me that she had a Hollywood offer to star in a picture of her own, I Was a Teenage Porno Queen.”
I was about to say that I’d heard lies before but that was probably the biggest yet. But I stopped myself in time.
The two lesbians had stripped by now and lay upon the bed. One of them said, “Passive mode? Let me see if I can do it.” And she laid back like she was dead.
That did it. It took two bongs before I could perform on the first one and another before I could even touch the second.
Finally I managed it. I felt stoned but relaxed. The walls were sagging in and going away while Adora made her sales pitch to the now ex-lesbians. It was nice to be so detached.
And then suddenly I wasn’t.
The wife member of the team had just said, “Oh, this real thing really is good. I never in my life thought anyone could get that much bang out of a bang. But I don’t think once in three weeks is often enough.”
Adora said, “Have no fear. In just three days, we begin to reform those chauvinistic pigs of homos, and with my husband’s demonstrations, believe you me, kiddo, the place will be full of standing ovations. I can just see their buttons pop when they behold him pumping away, doing the real thing. They won’t be able to restrain themselves!”
I went ice-cold. The vision I got was entirely different from hers!
Bumping off door jambs, I got to my room. I locked th
e door. I fell upon the sofa. I lay there shivering. I also felt like I was running a fever.
Would my plan work?
Would I make it in time?
If the Fates decreed NO to both, then I might as well blow my brains out, for life would become utterly unsupportable.
Too stoned and too blind to watch viewers, I wrapped myself in blankets and fell into awful nightmares where I did not make it and wound up in the Manco devil’s hell, raped for eternity by homo demons, even though I blew my brains out daily!
PART FIFTY-FOUR
Chapter 5
I awoke late. I looked at my watch. Shock jolted through me! It was past 10:00 AM. The court might already have opened!
Pushing bandages out of my eyes, I gripped the viewer. Yes! A view of the courtroom!
I freaked!
Hastily I rang Eagle Eye. The man with the cigar-husky voice answered. “You still want that fifty Gs?” I said.
“The bounty on that woman? The one who is to be committed? The one our security officer is thirsting to nail? YES, INDEED!”
“She’s in the courtroom of Judge Hammer Twist right this moment. I do not think the court has opened. If you can get there fast you can nab her!”
“Gone!” he said, and hung up.
Anxiously I looked at the viewer. No, the court had not opened yet: the bench was empty. But there were lots of people in the place, from the amount of comings and goings in the front of the room. I tried to spot exactly what row she was in. I couldn’t because she kept turning her head from left, where an older man was sitting, to right. The double! The Whiz Kid double was sitting next to her!
The woman was sly and cunning but she was also stupid. The commitment order was still in force and yet all she seemed concerned about was this double. There was a briefcase on her lap. Oh, this was like bringing down a kite by parting its string!
I looked at the other viewers. Crobe was diddling around with some awful concoction of brain cells, humming happily.
The other viewer showed the van interior. Aha, so Heller had found them. And he was lying low, I concluded, until the Whiz Kid double spoke his piece in court.
The lights were hurting my eyes. Too much sun in the room. I adjusted the bandages to keep most of it out.
One thing you could say about courts: they were usually very slow and one spent most of his time on a case simply waiting and waiting. It was working in my favor.
I went and got some coffee. My throat was very dry and the coffee didn’t seem to do the trick. I got some cookies—chocolate tops with white centers. I ate the whole box. I finished off the coffee.
I went back to the viewer.
Aha! Action! The security officer was over by the side door talking to a court official. They were looking into the room. Then the court official shrugged, as much as to say “Go ahead,” although any words were lost in the hubbub of the room.
Two more security men came into the room. A fourth took position by the door, guarding it. The other three began to walk along the aisles in front of spectators, bending over and looking carefully into every face. They were taking lots of time with each person in the courtroom.
The Countess was following their progress. But I was in absolute glee! She couldn’t possibly get out. Even if she were in disguise, it wouldn’t work, for those security men were on the watch for powder or paint.
Judge Hammer Twist came out of the door of his chambers and somebody yelled, “All rise!”
The audience did. But the security search kept on.
Judge Twist took his seat at the bench. He was bright red with sunburn but there was no sign, otherwise, that he had been goofing off: he was all business. He rapped his gavel.
They had somebody for sentencing, as the first item on the docket. A man had run off from his wife and hadn’t supported her. They hauled the wretch up before the bench and the judge gave him seven years’ hard labor.
Next was a burglar who had robbed offices by strangling secretaries. The judge gave him a one-year suspended sentence.
Next was a bigamist who pleaded guilty. The judge gave him life imprisonment.
Then there was the final award of judgment to an old woman who had slipped on the sidewalk in front of Baltman’s. The judge announced the jury award of fifteen million dollars. “Well, Becky,” said Judge Twist in an amiable voice to the plaintiff, who had just received the news of her riches, “you’re doing pretty well this year. That’s your third winning suit.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” the old harridan said. “And I’m not forgetting the Retirement Fund for Judges, like we arranged in chambers.”
The judge seemed to want to get rid of her quickly, for he hastily began looking all over the top of his desk.
At that moment one of the security men stepped directly in front of my viewer and was in the act of bending forward.
“Wister,” the judge said. “I have a plea here for special hearing. Clerk, call Wister!”
An arm went out and thrust the security man aside.
The Whiz Kid double and the older man who had been on her left all went forward with the Countess Krak.
Well, all right, for the instant. I was sure they had her spotted from the way that security man had scowled. Yes, he had gone over to the security officer quickly and they were talking.
The double came to a stop before the bench.
“This is most irregular,” said the judge. “Where are your attorneys? Boggle, Gouge and Hound usually represent you.”
“They’ve been dismissed,” the double said. “I am representing myself.”
“Oh, my!” said the judge. “This is bad business! How do you expect lawyers to get properly rich if they don’t get juicy targets like you? You’re pretty remunerative around here.”
“I’m afraid not now,” said the double. “You see, Your Honor, I’m pleading guilty to all charges.”
“Oh, well, that doesn’t make for any prolonged defense. So I will accept that you’re representing yourself. Guilty. You’re pleading guilty, then.”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“All right. But to what are you pleading guilty? We have to have something in the court record to plead guilty to before we plead guilty. As you’re representing yourself, I’m taking it upon myself to instruct you in your legal rights. So what are the crimes, Wister? Hey?”
“Any suits filed against Wister are against me, not against Wister.”
“You’ve got me mixed up,” said the judge.
“I had a brother named Wister. The ones they got mixed up was me and my brother. To save the family honor, I freely admit I did all those things that Wister was being sued for.”
The judge was scrambling around his desk. Then he called for his clerk and they scrambled around his desk. They found something.
“Aha,” said the judge, reading a legal paper, “it appears that the women plaintiffs just withdrew their suits. Something about their finding out that you were going to do this and you didn’t have any money.”
The prosecuting attorney came over hastily and whispered in the judge’s ear.
“Ah,” said Judge Twist. “This charge of rape of a minor in Mexico. Very, very serious. Clerk, see if there’s anything in on that. I haven’t done my morning mail. Thank you, Mr. Prosecutor, for calling it to my attention. We can’t have minor-raping going on, even in Mexico.”
The clerk had dived for his chambers and came back with a telegram. He handed it to the judge.
Twist read it and began to frown very heavily. “This is pretty bad news. The request for a warrant has met with a technical flaw in wording. Let’s get this straight. The State Department and the US Department of Justice have communicated with the Mexican authorities . . . hmm. Burro stealing is no longer a crime since the Mexicans started building Volkswagens, as you can’t give burros away. . . . Hmmm. Bad news here. Ah, yes, the technical flaw: The request asserted that the girl violated was a virgin and Mexican authorities refuse to believe that there are
any virgins in Mexico, especially in the Barrio Cópula. So they won’t issue a warrant. . . . US Justice wants to know if you stole a Volkswagen? Did you steal a Volkswagen, Wister?”
“No,” said the double. “I’ve never even been in Mexico.”
“Oh, that’s neither here nor there. The point is, they’ve refused to issue a warrant, so we can’t get you for that.” Twist was getting quite angry. The sunburn went redder. “Clerk, Mr. Prosecutor, isn’t there something we can get this young man for? Can’t be wasting the court’s time like this. Here we have a potential legal victim standing right here and nothing to charge him with! Unacceptable! Wasting the taxpayers’ money! Unthinkable!”