But if this had been the only event which that afternoon and evening held for me, it would have been of little moment. However, this was not the case, as the events of that ghastly day were to prove.
The Countess Krak had spent the night in some upper-class hotel. I had no way of finding the name, as it was not marked on anything she looked at.
She was finishing lunch in her room. The silver dishes on the white linen and their luscious contents were getting scant attention. Beside her she had open an enormous book of law and was reading two pages per forkful.
There was a knock on her door and at her call Bang-Bang came in, hat in hand. “I’ve got the wheels at the back entrance,” he said. “We better get along or we’ll be late, Miss Joy.”
There was a flurry of wraps and, carrying the book and a briefcase, the Countess Krak left.
Here was my chance!
She exited through a back stairway into an alley. Broadside to her was a WHITE VAN!
Bang-Bang had the side door slid open. She stepped inside. The van drove away.
Aha! A white van! A commercial-type vehicle with no side windows, converted to recreation use!
If I could get it spotted, I could advise Dingaling, Chase and Ambo and they could serve that injunction and commitment order and the Countess Krak would be in Bellevue—zip, zip—and that would be the end of her! For I knew a firm like Dingaling would not give up! To hells with the clients, the case was everything!
I called the motor vehicle department. I told them I was a Fed and wanted full particulars on a white van.
“Make?” he said.
I did not know.
“License number?”
I did not know.
“Well, (bleep), Mister Fed, there are tens of thousands of white vans in New York. Get me more particulars next time.” He hung up.
I wasn’t daunted. I would keep watch. But meanwhile I had better talk with Dingaling, Chase and Ambo. I phoned.
“They’re in court,” a girl in their office said.
“You’ve got to contact them!” I said.
“I’m sorry, Mac. I don’t work here. I’m just a client that’s suing a millionaire for not properly buttoning up my dress when he spotted me swimming bare-(bleep) two miles away at Coney Island three years ago. It’s a juicy case. You want to drop over and be a witness? I may have a couple hours’ wait. We can knock off a couple of (bleeps) and discuss the details.”
I hung up.
Court!
That would be the Superior Court, Judge Hammer Twist!
I quickly got information and got the number. Then I got on to a switchboard which called another switchboard in the courthouse and that operator called another switchboard, and it went on and on and around and around. Very tangled. After half an hour of trying, some clerk in another department said he thought Judge Twist was in court.
Gods, couldn’t you get anywhere at all in this legal system? Not even on a phone?
Aha! I had not run out of chances. I looked up and phoned Eagle Eye Security.
“You guys got conned last night,” I told the chief.
“How so?” a cigar-husky voice came back.
“The foul fiend went right in and had her will with the poor girls you had in your charge. The Dingaling clients.”
“Oh, those,” he said. “My men there said they had a particularly satisfactory evening at the apartment.”
“I’ll bet they did,” I said. “But that is neither here nor there. The woman is still on the loose.”
“That’s right,” he said. “And furthermore, we get ten big ones if we nail her. Any information leading to her apprehension and commitment to Bellevue will find us very generous with you.”
“I’ll keep in touch,” I said.
I turned back to the viewer.
I went into shock!
I had a view of the courtroom! She was amongst the spectators! Exactly where I could not tell, for all I saw was heads and the judge on his bench. Judge Hammer Twist!
I grabbed the phone back. “She’s right in the courtroom of Judge Twist! This very minute! NAIL HER!”
He banged down the phone.
Aha! They were on to it! Ten thousand dollars bounty money was talking!
What was going on in the court caught my attention.
Dolores, Toots and Maizie were seated at a table in front of the bench. Dingaling, Chase and Ambo, all three, were standing before the judge.
“But this is very irregular,” said Judge Hammer Twist. “You mean you are dismissing cases? You’ll disrupt the whole legal system! The livelihood of everyone connected with the law depends utterly upon ADDING cases to the calendar, NOT taking them off! Oh, I can tell you, this is VERY irregular!” He was looking very mean, frightfully put out. “You could get disbarred for this! I’ll have to hear it from the clients themselves before I will believe it! Clerk, swear in Toots Switch Wister.”
Toots was pushed forward to the stand and sworn in. She said, “Yes, it is true I wish all the previous suits against Wister dismissed. There never was a marriage. The true facts of the case are that I was a passenger on the train. He stole my clothes and sunbonnet to make his escape, but all the time he was stripping me, I lay there sobbing and pleading with him to (bleep) me and he refused. Therefore I am filing a new suit on the grounds of abandonment after unbreeching me.”
The judge gave a happy rap with his gavel. “Another suit. That’s better. Step down, Miss Switch. I now want to hear from Miss Maizie Spread Wister.”
The clerk swore her in and she took the stand. She said, “All evidence previously given concerning my relations with Wister was nonfactual. I am dismissing my previous suits.” She held up the pillow. “I was just wearing this in order to look pregnant when in fact I am not, as you can now see.” She hoisted up her skirt and showed Twist a lot more than her flat belly.
“Looks like an open-and-shut case to me,” said Judge Twist.
“Actually,” said Maizie, “the fact that he did NOT touch me and that I am NOT pregnant is the source of my new complaint and suit. I am filing a two-billion-dollar class action suit on behalf of all the women and wives of Kansas who have NOT been (bleeped) nor impregnated by Wister. This is an assault on their natural women’s rights, making them underprivileged. We assert we are being neglected by the greatest and most notorious outlaw of all time and demand punitive damages and redress of wrongs.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said the judge. “Step down. I shall now hear Dolores Pubiano de Cópula Wister.”
The clerk swore her in. The Mexican beauty took the stand, crossed her legs and pulled up her skirt. She smiled at the judge. In college English she said, “Although I am but a poor waif from a minuscule pueblo south of the border, I am depriving myself by dismissing all previous suits against Wister. I was never married to him. However, when he was on the run in Mexico, he stopped by our hacienda. I was just a child at the time, scarcely twelve. I stood there in the hot desert sun, black-haired, my skin as white as milk, gazing with rapture as he raced up one jump ahead of the rurales. His horse fell dead at my feet.
“I said, ‘Caballero, with your hair like sun and your eyes like the sky, pray take my burro as a gift so that you can fly to freedom before the onslaught of your foes.’” She hesitated, looked toward Dingaling. That worthy pointed urgently at the scraps of paper she held.
She looked at the notes. “Oh, yes,” she said, looking back at the judge. “This is the best part. Although the rurales were spraying the area with rifle fire, Wister swung down from his horse, his silver conchos flashing in the sun.” She looked at her notes again, then up. “He said, ‘Ah, my proud beauty, at last you are in my possession.’ He seized me and dragged me into the shade of the cactus, lifted my skirts and (bleeped) hell out of me. Then he took my burro and rode off, and even though I jumped on his horse in pursuit, I could not catch him.”
Judge Twist’s eyes were bright. He licked his lips. “Go on,” he said.
/> The girl looked at Dingaling, who pointed urgently at the notes. She read further. “So therefore, I am placing suit against Wister for the theft of my burro. But this is not the main thing. I am filing criminal charges against him of rape. I was only twelve at the time and this was many years ago, but as I was a minor the statute of limitations does not apply. Therefore I am demanding a criminal warrant be issued against Wister for RAPE OF A MINOR!”
“Well, well,” said Judge Twist, with a rap of his gavel. “I knew we would get somewhere with this case.”
A man in a three-piece suit approached the bench and whispered urgently.
The judge rapped with his gavel. “The prosecuting attorney has reminded me that he can add statistics to his conviction records here. Therefore will all three of these plaintiff-defendants stand before the bench.”
Dingaling, Chase and Ambo had evidently had words with the judge before this court session, for they had it all worked out. They pushed the three girls before the judge.
The judge said, “Each of you is charged with false swearing, criminal libel, perjury, etc., etc. How do you plead?”
“Guilty,” chorused Dingaling, Chase and Ambo, for their clients.
“Found guilty as charged,” said the judge. He gave a rap of his gavel. “You three are hereby sentenced to ten minutes in jail for each count, sentences to run concurrently.” He looked to the prosecuting attorney who nodded. The judge rapped with his gavel.
“Now,” said Judge Hammer Twist, “the court will accept, of course, these new civil suits and trust that they will run on and on comfortably. However, this criminal charge presents difficulty. The rape of a minor occurred in Mexico. I will require that charges be filed there, mailed here. It will be five days at least before the court can issue the arrest warrant. Is that satisfactory to you, Dingaling?”
“Quite,” said Dingaling.
“And to the prosecution?”
“Quite acceptable,” said the prosecuting attorney. “Remember that we have an appointment to play in the Miami Golf Classic day after tomorrow. And the day after that we have to be home to attend the Surf and Sun Handicap at the Aqueduct race track.”
“Yes, indeed,” said the judge. He addressed the court. “The crime of the rape of a minor is very serious indeed, carrying with it, as it does, long prison terms up to life. But the newly passed law that also requires the offender to be sterilized must be taken into account, as sterilizing a male adult often results in his death. So therefore this court must not seem neglectful of its duties, and within five days the warrant against Wister will be issued with the serious charge, Rape of a Minor. I think we can safely waive any grand jury formality, as I saw early today it is an open-and-shut case. Court adjourned.” He rapped his gavel and stood up. The whole courtroom stood up. The judge swept grandly to his chambers.
The Countess Krak, amongst the spectators, was muttering with subdued rage. “Oh, the sluts! The hussies! They added to what I told them to say!”
Ten minutes later, inside the white van, she was recounting it to Bang-Bang as they drove. “Somebody coached them!” she concluded. “Somebody is behind this!”
“Could be that bucktoothed nut that impersonates Jet,” Bang-Bang said over his shoulder through the driver-compartment door as he caromed off a truck. “Maybe he done them things.”
The Countess Krak said, “Bang-Bang, I think you’ve got it. But where do we find him?”
“Legwork,” said Bang-Bang. “I may not be very big but I can kick hell out of people. You leave that up to me. We’ll get Jet clear of this legal tangle yet!”
PART FIFTY-TWO
Chapter 7
I called Eagle Eye Security. “They’ve left,” I said. “How did you miss?”
“We weren’t set up for it,” the cigar-husky voice came back. “The last place you’d look for a criminal is in the court system, unless of course you mean the judges. And the place is pretty hard to get around in. By the time my men found what room, the court was adjourned. But never mind. Dingaling, Chase and Ambo suspect hanky-panky in this case. They told me this morning they’d never had a client suddenly back out before and they really had to twist their wits to work out how to keep the suits going. They come up with this new angle, rape of a minor, and that makes everybody trying to interfere accessories and all that. They upped the head money to fifty Gs if we can land that woman in Bellevue.”
“That’s great,” I said, taking a new grip on life.
“Yeah, listen. You Feds seem to know a lot about this case. You got a photograph of the target person?”
Oho! I did have one of Krak! A copy of her passport shot. “I’ll get it right over to you,” I said.
I hung up. I got Raht on the two-way-response radio and had him come over to pick it up and deliver it.
“I think we’ve got that (bleeped) Royal officer now,” I said. “Rape of a minor.”
“Fact?” said Raht, mustache twitching.
“You challenge the facts of a court?” I said, incredulous.
“One of these Earth courts?” said Raht. “Yes.”
“Rape of a minor is VERY serious,” I said. “They sterilize the male and the operation sometimes kills him. And they send what’s left up for life. Serves the (bleepard) right!”
“Why?” said Raht.
“You (bleeped) fool!” I raved at him. “He’s carrying Grand Council orders. He’s not Apparatus. He’s Fleet! He could order me killed, just like that! And you better watch it, Raht. One misstep and I’ll vaporize you myself!”
“Well, did he rape the minor or didn’t he?” said Raht. “He doesn’t seem that kind of a person. From all the spying I’ve done on him, he seems an all right sort of guy. It wasn’t his fault we were beat up at the Gracious Palms. It was yours for not planning it well.”
“Those were whores at the Gracious Palms!” I raved at the idiot.
“Whores, smores,” said Raht. “He’s a Fleet man. What could you expect? I can tell you this, none of them were minors! We had the bruises to prove it! Breaks, too!”
“He practically slavers after minors!” I shouted. “Now, (bleep) you, take this photo to Eagle Eye Security.”
Raht accepted it. He looked at it. “Oho,” he said. “This is his girl. I got a glimpse of her once. This photo doesn’t do her justice. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever laid eyes on. There aren’t any women on the planet Modon that could touch her for looks. The only woman I’ve seen that could compare with this girl is Hightee Heller. Poor Terb had some pin-ups of Hightee. I was looking at Terb’s things the other day and found them. Now, this girl has the same type of eyes. She looks like a Manco aristocrat and they are the most famous beauties——”
“Gods (bleep) you, Raht!” I screamed at him. “Shut up! Get that photo over to Eagle Eye Security AT ONCE.”
He put it in a case he carried. At the door he looked back. He said, “You can’t ever convince me that a Royal officer with a girl as beautiful as this one would ever go near any minor, much less try to rape one!”
He got out quickly, just before the chair shattered against the door. What riffraff! It was a good thing I had him in the iron terror of Apparatus discipline. How dare he doubt that Heller had raped a minor! I said so and that should be enough.
I was pretty put out.
I gave Heller’s viewer a kick. Too bad there was no button relay on it to shock him. It was an omission. I should have had him fixed up like Lombar had fixed the Antimancos. I still wore the control star, although they were far away.
The viewer, under the impact, had turned toward me. Heller was sitting in the salon playing poker with Captain Bitts, the sports director and a mate.
“I didn’t know there were supposed to be five aces in the deck,” said Heller. “I’ve got three and you’ve got two.”
“Special deck,” said Captain Bitts. “But as you can plainly see, I have all clubs, so that takes this pot. A flush beats a full house every time.” He raked in the pot. r />
“It’s nice of you to let me play on credit,” said Heller. “How much do I owe you now?”
“Ten thousand and thirty-three exactly,” said Captain Bitts.
“I think we should take a run around the deck,” said Heller to the sports director, “while I’ve still got some shoes to run in.” He got up, the sports director rising with him. “We’ll have another game this evening when I feel less confused.”
I turned away. I was glad he was confused, the rapist. He’d be far more confused than that when we got to him.