APPLAUD
Music blared. Tom Snide himself pranced out on the stage throwing kisses. He was an older man with curly hair and a very false smile. “Good afternoon, good afternoon, housewives of America, my dearest friends who keep sweeping my popularity from coast to coast.”
The girl in the housecoat held up a card:
LAUGH
“Just don’t sweep it under the rug,” said Snide.
The girl held up a card:
LAUGH HARDER
“Welcome to ‘Weirdo World’!” said Snide. “I’m sure all of you feel right at home.”
The girl held up a card:
HOWL WITH LAUGHTER
“Today we were lucky enough to get on our show a young man who has stirred the hearts and skirts of America and the world. And here he is, the weirdo you’ve been panting for, the notorious outlaw, WISTER, THE WHIZ KID!”
The girl held up a card:
SHRIEK!
The Wister double peeked out from behind a potted palm, raced over to cover behind a desk and then hid behind a piano.
“What are you ducking for?” said Snide.
“I’m afraid that audience will swarm over the footlights and rape me,” said the double.
The girl held up a card:
SAY OOOOO WITH DELIGHT
“No, no,” said Snide. “We’ve packed the place with security guards so they can’t get at you. Come out in plain sight.”
“And no process servers?” said the double.
The girl held up a card:
SHRIEK WITH LAUGHTER!
The audience shrieked, but Tom Snide had lied. The shabby man in the shabby coat was peering out from under the brim of his shabby hat, just two seats away from me. His face was all bandaged up, too! But he was waiting for the Countess Krak, commitment paper in his hand. And then I looked just beyond him. Two Bellevue attendants! They must have a wagon outside waiting.
I glanced at my viewer. The Countess Krak was sitting there watching the show on TV!
A camera swept the shrieking housewives. I saw it on the Countess Krak’s screen. The camera, amongst the others, SHOWED ME!
I scrunched down. Oh, Gods, she had better not notice!
Then her screen, seen through my viewer, was again showing the stage.
The Whiz Kid swaggered into full view. He was dressed in the black of a Western outlaw, but had red hearts for pistol holsters. His buckteeth and horn-rimmed glasses did not go too well with the rig.
He sat down in the interview chair.
“How do you do it?” Snide said. “Get all these women so crazy over you that they sue you for billions?”
“I guess it just comes natural,” said the double.
The girl held up a card:
LAUGH WHILE SAYING OOOOOO
“When you really get into it, it’s easy to understand,” said the Whiz Kid.
Card:
LAUGH LOUDER WHILE OOOING LOUDER
“The women all over the country seem utterly crazy over you,” said Snide. “Doesn’t that seem sort of weird?”
“It’s a hard life,” said the double. “And the longer I’m at it, the harder it gets.”
Card:
SCREAM WITH LAUGHTER
WHILE OOOING WITH SCREAMS
“Most men,” said the double, “couldn’t stand up to it, and I admit I have been lying down on the job.”
Card:
SHRIEK WITH LAUGHTER
“I understand they want to arrest you now for raping a minor,” said Snide. “I shouldn’t have thought you would have stooped to that.”
“Well, she was pretty short,” said the Whiz Kid.
Card:
HOWL WITH LAUGHTER
“With all these legal entanglements,” said Snide, “I should imagine you have pretty steep legal fees.”
“It’s worth it,” said the Whiz Kid double. “But the real cost is in replacing pants I have to leave behind when the husband comes home unexpectedly.”
Card:
LAUGH LIKE MAD
Snide said, “Well, if you are going to devote all your spare time between robbing trains and stealing cities to hopping in and out of beds, I think your legal fees will soon exceed what you find in the Wells Fargo boxes. The law is a pretty expensive business. How do you propose to solve it when this bed-hopping bankrupts you?”
“I’ll act as my own lawyer,” said the double. “Nothing is going to keep me from tasting the pleasures of the flesh. The country is absolutely crammed with beautiful women with nothing to do after their husbands leave for work.” Then in a whisper, barely audible on the program, he said, leaning toward Tom, “Hey, you’re off the script.”
“Well,” said Snide, ignoring the double’s aside, “we’ll just see how well versed you are in law. We have a lawyer here to interrogate you on the subject of law.”
Another sound. Voltarian! I thought I had lost my wits. Then I located it. It was coming from my viewer. The Countess Krak had her left-hand microphone in her hand and into it she had said, “Cue. Walk to center stage.” In VOLTARIAN!
Snide had risen and was making an elaborate, ushering bow.
ONTO CENTER STAGE WALKED MISTER CALICO!
Oh, indeed Snide was off the script!
The cat had a black harness. It was wearing a big, black bow tie. It surveyed the audience.
“Chair on your right,” said the Countess Krak in Voltarian into her left-hand mike.
The cat jumped up on the second interview chair. It sat down, looking at the Whiz Kid double.
“What the hell is this?” said the double. “That’s no attorney. That’s a cat!”
The cat opened its jaws. It said, “I am a lawyer cat.”
The girl with the cards was just standing there staring. The audience was open-mouthed.
A talking cat!
Oh, that devil Krak. I knew exactly what she had done. She was using Eyes and Ears of Voltar gear. She had a mike hidden in the cat’s ear to direct it and she had a speaker hidden in the cat’s tie so she could talk through the cat. And she’d even trained the cat to open and close its mouth when it heard the speaker going. (Bleep) her!
Snide was in on it! The fool had fallen for it as an unheard-of novelty! Snide said to the cat, “The Whiz Kid seems to doubt your credentials, Lawyer Calico. Perhaps you had better convince him.”
The cat—Krak talking through her right-hand mike—said, “He should understand the PURR-pose of the law.”
The girl with the cards had recovered. She raised a card:
LAUGH
The audience didn’t read the card. They were saying, “A talking cat.” “It’s really talking.” “What a cute cat.” “Listen to it TALK!”
“Snide,” said the cat, “you have a very disorderly audience.” It turned to the seats. “Order in the court!”
Snide banged a gavel. “I am sorry, Lawyer Calico. Continue with your credentials.”
Krak, watching her TV of the show, leaned into her right-hand mike. The cat seemed to say, “Cats are the very basic of the law. All cases begin with a CAT-alogue of crimes.”
The girl raised her card:
LAUGH
It wasn’t needed. The audience was laughing.
Where the hells was Krak operating from? I grabbed the walkie-talkie. I said, “That’s her, making the cat talk!”
“We’ll handle,” said the security officer back.
“Continue,” said Snide to the cat.
The cat seemed to say, “The law violently opposes anything DOG-matized. Police CAT and MOUSE with criminals. Criminals RAT on one another. Judges think everyone is a RAT. And the end product of any legal action is a CAT-astrophe!”
The audience, uncoached, was screaming with laughter.
“But Snide,” the cat seemed to say, “I’ll give you the final proof that I am indeed a lawyer cat.”
Krak was whispering orders into her left-hand mike.
The cat got up off the chair and jumped onto the Whiz Kid
double’s knee. It seemed to pull something out of its harness. It was sniffing into the Whiz Kid’s pockets. Had it put something in one?
“What are you doing?” said Snide.
“I’m doing what every lawyer does,” said the cat.
Suddenly it grabbed the double’s wallet out of his hip pocket!
It clenched the wallet in its teeth.
It ran off the stage!
THE DOUBLE RACED AFTER IT!
The audience howled with laughter.
I screamed into the walkie-talkie, “FOLLOW THAT CAT!”
Ignoring the red lights, security men were all over the stage, racing across it after the cat.
I leaped up and sped after them!
On their trail, I burst out of an outside door just in time to see the cat streaking down a long flight of steps. The double was speeding in its wake.
A van, different from the one they had had before, was sitting at the bottom of those steps!
Yikes! The cat had planted Unit B on the double and had the Unit A on itself! The follow-compellers!
The cat was almost to the van!
ZWOOOP!
The double, racing down the steps, seemed to fly into a bundle of whirling arms and legs. He hurtled toward the bottom.
He lit!
The security guards were streaming down the steps.
ZWOOP! ZWOOP! ZWOOP! ZWOOP! ZWOOP!
They were skidding like they were on a toboggan slide!
I was running forward.
I was going down the steps.
Bang-Bang had the double by the collar and was throwing him into the van.
The security men were landing in a disorderly pile.
ZWOOP!
My own legs went in six directions at once and I rocketed down the steps in a power dive.
I landed on my head.
Security men were all around me in piles.
The security officer at the top screamed, “GET THAT VEHICLE NUMBER!” Then he started down.
I looked at the speeding van. It was roaring down an alley and away.
IT HAD NO LICENSE PLATES!
The security chief landed near me with a thud.
I couldn’t account for any of this.
What had caused such a catastrophe?
And then I looked at the steps.
The cat could run down them but nobody else could.
THEY WERE COVERED WITH BANANA PEELS!
PART FIFTY-FOUR
Chapter 1
The Eagle Eye Security officer picked himself up off the pavement. He was shaking his fist down the alley in the direction the van had disappeared. “I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I ever do!” he screamed. He whirled. “What make of van was that?” he roared at his men.
They were unscrambling themselves and picking banana peels off their messed up uniforms.
“Transvan!” said one.
“Econoline,” said another.
“Quicklay,” said a third.
All they could agree upon was that it had no license plates, was white and was basically commercial. I already knew there were tens of thousands of such vans in New York.
“You goofed!” I screamed. “You let them get away!”
“Please God!” cried the security officer, “give us another chance.” He was pointing to the process server and the two Bellevue attendants who had come up, straitjackets in their hands. “I’ll get that process served and that fiend committed if I have to do it myself!”
“Go ahead!” I said. And he rushed off to phone police and put up roadblocks and get helicopter coverage and do the other things they do.
I made my way back to the “Weirdo World” talk show, where Tom Snide was ending off his half-hour with slides of famous outlaw lovers of history. He seemed to be pretty annoyed that his audience of handpicked females were talking to one another about the cat. “In short,” he said, “when you look at some of these skinny runts and compare them to a virile type like me, you wonder what women see in such men.”
“What a CAT-ty remark!” some blonde in the front row yelled loud enough to get it into the mikes.
Screams of laughter rolled through the TV theater. In vain, the card girl in the housecoat held up her sign:
REVERENT COOS
“We’re tired of your PUSS!” another called, not to be outdone.
That started them all off and they were vying for who could get off the vilest puns about the cat.
Snide could look after himself. I grabbed my viewer off the floor where it had fallen and got out of there.
It was up to me, I knew.
I was not in very good shape. My head was hurting from falling on it, my eye had begun to bleed and I was literally seeing red. But an Apparatus officer has to have stamina and overlook his pain. One must have courage.
Besides, I was afraid I might be overdue for my afternoon appointment with lesbians at the apartment. Adora must get no suspicion that I had to figure out how to do in Krak and Heller and run, before the homo education began. Teenie I would get to, somehow, some way.
All the way to the apartment in a cab, I watched the viewer.
A police car screamer was sounding, rising, in the speaker.
The Countess was holding the cat. She had taken off the bow tie and the harness. She was rubbing the cat’s ears and petting him and the cat was absolutely grinning! I had heard that witches on Earth had cats but they were usually black, and this cat only had a few black patches amongst the orange and white.
Also, the Countess was not riding on a broomstick. She was riding along in a van with a posh interior. The curtains were closed and she had on interior lights.
“That squad car seems to be interested in us,” came Bang-Bang’s voice through a curtain, beyond which must have been the driver’s seat. “He’s checking the license plate.”
“They aren’t stolen, are they?” said the Countess.
“Hell, no—beggin’ your pardon, ma’am. Mike Mutazione has his own stamping machine. You couldn’t trace the plates I just flipped on if you were the governor of New York!”
The screamer was dwindling.
“He’s gone now,” said Bang-Bang.
“You better take us to that hidden place they used to transfer booze in,” said the Countess Krak. “We don’t have time to play tag with the police. We’ve got work to do.”
If she would just look outside or mention an address, I’d have her! But all she was looking at was that (bleeped) cat. Ye Gods, its purr was so loud in the speaker, I thought for some time it was their engine! What an insufferable feline!
They drove on. I had no way of knowing their destination or location unless they made a mistake and mentioned it.
Eyes glued redly to the viewer, I overpaid my cab at the apartment and stumbled in.
I got out of my disguise, still watching the viewer.
They stopped!
Mister Calico jumped out of the Countess’ arms and went through the front curtain. Then Bang-Bang’s hand came into view and swept the dividers aside. I could see straight through their windshield.
A warehouse!
But where?
There are hundreds of thousands of warehouses in Manhattan. Still, they might drop a clue.
The Countess Krak must have been sitting in an easy chair that pivoted. When Bang-Bang entered the back, she swung it around.
There, lying on a couch crossways to the van, was the Whiz Kid double.
He was tied hand and foot.
He was gagged.
His black outlaw costume wasn’t doing him any good at all. His eyes were wild with fear.
I suddenly detected a new sound. I turned up the speaker volume. Lapping water! This warehouse was over some stream or river! An old bootleg warehouse! It would have a trap door where they could unload small boats up through the floor or dump bodies into the tide!