Authors: Lawrence Sanders
“Agreed.”
“He is on our payroll, so your expense will be minimal. He is young, intelligent, sharp. Versed in business law. He will spend a minimum of two or three hours a day at Scilla, familiarizing himself with the operation. Auditors will go in every month. You will not be—uh—I believe ‘scammed’ is the new word, Mr. Flair.”
"That is the word."’ I nodded. "But it never occurred to me that I would be scammed, sir. But there is—”
“Our man,” he rumbled on, “whom you will meet shortly, will occupy the private office of the former owner, Anthony Scilla. Now, you will want the office shared. I recommend Chauncey Higgles, a British organization of excellent reputation. They have a branch office in this city, on Market Street. We use them frequently. Dependable. Discreet. The salesperson you want to deal with is Mrs. Agatha Whiggam. I have alerted her to your interest. She tells me that Higgles has in their files complete floor plans of Scilla, as they do of almost every other building, office, store, and factory in the city. I suggest you follow her instructions.”
I looked at him with admiration.
“Mr. Hawkley,” I said, raising my glass to him, “we’re two of a kind.”
“Umm,” he said.
He swung slowly back and forth in his high-backed leather swivel chair. He gazed at me dreamily from those faded eyes.
“Mr. Flair,” he said, “you are an adventurer.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “I expect so.”
“Perhaps a buccaneer?”
“Perhaps,” I agreed.
Again the stretched smile. I think he saw himself in me. I know I saw myself in him. Strangely enough, I had never felt that sense of identity with any object except Angela Teresa Berri. And here we were, plotting her destruction. If the three of us ever got together, we could rule the world and all its suburbs.
The blond secretary returned with bank forms, a receipt, a book of checks, my BIN card. I signed where I had to sign, including a dozen blank checks. I kept only my BIN card; he retained the other documents.
“We’ll wait for your Detroit check to clear,” he said. “But unless you hear from me differently, you may proceed with your plans in two weeks.”
He was speaking to me, but his eyes were following the haunches of the young ef as she marched out of the office. The massive door boomed shut behind her.
“Art is long, and time is fleeting,” Simon Hawkley said. “Yes, sir,” I said. I wasn’t certain what he meant. If anything. He sighed, looked down at his liver-spotted hands.
“The man you are about to meet is Seymour Dove,” he said. “He is neither a clerk nor a junior partner. But he occupies a very special position in this office. Originally, he trained for the stage. He is very handsome and has great presence. He also had enough intelligence to realize the theater—stage, movies, TV—did not offer the rewards he desired. So, at a relatively late age—his middle-twenties—he took a law degree and minored in business administration. But his previous stage experience has proved valuable, as I have reason to know. Also, he is a happy man. That helps.”
“Yes, sir,” I agreed. “It surely does.”
He slowly slipped an obso hunter from an inside pocket, flicked it open, glanced at the face, clicked it shut, slid it back into the hidden pocket.
“Mr. Dove will be with us in two minutes.”
If only I could manipulate SATSEC as efficiently.
Initially, Seymour Dove overwhelmed me. Dismayed me. I saw ! a big, beefy em, handsome and brutish, clad in harsh, bright California colors. A horseblanket-plaid jacket, fire-engine-red slacks, a lace shirt unbuttoned to his navel, capped teeth, bronzed skin, red hair so perfectly teased it had to be a wig, makeup artfully applied, plastigold sandals on bare feet, enormous sunglasses that not only blanked his eyes but covered half his face. A sight.
“Hi, dads,” he said.
I turned to look at Simon Hawkley in astonishment. Was this— But he was silent, regarding me gravely. I turned back to Seymour j Dove. He was pulling up a chair, unasked, beginning to speak rapidly in a flat, hard voice, totally unlike his flutey “Hi, dads.”
“Here’s what you want,” he started. . . .
Then, as he spoke, I caught on. He wasn’t wearing clothes; he was wearing a costume. He was auditioning for a role. He would wear those garments as chief executive officer of Scilla Pharmaceuticals and earn a reputation as a microweight, a playboy. But • he’d watch the books. He’d report to Simon Hawkley the moment he got a nibble from Washington. He’d keep his private office sacrosanct and oversee the sharing installation.
“Is that about it, dads?” he asked, switching back to his stage ' voice.
I stood up, leaned across the desk to shake Hawkley’s paper hand. Then I stroked palms with the seated Seymour Dove.
“My worries are over,” I said.
The California whites gleamed at me.
“Depend on it,” he said.
On September 10, Paul Bumford came to my office to discuss matters of mutual interest. He had been serving tough; his thinned-down physique and almost gaunt features showed it. But he was cool, precise, informed. If he had problems—and I knew he had— he showed no signs of being unable to handle them.
Finally, after we had concluded the agenda agreed upon, he returned to me an Instox copy of the DCS prospectus I had submitted to him for comment.
“Well?” I asked.
He grinned. “Nick, it’s magnificent.”
“Really?”
“Really. If he rejects it, he’s a fool. But he won’t reject it.”
“How do you know?”
“I just feel it.”
I laughed. “Well ... I trust your instincts.”
"Do you ? Nick, don’t change a word of it. It's great. And thanks for the plug. More good news . . . Mary Bergstrom and Phoebe Huntzinger are back from the Denver FO. Everything on Project Phoenix is go. Mary made some suggestions on the scanning areas of the lasers. Phoebe says the computer is as ready as it’ll ever be. Tests started yesterday.”
“Fine,” I said. “That’s fine.”
I consulted some notes on my desk pad. I was conscious of him staring at me. I looked up. Our eyes locked.
“So much going on,” I said, “I thought it best to make notes.” “Of course.” He nodded.
“Now then,” I went on, “the DOB (we pronounced it Dob) is meeting on Tuesday of next week. Do you have time to go down to Washington with me?”
“I’ll find time.”
“Good. And I want Mary Bergstrom to come along. We’ll drive down on Monday, directly to the Alexandria Hospice. They’ll put us up for the night. I want you and Mary to meet Group Lewisohn. ’ ’ “Why?”
“Oh . . . just to familiarize yourselves with their operation,” I said vaguely.
“In other words, I have no need to know?”
“At the moment, no,” I agreed. “But you might.”
“Oh? Your contingency list for Lewisohn?”
“That’s right.”
“The trouble with contingency plans,” he said, “is that they all have a built-in defect. The objects who devise them can’t resist trying them out to see if they’ll succeed.”
I thought it time to show my teeth.
“Are you objecting to my efforts to keep Hyman R. Lewisohn alive?” I asked coldly.
“No, no!” he backed off hastily. “My God, Nick, you’re touchy lately.”
“I admit it.” I sighed. Having made my point. “The moment we
get the Scilla business concluded, I’ll be my usual sweet self again.”
“Scilla,” he said. “Ah-ha! I’ve been saving the best news for last.”
“What about Scilla?” I asked sharply.
“I’ve gotten the need for hallucinogens to over a hundred thousand new dollars during the next fiscal year. Projected.”
I smiled. “Paul, that’s great. Just great!”
“Yes.” He nodded. “I won’t be modest. It’s great.”
“All right, now here’s what you do: Send me a Request for Suspension of Bidding form. State that you’ll need the hallucinogens in the amounts detailed for the purposes noted. State that Scilla has been our supplier in the past and you recommend them on the basis of tested purity of product, responsibility for delivery, and so forth. And the amount involved, in your opinion, is not sufficient to advertise competitive bidding among the drug cartels. Then I’ll put my endorsement on it, forward it to Data and Statistics, and they’ll send it on to—”
“Got it right here,” he said.
He picked the document from his case, glanced at it briefly, placed it on my desk with a flourish.
I laughed. “Paul, you’re way ahead of me.”
“That’s right,” he said.
We estimated it would take about a week for the request to clear Data & Statistics in GPA-1, and another two weeks to be processed by Angela’s Purchasing Department in Washington. If she was going to take the bait, it couldn’t be before late September, perhaps early October.
I was content to wait. I would be patient. Sometimes anticipation is more satisfying than realization.
I wasn’t so patient with the preliminary reports Paul was receiving from his Neuropsychiatry Team: the psychological profile of Art Roach. Of all scientific jargons, sociological gobbledygook was the worst. Closely followed by psychiatric guck. I wanted objective judgments. I received such kaka as “anal positive . . . cyclothymic personality . . . severe status orientation . . . probable overcompensating inferior . . . possible paranoiac schizophrenia, etc., etc.”
In my disciplines, a gene is a gene, a cell is a cell, a virus is a virus, and a brain is never a mind. I wanted their language to be as exact.
Finally, in desperation, I posed a series of questions, through Paul. The answers that came back substantiated my splanchnic opinion of the em.
Art Roach was shrewd without being intelligent. He was deeply conscious of the circumstances of his birth—he was a bastard—and his lack of conditioning. To reinforce his self-esteem, he pampered his corpus—mirrors, massages, saunas, laxatives, and nasal sprays. He was motivated by status almost totally. His sadistic sexual behavior served to obliterate his essential belief in his own unworthiness. He was a slave striving to be a master.
To my question, “If status is threatened, is this object capable of violence?” the answer was unequivocal and mercifully short: “Yes.”
The private data bank reports on Angela Berri, sent by commercial mail to my father and forwarded by commercial mail to my letter drop, were less revealing. I scanned the background material swiftly: “NF . . . bom in Chicago . . . father a bartender. . .etc., etc. ” It wasn’t important. No one had roots anymore. History was inoperative.
The quality of her brain had been, apparently, recognized at an early age. She received advanced conditioning, then was accepted by the Science Academy at the age of thirteen. I was already aware of her doctorates and of her career after she entered Public Service.
Something I hadn’t known: She had been married at the age of eighteen to an em named John Findlay. He had suicided three weeks after their marriage. No details provided. None were necessary. I could guess.
I spent more time scanning reports of her personal finances and credit rating. At first glance, they revealed nothing. Her total wealth was substantial, but nothing that could not be accounted for by her annual rank-rate. She neither deposited nor withdrew sizable sums at regular intervals. Her expenditures seemed to be what might be expected of an ef with her income. The totality did not form a mathematical model of the greedy object I knew her to be. Until. . . .
I was scanning an Instox copy of her household insurance policy. I zipped the fine print. It seemed normal. I went back for a slower scanning. Ah! She was paying insurance premiums on more than 100,000 new dollars’ worth of personal jewelry and furs. This in an age when some of the wealthiest efs leased their jewelry and furs.
The policy had a footnote to this assessment: “See Appraisal Affidavit No. 6-49-34G-2-B
I searched for this document, but it was missing from the file. No matter. She could not resist adorning her corpus—with gems and costly furs that were hers alone.
So I believed the insurance policy, without yet knowing how she had managed to cover the purchases of 100,000 new dollars’ worth of jewelry and furs. I was saddened, because greed seemed to me so drab. There are more admirable vices.
I decided to take the limousine to Washington, D.C. These trappings of official majesty counted for something in the Nation’s Capital. In Manhattan, the new breed of pimps selected the identical vehicles: big, black, sedate, silent, powerful. Tooty cars to drop off street whores along Park Avenue.
Our chauffeur was a perky, red-wigged ef with the face of a choirboy and a corpus to match. I wondered how much love she had paid the ruler of the motor pool for this cushy assignment. Whatever, she seemed to be happy; her humming never ceased. Finally, Paul leaned forward and pressed the button that raised the bulletproof, soundproof plastiglass partition between driver and passengers. Then he settled back. Mary Bergstrom was seated solidly between us, knees together. So we drove south. Stiff. Rarely speaking. A grim trip.
At Rehabilitation & Reconditioning Hospice No. 4, we went immediately into colloquy with Group Lewisohn. In addition to Dr. Seth Lucas and Maya Leighton, the Group now included a hematologist, a neuropsychologist, two oncologists, an interne, three nurses, a dietician. We went over the most recent scannings quickly. There had been little change, physically, since my last visit. No grave deterioration, but no improvement either.
“It’s not the scannings that bother me so much,” Lucas said nervously. ‘ ‘But I think there’s been a loss. The object refuses to let •us test motor ability. So the loss may be psychological. But I’m convinced there’s a growing lassitude there. Maya?”
“I concur,” she said promptly. “He doesn’t grab my tits anymore. Physical? Psychological? I can’t say. Both, probably. But there’s a definite slowing down. One symptom is a lengthening of verbal response. Nick, we’re with him every day, so we can’t determine its significance. You haven’t seen him for weeks; you’ll be able to compute it easier than we can.”
“All right.” I sighed. “I’ll take a look. Is he serving at anything?”
“At something.” The psychologist nodded. “Lots of books, computer printouts, confidential reports. He hasn’t volunteered any information and, of course, we haven’t asked. But his morale is degenerating. No doubt about it. It may be due to his current service or it may be physiological in origin.”