Heller slowly paid the fees at the temporary cashier’s desk and then, hands in pockets, wandered about, not looking at very much, apparently immersed in thought.
After a while, he studied the posted building layout.
He began to read bulletin boards. Students were looking for rooms and rooms were looking for students and Mazie Anne had lost trace of Mack and Mack had lost touch with Charlotte and Professor Umpchuddle’s classes were transferred to the left wing. Then his eyes clamped on to a formally printed plastic sign. It said:
Promptly Heller was out on College Walk again, trotting through the throng of milling students, clickety-clacking on a zig-zag course and presently clickety-clacked into the office labelled:
Mr. Twaddle was sitting at his desk in shirt sleeves filling out stacks of forms. He was a small, bald-headed man. He pointed at a chair, sat back and began to pack an enormous briar pipe.
“I want to hire a graduate,” said Heller.
Mr. Twaddle stopped packing his pipe. Then he stopped staring. “Your name?”
Heller showed him the invoice.
“Possibly you mean your family wants to hire a graduate?”
“Do you have any?” said Heller.
“A graduate in what, Wister?”
“Stocks and bonds,” said Heller.
“Ah. A Doctor of Business Administration.” Mr. Twaddle got the pipe going.
“He’d have to be over twenty-one,” said Heller.
Mr. Twaddle laughed indulgently. “A Doctor of Business Administration would certainly be over twenty-one, Wister. There are so many changes in the rules each year, it practically takes them forever. But I am afraid this is the wrong season of the year. You should have been here last May. They all get snapped up, you know. There won’t be another crop until the October degrees are awarded almost two months from now and it just so happens there aren’t going to be any in that October crop.” He smoked complacently.
“Haven’t you got any leftovers? Please look.”
Mr. Twaddle, being a good fellow, opened a drawer and got out a tattered list. He dropped it on the desk before him and made the motions of going over it. “No. They’ve been snapped up.”
Heller inched his chair forward to the desk. He pointed a finger halfway down the list. I hadn’t known he could read upside down. But he couldn’t read very well because the name had a lot of marks and cross-outs after it.
“There’s one that isn’t marked assigned,” said Heller.
Mr. Twaddle laughed. “That’s Israel Epstein. He didn’t graduate. Thesis not accepted. I’m acquainted with this one. Oh, too well acquainted. You know what he tried to hand in? Despite all cautions and warnings? A thesis called ‘Is Government Necessary?’ But that isn’t why they refused to re-enroll him.”
“But he’s over twenty-one,” said Heller.
“I should say he is. He has been flunked out on his doctorate for three consecutive years. Wister, this young fellow is an activist! A deviant. A revolutionary of the most disturbing sort. He simply will not conform. He even boycotted the Young Communist League! He’s a roaring, ranting tiger! A wild-eyed, howling anarchist, of all things! Quite out of fashion. But that wasn’t why they refused to re-enroll him. The government cut off his student loans and demanded immediate repayment.”
“Why would they do that?” said Heller.
“Why, he was doing all the income tax forms for students and the faculty and he was costing the Internal Revenue Service a fortune!”
“Is that his address?” said Heller. “That number on 125th Street?”
Mr. Twaddle said, “It probably was up to a few minutes ago. Ten IRS agents were just here demanding that address. So he will soon be beyond reach entirely.”
“Thank you for your help, Mr. Twaddle,” said Heller.
“Always glad to assist, Wister. Drop in any time.”
Heller closed the door behind him. Then he started to run.
Heller was down 116th Street and up Broadway like a quarter horse. If anyone noticed he was going faster than was usual, he wasn’t looking at them — but New Yorkers never notice anything. And, factually, I don’t think he was moving at any exceptional speed: some cars were going faster than he was. I was glad to note that gravity differences had not given him any phenomenal powers. Things to him weighed only a sixth less than usual.
Judging by the scenery flow, he was probably only doing twenty.
I was, of course, a little bit puzzled by his obvious antagonism to an anarchist. Or did he fear for the IRS agents, faced by a maniacal wild man of huge powers? Perhaps his contact with the FBI had inclined him to defect to the Earth government. I know that in his place, I would have been seeking political asylum.
He came to 125th Street and raced along, looking for the address. But he found it because of three double-parked government cars. There was no one in them.
Heller checked the building. The street number was almost indecipherable. It was one of those innumerable abandoned apartment houses with which New York is strewn. The taxes are high, the tenants destructive. If the owner tries to repair the building, the tax rates go up and the tenants tear it down again. So owners simply abandon them to rot. And this one was so bad off that not even tenants had to wreck it. Obviously no one in his right mind would try to live there. The front entrance looked like it had been an artillery target.
He circumvented fallen debris and went in. He stopped. Noise was coming from the second floor-ripping sounds.
Heller went up what was left of the stairs.
A government agent was standing outside a door, picking his teeth.
Heller walked up to the agent. “I’m looking for Israel Epstein,” he said.
The agent found a particularly succulent morsel in his teeth, ate it and said, “Yeah? We ain’t got a warrant out for him yet, so that don’t make you an accomplice. But as soon as they get through planting the evidence in there, we’ll be able to get one.”
“Where is he?” demanded Heller.
“Oh, him. Well, if we let him escape first, then he becomes a fugitive and we can send him up for that if for nothing else.”
“Where did he go?” demanded Heller.
“Oh, he ran off down 125th Street,” said the IRS agent, pointing west. “Said he was going to drown himself in the Hudson River.”
Heller turned to leave. Two IRS agents stood squarely behind with drawn guns.
“Sucker,” said the tooth-picking one. “Hey, McGuire!” he yelled into the apartment, “Here’s one of his friends!”
The two agents in the hall pushed Heller ahead of them with their guns. They shoved him well into the apartment.
The place might have been a wreck before. It was an emergency disaster now. It was torn to splinters!
IRS agents were using jimmies to pry up boards, hammers to smash furniture.
A huge hulking brute out of a horror film stood, hands on hips, glaring at Heller. “So, an accomplice! Sit down in that chair!”
It was pretty broken up but Heller managed it.
“Say SIR when you’re spoken to!” said McGuire.
“Sir?” said Heller. “You a nobleman or something?”
“We’re a hell of a lot more important than that, kid. We’re Internal Revenue Service agents. We run this country and don’t you forget it!”
“Sir?” said Heller.
“Now, where are the books you and Epstein cooked? Where are they hidden?” demanded McGuire.
“Sir?” said Heller.
“We know God (bleeped) well that you had actual IRS manuals! Copies of the real law and everything. Where are they hidden?”
“Sir?” said Heller.
“Do you realize,” said McGuire, “if they got into public hands it would ruin us? Do you realize this is treason? Do you know what the penalty for treason is? Death! It says so right in the Constitution!”
“Sir?” said Heller.
“I don’t think he’ll talk,” said another agent.
McGuire said, “I’ll handle this, Malone.”
“There ain’t any manuals here,” said still another agent.
McGuire said, “Shut up, O’Brien. I’ll handle this. This kid is a red-hot suspect. I got to read him his rights. Now listen carefully. You have to testify to whatever IRS wants you to testify to. You have to swear to anything IRS tells you to swear to and sign anything you are told by IRS to sign. If you fail to do so you will be charged with conspiring to conspire with conspirators regardless of race, color or creed. Sign here.”
Heller had a slip of paper under his nose. “What’s this?”
“By the Miranda Rule,” said McGuire, “the prisoner must be informed of his rights. I have just informed you of yours. The IRS is totally legal, always. This attests you have been warned. So sign here.”
Heller signed, “J. Edgar Hoover.”
“Good,” said McGuire. “Now, where are the God (bleeped) cooked account books and where are the God (bleeped) IRS manuals and regulations?”
“Sir?” said Heller.
“He ain’t going to talk,” said Malone.
“I better just plant this Commie literature and these bags of heroin and we can get going,” said O’Brien.
“You know what’s going to happen to you, kid?” said McGuire with obvious satisfaction. “We’re going to force you to report downtown to the Federal Building. We’re going to cross-examine you, kid. We’re going to put you under the hot lights and we’re going to find out all about you. Everything. When we get through with you, there won’t be a thing about you we don’t know. Take this.”
McGuire had been scribbling a name on a legal document. He handed it to Heller. It said:
SUBPOENA! THE PEOPLE VERSUS EPSTEIN. J. Edgar Hoover is hereby summoned to appear at 0900 hours at the Federal Building, Room 22222, Permanent Federal Grand Jury, Internal Revenue Courts.
“Cross-examination?” said Heller. “Correct.”
“You find out everything there is to know about me?”
“Correct.”
“Actually, I think,” said Heller, “that under that board over there is a good hiding place.”
“That’s better,” said McGuire. “Which board?”
Heller got up. He went over. He knelt down.
And out of his pocket, his action hidden from them by his body, he took a red-and-white piece of candy. I recognized it. It was the candy he had been making aboard the tug! It had a wrapper that looked like paper. With a thumbnail and a twist, he pushed the paper down into the candy. He put it under a board.
He stood up. “There are no manuals there now.”
“Shows the right spirit. You can go now but you show up! Federal Building, nine hundred hours!”
Heller walked out.
He walked down the remains of the steps.
Outside, he walked up to one of the government cars. He bent over.
He had four sticks of dynamite strapped to his leg!
He undid the tape.
He laid the dynamite into the back seat of the car. No cap, no means to explode it. He just laid it there.
Then he walked very rapidly west on 125th Street.
The buildings on either side of him shook in concussion!
A gigantic flash whipped at the sky!
A roaring blast of sound struck a sledgehammer blow!
Heller looked back. As the smoke soared, I saw that the whole front of the abandoned apartment house was falling into the street in slow motion. Pieces of the roof were still sailing in the air!
The government cars, showered with rubble, did not explode: So he wasn’t that good with explosives after all.
Pieces of apartment house were falling out of the sky. Torrents of flame began to leap up.
It was the candy!
I knew what the stuff was now. It was a binary concussion-flame grenade. It didn’t operate until the wrapper, the needful element, was shoved down into the explosive. It had activated on a forty-second dissolve. The Apparatus never used them. They were too risky to carry!
“What the hell was that?” said an old man near Heller.
“There were ten terrorists in that building,” said Heller.
“Oh,” said the old man. “Vandals again.”
Heller went along 125th Street, first at a casual walk and then at a distance-increasing run.
Behind him, fire sirens were screaming.
Heller didn’t look back again. He was headed, apparently, for the river.
Speeding along, Heller could catch glimpses of the river ahead. His view was impeded with underpasses and overpasses of major roads.
He veered slightly to his left. The river lay just on the other side of some trunk highways along which traffic blurred.
Heller negotiated the obstacles.
Before him stretched a long dock, reaching west into the water.
He slowed, alert. He jumped up to see over some obstacles. Then he went speeding ahead.
On the end of the dock lay a tangle of something. Heller raced to it.
Right at the dock end lay a jacket. A pair of hornrimmed spectacles was sitting on it.
The Jersey shore, opposite, was a yellow haze of polluted air. The Hudson was blue with sky reflection despite the scum and filth in it.
Heller was looking up and down the river. Apparently an incoming tide from the ocean was slacking the current for the bits of dunnage and trash were going neither upstream nor down.
A hat!
A soggy, dark blue, snap-brim hat, still afloat with the air trapped in it.
Heller threw off his jacket. He pulled off his shoes. He zipped out of his pants. He threw his cap to the dock.
In a long dive he went into the water, debris and oil!
Down he went! Hands grabbing out and back, he was pulling himself toward the bottom.
The light went from brown to dim gray.
Yikes! How deep was this river?
Down, down, down, his eyes sweeping left to right through the murk!
Ooze!
He had hit bottom!
Up he went like a streak.
He blew to the surface. He treaded water, jumping his head up to look around.
He inverted.
Down he went again. Down, down, down, looking left and right.
Black ooze!
Around in a circle on the bottom. Old tires and cans.
Up, up, up! He blew to the surface again.
More treading water. More jumps to lift his head out.
A faint sound!
Heller made a bigger jump, lifting himself out of the water.
A faint voice, “I’m over here.”
Heller treaded water and looked toward the dock.
There in the water, clinging to an old ring sunk in concrete, was somebody, just a hand and head showing.
Heller struck out in that direction.
In a minute or two he was beside a very small young man, covered with oil, mostly eyes.
“I’m a failure,” moaned the pitiful figure. Then he coughed.
“I lost my nerve. I couldn’t keep my head under long enough to drown.”
“Are you Israel Epstein?” said Heller.
“Yes, I’m sorry I can’t shake hands. I’d lose my grip.”
Heller was surveying the fellow’s plight. The dock end was sheer above him and had no handholds.
A passing ship engulfed them in waves. Epstein lost his grip on the ring and got banged against the concrete. Heller put Epstein’s hand back on the ring. “Hold on!”
“I can’t climb up. I was a failure at drowning myself and now I’m a failure at saving myself. You better go off and leave me. I’m not worth rescuing.”
Heller swam along the dock and found an iron ladder that reached down into the water. He climbed up.
He went to his jacket and took out a coil of fish line. He went back to the dock edge above Epstein. “Just hold on,” he called down. A passing tug’s wash engulfed Epstein.
Heller’s hands were moving rapidly in a strange repeating rhythmic pattern. He was plaiting the fish line into a thin rope!
He made a nonslip loop in the end of his product. He lowered it down to Epstein. “Put your legs through it and sit on it.”
Epstein couldn’t do it.
Heller secured the top end to an old rusty ring and dived back into the water. He paddled over to Epstein, found a piece of driftwood, broke it and forced it into the loop to make a seat and got him onto it and showed him how to hold the upper strands.
“You shouldn’t go to all this trouble,” said Epstein. “I’ll only come to another bad end.”
Heller splashed at the water to get oil scum to float away and when he had a clear patch, he used it to get some of the oil off Epstein’s head and shoulders.
“Now, don’t go away,” said Heller. He swam back to the ladder, got up on the dock and shortly had Epstein up beside him, safely on the concrete.
A pair of cops wandered up. “What are you doing?”
“Fishing,” said Heller.
“You sure you’re not swimming?” said one cop.
“Just fishing,” said Heller.
“Well, see that you don’t swim,” said the cop and he and his partner wandered away, idly swinging their nightsticks.
“You didn’t turn me over to them,” said Epstein. “But you might as well. They’ll get me anyway.”
Heller had recovered his redstar engineer’s rag. He was wiping the oil off Epstein. Then he got Epstein’s shoes off and got him out of his pants and put the articles in the sun, which seemed to be quite hot.
He took a few more swipes at Epstein’s face and then put the young man’s horn-rimmed glasses on him.
I wondered if Heller had made a mistake in identity. According to Mr. Twaddle, this Epstein was a roaring anarchist, a terror and a threat to civilization. But he was quite small, had a narrow face, a beaked nose, weak eyes and was shivering.
“You cold?” said Heller.
“No, it is just what I have been through,” said Epstein.
“What do they want you for, really?” said Heller.
Epstein looked like he was going to cry. “It all started when I realized that the usual Internal Revenue Service agent just made up regulations as he went along. But one fatal day I was in the law library and found the actual Congressional law and the IRS manual of regulations. I Xeroxed them. I started to do the income tax returns for the faculty and some students with all the correct deductions.” He sighed and was silent a bit. “Oh, the way of the revolutionary is hard! I’m not up to it.”
“So what happened?” said Heller.
“The local IRS office lost about two million dollars in illegal collections they’d been getting. And the bonuses of agents McGuire, O’Brien and Malone shrank to nothing.”
He sighed a long, shuddering sigh. “They will never forgive me. They will persecute me all my days. You shouldn’t have rescued me. I am a lost cause.”
Heller had gotten some of the oil off of himself. He went over to his jacket and fished out the subpoena. He brought it back and handed it to Epstein. As he sat back down, he said, “What is this?”
Epstein looked at it, turned it over. “It’s just a subpoena. It tells you to appear before a grand jury and testify.”
“And what does that consist of?” said Heller.
“Oh, very simple. You just take the Fifth Amendment — which is to say, refuse in case it incriminates you — and they put you in jail and bring you out every few weeks and you just take the Fifth Amendment again.”
“Then they really don’t examine you and make you tell all you know?”
“No, it’s just a method of keeping innocent people in jail.”
Heller was looking at the water. “Oh, those poor fellows,” he said.
“What poor fellows?” said Epstein.
“McGuire, Malone and O’Brien and seven other agents. They’re all dead. I thought I was facing a Code break, you see.”
“Dead?”
“Yes, your apartment blew up. Killed them all.”
“If those three are dead, then the case is ended. They didn’t have any evidence, only their own testimony. It means I am not being hunted. The thing is all over!”
“Good,” said Heller. “Then you’re free and clear!”
Epstein sat for a short time, looking at the water. Then suddenly his teeth began to chatter and from this he went into a torrent of tears.
“If you’re free and clear,” said Heller, “what’s wrong now?”
After a bit Epstein was able to talk. But he still kept on crying. “I know something awful is going to happen in the next few minutes!”
“Why?” said Heller in astonishment.
“Oh,” wept Epstein, “I wouldn’t be permitted to have this much good news.”
“What?” said Heller.
“The news is too wonderful! I don’t deserve it! A world record catastrophe is going to strike any moment now to make up for it! I know it!”
“Look,” said Heller patiently, “your troubles are over. And there’s more good news. I have a job for you.”
“Oh?” said Epstein. “You mean I’ve got a chance to pay back my student loans and re-enroll for my doctorate again?”
“I think so,” said Heller.
“What is your name?”
“Jet.”
Oh, my Gods! This was a Code break. Heller was going to tell him his real name.
“That isn’t all of it,” said Epstein.
“Well, no,” said Heller. “The full name on my papers is Jerome Terrance Wister. That makes my initials ‘J. T.’ My real friends call me Jet.”
Oh, that slippery dog. He’d just squeaked by on that one.
“Oh, J. T. Wister. Jet. I get it. The name on the subpoena was J. Edgar Hoover and I was sure you wanted me to murder somebody. I am not the type, you know. I can’t even kill cockroaches.”
“Nothing drastic like that,” said Heller. “You’re over twenty-one, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m twenty-three and an aged wreck.”
“Well, all I want you to do is open a broker account for me.”
“Do you have credit?”
“Well, no,” said Heller. “But all I want you to do is open an account so I can buy and sell stocks — some firm like Short, Skidder and Long Associates.”
Epstein drew a shuddering sigh. “It isn’t that simple. You have to have an address so you can have a bank account. Then you have to arrange credit and open a brokerage account. Do you have any money?”
“Yes. I have a hundred thousand to use in such gambling.”
“Do you have any heavy debts or liabilities like me?”
“No.”
“I know everybody has enemies. But do you have any special enemies that would like to get at you?”
Heller thought a bit. “Well, there’s a Mr. Bury, an attorney I’ve run into.”
“Bury? Bury of Swindle and Crouch?”
“Yes, the same.”
“He’s Delbert John Rockecenter’s personal family attorney. He’s one of the most powerful lawyers on Wall Street. And he’s an enemy?”
“I would say so,” said Heller. “He keeps working at it.”
“Oh,” said Epstein. He was silent for a bit and they sat in the hot sun drying off. Then he said, “This thing you’re asking is pretty big. It’s going to take an awful lot of work. You would need somebody on it full time, not just to start it but to run it for you.”
“Well, how much do you earn a week?”
“Oh, I don’t earn much of anything,” said Epstein. “I’m not really an accountant — that’s just one of the things a business administrator has to know. They wouldn’t take my last thesis for my doctorate. It was a good thesis, too. It was all about corporate feudalism-industrial anarchy, you know — how the corporations could and should run everything. Its title was ‘Is Government Necessary?’ But I think I could get them to accept my new title. It’s ‘Anarchy Is Vital If We Are Ever Going to Establish Industrial Feudalism.’ ”
“Well,” said Heller, “you could have time to work on that.”
“You see,” said Epstein, “they argue with me that it isn’t in the field of business administration. They say it is a political science subject. But it isn’t. No! About eighty percent of a corporation’s resources are absorbed in trying to file government reports and escort inspectors around. If they would listen, I could get the Gross National Product up eighty percent, just like that!” He brooded a bit. “Maybe I ought to change my thesis title to ‘Corporations Would Find Revolution Cheaper Than Paying Taxes.’ ”
“I would pay you five hundred dollars a week,” said Heller.
“No. If I did it, it would be for one percent of the gross income with a drawing account not to exceed two hundred dollars a week. I’m not worth much.”
Heller went over to his jacket and fished out two one hundred dollar bills. He tried to hand them to Epstein.
“No,” said Epstein. “You don’t know enough about me. The offer is probably very good. But I can’t accept it.”
“Right now, do you have any money? Any place to live? Your apartment isn’t there anymore.”
“It’s no more than I deserve. I didn’t have any other clothes and I can sleep in the park tonight. It’s warm weather.”
“You’ve got to eat.”
“I am used to starving.”
“Look,” said Heller, “you’ve got to take this job.”
“It’s too good an offer. You do not know me, Mr. Hoover — I mean, Mr. Wister. You are probably a kind, honest, patient man. But your efforts of philanthropy are being directed at a lost cause. I cannot possibly accept your employment.”
They sat for a while, dangling their legs off the dock edge, drying out in the warm sun. The Hudson had begun to flow again as the tide ebbed.
Suddenly Heller said, “Is ethnology included in business administration studies?”
“No.”
“How about the customs of people?”
“No. You’re talking about social anthropology, I guess. I’ve never studied that.”
“Good,” said Heller. “Then you would not realize that the laws of the American Indian were still binding on Manhattan, due to prior sovereignty.”
“They are?” said Epstein.
“There was an Indian law that when you saved a man’s life, that man was thereafter responsible for you from there on out.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“I was told by a master of political science from your own university.”
“So it must be true,” brooded Epstein.
“Good,” said Heller. “I just saved your life, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did. I’m afraid there’s no doubt about that.”
“All right,” said Heller. “Then you are responsible for me from here on out.”
Silence.
“You have to take the job and look after my affairs,” said Heller. “It’s prior Indian law. There’s no way out of it.”
Epstein stared at him. Then suddenly his head dropped. He broke into a torrent of tears. When he could talk, he blubbered, “You see, I knew when I heard all that good news, some new catastrophe was lurking just ahead! And it’s arrived! It’s been horrible enough, in the face of malignant fate, trying to bear up and take responsibility for myself. And now,” a fresh torrent of tears, “I have to take responsibility for you, too!”
Heller laid the two one-hundred-dollar bills in his hand. Epstein looked at them forlornly. He got up and went over to his jacket. He put them in his empty wallet.
He sadly looked at Heller. “Meet me on the steps of High Library on the campus tomorrow at noon and I will have the plan of what we have to do.”
“Good,” said Heller.
Epstein picked up his coat and walked a little ways. Then he turned. “I am sure that, with my awful fate, you will live to regret the kind things you have done. I am sorry.”
Head down, he trudged away.
That evening, in the Gracious Palms lobby, Heller sat reading the Evening Libel. He was wearing his old, blue, too-short suit. The “throwaway” suit had really been thrown away after Heller’s swim in the polluted river water. And evidently the tailors had not delivered any new clothes.
The story he was reading said:
In a strongly worded statement today, Mayor Don Hernandez O’Toole censured the New York District Office of the Internal Revenue Service.
“The IRS practice of blowing up perfectly good tax-deductible property must cease,” said Mayor O’Toole. “It places all New York at risk.”
The censure came on the heels of an explosion this afternoon on West 125th Street where an IRS squad was visiting a tax-deductible apartment house.
Dynamite found in the government cars was clear proof of intent to dynamite, according to New York Fire Commissioner Flame Jackson.
Premature dynamission was the stated cause of the blast.
A U.S. Government spokesman said, “IRS has a perfect right to do what it pleases, when it pleases and to whom it pleases and New York better get the word, see?” This was generally accepted as an evidence of cover-up as usual.
There were no lives of any importance lost in the blast.
Heller had just turned the paper over and half a strip of Bugs Bunny became visible and I was much annoyed when he was interrupted.
Heller looked up. Vantagio was standing right beside his chair.
“Did you get registered?” His voice was edgy. Hostile? “If you did, why didn’t you call me?”
“Well,” said Heller, “it’s sort of up in the air. It’s my grades: D average and I’m asking to be accepted as a senior. It’s possible I won’t make it.”
Had Vantagio gone white? Hard to tell as he was shadowed by a lobby palm. “What did they say?”
“It’s ‘under advisement.’ I am to go back at nine in the morning.”
“Sangue di Cristo! You wait until eight o’clock at night to tell me this!” Vantagio rushed off. He slammed the door of his office. Oh, he was angry.
Yes, I felt I could make, possibly, use of this jealousy for Heller.
But I made a more important observation about nine, New York time. Heller disengaged himself from some African diplomat he was talking to, got in the elevator and went to his suite. I could see that, down the hall, his door was wide open!
And down close to the floor, as though she were lying on it, a beautiful brunette girl was extending her hand out into the hall. In a musical voice she called, “Come along, pretty boy. We’re waiting!”
A torrent of giggles came out of the room.
The interference went on. But I had made my observation. Heller never locked his door! Those women simply walked in whenever they chose!
A wide-open invitation to rob the place!
I myself had a very happy afternoon nap, contemplating it.
I must have overslept but there was ample excuse for it. I had not dared sleep for days. But things were running my way now. When I awoke, Heller was already disembarking from the subway at 116th Street. I watched tolerantly. His fate would soon be sealed.
He went directly to the temporary reservation area. There were quite a few students about, milling, finishing off their signups. I realized that it wasn’t registration week, really. It had been registration day, per se, yesterday, judging from the crowd sizes.
I sat back to enjoy Heller getting his comeuppance. No way would this Miss Simmons let him into this school. Not with those grades. Heller’s plans would be thrown into a cocked hat!
And there she was. She had just finished her last student. She ignored her short waiting line. She had a smile on her face but it was the kind you see on the female spider just before she has a meal of a male.
“Well, if it isn’t the young Einstein,” said Miss Simmons. “Sit down.”
Heller sat down and Miss Simmons scrambled through her papers and then sat back with that horrible smile. “It appears,” she said, “that they don’t care who blows up the world these days.”
“You called me ‘Wister’ yesterday.”
“Well, times have changed, haven’t they. Who do you know? God?”
“Has my enrollment received advisement?” asked Heller.
“That it has, young Einstein. Now, ordinarily we do not permit a transfer from another school into the senior class.”
“I could make up—”
“Hush, hush. But in your case, it seems this is to be allowed. And into our competitive School of Engineering and Applied Science, too.”
“I am very grate—”
“Oh, hush, young Einstein. You have not heard it all. Ordinarily we require a fresh American College Test that must average 28% or above. But you, young Einstein, seem to have had that waived.”
“Well that’s goo—”
“Oh, there’s more,” said Miss Simmons. “It has always been mandatory that a student entering engineering school receive a Scholastic Aptitude Test and that the grade for verbal and written be above 700. But you are not being required to do any SAT at all.”
“That’s truly marv—”
“And more, young Einstein. Our requirement for a B average for such enrollments has been waived. Now, isn’t that nice?”
“Indeed,” said Heller. “It is very ni—”
“It is far too nice, young Einstein. I have direct orders here to admit you. As a senior. In the School of Engineering and Applied Science. As a candidate for a Bachelor in Nuclear Science and Engineering, graduating next May. And the order is signed by the president of the university himself.”
“Really, I’m overwhel—”
“You’ll be overwhelmed shortly,” said Miss Simmons and her smile vanished. “Either somebody has gone stark raving loony or the reduction of government subsidies and the lack of a post-war boom makes them slaver for your twenty-five hundred dollars and they have gone stark raving loony! You and they are NOT going to get away with it. I will not have my name on the form registering you and turning upon the world a nuclear scientist who is a complete imbecile. Do I make myself clear, young Einstein?”
“I’m very sorry if—”
“Oh, don’t waste energy on getting upset at this point,” said Miss Simmons. “You are going to be upset enough later to need every calorie! Oh, I have no choice but to enroll you, young Mr. God Junior. But there are ways of enrolling and ways of enrolling. Now, shall we begin?”
“I really—”
“Now, to start with,” said Miss Simmons, “you do not have all the requisite credits in former schooling for this degree. There are four subjects here which are omitted and I am signing you up to take them IN ADDITION to the heavy engineering subjects you will be required to take for the semester.”
“I am sure I—”
“Oh, don’t thank me yet! There’s more! Now, I very much doubt that with those D grades, you were firmly founded in the subjects in which you received them. So I am making your acceptance conditional upon special tutoring to bring those subjects up to the mark along with your regular class work.”
“I think I—”
“I know you are grateful,” said Miss Simmons. “So I will add another favor. Your Saint Lee’s was a military school. And I adjudicate that your military science and study credits given there are not valid unless you continue on with and complete your entire ROTC — Reserve Officers’ Training Corps — schedule in this, your senior year. You can really get a bellyful of how nasty war is! And the Army can be persuaded it is unpatriotic not to complete them. I intend to write them a little note. That means three additional class periods and one drill period a week. All on top of the extra subjects and tutoring. Now, isn’t that nice, God Junior?”
Heller was just looking at her by now. Stunned, no doubt.
She had turned to her accordion-folded computer printouts of class timings and assignments already made. “But here is where you are really going to thank me, God Himself. When I received this order at breakfast, I worked it all out. There is no way to assign all these hours in such a way that the classes are consecutive. Several of them occur at the same exact hours. You have to be in two, and in one case three places at the same time.
And that is the way you have been assigned. You will be absent, one class or another, any way you want to look at it. The professors will rant. You will find yourself in front of deans. And it is they, not I, who will tell you that you cannot graduate and get your diploma next May. If they come back on me, I will say you just demanded it all, and you did, didn’t you, Jehovah?”
Miss Simmons sat back and tapped a pencil against her teeth. Then after a bit she said, “Oh, I don’t blame you for being over-awed in appreciation. You see, Master of All He Surveys and Creator Himself, I do not like INFLUENCE. Also, I am a member of the Anti-Nuclear Protest Marchers, its secretary in fact. And though the organization may be old and it may be suppressed and it may be that the New York Tactical Police Force is just waiting to bash in our heads again, the thought of letting a nuclear scientist as unqualified as you loose upon the world turns my blood to leukemia. Do we understand each other, Wister?”
“Really, Miss Simmons—”
“Oh, I almost forgot. Just in case you find time heavy on your hands — loafing about with this schedule — I have added another course to make up for a missing optional. It is Nature Appreciation 101 and 104. One goes out every Sunday, all day, and admires the birds and trees and learns, perhaps, what a nasty thing it is to make those world-destroying bombs! I teach this class myself, so I can keep an eye on your vicious proclivities. Now you can thank me, Wister.”
“Really, Miss S—”
“And as they are so interested in money, all this adds another fifteen hundred and thirty-three dollars to your bill. I hope you don’t have it. Pay the cashier. Good day, Wister. NEXT!”
Heller took the papers she had already made out. He took the invoice.
He went over and paid the cashier.
Aha! My heart had gone out to Miss Simmons more and more. What a sterling character! I toyed with the idea of sending her some candy “From an Unknown Admirer.” No, on the other hand, a pair of brass knuckles would be more in her line. With maybe a Knife Section knife to keep on her desk. But really, did she need it?
Just before noon, Heller came to the High Library. It was a very imposing building with a Roman look — ten huge columns stretched across the front, an enormous rotunda, a very noble facade. It was fronted with a vast expanse of steps almost as wide as the building itself.
He passed a fountain and then a statue with the words Alma Mater on it. He went halfway up the upper steps and slumped down on the stone.
And well he might slump. I had been kept laughing for the last two hours following his zigzag course around the enormous campus. He trotted here and he trotted there. He was locating every single one of the large number of classrooms, halls, armories and drill fields he would have to attend. He had constantly checked a copy of a computer printout and he had found that he had a schedule which went two classes at the same time, followed by no class for the next hour and then, in one case, three classes at the same time! I was kept in stitches. Not even the great Heller could cope with that schedule. And it went seven days a week!
As he sat there in the hot noonday sun, he must be realizing that there was no way on Earth he could get a diploma and carry out the silly plans he had undoubtedly made to carry his mission through just to spite me. And get me killed.
Students were drifting up and down the steps, no vast throng. Young men and women, not too well dressed. Heller must look younger than some of them, despite being, in fact, several years older in time and, in all honesty, decades older in experience. How silly he must feel, a Royal officer of the Fleet, sitting there amongst these naive creatures. Another joke on him and on them, too. I idly speculated what they would think if they knew a Voltar combat engineer was sitting right there, in plain view, a Mancoian from Atalanta more than a score of light-years away, a holder of the fifty-volunteer star, that could blow their planet to bits as easy as he could spit or could prevent an invasion that would slaughter every one of them. What a joke on them. How stupid they were!
A couple of girls and a young man drifted by. One of the girls said, “Ooo! Are you on the baseball team?”
“I didn’t know they were still turned out,” said the boy. “Why, you’re wearing spikes!”
Heller looked at one of the girls. “You can’t get to first base if you don’t.”
They all of them burst into screams of laughter. I tried and tried to figure out what they were laughing about. (Bleep) that Heller, anyway. Always so obscure. And he had no right to start currying popularity. He was an extraterrestrial, an interloper! Besides, they were pretty girls.
“Name’s Muggins,” said the boy. “This is Christine and Coral — they’re from Barnyard College: that’s part of Empire but all women, oh boy!”
“My name’s Jet,” said Heller.
“C’m up’n see us s’m’time,” said Christine.
They all laughed again, waved and walked on down the broad steps.
And here came Epstein!
He was dragging an enormously long roll of something behind him. It was about a foot in diameter and certainly over twelve feet long! He passed the fountain and then the statue. He stopped a couple steps below Heller. He was dressed in a shabby gray suit and a shabby gray hat and, in addition to the roll, he was carrying a very scuffed up, cheap attache case. He sank down on a step, puffing.
“And how is Mr. Epstein?” said Heller cheerfully.
“Oh, don’t call me that,” said Epstein. “It makes me uncomfortable. Please call me Izzy. That’s what everybody does.”
“Good. If you’ll call me Jet.”
“No. You are really my superior as you have the capital. I should call you Mr. Wister.”
“You have forgotten,” said Heller, “that you are responsible for me now. And that includes my morale.” Then he said very firmly, “Call me Jet.”
Izzy Epstein looked unhappy. Then he said, “All right, Mr. Jet.”
Heller must have given it up. “I see you found some clothes. I was worried that they’d all been destroyed.”
“Oh, yes. I took a bath in the gym and I got two suits, this hat and this briefcase from the Salvation Army Good Will. They wouldn’t do for you, of course, but if I dressed too well, I would attract attention and invite bad luck. One must never appear to be doing too well-the lightning will strike.”
This Izzy Epstein was turning my stomach. It was quite obvious that he was a neurotic depressive with persecution complexes and had overtones of religio-mania, evident in his fixations on fate. A fine mess he would make for Heller. Neurotics are never competent. But on the other hand, it was really a break for me that Heller had run into him. The fellow couldn’t even manage his own affairs, much less Heller’s.
“Well, you look better, anyway,” said Heller.
“Oh, I’m exhausted! I have been working flat out all night to prepare a proposal for you. The only building I could find open was the Art College, so I had to use their materials.”
“Is that what that is?”
“This roll? Yes. All they had left out was studio paper — the kind they use behind models, twelve feet wide, a hundred feet long. And they didn’t leave out any scissors. So I used that.”
He tried to unroll it. But he didn’t have enough arm reach. Heller started to help him but Izzy said, “No, no. You’re the investor. You there!” he called out suddenly.
A couple of new students had come out of the library. Izzy stopped them at the top of the huge, wide stairway. “You hold this end,” he said to one. “And you this end,” he said to the other. “Now, hold it tight.” The two stood there, twelve feet apart, holding the top of the roll.
Heller had followed Izzy up. Izzy took the roll and backed down two steps, unreeling it. At the top, in wild, garish ink, all along it, it said: Confidential Draft.
“You will probably find it too colorful,” said Izzy, understating it like mad, for it was blazing in the sunlight, “but they had only left around old dried-up pots of poster paint and I had to mix it with water. And there were only some discarded brushes. But, it will give you the idea.”
He backed down two more steps. Revealed to view were some odd lines and symbols. It looked like three wooden hay forks raking apples — and all of different colors, all bright.
“Now, that first row is what we call the mask corporations. We incorporate those separately in New York, New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware. They all have different, noninterlocking boards of directors.”
He backed down another step unrolling the roll further. But there was a bit of wind. Two more students, eating sandwiches, were paused nearby. Izzy sent one to the far side and one to the right side and told them to hold it steady and they did.
Izzy pointed to the newly displayed mad thunder of color, lines and symbols. “Now, those are the bank accounts for those corporations.”
He backed down another step, got two more students to hold the sides and two more to hold the extreme top which was buckling. “Now there, and notice the arrow’s as they intertwine, are the various brokerage firms which will handle orders placed with the mask corporations.”
Izzy backed another step, unrolling the roll further.
“What is this?” one student, wandering up, asked another.
“Psychedelic art,” said one already holding.
“Now, here we are getting to the more important stages,” said Izzy. “The corporation on the right is in Canada. The one on the left is in Mexico. And these two corporations invisibly control the center one which is in Singapore. Get it?”
Izzy backed further. He needed more students and got them. Several were now up on a big stone parapet, looking down on it.
“Now, this series of arrows — the green series is the most important although the purple ones there are useful — transfer the funds of the above corporations in such a way as to bypass all reporting to governments.”
“Is it a poster?” asked a student.
“Poster for some new riots, I heard them say,” said another.
Izzy stepped down another broad step and unrolled it further. He got more holders. “Now, this is the Swiss-Liechtenstein consortium of corporations. You may wonder why these seem so independent. Well, actually they are not.”
He unrolled more chart, got some newcomers to hold it. “The Swiss-Liechtenstein fund flow goes underground to West Germany and thence to Hong Kong. Do you get it? No?”
More of the chart was unrolled and held, “You can see why, now. The Hong Kong funds — see the purple arrow there — flow to Singapore, come back to Tahiti and…”
He unrolled more chart, “…arrive right in our own backyard in the Bahamas. Clever, eh? But look at London.”
He unrolled more chart. One whole width was devoted to three corporations, three stockbrokers and three bank accounts, all in London. Orange lines radiated out and came back to Hong Kong. “And that is how we get the funds into the Bahamas from the City as they call it. But you will be interested in this.”
He unrolled more chart and got more holders. There was an interlocking series of lines which stretched out to every bank account and brokerage house, a spider web of royal blue. “That is the arbitrage network. By means of a centrally controlled system, we can take advantage of the differences of currency prices throughout the whole network and every time we transfer any funds, we also make a mint! It requires telexes and lease lines from RCA, of course. But it will pay for itself every week.”
He unrolled more chart, got more holders. The steps were pretty thronged by now.
“What was the artist thinking when he drew it?” asked a girl.
“Soul music,” said a learned boy.
“I think it’s quite lovely,” said another girl. “It certainly makes one tranquil.”
“And now,” Izzy said to Heller, “I’ll bet you’ve been holding your breath waiting until I got around to this.” He waved his arm in a grand gesture at a single corporation marked with a circle and red arrows. “That,” said Izzy, “is MULTINATIONAL! By reason of nominee shares, noninterlocking controlled boards, it orchestrates the entire conduct of the entire remaining chart. And listen, here is the best part: it calls itself a MANAGEMENT company! It isn’t visibly liable for a single thing any other company does! Isn’t that great?”
“But why,” said Heller, “why all these different corporations and brokerage houses and bank accounts?”
“Now, I am responsible for you. Right?”
“Right,” said Heller.
“If any one of those corporations goes broke, it folds all by itself and it doesn’t do a thing to any other part of the entire consortium. You get it? You can go bankrupt to your heart’s content! You can also sell them for tax losses, buy other corporations with them. You can also hide and vanish profits. Everything.”
“But,” said Heller doubtfully, “I don’t see that so many—”
“Well, I will admit I haven’t told you the real reason.” He leaned over to Heller’s ear. “You told me you had an enemy. Mr. Bury of Swindle and Crouch. He is the most vicious, unprincipled lawyer on Wall Street. With this setup, he will never be able to touch you.”
“Why not?” said Heller.
Izzy leaned much closer and whispered much more quietly, hard to hear above the chatter of the crowd. “Because in every record, neither you nor your name will ever appear in any of this. And anything you are publicly connected with will not feed back into any of this. They are all private companies, all for profit, all controlled by actual stock shares. It is impenetrable!”
He stood back. “There is just one thing more I need your approval on. I didn’t put it on this chart. An art student did it for me at breakfast.”
Tucked in the bottom of the roll was another roll. It opened to a picture about two feet by three. It was a round, black globe. It had a little piece of rope or something sticking out of the top of it. Sparks were flying from the tip.
“What is it?” said Heller.
“It is my proposal for the evolving logo of Multinational! Actually, it is the old symbol of anarchy, a bomb! See the lit fuse?”
“A chemical powder bomb,” said Heller.
“Now, we turn the poster over and we simply see a dark sphere with a wisp of cloud at the top. And that’s what we will put out as the logo but you and I will know what it really is. Now do you approve?”
“Well, yes,” said Heller.
“The chart and the logo?”
“Well, yes,” said Heller.
“I know it is crude and hastily done. I haven’t even filled in many of the names. I think it is very tolerant of you to approve it.”
“What is this?” a newcomer asked Heller. “A work of art?”
“Yes,” said Heller. “A work of art!”
“Well now, let’s roll it up,” said Izzy.
“No,” said several of the crowd at once. One said, “A lot of people haven’t been able to see it. We’ll spread it out on the steps here and people can go up on the parapet there or climb the statue and get a real look.”
Overruled, Heller and Izzy drew back and let them have their way.
“Did you get re-enrolled?” said Heller.
“Oh, yes,” said Izzy. “That’s why I was a little late. While I was doing all this, I got a brand-new idea for a doctorate thesis. And I saw them about it. It’s ‘The Use of Corporations in Undermining Totally the Existing World Order.’”
“And they agree to let you re-enroll and write it?”
“You see, the mistake I was making was getting off into political science and they kept telling me so. My doctorate is in business administration. But this new idea is perfect. It doesn’t contain the word government, it does contain the word corporations. And world order can be interpreted to mean capitalistic finance. So unless some horrible, malignant fate overtakes me from some other quarter, I can get my doctor’s degree at the end of this October.”
“Then you paid your bill,” said Heller.
“Oh, yes. You can have your two hundred advance back.”
“But how… ?”
“Right after I left you yesterday, I went to the Bank of America. I showed them the two hundred which proves I had a job and borrowed five thousand dollars without collateral. I paid off the government loan and have far more left than I really need. I won’t have to sleep in the park — I’m always afraid of being mugged. I can stay in a dorm a couple of nights until we get our offices. And, if you don’t mind, I’ll sleep there when we do.”
I was speechless. How could this ragtag, mucked-up mess of a timid little man walk into a bank and borrow five thousand just by showing them a couple of hundred-dollar bills?
“Now wait a minute,” said Heller, obviously having afterthoughts. “It will take a long, long time to set up all those corporations in Hong Kong and Tahiti and wherever. What do you have in mind as a time schedule?”
“Oh, that is my fault,” said Izzy. “I have been under such a nervous strain lately. I didn’t want to tell you because I was afraid you would balk.”
“So, how long? Two months? A year?”
“Oh, heavens, no! I was shooting for next Tuesday! I thought you would want it Friday but there’s a weekend…”
“Next Tuesday,” said Heller. Then he seemed to rally. “You’re going to need money for all this. So here is ten thousand to start with. Will that be enough?”
“Oh, heavens, yes. Too much, actually. I’ll put it in a locker at the bus station to keep it safe. And then put it in the first bank account. And then, when everything is set, you can put your capital in the various bank accounts and it will get transferred around and start to get to work. Is it too much to ask to meet you here on these steps 4:00 P.M. Tuesday?”
And then I thought I had it. This Izzy was a sly, clever crook. He was going to take all of Heller’s money, deny him any control and leave him broke. I cancelled any idea of interfering with Izzy Epstein! He didn’t even give Heller a receipt!
Izzy got his chart back from the congratulatory crowd. Several even helped him carry it as he went away.
I laughed. Maybe that was the last Heller would ever see of him!
I was quite heartened by the number of potential allies I was picking up in case everything else went wrong with my plans for Heller. Vantagio, Miss Simmons, this Izzy Epstein. I began to keep a list. When Raht and Terb called in, possibly I could greatly embellish my planning.
Heller spent the afternoon doing some more checking on class locations, obviously still trying to figure out how to be in two or three places at once and get tutored at the same time. And then he went around to the other side of what was labelled “Journalism” and found the college bookstore on Broadway.
All day he had been running into people and sticking his nose into professors’ offices and making up a list. He had been using the back side of a computer printout with the staples removed and now had this yard-long sheet with titles and texts and manuals and authors scribbled all over it. He handed it to the girl behind the counter. She was obviously some graduate student doing part-time work to handle the current rush. Pretty, too.
“All this?” she said, adjusting her horn-rimmed glasses. “I can’t read some of this writing. I wish they would teach kids to read and write these days.”
Heller peered over at what she was pointing at. Yikes! He had annotated the list over on the edge with Voltarian shorthand!
My pen was really poised. Oh, I’ve seen Code breaks in my time. Maybe a whore and a tailor wouldn’t know they were dealing with an extraterrestrial but he was in a college area and those people are smart.
“It’s shorthand,” said Heller. “The main titles and authors are in English.”
They were, too. In very neat block print.
“What’s this here?” said the girl, lifting her glasses above her eyes to see better. She was pointing at The Fundamentals of Geometry by Euclid. “We don’t have any books by that author. Is it a new paperback?”
Heller told her she’d have to help him as he didn’t know either. She went to her catalogues and looked up under “Authors.” She couldn’t find it. So she looked in a massive catalogue of alphabetical book titles. Then, cheered on by Heller, she looked up the author in the book titles. “Hey, here it is!” she said. “Euclidian Geometry as Interpreted and Rewritten by Professor Twist from an Adaption by I. M. Tangled.” She went and found a copy. “You wrote here that his name was ‘Euclid’ when it was ‘Euclidian.’ You should learn how to spell.”
They couldn’t find anything by somebody named “Isaac Newton” and the girl decided he must be some revolutionary banned by the New York Tactical Police Force. But Heller persevered and they eventually came up with a book, Laws of Motion I Have Rewritten and Adapted from a Text by Dr. Still as Translated from an Archaic English Newtonian Work by Elbert Mouldy by Professor M. S. Pronounce, Doctor of Literature.
“You should have told me it would be in the literature section,” said the girl. “You don’t even know how to read a card catalogue.”
“I’ll try to find out,” said Heller.
“Jesus,” said the girl, “they teach card catalogues in the third grade! God, didn’t anybody ever teach you anything? There’s a staff at High Library devoted to showing students how to do it. You ask them over there. I’m here to sell books, not teach kindergarten! But let’s get on, this is an awfully long list! You’re keeping others waiting!”
They did make progress, however, and the pile of books grew and grew. Finally the girl, peering between the columns of books and lifting her glasses to see Heller, said, “You can’t carry all these. And I’m not going to wrap them. So you go over to the college store and get about five rucksacks while I get an assistant to add up this bill.”
Heller did as he was told.
When he returned, he packed the five rucksacks and paid the bill. Then he began to adjust straps and finally managed to get the sacks hung around him. Other students who had been waiting made room for him disinterestedly.
“Can you manage?” said the girl. “That must be about two hundred pounds. Books are heavy.”
“Just barely,” said Heller. “But we haven’t got everything on this list.”
“Oh, the rest of that stuff. Well, take that one about thirty from the top, World History Rewritten by Competent Propagandists for Kiddies and Passed by the American Medical Association, that’s fourth grade grammar school. We don’t carry that sort of thing. You’ll have to get them at Stuffem and Glutz, the city’s authorized school supplier. They’re on Varick Street.” And she gave him the number. “My God,” she added, “how’d you ever get here not knowing those texts?”
Heller turned to make his way through the backlog of student customers who stepped aside patiently. The girl said to the next student in line, “Jesus, what we get for freshmen these days.”
“It says on your slip there he’s a senior,” said the student.
“I got it!” said the girl. I quickly and hopefully jacked up the audio. “He’s here on an athletic scholarship! A weight lifter! Hey, call him back. I was awful impolite. I need a date for tonight’s dance! Boy, am I dumb! He was cute, too.”
Yes, she certainly was dumb! She had denied me opportunity after opportunity to file charges against Heller for Code breaks! And they had watched somebody heft two hundred pounds of rucksacks like they were air and I’m sure if they had looked out the door or window they would have seen Heller running along, clickety-clack, without a care in the world to the subway. My faith in the powers of observation of college students had suffered a heavy blow. Maybe they were all on drugs. That was the only possible explanation! An extraterrestrial right under their noses making all kinds of giveaways and they hadn’t even blinked an eye!
Heller got right on down to Varick Street on the same subway. He got into the city-authorized bookstore. And he was shortly showing a half-blind old man his list. In the subway he had ticked off missing titles with a red pen and now he handed it over, Voltarian shorthand and all, for the red checks to be filled.
The old man bustled off to a storeroom. “You want thirty copies of each?” he called back.
“One will do just fine.”
“Oh, you’re a tutor. All right.” And he came back in about ten minutes, staggering under a stack of books. “I’ll get the rest now.” And he went back and came out staggering under a second stack.
Heller checked off the titles. He got almost to the end. “There’s one missing: Third Grade Arithmetic.”
“Oh, they don’t teach that anymore. It’s all ‘new math’ now.”
“What’s ‘new math’?” said Heller.
“I dunno. They put out a new ‘new math’ every year. It’s something about greater and lesser numbers without using any numbers this year. It was orders of magnitude of numbers last year but they were still teaching them to count. They stopped that.”
“Well, I’ve got to have something about basic arithmetic,” said Heller.
“Why?”
“You see,” said Heller, “I do logarithms in my head and the only arithmetic I’ve ever seen done was by some primitive tribe on Flisten. They used charcoal sticks and slabs of white lime.”
“No kidding?” said the old man.
“Yes, it was during a Fleet peace mission. They wouldn’t believe we had that many ships and it was really funny to see them jumping about and counting and multiplying and writing it down. They were more advanced than others I’ve seen, however. One tribe had to use their fingers and toes to count their wives. They never had more than fifteen wives because that was all the fingers and toes they had.”
The old man said, “A Fleet man, huh? I was in the Navy myself, war before last. You just wait there.”
He went back and searched and searched and finally came out with a dusty, tattered text that had been lying around for ages. “Here’s a book called Basic Arithmetic Including Addition, Multiplication and Division With a Special Section on Commercial Arithmetic and Stage Acts” He opened the yellowed pages, “It was published in Philadelphia in 1879. It’s got all sorts of tricks in it like adding a ten-digit column of thirty entries by inspection. Old-time bookkeeper stuff. Lot of stage tricks: they used to go on stage and write numbers and do complicated examples upside down leaning over a blackboard and get the answer in three seconds and the audience would flip out. Mr. Tatters said to throw it out but I sort of thought I should send it to a museum. Since they passed the law that kids had to use calculators in class, nobody is interested in it anymore. But as you’re a navy man like myself you can have it.”
Heller paid and the old man wrapped up the books into two more huge packages. Another two hundred pounds of books. I expected Heller to heft them up and walk off. It disappointed me when he found four hundred pounds too cumbersome. I’m sure he could have, with some strain, walked off with them. He had them call him a taxi. The old man even got a dolly and helped him load up. Heller thanked him.
“Don’t throw that book away,” said the old man at the curb. “I don’t think there’s a soul in this country knows how to do it anymore. I don’t think they even remember it ever existed. When you’re through with it, give it to a museum!”
“Thanks for piping the side!” said Heller and the taxi drove away leaving the old man waving at the curb.
Code break. “Piping the side!” It must be some Voltarian Fleet term. No, wait a minute. I had never heard the term on Voltar. But Heller wouldn’t know Earth terms like that. Or would he? The Voltarian Fleet doesn’t use pipes. A lot of them use puffsticks. Only Earth people smoke pipes. It was moving into the New York rush hour so I had a lot of time to work on this. I got as far as Earth sailors as well as spacers have a lot to do with whores when my concentration was interrupted.
A houseman was wheeling all that book tonnage across the lobby and Vantagio popped out of his office like some miniature jack-in-the-box.
He stared at the packages, tore a piece of paper off a corner and opened a rucksack to verify they were books. “They accepted you!” He let out a wheeze of relief and mopped his face with a silk handkerchief. He waved the houseman on and pushed Heller into his office.
“You did it!” said Vantagio.
“I think you did it,” said Heller.
Vantagio looked at him with feigned blank innocence.
“Come on,” said Heller. “They waived everything including having a head! How did you do it?”
Vantagio started laughing and sat down at his desk. “All right, kid, you got me. It was awfully late and I had an awful time getting hold of the university president last night but I did it. You see, at peak periods, we use some of the Barnyard College girls here. So I just told him that if you weren’t enrolled in full by 9:30 this morning, we’d cut off our student aid program.”
“I owe you,” said Heller.
“Oh, no, no,” said Vantagio. “You don’t get off that easy. You still have to do what I tell you. Right?”
“Right,” said Heller.
“Then get on that phone and call Babe and tell her you’re enrolled!”
Heller turned the desk speaker phone around to face him and Vantagio pushed the lease line button. Geovani in Bayonne transferred the call to Babe in the dining room.
“This is Jerome, Mrs. Corleone. I just wanted to tell you what a great job Vantagio did in getting me enrolled.”
“It’s all complete?” said Babe.
“Absolutely,” said Heller. But I noted he did not tell her, as he had not told Vantagio, that Miss Simmons had really set him up to fail. Heller was sneaky.
“Oh, I’m so glad. You know, you dear boy, you don’t want to grow up to be a bum like these other bums. Mama wants you to have class, kid, real class. Become president or something.”
“Well, I certainly do thank you,” said Heller.
“Now, there’s one more thing, Jerome,” said Babe, a little more severely. “You’ve got to promise me not to play hooky.”
That stopped Heller. He knew very well he would be missing in as many as two or three classes a day! Bless Miss Simmons!
Heller found his voice, “Not even one class, Mrs. Corleone?”
“Now, Jerome,” said Babe, her voice hardening, “I know it is a terrible job bringing up boys. I never did but I had brothers and I know! Let down your guard for one second and they’re off and away, free as birds, skylarking and breaking neighbors’ windows. So the answer is very plain. I give it to you absolutely straight. No hooky. Not even one class! Mama will be watching and Mama will spank! Now promise me, Jerome. And Vantagio, if you’re listening to this, which you are — I am sure you are as I can tell it’s the speaker phone on your desk — you look at his hands; no crossed fingers, no crossed feet. All right?”
Vantagio peered at Heller. “They aren’t crossed, mia capa”
Oh, what a spot Heller was in! With his nonsense Royal officer scruples about keeping his word, I knew he was suffering agonies. He couldn’t keep that promise so he wouldn’t make it. And I was sure that, to Babe Corleone, the phrase “Mama will spank” translated more truthfully into “concrete overcoat.”
“Mrs. Corleone,” said Heller. “I will be truthful with you.” Ah, here it came! “I promise you faithfully that, unless I get rubbed out, or unless something happens that closes the university, I will complete college on time and get my diploma.”
“Oh, you dear boy! That is even more than I asked! But nevertheless, Jerome, just remember, Mama will be watching. Bye-bye!”
Vantagio closed the circuit and sat there beaming at Heller.
“There’s one more thing,” said Heller. “Vantagio, could you get me the phone number of Bang-Bang Rimbombo. I want to call him from my suite.”
“Celebrating, are you?” said Vantagio. “I don’t blame you. As a matter of fact, he’s right here in Manhattan and the parole officer is riding his (bleep) off.” He wrote the number on a scrap of paper and handed it over. “Have fun, kid.”
It left me blinking. Vantagio might be smart but he hadn’t penetrated that one. Heller was full of surprises, (bleep) him. What was he going to pull? Blow up the university? That was the only way I could think of that would let him keep the promise he had just made to Babe Corleone.
About an hour later, Heller came out of his room. The tailors must have delivered something, for in the elevator mirrors I could see that he was dressed in a charcoal gray casual suit — the cloth must be some kind of summer cloth that was very thin and airy but looked thick and substantial. He had a white silk shirt with what appeared to be diamond cuff links and a dark blue tie. For a change he wasn’t wearing his baseball cap and in fact wore no hat at all. But when he crossed the lobby he was obviously still wearing spikes!
He clattered down the steps of a subway stop and caught a train. He got off at Times Square and was shortly clattering up Broadway past the porno shops. He turned into a cross street. I thought he must be going to a theater for he gave some attention to billboards of stage plays as he passed them.
Then he was looking up a flight of stairs. K.O. ATHLETIC CLUB, read the sign. He clattered on up and entered a room full of punching bags and helmeted boxers sparring around.
He was evidently expected. An attendant came over, “You Floyd?” and then beckoned. Heller followed him into a dressing room and the attendant pointed to a locker. Heller stripped and hung up his clothes. The attendant gave him a towel and shooed him through a door into a smoking haze of steam.
Heller groped around, fanned some steam out of the way and there was Bang-Bang Rimbombo, sitting on a ledge, streaming sweat and clutching a towel about him. The little Sicilian’s narrow face was just a diffused patch in the fog.
“How are you?” said Heller.
“Just terrible, kid. Awful. I couldn’t be worse. Sit down.”
Heller sat down and dabbed at his own face with a towel. The sweat started to pour off him, too. It must be awfully hot.
They sat in utter silence, steam geysering around them. Now and then Bang-Bang would take a gulp of water from a pitcher and then Heller would take a gulp.
After nearly an hour, Bang-Bang said, “I’m starting to feel human again. My headache is gone.”
“Did you take care of what I asked?” said Heller. “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”
“Oh, hell, that was easy. Hey, I can bend my neck. I haven’t taken a sober breath since I saw you last.” He was silent for a while and then apparently remembered what Heller had asked. “This time every week, Father Xavier goes down to Bayonne. He’s Babe’s confessor, knew her since she was a kid on the lower East Side. He has dinner with her and then hears her confession and then brings a load of hijacked birth control pills back to town. One of his stops is the Gracious Palms. So it wasn’t any trouble. You’ll have them later tonight. You don’t owe me nothing. They wasn’t no use.”
“Thank you very much,” said Heller.
“If all things was handled that easy,” said Bang-Bang, “life would be worth living. But just now it ain’t. You know, life can be pretty awful, kid.”
“What’s the matter? Maybe I can help.”
“I’m afraid it’s all beyond the help of God or man,” said Bang-Bang. “Up the river I go next Wednesday.”
“But why?” demanded Heller. “I thought you were out on parole.”
“Yeah. But, kid, that arrest was very irregular. A machine gun is a Federal crime but the late Oozopopolis rigged it to be found by the New York Police and they got me on the Sullivan Law or whatever they call illegal possession. I didn’t go to a Federal pen; they sent me up the river to Sing Sing.”
“That’s too bad,” said Heller.
“Yeah. They’re so crooked they can’t even send you to the right jail! So when I was paroled, I of course went home to New Jersey. And right away, the parole officer dug me up and said I was out of jurisdiction, that I couldn’t leave New York. So I come to New York and we don’t control New York like we used to before ‘Holy Joe’ got wasted. So Police Inspector Bulldog Grafferty is leaning all over the parole officer to send me back to the pen to finish my time — they tell me now it’s eight months, kid. Eight dry months!”
“Is it because you haven’t any place to live? I could—”
“Naw, naw, I know a chick on Central Park West and I moved in with her and her five sisters.”
“Well, if it’s money, I could—”
“Naw, naw. Thanks, kid. I got tons of money. I get paid by the job and under the counter and that’s the trouble. The parole officer made it a condition that I get a regular job. Imagine that, kid. A regular job, an artist like me! The job I do have nobody dares report and that leaves me bango right out in Times Square with no clothes on. Nobody will hire an ex-con. Babe said she’d arrange a regular pay social security job in one of the Corleone enterprises but that connects the family up to legit business — I’m too famous. I won’t risk getting Babe in trouble, never. She’s a great capa. So that’s what I’m up against. They said, ‘Regular job: social security, withholding tax or a charge of vagrancy and back you go this next Wednesday.’ That’s what the parole officer said.”
“Gosh, I’m awful sorry,” said Heller.
“Well, it made me feel better just getting it off my chest, kid. I feel tons better. Headache gone?” He shook his head experimentally. “Yep. Let’s get a shower and get out of here and have some dinner!”
They were soon dressed. As they passed out through the training room, I suppose Heller just plain could not resist socking something — it’s his vicious character. As he passed by a punching bag, he hit it. It flew off its springs.
“I’m sorry,” said Heller to the attendant.
“Hey, boss!” the attendant yelled at somebody.
A very fat man with a huge cigar in his mouth came over.
“Look at what this kid did,” said the attendant.
“I’ll pay for it,” said Heller.
“Hmm,” said the fat man. “Punch this one over here, kid.”
Heller went over to it and punched it. It simply vibrated back and forth — slam, slam, slam, slam.
“That other one just had a weak spring, Joe,” said the fat man. “You ought to keep this equipment under repair.”
I laughed. Heller couldn’t punch so hard after all. He’s always bragging and showing off. Good to see him come a cropper now and then.
The theater crowds had gone in. “Y’ever want to see the last end of a show,” said Bang-Bang, “wait for intermission when the crowd comes out to smoke and then walk back in with them. You get to see the last acts but I always get to wondering how they got into all that trouble in the first acts, so I don’t do it.”
They came to a huge, glittering restaurant with a huge, glittering sign:
The maitre d’ spotted Bang-Bang in the line and dragged him out. He led them to a small table in the back.
“Some of them diners,” said Bang-Bang, “is celebrities. That’s Johnny Matinee over there. And there’s Jean Lologiggida. The theatrical stars all come here to eat. And after the opening night, when the stars come in, if it’s a hit everybody claps and cheers. And if it’s a bomb, they turn their backs.”
The maitre d’ put them at a small, secluded table and handed them menus. Heller looked at the prices. “Hey, this place isn’t cheap. I didn’t intend for you to invite me to dinner. I’ll pick up the tab.”
Bang-Bang laughed. “Kid, for all the glitter, this is an Italian restaurant. The Corleone family owns it. There ain’t no tab. Besides, he’ll just bring us antipasto, meatballs and spaghetti. Good, though.”
Bang-Bang was hauling at his side. He brought out a full, unsealed fifth of Johnnie Walker Gold Label and set it on the table. “Don’t look so surprised, kid. It’s just going to sit there and be admired by me. I got cases of it left but I won’t have any in Sing Sing for eight months. I just want it to tell me I’m not in Sing Sing yet.”
The antipasto came and they got busy on the crisp odds and ends.
A waiter drifted by, a different one, with huge spiked mustaches. “Che c’e di nuovo, Bang-Bang?”
“All bad,” said Bang-Bang. “Meet the kid here. One of the family. Pretty Boy Floyd, this is Cherubino Gatano.”
“Pleased,” said Cherubino. “Can I get you anything, Floyd?”
“Some beer,” said Heller.
“Hold it, hold it!” said Bang-Bang. “Don’t let this bambino kid you, he’s a minor and they’d have our (bleep). Got to keep it legal.”
“Hold it, hold it yourself,” said Cherubino. “If he’s a minor, he can still have some beer.”
“Since when?”
“Since now.” Cherubino went off and came back shortly with a squat bottle and a tall Pilsener glass on a tray.
“You’re breaking the law!” said Bang-Bang. “And me about to go back up the river. They’ll add ‘contributing to the delinquency of a minor’ this time and never let me out!”
“Bang-Bang,” said Cherubino. “I love you. I have loved you since you were a child. But you are stupid. You can’t read. This is Swiss beer all right and the very best. But in this case they have taken all the alcohol out!” He pushed the bottle label at Bang-Bang. “Imported! Legal!” Then he poured the Pilsener glass full and gave it to Heller.
Heller tasted it. “Hello, hello! Delicious!”
“You see,” said Cherubino, starting to take the bottle away. “You always were stupid, Bang-Bang.”
“Leave the bottle,” said Heller. “I want to copy the label. I’m so tired of soft cola I could burp!”
Cherubino said, “Bang-Bang and I used to stand off all the Greeks in Hell’s Kitchen together, so don’t get the idea we’re not friends, kid. But he was always stupid and when he came back from the war they’d made him even stupider and that’s impossible. See you around.” He left.
Bang-Bang was laughing. “Cherubino was my captain in that same war, so he ought to know.”
“What did you do in the war?” asked Heller.
“Me? I was a marine.”
“Yes, but what did you do?” said Heller.
“Well, they say a marine is supposed to be able to do anything. They have to handle all kinds and types of weapons so they specialize less than the Army and get shot at with more variety.”
“What training did you get?” said Heller.
“Well, it was pretty good. I started out real good. When I got out of boot camp, I went right to the top. They made me a gunship pilot.”
“What’s that?”
“Gunship, whirlybird, Green Giant, chopper. A helicopter, kid. Where you been? Don’t you ever see old movies? Anyway, there I was dashing about shooting the hell out of anything that moved on the ground and suddenly they sent me to a specialist school.”
“In what?”
“Demolitions.” Their meatballs and spaghetti had arrived. “Oh, well, hell, kid. We’re pals. I might as well tell you the truth. I crashed so many whirlybirds a colonel one day said, ‘That God (bleeped) Rimbombo shows talent but he’s in the wrong branch of the service. Send him to demolitions training school.’ I tried to point out that choppers full of bullets don’t fly well but there I went and here I am. Nobody else knows that, kid, so don’t spread it around.”
“Oh, I won’t,” said Heller. After a bit he said, “Bang-Bang, I want your opinion about something.”
Ah, now we were getting to it. This Heller was sneaky. I knew all the time he was not there for nothing. I was alert. Maybe he would antagonize Bang-Bang. He sets people’s nerves on edge. I know he does mine. Dangerous!
He was taking a form out of his pocket. It said:
It was an enrollment form.
“Bang-Bang,” said Heller, “look at this line here. It makes one promise to be faithful to the United States of America and support the Constitution. One is supposed to sign it. It looks like a pretty binding oath.”
Bang-Bang looked at it. “Well, that’s not the real oath. This next line here says you promise that when you graduate from the ROTC you will serve two years in the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant. Hmm. Yes. This is the junior or senior year form. Now, when you get out of the ROTC, they make you take the real oath. You stand up, hold up your right hand and repeat after them and get sworn in for real.”
“Well, I can’t sign this allegiance form,” said Heller. “And later, when I graduate, I can’t take any such oath.”
“I understand completely,” said Bang-Bang. “It’s true they’re just a bunch of crooks.”
Heller laid the form aside and ate some spaghetti. Then he said, “Bang-Bang, I can get you a job driving a car.”
Bang-Bang was alert. “With real social security, withholding tax and legit? That would satisfy the parole officer?”
“Absolutely,” said Heller. “By Tuesday I’ll have a corporation, all legal, and it can hire you as a driver. And that will beat your Wednesday deadline.”
“Hey!” said Bang-Bang. “And I won’t have to go back up the river!”
“There are a couple of conditions,” said Heller.
Bang-Bang looked even more alert.
“The driving itself won’t amount to much. But during the day you’ll have to run some errands. It isn’t really hard work and it’s actually in your line.”
Bang-Bang said, “Do I smell some catches in this?”
“No, no, I wouldn’t ask you to do anything illegal,” said Heller. “There are lots of girls around the place of work.”
“Sounds interesting. But I still smell a catch.”
“Well, actually, it isn’t much of a catch,” said Heller. “You’ve been a marine and know all about this sort of thing, so it’s no strain. What I want you to do, in addition to these other duties, is sign this ROTC form as J.
Terrance Wister, report to three classes a week and do the drill period.”
“NO!” said Bang-Bang, refusing utterly.
“They don’t know me by sight and I realize we look different, but if I know such organizations, all they’re interested in is somebody to yell ‘Yo’ when the roll is called and somebody to march around as part of the ranks.”
“NO!” said Bang-Bang. And of course he was right. He was a small Sicilian, a foot shorter than Heller, brunette where Heller was blond.
“If you keep telling people your name is Terrance, and if I keep getting people to call me Jet or Jerome, other students will think we are two different people but the computers will think there’s just one of us.”
“NO!” said Bang-Bang.
“You could give me the material they teach and coach me in the drills. I’d be earning the credits honestly.”
“NO!”
“I’ll pay you whatever you ask a week to do these other things and this and you won’t be sent back to prison.”
“Kid. It isn’t the pay. A couple hundred a week would be great. But it isn’t the pay. There are just some things one can’t bring himself to do!”
“Such as?” said Heller.
“Look, kid. I was a marine. Now, once a marine, always a marine. The Marines, kid, is the MARINES! Now, kid, the Army is a hell of a downstairs sort of organization. It is the Army, kid. Dogfaces. I don’t think you realize that you’re asking me to throw away all my principles. I couldn’t even pretend to join the Army, kid. I’d feel so degraded I wouldn’t be able to live with myself! And that’s everything, kid. Pride!”
They ate some more spaghetti.
There was a change of noise level. Bang-Bang looked toward the distant door. “Hey, a new show must have just let out. I think that commotion at the door must be the stars. Now watch this, kid. If it’s a great show, this whole crowd of diners here will applaud and if it was a flop, they’ll turn their backs.”
Heller looked. Johnny Matinee was half out of his chair, looking toward the door. Jean Lologiggida was craning her pretty neck. Three of the Sardine photographers, that had been running around taking flash pictures of diners for personal albums, got ready to shoot a big scene.
The buzz at the door increased. The crowd there parted.
In walked Police Inspector Grafferty, resplendent in full uniform!
The diners turned their backs on him with a groan.
“That’s Grafferty,” hissed Bang-Bang. “Got his nerve walking into a Corleone place. He’s in Faustino’s pay!”
Grafferty knew exactly where he was going. He was coming straight through to the back. To Bang-Bang’s table!
He stopped with his right side to Heller. His interest was in Bang-Bang. “The undercover cops in the street spotted you coming in here, Rimbombo. I just wanted to get one last look at your face before they sent you back up the river.”
But Heller was not looking at Grafferty. He had picked up the corner of the tablecloth and was tucking it into Grafferty’s coat pocket with a fork! What a crazy thing to do! Clearly showed he had a trivial mind.
“What’s this?” said Grafferty. He was reaching out for the bottle of Johnnie Walker Gold Label. “Hooch without a revenue seal on its cap! I thought I could find something if I just came…”
Heller’s voice cut into the speech and into the room for that matter. The drone of diners’ voices vanished. “Don’t try to pinch my friend for contributing to the delinquency of a minor!”
Grafferty let go of the Scotch and turned to face Heller. “Who’s this? Haven’t I seen your face before somewhere, kid?”
In that penetrating Fleet voice of his, Heller said, “This beer is legal!”
“Beer?” said Grafferty. “A minor and beer? Oh, boy, Rimbombo, you are in for it now! And this is a licensing matter! I can get the Corleone license revoked for this whole place!”
“Look here!” said Heller. “It’s nonalcoholic beer. Look at the label!”
Heller was fumblingly, hastily, pushing the empty beer bottle forward toward Grafferty. It seemed to slip. Grafferty grabbed for it.
The beer bottle hit the bottle of Scotch!
The Scotch went over the table edge!
Grafferty grabbed for the Scotch!
The Scotch hit the floor with a splintering crash!
Grafferty was still going down. He seemed to trip.
The whole tablecloth was pulled off!
Bowls of spaghetti, utensils, dirty plates and red tomato sauce hit Grafferty in an avalanche!
Jean Lologiggida was half out of her seat, looking white, hand pressed to her bosom.
Heller was up. “Oh, my goodness!” he cried and raced around the table to help Grafferty. His spikes stepped on the broken glass of the Scotch. He looked down and kicked the cap and label far away with a twitch of his foot.
He was assisting Grafferty up. From a nearby table he grabbed a red-checked cloth. He began to swab at Grafferty’s face.
What a horribly bad job of cleaning! He was smearing spaghetti all over Grafferty’s face, in his hair, on his tunic.
Jean Lologiggida was pressed back against the side of her booth.
Heller took Grafferty by the elbow and led him toward the star’s table.
The photographers were batting out shot after shot!
Heller got Grafferty to her table. “Oh, Miss Lologiggida! Inspector Grafferty demanded the right to tell you how terribly sorry he was to disturb your dinner. The tablecloth caught in his belt. And you are sorry, aren’t you, Inspector?”
Grafferty didn’t know whether he was up or down. He stared at the star. He said, “Oh, my God, it’s Lologiggida!” Then he saw he was still trailing the tablecloth and plates. He tore the corner of it off his belt. And while the flashguns flashed, rushed from the restaurant.
Suddenly Jean Lologiggida burst into gales of laughter! She was doubled up with it!
Johnny Matinee rushed over. “Ye gads, I wish I’d been part of that. It’ll make the front page!”
Somebody, evidently Johnny Matinee’s public relations man, was grabbing the photographers and having a hurried consultation with the proprietor.
The PR man said, “It’s nothing to you, kid,” to Heller. “Do you mind if Johnny takes your place on the front page? We’ll overpaste the shots they took.”
“Feel free,” said Heller.
They put Johnny Matinee where Heller had stood in front of Lologiggida, got him to assume the same pose. The flashbulbs flashed.
Heller went back to the table. The restaurant was still rocking with laughter. Somebody belatedly started to applaud and Heller turned and took a bow but indicated, with his hand, Johnny Matinee. This seemed even funnier to people.
Bang-Bang was sitting there, doubled over with laughter. “Oh, sangue di Cristo! That Grafferty won’t come near a Corleone place for a while. And you bought the joint a million in publicity!”
Heller said, soberly, “And Grafferty won’t connect that bottle up with the warehouse job.”
Bang-Bang looked at Heller as Heller sat back down. “Hey, I never thought of that!”
Cherubino came over. He had another nonalcoholic beer. He was grinning when he set it down. “This a good kid you got here, Bang-Bang. I’m glad he’s part of our family and not some other mob! Maybe you ain’t so stupid as I thought!” He went off.
Bang-Bang sat there, looking at Heller. “You know, kid, I’m going to take you up on that offer. I’ll even swallow my scruples and join the Army for you.” He thought for a bit. Then he said, “It’s not because it’ll save me from going back to jail. It’s just because you’re kind of fun to be around!”
But I was not as impressed as they were. Heller’s tablecloth trick was something we used to do at the Academy to dumb recruits. And any spacer has vast experience in handling barroom brawls. Heller was just taking advantage of the fact that Voltar technology was far higher than that of Earth’s. Still, he was too tricky, too sneaky. And he was making too much progress!
Where the Hells was the communication from Rant and Terb? I couldn’t abide the idea of seeing Heller fool all these people into thinking he amounted to something. All that (bleeping) applause!