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.
Chapter 4
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.”