It was the cameraman who answered me. “The local yokels are up in arms about us shooting a sex scene in their graveyard.” His voice was frightened.
“They tried to get an injunction to stop me legally,” Twitchcock added. “But my lawyer had it vacated on the grounds that the cemetery is beyond the town line. Theoretically, nobody really owns it. I’ve got as much right to shoot here as they have to bury somebody here.”
There was movement now behind the headlights. Shadowy figures were blocking out the glare as they came for us. I made out the silhouettes of a couple of shotguns. Also several clubs and a pitchfork or two. “They don’t seem to think so,” I told Twitchcock dryly.
Randy slipped back into her shroud, covering her goosepimples.
“Look here, you people!” Twitchcock was screeching. “The courts have already decided this. You’ve no right to-”
“Screw the courts!” It was a different voice from the first one, but even more hostile. “And don’t you be talkin’ ’bout rights, you ghoul!”
“There’s no excuse for taking the law into your own hands!” Twitchcock was quivering with fear, a three-hundred-pound jellyfish caught in a whirlpool.
“Bullshit!”
We were surrounded now.
“This isn’t the democratic way!” Twitchcock protested.
To no avail. It was like trying to tell an armed Black Panther in a Harlem back alley that because he had a crooked nose and cauliflower ears, black wasn’t beautiful. It might be objectively true, but it sure as hell didn’t help relations!
“Strip ’em down, boys!” Such was the answer to Twitchcock’s plea.
Three hefty Middle Americans held me while a fourth tore off my clothes. Twitchcock and the rest were also undressed. None too gently, except for Randy, who wasn’t so much roughed up as manhandled with a certain amount of lingering appreciation.
“Look at them tits!” The speaker hefted them with both hands.
“Julius!” A woman’s voice twanged out from the rear of the mob. “You get your paws off that hussy and stick to business!”
“Why in tarnation’d you bring the missus along, Julius?” one of the heavies holding Twitchcock asked disgustedly.
“Now, you know she wouldn’t-a missed it, Pete. It’s the most excitement this town’s had since we stoned them hippies.”
The one called Pete seemed to be in charge. Under his instructions, stout poles were brought up, and we were tied to them. Rough-edged ropes cut hard into my wrists and ankles. Then my pole was picked up by both ends, and I was being carried, dangling like a calf at branding time.
I caught an acrid smell. It took me a minute to identify it. Then I realized what it was. Simmering tar! It was being heated in a large caldron near where the cars were parked. They’d been rearranged to form a circle, with their headlights now illuminating the clearing where the oversized vat of tar was being heated over a large, red-hot bed of coals. Not too far away from it were several burlap bags. Nobody had to tell me they were filled with feathers.
Suspended, naked like the rest of us, Randy Beaver was being carried on the pole beside me. The man called Julius was walking alongside her. Every so often he’d cop a feel-squeeze one of her plump, dangling buttocks or grab the spillover of the jiggling breast nearest him. Randy looked as terrified as I felt.
“I wish I had a cigarette.” Her voice quavered.
“Cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health,” I reminded her.
“So is tar and feathers!”
The poles were raised. We hung suspended over the tub of steaming tar. The heat was bearable, but uncomfortable. We stayed that way while the sacks of feathers were broken open and the contents distributed among our fun-loving hosts.
“I’ve been looking for a chance to talk to you,” I told Randy.
“Boy! You sure do pick your moments!” She bit her trembling lower lip. “What about?” she asked.
The poles were being slowly lowered now. The heat was more intense. The hot, bubbling tar was reaching up for our bare bottoms!
“About Torn Swift,” I answered her.
About Tom Swift. . . .
CHAPTER SIX
“About Tom Swift . . . ?”
I’d raised the question with Charles Putnam that day on Paradise Island.
“I was just coming around to him,” Putnam told me. “You see, Mr. Victor, when we discovered the infiltration, a tracer was put on the four telephone trunk lines feeding into the computer. After a few days, we picked up an unauthorized call. We barely managed to trace it to its source before the connection was severed. The caller must have detected the electronic beep given off by the tracing equipment.”
“And he hasn’t called back since?”
“We can’t be sure. When he knows it’s there, an experienced phone phreak—-which Tom Swift surely is—- can use his M.F.-er to circumvent tracing equipment. He could have had further communication with the computer without our knowing it.”
“Where did you trace the call to?”
“A pay booth alongside a gas station in a backwoods section of Vermont. Of course, we put a tap on it immediately. And we kept it under visual surveillance as well. Two-man teams.”
“What did they turn up?”
“Not much for about a week. Very few calls were made. The proprietor of the gas station calling his home or arranging a poker game. One or two tourists phoning ahead for accommodations. Then, finally, one call that was out of the ordinary.”
“A phone-phreak call? Long distance?”
“No. It was a local call, and the dime was collected.”
“Then what was unusual about it?” I wanted to know.
“Three things. First, the caller was a blind man. Second, he identified himself to the party at the other end as ‘Tom Swift.’ Third, he subsequently vanished under peculiar circumstances.”
I saw what Putnam meant. From the little I knew about it, phone phreaking had a particular attraction for the blind. Probably more than half the phone phreaks in the country were sightless. Also, phone phreaks frequently adopted outlandish aliases. The article I’d read had detailed the phreaky exploits of such as “Dial Tone Jim,” “Buck Robbers,” “The Coin Slot Kid,” “Operator 69,” “Brother Breather,” and others. “Tom Swift” was just the sort of pseudonym a phone phreak might use.
“Who did he call?” I asked.
“A local girl named Randy Beaver. And right now she’s our only lead.”
“How did the blind man shake the agents watching the phone booth?”
Putnam told me. When Tom Swift left the phone booth, one of the agents stayed behind to call in, find out what the tap had uncovered, and receive instructions. The other one followed the blind man for about a mile and a half through the Vermont woods to a small cabin in which he’d been living. Whether because his hearing was sharper due to his blindness (as is the case with many sightless people), or because of the agent’s all-around klutziness, it seems obvious from what happened later that by the time he reached home Tom Swift had become aware that he was under scrutiny.
The agent had been watching the cabin about twenty minutes when he spotted Randy Beaver approaching. She let herself into the place without bothering to knock. Once she was inside, the snoop zipped on down to a window for a look-see and an earshot of what was happening.
What was happening kept him glued there. Randy, making noises about how hot it was, proceeded to strip down to the essential bares. (It was, I imagine, the promise of just such moments as this which had persuaded the agent to let himself be recruited for government I-spy service in the first place.) Seemingly, Tom Swift, being blind, was both unaware of and unaffected by the unveiling of the Beaver beaver and subsidiary charms. He excused himself to go to the john. The john was an old-fashioned outhouse some fifty feet out back of the cabin. From his vantage point at the window, the snoop had a clear view of the path between the cabin and the outhouse. He watched Tom Swift walk the distance, secure in the knowledge that the blind man couldn’t see him. Then he settled back to keep an eye on the outhouse door, waiting for Swift to emerge.