RECRUITER: . . . to do my duty . . .
FINK (slight childish snicker): . . . to do my duty . . .
RECRUIT ER: . . . no matter what country . . .
FINK: . . . no matter what country . . .
RECRUITER: . . . gets hurt in the process;
FINK: . . . gets hurt in the process;
RECRUIT ER: . . . and to obey the CIA code without regard to changes in foreign policy;
FINK: . . . and to obey the CIA code without regard to changes in foreign policy;
RECRUITER: . . . to help other peoples at all times . . .
FINK: . . . to help other peoples at all times . . .
RECRUITER: . . . whether they want to be helped or not;
FINK: . . . whether they want to be helped or not;
RECRUITER: . . . to keep CIA fiscally Strong - - -
FINK: . . . to keep CIA fiscally strong . . .
RECRUITER: . . . mentally ambiguous . . .
FINK: . . . mentally ambiguous . . .
RECRUITER: . . . and morally square.
FINK: . . . and morally — square?
RECRUITER: Square.
FINK: . . . and morally square!
RECRUITER: Welcome to the CIA.
FINK: Yish! You got my cheeks all wet.
RECRUITER: Sorry, I was carried away by the beauty of the ceremony.
FINK: Your tic is ticking again.
RECRUITER: Merely an expression of joy (His tone becomes clipped.) Agent Fink, report back here at oh-six-hundred Friday for further instructions.
FINK: Yes sir.
SIT-IN STUDENTS (chanting):
IN MATTERS OF AFFAIRS OF STATE,
THE CIA E’ER GOOFS ITS ROLE.
THEY ARE THE FUMBLERS OF OUR FA TE,
'THE U-2 LEMMINGS OF OUR SOUL!
RECRUITER: Poets! They should all be shot!
SECRETARY: Yes sir. Shall I turn off the tape-recorder now, sir?
RECRUITER: Might as well.
STUDENTS (singing):
WE SHALL OVERCOME,
WE SHALL OVERCOME,
WE SHALL OVERCOME SOME--
That was the end of the transcription. Red-eyed, I sighed and continued to leaf through the rest of the dossier. There was nothing there to connect Fink with Sy Lenzio or any other member of the Pine Glen Drama Group.
It occurred to me that I might be tackling this bass-ackwards. If a study of Fink’s background had held any clues, then Senator Hawthorne wouldn’t have enlisted me. The key to the fate of the missing fifty Gs had to lie with some member of the little theatre group.
But which one? So far I didn’t really know too much about any of them. Still, it might pay to go over what I did know. I considered them one by one.
There was the mid-thirtyish sexpot Rusty Roundheels, my hostess of the evening. The redheaded runaround and her husband Roger had only recently finished the posh basement where the mime had been minced. It was an expensive looking playroom. Where had the money come from? Might it be part of the missing fifty thousand?
And there was Joy Boxx, the willowy and willing evangelist’s wife. Joy had played the ingenue role in the play put on earlier that fateful evening. With her husband away saving sinners a good deal of the time, the sleek blonde would have plenty of free time for all sorts of intrigue—romantic and otherwise. Could she have been Arch Fink’s contact in the drama group?
Or might the contact have been Wanda Humphrey? The Austrian dancer with her malapro English and Zsa Zsa-style coquetry and vagueness surely fit the popular conception of the femme fatale spy. Austria, after all, was a Communist neighbour. If the Reds had wanted to discredit the CIA and stymie American efforts to participate in the International Conference of Little Theatre Groups, the beautiful and exotic Wanda might have been just the girl to sic on Arch Fink.
Female-wise, as far as the drama group was concerned, that left Dr. Cleo Taurus. The petite brunette medico seemed a less likely prospect than any of the others, but you could never tell. If the healing arts paid off for her as well as for others of her profession, then money wouldn’t be a motive. But as a wandering wife, there was always the chance of another sort of liason between her and Fink.
If there had been such a connection, then it made her husband Nick suspect as well. And Phil Anders-—if he was her lover, as seemed likely. Jealousy might have brought either of them in contact with Fink. And any contact might be an arrow pointing towards the missing fifty thou. In Anders’s case, the money would have played a part. His job as an insurance claims adjustor couldn’t pay him much. An affair with Cleo just might be costing him more than he could afford.
But someone like Phil would have a rough time concealing fifty thousand dollars if he latched onto it. There was only one man I could think of in the drama group to whom handling the money would probably be no problem. That was Will Leigh. A banker by profession, the fat man with his comedy relief approach to life would have known just what to do with the dough until the heat was off.
Peter Putter, like Phil, probably wouldn’t have known how to handle it. Still, any man so obsessed with keeping his hands in his pockets might not hesitate to reach into the pockets of the CIA. And his fumbling shyness might be indicative of one of two other factors. It could be genuine nervousness because he was the one who’d taken the money. Or it could be a deliberate cover-up to disguise the shrewdness which would have been necessary for him, to con Fink out of the money.
Among the living, that left Cass Novak. There was nothing to connect him with Fink. But he had the most obvious motive to kill Sy Lenzio. He wouldn’t be the first man to kill because he’d been beaten publicly in a fight. He’d been close enough to that wall-switch to flip it and activate the power saw without any of the others noticing. The only trouble was that the same held true for all the others in the furnished cellar. Any one of them might have tripped the fatal switch without being seen. With everybody’s attention on the mime, it would have been simple. I couldn’t even be sure that Joy Boxx, who’d been y standing right beside me, hadn’t slipped away long enough to do it.
And what about the dead mime? He certainly could have been Fink’s contact as easily as any of the others. If he had taken the money, that was reason enough for someone to have killed him. That was particularly true if Lenzio had a confederate, or if he’d confided in someone where the moola was stashed. Was there a Lenzio-Fink link?
And that brought me right back to where I’d started. No hits, no runs, and search me how many errors in my reasoning. The hell with it! I was tired. Dawn was cracking through and I decided to go to sleep.
But my mind kept whirling in bed. It started with Sy Lenzio and then skidded away to the dead man’s date of the evening, the teeny-bopper. I didn’t even know her name, but I sure would like to have had her number. That Shing-A-Ling bounced around behind my closed eyelids like an aphrodisiac. I drifted off to sleep ogling the memory of that tantalizingly flaring miniskirt. The dream I had was a gasser . . .
It opened with a very old man—me! Gray-haired, balding, half toothless, skin like parchment, and trembling with age, I was riding the subway. Standing directly in front of me, strap-hanging, was the teeny-bopper. Under the tank-top she was wearing, her breasts swayed with the rhythm of the train. The tank-top was made out of cellophane. Each time the train lurched one of her healthy, uptilted breasts bounced against my chin. Cagily, I let my chin sink and then the long, red, cellophane-covered nipple of her breast slapped directly against my lips. I began timing my breathing with the lurches so that each time the breast-tip made contact I managed to prolong it, to hold it between my lips and even get in a lick or two with my tongue.