“As an officer of the court I will be forced to report anything I hear of a criminal nature.”
“Don't worry, Barry. There won't be any problem with that. You help us now and I guarantee you will have no problem with telling everything you know to the authorities.”
“You said that the alligator witness would turn also.”
“A little mistake. The President's. Now, how do we get the bum?”
“You don't,” said Glidden. “He is always surrounded by bodyguards. They are called the Secret Service, and they are prepared for everything.”
“Not everything. There's been one President killed and one wounded in my lifetime alone,” said Beatrice.
“They have electronic sensors. They have men who will shield him with their bodies. They have everything they need to catch you. And then they're going to put you in jail for a very long, long, long time. Longer than the alligator thing, Beatrice Dolomo.”
Barry Glidden felt the rage rise in him. His hands tapped the table. She had gone too far, and he knew what he would do to stop her. As soon as he got out of here, this responsible officer of the court would report this plan to harm the President of the United States. And he would forgo any fee. He would, for the first time in his glorious career, live up to that precious oath he had taken years before when he graduated from UCLA Law School. Then, once the Dolomos were safely in the slammer, he would make his move for the rolling lands of the estate and bring his children back from Switzerland.
The estate might be held against uncollected taxes. It might even be a steal.
“The President can't be reached through any girlfriends. He's faithful to his wife. You can't poison him,” said Barry, “because he's got tasters. Those cobras you snuck into someone's bed won't work, and boiling oil could never get near him. You might try to plant a sniper on a roof with a rifle, but the Secret Service would spot him. I guarantee it.”
“Does the President read letters?” asked Beatrice.
“Of course he does,” said Barry.
“Then we'll send him a letter. Meanwhile, we want you to speak to the Vice-President. He, after all, is going to be in charge, after the current President is lost. Tell him to lay off Poweressence.”
Beatrice nodded at the reasonableness of her own suggestion.
Barry gave only a polite smile. He wondered if he should drive directly to the Federal Bureau of Investigation or run. As Rubin escorted him to the door, Beatrice issued a particularly strange good-bye:
“Give him just enough for now,” said Beatrice.
“What is she talking about?” said Barry.
“Nothing,” said Rubin. He invited him to the lounge bar downstairs.
“No thanks, I was interrupted down there by your wife.”
“Beatrice does not like to see anyone but her making love.”
“It wasn't love.”
“Whatever,” said Rubin. He needed two Motrin and a Demerol to make it down the stairs. He asked Glidden if he would deliver a letter for him.
“Sure,” said Barry.
Apparently Rubin was going to write the letter while Barry waited. In order to rush Rubin, Barry followed him through the door he'd exited. It led to a cellar, a cellar where many rubber suits hung against the walls. A cellar with several doors so that Barry couldn't quite be sure which he'd used to get in. So he picked one door at random and burst through. He found himself staring at Rubin. Rubin was sweaty-faced, wide-eyed, and on the other side of a piece of glass, and his hands were stuffed into rubber-coated arms protruding into Barry's room.
“Get out of there. Go back,” yelled Rubin. The voice was muffled by the glass. One rubber hand held a cotton swab and the other a pink letter.
“What are you doing with that letter?”
“Go back.”
“You're doing something funny with the letter,” said Barry.
“I'm not doing anything with the letter. Get out of here. Go back.”
“That's the letter you want me to deliver?”
“Get back. For your own good. Get back. I control forces you know nothing about, forces beyond your understanding.”
“That's the letter you wanted me to deliver. What are you doing to it?” Barry went over to the small table the rubber arms worked over. There was a jar of something on the table. The swab was wet with something. Barry leaned over the little jar. He sniffed. It smelled strangely like a root cellar he once had made love in. He had gone to a client's house to help her with a divorce. Her husband had accused her of adultery. He was very suspicious, she had said. Life was hell, she had said. Perhaps they had better talk about it in the root cellar, she had said. It was the first time Barry Glidden had ever accepted an alternate form of legal fee.
So Barry Glidden basked in the fond memories of this odor.
“Get back,” said Rubin.
“What's wrong here? What are you doing, Rubin?”
“It's too intricate for you to understand.”
“What if I were to take this jar and bring it to the police, Rubin? What would happen then?”
“You'd only hurt yourself,” said Rubin. “Don't touch it, please.”
“I'm not so sure,” said Glidden.
“It's dangerous. What do you think I am doing on the other side of the glass shield with my hands in rubber gloves?”
“You tell me,” said Glidden. He did not move. He liked the aroma of the liquid in the jar.
Beside the steel jar was a steel cap. If he could protect his own hands with his own jacket, Barry reasoned, he could cap the jar, put it in his briefcase, and drive it to some chemist to get it analyzed. It could be good evidence in the government case against the Dolomos, good enough to cut six months off the projected time when all this land would be sold.
Glidden removed his suit jacket, taking out the wallet and the keys and stuffing them in his pants. Then, very carefully, he used it like a giant potholder to move the steel jar top over the container of the pleasant-smelling liquid. One of the rubber gloves tried to push him away. It held the letter. Barry ignored it. Then the letter touched the back of his hand.
He looked down at his suit jacket. For some reason it was bunched up in his hand. Inside it was a jar top. He was holding a jar top with his suit jacket. He put the lid on the table and began to brush out his suit. As he did so, he knocked over the jar. A sense of panic seized him as the dark stain spread over his shirt and jacket and pants. Someone was going to tell his mommy.
Barry Glidden began to cry and he only stopped crying when the nice man brought him into a room with toys and other children, nice little boys and little girls. But they were not really that nice. They kept all the toys to themselves and would not share with Barry. Nobody would share with Barry. He cried even harder. Then a nice lady gave him the yellow boat, and he stopped crying. Barry Glidden, after twenty tough competitive years before the California bar, was happy at last.
Rubin Dolomo left Glidden in the first playroom and began his assault on the President of the United States. He was not sure whether he should cast legions in a wild charge such as in Invaders from Dromoid, or send in a single lone deliverer. Like in Defenders of Larkin.
Beatrice had a simpler plan.
“Do both and do it now. If we wait around for you to get things right, we'll die of old age,” she said. She now blamed him for failing to turn the witness.
The problem had been that they couldn't get through. A man of such negativity as to be totally unreasonable had been responsible for keeping the love note from the President.
In his own way, Rubin Dolomo had more than a little shrewdness, and Beatrice, despite her haranguing, appreciated that. She knew that though he often failed once, he rarely failed twice, if one kept after him. So when he said he had a new and better plan to reach the President of the United States, she did not question him.