In a muttering blur of sound, as fast as the blur of his hands as he stacked it, the pile of packets, neatened, grew beside him. Then he was done.
"Oy," said Izzy. "Give or take miscounts in the packages, this is a MILLION DOLLARS!" He rubbed at his eyes behind his horn-rimmed glasses. He looked at Heller. "How do you do these things?"
Heller fished up my poor, misdirected hundred thousand. He added to it rubles and an extra fistful of currency that had been in the purse. Then he tossed all this on the pile. He said, "I have secret admirers, Izzy. They are terrified I might go on welfare."
"Did you draw this out of the bank? I mean are there any traces on it?"
"Nary a one," said Heller. "A totally untraceable donation."
Izzy was totalling again. "Oy, oy!" he said, "This means we only have $400,000 more to go to clean up IRS!"
Heller reached over. He pulled some packets off the stack. "Make that $410,100, Izzy. Bang-Bang is low on skirts. He was complaining just tonight." He handed $10,000 to Bang-Bang.
Izzy was doing plans and calculations. "I won't pay IRS. I will put it all on the arbitrage line, run it up and then pay those goyim robbers. The Japanese yen is dirt cheap in Singapore tonight and sky-high in Paris! I'll get right on–"
"Wait a minute, wait a minute, Izzy." Heller looked around. The cat had gotten up on his desk and was sitting there eyeing Izzy very intently.
Heller handed Izzy a $100 bill. "Go buy this cat a blanket and a new harness and a dish and things. He hasn't got a decent spacekit."
Izzy took the $100 but he said, "You going to keep a cat here? There aren't any mice."
Heller said, "This is a no-mice cat. He deals with rats, exclusively. He's a very tough hit cat, Izzy. And you'll be very glad to know that I saved his life so now you have somebody to share responsibility for me."
"Oh, thank heavens," said Izzy. "I'll get him a space-kit at once, whatever it is."
Izzy was stuffing money into big plastic bags from the bar. He looked around to see if there was any more and then rushed out.
The cat, apparently having made certain that Izzy would obey, curled up under Heller's desk lamp and went to sleep.
Heller was looking at the wallet he had snapped out of Black Overcoat's pocket. It had some names and I.D. in it. He showed it to Bang-Bang. "Inganno John Scroccone. You know the name, Bang-Bang?"
"No."
Heller looked at it again. "I'm certainly in the I.D. collection business. I've got to find out."
Bang-Bang said, "What really happened up there on the roof tonight?"
"Hush," said Heller. "I promised the cat faithfully I wouldn't turn state's evidence on him. His pawprints are all over the place. So both him and me have got to take the Fifth."
"Oh," said Bang-Bang.
The cat stretched and began to purr.
The horrible sight of my hundred thousand dollars U.S. in Heller's hand did something even more horrible to my psyche. A psyche is, as all psychologists know, located just above the id and, when overreacted upon, bruises the ego. When these three things are already swollen from past abuses, there ensues what is called the "I'm-going-nuts syndrome." A case of multiple frustrations is likely to ensue, surcharging the blood vessels and precipitating an epileptic fit.
All patients have their own particular remedies. With some, it is yelling at the wife. With others, it is kicking the dog. I thought rapidly: if I did not apply first aid at once, I might find myself in need of psychiatric help. Drunkards often obtain relief by imbibing the hair of a dog that bit them but I had no dog whose hair I might find palatable, much less one to kick. Thus, out of dire necessity, an inspiration was born. I had better look at some money. That, I was sure, would be the soothing balm which would interrupt the threatened epileptic fit.
Accordingly, with shaking hands, I went to my mattress and reached within. Some days ago, when Silva had come, thirty thousand bucks had remained in this hiding place. If I just gazed upon them and caressed their crisp-ness, life might once more begin to flow through my higher nervous centers and make them less nervous.
My hand didn't contact anything!
I threshed it about.
Still nothing.
Alarmed now more than ever, I threw the mattress on the floor. I tore the bed apart. I took a knife to the box springs.
NO MONEY!
It was gone.
I lay down in the wreckage and had my epileptic fit.
It didn't help.
I banged my head against the wall. That didn't help, either. But some time later, I woke up and found that it was a bright day.
Coffee. Maybe several cups of coffee would steady my nerves. I managed to phone down and get the order placed. I took a shower and then found out I was standing in it with my clothes on.
By the time I had remedied this and had my pants turning into ice on the terrace, breakfast had arrived.
Unthinkingly, I opened the paper.
Buckteeth!
A two-column picture!
Madison had once more made the front page!
WHIZ KID SUES OCTOPUS
TEN-BILLION-BUCK BANG
The attorneys of the Whiz Kid—Boggle, Gouge and Hound—today filed suit against olympian Octopus Oil Company for a cool ten billion bucks, the largest malfeasance civil suit in history. Rockecenter attorneys, Swindle and Crouch, when reached, said, "No comment."
The financial world today was rocked by the spectacle of Octopus actually being sued. Stocks fell. Dow-Jones dropped 230 points. The other six of the Seven Brothers hastily denied connection and complicity but informed sources implied they would soon be added due to their inextricable interlocks and total control by Octopus.
The Whiz Kid stated, "Octopus cannot help but be included in my campaign to bring honesty and integrity into the way faculties discriminate against students. Octopus heavily endows M.I.W., which makes oil a party to conspiracy to conspire with multiple malice and breach of breaches. By cancelling my scholarship and depriving the college restaurant of my services, chaos has been caused, irreparable and condemnatory. If Octopus can callously deny students second helpings of rice pudding, the whole American way of life is threatened. Fascism will flourish and all will tremble at the tyranny. ..."
Oh, there was more! And the vendor, knowing my habits, had a five-foot stack of newspapers outside my door.
The shouts and roars of student riots on the TV were so loud, I couldn't understand the news vendor who kept asking me for his money. I had to close the door on him.
Madison had blown it!
That was very plain indeed. He was obviously going to tailor the Whiz Kid into a deathless symbol of revolt against Big Oil.
How Heller must be sniggering this morning!
Although I loathed to do it, I approached my viewer. It was my duty and the way of the Apparatus officer (hard though it may be to always have duty as a goal). Besides, I was too shaken up to do more than collapse in front of the screen hoping that this did not reveal a diagnosis of masochism in me.
Heller was riding in a public cab. By his reflection in the partition, I could see he was wearing a tan tweed suit, a puffed-out silk tie and, over it all, a cordovan-leather trench coat. Really elegant. I tried to make out where he was going by the passing winter scenery he seemed to be admiring so much. They were on some sort of a turnpike. He was catching glimpses of sunlit water to his left.
The Statue of Liberty! Way over there. And beyond it, back and across the bay, Manhattan!
Babe Corleone—he was on his way to see Babe Corleone!
Sure enough, they soon exited from the turnpike and shortly were threading their way through the impressive high-rises of Bayonne.