"No," said Miss Pinch, looking at me with a cocked head, compressed mouth and hungry eye, "Let's stay right here and do it all over again. We've got the whole night. But I'm first this time, Candy. You can watch if you promise not to scream. I'M the one who gets to scream when I have another of those GORGEOUS orgasms. I'm getting breathless just thinking about it."
That was how I got the safe open. In fact, three safes. Well, not exactly as I planned, but one must learn to improvise. One must know how to go deeper into things than one might have, at first, intended.
One has to know when to take things lying down.
Alas, if it had only kept up on a level with that night.
For more than sixty hours now, my best-laid plans were getting blocked. Stopping Heller was not making any progress, and it MUST, it MUST, it MUST!
In the back room of the apartment, I was fidgeting. Part of it was scratching fleas.
For two days a Hellish din had been going on in the basement flat and garden. Redecoration and refurnishing were proceeding apace.
I had signed a couple of Octopus Oil blank petty cash invoices with the name John Smith, and after that all Hades had come unstuck. Workmen in the front room, workmen in the back room, workmen in the garden. Plumbers, painters, electricians and even gays directing the new decor and furnishings. It was a very good lesson that one should never sign invoices!
But the main reason I was fidgeting (aside from scratching fleas) was my inability to raise Raht on the two-way-response radio. I knew he had it and I also knew he was refusing to answer it, just to spite me.
I did not dare phone the New York office, as I was on the run. Raht was different, because on the two-way I could fool him into thinking I was in Africa.
That I contact him was desperately cruciaclass="underline" The 831 Relayers were on and at this close range my viewers were just flared out. I did NOT know what was going on with my Target One: Heller! Without that data and without a check on that hellhound, the Countess Krak, I dared not act.
I was in a rage to get something-anything-done to begin the job of finishing him off.
I had money-three thousand dollars. Two of the bills were my regular pay. The third one was for overtime.
I stared disconsolately into a bucket of daffodil-yellow paint. A flea was swimming around in it, getting all yellow. I was about to push him under with a paint paddle when he jumped out and vanished. The incident sharpened my restless mood. I had to get out of this overrun place and think.
I wiped some yellow paint spatters off my trench coat and went out for a walk. The brisk and windy day should cool my fevered brow, calm me and let me concentrate.
All unsuspecting, I walked by a newsstand. And there on the front page of the New York Grimes, big as big, it said:
WOMEN'S BOMB RIGHTS
COMING UP AT UN
SECURITY COUNCIL
PETTICOAT PICKETING BEGINS
ANTINUCLEAR PROTEST
MARCHERS HOLD RALLY
AT EMPIRE UNIVERSITY
Heller again! They had put that headline there just to nag me.
Then the full import of it hit me. If that bill passed the Security Council now, Miss Simmons would be drooling all over Heller! Rather than flunk him out of Empire as she had promised, she would pass him! I would have lost a vital ally I had counted on to block his villainous rehabilitation of this planet, a plot that would ruin me, Lombar and Rockecenter.
Oh, I knew an emergency when I saw one. What could I do?
I stood on the corner, almost frantic with the urgency of the emergency. I stared up into the sky, beseeching the Gods for an omen. I got it! Right in my line of view was the Octopus Oil Company Building! Rockecenter was in his Heaven and all would soon be right with the world. I realized that Bury could not possibly know that "Wister" was behind this women's rights thing. Rockecenter, Bury and everyone who mattered knew how dangerous women were already. But completely aside from that, Rockecenter controlled the uranium supplies of the world, and the thermonuclear-bomb market would crash if there was no more war on the horizon! That bill, if passed, could bring about a devastating and disastrous peace! Rockecenter must be frantic!
No sooner realized than activated. I strode with swift stride to the Octopus building.
I walked straight in through the Benevolent Association door. I was in luck! There sat Bury! His little snap-brim hat was sitting on top of a cage of white mice on his desk. He looked up and the sides of his mouth twitched, as close to a smile as ever appeared on that prune face.
"Inkswitch!" he said. "Come in. Haven't seen you for a day or two." He waved a hand at the interview chair, "Take the stand. What have you been up to?"
I sat down. "I have to keep up my cover as a Federal agent," I said. "I just dropped in to see if you know about this Women's Thermonuclear Rights Bill."
"Women," he said. "I try to stay away from those. Without much luck, I must say: they are as hard to escape as subpoena servers."
"Well, I thought you might like to know that this Wister is behind that bill right up to the hilt. He's a menace."
"Oh, Wister," he said. And the look came in his eyes that can only possibly appear in the hard orbs of a Wall
Street lawyer. Then he tented his hands and sat back. "But I think we've got that case pretty well into due process. Madison is on it. And from the bills we're getting from F. F. B. O., I'd say he was pretty busy."
"Wister has got to be stopped," I said.
The "smile" twitched the sides of his mouth. "Well, you just wait, Inkswitch. Anything a public-relations man like J. Warbler Madman is onto is going to be stopped. You can count on it! By the time that maniac is through with Wister, the poor (bleep) will be absolutely begging for the electric chair and throwing anyone who tries to get a governor's reprieve straight out of his cell. Madison you can count on, Inkswitch. He tops every snake I ever met! When you combine the Madisons of this world with the media we have, even the Four Horsemen would plead for an out-of-court settlement. Worry not, Inkswitch. You can count on Madison to absolutely ruin Wister's life. The prosecution rests."
I saw I wasn't getting anywhere with Bury. I rose to go.
"Oh, by the way, Inkswitch," he said, "I just remembered, I had a present to send you the other day and my secretary told me he didn't have your current address."
"Snakes?" I said.
"No," he said. "They're pretty valuable. I picked up a set of acupuncture needles over in China and I thought you might like to try them out on Miss Agnes. If you put them in the wrong place, they raise hell. So what's your current address?"
"I'm undercover," I said.
"Oh, hell, Inkswitch, I know that. This is just for my own notebook."
I couldn't very well refuse and expose the fact that
I'd never even met Miss Agnes. I gave him the basement-apartment address. He wrote it down in a little black book. Then he paused.
"I know this address," he said, prune wrinkles even more pronounced as he thought. "Yes, I was over there last month hushing up a murder. Somebody beaten to death. I have it! That's Miss Pinch's apartment!" He looked at me in real surprise. "Jesus," he exclaimed, "you're not living with Miss Pinch, are you?"
I said, "I got her under control."
"Jesus!" he said, admiringly. "Maybe I ought to turn you loose on my wife!"
Hastily, I shifted the subject on him. I was busy enough without another stud assignment. And I vividly remembered his wife's voice. Traumatic!"Please don't tell Miss Agnes I'm living with Miss Pinch," I said.
Bury shook his head. "Oh, no. You got a low opinion of me, Inkswitch, if you think I'd talk to Miss Agnes. I'm not crazy. At least, I'm not committed yet, in spite of this job."
"That's two of us," I said. But it was a lie. Being a Wall Street lawyer could not be anywhere near as tough as the job of an Apparatus officer. I left.