They landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in a screech of wheels and a roar that made troops bound for battle seem quiet by comparison and tame.
I still had a bastion on which one could normally count. The government men-immigration, customs and drugs-at JFK are the most nasty and unwelcoming brutes in the whole world. They resemble a bunch of corpses exhumed on a cold day. They make a foreigner's first introduction to America so hostile that a walk, naked, in absolute zero would seem warm by comparison.
I hoped they would find the locket, undeclared, and confiscate it and throw the Countess Krak into the mayhem of a Federal pen. She deserved it.
As the Countess walked in to the line of U. S. Citizens Being Readmitted on Probation, my hopes soared. They have the toughest, most silent man there that any mortuary could devise. He looks in a little book to see if you are an escaped criminal wanted for unpaid parking tickets and if he finds your name or number or if you come up on his computer screen, he makes a signal the entering person cannot see and Federal police do a vulture pounce from all sides.
The Countess and Mamie walked through, chattering about clothes, clothes, clothes and fashions, fashions, fashions.
Krak's idle eye even landed on the computer face once. It said, in answer to her passport number:
I. G. Barben drug runner
and the corpse made a tiny pencil symbol on the corner of a passport page and stamp, stamp, she was through!
At customs, the Federal police had person after person put his or her hands against the walls, legs outspread, while efficient and snarling frisking went on.
The Countess and Mamie walked on through, bags all chalked with okay to go, talking about fashions, fashions, fashions and clothes, clothes, clothes-babes in the lion's den without a glimmer of finding out any lions were around.
Gods! At those moments I was cursing the corrupt inefficiency of the bureaucracy, let me tell you! They not only didn't find the locket, they didn't even search her.
They stood at last Admitted and Inside The Country. Mamie Boomp had a baggage mound that almost compared to Krak's. But she was an efficient and seasoned traveller. She bopped two otherwise busy porters over the head with her Parisienne parasol and the baggage was promptly loaded on two separate handcarts.
"That's Bonbucks Teller's JFK branch right over there, dearie. The one with the gold and diamond front. See the sable flag flying in the wind? And so I'll leave you now. I have a date with the mayor tonight and all he does is talk about his awful wife so I got to get home and rest up first. Here's my business card, dearie. Look me up and don't let them paint your head blue."
They kissed and the Countess was on her own.
Like a regiment with nothing but ruin in mind, the Countess descended upon Bonbucks Teller's.
She had the list. She sped, prebriefed, from department to department, pointing at a thousand-dollar item here and a ten-thousand-dollar item there.
Her only pause was in footwear. They had an elegant display of "disposable shoes" at one hundred dollars a pair, Not guaranteed if worn more than one day, boxed in thirty-day handy supply packages. She went conservative suddenly and only bought one box. Her splurge here was on soft Moroccan leather boots, blue, red and white, that went with The Pirate Look. She thought she had better have two of each as they were on sale at only five hundred dollars the pair.
How apt, I thought. Pirate boots for a real bloodthirsty pirate with a record as long as the Spanish Main!
The "marionette shoes" that gave one The True Puppet Look were just flap-flaps of colored plastic that looked like they were riveted to the sides of the legs and toes. She didn't favor them and I completely understood why: she was not a true-blue marionette: others danced to the Countess Krak's puppet strings, she didn't dance to their tunes worth a (bleep)! She only bought twenty pairs.
Clerks were following her about like jackals hanging around a lioness to pick up bits of the kill. They were tallying up a list so long it took a second clerk to carry it.
Oh, Heller, you are not just into it, you are done. I was a man of experience. I knew.
There was quite a row in the hair salon. Not with the Countess but between two coiffateurs. One said that it would wrench his soul if he could not shave her head and paint it blue and the other, fending off the flashing scissors with two deadly curling irons, said, "Touch not one hair of that golden head but wreck your country's flag instead," and won! A dreadful battle! They made her an emergency appointment for a half hour hence, to give her a "golden aura windswept with ruby dust," and rushed her to the accounts office to tally up the wounded and slain.
The accounts manager was dressed in a cutaway morning coat with tails. But he didn't fool me. He had digitals running at a greedy pace for eyes.
Seated at a plush, upholstered desk, the Countess Krak, in her dingy veil and hooded, dirty robe with holes in it, must have looked like a poor risk. She had yet to remove the healing cup above one eye and this certainly must not have added to her appearance of being an accounts receivable.
The yards of bills added up to $178,985.65 plus New York sales tax of 11 percent. Oh, marvelous! That locket would not even cover a third of it! Heller, I gloated, you have had it!
"Address?" said the accounts manager. It is too forward to ask for names in such a place. Such wealthy patrons must feel known.
The Countess was looking over Mamie Boomp's list to see if she had missed anything important like the right color necklace to go with the breakfast, sea-green organdy, casual house wrap. Absently, she reached into a pocket of her cloak and handed him something.
At first, I thought it was the necklace. I couldn't see as she was looking at the list, not him.
The accounts manager said, "Jerome Terrance Wister, Empire State Building? That's an office." She must have given him the scrap on which I had written Heller's address.
"Yes," said the Countess absently. "I suppose it is. My man is very important. He is here to make the planet run right so I suppose he has to have an office. Could
I add an aquamarine necklace to that list here? I overlooked it."
The accounts manager walked away. He had gone into another office to phone. They always do. It would be impolite, even nasty, to discuss money in front of a customer.
I tried to turn my sound up and overhear. All I got was a jet plane taking off over at the airport.
Oh, Heller, you might have been in trouble before, but you're really over your head now! $178,985.65 plus New York tax and an aquamarine necklace! You'll drown!
After a bit the accounts manager came back. "Where did you just come from, Miss?"
Oho, I bet that had been a surprise to Heller! He might even be feeling amazed. But he sure would shortly be sick if the accounts manager hadn't yet given him the total!
The Countess Krak fished around in her pocket and came up with the messy ticket folder, now all ripped out. "Afyon, Turkey," she said. And she held out the folder with that on it.
"The identity verifies, then," said the accounts manager. "I will add the necklace to this bill. They just called up the price. So, with your permission, I will total it."
The Countess Krak was still reverifying her list.
The accounts manager wrote a final figure on an invoice. He pushed it toward the Countess Krak and tendered her a pen. "If you please," he said, "your signature."
"How do I sign this?" said the Countess Krak, taking the pen.
"Why, just like this, of course. Don't change it in any way. It always causes a terrible row when they do."
He put down the item I had written Heller's Earth name and address on. Then he turned it over.