Heller drew back from the intimidating finger and nodded.
Doctor Kutzbrain threw the folder into the waste-basket, picked up his scissors and cut himself. "End of student psychiatric interview! NURSE SCREW! Send in Borden now!"
Heller went out, taking the interview order card with him. He firmly made the nurse sign it off as completed.
He went outside to where Bang-Bang alertly had the motor running.
Bang-Bang got out and elaborately wiped the inside of his leather cap sweatband. "You didn't run out, so I assume you got away." He opened the old cab's shining door. He took a bag, apparently dynamite, off the seat. "I guess we won't be blowing up the place today."
Heller got in. Bang-Bang closed the door, removed the sign, threw the bag on the front floorboards and got in. He put up the flag and the police radio went off.
Heller said, "Bang-Bang, those people are crazy!"
"So, hell, what's news? Everybody knows that. Where we going now?"
"If there's nothing more up here, I better get to the office."
"Heigh-ho, Silver!" said Bang-Bang and rushed the cab perilously out into the traffic. It made me kind of giddy watching the viewscreen, streets and signs and trucks flashing about.
I tried to concentrate on the interview. There must be a lot there to be learned. But actually, I myself was far too sick at heart about myself to concentrate.
Heller was not paying any attention to Bang-Bang's driving. He reached into a rucksack and pulled out a textbook. It was a paper-covered text and on the top of it was written in penciclass="underline"
You asked what Marketing was. This simplified text is recommended.
Izzy
What was a combat engineer doing going off into a subject like marketing? One more thread in the crazy pattern he was weaving!
Evidently, he had already almost finished the book, for there was a marker near the end. He opened it up and while, as seen in his peripheral vision, Bang-Bang sought to separate nurses from their baby carriages and massive trailers from their cabs, Heller demolished the remainder of the text.
There was one page at the end. It only had one thing on it: a paragraph. It said, To integrate his grasp of the subject, the student must now do a complete marketing project, getting a specific product wanted and accepted by consumers.
Heller sat there looking out. His eyes were picking out advertising signs. He watched quite a few go by.
Then his eyes unfocused, a thing I had seen him do before when he was thinking deeply. To himself he said, "Beans? Bootleg whiskey? Seagulls? Shoes? Bunion powder? No, no, no. Oh, a survey! I haven't done a consumer survey."
He leaned forward and yelled through the mainly closed partition, "Bang-Bang! If you were a consumer, what would you really want to consume the most of?"
Bang-Bang skidded with screeching tires around a street-under-repair obstruction as he yelled back. "I'll let you in on something if you promise not to spread it around." He mounted a curb and got around a produce truck. "Everybody thinks I'm called Bang-Bang because of explosives. That ain't so." He careened past a fire truck. "Cherubino can tell you. I been called Bang-Bang since I was fourteen." He leaped the cab lightly over an open manhole cover. "The reason I'm called Bang-Bang is because of girls. If Babe knew I was going in and out of the Gracious Palms, she'd have a fit!"
"So the answer to the question of what you'd consume the most of is girls."
"And girls and girls!" Bang-Bang yelled back, narrowly missing one on a crosswalk to prove his point.
Heller sat back. "Girls. Hm." He made a note on the inside back leaf of the marketing book, "Survey done. Item: girls."
After that harrowing ride that violated all laws of traffic and nature, Bang-Bang let Heller out at the main entrance of the Empire State Building with a yell that he'd put the taxi in their parking lot as he drove away.
Heller looked up. It made me dizzy: the building, even though you couldn't see the top from the street or even a quarter of its height, seemed like it was going into the clouds.
He threaded his way through the hurrying throngs. He walked past the ranks of express and other kinds of elevators and entered the one that, apparently, had its first stop on his floor. No one paid him any attention.
He got out. Their hall had changed. It had more brass plates and it had palms at intervals. I had not remembered how really vast that half a floor of theirs was!
He found Izzy in the communications room. "Hi, Izzy!" he said above the roar and chatter of teletype machines. "How's it?"
Izzy smiled at him wanly, probably the most smile Izzy could manage. He was still in a Salvation Army Good Will suit. His horn-rimmed glasses accentuated his beak of a nose. "I hoped you wouldn't be in until things were better," said Izzy. He held up a sheet. "We just lost on the ruble exchange with Italy. It's an awful strain. We can't seem to get the hundred thousand up above a half million. Conditions are so uncertain."
"Well, we're paying the rent," said Heller.
"Oh, we're not just here to pay rent," said Izzy. "If corporations are to take over governments, we ought to be thinking in acceptable sums like trillions."
"We will," said Heller cheerfully. "Now, what was so urgent?"
"Oh, dear," said Izzy. "I'm afraid I'm not ready for that, either."
Heller was beckoning. They went out and walked and walked past doors and doors with different name-plates. It gave me a melancholy pleasure to see that several girls, obviously their own employees—possibly students working part time, from their appearance– didn't even say hello to Heller but hurried on by on their errands with their burdens.
They had stopped before a door. The sign said:
Maysabongo Eastern United States Legation
Republic of Maysabongo Long Live Dictator Ahmed Allah!
Izzy was fumbling in his case for keys. He must be carrying ten pounds of them. He opened the door, threw on the lights.
The decor was bamboo. Sets of vicious-looking swords adorned the otherwise bare white plaster walls. The obvious coat of arms—crossed assault rifles—was sitting against a desk.
"You got the vice-consular appointments, didn't you?" said Heller.
"Yes, Mr. Jet. They're there on the desk. Here's Bang-Bang's; here's mine. Ah, yes. And here is yours."
Heller took his and glanced at it. It made him a Consul of Maysabongo but I couldn't see the rest of it. He put it in his pocket.
"And you got the company formed," said Heller.
"Oh, yes. Wonderful Oil for Maysabongo, Limited, incorporated in Maysabongo, registered to do business, etc. But you aren't a director, Mr. Jet. They have to be Abie Cohen and his wife. You see, I must be firm, as I'm responsible for you, that you have no connection with any of these corporations. Not even anything a Justice Department black-bag job can find. That attorney Mr. Bury is pretty vicious, and Rockecenter controls the
Justice Department, amongst everything else. A frightening man."
"I don't see the problem."
"Well, it's the mural. The deputy delegate is demanding that it should be a portrait of Harlotta."
"I think I can get her to pose."
"It isn't the model, Mr. Jet. The model problem we have is the Tahiti mural. And we do have other model problems despite this local agency here. No, the problem, Mr. Jet, is the painters!"
"I thought you had some."
"I don't think you'll approve. I have some waiting and the samples are in your office but... but..."
Heller told him to lock the legation back up and walked off down a long, long, long hall past doors, doors, doors, toward his office.
Izzy was trotting along beside Heller. "I really don't think I'm ready to show you their work."