"You'll have to talk to her psychiatrist for that. You'll have to excuse me. I'm very backlogged today on child care."
I rang off. My, I certainly was getting there. All those tales about helping him out by going down on him and his patients. Gods, what a liar! And a dangerous one, telling lies like that on honest, hard-working professionals, slaving away to make school children into fit citizens.
My luck was holding. The psychiatrist was not only in his office but he was between appointments.
"Always glad to help the Feds," he said. "Where would psychiatry be without the government to support it? Teenie Whopper? (Bleep), I have so many patients, (bleeped) kids... I'm looking in my files. Hold on... Nurse, where are the files?... Ah, here it is. Teenie Whopper. Serious case."
I grinned eagerly into the phone. "What was the diagnosis?"
"Hyperactivity. I spotted it myself when she was skateboarding. Flagrant case."
"Did you treat her?"
"Certainly I did. You don't think I'd neglect my school children, do you? Have to make a show for Federal assistance appropriations some way."
I knew I had Teenie now. Right in a vice!"What was the treatment?" I said.
"Hyperactive child? Textbook. We only go by the textbook here. I started it and then turned it over to the school psychologist to continue and complete. Yes, here's the discharge notation."
"She didn't ever go down on you, did she?"
"(Bleep) no! The proper treatment for hyperactivity is sexual release, of course. You put the patient on a table, strapped down, and use a hand vibrator. In the case of girls, of course, you might have to give them kisses to provide oral stimulation to get them started. But I assure you, the vibrator produces a perfectly acceptable orgasm or ejaculation in any child. Did she say I had her go down on me?"
"She certainly did."
"That's absurd. Why should I want a little girl to go down on me when I have my hands absolutely full of young boys that have to be converted to homos? Why would you use girls to do that when you've got so many boys to do it? Makes no sense!"
"So she lies," I said.
"Of course," he said.
"Then you wouldn't be adverse to signing an order committing her to Bellevue."
"WHAT? My God, no! I resent that! I'll have you understand that I know my business perfectly. You're not putting any black marks on my record to reduce my appropriation. My diagnosis was 'hyperactive.' That was correct. The treatment was standard and was begun by me and completed by a competent psychologist. A notation right here says 'symptoms permanently submerged, have seldom seen a child so hollow-eyed and (bleeped) up, skin and bone.' Sir, are you inferring that psychiatry is not a successful science?"
"No, no," I said. "But..."
"You may be a Federal agent, sir, but you do not understand the brain. I will contest with violence any effort to remove a menace from society! Good day, sir!"
He banged down the phone.
I sat there staring.
Thank Gods, no such barriers stood between committing Heller and Krak. Their court orders were already signed and waiting only to be served.
But Teenie Whopper?
A pawn trained by experts in the badger game from infancy. A confirmed pot smoker. A pathological liar racing around ruining everyone's reputation.
She could get me sterilized and sent to prison to be (bleeped) by homo cons.
DANGEROUS! She made Jack the Ripper look like a saint!
I had passed by my last opportunity to murder her. I couldn't strangle her now without going to prison if she vanished.
I couldn't possibly leave her alive to ruin me with lies and photos. And I couldn't kill her. All solutions were blocked.
I began to feel sort of insane.
I couldn't stay here with homos pawing at me.
I couldn't leave.
Yet I had to leave.
If I left, Teenie and a warrant for rape could reach me and finish me wherever I went.
Suddenly, bravely, I realized I could not just sit there and go crazy.
I must get a plan. I must get a plan. I must get a plan!
Heller's viewer was a sort of mockery to me. The day, where he was, was beautiful and mild, a calm disturbed only by the rolling swell which pulsed through the blue water. The clouds, as in a picture book, stood like castles along the horizon. The yacht's stabilizers had her rolling not at all.
He was standing at the rail, gazing out, probably westward to New York under the horizon. It was an otherwise deserted sea.
Captain Bitts came up. "Top of the morning to you, Mr. Haggarty," he saluted. "It's pleased I am to see you all shipshape and Bristol fashion and well recovered from your wounds."
"It was poker," said Heller. "A truly remarkable game. Very therapeutic and instructive, too. But I was thinking, Captain Bitts, now that you have my marker for $18,005, the only way you can collect it is to land me in New York and let me go to a bank."
Suddenly I penetrated the sneakiness of the man. He had worked out a way to bribe Captain Bins! By letting him win at poker! Ah, Heller, go ahead and plot: if you succeed in getting ashore, the court will have you picked up and committed to Bellevue Hospital, thanks to Dingaling, Chase and Ambo and my ingenuity.
Mentally, I urged at Captain Bitts to fall for it. It would deliver Heller into my hands.
"Mr. Haggarty," said Captain Bitts, "this is very tempting. But let us review the situation: The enemies of Turkey are after you; probably Russian agents dog your trail; I have my orders from the owner's concubine to not let you ashore. I regret that, even to my financial distress, the answer is no."
(Bleep) him! He thought Krak was my concubine as she had used my Squeeza credit card to buy the yacht. He was working against his own boss! Me.
"Ah, well," said Heller, "if you won't, you won't. It does happen, however, that I am a little bored. I have heard of a game called 'dice.' Could you teach me to play it?"
Captain Bitts assured him that he would be glad to, first thing after lunch.
I thought all this over. I was looking for some advantage on which to base a plan.
Something went flash in my head. I grabbed the phone and called the State Department in Washington, office of the Secretary of State. I decided to use the name of Rockecenter's law firm.
"This is Swindle and Crouch," I told the clerk.
"Yessir!" he said, instantly respectful and alert.
"There is a yacht upon the high seas called the Golden Sunset. There is a desperate and notorious criminal aboard, an American. I want your advice about calling the Navy Department to have her boarded and the criminal seized."
"Where is he wanted, sir?"
"There is an outstanding commitment warrant unserved in the New York Superior Court. And within a few days there will be another warrant."
"What is the national flag of the yacht, sir?"
"Turkish," I said.
"I will have to get an opinion from our Citizen Harassment Section. Please hold on."
I sat anxiously.
He came back on. "I'm terribly sorry that I have bad news, sir. We are of course devoted to the arduous task of making all possible trouble for U. S. citizens wherever they may be found, and we are usually very successful at it: just today we had a U. S. mother and her two babies seized by the Chinese after we planted contraband in their nursing bottles, so we don't want to give you the idea that we lack zeal. But through an oversight by our Legal Section, the extradition treaty between Turkey and the United States has expired and it will take several years to get the paper work from one basket to another here to get it renewed. So it would be illegal to board the yacht and seize the subject U. S. citizen."
"Oh, too bad!" I said.
"Do you know if the subject U. S. citizen has committed any crimes in Turkey? If he has, why, then we could threaten to reduce our support of their army-they're very dependent upon their army to keep the people under repressive rule-and the Turks, of course, would arrest and imprison the man."