“Just Moe Brimstine,” Juno corrected dourly.
“Comes to the same thing,” Sacheverell went on. “Now Jackie and Cookie are safely asleep upstairs…”
“Yes,” Juno butted in again, “but they’re not going to stay that way too much longer.”
“Not after what you put in their whiskey?” Sacheverell asked her with a thin smile.
“Listen,” Juno told him, “those two guys have had more things in their whiskey than ever got wrote down in books jerks like you read. They’re tough, the little punks.”
“Well, if they do wake up, I’m sure you can take care of the two of them. So there’s the situation, Mr. Gish, and the only trouble is that Mrs. Jones won’t tell us where Mr. Brimstine is. She started to, but then she shut up like an air lock. We’ve pleaded with her, we’ve implored her, we’ve promised her things. I’ve done my best to explain to her just how cosmically important it is that the Green One be served and worshipped properly so that he will be able to change the world. Señor da Silva flattered and jollied her, and Dr. Opperly was friendly as anything. But she just won’t talk.”
“I sure won’t talk to nuts like you,” the female wrestler told him wrathfully. “If you hadn’t started acting so squirrely, I’d have probably spilled it straight off. But I’m not the sort of person who likes to be jollied or anything else -”
“‘Scuse please,” Dion interrupted. “No jolly, really mean. Much like you, Juno Jones. Big strong woman.”
“And I don’t enjoy nut talk,” Juno said to Sacheverell, ignoring da Silva. “Every crazy reason you gave me for talking made me that much surer I wouldn’t.” She took a drink and turned toward Phil, her elbows on her correspondingly large knees. “Now, with you it’s different,” she said. “You got a nut’s idea of food, but outside of that you’re pretty human. And I gotta admit you’re a gutsy little guy, because I saw you go up against Brimstine and from what I hear you did some more of the same later. But the main thing is that you own this crazy cat, or at least you was looking for it when I first met you. And I don’t believe you had any nut ideas about it, though I thought so at the time. That right, Phil? Or are you planning to do something cosmic with that cat?”
“I just want to find it,” Phil said honestly.
“That settles it for me. It’s your cat and you got a right to know where it is, even if you get killed trying to get it and I get into all sorts of mucking trouble for telling you. You want I should tell you in private, Phil, or just say it right out in front of all these screwballs?”
“Thank you, Juno,” Phil said quietly. “Just say it right out.”
Juno opened her mouth – and then said, “Oh, Lord.”
Phil turned around. Jack and Cookie were just coming in from the hall.
“Fine sort of wife you turned out to be,” Jack informed Juno, striding toward her with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. “Can’t leave you ten minutes but you start pulling some dumb trick.” With circles under his eyes and a day’s growth of beard, the black-sweatered little wrestler did a fair job of looking outraged and dejected. But Cookie, automatically imitating his hero, could produce only an expression like that of a blonde baby about to cry.
“Getting sneaky, too,” Jack observed. “Spying on me.”
“Underhanded,” Cookie commented.
“Underhanded?” Juno banged the silver inlaid table so hard that it jumped and she had to grab at her glass and the bottle. Why, you two stinkers are so permanently underhanded you couldn’t play no game but softball.”
“Also, I don’t like the company you keep,” Jack continued. “The Ikeless Joe was bad enough,” he said, giving Phil the barest glance before going on to da Silva, “but where between here and Pluto did you ever pick up this silly greaser who can’t even talk English?”
“This corny gigolo,” Cookie added witheringly.
Dion, who until this moment had seemed merely interested, put down his glass and frowned at Jack. “No like you,” he asserted. “You want kick in face, trample?”
Phil winced, visualizing it in the full, rich details.
“Do you know who you’re talking to?” Cookie demanded of Dion.
“Don’t brawl boys,” Mary called from the alcove, “at least until I’ve finished this ticklish part.” She was putting some finishing touches on Moe Brimstine’s face under the magnifier. “Then I think I’d like to watch you tramp around, Dion man.”
“Don’t anybody worry,” Jack said sadly. “I’m not looking for a fight even if I was handed one. I’m too downhearted about this innocent, thoughtless, uneducated wife of mine.”
“Uneducated?” she exploded. “After being married to you all these years? You got so many rotten ideas you’re a whole university. Well, I’ve graduated. And shut up, now, ’cause I got to tell Phil here where he can find Moe Brimstine and maybe Billig and his cat.”
Jack whirled toward her. “Juno, you don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t know what you’d be doing. Just come upstairs a minute and I’ll explain the whole deal.”
“Come upstairs?” Juno mocked. “Tell that to the green farm girls trying to break into the wrestling racket. Now look here, Phil. Brimstine…”
“Juno!” Jack yelled, “I didn’t want to tell you in front of everybody, but there’s a million dollars riding on this deal for me and you, if Billig pulls out of his trouble. Which he can do, so long as he has the green cat to trade to the government. And look, Juno, Billig’s lost all his bodyguards and power and everything – he’s got to depend on Brimstine and me and Cookie.”
Juno stared at him. For a second or two there was silence. Then Sacheverell coughed delicately.
“Jack,” he said unhurriedly, “I am convinced that you have a deep appreciation of spiritual values. Your aura may flicker and dim, but in the end it always glows out bright and clear. Yesterday you gave up ten thousand dollars Moe Brimstine would have given you for the Green One, just in order that we might worship him properly and help him change the world. Now if you were willing to do that…”
“I know, I know,” Jack snarled at him impatiently, “but this time it’s really big money.”
Sacheverell looked up at the ceiling, as if he were silently telling some god just how evil a world it was.
“I was flattered by you and Mary for a while,” Jack went on. “I liked your style and I fell for some of your wild ideas. I played along with you to the tune of ten thousand dollars, though I won’t say I wasn’t going to steal the green cat back and sell it to Brimstine after you’d had your fun with it. But tuck your aura up over your ears and get this through your head: this time it’s really big money.”
Sacheverell said, “Mary, remind me to burn our black sweaters tomorrow morning.”
From the look on Juno’s face, Phil could tell that Jack had finally done something to please her.
But he had done it rather too late. The satisfaction washed out of Juno’s face and only the grimness was left as she said to him, “That million was just for you, Jack, or for you and Cookie until half a minute ago. Another thing, Billig isn’t going to pull out of this – and if he did he’s the kind of man who kills the people who save him. But even if you got your million, I wouldn’t take any part of it. Don’t get the idea that anybody, including that crazy green cat, has made me go soft. It’s just that I wouldn’t ever accept anything from you, Jack – not ever again.” Without a pause she turned to Phil and said, “Brimstine’s behind the counter in the Bug-Eyed Bar in All Pleasures Amusement Park. I’ll take you to the exact spot.”
At that moment, when everyone was watching Juno, a cool, scornful voice spoke from the dining room: “And we’ll be coming along.”
Phil’s head followed the others around. Standing in front of Lucky’s altar, his bulging forehead wrinkled with unsmiling amusement, was Carstairs. To his left stood Llewellyn, eyes gleaming in his impassive black face. To Carstairs’ right lounged Buck, yawning but watchful. Phil got the feeling that the hep-thugs were trying to look like the muzzles of the weapons they held with casual proficiency. Close beside Buck and a little behind him stood Mitzie Romadka.