Death Quest Read online

  PART FORTY-FIVE

  Chapter 3

  But Delbert John Rockecenter never thanked me,” said Agnes Morelay under the hypnohelmet. “He didn’t do as much as thumb his nose. So I made him pay. There’s a little operation one can do. A small cut with a knife. When he got knocked out in a fall from a horse, I said he’d injured his (bleeps) and I sterilized the (bleepard). The foundation is just another psychiatric medical fraud. The Rockecenters have always been insane but I’ve used every psychiatric technique to make sure it’s chronic. For eighteen years I’ve blackmailed him into doing anything I want, but I still can’t get my hands on his money. So I haven’t got my reward yet but I will, I will. The (bleepard)! My psychiatric professors and all my colleagues pat me on the back and tell me how much I’ve done for the profession. And so I have, but Delbert John has yet to give me the Rockecenter money! No reward is enough for the sacrifice and devotion of my whole life!”

  “I have heard you,” said the Countess Krak. “Listen carefully. You will feel rewarded when you propose to some nice young man and settle down. Have you got that?”

  “I will feel rewarded when I propose to some nice young man and settle down.”

  “Good. Now, as to the land yacht, when you awake, you are going to write a letter on your stationery and in it you are going to say that you have turned it over to an agent named Heavenly Joy Krackle of Sleepy Hollow, New York, to take it around and show it and try to sell it for you. But if after a period of three months it has not been sold, said Heavenly Joy Krackle may buy it for . . .”

  She pulled down the microphone. She muttered, “Let’s see, a million dollars would not be worth very much . . . it’s now second-hand . . . fifty thousand credits would be a fair price on Manco. And I’ll have our estates back by then. . . .” She raised the mike and continued. “. . . said Heavenly Joy Krackle may buy it for fifty thousand credits. Have you got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And now you will forget all about the helmet and that you have told me anything. And when you have written the letter you will fully wake up, believing we only came to take the land yacht away.”

  She turned the helmet off, removed it and put it in her shopping bag.

  Dr. Agnes Morelay rose from her couch, went straight to her desk and got some stationery with her letterhead. Krak watched her. The psychiatrist wrote:

  TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

  The Kostly Custom Coach Company Land Yacht has been turned over to my agent, Heavenly Joy Krackle of Sleepy Hollow, New York, to take it around and show and try to sell it for me. But if after three months she has not sold it, she can buy it for $50,000 on credit. Anything to get rid of the (bleeped) thing because I am not going anywhere!

  AGNES P. MORELAY, P.h.D., M.D.

  Krak picked up the letter, blinked at it a couple times and then put it in her purse.

  “Now,” said Miss Agnes, “get the god (bleeped) thing the hell out of my driveway!”

  The Countess Krak went out. She walked down the drive toward the monstrous vehicle. Bang-Bang was waiting anxiously, halfway out the gate.

  Krak said, “Unload our baggage, Bang-Bang. And park that cab somewhere. We’re taking this land yacht.”

  Bang-Bang looked anxiously at the house and then at Krak. “Hey, you couldn’t have bought this. It’s worth a million bucks.”

  “It’s a steal, Bang-Bang. Get the baggage.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” said Bang-Bang. “And Ossining just a few miles up the road.”

  “Hurry,” said the Countess Krak.

  He spun around a couple of times. Then he raced to the cab and with three trips dumped the luggage in front of the huge vehicle out of sight of the house. He raced back, jumped into the cab and drove it into the bushes down the road. He raced back, looking anxiously at the house. “Gimme the keys, quick,” he said.

  “Keys,” said the Countess Krak. “Oh, dear, I forgot to tell her to give them to me. Bang-Bang, run in and ask Dr. Morelay to give you all the keys.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” said Bang-Bang. “I haven’t even got a gun!”

  “Go,” said the Countess Krak. She looked after him and he seemed to be taking a very erratic course. “I better make sure he is all right,” she muttered.

  She went to the baggage and reached into a case. She took out a telescope, the duplicate of the one I’d used that could see through walls and hear conversations. She turned it on, and under cover of the land yacht, focused it on the front door.

  The butler let Bang-Bang in. He said, “Dr. Morelay has them, sir. This way, please.”

  He marched Bang-Bang down the hall and into the office, closed the door and left.

  Miss Agnes was sitting at her desk, gazing into space.

  “The keys and instruction books and things,” said Bang-Bang.

  The woman looked at him. She suddenly seemed to come to life. She rose up from the desk, walked across the office and locked the door!

  She walked over to Bang-Bang. She said, “Are you a nice young man?”

  “Jesus, yes, ma’am. We really didn’t mean nothing. It’s all kind of . . .”

  Dr. Morelay was paying no slightest attention to what he was saying now. She reached out and unbuttoned his coat. He stared down at what she was doing. She started to undo his belt buckle.

  “Jesus Christ.” Bang-Bang grabbed his suddenly sliding pants. He sped to one side. Dr. Morelay was right after him. Bang-Bang, like a gazelle, went over an upholstered chair. Miss Agnes was right over after him. Bang-Bang sprang across the desk with agility. The psychiatrist sprang also.

  Unfortunately for Bang-Bang, his foot had come down in the wastebasket. He tottered.

  Miss Agnes sprang.

  Bang-Bang was hurled backward to the couch. He landed on it with a crash!

  Miss Agnes was onto him, pinning him down with her knees. She was ripping away at his clothes.

  An electric shock machine lighted up.

  “Settle down!” screamed Dr. Morelay.

  A diploma went awry on the wall.

  “Lie still, you nice young man!” screamed Morelay. “I got to settle down on you!”

  The Countess muttered angrily, “Well, I never! You give these primitives the simplest suggestion and even then they get that wrong!”

  The electric shock machine was throwing off sparks.

  The diploma glass shattered. “Oh, boy, WOW!” howled Dr. Morelay.

  The electric shock machine went up in smoke. Bang-Bang’s groan was more a moan of horror.

  The diploma came out of the glass and went sailing gently down to the floor.

  Bang-Bang got to the middle of the room, trying to straighten up his clothes, yet looking back at the couch in shock.

  “Poor Bang-Bang,” muttered the Countess Krak. “How embarrassed he must be. And now we’ll have to stop the night somewhere down the road so he can recuperate. Blast! I wanted to drive straight through!”

  Miss Agnes lay there grinning like a ghoul. “Oh, boy, that was really good,” she said. “Forty-four years I kept myself a virgin for that rotten (bleepard). But now revenge is really sweet. I’ve let myself be settled down by a nice young man instead of him. And that vengeance was really great. Revenge after all is the best reward. And I’ve got it at last! I’m full of it!”

  She got up off the couch and pulled up her pants. She went to her desk, opened a drawer and pulled out a huge envelope of keys and instruction books and registrations. She dumped them in Bang-Bang’s arms. She went and unlocked the door. “Nice young man,” she said, “you better take up Psychiatric Birth Control. If anybody found out nonperverted sex is that good, they’d overpopulate the world!”

  Bang-Bang ran for it. The Countess Krak pushed the telescope out of sight into a bag.

  He came sprinting down the drive. He gave his clothes a hasty glance when he saw the Countess. Then he nervously began fumbling for keys in an envelope. He was trying one after the other in the lock of the main land yacht door.

  H
is face was brick red. “For Christ’s sakes,” he said to himself, “don’t lose these keys! I don’t think I could stand getting another set!”

  He got the door open. Then he must have seen something on Krak’s face. He said, “Did you say something about me to that woman?”

  “Me? Bang-Bang?” said the Countess Krak.

  A sudden thought struck me like a lightning bolt. I had forgotten right up to this minute that the old cab they had been using was bulletproof. They would not be riding in it now. Instead they would be in this land yacht, which seemed to have aluminum sides: a rifle slug could go through it like paper! Oh, was luck favoring me now! The Countess Krak was even wider open for a hit!

  PART FORTY-FIVE

  Chapter 4

  Bang-Bang, swearing and snarling to himself, managed to find enough controls in the ornate and sparkling driver’s area to get the land yacht’s main Diesel engine started and, with exaggerated allowances for posts and curbs, got it out of the gate and going down the road. It was ridiculous to watch that five-foot-five, one-hundred-pound Sicilian trying to wrestle that mammoth vehicle.

  The Countess Krak was kneeling on their baggage, spotting signs for him through the vast windshield. She read one, Kingsland Point Park, and Bang-Bang, evidently unwilling to go on, turned into it and shortly stopped the monster in a parking area that overlooked the Hudson. The sun was going down and the river was vast before them, two miles wide at this point and golden in the sun.

  “Why are we parking here?” said the Countess Krak.

  It was just fine with me that they parked there. I could spot the place exactly for Torpedo. A setup.

  Bang-Bang wasn’t answering her. He was surrounded by a vast array of chrome knobs, panels, switches, levers and controls. And right beside his seat there was a mobile-telephone handset. He picked it up, listened to it and his face glowed with satisfaction as he heard the dial tone.

  The Countess Krak was moving back toward a sitting room, trying to sort baggage.

  “Long distance?” said Bang-Bang. “Gimme an urgent person-to-person call to Pretty Boy Floyd, Ochokeechokee Hotel, Ochokeechokee, Florida.”

  The Countess Krak stopped what she was doing and stared.

  “Jet!” yelped Bang-Bang. “Is that you? Thank God. We’re only five miles south of Sing Sing and I think we just stole a million-dollar land yacht!”

  Bang-Bang listened a moment, then he extended the phone to the Countess. “He wants to talk to you.”

  She took the handset. She said, “How are you, dear? Did you have a nice trip?”

  Heller’s voice, “What are you up to?”

  “Do you have a nice room? I hope there were no alligators in it.”

  Heller said, “Quit it! It’s all okay here. What are you up to?”

  In a very sweet voice, she said, “Well, it’s all okay here, too.”

  “Listen,” said Heller. “What are you doing with a million-dollar land yacht? Where are you going?”

  She said, “It’s lonesome without you, dear.”

  “WHERE are you headed for?” said Heller.

  “You really want to know, don’t you, dear?”

  “YES!”

  “Well, I’m not going to tell you straight out. The domestic police monitor calls, you know.”

  “Then you really ARE going somewhere!”

  She said, “Do you recall a stone wall?”

  “NO! Don’t go there! Don’t go near him!”

  “If you say so, dear. But I must speed up things a bit.”

  Silence at the other end. Then finally, “All right. But only if you do me a favor.”

  “Whatever you say, dear. You know I never do anything you don’t want me to do.”

  Heller said, “Drive slowly. Take your time. Give me four days to meet you there. And DON’T arrive before I do.”

  “All right, dear.”

  “I can complete my part of this project here in that time and join you.”

  “Oh, wonderful! It means we’ll have a lovely vacation.”

  “Looking forward to it,” Heller said. “Love you. Put Bang-Bang back on.”

  She surrendered the handset. Bang-Bang listened intently. Then he said, “This is a mobile phone here.” And he gave Heller the number and call of it. Then he said, “Yes, SIR, Mr. Jet. That takes a load off my mind.” He hung up.

  “What did he say?” said the Countess.

  Bang-Bang didn’t answer. He was industriously putting another call in. I was beside myself with glee. What luck! Heller had unwittingly arranged the very delay that I might need! Four days! The Countess Krak would be exposed on the road for four days in a vehicle that was so easy to spot it would be a cinch to find it.

  “Jiffy-Spiffy Garage?” said Bang-Bang. “Let me speak to Mike Mutazione. . . . Hello, Mike. This is Bang-Bang. Look, Mike, you know that old cab? . . . Yeah. Well, it’s parked in the bushes up here in Indian country.” And he gave him the exact location and told him the keys were “in the usual place.” Then he turned to the Countess. “That cab don’t belong to the family anymore. He wants to know who is going to pay for the trip.”

  The Countess dived a hand into her purse and gave him my Squeeza credit card. Oh, well, I thought. Just ferrying a cab thirty miles or so down to Newark wouldn’t be that expensive. I had to remember that half a million was forfeit if she overran that credit card.

  “I got a valid credit card here,” said Bang-Bang into the phone. And he gave Mike the number and designation. “Okay, I’m glad that will be fine. Now, Mike, the old cab has received a few dents lately, and while you’ve got it you could fix it up.”

  “Tell him,” Krak said, “that he should fix it up so it will fly.”

  “Yeah, Mike,” said Bang-Bang. “And the lady wants it hopped up. So put a new motor in it. . . . Yeah, you can redo the whole thing. New leather on the seats. You know. . . . Great. Now there’s something else, Mike. I’m trying to drive something that’s a grown-up, expanded Greyhound bus, that’s now a two-decker land yacht. I want you to hire me a retired Greyhound bus driver. . . . All right. And an old lady for a cook and another one to keep it clean. . . . Right. . . . Yes, by all means, send a polite old mechanic that can keep the gadgets operating. . . . Sure, the cook can bring a load of food and liquor. . . . Yes, that’s all right. . . . Yes, new uniforms. That would be nice. . . . I see what you mean, Mike. A second, smaller motor home and driver for the crew. . . . Well, hey, that’s lucky, you had one right there. How about that! Only fifty Gs! Well, fine, send the crew along in that. . . . Yeah, we’re parked temporary in Kingsland Point Park. . . . Easy to locate, the thing is big as a house. . . . Yes, we’ll wait right here for the crew. . . . Oh, yes, sure, Mike. Put it all on the Squeeza credit card—wages, the second motor home, the lot. . . . Bye now.”

  I was almost fainting! He had just run up what might become an eighty-thousand-dollar bill! With all Krak’s other purchases, Mudur Zengin might begin to run out of money and cost me my half-million deposit certificate!

  Bang-Bang was handing the credit card back to the Countess Krak.

  “What did Jettero say?” she plagued him.

  “To make sure you were comfortable and safe,” said Bang-Bang. “And it occurred to me that spring is on the land and if we had a crew you could just spend these four days wandering around the fields as we loafed along southward and pick wildflowers and enjoy the views. Beautiful country this time of year. You’ll love it out in the open.”

  All worries were swept away for me. Bang-Bang unwittingly had set her up as the easiest target in the world!

  “It’s getting awfully dark,” said the Countess Krak. “Doesn’t this craft have any glowplates?”

  “You mean lights?” said Bang-Bang. “The generator hasn’t been started. Let’s see. It must be one of these switches here.” He was looking over the vast array of panels in reach of the driver’s seat. He found it and pushed a button.

  My screen flickered!

  The roar of a
n engine starter.

  MY SCREEN WENT OUT!

  Interference! It must be coming from the generator’s carbon brushes! It might be suppressed for Earth-type radio but it certainly jammed the wavelength and type that I was operating on!