Fortune of Fear Read online

  “You said it, baby. Mind if I help you with that fashion mag and show you what really puts the beasts in heat?”

  Suddenly a chill like the Arctic wind coursed through me. I abruptly had a vivid recollection! The Countess Krak’s sudden burst of affection! The completely out-of-character kiss on my cheek!

  Sleight of hand! She was an expert at it. She had trained magicians by the score! All she had to do was unhook the clasp with one hand and catch it as it fell into the other!

  Conviction! The Countess Krak had the emerald locket!

  It all added up. She had made sure in her hypnotic implant that I would let her take away anything she wanted! She had been so concerned about her appearance when she first met Heller.

  I knew exactly what she intended to do now. She would land in New York. She would buy a truckload of clothes. And she would pay for them with the locket! With Utanc’s fifty-thousand-dollar locket that I could not hope to replace!

  Oh, it was true she was a criminal! I immediately believed her police record down to the last dot! A thief!

  PART THIRTY-SIX

  Chapter 5

  Torn between rage and despair, I was an unwilling participant in that flight.

  Fashions, fashions, fashions. Clothes, clothes, clothes. Up the snowbanked Danube far below, fashions, fashions, fashions and clothes, clothes, clothes. Across the Alps and Germany and through the Brussels change, fashions, fashions, fashions and clothes, clothes, clothes. Across the tip of England and above Atlantic storms, fashions, fashions, fashions and clothes, clothes, clothes. They even neglected their lunch—the Countess Krak because she couldn’t figure how to eat it and Mamie Boomp because she was getting too fat and could no longer get into some of her fashions, fashions, fashions and clothes, clothes, clothes.

  They had taken time out now and then to exchange theatrical experiences. They had both been on the stage. And I also had to suffer through some items from Countess Krak that would have been flagrant Code breaks if Mamie Boomp had not gotten the idea that Atalanta was Atlantic City and Voltar was a place just outside of Peoria, Illinois.

  At length, Mamie said, “Now that we have got it all laid out even down to the organdy sea-green negligees, dearie, I still get the sneaking hunch you’re not entirely happy about it. You got some problem you ain’t telling Mamie?”

  “Well, yes,” said the Countess Krak. “I’m going to meet my man, you see. He’s been on this planet for months all by himself. He’s the handsomest, most gorgeous man you’d ever hope to see. You get some idea when I tell you that his sister is considered one of the best-looking women in the whole Confederacy.”

  “Ah, yah,” said Mamie Boomp. “One of them ‘you all’ southern belles.”

  “And he’s considered one of the best-looking officers in the whole Fleet. For months he’s undoubtedly been waist deep in the most beautiful and most gorgeously dressed women on the planet.”

  “Oho, a sailor, eh? Well, I don’t blame you for worrying. Them Navy officers knock ’em dead. It’s the uniform!”

  “And that’s the problem,” said the Countess Krak. “If I show up looking like a frump, I’ll be playing way at the back of the orchestra from there on out. He’ll ignore me!”

  “I get it. That first meeting after the long absence. Jesus, kid. That speeds this all up. I thought we had some time. You’re telling me you got to do it all in a couple of hours before you meet the shore boat. Jesus, that’s tough. Even a perm takes longer than that!” She thought it over, shaking her head. “Jesus. You get just one walk-on and you have to knock ’em from the orchestra seats right out into the lobby. And out of the balcony as well! Cripes, that’s a tough spot! No soft music or even an MC with some funny jokes to give it a buildup.” She was very pensive, rolling her diamonds around on her puffy fingers.

  Suddenly, Mamie dived at the mound of fashion magazines on the floor. She got out one called Ultra Ultra. She was thumbing through the ads. She came to the double center spread and in triumph pushed it at the Countess Krak. “There! Bonbucks Teller! They’re too rich for my blood but they’re one of the top four women’s stores in the world. And they got branches, see?” She pointed at the bottom of the posh display ad. “There’s a branch right at JFK Airport where we’re landing! They got everything and they are fast. There’s just one problem: boy, do they cost the do-re-mi—an arm, a leg and your head! Have you got the loot, Joy? I mean, the MONey.” She made the money motion with her thumb and two fingers.

  “Money?” said the Countess Krak. “I’ve got that all figured out.”

  A new chill took me. I had been wondering how she could buy so many five-dollar magazines. Almost not daring to look, I felt in my pockets.

  My fingers encountered, in my trousers, the sheaf of credit cards. I took them out and put them back as a pack: thank Gods, I still had that fatal deck.

  I explored further. I usually kept my wallet in my hip pocket. I didn’t want to reach for it. One’s supply of adrenalin is limited to a finite number of severe shocks and when it is gone one begins to faint. I risked it. My wallet?

  IT WAS GONE!

  Oh, my Gods! Her sleight of hand must have been up to getting the wallet, too! The whole nine hundred dollars I had taken from their travel money was missing!

  A pickpocket! The lowest, vilest sort of criminal, the type that even other criminals looked down upon! Oh, the police record had been right!

  The Countess Krak was not only a jewel thief of wanted-poster proportions, she was also a gods (bleeped) pickpocket!

  I was utterly penniless again!

  The fatal kiss of the Countess Krak!

  Rage gave way to despair. I hung my head. The voice of Mamie Boomp still came through my cloud of utter despondency. She was making a list of “bare necessities”: silk panty hose and bras, morning coats, cocktail dresses, evening gowns, suits, skirts and spare blouses with the most expensive Holland lace, shoes, boots and ermine house slippers, fifty assorted negligees, the jewels to go with it all and ending up with “various fur coats” including a full evening Blackgama mink hood and cape.

  “This list,” she concluded, “will last at least two months and carry you to spring. But at that time, of course, you’ll need to reoutfit to hold on to your sailor. Now let’s get down to services, beginning with a new hairdo. I advise against the new style of shaving half the head and painting it all blue. You just don’t have the time. Bonbucks Teller’s beauty salon will advise it but I think that the new windblown style, gold aura, this one where they’re using ruby dust, will go just fine with your complexion. Providing you wear enough blue white diamonds to enhance the eyes. Now, as to fingernails, gold leaf seems to be catching on. . . .”

  As it continued, I began to pick up a sort of bitter hope. That emerald locket was worth, I thought, no more than fifty thousand dollars. My overtrained and presensitized ear was scenting that this “bare necessity” array was going to top that. At Bonbucks Teller, a Blackgama mink, the top, top of all minks, would probably, all by itself, be twice the value of that locket!

  Hope rose. Regardless of my own loss, Heller was going to get roped into this far beyond any ready cash he had. He hadn’t even been able to pay for all of Babe’s tiara, now languishing forgotten at Tiffany’s. This foreign nightclub tour “singer” and this vicious criminal, Countess Krak, were tailoring a disaster for him on which I could scarcely hope to improve. If IRS was wiping out Heller, this pair was going to go them one better and have him sleeping in the park and eating the leavings in garbage cans. Gods bless such stores as Bonbucks Teller! Gods bless fairies who designed and lured unwary and helpless males into shuddering bankruptcy. They were not just getting rid of competition: they were getting rid of men entirely! Via the bankruptcy court. And there was where Heller was being headed.

  PART THIRTY-SIX

  Chapter 6

  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 com
parison 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 US 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:

  IG 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 traveler. She bopped two otherwise busy porters over the head with her Parisian 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 were not just into it, you were 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 coiffeurs. 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.

  The Countess’ eyes focused on Sultan Bey and/or Concubine. Roman Villa. Afyon, Turkey.

  IT WAS MY OWN SQUEEZA CREDIT CARD!

  I reeled. There must be some awful error! I yanked the pack out of my pocket and shuffled rapidly through them. The Squeeza card was GONE!

  Oh, Gods, in my haste to find something to write Heller’s address on, I had lucklessly chosen the only c
redit card in the deck that had a totally blank back and was not in laminated plastic! And it was a credit company whose monthly interest charge, in one month of unpaid balance, would equal the original bill! The worst credit hounder of the mob!

  There was still a chance. She might bungle the signing! They still might detect she was not Utanc, not the “concubine,” and sling her in jail for forgery. I held my breath.

  But the Countess Krak was obeying orders. Penmanship was a fitting part of her criminal talents. She signed it just like she had been told: “Sultan Bey and/or Concubine. Roman Villa. Afyon, Turkey.”

  With a sickening surge, I suddenly realized that she had thought I had given her a credit card! She was so (bleeped) stupid she didn’t even realize she was forging anything! She would have that as a defense if they detected it!

  But the manager took the finished product, compared it expertly to the card and nodded. All hope died within me.

  “Miss,” he said to the Countess Krak, “according to the accounts and credit report I just got from the Central Credit Card Bureau, your master is always easy to locate. We can find him right down to the hour and minute at any time. But you, I am sorry to say, having a WATS phone line you use all over the world, can never be spotted. Please tell us where you are from time to time. You see, it is giving our downtown store problems.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said the Countess Krak, undoubtedly mystified but taking this strange planet in stride.

  “Yes. We always send our best customers flowers every Saturday. Your favorite black orchids have been coming back from the Bentley Bucks Deluxe Arms penthouse. So is it now all right for us to send them to this office at the Empire State Building?”

  “Quite all right,” said the Countess Krak with charm. “But please include the store card prominently so my man won’t think they’re from some stupid Apparatus executive and kill him.”

  “I quite understand,” said the accounts executive and dutifully made a note of it: “Must not complicate extra-concubine affairs.” Aloud, he said, “Discretion must always be our watchword. After all, we have no interest where the lady spends her nights off or even in her travels. It is the man we are interested in. His whereabouts down to the last square inch is always of great concern, for, after all, he foots the bills.”