Death Quest Read online

  The clerk found the bill. “That’s $5,100, please.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “It was $4,900 yesterday.”

  “The additional is for his room while we detained him and for his shots.”

  What could I do? Nothing. I paid it. I said, “When you let him go, tell him he is supposed to report back to Dr. Finkelbaum.”

  She made a note of it and I rushed off. I had to get down to the financial district to Boyd’s of London and get his hit man insurance. But there were no taxis in sight and no subways were handy. I raced over to Second Avenue and boarded a downtown bus, Number 15.

  New York buses lurch around and roar, dive into and away from curbs and make an awful fuss. But they don’t get anywhere very fast.

  I thought I had better check up on the Countess Krak. If I was fast enough I could get her hit before the day was done. I balanced the viewer on my knee and watched.

  (Bleep) that Bang-Bang! Driving at speed, he had gotten her almost to the ROTC offices at Empire University! They pulled up at the door. The Countess Krak pushed a pad and ballpoint through the cab partition.

  “Now, Bang-Bang, write a request in proper form for a leave of absence from class and drills for a couple weeks.” And she watched while he printed it quite laboriously.

  At the bottom he had drawn a line and left a space. He indicated it. “That’s for the endorsement of Colonel Tanc, US Army. He’s got to initial it or it’s no good, and it’s got to go into the files. But Tanc won’t sign it, Miss Joy.”

  “What kind of a man is this Colonel Tanc?” said Krak.

  “Regular Army,” said Bang-Bang. “Posted here to run the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps for Empire. He’s a military martinet, stiff as starch. Hound for discipline. Very proper. Never does the slightest thing irregular. He thinks these student officers are just play soldiers and beneath contempt. Wister, being a senior, holds ROTC rank of lieutenant but that’s not Regular Army and we ain’t even sworn into the service, thank God. But when we graduate, and Wister is sworn in, Wister will be an Army officer and I swear to Pete, Miss Joy, the colonel doesn’t even consider us up to a Regular Army buck-(bleep) private—beggin’ your pardon, ma’am. He’ll never grant this, probably even assign punishment drill. I wouldn’t advise you presenting this. You could blow the whole show.”

  Two plump black women in the seat behind me were looking over my shoulder at the viewer interestedly. One said, “I didn’t know they were doin’ no rerun of Sophia Loren in the morning, but that sure as hell is Marcello Mastroianni.”

  “Naw,” said the other, “that’s Humphrey Bogart, plain as the nose on your face, woman. But I didn’t know he played with Sophia Loren and that sho’ as hell was her voice.”

  “Look at that,” said the other, “you don’t see her face, only what she’s lookin’ at. I know a Hitchcock film when I see one, only it’s in color. Did Hitchcock ever direct Sophia Loren?”

  I ignored them. Riffraff.

  “Now, this could be a little dicey, Bang-Bang,” said the Countess Krak. “You park right there and be ready for a fast getaway.”

  Bang-Bang, in alarm, said, “You be careful!”

  “Oh, indeed I will. This could be very dangerous.”

  Bang-Bang groaned.

  “No, that ain’t Sophia Loren,” said one of the black women. “That’s Lauren Bacall and Bogart. I’d know her voice anywhere.”

  “You’re right,” said the other. “I jus’ got the names mixed. I know this film. It’s the one where Bacall gets killed, but I didn’t know it was in color.”

  “Yah, Hitchcock directed it, all right. You only see what she’s looking at. Horror film.”

  The Countess Krak took an envelope out of her purse. She wrote on it From Lieutenant Wister, ROTC. She put the leave request in it. Then she produced a little glass bubble and inserted that in the envelope. She sealed the flap. The action startled me. What was this vicious female making? A letter bomb? Was she going to kill the colonel?

  “You won’t change your mind?” pleaded Bang-Bang.

  “You keep that motor running,” said the Countess Krak. “Get ready to make those tires scream if this goes wrong.”

  She got out of the cab, and using the window as a mirror, she fluffed her hair and straightened her jacket. She walked in through the entrance.

  There was a huge sign there. It said:

  REGIMENTAL DANCE MARCH 28

  Full Uniform

  Bring your girls, girls, girls

  “Hmm,” said the Countess Krak. “So this is Lieutenant Wister’s life in the ROTC.”

  There was a sergeant at a waiting room desk. When she entered, he stood up and blinked and looked like he was going to offer her a chair.

  She paid no attention to him. She sailed right on past him, heading for the door marked Colonel Mark Q. Tanc, United States Army. She opened it and marched in.

  Colonel Tanc was sitting at his desk, surrounded by flags and cannon shells. He looked the very proper officer—tunic, shirt, tie, eagles on the shoulders and campaign ribbons by the score to account for his bitter and disapproving face.

  The Countess Krak had the envelope in her hand. Her thumb and forefinger crushed the glass bubble inside it and it made a tiny crack.

  She handed it toward the colonel and he, glaring, would not have touched it at all if she hadn’t used the magician’s forcing twitch of the hand which makes people take things.

  The colonel, removing his baleful glare from her face for a moment, read the inscription. “Wister?” he snarled. “Do I have a man named Wister?” He began to open it.

  “Oh, indeed you do,” said the Countess Krak in a lilting voice. “And I have the honor to be his sister. He could not come himself, today. His poor, dear grandmother lies dying in Sleepy Hollow, ready to leave him a million bucks if he avoids the wolf and comes out of the woods in time with a basket of lunch on his arm.”

  The colonel stared at her and began to read the leave request. A strange look of pleasure began to creep over his face.

  The Countess Krak continued. “Oh, I am sure that you will excuse him from his classes and drills a couple weeks. For if you don’t, why, then I shall refuse to dance with you at the Regimental Ball, March twenty-eighth.”

  The colonel’s face was becoming flushed. He looked at her with hungry eyes. He said, “Oh, Christ, we can’t have that!” He hastily endorsed the request for leave.

  She extended her hand and took hold of the paper to draw it away.

  The colonel’s fingers amorously clutched her wrist. He said in an emotion-charged voice, “Come with me to my room, my little pigeon!”

  With an expert twist of her arm she unlocked his clutching paw. She got the leave request away.

  The colonel lunged across the desk toward her, panting, face suffused.

  The Countess Krak sped out of the room. The colonel was pursuing.

  She threw the endorsed order at the sergeant and shouted at him as he caught it, “File this!”

  She raced out of the orderly room.

  The colonel was close behind her.

  She glanced back. Suddenly the sergeant had joined the chase with hot and panting cries.

  The Countess Krak got to the cab.

  She glanced back. The two Army men were closing the distance, arms outstretched clutchingly, crying cries of beasts in heat.

  The Countess Krak leaped into the cab, inches ahead of capture.

  The motor roared!

  Tires screamed!

  She got the door closed and looked back.

  The two men were pounding after them along the road.

  Bang-Bang fed the cab more gas.

  The pursuers were lost in the cloud of fumes behind them.

  “JESUS!” said Bang-Bang, taking a weaving and rapid escape course from the neighborhood. “What was all THAT about?”

  “She made it!” said one black woman.

  “Yeah, and right in the teeth of the Army, too!” said the other
.

  “Did you see that colonel slaver?” said the first. “Great actor, Charlton Heston.”

  “(Bleep)!” said the other. “That didn’t take no actin’. Not when you realize he was chasing Lauren Bacall!”

  The Countess Krak said, “You and Jettero got your two weeks leave.”

  “What’s the repercussions?” said Bang-Bang.

  “No repercussions,” said the Countess Krak mildly.

  “Miss Joy,” said Bang-Bang severely as he drove, “the Regular Army here is knee-deep every day in pretty college girls. Colonel Tanc and that sergeant looked like they wanted to swallow you whole. I know that look in Army guys: not as bad as Marines, but they meant business!”

  The Countess Krak had taken a torn wrapper out of her purse. She was reading it.

  Eyes and Ears of Voltar

  Item 452: An emotional stimulator perfume

  capsule. Crush in contact with paper or cloth and

  avoid. Causes a person to become

  amorous so that he can be arrested for

  making improper advances.

  She muttered, “They ought to warn you that this stuff is STRONG!”

  Bang-Bang said, “Miss Joy, Jet would kill me if anything happened to you. I know you’re beautiful and I can understand that back there, up to a point. But did you DO something?”

  “Me? Bang-Bang?”

  “Miss Joy, I have just done an intelligence summary and estimated the dangers of this projected campaign. I think I better take you home.”

  “Bang-Bang,” she said firmly, “drive to Hairytown, New York.”

  Bang-Bang turned north. He muttered, “Now I’m being a (bleeped) fool, too! It’s awful what a beautiful woman can do!”

  One of the black women behind me said, “This is where I get off. I want to catch the rest of that film at home on the TV. I love the part where she gets killed.”

  I smiled grimly to myself. I said, “So will I!” And I continued on downtown to make the final arrangements.

  PART FORTY-FIVE

  Chapter 1

  At the Boyd’s of London US office on Wall Street, the fellow sat there in a black cutaway with dandruff on his shoulders and said, “But I say, old chappie, this is a special rate.”

  “A five-day minimum at a thousand dollars a day for a measly twenty-five-thousand-dollar policy is NO special rate,” I snarled.

  He waved his cigarette holder in an airy way. “Hit men are hit men,” he said. “And I must say the actuarial statistic shows that they themselves get hit. NOT what you would call a profession without risks. Rifles backfire, husbands take reprisals and,” he fixed me with a beady eye, “cases have not been unknown where beneficiaries did a bit of hitting themselves, eh, what?”

  I shook my head.

  He took another approach. “It is not that your man is inexperienced. According to his record here, when he worked for Swindle and Crouch, he executed his contracts in quite a satisfactory way. It’s just that records show he has a twist. A personality quirk, let’s say. But I will tell you what I will do. Business has been slow today. Make it five thousand dollars for five days and I’ll write the policy for seven days. It’s the very best we can do, old chap.”

  I had to take it. It was the only way I had to hand to get Krak killed.

  They wrote the policy with lots of scrolls and made his mother beneficiary. I paid them from my hard-earned hoard and I was on my way.

  En route to Dr. Finkelbaum’s I stopped off in a white-arm lunch, one of those places where the table is the arm of the chair. I took from my pocket a sheet and envelope of Apparatus self-destruct paper. You write on it and then spray it lightly and fold it and ten hours after it is opened it simply evaporates. No evidence left.

  Disguising my handwriting, I wrote:

  Find $850 enclosed. Your policy is clipped to the envelope so you can give it to your mother. Get a rifle. Get a car. Get to Hairytown, New York. They’re in an orange-colored cab, old style, unmistakable. Phone me at the number at the bottom of the page as soon as you have something to report. X

  I added Miss Pinch’s number.

  I sprayed the paper. I took a five-hundred-dollar bill, three one-hundred-dollar bills and a fifty, and wrapped the note around them: I didn’t want them to get lost, for aside from thirty dollars they were all the money I had left. I put them in and sealed the envelope against air.

  Not even finishing my bitter coffee, I sped for Dr. Finkelbaum’s.

  Arriving, I peeked in and, sure enough, there sat Torpedo.

  I entered the waiting room with elaborate casualness. I picked up a two-year-old magazine from the table. I sat down. Unobserved, I slid the envelope and policy into the magazine while I pretended to read. Then, very casually, I rose, laid the magazine down in the chair beside Torpedo and walked out. Very smoothly done. Right by the manual.

  I lurked around a corner, eyes fixed on a reflective shop window across the street. I saw Torpedo come out reading the letter.

  Wonderful! The Countess Krak would soon be dead!

  I raced down into a subway and was on my way home, conscious of pride in my organizational skill.

  The moment I got home, I raced into the back room closet and put the viewer down.

  I had expected by this time that they would be in Hairytown, for it is less than twenty miles north of Empire University, straight up the Hudson and right on the street or highway named Broadway.

  I had only slightly misestimated. They were not yet into the town. They must have paused briefly somewhere for a bite of lunch. The Countess was watching torrents of air traffic going up and down the Hudson a mile west from their road.

  Krak was saying, “This cab certainly rides roughly when you use it as a ground car, Bang-Bang. Why don’t you take it off this bumpy cart track and fly it?”

  “Jesus, Miss Joy,” he said over his shoulder as he bounced along, “it won’t do that.”

  “Is it broken or something? I see other vehicles flying up and down, way out there over the river.”

  “Those are choppers, Miss Joy. This is a cab: it ain’t supposed to leave the ground.”

  “Are you afraid of the police?”

  “Yes, MA’AM!”

  “I am appalled, Bang-Bang, at how overregulated this planet is. It doesn’t seem to reduce the crime rate any, either. Listen, Bang-Bang, I can fix it with any cop who stops us. I’m tired of the jolting. Take it into the air.”

  Bang-Bang said helplessly, “My chopper license isn’t up to date.”

  “Now we’re getting someplace,” said the Countess Krak. “You should have told me and I could have made the parole officer renew it. Bang-Bang, you should understand here and now that you can trust me.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Bang-Bang miserably.

  She was looking at the road expectantly. Then she saw, apparently, that the old cab was not taking off the way any ordinary airbus would have. She said, “Well, get it into the air!”

  “Ma’am,” said Bang-Bang, with a sigh of relief, “we’re here. There’s the city limits sign of Hairytown.”

  “Good,” said the Countess Krak. “But when we leave, make sure we don’t have such a rough trip back. There’s a shop. Stop and I’ll go in.”

  “I’ll keep the motor running.”

  “Oh, this isn’t dangerous. I’m just asking for directions on how to get to Miss Agnes’ house.”

  He stopped and she got out. There was a sign. It said:

  ANTIQUES

  Priceless Artifacts

  of Sleepy Hollow Country

  Washington Irving Slept Here

  SALE TODAY ON HEADLESS HORSEMEN

  “Well, I never!” said the Countess Krak. “This is the place I’m supposed to be from, according to my passport.”

  Bang-Bang, sitting behind the wheel, blinked. “Isn’t your passport right?”

  “Government documents are never right. You wait right there—I won’t be long.”

  She went into the shop.
A very old, spindly man was drilling wormholes in a chair. He looked up.

  “I’m supposed to be from around here,” said the Countess Krak, “but I have gotten lost. Could you please direct me to the house of Miss Agnes?”

  He stared at her. His eyes went round. Then he turned aside and spat. He went out the back door and didn’t come back.