Friday (22 page)

And caught something out of the corner of my eye: a figure coming out from behind a pillar at the top of the steps.

It triggered me. I pushed the Chief down flat to the steps, knocking a couple of his staff aside to do it, then bounded up to that pillar.

I didn’t kill the man who had lurked behind that pillar; I merely broke the arm he had his gun in, then kicked him sort of high when he tried to run. I hadn’t been hurried the way I had been the day before. After reducing the target the Chief Confederate made (really, he should not wear that distinctive headdress), I had had time to realize that the assassin, if taken alive, might be a clue to the gang behind these senseless killings.

But I did not have time to realize what else I had done until two Capital police seized my arms. I then did realize it and felt glum indeed, thinking about the scorn there would be in Boss’s voice when I had to admit that I had allowed myself to be publicly arrested. For a split moment I seriously considered disengaging and hiding behind the horizon—not impossible as one police officer clearly had high blood pressure and the other was an older man wearing frame spectacles.

Too late. If I ran now using full overdrive, I could almost certainly get away and, in a square or two, mingle with the crowd and be gone. But these bumblers would possibly burn half a dozen bystanders in trying to wing me. Not professional! Why hadn’t this palace guard protected their chief instead of leaving it up to me? A lurker behind pillars fer Gossake!—nothing like that had happened since the assassination of Huey Long.

Why hadn’t I minded my own business and let the killer burn down the Chief Confederate in his silly hat? Because I have been trained for defensive warfare only, that’s why, and consequently I fight by reflex. I don’t have any interest in fighting, don’t like it—it just happens.

I did not then have time to consider the advisability of minding my own business because Georges was minding mine. Georges speaks unaccented (if somewhat stilted) BritCan English; now he was sputtering incoherently in French and trying to peel those two praetorians off me.

The one with the spectacles let go my left arm in an effort to deal with Georges so I jabbed him with my elbow just under his sternum. He
whooshed
and went down. The other was still holding on to my right arm, so I jabbed him in the same spot with the first three fingers of my left hand, whereupon he
whooshed
and laid himself across his mate, and both vomited.

All this happened much faster than it takes to tell it—i.e., the cows grabbed me, Georges intervened, I was free. Two seconds? Whatever it was, the assassin had disappeared, his gun with him.

I was about to disappear, too, with Georges even if I had to carry him, when I realized that Georges had made up my mind for me. He had me by my right elbow and had me firmly pointed toward the main entrance of the Palace just beyond that row of pillars. As we stepped into the rotunda he let go my elbow while saying softly, “Slow march, my darling—quietly, quietly. Take my arm.”

I took his arm. The rotunda was fairly crowded but there was no excitement, nothing at all to suggest an attempt had just been made a few meters away to kill the nation’s chief executive. Concession booths rimming the rotunda were busy, especially the off-track betting windows. Just to our left a young woman was selling lottery tickets—or available to sell them I should say, as she had no customers just then and was watching a detergent drama on her terminal.

Georges turned us and halted us at her booth. Without looking up she said, “Station break coming up. Be with you then. Shop around. Be my guest.”

There were festoons of lottery tickets around the booth. Georges started examining them, so I pretended a deep interest, too. We stretched the time; presently the commercials started, the young woman punched down the sound and turned to us.

“Thanks for waiting,” she said with a pleasant smile. “I never miss
One Woman’s Woes
, especially right now when Mindy Lou is pregnant again and Uncle Ben is being so unreasonable about it. Do you follow the theater, dearie?”

I admitted that I rarely had time for it—my work interfered.

“That’s too bad; it’s very educational. Take Tim—that’s my roommate—won’t look at anything but sports. So he doesn’t have a thought in his head for the finer things in life. Take this crisis in Mindy Lou’s life. Uncle Ben is purely persecuting her because she won’t tell him who did it. Do you think Tim cares? Not Tim! What neither Tim nor Uncle Ben realizes is that she
can’t
tell because it happened at a precinct caucus. What sign were you born under?”

I should phrase a prepared answer for this question; human persons are always asking it. But when you weren’t born, you tend to shy away from such things. I grabbed a date and threw it at her: “I was born on the twenty-third of April.” That’s Shakespeare’s birthday; it popped into my mind.

“Oho! Have I got a lottery ticket for you!” She shuffled through one of the Maypole decorations, found a ticket, showed me a number. “See
that?
And you just walked in here and I had it! This is
your
day!” She detached the ticket. “That’s twenty bruins.”

I offered a BritCan dollar. She answered, “I don’t have change for that.”

“Keep the change for luck.”

She handed me the ticket, took the dollar. “You’re a real sport, dearie. When you collect, stop by and we’ll have a drink together. Mister, have you found one you like?”

“Not yet. I was born on the ninth day of the ninth month of the ninth year of the ninth decade. Can you handle it?”

“Woo woo! What a terrific combo! I can try…and if I can’t, I won’t sell you anything.” She dug through her piles and strings of paper, humming to herself. She ducked her head under the counter, stayed awhile.

She reappeared, red-faced and triumphant, clutching a lottery ticket. “Got it! Look at it, mister! Give a respectful gander.”

We looked: 8109999

“I’m impressed,” Georges said.

“Impressed? You’re
rich
. There’s your four nines. Now add the odd digits. Nine again. Divide that into the odd digits. Another nine. Add the last four—thirty-six. That’s nine squared, for two more nines, making another four nines. Add all up at once and it’s five nines. Take away the sum and you have four nines again. No matter what you do, you always keep getting your own birthday. What do you want, mister? Dancing girls?”

“How much do I owe you?”

“That’s a pretty special number. You can have any other number on the rack for twenty bruins. But that one—Why don’t you just keep piling money in front of me until I smile?”

“That seems fair. Then if you don’t smile when I think you should, I’ll pick up the money and walk away. No?”

“I may call you back.”

“No. If you won’t offer me a fixed price, I won’t let you spar around about it after I’ve made a fair offer.”

“You’re a tough customer, sport. I—”

Speakers on all sides of us suddenly started blasting “Hail to the Chief,” followed by “The Golden Bear Forever.” The young woman shouted, “
Wait! Over soon!
” A crowd of people came in from outside, walked straight through the rotunda, and on down the main corridor. I spotted the eagle-feather headdress sticking up in the middle of the clump but this time the Chief Confederate was so tightly surrounded by his parasites that an assassin would have a hard time hitting him.

As it became possible to hear again the lottery saleswoman said, “That was a short one. Less than fifteen minutes ago he went through here heading out. If he was just going down to the corner for a pack of tokes, whyn’t he send somebody instead of going hisself? Bad for business, all that noise. Well, sport, have you figured out how much you’ll pay to get rich?”

“But yes.” Georges took out a three-dollar bill, laid it on the counter. He looked at the woman.

They locked gazes for about twenty seconds, then she said glumly, “I’m smiling. I guess I am.” She picked up the money with one hand, handed Georges the lottery ticket with the other. “I bet I could have sweated you out of another dollar.”

“We’ll never know, will we?”

“Cut for double or nothing?”

“With
your
cards?” Georges asked gently.

“Sport, you’ll make an old woman out of me. Be elsewhere before I change my mind.”

“Rest room?”

“Down the corridor on my left.” She added, “Don’t miss the drawing.”

As we walked toward the rest room Georges told me quietly in French that gendarmes had passed behind us while we were dickering, had gone into the rest room, come out, back into the rotunda, and down the main corridor.

I cut him off, speaking also in French—telling him that I knew but this place must be filled with Eyes, Ears—talk later.

I was not snubbing him. Two uniformed guards—not the two with stomach problems—had come in almost on our heels, hurried past us, checked the rest room first—reasonable; an amateur often tries to hide in a public rest room—had come out and hurried past us, then deep into the Palace. Georges had quietly shopped for lottery tickets while guards looking for us had brushed past him, twice. Admirable. Quite professional.

But I had to wait to tell him so. There was a person of indeterminate sex selling tickets to the rest room. I asked her(him) where the powder room was. She (I decided on “she” when closer observation showed that her T-shirt covered either falsies or small milk glands)—she answered scornfully, “You some kind of a nut? Trying to discriminate, huh? I ought to send for a cop.” Then she looked at me more closely. “You’re a foreigner.”

I admitted it.

“Okay. Just don’t talk that way; people don’t like it. We’re democratic here, see?—setters and pointers use the same fireplug. So buy a ticket or quit blocking the turnstyle.”

Georges bought us two tickets. We went in.

On our right was a row of open stalls. Above them floated a holo:
THESE FACILITIES ARE PROVIDED
FREE
FOR YOUR HEALTH AND COMFORT BY THE CALIFORNIA CONFEDERACY
—
JOHN
“
WARWHOOP
”
TUMBRIL
,
CHIEF CONFEDERATE
.

A life-size holo of the Chief floated above it.

Beyond the open stalls were pay stalls with doors; beyond these were doorways fully closed with drapes. On our left was a news-and-notions stand presided over by a person of very determined sex, bull dyke. Georges paused there and surprised me by buying several cosmetics and a flacon of cheap perfume. Then he asked for a ticket to one of the dressing rooms at the far end.

“
One
ticket?” She looked at him sharply. Georges nodded agreement. She pursed her lips. “Naughty, naughty. No hanky-panky, stud.”

Georges did not answer. A BritCan dollar passed from his hand to hers, vanished. She said very softly, “Don’t take too long. If I buzz the buzzer, get decent fast. Number seven, far right.”

We went to number seven, the farthest dressing room, and entered. Georges closed the drapes, zipped them tight, flushed the water closet, then turned on the cold water and left it running. Speaking again in French, he told me that we were about to change our appearance without using disguises, so, please, my dear, get out of the clothes you are wearing and put on that suit you have in your jumpbag.

He explained in more detail, mixing French and English and continuing to flush the commode from time to time. I was to wear that scandalous Superskin job, more makeup than I usually do, and was to attempt to look like the famous Whore of Babylon or equivalent. “I know that’s not your métier, dear girl, but try.”

“I will attempt to be ‘adequate.’”

“Ouch!”

“And you plan to wear Janet’s clothes? I don’t think they’ll fit.”

“No, no, I shan’t drag. Just swish.”

“Excuse me?”

“I won’t dress in women’s clothes; I will simply endeavour to appear effeminate.”

“I don’t believe it. All right, let’s try.”

We didn’t do much to me—just that one-piece job with the wet look that had hooked Ian, plus more makeup than I am used to, applied by Georges (he seemed to feel that he knew more about it than I did—he felt that way because he did), plus—once we were outside—that here-it-is-come-and-get-it walk.

Georges used on himself rather more makeup than he had put on me, plus that vile perfume (which he did not ask me to wear), plus at his neck a shocking-orange scarf I had been using-as a belt. He had me fluff his hair and spray it so that it stayed bouffant. That was all…plus a change in manner. He still looked like Georges—but he did
not
seem like the virile buck who had so wonderfully worn me out the night before.

I repacked my jumpbag and we left. The old moose at the newsstand widened her eyes and caught her breath when she saw me. But she said nothing as a man who had been leaning against the stand straightened up, pointed a finger at Georges, and said, “You. The Chief wants you.” Then he added, almost to himself, “I don’t believe it.”

Georges stopped and gestured helplessly with both hands. “Oh, dear me! Surely there has been some mistake?”

The flunky bit a toothpick he had been sucking and answered, “I think so, too, citizen—but I ain’t going to say so and neither are you. Come along. Not you, sister.”

Georges said, “I positively am not going anywhere without my dear sister! So there!”

That cow said, “Morrie, she can wait here. Sweetie, come around behind here with me and sit down.”

Georges gave me the barest negative shake of his head but I did not need it. If I stayed, either she would take me straight back to that dressing room or I would stuff her into her own trash can. I was betting on me. I will put up with that sort of nonsense in line of duty—she would not have been as unpleasant as Rocky Rockford—but not willingly. If and when I change my luck, it will be with someone I like and respect.

I moved closer to Georges, took his arm. “We have never been separated since Mama on her death bed told me to take care of him.” I added, “So there!” while wondering what that phrase means, if anything. Both of us pouted and looked stubborn.