The Rip-Off (2 page)

I punched the button marked P.H., and was zoomed forty floors upward to the penthouse floor. As I debarked into its richly furnished reception area, a muscular young man with gleaming black hair stepped in front of me. He looked sharply into my face, then smiled and stepped back.

"How are you, Mr. Rainstar? Nice day."

"How are you?" I said, for I am nothing if not polite. "A nice day so far, at least."

A truly beautiful, beautifully dressed woman came forward, and urgently squeezed my hand.

"Such a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rainstar! Do come with me, please."

I followed her across a hundred feet or so of carpet (a foot deep, or so) to an unmarked door. She started to knock, then jerked her hand back. Turned to me still smiling, but rather whitishly.

"If you'll wait just a moment, please…"

She started to shoo me away, then froze at the sound from within the room. A sound that could only be made by a palm swung against a face. Swung hard, again, again. Like the stuttering, staccato crackling of an automatic rifle.

It went on for all of a minute, a very long time to get slapped. Abruptly, as though a gag had been removed, a woman screamed.

"
N-No! D-don't, please! I'll never do-!"

The scream ended with the suddenness of its beginning. The slapping also. The beautiful, beautifully dressed young woman waited about ten seconds. (I counted them off silently.) Then, she knocked on the door and ushered me inside.

"Miss Manuela Aloe," she said. "Mr. Britton Rainstar."

A young woman came toward me smiling; rubbing her hand, her
right
hand, against her dress before extending it to me. "Thank you, Sydney," she said, dismissing the receptionist with a nod. "Mr. Rainstar, let's just sit here on the lounge."

We sat down on the long velour lounge. She crossed one leg over the other, rested an elbow on her knee, and looked at me smiling, her chin propped in the palm of her hand. I looked at her-the silver-blond hair, the startlingly black eyes and lashes, the flawlessly creamy complexion. I looked around and found it impossible to believe that such a delicious bon bon of a girl would do harm to anyone.

Couldn't I have heard a recording? And if there had been another woman, where was she? The only door in the room was the one I had entered by, and no one had passed me on the way out.

"You look just like him," Manuela was saying. "We-ell, almost just. You don't have your hair in braids."

I said, What? And then I said, Oh, for several questions in my mind had been answered. "You mean Chief Britton Rainstar," I said. "The Remington portrait of him in the Metropolitan."

She said, No, she'd missed that one, darn it. "I was talking about the one in the Royal Museum by James McNeill Whistler. But tell me. Isn't Britton a kind of funny name for an Indian chief?"

"Hilarious," I said. "I guess we got it from the nutty whites the Rainstars intermarried with, early and often. Now, if you want a real honest to Hannah, jumpin' by Jesus Indian name-well, how does George strike you?"

"George?" she laughed. "
George?"

"George Creekmore. Inventor of the Cherokee alphabet, and publisher of the first newspaper west of the Mississippi."

"And I guess that'll teach me," she smiled, coloring slightly. "But, anyway, you certainly bear a strong resemblance to the Chief. Of course, I'd heard that all the Rainstar men did, but-"

"We're hard to tell apart," I agreed. "The only significant difference is in the pockets of later generations."

"The pockets?"

"They're empty," I said, and tapped myself on the chest. "Meet Lo, the poor Indian."

"Hi, Lo," she said, laughing. And I said, Hi, and then we were silent for a time.

But it was not an uncomfortable silence. We smiled and looked at each other without self-consciousness, both of us liking what we saw. When she spoke it was to ask more questions about the Rainstar family; and while I didn't mind talking about it, having little else to be proud of, there were things I wanted to know, too. So, after rambling on awhile, I got down to them.

"Like when and why the heck," I said, "am I seeing P. X. Aloe?"

"I don't think you'll be able to see Uncle Pat today," she said. "Some last minute business came up. But there's nothing sinister afoot"- -she gave me a reassuring little pat on the arm. "Now, unless you're in a hurry…"

"Well, I
am
due in Washington to address the cabinet," I said. "I thought it was already addressed, but I guess someone left off the zone number."

"You dear!" she laughed delightedly. "You absolute dear! Let's go have some drinks and dinner, and talk and talk and talk…

Give another woman a vicious slapping? This darling, diminutive child? Rainstar, you are nuts!

We took the elevator down to PXA's executive dining room, in a sub-basement of the building. A smiling maitre d', with a large menu under his arm, came out of the shadows and bowed to us graciously.

"A pleasure to see you, Miss Aloe. And you, too, sir, needless to say."

"Not at all," I said. "My pleasure."

He looked at me a little startled. I am inclined to gag it up and talk too much when I am uneasy or unsure of myself, which means that I am almost always gagging it up and talking too much.

"This is Mr. Britton Rainstai Albert (Albehr)," Manuela Aloe said. "I hope you'll be seeing him often."

"My own hope. Will you have a drink at the bar, while your table is being readied?"

She said we would, and we did. In fact, we had a couple, since the night employees were just arriving at this early hour, and there was some delay in preparing our table.

"Very nice," I said, taking an icy sip of martini. "A very nice place, Miss Aloe. Or is it Mrs.?"

She said it was Miss-she had taken her own name after her husband died-and I could call her Manny if I liked. "But yes"-she glanced around casually. "It is nice, isn't it? Not that it shouldn't be, considering."

"Uh-huh," I said. "Or should I say ah-ha? I'm afraid I'm going to have to rush right off to Geneva, Manny."

"Wha-aat?"

"Just as soon as I pay for these drinks. Unless you insist on going dutch on them."

"Silly!" She wriggled deliciously. "You're with me, and everything's complimentary."

"But you said considering," I pointed out. "A word hinting at the dread unknown, in my case at least. To wit, money."

"Oh, well," she shrugged, dismissing the subject. "Money isn't everything."

It was activated by tones, and was uncannily accurate in deciding when a person's voice tone was not what it should be. Thus, Bradley, the man who had called me this morning, had been revealed as a "switcher," one who diverted business to competitors. So all of his calls were completely recorded, instead of receiving a sporadic spot check.

"I see," I nodded to Manny, as we dawdled over coffee and liqueurs, "about as clearly as I see through mud. Everything is completely opaque to me."

"Oh, now, why do you say that?" she said. "I'd seen that portrait when I was a little girl, and I'd never gotten it out of my mind. So when I found out that the last of the Rainstars was right here in town…!"

"Recalling part of the conversation," I said, "you must have felt that the last of the Rainstars needed his mouth washed out with soap."

She laughed and said, Nope, cursing out Bradley had been a plus. "That was just about the clincher for you with Pat. Someone of impeccable background and breeding, who could still get tough if he had to."

"Manny," I said, "exactly what is this all about, anyway? Why PXA's interest in me?"

"Well…"

"Before you answer, maybe I'd better set you straight on something. I've never been mixed up in anything shady, and PXA seems to be mixed up in nothing else but. Oh, I know you're not doing anything illegal, nothing you can go to prison for. But, still, well-"

"PXA is right out in the open," Manny said firmly. "Anyone that wants to try, can take a crack at us. We don't rewrite any laws, and we don't ask any to be written for us. We don't own any big politicians. I'd say that for every dollar we make with our so-called shady operations, there's a thousand being stolen by some highly respectable cartel."

"Well," I nodded uncomfortably, "there's no disputing that, of course. But I don't feel that one wrong justifies another, if you'll pardon an unpardonable clichй."

"Pardoned"-she grinned at me openly. "We don't try to justify it. No justifications, no apologies."

"And this bugging business." I shook my head. "It seems like something right out of
Nineteen Eighty-four
. It's sneaky and Big Brotherish, and it scares the hell out of me."

Manny shrugged, remarking that it was probably everything I said. But bugging wasn't an invention of PXA, and it didn't and wouldn't affect me. "We're on your side, Britt. We're against the people who've been against your people."

"My people?" I said, and I grimaced a little wryly. "I doubt that any of us can be bracketed so neatly any more. We may be more of one race than we are another, but I suspect we're all a little of everything. White, yellow, black and red."

"Oh, well"-she glanced at her wristwatch. "You're saying that there are no minorities?"

I said that I wasn't sure what I was saying, or, rather, what the point to it was. "But I don't believe that a man who's being pushed around has a right to push anyone but the person pushing him… if you can untangle that. His license to push is particular not general. If he starts lashing out at everyone and anyone, he's asking for it and he ought to get it."

It was all very high-sounding and noble, and it also had the virtue, fortunately or otherwise, of being what I believed. What I had been bred to believe. And now I was sorry I had said it. For I seemed to be hopelessly out of step with the only world I had, and again I was about to be left alone and afraid in that world, which I had had no hand in making. This lovely child, Manny, the one person to be kind to me or show interest in me for so very long, was getting ready to leave.

She was looking at me, brows raised quizzically. She was patting her mouth with her napkin, then crumpling it to the table. She was glancing at herself in the mirror in her purse. Then, snapping the purse shut, and starting to rise.

And then, praise be, glory to the Great Mixed blood Father, she sat back down.

"All right," she said crisply. "Let's say that PXA is interested in using the Rainstar name. Let's say that. It would be pretty stupid of us to dirty up that name, now, wouldn't it?"

"Well, yes, I suppose it would," I said. "And look. I'm sorry if I said anything to offend you. I always kid around and talk a lot whenever I'm-"

"Forget it. How old are you?"

"Thirty-six."

"You're forty. Or so you stated on your loan-application blank. What do you do for a living, if you can call it that?"

I said, Why ask me something she already knew? "That information's also on the application. Along with practically everything else about me, except the number and location of my dimples."

"You mean you have some I can't see?" She smiled, her voice friendlier, almost tender. "But what I meant to ask was, what do you write for this Hemisphere Foundation?"

"Studies. In-depth monographs on this region from various aspects: ecological, etiological, ethological, ethnological. That sort of thing. Sometimes one of them is published in Hemisphere's
Quarterly Reports
. But they usually go in the file-and-forget department."

"Mmm-hmm," she said thoughtfully, musingly. "Very interesting. I think something could be worked out there. Something satisfactory to both of us."

"If you could tell me just what you have in mind..

"Well, I'll have to clear it with Pat, of course, but. Thirty-five thousand a year?"

"That's not what I meant. I…
What?
" I gasped. "Did you say
thirty-five thousand?
"

"Plus expenses, and certain fringe benefits."

"Thirty-five thousand," I said, running a finger around my collar. "Uh, how much change do you want back?"

She threw back her head and laughed, hugging herself ecstatically. "Ah, Britt, Britt," she said, brushing mirth tears from her eyes. "Everything's going to be wonderful for you. I'll make it wonderful, you funny-sweet man. Now, do me a small favor, hmm?"

"Practically anything," I said, "if you'll laugh like that again."

"Please don't worry about silly things, like our bugging system. Everyone knows we have it. We're out in the open on that as we are with everything else. If someone thinks he can beat it, well, it isn't as if he hadn't been warned, is it?"

"I see what you mean," I said, although I actually didn't. I was just being agreeable. "What happens when someone is caught pulling a fast one?"

"Well, naturally," she said, "we have to remove him from the payroll."

"I see," I said again. Lying again when I said it. Because, of course, there are many ways to remove a man from the payroll. (Horizontal was one that occurred to me.) My immediate concern, however, as it so often is, was me. Specifically the details of my employment. But I was not allowed to inquire into them.

Before I could frame another question, she had moved with a kind of unhurried haste, with the quick little movements which typified her. Rising from her chair, tucking her purse under her arm, gesturing me back when I also started to rise; all in one swift-smooth uninterrupted action.

"Stay where you are, Britt," she smiled. "Have a drink or something. I'll have someone pick you up and drive you home."

"Well…" I settled back into my chair. "Shall I call you tomorrow?"

"I'll call you. Pat or I will. Good-night, now."

She left the table, her tinily full figure with its crown of thick blond hair quickly losing itself in the dining room's dimness.

I waited. I had another liqueur and more coffee. And continued to wait. An hour passed. A waiter brushed by the table, and when he had gone, I saw a check lying in front of me.

I picked it up, a nervous lump clotting in my stomach. My eyes blurred, and I rubbed them, at last managing to read the total.

Sixty-three dollars and thirty cents.

Sixty-three dollars and-!

I don't know how you are in such situations, but I always feel guilty. The mere need to explain, that such and such is a mistake, et cetera, stiffens my smile exaggeratedly and sets me to sweating profusely, and causes my voice to go tremulous and shaky. So that I not only feel guilty as hell, but also look it.

It is really pretty terrible.

It is no wonder that I was suspected of the attempted murder of my wife. The wonder is that I wasn't lynched.

Albert, the maitre d', approached. As I always do, I over-explained, apologizing when I should have demanded apologies. Sweating and shaking and squeakily stammering, and acting like nine kinds of a damned fool.

When I was completely self-demolished, Albert cut me off with a knifing gesture of his hand.

"No," he said coldly, "Miss Aloe did not introduce you to me. If she had, I would have remembered it." And he said, "No, she made no arrangement about the check. Obviously, the check is to be paid by you."

Then, he leaned down and forward, resting his hands on the table, so that his face was only inches from mine. And I remember thinking that I had known this was going to happen, not exactly this, perhaps, but something that would clearly expose the vicious potential of PXA. A taste of what could happen if I incurred the Aloe displeasure.

For she had said-remember?-that they did not pretend or apologize. You were warned, you knew exactly what to expect
if
.

"You deadbeat bastard," Albert said. "Pay your check or we'll drag you back in the kitchen, and beat the shit out of you."