They'd Rather Be Right (12 page)

“Would you really attempt to apply physical quantum laws of space-time continua to sociology?” the mouth asked. The words were blurred; the flaccid lips had long since forgotten how to form crisp, incisive speech.

Billings and Hoskins had been watching the appari-tion arise, above the partition. Billings was first to recover himself. The question restored his position in the academic world.

“Unquestionably, it should be considered,” he answered.

The eyes closed. The whiter lids accentuated the grime on the face. They opened again.

“I wonder now,” the mouth asked, “why that possibility had never occurred to me in my reflections?

Perhaps I may blame it on the times we live in. Yes, certainly worth considering.”

The head began to disappear behind the partition again, then came up. The face had an eager expression this time.

“I would offer you gentlemen a nightcap—if I had one,” the mouth said hopefully.

“I’m afraid we don’t have any spirits either,” Billings said regretfully.

The eyes regarded them, searching their expressions for truth. Apparently the face grew satisfied that they were not selfishly hoarding.

“Then you, also, are broke,” the mouth said with a twist of philosophic humor. “Distressing, isn’t it?

But thank you, gentlemen, for a new idea. It amply repays me for this disturbance of my rest.”

The head sank quickly out of sight, and this time it did not reappear. In a few minutes there were gentle snores coming through the partition, an accompaniment to the louder ones from down the hall.

“Imagine that,” Hoskins whispered finally. “Imagine finding a mind like that in a place like this.”

“My good Dr. Hoskins,” Billings whispered back with asperity, “we’re here, aren’t we?”

It was three o’clock in the morning when Joe checked them out of the Deluxe Hotel. He had paid for their room in advance, of course, and checking out meant no more than dropping their cubicle key at the desk. The night clerk picked it up without question, without comment, without speculation. He had seen everything in his time and had lost all curiosity about men on the short line. Guided by the grapevine command, it was easy for him not to notice that this was an old geezer, a middle-aged bum, and a young punk.

The lobby was discreetly darker than the street outside. At the door, before stepping out, Joe touched Hoskins on the elbow and spoke in a low voice.

“I’ll go first. You follow a quarter of a block be-hind. Hang onto one another, as if you’d had too much wine, but don’t overdo it.”

Hoskins started to speak and then nodded grimly. “What about police?” Billings asked softly.

“Aren’t we in danger?”

Joe looked the two men over critically, and smiled.

“You look too seedy to be able to pay a fine, so the locals probably won’t bother you. The Federals have had a shake-up in the last couple of days. Seems Some of their men were derelict in their duty. And they’re still working the better-class sections. It’s too early in the normal pattern for you to have come as far down as skid row, yet. Just follow along behind me.”

Out on Third Street, the wind off the harbor was chill and sharp. The fog was so heavy it was like fine rain. A few gray shadows of men wandered aimlessly up and down the sidewalk, looming up out of the fog a half block away and then disappearing again.

Joe hunched his shoulders and shuffled toward the corner of Howard Street. He waited there until he saw the two familiar figures lurching along behind. He steeled himself against the somatic effects of dejection and misery, and sampled the minds of those men still out on the street. Everything seemed to be normal. Some of the men were drunk; others, lacking the price of a flop house, were drugged with weariness and lack of sleep. A pair of cops were working the street two blocks up, routing such men out of doorways or alley corners where they were trying to sleep. But they were already beyond Joe’s destination.

He waited again at the entrance to an alley, until the professors were almost up to him. They were doing very well with their act, and when they followed him into the alley it might have been no more than the act of any normal human being seeking food from a gar-bage can, or hunting redeemable bottles thrown away by some more fortunate wino.

Joe stood in the darkness of the alley, waiting until they had come up to him. He made a quick survey of the minds in the vicinity and detected no evidence that any of them had been noticed. He took a key from his pocket and opened a door. He led them down some steps, cautioning them to feel their way carefully in the blackness. He took another key and opened another door at the bottom of the steps.

He led them into the even deeper blackness of a
room,
closed the door behind them, heard the click of the latch, and snapped on a light. After the darkness, the light dazzled all of them for a moment, and then they began to see. They were in a small and neatly furnished living room.

In front of them there stood a slight little man who stared unwinkingly at Joe. Heightened by flared up eyebrows, the eyes might have been those of an owl.

“I see you made it, kid,” he said in a dry, brittle voice. He turned and called into another room, “Ma-ble, they’re here.”

The side door to the room opened, and a huge woman waddled in. Her hair had been dyed a flaring crimson, but showed a full two inches of gray at the roots. Her face appeared to be coated with varicolored enamels.

“Quick trip, son,” she said approvingly. “Coffee isn’t even ready yet.”

“Mabel ... Doc Carney ... meet my friends, Professor Billings and Professor Hoskins.” It never occurred to him to fumble for Mabel’s last name, or that Doc Carney might have any other. It never occurred to anybody. Their identities were complete and understood.

He watched both Hoskins and Billings bow slightly in the direction of Mabel. Here, in a more familiar kind of habitation, some of their dignity came back to them, and they wore it well.

“Sa-a-ay,” Mabel boomed at them in her hoarse voice, “you’re people.”

Joe was pleased to see a look of comprehension, orientation, come into Hoskins’ eyes. Perhaps that ivory tower had not been so sheltering, after all. Naturally he had never looked in to see, since that aspect of Hoskins was none of his concern. But Billings was completely bewildered. His expression seemed to say that naturally they were people.

“The word ‘people’,” Joe instructed in a dry, didactic manner, “used in this context at this ethnological stratum contains a specialized semantic content, signi-fying respect, approval, classifying you as superior in the humanities attitudes.”

Thus translated into simple English, Billings grasped the idea quickly. He took a step forward and held out his hand.

“You’re people, too,” he murmured. “That is not difficult to apprehend.”

“My-y,” she bridled in admiration, and shook his hand up and down heartily.

“You’re entirely right about that ... er ... professor,” Doc Carney said with approval. “Mabel was a hundred-dollars-a-night girl in her day. She’s real class.”

“You don’t say,” Billings murmured, without any comprehension at all.

Mabel threw him a quick look, then flicked her glance suspiciously at Hoskins. Hoskins gave her a broad grin, and with a wink indicated that Billings was not wise to the life. Mabel took it then as it was meant, a compliment. Joe hurried quickly, before he burst into laughter, into the adjoining kitchenette where the coffee had begun to percolate. The somatics in the room were wonderful. He hadn’t needed to supplement with broadcasted reassurance at all.

“And did I understand that you were introduced as Doctor?” Billings turned toward Carney after they were all seated and asked. “What field, may I ask?”

Joe heard the question and came to the doorway with the percolator in his hand.

“Doc is an honorary title,” he told Billings. “He’s a carney.”

“I beg your pardon, Joe?” Billings asked.

“Doc Carney was a practicing psychologist” Joe explained. “A mentalist at traveling carnivals. He had an act. From the stage he told you things about yourself. I was his shill in the audience one summer while I was on vacation. That’s how I got to know him. We rolled ’em in the aisles.”

“Never saw anybody pick up the codes faster than Joe,” Carney commented. “Tried to get him to stick with me, we’d have made barrels of money.”

Mabel was in her element. It had been a long time since gentlemen had sat around in her parlor, talking in high-class voices. She sat in an elegant pose in her old red sweater, and surreptitiously glanced at a wall mirror to see if her bright orange face powder and flaming lipstick were wearing well. In a provocative gesture of old, she flicked her long jet earring back and forth at the side of her cheek with her finger, and tried to shrink her broad and shapeless thighs into something like seductiveness. With the forefinger of her other hand she scraped idly and futilely at a dirt spot on her old black skirt.

The room fell suddenly silent, and all of them welcomed the steaming cups of coffee Joe carried in on a tray. All of them sipped slowly, appreciatively. Mabel alternately straightened her little finger and tucked it in again, unable to remember which was considered the more fashionable. It had been a long time since she was a hundred-dollars-a-night girl. A very long time.

“Now to business,” Joe said crisply, and set his cup down on an end table beside his chair.

Hoskins and Billings were past any stage of astonishment. It seemed quite natural to them that Mabel was their landlady; that she owned half of the property on the short line; that she had documents, letters, in-scribed jewelry, and memories of former days which protected her against shakedown and blackmail.

“I could tell you plenty about these sanctimonious old geezers who tell the rest of the world how to be good,” she boomed. “But I leave them alone and they’re glad to leave me alone. It’s the same with my tenants. As long as you boys treat me fair, pay your bills, and don’t get me mixed up in your troubles, I leave you alone. I don’t know what you’re doing here. I don’t want to know. It’s none of my business.

I don’t pry and snoop. I don’t have to. I’ve already seen everything.”

“She means it, too,” Joe said. “Mabel doesn’t pretend to be respectable, you know. So she doesn’t need to get her kicks out of peeking and spying and being scandalized and righteously indignant.”

Mabel turned and looked at him with shrewd eyes.

“What would you now about it, son?” she asked. “You’re not even dry behind the ears yet.”

Joe winked at her and pulled his mouth into an expression of self-mockery.

“Why, Mabel,” he said, teasing her, “you’ve heard about this terrible younger generation. I might even be able to tell you a few things.”

She threw back her head and roared with a hearty laughter. They went back to business.

Doc Carney was to be their outside contact man, buying all their supplies for them. Hoskins and Billings wouldn’t need to go outside at all. There was a big room, beyond the bedrooms to this apartment, which could be fitted into their workshop. Long ago power lines had been cut into the trunks under the street. It was never exactly mentioned, but it gradually became clear that the former tenants, who had paved the way for them, were counterfeiters.

It became apparent also, as Joe had planned, that Mabel and Carney assumed they were also counterfeiters. Obviously Billings was the engraver, no doubt some old renegade who had once worked for the Treasury. Hoskins must be the mechanic, the handy man, the chemist. Joe was the front for the outfit. And now that Mabel and Carney had seen them all, Joe was probably the brains of the outfit, too.

These other two were putting on a good show at being college teachers, but it wasn’t all show. they really were out of this world, and didn’t know enough to come in out of the rain.

When they began listing some of the things they needed, Carney’s suspicions were confirmed, although his eyes opened wide at the list of electronic and chemical equipment they felt they might need.

His expression indicated he thought these boys were really going first-class.

“You can’t buy this stuff with queer money,” he said at one point coming right out into the open with his suspicions. “I can get all this stuff cheap. The boys heist it from warehouses, or highjack it, or lift it from labs and plants. Most of this stuff is hard to dispose of, so it’ll be cheap. They got no sense about what will move fast. Their fingers stick to everything. Still, you got to play fair with them. Pay them with queer, and you cut off your own nose.”

“The money will be good, Carney,” Joe reassured him. “This is a square deal all around.”

“That’s all I want to know,” Carney answered with relief. “How you pass the stuff and get good money for it to pay the boys is your business.”

“I haven’t said I was going to pass any queer,” Joe reminded him.

“That’s right, son,” Mabel interrupted. “Never tell anything.”

“But just how will we get the money?” Hoskins asked. “It will take a great deal. And we’re not working on subsidy now.”

“It won’t take as much as you think,” Joe said. “We’re almost through. Just a few additions and conversions to be made now. I’ve been playing the races for it. I’ve got a system.”

Carney looked at him with admiration. The kid thought of everything. That would answer any questions about where the money came from. It was an old blind, but a good one. He threw back his head and laughed.