He satisfied himself that there was no trace of either one left anywhere.
But, all in all, it was a pretty amateur performance. No dope addict would ever waste drugs that way. And although you can burn heroin, it is too expensive a way to imbibe it. One has to shoot it into the blood to get the maximum good out of it.
Even though it was probably a hot night, he left the window open. Looking for something to do, he found and read The Fine Art of Angling for Beginners. Finishing that, he tackled The Fine An of Baseball for Beginners.
It was not yet eight. He got interested in the TV set. He got it on. He got a picture. And then he kept pummeling and picking at its switches. He got it all out of kilter and finally got it back in again. I couldn’t figure out what he found wrong with it. It was working, sound and picture.
Somewhat impatiently, he went through the whole routine again. There was a sign that said if the TV didn’t work to call the desk and he approached the phone. Then he apparently thought better of it and slumped in a chair. He addressed the set: “All right. You’re the first viewer I ever met I couldn’t fix. So just go on hiding your 3-D control. I’ll look at you anyway!”
A movie was just coming on. The title was THE FBI IS WATCHING YOU!
He sat through all manner of shootings and car chases and wrecks. The FBI wiped out all the red agents in America. It then wiped out all the Mafia in America. It then wiped out the U.S. Congress. I could tell Heller was impressed. He kept yawning and, psychologically, that is a sure sign of tension building up and releasing.
The Washington, D.C., local late news followed.
Whites had been mugged. Blacks had been mugged. Whites had been raped. Blacks had been raped. Whites had been murdered. Blacks had been murdered.
There is a law in America that TV must cover everything impartially without showing bias and they had racially balanced the program up pretty well.
There had been no slightest mention of any incident in Potomac Park. There hadn’t even been a line about a Mary Schmeck, a junkie, dying on the way to a hospital — such deaths are too common to even get notice.
Heller sighed and shut off the TV.
He went to bed.
It was just past six in the morning in Turkey. I, too, turned in. But I couldn’t sleep. He had not even put a chain on his room door or locked the French doors to the balcony. He had not even placed any sort of a weapon under his pillow!
He was going to be hit. That was for certain. Somewhere on the path he was taking, Bury had it all arranged. There was no IF about it. There was only WHEN?
An idiot had me on a chain and was leading me straight to my death! Maybe I would go as anonymously and unremarked as Mary Schmeck. The thought saddened me.
Chapter 7
For a man about to be hit, Heller certainly was relaxed the next morning.
There was a small buzzer on my viewer which sounded when reception intensified, if you remembered to set it and I certainly had! At 2:00 P.M. Turkish time I was blasted out of bed by it. It was 7:00 A.M. in Maryland and Heller was up and taking a shower. At least he was still alive, though I was unconfident that it would be for long.
He was splashing around in the shower. His Fleet passion for cleanliness grated on my nerves. It had been just as hot in Turkey as it had been around Washington I was sure. I didn’t have air conditioning and I was certainly more sweaty and dirty and rumpled than he had been, yet I didn’t have to take any shower! The man was clearly mad.
I went out and got a small boy by the ear and hurled him in the direction of the cookhouse and, shortly, I was back hanging over the viewer, wolfing kavun, or melon, and washing it down with kahve, the Turkish name for coffee, which is a cousin to hot jolt. I was so intent that I was gulping it down with sade and omitting mineral water swallows between sips the way you are supposed to do. The fact was forcefully called to my attention when my already raw nerves began to leap peculiarly. I dumped in the sugar and drank about a quart of water very quick. But my nerves were still jumping.
It was absolutely horrifying to watch what Heller was doing — or, more correctly, what he was not doing!
He made no baggage inspection — he simply got out a clean set of underclothes and socks from the carry-all and put them on, thus denying me any real inspection of his suitcases.
Dressed, he did not look up and down the hall before he stepped into it. He gave not the slightest glance around corners before he rounded them. He did not inspect the parking lot as he passed it for new, strange cars. And he did not even look over the restaurant when he entered but, with indecent carelessness, walked over to a booth and sat down.
A teen-age girl with a ponytail came to wait on him. He said, “Where’s that elderly woman that was here last night?” Evidently the stupid idiot had formed some attachment — mother fixation no doubt!
The dumb girl went off to ask the manager of all things! She came back. “She was just temporary. You got no idea how the help shifts around in these motel chains. What’ll y’have?”
“A chocolate sundae,” said Heller. “That’s to start. Then… what’s these?” He was pointing at a picture.
“Waffles?” said the girl. “They’re just waffles.”
“Give me five,” said Heller. “And three cups of hot jo— coffee.”
I made a hurried note. Although I realized it was quite plain that he was imitating the accents of the people he talked to, he had almost strayed into a Code break. When I had the platen, those could be used to hang him high!
She came with a big, gooey chocolate sundae and he demolished it. Then she came with five separate plates of waffles and spread them around and he demolished those. Then she came with three separate cups of coffee. He emptied the sugar bowl of cubes into them and demolished those.
She was hanging around, not giving him his check. “You’re cute,” she said. “It’ll be fall semester soon. You going to sign up with a local high school?”
“I’m just passing through,” said Heller.
“(Bleep),” said the girl and stalked off. She came back with his check. She had put all the items on it. She was very frosty and uppity. Even the dollar tip didn’t seem to matter. She must have been looking at his back as she left the table but her voice came through clearly. “I never get the breaks.”
Heller said to the cashier, “I understand your lamp blew out last night.”
“Which one?”
“This one,” said Heller, tapping it.
The cashier asked the manager who was fiddling around with the cigarette display. He said, “Oh, yeah. Outside fuse. But it didn’t blow. The fuse got pulled somehow.”
He bought a whole bale of daily papers and went back to his room. A golden opportunity had been missed, I realized suddenly. I cursed Raht and Terb. They were somewhere within two hundred miles of him or I wouldn’t be getting a picture. They were depending on the fact that his clothes and suitcases were bugged to keep him ranged. I could have kicked them for not demanding a receiver-typer. Yes, I knew it was illegal for them to pack around more than a small transmitter that looked like an alarm clock. But they should have said, “(Bleep) the regulations, Gris must be served!” They hadn’t. A pair of (bleepards), both of them. A golden chance to ransack his baggage had been missed! If I had that platen, I wouldn’t be going through all this!
He got out a spin brush, filled its fluid container and washed his teeth and I was so bitter about the suitcases that I almost passed over a real Code break. That spin brush might even have a Voltarian manufacturing plate on it! Not that anybody on this planet could read it, but it was still a Code break. His obsession with cleanliness was going to ruin him yet. I didn’t even own a spin brush: they cost three credits.