Hughes grinned with effort. "Would you like a drink, Henry?"
Flynn looked around the room. "Carrot juice?"
"We can find you the hard stuff if we look."
"I don't really have time. I've got a meeting with field investigators at three."
Prosecuting wild cards, of course, for violations of the registration and public health acts.
"To business, then," Herzenhagen said. He started to light a cigarette, saw Hughes' look, then sighed and put it away. "A triple jump, I think, with one of the holdouts on the conference committee."
"Congressman Phipps," Flynn said. "He's been waffling for weeks on this - won't say yes, won't say no."
"I'll head to Latchkey to tell Gyro to get ready. Henry, if you can get hold of Phipps' schedule ...? Let's see if we can get Phipps in the body of some fat old tourist lady from Philadelphia."
And if that didn't nudge Barnett, Herzenhagen thought, he would unleash a barrage of jumping incidents throughout Washington society, not forgetting to include his little friends in the press. Stick Ted Koppel in the body of a foreign tourist named Indira, and see how long the press was willing to editorialize about civil liberties.
And if that didn't work, Herzenhagen had a little plan of his own.
The Lord, he thought, moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform.
Hughes dropped the weights and mopped his face. "You're ruthless, you know that?" His tone was admiring. He turned to the senator.
"Now, what about the logistical support you were saying you need?"
Herzenhagen stood. "This really isn't any of my business. I should head out to Latchkey and let Gyro know about his assignment."
And maybe, he thought hopefully, squeeze in an hour or two with Peggy.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Shad had heard every word. To anyone with a parabolic mike, the glass wall of Hughes' penthouse formed an exemplary diaphragm to amplify the sound of anything inside.
As soon as Shad heard the door close behind Herzenhagen he left the roof of the building opposite, moved quickly down the outside of the building, crossed the alley between them, waved to Croyd in the van, then went up Hughes' building. He ate enough photons to keep himself from having a human silhouette, and it looked as if no one was paying attention anyway. People simply didn't look for people to walk up the side of a building as if it were a sidewalk.
Strains of Scrapple from the Apple floated through his mind, an odd little instrumental accompaniment to his thoughts.
Shad vaulted over the railing of the balcony and tested the glass door. It was open - who expected an enemy from this direction?
Eyes turned toward him as the door slid open. He sucked every photon from the room and went for Hughes first. Shad knocked the old man down, drew a Smith & Wesson, and emptied it, six shots, into the chest of Senator Henry Flynn.
Hey man, some inner voice said, you just killed a US Senator! Is this some kind of great or what?
His old wounds ached as he saw Flynn fall. Then pain crackled up his leg as Hughes sank teeth into his calf. He grabbed Hughes's ear and yanked - he didn't want to bruise the man - and Hughes let go. Shad slipped a forearm around his throat and put a sleeper hold on him. Hughes struggled - he was strong for an old guy, and a nat - but he was elderly and hadn't even so much as Hartmann's combat training, and he passed out quickly.
There was a sound outside. Shad dragged Hughes to the door and locked it from the inside. "Howie?" The voice of the bewildered dietician. "Is there something wrong? Shall I call security?"
Shad smeared Hughes' fingerprints all over the Smith & Wesson, tossed the gun next to Flynn's corpse, then hoisted Hughes into a fireman's carry, and started walking down the building with him.
"Howie!" he heard. "You're scaring me!"
Croyd had the rear door of the van open. He looked like the little old crabcake lady. Shad tossed the old man inside, slammed the doors, walked to the driver's door. As he drove away he heard the rip of duct tape being torn off the roll, heard one of Hughes' awakening moans being snuffed out by tape placed across his mouth.
Shad made some random turns, found a pay phone at a corner. "Got the list?" he asked.
More tape ripped. Croyd dug the phone list out of his jacket pocket, spilling gel caps in the process, then made a series of phone calls alerting the media and police to the fact that there had been a shooting in Howard Hughes' apartment.
Shad always liked to use the cops as his allies when he could. It was harder to cover up stuff when the police were actually wandering around taking pictures.
Croyd got back in the van and Shad took off. Hughes was puffing and blowing and trying to fight his arms out of the duct tape. "You know," Croyd said, "I thought you were going to be asking my moral advice from time to time."
His voice sounded pretty strange coming out of an elderly waitress.
Shad shook his head. "They were planning on jumping a congressman so that they could pass a law to put us all in camps."
"Oh. Okay. But I was going to advise you to snuff the bastards anyway."
Shad looked over his shoulder, saw Croyd's little-old-lady eyes gleaming bright. "We're not out of control, are we?" he asked.
Croyd picked one of the gel caps off the floor of the van and popped it in his mouth. "No," he said. "Why do you ask?"
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
"Would you like a date with Katherine Hepburn?" Hughes asked. "I can get you one. Mr. Connections, that's me."
They'd slapped him around some with a towel, trying to get answers out of him, and Shad had drained a bit of body heat; but Hughes, simply in being kidnapped, seemed to have regressed into some strange, alternate personality. His mind floated around the Forties without ever quite landing anywhere.
"General MacArthur Johnson," Shad said, giving it another try. "Who's he?" He was on Hartmann's list, but Shad had done some checking and found out there was no MacArthur Johnson in the US Army, Marines, or Air Force, or on the retired list, either.
Maybe the fucker was Canadian.
"How about Jane Russell?" Hughes grinned. "Some hooters, huh?"
Shad considered again the possibility of the Hartmann solution, fun with a kitchen knife, but found his heart wasn't really in the idea anyway. He didn't have quite the same grudge against Hughes that he'd had against Gregg Hartmann.
Besides, he was afraid Croyd would enjoy it too much.
"The hell with this," Shad said, and picked up his Skorpion. "Let's do it."
"You betchum, Red Ryder." Croyd's face twitched as he taped Hughes' mouth shut and left the van. The cool night Maryland countryside opened up around them. They began walking down the lane toward the lights of Latchkey, a quarter-mile away.
Croyd rotated the yoke on his High-Standard semiautomatic shotgun so that he could fire it from the crook of his arm, just by pointing. His current appearance was that of a three-piece suit executive standing next to him at the McDonald's counter that afternoon, an image that contrasted somewhat with the weapon.
"I suppose Red Ryder was before your time," he said. He was having a hard time not talking, Shad noticed.
"I suppose he was."
"Who'd you listen to when you were growing up?
"Watch, not listen to. Scooby-Doo, I guess."
Shad traced the phone line from the house, went up a power pole, cut the line. "Never heard of Scooby-Doo, the bastard," Croyd snarled from below. "I'm getting disconnected from my culture, you know that?"
That's not all you're getting disconnected from, Shad thought.
"It's like mathematics. I always wished I learned algebra."
"Quiet for a second, okay?"
Shad covered himself in darkness, glided forward, checked out the detectors on Latchkey's fence. Infrared, he saw. Piece of cake. He swallowed enough photons to conceal body heat and waved Croyd forward over the fence.