"What are those things, dear?" she said from her stool at the bar.
"Spore cultures," he said. "I'm just checking Crobe's formula. In a few days I'll know if they're all right."
"Can't you do it sooner, dear? I don't think this planet is very good for us."
"Well, honey, some things take as long as they take. These people pretty well let this planet go down the drain. And this mission has got to be a success."
"Yes," she said. "It has to be a success." She looked into her coffee for a bit. Then she looked up and said, "Is there anything I can do to push it along?"
He went over to her, put his arm around her and said, "You just go on being pretty and smile in the right places and it will all come off just fine." He kissed her and she clung to him for a moment.
She smiled suddenly and gave him a playful push. "Honey, you just better get back to work. In fact, I'm going to go out shopping to remove temptation."
They both laughed.
I didn't. She was egging him on, egging him on. She would ruin everything! I shut off the viewers angrily.
This was certainly no laughing matter. As long as that fiend was with him and alive, he would go speeding along toward completion, ruining everything.
The best thing to handle it was one well-placed sniper bullet. She was always walking around unescorted. Too easy.
The thought of a Countess Krak lying dead was a vision which spurred me into action.
Although some people do it, running around New York with no clothes on was no way to go about hiring a hit man.
All my raiment was gone. But that is easily replaced in New York. All I had to do was catch a bus down
Seventh Avenue to get to the Garment District. In all directions around 37th Street, there are shops, shops, shops that sell clothes, clothes, clothes.
The first problem was clothes to buy clothes in. I still had my military boots even though they were a bit gray with DDT. The problem was with the upper areas.
They had dusted their own clothes but despite copious coughing I finally found an old raincoat that was big enough. I put it on, stuffed my I.D. and money in a pocket and was on my way.
Fortunately, nobody ever looks at anybody in New York. Riding on a bus in a mauve woman's raincoat did not attract too much attention.
Shortly, I was in a shop whose signs proclaimed that it had everything for the gent. It was very nice. A sort of miniature department store. The proprietor himself waited on me. He was a very well-informed Jew. He knew what all the fashions were, from one end of the world to the other. He expressed only sympathy when I told him all my clothes had been lost in a fire. He went right to work. There was only one thing odd about the proceedings. He kept putting things on me and then calling to his wife-a charming lady named Rebecca-and asking her opinion. They never consulted me. They debated this and that about four-button sack jackets as opposed to two-button sack jackets for a man of my build, or theatrical collars as opposed to Ivy League collars for my face shape. But whatever the debate, she would finally stand back, rub her hands and say, "Oy, don't he look handsome in that." And the proprietor would say, "Good, he'll take it." They never asked my opinion once.
I wound up with several suits, topcoats, shoes,
assorted hats and haberdashery. I walked out very well dressed, carrying a tower of boxes. There was only one thing wrong: they had, by some mysterious calculation I could not fathom, estimated my bankroll to the penny. All I had left was a handful of bus tokens which they didn't seem to want. A marvel of mathematical subtraction.
I now had the whole ten thousand to go. But such was the lure of the vision of a dead and bleeding Countess Krak that I was not daunted in the least. Something would turn up.
With my new wardrobe safely deposited in the apartment, I caught a bus downtown. With many a lurch and roar, I landed in the Bowery.
I stood and looked at the black-glass and chrome high-rise with the sign Total Control, Inc. fanned out in a splendid arch: the office building of the Faustino mob. My plan was to hire a hit man on credit.
My suit was charcoal gray with a banker pinstripe. My shirt was impeccable mauve silk. My tie was a patriotic red, white and blue. My topcoat was the finest black. I reeked prosperity. Credit should be easy.
I walked past the murals depicting American history in drugs. I was not carrying a gun. And there was Angelina, her pretty brunette self. She remembered me. And why not? She had personally dumped me down the chute of the fake elevator.
"It's about time you showed up, Inkswitch," she said.
At last somebody had noticed I'd been gone!
"Accounts has been raising hell since you skipped out of your hotel."
"I did no skipping," I said stiffly. "Tell Faustino I have arrived."
"Buster, you ain't seeing the capo today." She had
been punching a computer. She read the screen. "You're several months overdue for an appointment with the consigliere."
"I'm sure there has been some misunderstanding," I said.
"Well, you just go misunderstand it with him." She beckoned to a security guard and I found myself in an elevator. It was a real one this time. So I was making progress. We shot up to the fortieth floor. I was shoved into an executive office.
Razza Louseini was sitting at his desk. His reptilian eyes fastened upon me. The knife scar that ran up from mouth to left ear went livid.
"So you're Inkswitch," he said. "I was looking for a much more prepossessing man."
"I want to hire a hit man on credit," I said. I didn't want him to get into all that Italian circumlocution.
"I'll bet you do," said Razza. "And that's what I wanted to see you about. Credit. When are you going to pay?" He was waving a bill!"You hired two snipers last fall. You got them both killed. And you never even had the decency to show up and pay the compensation. This bill," and he waved it with an Italian gesture for emphasis, "has been the subject of more legal correspondence than any other item on my desk! Attorney after attorney, collection agency after collection agency. Letters, letters, letters! I am sick of them! A consigliere has better things to do than mess around with delinquent accounts."
I was beginning to become uneasy. It must be an astronomical bill!
He was, Italian-wise, carrying on. "You know the rules. Liquidate or get liquidated. So when are you going to get this God (bleeped) bill off my God (bleeped) plate?"
"What's wrong with it?"
He echoed that a few times. "Swindle and Crouch won't pay it because they have no matching voucher. The Federal government won't pay it because you never signed it. Octopus Oil won't pay it because the third assistant vice-president didn't initial the requisition. Letters, letters, letters! Torrents of letters! And where are you? You can't be found. Skipped out of your hotel..."
"Wait a minute," I said, "I wasn't in any hotel."
"Well, whatever your story is, Inkswitch, you've had every (bleeped) computer in the organization so screwed up, it's cost a fortune in fuses."
"How much is this bill?" I said.
"Two thousand dollars," said Razza Louseini. "It isn't the money. It's the organizational screw-up. We've got to get it paid just to straighten out the computers. They're so crazy on the subject by this time that they gibber. Just yesterday we were trying to do a cost accounting for hit men for the CIA and all we could get on the printouts was the cost of Cape Canaveral. Pay this God (bleeped) bill!"
I can be pretty cunning about these things. I said, "All right, Consigliere, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll pay that bill, but you give me another hit man."
He thought about it. Sicilians are pretty quick to spot who has the leverage. "When?" he said.