On the way to FBI Headquarters on 69th Street, he read the Post a little more carefully. The judge and his union suit weren’t the only things that were fouled up, he saw. Things were getting pretty bad all over.
One story dealt with the recent factional fights inside the American Association for the Advancement of Medicine. A new group, the United States Medical-Professional Society, appeared to be forming as a competitor to the AAAM, and Malone wasn’t quite so sure, when he thought about it, that this news was as bad as it appeared on the surface. Fights between doctors, of course, were reasonably rare, at least on the high hysterical level the story appeared to pinpoint. But the AAAM had held a monopoly in the medical field for a long time; maybe it was about time some competition showed itself. From what he could find out in the story, the USMPS seemed like a group of fairly sensible people.
But that was one of the few rays of light Malone could discern amid the encircling bloom of the news. The gang wars had reached a new high; the Post was now publishing what it called a Daily Scoreboard, which consisted in this particular paper of six deaths, two disappearances and ten hospitalizations. The six deaths were evenly scattered throughout the country: two in New York, one each in Chicago and Detroit, and two more in San Francisco. The disappearances were in Los Angeles and in Miami, and the hospitalizations were pretty much all over.
The unions had been having trouble, too. Traditional forms of controversy appeared to have gone out the window, in favor of startling disclosures, beatings, wild cries of foul and great masses of puzzling evidence. How, for instance, Malone wondered, had the president of Local 7574 of the Fishermen’s Fraternal Brotherhood managed to mislay a pile of secret records, showing exactly how the membership was being bilked of dues, on a Boston subway train? But, somehow, he had, and the records were now causing shakeups, denials and trouble among the fishermen.
Of course, the news was not all bad. There were always the comic strips. Pogo was busily staving off an approaching wedding between Albert Alligator and a new character named Tranquil Portly, who appeared to be a brown bear. He was running into some resistance, though, from a wolflike character who planned to abscond with Albert’s cigars while Albert was honeymooning. This character, Don Coyote by name, looked like a trouble-maker, and Malone vowed to keep a careful eye on him.
And then there were other headlines:
FUSION POWER SOON COMMERCIALLY
AVAILABLE SAYS AEC HEAD
Sees Drastic Cut in Power Rates
UN POLICE CONTINGENT OKAYED:
MILLION MEN TO FORM 1ST GROUP
Member Countries Pledge $20
Billion in Support Moneys
OFFICIAL STATES: “WE’RE AHEAD AFTER 17 YEARS!”
US Space Program Tops Russian Achievements
ARMED FORCES TO TOUGHEN TRAINING PROGRAM IN 1974 Gen. Foote: “Our aim is to train fighting men, not to run a country club.”
GOVERNMENT TO SAVE $1 BILLION ANNUALLY?
Senator Hits Duplication of Effort in Government,
Vows Immediate Reform
Malone read that one a little more carefully, because it looked, at first sight, like one of the bad-news items. There had been government-spending reforms before, almost all of which had resulted in confusion, panic, loss of essential services—and twice as many men on the payroll, since the government now had to hire useless efficiency experts, accountants and other such supernumerary workers.
But this time, the reform looked as if it might do some good. Of course, he told himself sadly, it was still too early to tell.
The senator involved was Deeks, of Massachusetts, who was also in the news because of a peculiar battle he had had with Senator Furbisher of Vermont. Congress, Malone noted, was still acting up. Furbisher claimed that the moneys appropriated for a new Vermont dam were really being used for the dam. But Deeks had somehow come into possession of several letters written by a cousin of Furbisher’s, detailing some of the graft that was going on in the senator’s home state. Furbisher was busily denying everything, but his cousin was just as busy confessing all to anybody who would listen. It was building up into an extremely interesting fracas, and, Malone thought, it would have been even funnier than Pogo except that it was happening in the Congress of the United States.
He heaved a sigh, folded up the paper and entered the building that housed the New York contingent of the FBI.
Boyd was waiting in his office when he arrived.
“Well, there, Kenneth,” he said. “And how are all our little Slavic brothers?”
“You refer, no doubt,” Boyd said, “to the _Meeneestyerstvoh Vnootrenikh Dyehl_?”
“Gesundheit,” Malone said kindly.
“The MVD,” Boyd said. “I’ve been studying for days to pull it on you when you got back.”
Malone nodded. “Very well, then,” he said in a stately, orotund tone. “Say it again.”
“Damn it,” Boyd said, “I can’t say it again.”
“Cheer up,” Malone said. “Maybe some day you’ll learn. Meantime, Thomas, did you get the stuff we talked about?”
Boyd nodded. “I think I got enough of it,” he said. “Anyhow, there is a definite trend developing. Come on into the private office, and I’ll show you.”
There, on Boyd’s massive desk, were several neat piles of paper.
“It looks like enough,” Malone said. “As a matter of fact, it looks like too much. Haven’t we been through all this before?”
“Not like this, we haven’t,” Boyd said. “Information from all over, out of the everywhere, into the here.” He picked up a stack of papers and handed them to Malone.
“What’s this?” Malone said.
“That,” Boyd said, “is a report on the Pacific Merchant Sailors’ Brotherhood.”
“Goody,” Malone said doubtfully.
Boyd came over, pulling at his beard thoughtfully, and took the top few sheets out of Malone’s hands. “The report,” he said, looking down at the sheets, “includes the checks we made on the office of the president of the Brotherhood, as well as the Los Angeles local and the San Francisco local.”
“Only two?” Malone said. “That seems as if you’ve been lying down on the job.”
“They’re the top two in membership,” Boyd said. “But listen to this: the president and three of his underlings resigned day before yesterday, and not quite in time. The law—by which I mean us, and a good many other people—is hot on their tails. It seems somebody accidentally mixed up a couple of envelopes.”
“Sounds like a case for the Post Office,” Malone said brightly.
“Not these envelopes,” Boyd said. “There was a letter that was supposed to go to the head of the San Francisco local, dealing with a second set of books—not the ones used for tax purposes, but the real McCoy. The letter didn’t get to the San Francisco man. Instead, it went to the attorney general of the state of California.”
“Lovely,” Malone said. “Meanwhile, what was San Francisco doing?”
Boyd smiled. “San Francisco was getting confused,” he said. “Like everybody else. The San Francisco man got a copy of an affidavit dealing with merchant-ship tonnage. That was supposed to go to the attorney general.”
“Good work,” Malone said. “So when the Frisco boys woke up to what was happening—”
“They called the head man, and he put two and two together, resigned and went into hiding. Right now, he’s probably living an undercover life as a shoe salesman in Paris, Kentucky.”
“And, after all,” Malone added, “why not? It’s a peaceful life.”
“The attorney general, of course, impounded the second set of books,” Boyd went on. “A grand jury is hearing charges now.”
“You know,” Malone said reflectively, “I almost feel sorry for the man. Almost, but not quite.”
“I see what you mean,” Boyd said. “It is a hell of a thing to happen.”
“On the other hand—” Malone leafed through the papers in a hurry, then put them back on Boyd’s desk with a sigh of relief. “I’ve got the main details now,” he said. “I can go through the thing more thoroughly later. Anything else?”
“Oh, lots,” Boyd said. “And all in the same pattern. The FPM, for instance, literally dropped one in our laps.”
“Literally?” Malone said. “What was the Federation of Professional Musicians doing in your lap?”
“Not mine,” Boyd said hastily. “Not mine. But it seems that some secretary put a bunch of file folders on the windowsill of their second-floor offices, and they fell off. At the same time, an agent was passing underneath, slipped on a banana peel and sat down on the sidewalk. Bingo, folders in lap.”
“Wonderful,” Malone said. “The hand of God.”
“The hand of something, for sure,” Boyd said. “Those folders contain all the ammunition we’ve ever needed to get after the FPM. Kickbacks, illegal arrangements with night-clubs, the whole works. We’re putting it together now, but it looks like a long, long term ahead for our friends from the FPM.”
And Boyd went to his desk, picked up a particularly large stack of papers. “This,” he said, “is really hot stuff.”
“What do you call the others?” Malone said. “Crime on ice?”
“The new show at the Winter Garden,” Boyd said blithely. “Don’t miss it if you can.”
“Sure,” Malone said. “So what’s so hot?”
Boyd smiled. “The police departments of seven major cities,” he said. “They’re all under attack either by the local prosecuting attorney or the state’s attorney general. It seems there’s a little graft and corruption going on.”
“This,” Malone said, “is not news.”
“It is to the people concerned,” Boyd said. “Four police chiefs have resigned, along with great handfuls of inspectors, captains and lieutenants. It’s making a lovely wingding all over the country, Ken.”
“I’ll bet,” Malone said.
“And I checked back on every one,” Boyd went on. “Your hunch was absolutely right, Ken. The prosecuting attorneys and the attorneys general are all new men—all the ones involved in this stuff. Each one replaced a previous incumbent in a recent election. In two cases, the governor was new, too—elected last year.”
“That figures,” Malone said. “What about the rest?”
Boyd’s grandiose wave of a hand took in all the papers on the desk. “It’s all the same,” he said. “They all follow a pattern, Ken, the pattern. The one you were looking for.”
Malone blinked. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “I’ll be doubly damned.”
“And how about the Russians?” Boyd said.
“You mean the Meeneestyerstvoh Vnootrenikh Dyehl?” Malone said.
“Now,” Boyd said, “I’ll be damned. And after I practiced for days.”
“Ah,” Malone said. “But I was there. The Russians are about as mixed up as a group of Transylvanian villagers with two vampires to track down and not enough flambeaux for all. Here, for instance, is just one example: the conflicting sets of orders that were given about me and Her Majesty and L—Miss Garbitsch.”
Briefly, he outlined what had happened.
“Sounds like fun,” Boyd said.
“They were so busy arguing with each other,” Malone finished, “that I have a feeling we hardly needed the teleportation to escape. It would just have taken longer, that’s all.” He paused. “By the way, Tom, about the stakeout—”
“Luba Garbitsch is being protected as if she were Fort Knox,” Boyd said. “If any Soviet agent tries to approach her with a threat of any kind, we’ll have him nabbed before he can say Ivan Robinovitch.”
“Or,” Malone suggested, “Meeneestyerstvoh—”
“If we waited for that one,” Boyd said, “we might have to wait all day.” He paused. “But who’s doing it?” he went on. “That’s still the question. Martians? Venerians? Or is that last one Venusians?”
“Aphrodisiacs,” Malone suggested diplomatically.
“Thank you, no,” Boyd said politely. “I never indulge while on duty.”
“Thomas,” Malone said, “you are a Rover Boy First-Class.”
“Good,” Boyd said. “But, meanwhile, who is doing all this? Would you prefer Evil Beings from the Planet Ploor?”
“I would not,” Malone said firmly.
“But I have a strange feeling,” Boyd said, “that, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, you do not hold with the Interplanetary Alien Theory.”
“Frankly,” Malone said, “I’m not sure of anything. Not really. But I do want to know why, if it’s interplanetary aliens doing this stuff, they’re picking such a strange way of going about it.”
“Strange?” Boyd said. “What’s strange about it? You wouldn’t expect Things from Ploor to come right out and tell us what they want, would you? It’s against custom. It may even be against the law.”
“Well, maybe,” Malone said. “But it is pretty strange. The difference between what’s happening in Russia and what’s happening here—”
“What difference?” Boyd said. “Everybody’s confused. Here, and over there. It all looks the same to me.”
“Well, it isn’t,” Malone said. “Take a look at the paper, for instance.” He tossed the Post at Boyd, who caught it with a spasmodic clutching motion and reassembled it slowly.
“Why throw things?” Boyd said. “You sore or something?”
“I guess I am,” Malone said. “But not at you. It’s—somebody or something. Person or persons unknown.”
“Or Ploorians,” Boyd said.
“Whatever,” Malone said. “But take a look at the paper and see if you see what I see.” He paused. “Does that mean anything?” he said.
“Probably,” Boyd said. “We’ll figure it out later.” He leafed through the newspaper slowly, pulling thoughtfully at his beard from time to time. Malone watched him in breathless silence.
“See it?” he said at last.
Boyd looked up and, very slowly, nodded. “You’re right, Ken,” he said in a quiet voice. “You’re absolutely right. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
“And that,” Malone said, “sounds like an insult. It’s much plainer than that. Suppose you tell me.”
Boyd considered. “Over here,” he said at last, “there are a lot of confused jerks and idiots. Right?”
“Correct,” Malone said.
“And in Russia,” Boyd went on, “there’s a lot of confusion. Right?”
“Sure,” Boyd said. “It’s perfectly clear. I wonder why I didn’t see it before.”
“That’s it!” Malone cried. “That’s the difference!”
“Sure,” Boyd said. “It’s perfectly clear. I wonder why I didn’t see it before.”
“Because you weren’t looking for it,” Malone said. “Because nobody was. But there’s one more check I want to make. There’s one area I’m not sure of, simply because I don’t have enough to go on.”
“What area is that?” Boyd said. “It seems to me we did a pretty good job—”
“The Mafia,” Malone said. “We know they’re having trouble, but—”
“But we don’t know what kind of trouble,” Boyd finished. “Right you are.”
Malone nodded. “I want to talk to Manelli,” he said. “Can we set it up?”
“I don’t see why not,” Boyd said. “The A-in-C can give us the latest on him. You want me with you?”
“No,” Malone said after some thought. “No. You go and see Mike Sand, heading up the International Truckers’ Union. We know he’s tied up with the Syndicate, and maybe you can get some information from him. You know what to dig for?”
“I do now,” Boyd said. He reached for the intercom phone.
Cesare Antonio Manelli was a second-generation Prohibition mobster, whose history can most easily be described by reference to the various affairs of State which coincided with his development. Thus:
When Cesare was a small toddler of uncertain gait and chubby visage, the Twenty-First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States canceled out not only the Eighteenth Amendment, but the thriving enterprises conducted by Manelli, Sr., and many of his friends.
When Cesare was a young schoolboy, poring over the multiplication tables, his father and his father’s friends were busy dividing. They were dividing, to put it more fully, husbands from families as a means of requesting ransom, and money from banks as a means of getting the same cash without use of the middleman, or victim. This was the period of the Great Readjustment, and the frenzied search among gangland’s higher echelons for a substitute for bootlegging.
And when Cesare was an innocent high-schooler, sporting a Paleolithic switchblade knife and black leather jacket, his father and his father’s friends had reached a new plateau. They consolidated into a Syndicate, and began to concentrate on gambling and the whole, complex, profitable network of unions.
And then World War II had come along, and it was time for Cesare to do his part. Bidding a fond farewell to his father and such of his father’s friends as had survived the disagreements of Prohibition, the painful legal processes of the early Thirties and the even more painful consolidations of the years immediately before the war, young Cesare went off to foreign lands, where he distinguished himself by creating and running the largest single black-market ring in all of Southern Europe.
Cesare had followed in his father’s footsteps. And, before his sudden death during a disagreement in Miami, Giacomo “Jack the Ripper” Manelli was proud of his son.
“Geez,” he often said. “Whattakid, huh? Whattakid!”
At the war’s end, young Cesare, having proven himself a man, took unto himself a nickname and a shotgun. He did not have to use the shotgun very much, after the first few lessons; soon he was on his way to the top.
There was nowhere for Cesare “Big Cheese” Antonio Manelli to go, except up.
Straight up.
Now, in 1973, he occupied a modestly opulent office on Madison Avenue, where he did his modest best to pretend to the world at large that he was only a small cog—indeed, an almost invisible cog—in a large advertising machine. His best was, for all practical purposes, good enough.
Though it was common knowledge among the spoil-sport law enforcement officers who cared to look into the matter that Manelli was the real owner of the agency, there was no way to prove this. He didn’t even have a phone under his own name. The only way to reach him was by going through his front man in the agency, a blank-faced, truculent Arab named Atif Abdullah Aoud.
According to the agent-in-charge of the New York office, Malone had his choice of two separate methods of getting to Manelli. One, more direct, was to walk in, announce that he was an agent of the FBI, and insist on seeing Manelli. If he had a search warrant, the A-in-C told him, he might even get in. But, even if he did, he would probably not get anything out of Manelli.
The second and more diplomatic way was to call up Atif Abdullah Aoud and arrange for an appointment.
Malone made his decision in a flash. He flipped on the phone and punched for a PLaza exchange.
The face that appeared on the screen was that of a fairly pretty, if somewhat vapid, brunette. “Rodger, Willcoe, O’Vurr and Aoud, good afternoon,” she said.
Malone blinked.
“Who is calling, please?” the girl said. She snapped gum at the screen and Malone winced and drew away.
“This is Kenneth J. Malone,” he said from what he considered a safe distance. “I want to talk to Mr. Aoud.”
“Mr. Aoud?” she said in a high, unhelpful whine.
“That’s right,” Malone said patiently. “You can tell him that there may be some government business coming his way.”
“Oh,” she said. “But Mr. Aoud isn’t in.”
Mr. Aoud wasn’t in. Mr. Aoud was out. Malone turned that over in his mind a few times, and decided to try and forget it just as quickly as possible. “Then,” he said, “let me talk to one of the other partners.”
“Partners?” the girl said. She popped her gum again. Malone moved back another inch.
“You know,” he said. “The other people he works with. Rodger, or Willcoe, or O’Vurr.”
“Oh,” the girl said. “Them.”
“That’s right,” Malone said patiently.
“How about Mr. Willcoe?” the girl said after a second of deep and earnest thought. “Would he do?”
“Why not let’s try him and see?” Malone said.
“Okay,” the girl said brightly. “Let’s.” She flashed Malone a dazzling smile, only slightly impeded by the gum, and flipped off. Malone stared at the blank screen for a few seconds, and then the girl’s voice said, invisibly: “Mr. Willcoe will speak to you now, Mr. Melon. Thank you for waiting.”
“I’m not—” Malone started to say, and then the face of Frederick Willcoe appeared on the screen.
Willcoe was a thin, wrinkle-faced man with very pale skin. He seemed to be in his sixties, and he looked as if he had just lost an all-night bout with Count Dracula. Malone looked interestedly for puncture marks, but failed to find any.
“Ah,” Willcoe said, in a voice that sounded like crinkled paper. “Mr. Melon. Good afternoon.”
“I’m not Mr. Melon,” Malone said testily.
Willcoe looked gently surprised, like a man who has discovered that his evening sherry contains cholesterol. “Really?” he said. “Then I must be on the wrong line. I beg your pardon.”
“You’re not on the wrong line,” Malone said. “I am Mr. Melon in a way.” That didn’t sound very clear when he got it out, so he added: “Your secretary got my name wrong. She thinks I’m Mr. Melon—Kenneth J. Melon.”
“But you’re not,” Willcoe said.
Malone resisted an impulse to announce that he was really Lamont Cranston. “I’m Kenneth J. Malone,” he said.
“Ah,” Willcoe said. “Quite amusing. Imagine my mistaking you for a Mr. Melon, when you’re really Mr. Malone.” He paused, and his face got even more wrinkled. “But I don’t know you under either name,” he said. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk to Mr. Manelli,” Malone said.
“But Mr. Aoud—”
“Mr. Aoud,” Malone said, wondering if it sounded as silly to Willcoe as it did to him, “isn’t in. So I thought you might be able to arrange an appointment for this afternoon.”
Willcoe bit his lip. “Mr. Manelli isn’t in just now,” he said.
“Yes,” Malone said. “I didn’t think he would be. That’s why I want to arrange an appointment for later, when he will be in.”
“Does Mr. Manelli know you?” Willcoe said suspiciously, the wrinkles deepening again.
“He knows my boss,” Malone said carefully. “You just tell him that this is something that ought to be worth time and money to him. His time, and his money.”
“Hmm,” Willcoe said. “I see. Would you wait a moment, Mr. Mel—Mr. Malone?”
The screen blanked out immediately. The wait this time was slightly longer.
And the next face that appeared on the screen was that of Cesare “Big Cheese” Antonio Manelli, the nearly invisible cog.
For a cog, the face was not a bad one. It was strong and well-muscled, and it had dark, wavy hair running along the top. At the sides of the face, the hair was greying slightly, and behind the grey two large ears stuck out. Manelli’s nose was a long, faintly aquiline affair and his eyes were very pleasant and candid. They were light grey.
“Aha,” Manelli said. “You are Mr. Malone, right?” His voice was guttural, but it was obvious that he was trying for control. “I regret announcing that I was out, Mr. Malone,” he said. “But a man in my position—I like privacy, Mr. Malone, and I try to keep privacy for myself. Let me request you to answer a question, Mr. Malone: do I know you, Mr. Malone?”
“Not personally,” Malone said. “I—”
“But I’m supposed to know your boss,” Manelli said. “I don’t know him, either, so far.”
Malone shrugged. “I’m sure you do,” he said, and dropped the name almost casually: “Andrew J. Burris.”
Manelli raised his eyebrows. “So that’s who you are,” he said. “I ought to have known, Mr. Malone. And you want to talk to me a little bit, right?”
“That’s right,” Malone said.
“But this is no way to act, Mr. Malone,” Manelli said reproachfully. “After all, we understand each other, you and me. What you should do, you should come in through channels, in the correct way, so everything it would be open and above the board.”
“Through channels?” Malone said.
Manelli regarded him with a pitying glance. “You must be new on your job, Mr. Malone,” he said. “Because there is an entire system built up, and you don’t know about it. The way things work, we sit around and we don’t see people. And then somebody comes and presents his credentials, you might say—search warrants, for instance, or subpoenas. And then we know where we are.”
Malone shook his head. “This isn’t that kind of call,” he said. “It’s more a friendly type of call.”
“Mr. Malone,” Manelli said. The reproach was stronger in his voice. “You must be very new at your job.”
“Nevertheless,” Malone said.
Manelli hesitated only a second. “Because I like you,” he said, “and to teach you how things operate around here, I could do you a favor.”
“Good,” Malone said patiently.
“In an hour,” Manelli said. “My place. Here.”
The screen blanked out before Malone could even say goodbye.
Malone got up, went out to the corridor, and decided that, since he had time to kill, he might as well walk on down to Manelli’s office. That, he told himself, would give him time to decide what he wanted to say.
He toyed at first with the idea of a nice bourbon and soda in a Madison Avenue bar, but he discarded that idea in a hurry. It was always possible for him to get into a tight spot and have to teleport his way out, and he didn’t want to be fuzzy around the edges in case that happened. Trotkin’s had showed him that, under enough stress, he could manage the job with quite a lot of vodka in him. But there was absolutely no sense, he told himself sadly, in taking chances.
He started off downtown along Fifth. Soon he was standing in front of the blue-and-crystal tower of the Ravell Building.
That made up his mind for him. He checked his watch, mentally flipped a coin and then cheated a little to make the answer come out right. He went inside and stepped into an elevator.
“Six,” he said with decision.
Lou was sitting at the Psychical Research Society desk, talking to the tweedy Sir Lewis Carter. Malone waved at Carter, decided that conversation with Lou was out, and started to walk away. Then he realized that he couldn’t have Carter thinking he was crazy. He had to figure out something to tell the man—and in a hurry, too.
Carter smiled and gestured to him. “Ah, Mr. Malone,” he said. “I’m glad you brought our Lou home safely. I’ve heard a little about your— ah—escapade. Astounding, really.”
“Not for the FBI,” Malone said modestly. “We’ve been through too much.”
“But—”
“No, really,” Malone said. “We never call anything astounding any more.”
“I can well imagine,” Carter said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
Malone thought fast. He had to have something, and he didn’t have much time. “Why—uh—” he said, and then it came to him. “Yes, as a matter of fact you can,” he said.
“Glad to be of service,” Carter said. “I’m sure we can do anything you request.”
“Have you got any more data on telepathic projection?” Malone said.
Sir Lewis Carter frowned. “Telepathic projection?” he said.
“The stuff—the phenomenon Cartier Taylor mentioned,” Malone said, “in Minds and Morons. I think it was page eighty-four.”
“Oh,” Carter said. “Oh, yes. Of course. Well, Mr. Malone, we’ll see what we can do for you.”
Malone sighed. “Thanks,” he said mournfully. “I guess—I guess that’s all, then.” He smiled at Lou, and turned the smile into a terrifying scowl when his eye caught Carter’s. “Oh,” Malone said. “So long. So long, everybody.”
“Ken—”
This was not, he told himself sadly, either the time or the place. “Goodbye, Sir Lewis,” he said. “Goodbye, Lou.”
The elevator opened its doors and received him.
Exactly fifty-nine minutes after Cesare Manelli had hung up on him, Malone showed up in the stately and sumptuous suite that belonged, for a stiff fee every month, to the firm of Rodger, Willcoe, O’Vurr and Aoud. The girl at the desk was his old Spearmint friend.
“Mr. Manelli,” Malone said. “I’ve got an appointment. My name is Malone and his is Manelli. He works here.” That, he told himself, was an understatement; but at least he had a chance of getting his point across.
“Oh,” the girl said. Her gum popped. “Certainly. Right away, Mr. Maloney.”
Malone opened his mouth, then shut it again. It just wasn’t worth the trouble, he thought.
The girl did things with a switchboard, then turned to him again. “Mr. Manelli’s office is right down there in back,” she said, pointing vaguely. “Think you can find it, Mr. Maloney?”
“I’ll try,” Malone promised. He went down the long corridor and stopped at an unmarked door. It was at least an even chance, he told himself, and opened the door.
The room inside appeared to be mostly desk. The gigantic slab of wood sat against the far wall of the room, in the right-hand corner and spreading over toward the center. It appeared, in the soft half-light of the room, to be waiting for somebody to walk into its lair. Malone was sure, at first sight, that this desk ate people; it was just the type: big and dark and glowering and massive.
There wasn’t anybody seated behind it, which reinforced his belief. The desk had eaten its master. Now it was out of control and they would have to have it shot. Malone took a deep breath and tried not to veer.
Then he heard a voice.
“Sit down, Mr. Malone,” the voice said. “How about you having a drink while we talk? If this is going to be so friendly.”
The voice didn’t belong to the desk. It belonged, unmistakably, to Big Cheese himself. Malone turned and saw him, sitting in the left-hand corner of the room behind a low table. There was another empty chair facing Manelli, and Malone went over and sat in it.
“A drink?” he said. “Okay. Sure.”
“Bourbon and soda, isn’t it?” Manelli said. He stood up.
“Your research department gets fast answers,” Malone said. “Bourbon and soda it is.”
“After all,” Manelli said, shrugging slightly, “a person in my position, he has to make sure he knows what is what, and all the time. It’s routine, what you call S. O. P. Standard Operating Procedure, they call it.”
“I’m sure they do,” Malone murmured politely.
“And besides,” Manelli said, “you are a well-known type. I thought I knew the name when old Fred mentioned it, or I would never talk to you. You know how it is.”
Malone nodded. “Well,” he said, as Manelli went over to a small portable bar at the back of the room and got busy, “we’re being frank, anyway.”
“And why shouldn’t we be frank, Mr. Malone?” Manelli said. “It’s a nice, friendly conversation, and what have we got on our minds?”
For the first time, as he turned, Malone got a glimpse of something behind the structured and muscular face. There was panic there, just a tiny seed under iron control, but it showed in the eyes and in the muscles of the cheek.
“Just a nice, friendly conversation,” Malone said. Manelli brought the drinks over and set them on the table.
“Take your pick,” he said. “That’s not what a good host should do, ask the guest to pick one, like a game; but I got into the habit. People get nervous about arsenic in the drinks. Which is silly.”
“Sure it is,” Malone agreed. He picked up the left-hand glass and regarded it carefully. “If you wanted to kill me, you’d need a motive and an opportunity, and you don’t have either at the moment. Besides, you’d make sure to be far away when it happened.” He hoped he sounded confident. He took a sip of the drink, but it tasted like bourbon and soda.
“Mr. Malone,” Manelli said, “you say these things about me, and it hurts. It hurts me, right here.” He pressed a hand over the checkbook side of his jacket. “I’m a legitimate businessman, and no different from any other legitimate businessman. You can’t prove anything else.”
“I know I can’t,” Malone said. “But I want to talk to you about your real business.”
“This is my real business,” Manelli said. “The advertising agency. I work here. Advertising is in my blood. And I don’t understand the least little bit why you have to do things to me all the time.”
“Do things?” Malone said. “What did I do?”
“Now, Mr. Malone,” Manelli said. He took a swallow of his drink. “You said let’s be frank, so I’m frank. Why not you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Malone said, telling part of the truth.
Manelli took another swallow of his drink, fished in a jacket pocket and brought out two cigars. “Smoke, Mr. Malone?” he said. “The very best, from Havana, Cuba. Cost me a dollar and a half each.”
Malone looked with longing at the cigar. But it was okay for Manelli to smoke cigars, he thought bitterly. Manelli was a gangster, and who cared how he looked? Malone was an FBI man, and FBI men didn’t smoke cigars. Particularly Havana cigars. That, he told himself with regretful firmness, was that.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I never smoke on duty.”
Manelli shrugged and put one cigar away. He lit the other one and dense clouds of smoke began to rise in the room. Malone breathed deeply.
“I understand you’ve been having troubles,” he said.
Manelli nodded. “Now, you see, Mr. Malone?” he said. “You tell me you don’t know what’s happening, but you know I got troubles. How come, Mr. Malone? How come?”
“Because you have got troubles,” Malone said. “But I have nothing to do with them.” He hesitated, thought of adding: “Yet,” and decided against it.
“Now, Mr. Malone,” Manelli said. “You know better than that.”
“I do?” Malone said.
Manelli sighed, took another swallow of his drink and dragged deeply on the cigar. “Let’s take a for-instance,” he said. “Now, you understand my business is advertising, Mr. Malone?”
“It’s in your blood,” Malone said, involuntarily.
“Right,” Manelli said. “But I think about things. I like to figure things out. In a sort of a theoretical way, like a for-instance. Understand?”
“What sort of theoretical story are you going to tell me?” Malone said.
Manelli leaned back in his chair. “Let’s take, for instance, some numbers runners who had some trouble the other day, got beat up and money taken from them. Maybe you read about it in the papers.”
“I haven’t been following the papers much,” Malone said.
“That’s all right,” Manelli said grandly. “Maybe it wasn’t in the papers. But anyhow, I figured out maybe that happened. I had nothing to do with this, Mr. Malone; you understand that? But I figured out how maybe it happened.”
“How?” Malone said.
Manelli took another puff on his cigar. “Maybe there was an error at a racetrack—we could say Jamaica, for instance, just for laughs. And maybe two different totals were published for the pari-mutuel numbers, and both got given out. So the numbers runners got all fouled up, so they got beat up and money taken from them.”
“It could have happened that way,” Malone said.
“I figure maybe the FBI had something to do with this,” Manelli said.
“We didn’t,” Malone said. “Frankly.”
“And that’s not all,” Manelli said. “Let’s say at Jamaica one day there was a race.”
“All right,” Malone said agreeably. “That doesn’t require a whole lot of imagination.”
“And let’s say,” Manelli went on, “that the bookies—if there are any bookies in this town; who knows?—that they got the word about who came in, win, place and show.”
“Sounds natural,” Malone said.
“Sure it does,” Manelli said. “But there was a foul-up someplace, because the win animal was disqualified and nobody heard about it until after a lot of payoffs were made. That costs money.” He stopped. “I mean it would cost money, if it happened,” he finished.
“Sure,” Malone said. “Certainly would.”
“And you tell me it’s not the FBI?” Manelli said.
“That’s right,” Malone said. “As a matter of fact, we’re investigating things like these confusions and inefficiencies all over.”
Manelli finished his drink in one long, amazed swallow. “Now, wait a minute,” he said. “Let’s say for a joke, like, for laughs, that I am some kind of a wheel in these things, in bookies and numbers boys and like that.”
“Let’s call it a syndicate,” Malone said. “Just for laughs.”
“Okay, then,” Manelli said, with a suspicious gaze at Malone. “Whatever you call it, a man like me today, he wouldn’t be some two-bit chiseler without brains. He would be a businessman, a smooth-operating smart businessman. Right?”
“Right,” Malone said. “And what I want to know is: how’s business?”
“You’re kidding?” Manelli said.
“I’m not kidding,” Malone said. “I mean it. The FBI’s investigating mix-ups just like the ones you’re telling me about. We want to stop them.”
Manelli blinked. “You know, Mr. Malone,” he said softly, “I heard about government interference in private enterprise, but don’t you think this is a little too far out?”
Malone shrugged. “That’s what I’m here for,” he said. “Take it or leave it.”
“Just so it’s understood,” Manelli said, “that we’re talking about imaginary things. Theoretical.”
“Sure,” Malone said. “Imagine away.”
“Well,” Manelli said slowly, “you heard about this wrecked night-club in Florida? It happened maybe a month ago, in Miami?”
“I heard about it,” Malone said.
“This is just a for-instance, you know,” Manelli said. “But suppose there was a roulette wheel in that club. Just a wheel.”
“Okay,” Malone said.
“And suppose the wheel was rigged a little bit,” Manelli said. “Not seriously, just a little bit.”
“Fine,” Malone said. “This is going to explain a wrecked club?”
“Well, sure,” Manelli said. “Because something went wrong with the machinery, or maybe the operator goofed up. And number seven came up eight times in a row.”
“Good old lucky seven,” Malone said.
“So there was a riot,” Manelli said. “Because some people had money on the number, and some people got suspicious, and like that. And there was a riot.”
“And the club got wrecked,” Malone said. “That’s what I call bad luck.”
“Luck?” Manelli said. “What does luck have to do with roulette? Somebody goofed, that’s all.”
“Oh,” Malone said. “Sure.”
“And that’s the way it’s been going,” Manelli said. He puffed on his cigar, put it in a nearby ashtray, and blew out a great Vesuvian spout of smoke.
“Too bad,” Malone said sympathetically.
“It’s all over,” Manelli said. “Mistakes and people making the mistakes, goofing up here and there and everyplace. There have been guys killed because they made mistakes, and nobody can afford guys being killed all the time.”
“It does run into expense,” Malone said.
“And time, and hiring guys to do the killing, and then they goof up, too,” Manelli said. “It’s terrible. Some guys have even been killed without they made any mistakes at all. Just by accident, sort of.”
“Well,” Malone said carefully, “you can depend on the government to do everything in its power to straighten things out.”
Manelli frowned. “You mean that, Mr. Malone?”
“Of course I do,” Malone said honestly. He hadn’t, he reminded himself, promised to help Manelli. He had only promised to straighten things out. And he could figure out what that might mean later, when he had the time.
“All I say is, it’s funny,” Manelli said. “It’s crazy.”
“That’s the way it is,” Malone said.
Manelli looked at him narrowly. “Mr. Malone,” he said at last, “maybe you mean it at that. Maybe you do.”
“Sure I do,” Malone said. “After all, the government is supposed to help its citizens.”
Manelli shook his head. “Mr. Malone,” he said, “you can call me Cesare. Everybody does.”
“No, they don’t,” Malone said. “They call you Cheese. I’ve got a research staff too.”
“So call me Cheese,” Manelli said. “I don’t mind.”
“There’s only one little trouble,” Malone said. “If I called you Cheese, you’d call me Ken. And word would get around.”
“I see what you mean,” Manelli said.
“I don’t think either one of us wants his associates to think we’re friends,” Malone said.
“I guess not,” Manelli said. “It would cause uneasiness.”
“And a certain lack of confidence,” Malone said. “So suppose I go on calling you Mr. Manelli?”
“Fine,” Manelli said. “And I’ll call you Mr. Malone, like always.”
Malone smiled and stood up. “Well, then,” he said, “goodbye, Mr. Manelli.”
Manelli rose, too. “Goodbye, Mr. Malone,” he said. “And good luck, if you really mean what you said.”
“Oh, I do,” Malone said.
“Because things are terrible,” Manelli said. “And they’re getting worse every day. You should only know.”
“Don’t worry,” Malone said. “Things will be straightened out pretty soon.” He hoped, as he went out the door and down the corridor, that he was telling the truth there, at least. He’d sounded fairly confident, he thought, but he didn’t feel quite so confident. The secretary was busy on the switchboard when he came out into the anteroom, and he went by without a greeting, his mind busy, churning and confused.
He felt as if his head were on just a little crooked. Or as if, maybe, he had a small hole in it somewhere and facts were leaking out onto the sidewalk.
If he only looked at the problem in the right way, he told himself, he would see just what was going on.
But what was the right way?
“That,” Malone murmured as he hailed a cab for the ride back to 69th Street, “is the big, sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. And how much time do I have for an answer?”
