I spotted Grafferty.
"I want this (bleepard)," Police Inspector Grafferty said. "I spotted him in a sex-pervert lineup three years ago and have just been waiting for him to make his first misstep. And now he has: He's brought himself to the attention of a psychiatrist. Fatal every time. And speaking of psychiatrists, what happened to your face?"
"Skateboards at point-blank range," I said.
"Oh, yeah. I remember now. You're the Fed that tipped us off about the Skateboard Bandits. I never forget a face. We never caught them, you know. But thanks for the tip. I wish this yacht would hurry up and come in."
"Busy day?" I said.
"Yeah, I've got to organize a police escort for the mayor's wife. She's going to make a speech tonight on the subject of mental health and she always drives the audience crazy. There comes the yacht now."
The Golden Sunset was coming up the Hudson. A tug got a line aboard her and took her in tow for the last quarter mile. She was a beautiful ship, all white with gold scrolls, more like a cruise liner than a yacht. The red Turkish flag with its yellow star and crescent floated out from her taffrail in the Hudson River breeze. Gulls were spiralling around. Helicopters from the nearby heliport added to the busy scene.
The tug, with many toots going back and forth from the yacht bridge to the tug pilothouse, nudged her into the berth. Ye Gods, she was big. I hadn't realized how large two hundred feet and two thousand tons of ship could be.
They were getting a gangway into her opened rail and the Federal mob swarmed aboard to suspect things and annoy people. They weren't in on what we intended. They all came off after a while, bitterly disappointed to have found no Chinese being smuggled in and thwarted in their efforts, by a vigilant crew, to plant contraband.
Now was our chance. People could come off.
Instead of that, two people went on. They were the butler from Heller's condo and Krak's lady's maid.
We watched the gangway and the hawsers. Nobody could get off that ship without our seeing it. We knew better than to go aboard, only to have the quarry sneak ashore behind us.
The butler and the lady's maid, assisted by several crew members, were bringing the Countess Krak's bag-gage to the pier and waiting taxis.
"Where is this guy?" said Grafferty, growing restless.
And there came Captain Bitts.
At the bottom of the gangway, Grafferty stopped him. "You have a passenger. And you better tell me where he is and that he has to come quietly."
"A passenger?" said Bitts. "Oh, you must mean the CIA man."
I lurked behind crates on the dock. I did not want to be seen. Also, I wanted to be out of the road of gunfire. I knew Heller's habits.
"I mean this man!" said Grafferty, displaying a blowup of Wister.
"Yeah," said Captain Bitts. "That man." He gazed back at the ship. "Well, he wanted us to teach him how to shoot dice. I don't know how he did it. He won back his marker. Then he won all my cash. And then he won all the crew's cash. And finally, he offered to bet us all he'd won against our putting him ashore if he could shoot five sevens in a row. Of course, that's impossible, so we made the wager."
Grafferty was impatient. "Well, WHAT HAPPENED?"
Bitts sighed. "The worst of it was, we afterwards sawed the dice in half and they weren't even loaded. So we put him ashore last night on the Jersey coast. By the way, as you're a cop, could you let me have two bits so I can phone the credit company and get some money? There's not a dime left on the ship. We're cleaned out."
I drew back quickly. Grafferty was raving about illegal landings and Bitts was replying about New Jersey wasn't New York, and when did the CIA become illegal aliens? It was pretty messy. I got out of there.
The dirty, filthy sneak! Typical of Heller!
That ceiling I had seen him looking at early this morning must have been a motel! And Gods knew where.
Oh, this was not going well!
As I grabbed a taxi at the West 30th Street Heliport, close to hand, I looked back at the yacht.
Suddenly, just like that, I got a terrific PLAN!
Even if all went wrong, left and right, I was not lost after all!
The plan was utterly brilliant!
The evening stint was only made endurable by the fact that I had an out.
Teenie came by to brag about how well she was doing in school and how wonderful it was to have a competent lot of instructors at last.
"There's nothing like a proper education," she told the two lesbians of the evening as she helped them undress. "Some men find the passive mode most inviting. When you see them naked, you fall back and look exactly like you are dead. You "
"GET HER OUT OF HERE!" I roared.
Adora was upbraiding me instantly. "You unfeeling brute. One must encourage the young in their school work! Not bellow at them! There, there, Teenie. Did he hurt your feelings?"
"Nothing that a new skateboard wouldn't heal," said Teenie. "He dented it and bent a wheel. I've got to go to a night class on advanced orgiastics. There's a sporting-goods mart open, and if I leave right now I'll have time to get a new skateboard. It's only two hundred dollars."
Anything to get rid of her. I grabbed out the two hundred dollars and threw them at her. Before I could put my roll back she slipped off another twenty. "There's tax," she said, and sailed away, spinning the books upon their strap and laughing gaily about something I could not make out.
"What a little dear," sighed Adora. "And such opportunities are opening up. Before you came home, Candy, she was telling me that she had a Hollywood offer to star in a picture of her own, / Was a Teen-age Porno Queen"
I was about to say that I'd heard lies before but that was probably the biggest yet. But I stopped myself in time.
The two lesbians had stripped by now and lay upon the bed. One of them said, "Passive mode? Let me see if I can do it." And she laid back like she was dead.
That did it. It took two bhongs before I could perform on the first one and another before I could even touch the second.
Finally I managed it. I felt stoned but relaxed. The walls were sagging in and going away while Adora made her sales pitch to the now ex-lesbians. It was nice to be so detached.
And then suddenly I wasn't.
The wife member of the team had just said, "Oh, this real thing really is good. I never in my life thought anyone could get that much bang out of a bang. But I don't think once in three weeks is often enough."
Adora said, "Have no fear. In just three days, we begin to reform those chauvinistic pigs of homos, and with my husband's demonstrations, believe you me, kiddo, the place will be full of standing ovations. I can just see their buttons pop when they behold him pumping away, doing the real thing. They won't be able to restrain themselves!"
I went ice cold. The vision I got was entirely different from hers!
Bumping off door jambs, I got to my room. I locked the door. I fell upon the sofa. I lay there shivering. I also felt like I was running a fever.
Would my plan work?
Would I make it in time?
If the Fates decreed NO to both, then I might as well blow my brains out, for life would become utterly unsupportable.
Too stoned and too blind to watch viewers, I wrapped myself in blankets and fell into awful nightmares where I did not make it and wound up in the Manco Devil's Hell, raped for eternity by homo Demons, even though I blew my brains out daily!
I awoke late. I looked at my watch. Shock jolted through me! It was past 10:00 A. M. The court might already have opened!
Pushing bandages out of my eyes, I gripped the viewer. Yes! A view of the courtroom!