"I'll pay for it myself," I said. "Get right over there and rent it and stand by. I will join you."

"You sure you're not going to bomb something?" said Raht.

"Swallow that impudence and do as you're told or I'll bomb you!" I snarled. What riffraff I had to deal with!

I clicked off.

The next part of my plan was to write a note to the girls. I glanced nervously at the viewer. I dug up pen and paper and an envelope. I wrote:

Dear Mrss. Beys,

I realize I cannot live up to your high opinion of me. I am going to commit suicide for the benefit of our children.

Good-bye cruel world.

Your husbands

I put it in an envelope, wrote Farewell on the face of it and propped it under a statue of Aphrodite in the front room so it looked like a human sacrifice.

I glanced at the viewer. They were in Yonkers already! Oh, I must hurry!

I began to pack, stuffing everything I had into cardboard grocery cartons, wishing I had remembered to buy some suitcases. This was taking time and I did not have enough string. Somehow I must make time because, before I went to that skyport, I had to grab Teenie. I thought she would be at the school and I left a gas bomb out. I cursed having accumulated all this gear.

I was lifting a viewer so it would sit face up in a carton and I could watch it simply by lifting the box flap, when suddenly a voice was heard. "Well, hurray, hurray for me!" I thought it was coming from the viewer. It confused me. What was THAT voice doing in Heller's speeding cab?

"Look what I got!"

I whirled and peered through the bandages. It was Teenie! Oh, my luck was in! She'd walked right into the net.

She was standing there in her flat oxfords and a plaid skirt, her ponytail thrusting out of the back of her head. "I just graduated," she said with her too-big smile. "And they gave me presents! Look! A genuine Hong Kong dildo. A whole dozen lace condoms. A package of joss sticks for luck. And behold!"

She was unrolling a diploma. It said she was a Certified Professional and that she had graduated Magna Come Loud.

"At last," she crowed, "I have completed my education!"

I didn't say anything. She started looking around at all the boxes. "Hey, are you blowing or something?"

I was caught in the middle of indecision. I had intended to just hit her with a gas bomb, dump her in a sack and put her with the other baggage. On the other hand, maybe I could talk her into carrying some of this heavy stuff.

"Teenie," I said, "I have always been fond of you."

"Oh, yeah?"

Teen-agers are hard to understand. Maybe I should be coy. "Teenie, how would you like to go for a ride?"

"A ride?" she said. "You mean like the old movies? Gangster style?"

I decided to be jocular. "Yeah, kid, you get the idea."

"Wait a minute," said Teenie. "Is this on the level? You're packing. Are you trying to get me to run away with you?"

Well, well. Maybe I had made an appeal. "That's right," I said.

"Oho!" she said. "I see it all now! That solves the mystery. You got me educated so you could get a good price selling me into white slavery!"

I gaped.

"Tell you what I'll do," said Teenie. "If you'll split fifty-fifty any price you get for me, I'll go with you."

I gaped wider.

"All right," she said. "Fair is fair and a bargain is a bargain." She put out her hand. She evidently wanted to shake hands for some reason. I shook hands with her.

My plans for Teenie had been a bit nebulous. They consisted solely of capturing her and holding her prisoner so that if at any time the court accused me of murdering her, as per the injunction, I could produce her and say, "See, she's still alive." That way she would not be around to lie about me or get me in trouble. It was an elementary and effective solution and part of my general plan. But I had not looked for this much cooperation.

"There's one condition to it," she said. "And that is that you let me go home and pack."

I glanced nervously at the viewer. Was there time or did I use the gas bomb after all?

Tudor City was en route to the skyport. She wouldn't own very much.

I gambled. "All right," I said.

She promptly went to work tying up boxes. "Hey," she said, "I see you have TV-osis. I never watch it myself. I like the stern realities of life instead. But you left this portable set on."

"Leave it," I said. "The switch is broken."

She shrugged and finished tying up the other boxes. She picked up a pad and pen and was about to pack it.

"I think Adora might get worried if you disappeared," I said. "Why don't you leave her a note?"

"Good thinking, Inky. She'd set the cops on the trail and blow your white-slavery ring to hell." She picked up the pen. She gnawed it. "I could tell her I had been approached for the Miss America contest, but the truth is dangerous. I can't think of anything to say."

"Just anything," I said, glancing nervously at the viewer.

Finally she got to writing, somewhat laboriously. Then she showed it to me. In badly formed letters, it said:

Deer Pinchy,

I am finne.

How R U.

I am dooinng well.

Will C U.

Teenie

"That's great," I said.

"No," she said. "It isn't warm enough." She threw it aside.

She tried again.

Deer, deer Pinchy and Candy,

I gradudated & with honnors.

Thay warded mee a bedpost gradadutaded coorss in Hung Cung.

Keeep upp the gud wk.

Teenie

Hott Dogg!

"That will do just great," I said urgently. "We have a plane to catch."

"Is that hot dog part warm enough?" she said.

"Yes, yes," I said and grabbed the letter. Then, cunning, I also grabbed the first letter. I put them in my pocket. I would mail the last one and keep the other one to show she was still alive.

I glanced at the viewer. The cab was running down a city street, probably searching along the route of the garbage truck. I had better get going!

I called a cab and we got my boxes out front. Wonder of wonders, my luck was really holding! We didn't have to wait more than a minute.

We loaded up and sped away. I took no backward glance at that scene of pain and travail. I would not miss it.

I peeked into the open flap of a box at the viewer. They were hunting for the garbage truck. It would be close but I felt that I might make my escape unscathed. If my luck continued to hold.

Tudor City is not a city at all. It's a collection of twelve brick buildings built in the 1920s in the Flamboyant or Tudor Gothic-English style of architecture. They are surrounded by green lawns and footpaths which were once kept up but which now seemed mainly devoted to growing marijuana. The buildings, according to the chattering Teenie, used to have three thousand apartments which housed twelve thousand people, but these numbers were now sort of blurred.

We approached it on 41st Street East and as the cab drew up beside one of the big buildings the atmosphere was suddenly calm and quiet. Not so my nerves.

"Hurry up and get your things," I told Teenie.

"You sit right there and wait," she said. "I have to climb fourteen stories on the fire escape to get to the old garret I have at the top and I don't want the landlady to see me leave."

She was off and up. The height would have made me dizzy. The cabby glanced at his ticking meter and opened his Daily Racing Form. I opened the carton anxiously to gaze at Heller's viewer.

They had spotted the garbage truck! Oh, this was going to be nip and tuck, and I was the likely one to be nipped!

As they drew near it on a narrow street, I was not crediting my ears. Was that a song I was hearing? Some kind of a ditty? It was not coming from Tudor City-it must be coming from my viewer!