The Countess Krak's voice rang out behind Heller. "Aha! I knew it! The crooked lawyer trying to usurp the empire!"
"What?" said Flagrant.
"Never mind," said Heller. "You mean this Madison has been doing all this bad, crazy Whiz Kid publicity?"
"Yes, indeed," said Flagrant. "I followed the campaign amongst the garbage cans. I'd recognize Madison's overblown style anywhere."
"That adds up," said Heller. And then in a deadly voice he asked, "Where can we locate this Madison?"
"Well, I don't know where the campaign office is, but Madison lives with his mother and she's in the phone book-Mrs. Dorothy Jekyll Madison."
Oh, Lords, I was praying now. What was delaying that (bleep) Teenie!
"Anything else you know?" said Heller.
Flagrant thought a bit. "I was there when Bury came in. He and some other man-brown-eyed, swarthy, had a gun."
I felt the strain tearing at my skull. That was ME he was describing! Oh, I had to get going!
Heller said, "Bang-Bang, there's a phone kiosk over there. Call information and get that address." He turned back to the man who was doing me in. "You have been a lot of help, Mr. Flagrant."
"I hope so," said Flagrant. "And I wish you lots of luck shooting Madison and anyone else connected with him."
I shuddered.
Flagrant was looking at the card. "Empire State Building, eh? Nice address. I'll report for work tomorrow and start advertising the sale of alligators."
"Alligator farms," said Heller.
"Yes, sir!" said Flagrant with mounting enthusiasm. "You wait! I'll do some ad campaigns that will make those alligators' mouths water. I'm getting ideas already! I can see it now! 'Tired of your mother-in-law or wife? Buy an alligator farm!'" He found a piece of board in the scattered garbage on the street, drew out a marker pen and started writing.
Bang-Bang came back, "Got the address!"
The Countess Krak and Bang-Bang jumped into the old cab. Heller slid under the wheel.
Bang-Bang yelled, "Good-bye, Mr. Flagrant!"
The cab tore away.
The Countess Krak said, "It would have been cheaper to use a helmet."
"Oh, I don't know," Heller called back over his shoulder. "Sales of those farms have slowed down. And that man seems to have a real talent. Did you see the sign he was writing up? Instead of cleaning the street himself, he's organizing a treasure hunt and offering the truck as a prize!"
Oh, Gods, they only had about eighteen miles to go. I had to get to the heliport and rescue Madison. For Madison would TALK! And implicate ME!
IT WAS NO TIME TO BE DELAYED!
I began to despair of making it!
Where, where, where was Teenie?
Our cab meter was ticking over. "That must be some TV show you're looking at on that portable," my hacker said. "You keep letting out small screams."
"What happened to our passenger?" I begged.
"Oh, you can never depend on kids these days," my hacker said. "But on the subject of TV shows, you got to watch it. Violence is bad for the heart."
"Especially when it's done with blastguns," I said.
"Oh, you're watching some rerun of Star Trek," he said. "That stuff is just garbage, you know."
"Please don't mention garbage," I begged.
"Well, it is. Like the commercials. They lie like hell, Mac. They got a lot of trick things in them trying to capture the audience."
"Please read your Racing Form" I begged. The word capture had turned my blood to icy slush. Heller was driving that old cab! Even my dimmed vision could see the way he was going around corners on two wheels! Have an accident, I begged him. Oh, please have an accident!
And Teenie? Perhaps she had just plain chickened out from an overdose of cold feet. This gave rise to new alarm. If I left her behind me, Adora would have me hunted down for rape of a minor simply by having this lying Teenie string some tale to the judge. It required her testimony for such a warrant, as I understood it, and photographs alone would do no more than whet the legal appetite. If I had Teenie in my possession I could guarantee that threats would prevent such testimony. Also, if I had her alive, a witness or two could so state and I couldn't be hunted down and hung for a Teenie dead. Oh, I had it all worked out. But where was Teenie?
Heller's cab went screaming around a curve. It was hurtling toward my doom. They only had fifteen miles or so to go to get to Madison's mother's house just north of me on the East Side.
There came Teenie!
She didn't have anything in her hands! No baggage. She had not come down the fire escape the way she went up.
"Inky, we're in trouble," she said. "I can't carry my baggage down the fire escape."
"Look," I said. "I'll pay the cabby extra to climb up and help you! But for Gods' sakes, hurry!"
"Well, I will admit I thought of that," said Teenie. "But that isn't it. It's the landlady. She heard me pushing things around and demanded her back rent. When I started to carry my things down, she threw the elevator bus bar and only let me come out when I told her you would let me have the two hundred dollars."
A sound of skidding wheels came from my viewer as Heller turned a corner.
I grabbed for my roll and gave her two hundred dollars.
I waited anxiously.
Then here she came again, burdened under sacks and boxes.
"Get in, get in," I screamed at her.
"No," she said, "but you can ask this hacker to come back with me and help with another load."
Oh, Gods! What could I do? I gave the order and the hacker slouched after her.
They came back staggering under boxes and baggage. What junk! There was even a worn-out monkey doll riding on top of Teenie's mountain.
"Get in!" I screamed.
"Can't," said the hacker. "Too much baggage for the cab. Breaks company regulations. I'll have to radio for a second hack."
He did so. They wouldn't budge otherwise. I sat there suffering.
Heller had gotten on an expressway. He was dodging about through trucks as though they didn't exist!
I looked in despair at all this baggage. "What is this stuff?" I wailed, hoping she would abandon it after all.
"The labors of a lifetime," Teenie said. "You see that big sack over there? That's chock-a-block with the seed of the very best Colombia hemp. That second bag is seeds of choice Acapulco Gold. That red sack is preselected seed from Panama Red."
"But that doesn't account for a tenth of this!" I wept.
"Well, no. Some of it is sentimental, I will admit. That big box is a press camera, one of the original tools of my childhood. It may be busted now, but oh, the pictures it has taken! Me being forced to go down on two men at once. Me being licked by a pervert that coughed up twenty G's. Oh, the memories of childhood. You wouldn't want me to leave that behind! It's museum-quality stuff. And then there's two or three skateboards that can be fixed, to say nothing of the two new ones you got me."
I averted my face from such a painful subject.
"And then there's my collection of autographed jock straps."
"WHAT?" I said, startled in spite of my anxiety.
"Of course. Most wonderful blackmail material you ever saw. You get one in a sentimental moment and afterwards you suggest you show it to the guy's girl. Gets you into all games free and God knows what else."
Thank Gods, here came the other cab. I even helped them pitch the things in.
"The 34th Street East Heliport!" I yelled. And off we went.
We weren't driving fast enough for me. Heller, on my viewer, was even jumping lights!
Thank Gods the heliport was just a few blocks south from Tudor City. I could see the excursion choppers coming and going from the pads by the river.
We sped under a highway and raced across a parking lot to Manhattan Charter Services.