Cyberbooks (21 page)

TWENTY-THREE

As a bullet seeks its target, dozens of men and women from all parts of greater New York converged on the single oak-paneled courtroom in which the Bunker
vs.
Bunker drama was to be played out.

Lori Tashkajian, foreseeing a lifetime of dreary editorial offices and smoky Greek nightclubs ahead of her, rode the Third Avenue bus to the courthouse.

Carl Lewis, after a sleepless night trying to think of some way to turn the tide that was so obviously flowing against Cyberbooks, decided that he could use the exercise and so walked the forty blocks to the courthouse, through the crisp November sunshine.

Scarlet Dean and Ralph Malzone took a taxi together, each of them wrapped in their own gloomy thoughts.

The Writer rode the crowded subway downtown, his heavily laden topcoat clanking loudly every time the train swayed.

P. Curtis Hawks, glowing with his new title of CEO, directed his chauffeur to whisk down the FDR Drive for a firsthand look at the trial that was going to break Bunker Books. Even though his limousine was soon snarled in the usual morning traffic jam (which often lasted until the late afternoon traffic jam overtook it), Hawks smiled happily to himself at the thought of Bunker going down the drain.

P. T. Bunker, Jr., rode with his mother in her white limo the few blocks that separated their Lower East Side mansion from the courthouse. Junior hummed a pop tune to himself, grinning, as he contemplated how the computer in his room at home was busily buying up every spare share of Tarantula stock it could find.

Alba Bunker did not notice her son's self-satisfied delight. She dreaded another day in court and longed to be in the powerful arms of her oversexed husband.

Dozens of curious and idle people with nothing better to do headed for the courtroom, after learning from their TV and newspapers of the fireworks the cowboy attorney had lit off the day before.

Lt. Jack Moriarty had the most difficult course. Upon awakening from the sedatives administered to him the previous evening, he realized with the absolute certainty of the true hunch-player that the Retiree Murderer was going to be in that courtroom. Half an hour with his laptop computer convinced him that P. T. Bunker, Jr., was grabbing Tarantula stock like a drunken sailor reaching for booze, and the murderer was going to strike again that very morning.

Knowing it was hopeless to try to gain release from the hospital through normal channels (which meant waiting for Dr. Kildaire, who had just signed out at the end of his midnight-to-eight shift), Moriarty slowly, carefully detached the sensors monitoring his body functions and, clutching the array of them in his hands so that they would not set off their shrill alarms, he tiptoed to the bed next to his and attached them to the sleeping hemorrhoid case there. The spindly wires stretched almost to the breaking point, but the alarms did not go off.

With barely a satisfied nod, Moriarty raced to the closet and pulled on his clothes. Years of shadowing suspects had taught him how to seem invisible even in plain daylight, so he slithered his way out of the ward, along the corridor, down the elevator, and out the hospital's front entrance in a matter of minutes.

Using his pocket two-way he summoned a patrol car to take him to the courthouse. When the dispatcher asked what authority he had to request the transportation, Moriarty replied quite honestly, "It's a matter of life and death, fuckhead!"

*

Justice Hanson Hapgood Fish allowed his clerk to help him into his voluminous black robes, then dismissed the young man for his morning pretrial meditation. He sank onto his deep leather desk chair and closed his eyes. The vision of all the lovely women in his courtroom immediately sprang to his mind. Mrs. Bunker, looking so vulnerable and hurt in virginal white. The one in red: stunning. The dark-haired one with the great boobs. This was going to be an enjoyable trial. Justice Fish determined that he would drag it out as long as possible.

Let the goddamnable lawyers talk all they want to, he said to himself. Let them jabber away for weeks. I'll give them all the latitude they want. They'll love it! After all, they bill their clients by the minute. The longer the trial, the more money they squeeze out of their clients. And the longer I can sit up there and gaze at those three beauties. He smiled benignly: a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette. Too bad they're all on the losing side of this case.

*

One other person was thinking about the Bunker trial, even though he was not heading toward the courtroom.

P. T. Bunker sat alone in his half-unfinished mansion, at the old pine desk he had used since childhood, reviewing the videotape of the previous day's session in court. Thanks to freedom of information laws and instant electronic communications, it was possible for any informed citizen to witness any open trial.

He wore an old
Rambo XXV
T-shirt, from an ancient promotional drive to tie in the novelization with the movie. It was spattered with bloody bullet holes, and showed a crude cartoon of the elderly Rambo shooting up a horde of Haitian zombies from his wheelchair. Below the shirt Bunker was clad only in snug bikini briefs, his legs and feet bare. He no longer needed padding to look impressive.

His handsome face grimaced as he watched the plaintiffs attorney attacking Bunker Book's management—himself! his wife!—in his relentless western invective.

A low animal growl issued from P. T. Bunker's lips as he watched the videotape. After nearly an hour, he glanced once at the Mickey Mouse clock on his desk top, then rose and headed for his clothes closet.

*

Carl Lewis arrived in the courtroom precisely at one minute before ten. Half a dozen other people were filing in through the double doors and finding seats on the hard wooden pews. Carl saw Lori up in the front row, talking earnestly with Scarlet Dean and Ralph Malzone. As he started toward them, a scruffy man of indeterminate age, wearing a long shapeless gray topcoat and a day's growth of beard, accidentally bumped against him. Carl felt something hard and metallic beneath the man's coat, heard a muffled clank.

But his mind was on Lori and the others. He mumbled a "Pardon me," as he pushed past the man and headed for his friends. He did not even notice Harold D. Lapin sitting on the aisle in the next-to-last row. Lapin sported a dashing little mustache and wore a yachting outfit of white turtleneck, double-breasted navy-blue blazer, and gray flannel slacks. Hidden in plain sight.

P. T. Junior entered the courtroom right behind Carl. He was followed by P. Curtis Hawks, dressed in a fairly conservative business suit. Neither of them recognized the other.

"All rise."

Carl had not yet sat down. The courtroom buzz quieted as Justice Fish made his slow, dramatic, utterly dignified way to his high-backed padded swivel chair. His completely bald skull and malevolently glittering eyes made Carl think once again of a death's head.

There
was more of a crowd this morning. The news of the western lawyer's tirade had drawn dozens of onlookers and news reporters, the way a spoor of blood draws hyenas. Just as Judge Fish rapped his gavel to open the morning's proceedings, two more men slipped through the double doors and took seats on opposite sides of the central aisle, in the very last row. One of them was Detective Lieutenant Jack Moriarty, freshly escaped from St. Vincent's Hospital. Just behind him came a rather tall, slim figure in a blue trenchcoat. Neither man paid the slightest notice to the other; their attention was concentrated on the drama at the front of the courtroom.

Judge Fish leaned forward slightly in his chair and smiled a vicious smile at the western lawyer.

"Is the plaintiff ready to continue?"

The man was dressed in a tan suede suit cut to suggest an old frontiersman's buckskins. "We are, Your Honor."

"Are you ready to call your first witness?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then proceed."

"I call Mr. Ralph Malzone to the witness stand."

Carl felt a moment of stunned surprise. The courtroom fell absolutely silent for the span of a couple of heartbeats, then buzzed with whispered chatter. The judge banged his gavel and called for silence.

Ralph looked more surprised than anyone as he slowly got to his feet and made his way to the witness box. He ran a nervous hand through his wiry red hair, glanced at Woody Balogna sitting at the plaintiff's table, then at Mrs. Bunker, at the defense table with her five interchangeable lawyers.

The bailiff administered the oath and Ralph sat down. Uneasily.

The western lawyer strolled slowly over to the witness box, asking Ralph to state his name and occupation. Ralph complied.

"Sales manager," drawled the lawyer. "Would y'all mind explaining to us just exactly what that means?"

Slowly, reluctantly, Ralph explained what a sales manager does. The lawyer asked more questions, and over the next quarter of an hour Ralph laid out the basics of the book distribution system: how books go from printer to wholesalers and jobbers, then from those distributors to the retail stores.

"There's a lot of different steps involved in getting the books from the publisher's warehouse to the ultimate customer, the reader, wouldn't you say?" the lawyer prompted.

Nodding, Ralph replied, "Yes, that's right."

No one noticed P. Curtis Hawks, sitting in the audience, wincing at the word "warehouse."

"A lot of jobs involved in each of those steps?" asked the lawyer.

"Yes."

"Now, if Bunker Books went into this Cyberbooks scheme, how would your distribution system change?"

Ralph hesitated a moment, then replied, "We would market the books electronically. We could send the books by telephone directly from our office to the bookstores."

"Eliminating all those steps you just outlined?"

"All but the final one."

"Isn't it true that you could also sell your books
directly
to the ultimate customer, the reader? Transmit books
directly
to readers over the phone?"

"Yeah, I guess we could, sooner or later."

"Thereby eliminating even the bookstores?"

"I don't think we'd—"

"Thereby eliminating"—the lawyer's voice rose dramatically—"
all
the jobs of
all
the people you deal with today: the printers, the wholesalers, the jobbers, the truck drivers, the store clerks
—and even your own sales force
!"

"We have no plans to eliminate our sales force," Ralph snapped back with some heat.

"Not today."

"Not ever. Books don't sell themselves. You need sales people."

The lawyer strolled away from the witness box a few steps, then whirled back toward Ralph. "But you
admit
, don't you, that all the jobs in the middle—all the jobs involved with book distribution—will be wiped out by this devilish new invention."

"The distribution system will be totally different, that's right."

With a triumphant gleam in his eye, the lawyer strode to his table and pulled a batch of papers from his slim leather saddle bag.

"Your Honor," he said, approaching the bench, "I have here affidavits from each of the nation's major book distribution companies, and both of the national bookstore chains. They all ask that their interests be considered in this trial. Therefore, I ask you to consider enlarging the venue of this trial. I ask that this trial be considered a class action by the thousands—nay, tens of thousands—of warehouse personnel, truck drivers, bookstore clerks, wholesalers, jobbers, distributors, and their associated office personnel, against Bunker Books!"

The courtroom broke into excited babbling. Judge Fish whacked away with his gavel until everyone quieted down, then said, "I will consider the motion."

The news reporters sitting at the media bench along the side wall of the courtroom tapped frantically at their computer keyboards.

With a satisfied grin, the western lawyer handed his papers to the bailiff, who passed them up to the judge. Then he smirked at the quintet of defense attorneys and made a little bow.

"Your witness," he said.

"No questions," squeaked five mousey voices in unison.

"Court will recess to examine these papers," said Justice Fish. Glancing at the clock on the rear wall of the courtroom, he added, "We might as well break for lunch while we're at it."