Mission: Earth "Black Genesis" (23 page)

Apparently Mr. Bury had. So Stupewitz spread out Heller's papers in front of him and began to read. He read the birth certificate, the diploma, the grades. "Got all that? I just wanted you to know there's no mistake. ... Yes, we have the boy right here. To prove it, here's his description," and he rattled it off. "... no, he hasn't talked to anybody. We made sure of that."

Stupewitz now shot a gleeful grin back at Maulin. Then he said into the phone, "Now, don't be upset, Mr. Bury. But he's wanted in Fair Oakes, Virginia, for assault and battery of two police officers, both hospitalized... yes, he apparently did it with an iron bar when they weren't looking ... yes, amounts to attempted murder. Also suspicion of car theft, speeding, refusal to halt. Fugitive... Right. And apparent possession of narcotics ... Right. And the Federal offense of seeking to smuggle them across state lines... Right. And, as a minor, cohabitation with a known prostitute... Right. Also the Mann Act—crossing state lines for immoral purposes ... Right. And refusal to divulge identity to a Federal officer."

I realized Heller could get life, the exact original thing planned for him.

Apparently some smoke was coming out of the phone. After a moment, Stupewitz went on. "Wait now, Mr. Bury. I'm just telling you this. The woman won't talk. We have the records, we have the car, we have the boy.... No, no reporters know anything about this. The name was not even known in Fair Oakes.... No. We're the only ones who know."

Stupewitz was now the one listening. Mr. Bury must be talking hard and fast. "... Yes, Mr. Bury," said Stupewitz. "... Yes, Mr. Bury.... Yes, Mr. Bury.... Yes,

Mr. Bury." Then there must have been a long speech. Stupewitz gave Maulin an evil grin and nodded to him. Then he said into the phone, "No. No records or copies of anything here. The local police know nothing and we won't even report it to the Director." He nodded as though Bury could see him. And then, all over again he gave all the identifying details and home addresses of himself and Maulin.

Stupewitz ended off with, "Yes, Mr. Bury. And you can be very assured that D.J.R.'s son is perfectly safe here in our hands; there won't be a whisper to the press or anyone. We are, as always, completely at the service of Delbert John Rockecenter. You got the idea, Mr. Bury. Good-bye."

He rose beaming from the phone. He and Maulin did a war dance round and round, laughing.

Maulin said, "And we were going to retire in a few years with nothing but our pensions!"

And Stupewitz said, "He'll hire us for sure. No other option!"

I was flabbergasted. These two crooked agents were using this case to forward their own advancement! They were blackmailing Delbert John Rockecenter! And what made it all the more criminal was that D. J. Rockecenter practically owns the FBI anyway!

And what made it even more stupid was that they actually thought they really had Delbert John Rockecenter's son.

Lombar's planning had taken a new twist!

But wait. This didn't get Heller off the hook. I hadn't worked it out yet just how, but there was real death in Heller's future now.

The phone rang and the two crooked agents stopped their war dance and Stupewitz answered it, said something back and hung up.

The two came into the room with Heller. He had been sitting there quietly, his eyes occasionally straying to a bloodstain on the wall. I doubted he could have heard the phone conversation in anything like the clarity I had, if at all, and he must be wondering what they were going to do with him.

Stupewitz said to him, "Listen, Junior, that was your old man's personal family attorney, Mr. Bury, of Swindle and Crouch, New York. Your dad is over in Russia, bein' wined and dined and he won't be home for a couple of weeks."

Maulin said, "You just sit tight, Junior. There's a little delay before you can go." Maulin sat down at his desk and looked into a basketful of reports. I understood now that this was his office and the other one was Stupewitz's. They must be pretty highly placed in the FBI to have private offices.

Stupewitz went to the door to leave. "I'll handle the rest of this," he said to Maulin. "You keep your eye on the kid." He started to leave again and then stopped. He called back to Heller, "You can stop worrying about that hooker. She's dead."

My viewscreen seemed to jolt. Heller said, "Why did you have to kill her?"

"Kill her?" said Stupewitz. "She was D.O.A. at Georgetown Hospital. Heart attack." Then, innocence

itself, he said, "You're lucky it was in the ambulance or you could have been charged with conspiracy to murder."

Maulin said, "Big H killed her, Junior."

Heller said, "I been meaning to ask somebody. What's a 'fix'?"

Stupewitz started for the door again. "Oh, this kid is too much for me! You grab it, Maulin. I'll get the rest done." He was gone.

With a weary shove at his basket of papers, Maulin leaned back and looked even more wearily at Heller. "No (bleep), kid. You don't know what a fix is? What the hell did they teach you at..." He had Heller's certificates on his desk and looked, "... Saint Lee's Military Academy? How to tat and knit?" He glanced at his watch and then shoved his basket further away with a detesting hand. "We got lots of time to kill, and as you'll be giving orders to this place yourself someday, I might as well begin the education of an All American Boy! Come along."

Pushing Heller ahead of him, Maulin plowed along down stairs and through halls. "Don't talk to people," he warned. "I'll answer any questions they ask."

Evidently, the building was huge. It was a long way down one corridor. Heller was clickety-clacking along.

"For chrissakes, Junior," said Maulin, annoyed by the noise. "Why are you wearing baseball spikes?"

"Comfortable," said Heller. "I got blisters."

"Oh, I get it. I got corns myself. Here we are." And he halted Heller at a door marked Drug Lab and shoved him through.

They were faced with yards and yards of wall racks on which assorted glass jars rested. A technician was crunched over a table, heating some water in a spoon, needles lying about.

"Now the Drug Enforcement Agency handles drugs," tutored Maulin in a gravelly voice, "but we still

got our own drug lab. We're really in charge of the government and sometimes we even have to shake down the DEA. There's practically every known kind of drug in these jars."

"Do you sell them?" said Heller.

The technician looked up in alarm. He said, "Shh!" Then he looked closer at Heller and said to Maulin, "What are you doing bringing a smart (bleep) kid in here, Maulin? This isn't part of the public tour."

"Shut up, Sweeney."

The technician bent back over his Bunsen burner grumbling. Maulin said, "Now, kid, the trick is to know all these drugs by sight and smell and taste. Just start at this bottom row and go along in, jar by jar, noting the labels. But for chrissakes, if you do any tasting, spit it out! I ain't going to be accused of turning you into a drug freak."

Heller went down the rows, doing as he was told. A couple of times, Maulin made him rinse his mouth out at the sink, holding him by the back of the neck the way you do a willful child.

Heller, being Heller, was making very rapid progress. But I was worrying. It was obvious they were detaining him and, knowing the FBI, it had skulduggery in it—stupid skulduggery but skulduggery just the same.

"Hello, hello, hello!" said Heller. He had a big can with brown powder in it and was examining it. "What's this?"

"Oh, the label's off it. That's opium, kid. Asiatic ..." Maulin looked at it closer. "No, Turkish."

Now, at any other time, I would have freaked out at Heller being shown just that. But I was sort of dulled by the shock of events.

"What does Afyonkarahisar mean?" said Heller, startling me out of my wits.

"(Bleep), I don't know," said Maulin. "Where's it say that?"

"Here on the side," said Heller. "It's kind of dim."

"I didn't bring my glasses," said Maulin. "Sweeney, what does Afyonkarahisar mean?"

"Black opium castle," said Sweeney. "Western Turkey. Why?"

"It's on this can," said Maulin.

Sweeney said, "It is? There's some black balls of it in the next jar from the same place. And that white jar down the line contains some of their heroin. (Bleep), now you got me lecturing." And he went back to work.

"You see," said Maulin learnedly, "there is a flower called a poppy and it has a black center and they scrape it and get a gum. They boil that and they get opium. They chemically process it and they get morphine. Then they chemically process that and they get heroin. The white heroin is Turkish and Asiatic. The brown heroin is Mexican ... Sweeney, where's some of that drug literature? No sense me wearing my lungs out."

Sweeney pointed to a cabinet and Maulin opened it. "(Bleep)," he said, "they been using it for toilet paper again." He seemed baffled. Then he had a bright idea. He was reaching in his pocket. "Sweeney, go on out to the newsstand and get me one of those paperbacks on drugs." Then he suddenly stopped fishing in his pocket. "Hell, what am I doing? Here I am standing next to the U.S. Mint and was about to spend my own dough. You got any money, kid?"

Heller reached in his pocket and drew out his roll. The way he did it was the first indication I had had that he was rattled. He had tripped into a preconditioned habit pattern. Voltar gamblers—and Heller sure was one, as I knew to my grief—have a mannerism in handling money. They insert a finger in the center of the roll and

let the two ends of the bills come up through their fingers and it looks for all the world as though they are presenting exactly twice as much money as they are actually holding.

Maulin looked at it. "Jesus," he said. Then, "I suppose this is your weekly allowance for candy." He plucked at the presented fistful. "Let's see. The book is about three bucks. Add two for Sweeney for his trouble. I'll take this fiver. No, on the other hand, you are probably hungry, so Sweeney can bring back some food: I'll take this sawbuck. No, come to think of it, Sweeney and me are also hungry, so I'll take this pair of double saw-bucks." He apparently couldn't think of anything else, so he threw the money at Sweeney whose former hostility seemed to have evaporated.

"What do you want to eat, kid?" said Sweeney.

"Beer and a hamburger," said Heller, apparently recalling Crobe's diet advice.

"Aw, kid," said Maulin, "you are a con man. You know God (bleeped) good and well we can't buy beer for a kid your age. Tryin' to edge us into a felony? Bring him milk and a hamburger, Sweeney. I'll take a steak sandwich and beer."

Sweeney was gone and Heller went back to learning the more than two hundred different types of drugs on the shelves.

I had resigned myself to Heller knowing now what we did in Afyon. What I was worrying about was why they were delaying Heller. The FBI was totally out of character, so it was some kind of a ploy. They had something else going.

Sweeney came back with the required items and shortly Maulin and Heller were back in the former's office. Maulin ate his steak sandwich in one large bite and washed it down with beer.

Heller sat nibbling his and looking at the book. It was titled Recreational Drugs and it said it contained "everything you need to know about drugs." It said it was recommended by Psychology Today, so I knew it must be totally authoritative. There was everything in it from aspirin to wood alcohol.

So Heller, being Heller and a long way from knowing enough to put on a show the way a real spy would do, simply started "reading" it which, for him, was ingesting a page the way Earth people ingest a word. He still had a sip of milk left when he came to the end of two hundred and forty-five pages. He put the book in his pocket and finished his milk.

Maulin said, "What the hell? Oh, I guess you're just too nervous to read. I can understand that." He looked at his watch and seemed worried. Then he had a bright idea. "Tell you what, Junior. They have public tours through this building every hour or so. But we won't wait for one of those. I'll take you on one."

Why were they delaying him? They were using the approach "Detain subject without arousing his suspicions."

Maulin took him down to the exhibit of gangster guns and weapons. I was interested myself, thinking I could pick up some pointers. Maulin even took some out of their cases.

"Are all these weapons chemical?" said Heller.

"Chemical?" blinked Maulin.

"I mean, none of them electrical?"

"Oh, you dumb kids. Reading a bunch of Buck Rogers comic books! If you mean do gangsters have any laser weapons, no. We caught somebody trying to sell us some a few years back and I think he's still doing time. They ain't legal, kid. Besides, powder is best. Now, you take

this sawed-off shotgun: it'll blow a man in half! Completely in half, kid! Ain't that great?" He picked up a burp gun. "Now, you take this: point it down a crowded street and it mows down dozens of innocent bystanders. Totally effective."

They moved on to some views of modern bank robberies and Heller inspected them. Maulin showed where the bank security cameras were placed, told him about marked money packs, alarm buttons, alarm systems, police techniques and how the FBI always, without fail, caught each and every bank robber that had even tried to shortchange a teller. And Heller was so interested that Maulin even got an alarm system and showed him how it was rigged and could be disabled. "Your old man, being your old man," he said, "has a vested interest in all this, so I hope you got it."

Heller had gotten it, no doubt of that!

Maulin showed Heller, next, the FBI laboratory and all the most modern scientific investigative techniques including those on the drawing board. I didn't like that as it was edging over into things Lombar had forbidden us to teach Heller. And I was relieved when they came off of it.