Pipsqueak (15 page)

“How?”

“Loomis was a sonopuncturist. He worked for Bookerman, trying to help him understand the full potential of the two spheres he had in his possession. He was in Bookerman’s confidence but turned on him when he learned there was a third sphere. Loomis wanted the spheres for his own purposes.”

“So why are Sloan, the naturopaths, and Palihnic trying to get these spheres?”

“They’re valuable. They have medicinal potential, and I’m sure government scientists would be very keen to—”

“Now, when Sloan came to me, he said you guys actually had something other than battling color TV in mind. He said that you’re attempting to do the same thing that the color-flash people are trying to do to the public. In reality, aren’t you competing with color flash, pitting sound against visuals in a bid to brainwash America?”

“Not at all, Garth,” Roger Elk chortled.

“You’re sure the Russkies weren’t developing this for use on their own citizens? You said they experimented on prisoners back before 1958. Color TV wasn’t even on the air yet.”

“But it existed in developmental prototypes, which the Russians obtained, and they made the prisoners watch color TV and monitored their brain waves after treating them to the tones.” Roger stood, impatient.

“Uh-huh. But lemme ask you this: I thought nicotine and high-protein diets were the way to cleanse the color flashes from our systems. Why now the spheres?”

“HDTV. High-definition television, the ‘next wave.’ The color flash is more saturated, more intense, and ultimately more devastating. They’re taking it to the next level. As it is now, they’re making do with subliminal domination. HDTV will suppress independent thought utterly, completely. Garth, you’ve got to give us that puppet. We hope to test it soon on a prime-time HDTV broadcast, and we need the last sphere to effect the tone. To block the color flash.”

“How? What’s the delivery system?”

Roger Elk sighed, then went to the door and knocked. “Okay, Mortimer.” He turned to me and straightened his bolo tie, a grin flickering. “I could tell you, but, ah, then we’d have to kill you.” Mr. Heavy opened the door and gave me a menacing squint. The growl was implied.

My lawyer waved me from the cell. “Mr. Carson here is ready to take a drive, Mortimer.”

I stepped out of the room, and Mr. Heavy a.k.a. Mortimer latched on to my collar and jammed something hard into my side that felt (and hurt) like a gun. I was willing to give Mortimer the benefit of the doubt and didn’t bother to confirm the weapon, verbally or visually.

As we coursed through the paneled halls and tromped down the steps to the garage, I was beyond being reasonable about all this. In short, I was fed up with getting shoved around, tired of being scared. The swell of resentment was starting a wave of hatred for these conspiracy-theory idiots for what they were putting me through. God help them if they’d put one finger on Angie.

My faith in Bookerman’s good intentions was next to nil. Maybe it’s just me, but any guy who can so casually order a man drowned in mud, or maintain a crew of henchmen, doesn’t get the philanthropist’s halo from me. Quite the contrary.

We got into the Lincoln, and Roger Elk opened the elevator. I tried to keep my nerve. The object was to get out of the building. It was the only way to escape—no way was I going to relive the disappointment I felt when I hit those glass doors. But now I had Mortimer to contend with. My odds against the Bing and Bowler duo were much better.

As before, the guy with the gun sat behind me, and after Roger Elk got us in and up the elevator, he took the passenger seat. When the garage doors opened, I saw it was night. “Is this the same day I came in here? What time is it?”

“Same day, eight o’clock. So, where will we find the squirrel?”

Although I’d considered turning Pipsqueak over and then going to the cops, there were a couple of things blocking that option. First, I didn’t want to take them back to my place and risk Angie’s involvement. Second, if I couldn’t trust my lawyer, could I trust the police? Where did this cult/conspiracy begin and end? Third, once they obtained the spheres, they probably didn’t intend to let me go. Fourth, if Elk’s absurd story had any validity, I’d be handing over a weapon of potential mass social destruction. Roger had asked me before what I’d be willing to do to stop such a scheme, and now I was asking myself the same question.

I needed to find a good escape venue. I might have tried taking them to Nicholas’s—he’d be just the kind who might be able to get me out of this jam. But what if he wasn’t home? Besides, I needed a place with maximum options, which meant to me a place teeming with people and portals of escape, but also a place where I might have been able to send Pipsqueak for safekeeping. Maybe someplace I could have sent Otto. . . .

That little devil was being very useful of late.

“Grand Central Station.”

“Where?”

“A guy who works for me runs a hot-dog stand there Tuesday afternoons. He was at the apartment this morning when Sloan came by. I wrapped the squirrel in a plastic bag and told him to take it with him for safekeeping. With any luck, we’ll be able to catch him before he folds up the stand.”

Roger Elk studied me a moment, then said, “Drive on.” He pulled a cell phone and dialed a number. “It’s me, Roger Elk. Send some boys to Grand Central. . . . Yes, they’ll do. Have them meet us at the 42nd Street entrance. We need to keep our bird from flying the cage.”

Chapter 22

B
usy as Grand Central Station” is a dated simile. Since the building’s restoration and 1998 rededication, you have to say, “Busy as Grand Central
Terminal
.” Associated with this hackneyed expression is the Main Terminal, the kind of soaring stone room that would give Michelangelo an itchy brush finger. Below the canyonlike walls, at ground level, two sides are lined with orderly rows of old-timey ticket booths and train gates, while wide-arched passages open on all four sides. In the center of the room is a multisided information kiosk, a hefty, four-faced gilt clock on top so you can see how late you are. Commuters strut their Manhattan savvy each day through the Main Terminal, a swarm of determined, briefcased vectors who by sheer force of will and steely nerve never collide with one another or even the bumbling tourists.

Most of the station is actually composed of passages leading from the Main Terminal to subways, stores, subterminals, and the street. Overlapping matrixes of low, vaulted, and often sloping tunnels give the inside layout the look of the Paris sewers gone dry.

I could only assume that Otto’s hot-dog stand was in one of the low-rent but high-traffic niches. Where, I didn’t know, and as I pulled over next to the 42nd Street entrance, I explained this uncertainty to my captors.

Roger Elk’s eyes narrowed as he motioned me out and into the company of a reception committee comprising four tall, lean, crew-cut gents. All wore different dinner jackets, some plaid, and I caught the view of at least one cummerbund. They smelled of bay rum. Nicholas’s mummies unwrapped, no doubt.

The Four Lads ushered a kid with a spit curl and porkpie hat into the Lincoln’s driver’s seat. In the near distance I spied a cop marching our way, no doubt peeved by the Lincoln parked at a bus stop.

“Try the Vanderbilt entrance. We’ll meet you there,” Roger Elk told the kid. Porkpie roared away under the Park Avenue overpass. The cop paused and was immediately accosted by confused tourists. He hadn’t come close enough for me to test my nerve. My escorts led me behind the cop’s back and into the terminal.

Roger Elk led the way to the Main Terminal and up to the information kiosk. The Cummerbunds, with Mortimer as point man, led our wedge effortlessly through the throng. Rush hour was past, but the place still hummed.

Roger Elk waited twenty seconds in a short line to pose his question.

“Where do they sell a hot dog?” he enunciated into the booth.

The kiosk woman chewed her gum distractedly. A big name tag reading
Heidi Moos
hung lazily from her vest.

“Wherever there’s buns, I guess, sweetie. Ha!”

Roger Elk gave her a grim look, and Heidi was suddenly miffed.

“Oh, lighten up! Jeez! There’s a cart near the Vanderbilt exit.” She jabbed a pencil over her shoulder.

Roger Elk waved us after him, and I fingered the Dudco™ Card in my pocket. I was running out of time and had to choose my opportunity soon or lose it entirely. Once we got to the hot-dog cart and Roger Elk asked for the squirrel, Otto would be confused or, worse yet, asinine, and I’d get hauled back to do some mud snorkeling.

We crossed the terminal, and I began trailing to the rear of the flying wedge, glancing back at the Cummerbund I’d zap first. My plan was to take the back door out of the wedge, forcing those in front to scramble past the fallen comrade once I popped him with the Dudco™ Card.

As we moved down the passage, the Cummerbund behind nudged me onward, apparently aware of my foot-dragging. Looking ahead, over the heads of the crowds, I could see a red and white sign for
Wiener King
.

Pedestrians parted in our path, and my heart surged when I drew a bead on the lunch wagon and the striped jacket and fez of the attendant. His back was turned to us as he wiped down the frankfurter rotisserie with a rag.

Roger Elk knocked on the counter, and my ears rang with dread as I slowly drew the Dudco™ Card from my pocket.

The attendant turned, and Otto was not Otto. Otto was Nicholas, and he winked at me from under the black tassel of his red fez. You could hear my toes scrunch in my oxbloods as I tried not to register any surprise.

“Red hots, boys?” Nicholas leaned on the counter. “Let’s see, six?”

“Otto?” Roger Elk asked Nicholas, whose fading injuries
had
made him look like Uncle Fester.

“Hey . . .” a Cummerbund began.

“What the . . .” another one added.

“That’s that guy . . .” a third complained.

I felt my right hand pull the Dudco™ Card between the fingers of my left. “One . . .”

Nicholas’s pupils widened at the crew-cut crew, realizing he’d been made. His hand darted out at Roger Elk; I saw a flash and felt a crackle in my fillings. Nicholas had zapped him with a stun gun wrapped in his rag.

“Two . . .”

My fillings buzzed again, and to my right I heard Mortimer go “WOOF” when the wind got kicked out of him. “
Pizdyets!
” Otto said, somewhere behind me. I didn’t have time to turn because I caught sight of Angie darting from the pedestrian crowd with a newspaper, which she pressed into the side of first one, then another Cummerbund. They yelped, eyes crossed, and crumpled stiffly to the floor. I heard another zap from Otto’s direction.

I spun around and jabbed the card at the last standing Cummerbund, his prep-school face snarled with confusion.

“Three.”

The card glowed blue. Nothing happened.

Cummerbund grabbed me by the shirtfront with one hand and fumbled for his gun with the other. I watched the card flashing blue in my hand, and I touched it to his plaid belly.

The hand on my lapel spasmed open, and the silent blue flash punched him back into the passing crowd and flat on his back.

“C’mon!” Nicholas had me by the arm, pushing me through a clot of gawkers. Angie and Otto were already running for the Vanderbilt Avenue exit ten yards away.

Freedom, and the Lincoln waiting at the curb. I flung open the passenger door.

Porkpie looked for his pals. “Say, what’s the big idea? Where’s—”

Nicholas jumped in the backseat and pressed his stun gun to Porkpie’s neck. “Easy, hotshot, or I’ll zap you like a june bug.”

Angie and Otto completed the Chinese fire drill, and as the doors were still closing we made our getaway, Porkpie pouty, the rest of us panting. “Left on 42nd,” I gasped.

“It’s illegal,” Porkpie complained.

“Do it,” Nicholas prodded, and put his fez on Angie. “Then make a right on Second.”

“GA-ZAP!” Angie high-fived Otto.

“Yes, of course!” he thundered.

I cocked an alarmed eye at the rearview mirror and my backseat pals, who were sharing smiles. “What are you people doing here? How the hell did you—”

Nicholas plucked the pen from my top pocket. “Transmitter. I bugged you.”

“You
bugged
me?” I felt my face heat with anger.

“Yeah, well, in truth, a little bird told me you’d been nabbed, but I used the bug to follow some of what was going on, so I could track you to wherever you were going. I had to find out what you knew. Which wasn’t much, I gotta tell you. I staked out the Hanover Square place in a cab. I saw you go splat against the glass. I was in the cab across the street, reading the paper. How’d you get so muddy, Garth?”

“They’ve got mud baths in there, and I was about to be drowned in one if I hadn’t bolted.”

“I put a call in to Angie and got her to pick up the stun guns from a friend. Then we waited in the cab for an opportunity. When you rolled out of the garage, we heard you tell Roger Elk about Otto at Grand Central. Being in a cab, we made it there first, enlisted Otto. Okay, boy, pull over to the curb here.” Nicholas prodded Porkpie. “That’s a boy. Pull the hand brake. Good. Now get out and scat, and don’t do anything cute. Your pals all got zapped, so you’re the lucky one. So far.”

Porkpie lit out like a bottle rocket, and I slid over into his seat and continued driving down Second Avenue.

“This rescue was a very dangerous thing to do.” I gave Angie the evil eye in the rearview mirror.

Angie threw her arms around me from behind. “I love you too, sweetheart. Thank goodness you’re all right!”

I was relieved
she
wasn’t hurt. “When did you get home, Angie? I was worried sick they’d round you up too.”

“Katie and I had lunch, then I went shopping, so I didn’t get home until around four. You okay, Garth? Did they hurt you?” She ran fingers through my hair, presumably looking for bullet holes or something.

“They thought about it, but no, I’m okay. Where are the police, for Pete’s sake?”

“The cops?” Nicholas sneered. “The cops would still have us downtown trying to convince them we were for real. There was no time for them. So where is Pipsqueak?”

“Back at the apartment. Under the floorboards, under Fred. But let’s talk about your little bird, your informant Vito.”

Nicholas paused. “Yeah?”

“I guess your bug didn’t hear my conversation with Vito?”

“Must have been too far underground. You didn’t tell him where Pipsqueak is, did you?”

“No. But that’s how I got it. Apparently he turned Sloan, who was trying to get Pipsqueak to you through me.”

“What happened to Sloan?”

“Last I saw they had him facedown in a mud bath.”

Nicholas gritted his teeth. “That’s bad. If Sloan talked . . .”

“Vito!” Angie said. “They might know Vito was an informer.”

“Better hurry. Those guys back there are going to drop a dime and they’ll be all over your place.”

We got there quick enough. Just too late.