Death Quest

  I ignored Torpedo in the front seat: he was whining his usual whine that he couldn’t stand holding off much longer, that he itched and burned to get it into the fresh-killed target and why couldn’t I hurry up before I drove him mad.

  An engine roar sounded behind her. She turned. Bang-Bang sprang out of a jeep and approached her. It gave me a new clue: that second motor home must be pulling a jeep on a tow bar like they often do. Made it easier to identify.

  Bang-Bang seemed excited. “Miss Joy, I called like you said. And I think I’ve got a trace of him. After he got hurt, he retired to a rest home!”

  She said, “Great! Then just start calling every rest home!”

  Bang-Bang said, “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but three days’ worth of telephones has shot the wad! Since the mobile phone went dead, we musta spent a thousand bucks on pay phones.”

  “Oh. Well, I’ll come back with you and draw another thousand on the credit card.”

  I ground my teeth. I had forgotten you could draw cash. My half-million certificate in Squeeza Credit hands was more and more at risk.

  They got into the jeep and Bang-Bang drove with wild abandon down a bridle path. He burst into a clearing. A sign said:

  General Store

  Bogg Hollow

  It seemed an unpopulated, sylvan place.

  The Countess Krak went in and used the credit card to get her change from a smiling clerk. She also bought a black smoked Virginia ham that was hanging in the rafters and told the clerk to send it to the cook. So she was in Virginia! I was not wrong. I was also in Virginia and so was the whining, itching Torpedo.

  Bang-Bang walked to an outside pay phone and closed the kiosk door. The Countess Krak, (bleep) her, did not follow him and so I could not see the number that would give me the absolute pinpoint for our hit.

  She walked down a path and there before her stood the vehicles. The land yacht and the other smaller motor home were parked so as to make an L. They had their awnings out. Very colorful. In the center of the L was a large picnic table that seemed a permanent fixture. The vehicles were hooked up to water lines: this must be some kind of a national park, very groomed and beautiful.

  An elderly lady, obviously Italian, in a stewardess uniform, was laying out a lunch at the picnic table. She saw the Countess coming and looked up and smiled. And then the Countess was inside the interference zone and my screen wiped out.

  Anxiously I began to tear through my accumulated maps and guidebooks. I found three separate places named Bogg! None of them were called Bogg Hollow. But ALL of them were north of Lynchburg!

  I grew very cunning. The only way you could get to Fair Oakes on a main highway was going through Lynchburg. To think was to act.

  I instantly pushed the whining, suffering Torpedo aside, started up and drove like mad to Lynchburg. I found a motel just south of town on US 29.

  It was a shabby, tattered place but the room I got on the second floor was ideal. It covered the highway with a view of such expanse that I could not miss. And the parking lot on the other side of the room afforded the quickest possible launching pad from which to give chase.

  I hated to share the same room with Torpedo. He was whining worse and worse, getting absolutely frantic. But I had to watch my cash and motels are expensive.

  I sat down with my viewers and my highway view. I had only to wait.

  Heller’s movements interested me. He was running about, pounding stakes with ribbons on them into the sand. Finally he ran out of stakes and walked back toward a mound of them. A man in a pilot’s uniform was nearby, making notations in a small book and looking toward the ditches some digging machines were excavating. He saw Heller and came over.

  “Mr. Floyd, what’s the tonnage in these cooling pipes?” the pilot said.

  “Thirteen point two three,” said Heller. “Are you still going to pick them up tomorrow?”

  “That’s the plan,” the pilot said. “Two freight choppers leave for the foundry at Scranton, Pennsylvania, tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Mind if I bum a ride?” said Heller. “Fair Oakes, Virginia, is not too far off your route.”

  “Never heard of the place,” said the pilot. “Probably boxed in by trees. If you don’t mind going down a ladder, come ahead.”

  “They scare me to death,” said Heller, telling what I knew for a fact was an outright, vicious lie. He hung by his teeth on safety lines from spaceships just for kicks.

  But the pilot saw through the lie. “I’ll bet. Glad of company.”

  “See you tomorrow afternoon,” said Heller.

  It made me anxious. This was going to be close. I promptly sent Torpedo out, rifle cocked and eyes hot, to visit every Bogg I had located.

  Torpedo came back late. He had not connected. He was screaming with frustration.

  “You got to get it,” Torpedo whined, “to really understand what I’ve got to do. All day now I’ve known I have the clap.”

  “What?” I said, aghast.

  “Yeah, that (bleeped) black corpse in Harlem. I wondered at the time why it was so juicy. Now I know. She had the clap. Now I’ve got it. But I know how to handle it. The prison psychologist always told all us cons the only thing to do with it was spread it around fast. So, god (bleep) it, where is the target? Where, where, where? I got to find her and do it, now that I got the clap. I need a bloodhound!”

  It was an unfortunate remark. I suddenly went into alarm. “A bloodhound?” I said. “Is that anything like a Great Dane?”

  “Same color. Just a little smaller, that’s all.”

  Oh, Gods, the full implication of this hit me like a club. That woman, Bucket!

  If the medical advice was to seek a bloodhound when one had the clap, then this would also include Great Danes!

  Had that Great Dane had the clap?

  Had Bucket had it?

  Did I now have the clap?

  I told myself how irrational it was. But I couldn’t shake it and I sat there at the window through the night, watching for the land yacht, trying miserably to accept the fact that I probably was not only going to go crazy because of goats but also would cave in and have my bones rot from dog-carried clap. It was an awful thing to have to face. I knew my career was probably coming to an end. But I would be true to duty to the last and, crazy and rotted away though I might be, still an Apparatus officer.

  At least I could put a crown on my shining record by ridding the universe of a scourge known as the Countess Krak. But somehow it didn’t help. Somewhere in my career, had I gone wrong?

  Was there somebody else I had failed to maim or kill? I was being punished for something, I was sure. But it was not because I had not tried to do my Apparatus duty always, like now. I was sure of that. It was just that the Gods are treacherous. They had it in for me.

  PART FORTY-FIVE

  Chapter 7

  In the afternoon of the fatal fourth day, after a ceaseless and worried vigil of the highway, with Torpedo twitching and whining on the bed, I walked over to the viewer and there she was!

  She was looking at the same blue-misted mountains she had been gazing at, at noon on the first day!

  She had not shifted location in all that time!

  And there was Bang-Bang’s voice, “Miss Joy! Miss Joy! I found him!”

  She turned and I listened intently. This was the clue I needed so crucially to reach her and kill her before Heller arrived.

  Bang-Bang was scrambling up the rocky path. He was all out of breath. He sank down on a rock near her, trying to get his wind so he could talk.

  “Oh, Bang-Bang!” said the Countess. “This is wonderful news. We can get this done before Jettero arrives. He’ll be so proud of us! But come on, tell me.”

  “Can’t get my breath,” he wheezed. And then he said, “He wasn’t in a rest home or retirement home. No wonder it took five hundred calls. He’s in a private hospital owned by a doctor friend. He’s sort of hiding out. But we better hurry, ’cause they say he may not have long t
o live.”

  He paused to catch his breath and ease a stitch in his side. I gritted my teeth at this delay. It was Krak who didn’t have long to live if I could get that address. That was where she’d keep her rendezvous with death.

  He fumbled in his pocket for a paper scrap. He read it to her. “He’s in Room 13, Altaprice Hospital, Redneck, Virginia. That’s only thirty-five miles west of here!”

  “Quick,” said the Countess. “Race back and tell the crew to pack it up and get the show on the road! We’re on our way!”

  I grabbed my maps.

  I had her!

  She was SOUTH of me! Those (bleeped) retired Greyhound bus drivers had cannonballed her down here to her operating area in what must have been eight hours from Hairytown! She must be in the Smith Mountain Lake resort area southeast of Roanoke, Virginia. And she had been phoning, phoning, phoning from there in comfort while I tore all over the Middle Atlantic states! How she must be laughing!

  She deserved to be killed and defiled at once!

  It would be easy! There was ample time before Heller could arrive. Redneck was only twenty miles south and east of where I was.

  I turned to give Torpedo his orders. I would not accompany him on the actual kill. But it was too easy, now.

  I opened my mouth to speak.

  There was a knock on the door!

  The blanket I was using to hide the viewers had fallen to the floor. I was trying to untangle it.

  Torpedo sprang up like a ghoul off the bed and opened the door.

  A cop was standing there! He had on a black plastic jacket and white motorcycle helmet. He glared at Torpedo. “That your black Ford out there? It’s the same license registered to this room. You left it parked out on the highway verge. It’s an offense! Move it before I give you a ticket!”

  He turned his back on Torpedo to point to it, stepped toward the balcony rail to do so. It was a fatal action.

  Before I could move or call out even if I would have, Torpedo acted!

  The hit man snatched a knife out of his belt!

  His left arm reached out and grabbed the cop’s throat to stifle any cry.

  He plunged the knife to its hilt in the cop’s back!

  He dragged the cop back into the room. He dropped him. He closed the door.

  The cop kicked a couple of times and was dead. The knife must have cut his heart in half from behind.

  Torpedo turned the body over on its face and, before my horrified gaze, unfastened its belt and began to pull down its pants.

  “No, no!” I cried.

  Torpedo’s hand snaked to the dead cop’s holster and I was suddenly confronted with a cocked gun. “You try and stop me!” snarled Torpedo.

  I gazed in horror at what he was doing. And then the idiocy of his action hit me.

  “You (bleeped) fool!” I screeched at him. “Your target is right south of here. She’s in your grasp! Shoot her and do it to her! Get out of here! She’ll be arriving at Altaprice Hospital, Redneck, Virginia, in just an hour or two! Get going!”

  “I got to test this out,” he panted.

  He finished what he had begun.

  I expected to hear calls outside or sirens.

  “Oh, would that prison psychologist love this!” chortled Torpedo. “(Bleeping) a screw! Clap and all!”

  “Get out of here!” I screamed.

  He got up, grinning ghoulishly. “That just whetted my appetite. Now I can go for a real kill!”

  He grabbed his rifle case and bullets.

  He tore out of there.

  A moment later, I heard the Ford starting up. Torpedo was on his way.

  I looked at the dead cop on the floor. I didn’t want to touch the corpse, disease contaminated as it was.

  I was paralyzed with the thought of being caught here with that. I opened the door a crack. There was no one in the parking area. The dead cop’s motorcycle was sitting there.

  Acting swiftly, I hauled the corpse outside. Masked by the railing and its covering vines, I dragged it down a short flight of stairs and dropped it. I pulled up the pants. I left the knife in the back.

  Carefully, I made sure there was no trail of blood, eradicating the few spots that I found. I put my room to rights.

  The dead cop lying out there with his sightless eyes made me sort of frantic.

  I had no transportation. I could not ride that motorcycle. I was not going to abandon my baggage.

  (Bleep)! What a thing to happen in the middle of a hit!

  Inspiration! I went out to the motorcycle and picked up its radio. I called the dispatcher.

  “This is Inkswitch. I’m a Fed. Someone seems to have killed your motorcycle cop. You better come and get him. This is the Mucky Motel.”

  Minutes later squad cars were there. They looked at my credentials. “The suspect is a black man,” I said.

  “We knew it!” said their chief.

  “I found this poor fellow lying here,” I said. “I saw the black man racing away on the other side of the field. He has this officer’s gun. I knew I should call you to form a posse.”

  “We’ll get the (bleepard),” said the chief.

  “I’m on a secret Federal case, myself,” I said. “So keep me out of it.”

  They didn’t really hear me. They were already tearing off across the field, obliterating the absence of the footprints.

  I joined them to make it look good.

  After an hour, they took my description of the black man, carefully photographed the corpse and cleaned the area up.

  That handled, I went back to the real business of the day: the hit on the Countess Krak.

  PART FORTY-SIX

  Chapter 1

  Heller’s viewer was blank. I knew what must be happening. That (bleeped) Raht was shifting the 831 Relayer from Florida to Virginia, which told me that Heller must be on his way.

  The viewer of the Countess Krak was totally flared out with interference.

  I sat there restively. My nerves were in pretty poor shape after the cop murder and rape. I wondered why these things were having such an effect on me. By psychology theory, there was neither limit nor personal penalty to crime unless it happened to oneself. Nothing had happened to me yet. Why was I reacting? Psychology and psychiatry surely couldn’t be wrong. That was unthinkable. Man was just an animal that had no conscience or soul, just a rotten beast, in fact. So, of course, it shouldn’t affect me, no matter how many rotten things I did.

  To take my mind off it, I began to wonder at the possibility that maybe, when he had made the hit, Torpedo might be crazy enough to just go on straight home. You could only depend upon him to kill and rape. He might get the idea cops would come and be waiting for him because of the motorcycle patrolman’s death.

  I went out and surveyed cars and a getaway route. Yes. There was an old car sitting there that in emergency I might use. They apparently utilized it to haul manure, the way it looked, a sort of passenger car cut into a truck.

  I made some other precautionary arrangements.

  Feeling more secure, I went back to my viewers.

  Krak’s was still flared out.

  But what was this on Heller’s? An electrical disturbance? I watched intently. Yes! It was becoming a flare-out. Raht must have come up last night by commercial plane and bus. He must have Heller bugged or watched to know where he was going.

  The viewer suddenly went all wavy and then came in very clear. Raht must have turned off the switch of the 831 Relayer.

  I was looking at a patch of ground below the skids of a freight helicopter. There was a patch of asphalt surrounded by low trees. It made me dizzy to look down.

  A ladder was unreeling below the chopper. The beat of engine and blades came through the door that Heller was holding open.

  Heller looked at the sky: although clouds were still bright with sunset glow, dusk was gathering on the ground. The time was about 5:45 in the afternoon. He moved toward the pilot and gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Thanks for the lift!?
?? he yelled.

  “Any time, Mr. Floyd,” the pilot said.

  Heller had closed the door. He edged back to the front of the cargo cable area. He lifted a small musette bag he was carrying and put the strap around his neck. He gave his black engineer gloves a tug at each cuff and looked down.

  The swaying ladder dwindled away toward the square of asphalt. The helicopter dropped lower.