Black Genesis

  McGuire had been scribbling a name on a legal doc­ument. He handed it to Heller. It said:

  SUBPOENA! THE PEOPLE VERSUS EPSTEIN. J. Edgar Hoover is hereby sum­moned to appear at 0900 hours at the Federal Building, Room 22222, Permanent Federal Grand Jury, Internal Revenue Courts.

  "Cross-examination?" said Heller. "Correct."

  "You find out everything there is to know about me?"

  "Correct."

  "Actually, I think," said Heller, "that under that board over there is a good hiding place."

  "That's better," said McGuire. "Which board?"

  Heller got up. He went over. He knelt down.

  And out of his pocket, his action hidden from them by his body, he took a red-and-white piece of candy. I rec­ognized it. It was the candy he had been making aboard the tug! It had a wrapper that looked like paper. With a thumbnail and a twist, he pushed the paper down into the candy. He put it under a board.

  He stood up. "There are no manuals there now."

  "Shows the right spirit. You can go now but you show up! Federal Building, nine hundred hours!"

  Heller walked out.

  He walked down the remains of the steps.

  Outside, he walked up to one of the government cars. He bent over.

  He had four sticks of dynamite strapped to his leg!

  He undid the tape.

  He laid the dynamite into the back seat of the car. No cap, no means to explode it. He just laid it there.

  Then he walked very rapidly west on 125th Street.

  The buildings on either side of him shook in concus­sion!

  A gigantic flash whipped at the sky!

  A roaring blast of sound struck a sledgehammer blow!

  Heller looked back. As the smoke soared, I saw that the whole front of the abandoned apartment house was falling into the street in slow motion. Pieces of the roof were still sailing in the air!

  The government cars, showered with rubble, did not explode: So he wasn't that good with explosives after all.

  Pieces of apartment house were falling out of the sky. Torrents of flame began to leap up.

  It was the candy!

  I knew what the stuff was now. It was a binary concussion-flame grenade. It didn't operate until the wrapper, the needful element, was shoved down into the explosive. It had activated on a forty-second dissolve. The Apparatus never used them. They were too risky to carry!

  "What the hell was that?" said an old man near Heller.

  "There were ten terrorists in that building," said Hel­ler.

  "Oh," said the old man. "Vandals again."

  Heller went along 125th Street, first at a casual walk and then at a distance-increasing run.

  Behind him, fire sirens were screaming.

  Heller didn't look back again. He was headed, appar­ently, for the river.

  Chapter 3

  Speeding along, Heller could catch glimpses of the river ahead. His view was impeded with underpasses and overpasses of major roads.

  He veered slightly to his left. The river lay just on the other side of some trunk highways along which traf­fic blurred.

  Heller negotiated the obstacles.

  Before him stretched a long dock, reaching west into the water.

  He slowed, alert. He jumped up to see over some obstacles. Then he went speeding ahead.

  On the end of the dock lay a tangle of something. Heller raced to it.

  Right at the dock end lay a jacket. A pair of horn­rimmed spectacles was sitting on it.

  The Jersey shore, opposite, was a yellow haze of pol­luted air. The Hudson was blue with sky reflection despite the scum and filth in it.

  Heller was looking up and down the river. Appar­ently an incoming tide from the ocean was slacking the current for the bits of dunnage and trash were going neither upstream nor down.

  A hat!

  A soggy, dark blue, snap-brim hat, still afloat with the air trapped in it.

  Heller threw off his jacket. He pulled off his shoes. He zipped out of his pants. He threw his cap to the dock.

  In a long dive he went into the water, debris and oil!

  Down he went! Hands grabbing out and back, he was pulling himself toward the bottom.

  The light went from brown to dim gray.

  Yikes! How deep was this river?

  Down, down, down, his eyes sweeping left to right through the murk!

  Ooze!

  He had hit bottom!

  Up he went like a streak.

  He blew to the surface. He treaded water, jumping his head up to look around.

  He inverted.

  Down he went again. Down, down, down, looking left and right.

  Black ooze!

  Around in a circle on the bottom. Old tires and cans.

  Up, up, up! He blew to the surface again.

  More treading water. More jumps to lift his head out.

  A faint sound!

  Heller made a bigger jump, lifting himself out of the water.

  A faint voice, "I'm over here."

  Heller treaded water and looked toward the dock.

  There in the water, clinging to an old ring sunk in concrete, was somebody, just a hand and head showing.

  Heller struck out in that direction.

  In a minute or two he was beside a very small young man, covered with oil, mostly eyes.

  "I'm a failure," moaned the pitiful figure. Then he coughed.

  "I lost my nerve. I couldn't keep my head under long enough to drown."

  "Are you Israel Epstein?" said Heller.

  "Yes, I'm sorry I can't shake hands. I'd lose my grip."

  Heller was surveying the fellow's plight. The dock end was sheer above him and had no handholds.

  A passing ship engulfed them in waves. Epstein lost his grip on the ring and got banged against the concrete. Heller put Epstein's hand back on the ring. "Hold on!"

  "I can't climb up. I was a failure at drowning myself and now I'm a failure at saving myself. You better go off and leave me. I'm not worth rescuing."

  Heller swam along the dock and found an iron lad­der that reached down into the water. He climbed up.

  He went to his jacket and took out a coil of fish line. He went back to the dock edge above Epstein. "Just hold on," he called down. A passing tug's wash engulfed Epstein.

  Heller's hands were moving rapidly in a strange repeating rhythmic pattern. He was plaiting the fish line into a thin rope!

  He made a nonslip loop in the end of his product. He lowered it down to Epstein. "Put your legs through it and sit on it."

  Epstein couldn't do it.

  Heller secured the top end to an old rusty ring and dived back into the water. He paddled over to Epstein, found a piece of driftwood, broke it and forced it into the loop to make a seat and got him onto it and showed him how to hold the upper strands.

  "You shouldn't go to all this trouble," said Epstein. "I'll only come to another bad end."

  Heller splashed at the water to get oil scum to float away and when he had a clear patch, he used it to get some of the oil off Epstein's head and shoulders.

  "Now, don't go away," said Heller. He swam back to the ladder, got up on the dock and shortly had Epstein up beside him, safely on the concrete.

  Chapter 4

  A pair of cops wandered up. "What are you doing?"

  "Fishing," said Heller.

  "You sure you're not swimming?" said one cop.

  "Just fishing," said Heller.

  "Well, see that you don't swim," said the cop and he and his partner wandered away, idly swinging their nightsticks.

  "You didn't turn me over to them," said Epstein. "But you might as well. They'll get me anyway."

  Heller had recovered his redstar engineer's rag. He was wiping the oil off Epstein. Then he got Epstein's

  shoes off and got him out of his pants and put the arti­cles in the sun, which seemed to be quite hot.

  He took a few more swipes at Epstein's face and then put the young man
's horn-rimmed glasses on him.

  I wondered if Heller had made a mistake in identity. According to Mr. Twaddle, this Epstein was a roaring anarchist, a terror and a threat to civilization. But he was quite small, had a narrow face, a beaked nose, weak eyes and was shivering.

  "You cold?" said Heller.

  "No, it is just what I have been through," said Epstein.

  "What do they want you for, really?" said Heller.

  Epstein looked like he was going to cry. "It all started when I realized that the usual Internal Revenue Service agent just made up regulations as he went along. But one fatal day I was in the law library and found the actual Congressional law and the IRS manual of regula­tions. I Xeroxed them. I started to do the income tax returns for the faculty and some students with all the cor­rect deductions." He sighed and was silent a bit. "Oh, the way of the revolutionary is hard! I'm not up to it."

  "So what happened?" said Heller.

  "The local IRS office lost about two million dollars in illegal collections they'd been getting. And the bonus­es of agents McGuire, O'Brien and Malone shrank to nothing."

  He sighed a long, shuddering sigh. "They will never forgive me. They will persecute me all my days. You shouldn't have rescued me. I am a lost cause."

  Heller had gotten some of the oil off of himself. He went over to his jacket and fished out the subpoena. He brought it back and handed it to Epstein. As he sat back down, he said, "What is this?"

  Epstein looked at it, turned it over. "It's just a sub­poena. It tells you to appear before a grand jury and tes­tify."

  "And what does that consist of?" said Heller.

  "Oh, very simple. You just take the Fifth Amendment—which is to say, refuse in case it incrimi­nates you—and they put you in jail and bring you out every few weeks and you just take the Fifth Amendment again."

  "Then they really don't examine you and make you tell all you know?"

  "No, it's just a method of keeping innocent people in jail."

  Heller was looking at the water. "Oh, those poor fel­lows," he said.

  "What poor fellows?" said Epstein.

  "McGuire, Malone and O'Brien and seven other agents. They're all dead. I thought I was facing a Code break, you see."

  "Dead?"

  "Yes, your apartment blew up. Killed them all."

  "If those three are dead, then the case is ended. They didn't have any evidence, only their own testi­mony. It means I am not being hunted. The thing is all over!"

  "Good," said Heller. "Then you're free and clear!"

  Epstein sat for a short time, looking at the water. Then suddenly his teeth began to chatter and from this he went into a torrent of tears.

  "If you're free and clear," said Heller, "what's wrong now?"

  After a bit Epstein was able to talk. But he still kept on crying. "I know something awful is going to happen in the next few minutes!"

  "Why?" said Heller in astonishment.

  "Oh," wept Epstein, "I wouldn't be permitted to have this much good news."

  "What?" said Heller.

  "The news is too wonderful! I don't deserve it! A world record catastrophe is going to strike any moment now to make up for it! I know it!"

  "Look," said Heller patiently, "your troubles are over. And there's more good news. I have a job for you."

  "Oh?" said Epstein. "You mean I've got a chance to pay back my student loans and re-enroll for my doctorate again?"

  "I think so," said Heller.

  "What is your name?"

  "Jet."

  Oh, my Gods! This was a Code break. Heller was going to tell him his real name.

  "That isn't all of it," said Epstein.

  "Well, no," said Heller. "The full name on my papers is Jerome Terrance Wister. That makes my ini­tials 'J. T.' My real friends call me Jet."

  Oh, that slippery dog. He'd just squeaked by on that one.

  "Oh, J. T. Wister. Jet. I get it. The name on the sub­poena was J. Edgar Hoover and I was sure you wanted me to murder somebody. I am not the type, you know. I can't even kill cockroaches."

  "Nothing drastic like that," said Heller. "You're over twenty-one, aren't you?"

  "Yes, I'm twenty-three and an aged wreck."

  "Well, all I want you to do is open a broker account for me."

  "Do you have credit?"

  "Well, no," said Heller. "But all I want you to do is open an account so I can buy and sell stocks—some firm like Short, Skidder and Long Associates."

  Epstein drew a shuddering sigh. "It isn't that sim­ple. You have to have an address so you can have a bank account. Then you have to arrange credit and open a brokerage account. Do you have any money?"

  "Yes. I have a hundred thousand to use in such gam­bling."

  "Do you have any heavy debts or liabilities like me?"

  "No."

  "I know everybody has enemies. But do you have any special enemies that would like to get at you?"

  Heller thought a bit. "Well, there's a Mr. Bury, an attorney I've run into."

  "Bury? Bury of Swindle and Crouch?"

  "Yes, the same."

  "He's Delbert John Rockecenter's personal family attorney. He's one of the most powerful lawyers on Wall Street. And he's an enemy?"

  "I would say so," said Heller. "He keeps working at it."

  "Oh," said Epstein. He was silent for a bit and they sat in the hot sun drying off. Then he said, "This thing you're asking is pretty big. It's going to take an awful lot of work. You would need somebody on it full time, not just to start it but to run it for you."

  "Well, how much do you earn a week?"

  "Oh, I don't earn much of anything," said Epstein. "I'm not really an accountant—that's just one of the things a business administrator has to know. They wouldn't take my last thesis for my doctorate. It was a good thesis, too. It was all about corporate feudalism-industrial anarchy, you know—how the corporations could and should run everything. Its title was 'Is Gov­ernment Necessary?' But I think I could get them to accept my new title. It's 'Anarchy Is Vital If We Are

  Ever Going to Establish Industrial Feudalism.'"

  "Well," said Heller, "you could have time to work on that."

  "You see," said Epstein, "they argue with me that it isn't in the field of business administration. They say it is a political science subject. But it isn't. No! About eighty percent of a corporation's resources are absorbed in trying to file government reports and escort inspec­tors around. If they would listen, I could get the Gross National Product up eighty percent, just like that!" He brooded a bit. "Maybe I ought to change my thesis title to 'Corporations Would Find Revolution Cheaper Than Paying Taxes.""

  "I would pay you five hundred dollars a week," said Heller.

  "No. If I did it, it would be for one percent of the gross income with a drawing account not to exceed two hundred dollars a week. I'm not worth much."

  Heller went over to his jacket and fished out two one hundred dollar bills. He tried to hand them to Epstein.

  "No," said Epstein. "You don't know enough about me. The offer is probably very good. But I can't ac­cept it."

  "Right now, do you have any money? Any place to live? Your apartment isn't there anymore."

  "It's no more than I deserve. I didn't have any other clothes and I can sleep in the park tonight. It's warm weather."

  "You've got to eat."

  "I am used to starving."

  "Look," said Heller, "you've got to take this job."

  "It's too good an offer. You do not know me, Mr. Hoover—I mean, Mr. Wister. You are probably a kind, honest, patient man. But your efforts of philanthropy

  are being directed at a lost cause. I cannot possibly accept your employment."

  They sat for a while, dangling their legs off the dock edge, drying out in the warm sun. The Hudson had begun to flow again as the tide ebbed.

  Suddenly Heller said, "Is ethnology included in busi­ness administration studies?"

  "No."

  "How a
bout the customs of people?"

  "No. You're talking about social anthropology, I guess. I've never studied that."

  "Good," said Heller. "Then you would not realize that the laws of the American Indian were still binding on Manhattan, due to prior sovereignty."

  "They are?" said Epstein.

  "There was an Indian law that when you saved a man's life, that man was thereafter responsible for you from there on out."

  "Where did you hear that?"

  "I was told by a master of political science from your own university."

  "So it must be true," brooded Epstein.

  "Good," said Heller. "I just saved your life, didn't I?"

  "Yes, you did. I'm afraid there's no doubt about that."

  "All right," said Heller. "Then you are responsible for me from here on out."

  Silence.

  "You have to take the job and look after my affairs," said Heller. "It's prior Indian law. There's no way out of it."

  Epstein stared at him. Then suddenly his head dropped. He broke into a torrent of tears. When he could talk, he blubbered, "You see, I knew when I heard all

  that good news, some new catastrophe was lurking just ahead! And it's arrived! It's been horrible enough, in the face of malignant fate, trying to bear up and take respon­sibility for myself. And now," a fresh torrent of tears, "I have to take responsibility for you, too!"

  Heller laid the two one-hundred-dollar bills in his hand. Epstein looked at them forlornly. He got up and went over to his jacket. He put them in his empty wallet.

  He sadly looked at Heller. "Meet me on the steps of High Library on the campus tomorrow at noon and I will have the plan of what we have to do."

  "Good," said Heller.

  Epstein picked up his coat and walked a little ways. Then he turned. "I am sure that, with my awful fate, you will live to regret the kind things you have done. I am sorry."

  Head down, he trudged away.

  Chapter 5

  That evening, in the Gracious Palms lobby, Heller sat reading the Evening Libel. He was wearing his old, blue, too-short suit. The "throwaway" suit had really been thrown away after Heller's swim in the polluted river water. And evidently the tailors had not delivered any new clothes.