The scientist could barely control his rage. “There’s a mouse loose in this room!” he snapped.
The young man was incredulous. “That’s just not possible, sir!” he said.
“I saw it! It’s hiding under the cages!” exclaimed the scientist.
“It’s an illusion!” said the assistant mildly. “You know as well as I do that no mouse could ever escape.”
“I tell you I saw it!” the scientist repeated with emphasis.
Clearly unconvinced, the young man nonetheless apparently wanted to accommodate his superior. “I once thought I saw a mouse too,” he said.
The scientist was on the verge of losing his temper. As he stepped toward the cages, the mouse ran out, scampered across the room, and hid under the cages on the opposite side.
Flushed and stricken, the young man stared at the floor. “I don’t understand how — it just couldn’t —” he mumbled.
Without a word, the scientist left the room. Levanter followed.
“Well, worse things happen,” said the scientist when they were outside. “Oil tankers break in half. Jumbo jets collide. Flu vaccines paralyze. General competence and individual responsibility are on the decline, you know.”
Thinking aloud, the scientist went on. “Now all the mice will have to be replaced, and everything based on the data we supplied to other research centers must be declared invalid. So will most of the findings we released for presentation at scientific congresses, seminars, and other conferences. A wipe-out.”
Levanter couldn’t think of anything to say to him.
“A human error,” the scientist said, “and we’ll probably never know whose. Still, Impton Consolidated will continue to pay the bills.” He seemed suddenly cheered by the thought. “What luck that you offered to stay and be a witness for Greg at his unfortunate divorce trial.”
Both sides of the busy New York street were filled with cars, so Levanter had to double-park. But before he could turn off the engine, a police squad car came along on the other side of the street and pulled up across from him. A sergeant rolled down the window and leaned out. “No double-parking. Move!” he shouted.
“I can’t,” Levanter called back.
The sergeant stepped out of his car and crossed over, hands on his hips. “What do you mean ‘can’t’? You just move!”
Levanter took his wallet from his back pocket. He opened it and slowly removed his driver’s license and a laminated card. The card identified him as a member of the American Council for Global Security, Washington, D.C. The Council was a small educational society which regularly polled its members for their views on such issues as the television networks’ fairness in their coverage of American military strength and reported the results in its monthly mimeographed newsletter. Membership in the Council was open to the general public for an annual fee of five dollars, which included the newsletter subscription and a membership card. Levanter had joined as soon as he returned home from Impton.
He handed the sergeant his driver’s license and, purposely hesitating, the membership card. “You guys do your job, we do ours,” he said indifferently. The sergeant glanced at the license, and then examined the membership card. Levanter watched him study the Council’s symbol: an American eagle, clutching the globe, with the credo PEACE THROUGH VIGILANCE above it, bracketed by two military insignia stars.
Just as Levanter had hoped, the sergeant, sharing the confusion caused by a series of public disclosures about the White House, the CIA, and the FBI, assumed that the Council was yet another of the government’s elitist intelligence units and that Levanter was one of its agents. He scanned the surrounding buildings, then bent closer to Levanter. “Stalking them right here?” he whispered, furrowing his brow in an expression of complicity.
“As you see,” Levanter assured him.
Without further question, the sergeant returned the license and card. “Are they really in this crummy block?” He shook his head in disbelief.
“They are everywhere. But so are we,” whispered Levanter, winking.
“Right you are.” The sergeant saluted, returned to his car, and, waving at Levanter, drove away.
Levanter turned off his engine. He picked up two bundles of shirts from the rear seat and carried them into the laundry. As Levanter placed the bundles on the counter, the Chinese shopkeeper reached for them. Levanter stopped him.
“The shirts in this pile are just to be washed,” he said. “Only the ones in the other pile are to be starched. Please be careful not to mix them up.”
The muscles in the face of the Chinese tightened. He grabbed both mounds of shirts and threw them together into one linen bag. Without a word, he handed Levanter a receipt.
Levanter took the ticket from him and carefully placed it in his wallet. “Too bad you’re disregarding my instructions,” he continued in an even, calm voice. “I’ll pick them up tomorrow, and I hope there’ll be no mistake.” He leaned slightly toward the man in exaggerated politeness. The man turned around, picked up the bag, and, almost running, disappeared into the back room.
When Levanter came back the next day to collect his shirts, the Chinese took his ticket without looking at him or saying anything. He handed Levanter two packages and turned away. Levanter put down an envelope he was carrying and tore open both packages. Almost immediately he saw that one of two shirts of identical fabric had been starched. Summoning the shopkeeper, he pointed to the starched shirt. “I warned you not to mix up my shirts,” he said firmly. “And now look what you’ve done!”
The man was breathing fast, but still stood immobile, looking away from Levanter.
“Even a child could see that these two shirts are made of the same delicate fabric, which must not be starched. But you couldn’t see it and used starch on one. Now that shirt is damaged. Do you expect to charge me for such inferior work?”
The Chinese became apoplectic; the veins swelled in his forehead, his eyes bulged in their sockets. He backed away from the counter and started to stamp on the floor, hitting his thighs with his clenched fists. He gasped, apparently searching for English words, but instead ranted something in Chinese.
“It seems you have forgotten not only how to launder shirts and how to speak English,” said Levanter coolly, “but also how to behave like a true Chinese.” He began to gather up his shirts.
The man stepped forward again, close to the counter. He had found his English. “I can forget America,” he said. “I can forget English. I can forget you and your shirts. But you — you —” He seemed to be planning a decisive verbal attack. “You,” he repeated slowly, pointing at Levanter, “you cannot forget what you do not know.” As if proud of his logic, he laughed hysterically. “You cannot forget China because you have never been there,” he repeated. “The Chinese people are very proud. They would never let your kind in,” he declared triumphantly. He leaned against the counter. “Now go out of my Chinese store.”
“I am about to leave,” said Levanter calmly. “But I knew your thoughts in advance, so look what I have brought to show you.” He reached for his envelope and drew out an eight-by-ten black-and-white glossy press photograph of himself surrounded by Chinese officials, standing under a large poster of Mao Tse-tung in front of Peking’s Great Hall of the People.
The man took the picture, glanced at it, then brought it closer to his eyes. His teeth clenched, he tore the photograph into tiny scraps and, screaming incoherently in English and Chinese, scattered the pieces like confetti around the shop. A black worker came running from the back room. When she saw her boss jumping around in a rage, her mouth dropped open. The Chinese was throwing the last scraps of the photo when he noticed her. Suddenly he sat down, quivering, his face in his hands, quietly sobbing. Levanter left his payment on the counter, picked up his shirts, and walked out.
Returning home from a late dinner with friends, Levanter spotted an attractive prostitute standing in a knot of six Japanese men with attaché cases in their hands and cameras around the
ir necks. The woman was taller than all the men and her voice easily carried to Levanter, who stopped a few feet away from the group.
“A screw’s a screw,” she was saying, sounding annoyed and impatient. “And if all you guys are with me in one room, you pay once for the room, but six times for me. Get it?”
In subdued, heavily accented voices, the men argued that since she had to undress and dress only once, they wouldn’t take as much of her time as six separate men.
“A screw’s a screw,” repeated the woman. “Six screws is six screws. Take it or leave it.”
But the Japanese men continued to bargain. She would save on taxi fares to and from her hotel, one reasoned.
“Six screws is six times the money. That’s how I count,” she said. She began to lose her temper. “I’ve had enough of your kind anyway.”
A disagreement broke out among the men. Looking away from them, the woman saw Levanter.
“Are you with them?” she shouted accusingly at him. Levanter assured her he wasn’t. She turned her back on the Japanese and came to him. “Are you going out?” she asked in a stern but inviting tone. She was young and fresh-looking, with a roguish air and expressive eyes.
“I’m already out,” said Levanter. “Don’t you want to know if I’m going in?”
She laughed, tossing her long, shiny hair. “Do you or don’t you want company?”
“Not company,” said Levanter. “You.”
She told him her price. “There’s this place two minutes from here.” She named a midtown tourist hotel, took Levanter by the arm, and walked beside him, matching his long stride.
As soon as they entered the brightly lit hotel room, she took his jacket and felt in all the pockets. Then she patted his pants pockets. Evidently confident that Levanter carried neither a weapon nor a detective’s badge, she began to stroke his hips more gently. Levanter handed her the money.
“I can tell you don’t mind the light,” she said as she bolted the door. “Some guys don’t want to see what they do.”
She stood in the center of the room, spread her legs, and began to undress, examining herself in the large mirror across from the bed. Conscious of every gesture, she removed each article of clothing in a deliberate fashion until she was naked. As her gaze wandered over the mirror, her hands trailed down her belly, her fingers alternating with the palm of her hand in making long curved strokes, squeezing and kneading her flesh, then gliding back over her body. She extended her arm toward Levanter and pulled him beside her. As he watched the two of them in the mirror, she rubbed and pressed her body against his, flinging her arms around him, licking his neck all the way up to his ear while she unbuttoned his shirt and loosened his belt.
As his hands stroked her thighs, Levanter saw her eyes in the mirror. Her gaze seemed to be directed beyond the reflection in the mirror; he began to wonder whether she was performing for the benefit of someone else, whether he and the woman were being watched from the other side of the mirror.
Levanter caressed the woman with one hand; with the other he reached behind him and picked up an ashtray. Then, in a single motion, he pushed her aside and swung his arm as if to hurl the ashtray at the mirror.
From behind the mirror came the muffled crash of an overturned chair and the sound of scrambling, of someone rushing away.
Levanter sped out of the room into the corridor and forced open the door to the next room. He discovered that he was right. A movie camera, mounted on a tripod, was aimed at the back of the mirror, and he could see the woman dressing hastily in the room he had just left.
All at once, two middle-aged men rushed forward and placed themselves between Levanter and the camera.
“I want this film exposed right now,” said Levanter calmly.
“Listen, you good-for-nothing creep!” one shouted, stepping toward Levanter with clenched fists, as the other edged behind Levanter to cut him off from the door.
Levanter did not move. He reached for his wallet, took out his American Council for Global Security membership card, and pushed it under the nose of the man who had just shouted at him. “Take a look at this,” he said.
The man took the card, scrutinized it carefully, then cautiously handed it to the other. Neither said anything as they returned the card to Levanter. They were clearly no longer in a fighting mood. In the next room the woman finished dressing, grabbed her bag, and, without a backward glance, ran out.
“I’m here on assignment,” said Levanter, putting the card back into his wallet. “And there are others like me in the hotel at this moment. Now,” he said in the most officious tone he could muster, “you have a choice: either you expose the film or we expose you.”
The men looked at each other. Without a word, one opened the camera and pulled out the cartridge. “My gift to the Feds,” he said, handing the film to Levanter.
The other one grinned at Levanter. “Why didn’t you wait a bit longer and enjoy yourself with the chick?” he asked. “How often do you get to play in a porno flick?”
Ronsard-Thibaudet Samael, President of the African Republic of Lotan, was a world-renowned essayist and the author of numerous works on the nature of language. Investors International had decided to honor him with its prestigious Humanitarian Award.
Levanter, one of the organizers of the event, went to the New York hotel where President Samael’s entourage was staying. He had an appointment with the State Department official serving as Samael’s adviser during his visit and was given a careful security check by three United States Secret Service agents both before entering the elevator and as he stepped out of it.
A tall, red-haired woman, with full breasts and unusually white skin, was waiting for Levanter at the door. Levanter mentally nicknamed her Oklahoma: a lot of everything but no detail to speak of. She introduced herself as President Samael’s adviser. Inside, she pointed to the papers spread all over her sofa, desk, and table, explaining that these were the detailed security plans for the Investors International dinner. President Samael was to be honored as a thinker and humanitarian. But since many Afro-Americans in the United States were fanatically opposed to his administration’s domestic reforms and foreign policies, his visit had turned into a political event, necessitating elaborate security measures. The State Department adviser was the liaison for the various federal and city agencies involved.
Levanter looked over the list of notables invited to the dinner; then he and Oklahoma started working on the final seating plan.
There was a knock at the door, but Oklahoma made no move to answer it. Assuming that she expected him to respond, Levanter went to the door and opened it.
He faced a handsome, slender man whose dense silver hair contrasted with the black skin of his youthful face. The man was naked except for a pair of unusually narrow briefs. Such a tight, sparse garment, Levanter thought with amusement, could go a long way toward sustaining the notion of black virility. A freshly starched white shirt hung by its collar from the man’s forefinger.
The man did not express any surprise at encountering a stranger at her door. Stepping past Levanter without speaking, he entered the room and went straight to the woman. He embraced her and whispered something in her ear. Levanter, ill at ease, remained at the door and looked away. But the man left as quickly as he had arrived, passing Levanter on his way out, still dangling his shirt. Levanter turned back into the room. Oklahoma, flushed, made no comment, and the two of them went on with their work as if nothing had happened.
A few minutes later there was another knock at the door. This time Levanter ignored it, and the woman went to answer. The same man entered. He was wearing a tailored dark blue suit, starched white shirt, fashionable wide tie, and shiny, pointy-toed shoes. Levanter, who had seen many photographs of President Samael, although he had never met him in person, recognized the man instantly and rose to greet him.
Oklahoma led him over to Levanter and introduced them. President Samael extended his hand and Levanter shook it. The President
stepped back, looked at him, then turned to Oklahoma. With a straight face, he said, “Mr. Levanter and I have met once before, but it was some time ago and we have both changed.” Addressing Levanter, he said, “You, Mr. Levanter, might even have forgotten our first meeting!”
“Indeed, Mr. President,” said Levanter with an equally solemn expression, “it was, after all, so long ago.”
Samael smiled. Assuring Levanter that he was looking forward to the dinner, he kissed Oklahoma on her cheek and left.
As Levanter and Oklahoma settled down to work again, Levanter remarked that President Samael was a very charming man.
The adviser raised her head and nodded. “A fine gentleman,” she said. After a moment, she added solemnly, “And always smartly dressed.”
In Tunisia on behalf of Investors International, Levanter attended a gala, where he was introduced to an Arab diplomat, a former Interpol official. A handsome man with dark, intense eyes, the Arab carried himself with an air of detachment. He offered to take Levanter for a ride in his new, custom-built Italian sports car.
They drove slowly through the crowded suburbs of Tunis, then moved onto an open highway, past giant billboards displaying life-sized portraits of the country’s president, and turned off at a dirt road.
Passing through peasant villages, the diplomat honked the horn to clear a passage through the crowds of half-naked men, women, and children who crawled out of their huts to stare at the car. The long gleaming hood kept brushing against villagers who failed to jump out of the way in time. In one village, a camel stubbornly blocked the road, and the diplomat was forced to stop. A crowd of onlookers pressed closer to the sleek machine.
An old beggar, his hand outstretched, hobbled over to the car on Levanter’s side. His chest was covered with dirt and sores, his trousers were in shreds, his feet bare. One eye was barely visible in a pool of oozing pus. He wore a wreath of fresh lemon-blossoms over his matted gray hair. He brought his face close to the window and fixed his good eye on Levanter. When Levanter made no move to open the window, the beggar began to twitch and placed his gnarled hands on the glass, his crooked fingers crawling over it like leeches.