Occasion ... for Disaster
he announced, "is too fast for me. I'm going to get some fresh air."
Luba nodded, her red hair brushing Malone's cheek silkily. "I'm
coming, too," she said.
Surrounding the Great Universal, Malone remembered, was a small belt
of parkland. He flagged a hallway car--remembering carefully to check
whether or not the driver was the sniggering Murray--and he and Luba
piled in and started out for the park. In the car, he held her hand
silently, feeling a little like a bashful schoolboy and a little like
Sir Kenneth Malone. It was a strange mixture, but he decided that he
liked it.
They got out, standing in the cool darkness of the park. Overhead a
moon and stars were shining. The little hallway car rolled away and
they were alone. Completely alone. Malone swallowed hard.
"Sleuth," Luba said softly in the darkness.
Malone turned to face her.
"Sleuth," she said, "don't you ever take a chance?"
"Chance?" Malone said.
"Damn it," Luba said in a soft, sweet voice, "kiss me, Ken."
Malone had no answer to that--at least, no verbal answer. But then,
one didn't seem to be needed.
When he finally came up for air, he said: "Lou--"
"Yes, Ken?"
"Lou, how long are you going to be here? Or in New York? What I mean
is--"
"I'll be around," Lou said. "I will be going back to New York of
course; after all, Ken, I do have a living to make, such as it is, and
Sir Lewis is expecting me."
"I don't know," Malone said, "but it still sounds funny. A girl like
you working for ... well, for the Psychical Research people. Ghosts
and ectoplasm and all that."
Suddenly Lou wasn't in his arms any more. "Now, wait a minute," she
said. "You seemed to need their information, all right."
"But that was ... oh, well," Malone said. "Never mind. Maybe I'm
silly. It really doesn't matter."
"I guess it doesn't, now," Lou said in a softer tone. "Except that it
does mean I'll be going back to New York pretty soon."
"Oh," Malone said. "But ... look, Lou, maybe we could work something
out. I could tell Sir Lewis I needed you here for something, and then
he'd--"
"My, my," she said. "What it must be like to have all that influence."
"What?" Malone said.
Lou grinned, almost invisibly. "Nothing," she said. "Nothing. But, my
fine feathered Fed, I don't want to be pulled around on somebody
else's string."
"But--"
"I mean it, Ken," Luba said.
Malone shrugged. "Suppose we table it for now, then," he said, "and
get around to it later. At dinner, say ... around nine?"
"And just where," Luba said, "will you be before nine? Making improper
advances to the local contingent of chorines?"
"I will make improper advances," Malone vowed, "only to you, Lou."
Lou's eyes sparkled. "Goody," she said. "I've always wanted to be a
Fallen Woman."
"But I have got some things to do before nine," Malone said. "I've got
to work, too."
"Well, then," Lou said in a suspiciously sweet voice, "suppose I talk
to Sir Lewis Carter, and tell him to keep you in New York? Then--"
"Enough," Malone said. "Nine o'clock."
XI
Somebody somewhere was wishing all the world "a plague on
both your houses," and making it stick. Confusion is fun in a
comedy--but in the pilot of a plane or an executive of a
nation....
Back in his room, Malone put on a fresh shirt, checked the .44 Magnum
in his shoulder holster, changed jackets, adjusted his hat to the
proper angle, and vanished.
He had, he'd realized, exactly one definite lead. And now he was going
to follow up on it. The Government was apparently falling to pieces;
so was business and so was the Mafia. Nobody Malone had heard of had
gained anything. Except Mike Sand and his truckers. They'd beaten the
Mafia, at least.
Sand was worth a chat. Malone had a way to get in to see him, but he
had to work fast. Otherwise Sand would very possibly know what Malone
was trying to do. And that might easily be dangerous.
He had made his appearance in the darkness beneath one of the bridges
at the southwest side of Central Park, in New York. It was hardly
Malone's idea of perfect comfort, but it did mean safety; there was
very seldom anyone around after dark, and the shadows were thick
enough so that his "appearance" would only mean, to the improbable
passerby, that he had stepped out into the light.
Now he strolled quietly over to Central Park West, and flagged a taxi
heading downtown. He'd expected to run into one of the roving muggers
who still made the Park a trap for the unwary--he'd almost looked
forward to it, in a way--but nobody appeared. It was unusual, but he
didn't have time to wonder about it.
The headquarters for the National Brotherhood of Truckers was east of
Greenwich Village, on First Avenue, so Malone had plenty of time to
think things out while the cab wended its laborious southeast way.
After a few minutes he realized that he would have even more time to
think than he'd planned on.
"Lots of traffic for this time of night," he volunteered.
The cabbie, a fiftyish man with a bald, wrinkled head and surprisingly
bright blue eyes, nodded without turning his head. "Maybe you think
this is bad," he said. "You would not recognize the place an hour
earlier, friend. During the real rush hour, I mean. Things are what
they call _meshuggah_, friend. It means crazy."
"How come?" Malone said.
"The subway is on strike since last week," the cabbie said. "The buses
are also on strike. This means that everybody is using a car. They
can make it faster if they wish to walk, but they use a car. It does
not help matters, believe me."
"I can see that," Malone murmured.
"And the cops are not doing much good either," the cabbie went on,
"since they went on strike sometime last Tuesday."
Malone nodded, and then did a double-take. "Cops?" he said. "On
strike? But that's illegal. They could be arrested."
"You can be funny," the cabbie said. "I am too sad to be funny."
"But--"
"Unless you are from Rhode Island," the cabbie said, "or even farther
away, you are deaf, dumb and blind. Everybody in New York knows what
is going on by this time. I admit that it is not in the newspapers,
but the newspapers do not tell the truth since, as I remember it, the
City Council election of 1924, and then it is an accident, due to the
major's best friend working in the printing plants."
"But cops can't go on strike," Malone said plaintively.
"This," the cabbie said in a judicious tone, "is true. But they do not
give out any parking tickets any more, or any traffic citations
either. They are working on bigger things, they say, and besides all
this there are not so many cops on the force now. They are spread very
thin."
Malone could see what was coming. "Arrests of policemen," he said,
"and resignations."
"And investigations," the cabbie said. "Mayor Amalfi is a good Joe
and does not want anything in the papers until a real strike comes
along, but the word gets out anyhow, as it always does."
"Makes driving tough," Malone said.
"People can make better time on their hands and knees," the cabbie
said, "with the cops pulling a strike. They concentrate on big items
now, and you can even smoke in the subways if you can find a subway
that is running."
Malone stopped to think how much of the city's income depended on
parking tickets and small fines, and realized that a "strike" like the
one the police were pulling might be very effective indeed. And,
unlike the participants in the Boston Police Strike of sixty-odd years
before, these cops would have public sentiment on their side--since
they were keeping actual crime down.
"How long do they think it's going to last?" Malone said.
"It can be over tomorrow," the cabbie said, "but this is not generally
believed in the most influential quarters. Mayor Amalfi and the new
Commissioner try to straighten things out all day long, but the way
things go straightening them out does no good. Something big is in the
wind, friend. I--"
* * * * *
The cab, on Second Avenue and Seventeenth Street, stopped for a
traffic light. Malone felt an itch in the back of his mind, as if his
prescience were trying to warn him of something; he'd felt it for a
little while, he realized, but only now could he pay attention to it.
The door on the driver's side opened suddenly, and so did the door
next to Malone. Two young men, obviously in their early twenties, were
standing in the openings, holding guns that were plainly intended for
immediate use.
The one next to the driver said, in a flat voice: "Don't nobody get
wise. That way nobody gets hurt. Give us--"
That was as far as he got.
When the rear door had opened, Malone had had a full second to prepare
himself, which was plenty of time. The message from his precognitive
powers had come along just in time.
The second gunman thrust his gun into the cab. He seemed almost to be
handing it to Malone politely, and this effect was spoiled only by
Malone's twist of the gunman's wrist, which must have felt as if he'd
put his hand into a loop tied to the axle of a high-speed centrifuge.
The gunman let go of the gun and Malone, spurning it, let it drop.
He didn't need it. His other hand had gone into his coat and come out
again with the .44 Magnum.
The thug at the front of the car had barely realized what was
happening by the time it was all over. Automatic reflexes turned him
away from the driver and toward the source of danger, his gun pointing
toward Malone. But the reflexes gave out as he found himself staring
down a rifled steel tube which, though hardly more than
seven-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, must have looked as though a
high-speed locomotive might come roaring out of it at any second.
Malone hardly needed to bark: "_Drop it!_" The revolver hit the seat
next to the cabbie.
"Driver," Malone said in a conversational voice, "can you handle a
gun?"
"Why, it is better than even that I still can," the cabbie said. "I am
in the business myself many years ago, before I see the error of my
ways and buy a taxi with the profits I make. It is a high-pay
business," he went on, "but very insecure."
The cabbie scooped up the weapon by his side, flipped out the cylinder
expertly to check the cartridges, flipped it back in and centered the
muzzle on the gunman who'd dropped the revolver.
"It is more than thirty years since I use one of these," he said
gently, "but I do not forget how to pull the trigger, and at this
range I can hardly miss."
Malone noticed vaguely that he was still holding hands with the second
gunman, and that this one was trying to struggle free. Malone shrugged
and eased off a bit, at the same time shifting his own aim. The .44
Magnum now pointed at gunman number two, and the cabbie was aiming at
gunman number one. The tableau was silent for some seconds.
"Now," Malone said at last, "we wait. Driver, if you would sort of
lean against your horn button, we might be able to speed things up a
little. The light has turned green."
"The local constables," the cabbie said, "do not bother with stalled
cars in traffic these days."
"But," Malone pointed out, "I have a hunch no cop could resist a taxi
which is not only stalled and blocking traffic but is also blatting
its horn continuously. Strike or no strike," he finished
sententiously, "there are things beyond the power of man to ignore."
"Friend," the cabbie said, "you convince me. It is a good move." He
sagged slightly against the horn button, keeping the gun centered at
all times on the man before him.
The horn began to wail horribly.
The first gunman swallowed nervously. "Hey, now, listen," he said,
shouting slightly above the horn. "This wasn't anything. Just a gag,
see? A little gag. We was playing a joke. On a friend."