"I heard the president talking about something like that tonight," Phil
said, "but he sounded drunk."
She shrugged.
"But Fun Incorporated is supposed to have all sorts of connections with
the government," Phil continued to object.
She smiled oddly. "You're right. The best connections any syndicate
ever had. Just the same, they're finished. Moe's been worried for
weeks, worried bad. I can tell."
"Moe?"
"Moe Brimstine. You saw him for a minute this afternoon."
"Oh, yes," Phil said, getting a vivid memory flash of the door-filling,
dark jowled hulk, and then went on with a little laugh, "You know, it
startled me when his voice was the same as Old Rubberarm's. He seemed
too important a man to be a door-tender."
"I'll say he is!" she exclaimed, the boom returning to her voice for a
moment. "You didn't actually think, Phil, did you, that he spent his
time peeking through a one-way peephole and working that spring-rubber
dingus? And would I be calling him a dumb robot? He just used his own
voice to record Old Rubberarm's questions and answers. He gets a kick
out of things like that." She lifted her heavy eyebrows. "Don't you
know who Moe Brimstine is?"
Phil shook his head.
"Where you been all your life? 'Scuse me, Phil, but Moe Brimstine
is ... why, he's on top of the syndicate, right next to Mr. Billig
himself!"
When Phil didn't recognize the second name either, she quit trying.
"Well, anyway, Phil," she said in her friendly, quiet voice, "there's
Moe Brimstine, practically the boss of Fun Incorporated, which runs
wrestling and amusement centers, all sales-robots, jukebox burlesque,
and a lot of other things they don't talk so much about. And he's
worried, real worried. Now I know Moe. He don't worry about nothing
but the syndicate. So things must be real bad." She paused, then added
cryptically, but with a sort of personal gloominess, "Lots of things
are real bad."
Phil nodded. There was a silence.
"Say, Phil," she finally said huskily, watching her big, gravy stained
finger rub her near-empty glass. "That really was a--whadya call
it?--delusion, wasn't it, this afternoon when you was talking about a
green cat?"
"I thought so then," Phil said softly. "Now I'm not sure."
She let out a big breath and looked up at him. "You know," she said
with sudden warmth, "neither am I. Say Phil, how valuable is that cat,
anyway, if there is a cat. Could it be worth $10,000?"
Phil felt his eyes bug at the same instant he was thinking that Lucky's
worth could never be measured in money. "$10,000?" he murmured. "I
haven't the faintest idea. What made you think of that figure?"
"Well," Juno said slowly, "after the Akeleys--muck 'em!--had left this
afternoon, Jack came in to me and started talking again about how dumb
I was about you. Only this time it wasn't because I had let you in,
but because I'd let you go. He says to me, 'You're dumb, Juno, you're
deductively dopey. You don't recognize opportunity. Now I'm in a
position to make $10,000 out of that little squirt, only I'm not going
to do it, at least not right away,' he says, 'because there are higher
things, Juno, there are higher things.'" And she rolled her eyes as if
she were in the ring and approaching her spouse in his character of
Swish Jack Jones, the Lady Killer.
"Well, anyway," she went on after a moment in a less outraged voice,
"I didn't wonder too much about that at the time, 'cause he's always
trying to needle me that way since he met Sashy (Jack hates me to call
him that) Akeley. But then, just after I get out of the ring tonight,
Moe Brimstine starts pumping me about a green cat. Seems he'd been
playing through Old Rubberarm's recordings of his conversations for
the afternoon, and I'd talked about a green cat when I was talking
to you. He pretended it was what you call idle curiosity, but that's
something Moe Brimstine's got nothing of. Course I told him you were
just a harmless nut with cats in your bonnet, but he didn't seem
satisfied." She looked at Phil puzzledly. "You did think you were a nut
this afternoon, didn't you? You didn't believe in any green cat then--I
mean, after we'd argued you out of it?"
Phil had to nod.
"But now you've changed your mind?"
"Yes, I have. You see, I finally took your husband's advice and went to
see the analyst."
"That lousy psycher the Akeleys put him onto!" she snorted.
Phil sketched the essentials of his episode with Dr. Romadka. When he
had finished, Juno burst out, "I get it all right. If he locks you up
and calls in some hoods and they demagnetize the law tape chasing you,
then that green cat's no weed dream, brother!"
"They didn't look like hoodlums," Phil objected doubtfully. "Besides,
Miss Romadka didn't seem to think the green cat was important."
"That sexy little she-punk!" Juno dismissed Mitzie contemptuously.
Phil was startled--he hadn't realized he'd told Juno so much about
Mitzie.
"Besides," Juno went on conclusively, "Moe's interested in the green
cat, or he wouldn't pump me about it, and anything Moe's interested in
has gotta be real. Oh, the poor little mutt."
"Who, Moe?" Phil asked confusedly.
"Course not. I mean Jack, specially after Moe catches up with him and
finds he had that green cat and then didn't deliver." Her brow furrowed
excitedly. "Look, Phil, this is the way I figger it: Moe tells Jack
and some of the other punks, 'Boys, I'm paying $10,000 to anybody who
brings me a green cat.' $10,000 is Moe's favorite figger dealing with
smart jerks like Jack."
"But why would Moe Brimstine want a green cat?" Phil objected. "Did you
ask him tonight when he was pumping you?"
"Brother, you don't ask Moe Brimstine anything," Juno assured him.
"But you do think now that your husband and Cookie stole the green cat
while Old Rubberarm was keeping me out?"
Juno's look implied he stated the obvious far too often.
"Has Mr. Brimstine been asking your husband questions?" Phil asked.
"Jack wasn't billed for tonight," Juno explained. "He went off
somewhere."
"To the Akeleys'?" Phil asked, a blurred memory nudging at his mind.
"This isn't the night," Juno said. Her voice became for a moment
bitterly mincing. "They only receive wunct a week! Most likely Jack's
gone off with Cookie somewhere."
"But if your guess is right about Mr. Brimstine offering $10,000 for a
green cat, and Jack stole the cat, then why hasn't he taken it to him?"
Juno rolled her head like an angry bull. "Oh, it'd be something those
Akeleys put him up to; something they flattered him into. Maybe they
even got him to give them the cat. They can really twist him."
Phil felt all at sea again. "But what would the Akeleys want with the
cat?"
"What do screwballs like that want with anything?" Juno countered.
"What do they want with Jack?" She snuffed and looked at Phil. "Get
one thing straight," she said gruffly, "I love Jack, the little rat.
I've taken a lot from him, but I haven't minded too much. Oh, it hurt
when I found out he thought more of Cookie and those other punks than
he did for me, but I didn't let it show through my skin. After all,
if a man knows you can lick him, I suppose it's bound to affect him.
But when those Akeleys discovered him and began to play up to him and
change him, that was too much for me. They're intelleckchuls, you see,
and they flattered Jack and filled him up with a lot of guff about
how he had a hidden artistic talent and how he was Zeus or some name
like that battling the female principle and so on. Well, he falls
for it, see?--goes into a complete free-fall. Starts to buy reading
tapes, printed books even! Next thing he's insulting me--using a lot
of words I never hardly heard of. Keeps talking about how great Mary
is, with her art and her magic figures or whatever they are, and how
wonderful Sashy is, with his great ideas about understanding and love
and a lot of other junk. Tells me to my face that I'm a dumb bell, a
stupe semantically!" And having done well with that last word, Juno
slugged down the rest of her drink. "Look, Phil," she went on, "I could
fight Cookie and the others, because they're on my level, but I can't
fight intelleckchuls. They're lifting Jack away from me and I can't
do nothing about it. And now they've gone and got him into some real
trouble, I bet, with this green cat business. Because Moe Brimstine
isn't impressed with intelleckchuls or anything." She carefully took
the glass out of her hand and made claws. "If I had the little rat
here," she said, "I'd strangle some sense into him. But until Moe
Brimstine talked to me, I didn't really suspicion anything was wrong,
and now I can't do nothing."
Phil's blurred memory suddenly came clear. He told Juno about how,
racing to Dr. Romadka's, he had seen Jack, Cookie, Sacheverell, and
Mary driving somewhere in the ancient electric.
Juno slammed the table with both fists. People looked around. "That
black hearse-box!" She roared. "I should have known it. Tonight's so
important they're receiving special." She jumped up and grabbed Phil
by the wrist, fumbled for her glass, got Phil's instead, recognized it
just before draining the last of the soybean milk, set it down with
a shudder and yanked Phil out of the booth. "Come on," she told him.
"We're going to the Akeleys! To the temple!"
Opening the doorway leading to the sub-street, Juno had to pause. Phil
got a chance to look back the long length of the bar. As he did, the
elevator door at the far end opened. A fat form filled it. Dark glasses
were twin patches of smut.
At that moment, Phil got an unannounced demonstration of Juno Jones'
strength. He was lifted off his feet and lightly swung some ten feet
through the doorway into the sub-street roaring and glaring with trucks.
"That was Moe Brimstine," Phil gasped.
"I know," Juno told him as she yanked him toward the escalator leading
to higher levels and cab phones. "He didn't see us."
Phil wasn't so sure.