"She's coming with us," Malone said, pointing to Dorothea.
Boyd shrugged. "Malone," he said, "who do you think you are? The Pied
Piper of Hamelin?"
Malone wheeled and went ahead. Opening the door, he played his I-R
flashlight on the room inside and he, Boyd, and Dorothea trailed in,
going through rooms piled with huge boxes. They went up an iron
stairway to the second floor, and so on up to the roof.
They moved quickly across the roof to the wall of the warehouse, which
was two stories higher than the building they were on. Of course there
were no windows in the warehouse wall facing them, except on the top
story.
But there was a single, heavy, fireproof emergency exit. It would have
taken power machinery or explosive to open that door from the outside
without a key, although from the inside it would open easily.
Fortunately, Malone had a key.
He took it out and stepped aside. "Give that lock the works," he
whispered to Boyd.
Boyd took a lubricant gun from his pocket and fired three silent shots
of special oil into the lock. Then he shot the hinges, and the cracks
around the door.
They waited for a minute or two while the oil, forced in under
pressure, did its work. Then Malone fitted the key carefully into the
lock and turned it, slowly and delicately.
The door swung open in silence. Malone slipped inside, followed by
Boyd and Dorothea Fueyo.
Infrared equipment went on again, and the eerie illumination spread
over their surroundings. Malone tapped Boyd on the shoulder, and
jerked his thumb toward the back stairs. This was plainly no time for
talk.
From the floor above, they could hear the murmur of youthful voices.
They started for the stairway. Fortunately, the building was of the
steel-and-concrete type; there were no wooden floors to creak and
groan beneath their feet.
At the bottom of the stairs, they paused. Voices came down the
stairwell clearly, even words being defined in the silence.
"...and quit harping on whose fault it was." Malone recognized Mike
Fueyo's voice. "That FBI guy was onto us, and we had to pull out; you
know that. We always figured we'd have to pull out some day. So why
not now?"
"Yeah," another voice said. "But you didn't have to go and vanish
right under that Fed's nose. You been beating it into our heads not to
do that sort of stuff ever since we first found out we could make this
vanishing bit. And then you go and do it in front of a Fed. Sure, you
got a big bang out of it, but is it smart? I ask you--"
"Yeah?" Mike said. "Listen, Silvo, they never would've got onto us if
it hadn't been for your stupid tricks. Slugging a cop on the dome.
Cracking up a car. You and your bug for speed!"
Malone blinked. Then it hadn't been Miguel Fueyo who'd hit Sergeant
Jukovsky, but Silvo. Malone tried to remember the list of Silent
Spooks. Silvo Envoz--that was his name.
"You slugged the FBI guy, Mike," Silvo said. "And now you got us all
on the run. That's your fault, Mike. I want to see my old lady."
"I had to slug him," Mike said. "Listen, all Ramon's stuff was in that
Cadillac. What would've happened if he'd found all that stuff?"
"So what happened anyway?" a third voice said (That was probably
Ramon Otravez, Malone thought.) "He found your stupid notebook, didn't
he? He went yelling to the cops, didn't he? We're running, ain't we?
So what's the difference?"
"Shut up!" Mike roared.
"You ain't telling me to shut up!"
"Me either," Silvo yelled. "You think you're a great big big-shot! You
think you're king of the world!"
"Who figured out the Vanish?" Mike screamed. "You'd all be a bunch of
bums if I hadn't showed you that! And you know it! You'd all--"
"Don't give us that," Silvo said. "We'd have been able to do it, same
as you. Like you said, anybody who's got talent could do it. There
were guys you tried to teach--"
"Sure," said a fourth voice. "Listen, Fueyo, you're so bright--so why
don't you try teaching it to somebody who don't have the talent?"
"Yeah," said voice number five. "You think you could teach that flashy
sister of yours the Vanish?"
"You shut up about my sister, Phil!" Mike screamed.
"So what's so great about her?"
"She got that book back from the Fed," Mike said. "That's what. It's
enough!"
"Hell," a voice said, "any dame with a little--"
"Shut your goddamn face before I shut it for you!"
Malone couldn't tell who was yelling what at who after a minute. They
all seemed unhappy about being on the run from the police, and they
were all tired of being cooped up in a warehouse under Mike's orders.
Mike was the only person they could take it out on--and Mike was under
heavy attack.
Two of the boys, surprisingly, seemed to side with him. The other five
were trying to outshout them. Malone wondered if it would become a
fight, and then realized that these kids could hardly fight each other
when the one who was losing could always fade out.
He leaned over and whispered to Dorothea and Boyd, "Let's sneak up
there while the argument's going on."
"But--" Boyd began.
"Less chance of their noticing us," Malone explained, and Started
forward.
They tiptoed up the stairs and got behind a pile of crates in the
shadows, while invective roared around them. This floor was lit by a
single small bulb hanging from a socket in the ceiling. The windows
were hung with heavy blankets to keep the light from shining out.
The kids didn't notice anything except each other. Malone took a
couple of deep breaths and began to look around.
All things considered, he thought, the kids had fixed the place up
pretty nicely. The unused warehouse had practically been made over
into an apartment. There were chairs, beds, tables, and everything
else in the line of furnishings for which the kids could conceivably
have any use. There were even some floor lamps scattered around, but
they weren't plugged in. Malone guessed that a job would have to be
done on the warehouse wiring to get the floor lamps in operation, and
the kids just hadn't got around to it yet.
By now the boys were practically standing toe-to-toe, ripping
air-blueing epithets at each other. Not a single hand was lifted.
Malone stared at them for a second, then turned to Dorothea. "We'll
wait till they calm down a little," he whispered. "Then you go out and
talk to them. Tell them we won't hurt them or lock them up or
anything. All we want to do is talk to them for awhile."
"All right," she whispered back.
"They can vanish any time they want to," Malone said, "so there's no
reason for them not to listen to--"
He stopped suddenly, listening. Over the shouting, screaming, and
cursing of the kids, he heard motion on the floor below.
Cops?
It couldn't be, he told himself. But when he took out his radiophone,
his hands were shaking a little.
Lynch's voice was already coming over it when Malone thumbed it on.
"...so hang on, Malone! I repeat: We heard the ruckus, and we're
coming in! We're on our way! Hang on, Malone!"
The voice stopped. There was a click.
Malone stared at the handset, fascinated and horrified. He swallowed.
"No, Lynch!" he whispered, afraid to talk any louder for fear the kids
would hear him. "No! Don't come up. Go away. Repeat: Go away! Stay
away, Lynch!"
It was no use. The radiophone was dead.
Lynch, apparently thinking Malone's set had been smashed in the fight,
or else that Malone was unconscious, had shut his own receiver off.
There was absolutely nothing that Malone could do.
The kids were still yelling at the top of their voices, but the
thundering of heavy, flat feet galumphing up from the lower depths
couldn't be ignored for long. All the boys noticed it at about the
same time. They jerked their heads round to face the stairway. Malone
and his compatriots crouched lower behind the boxes.
Mike Fueyo was the first to speak. "Don't vanish yet," he snapped.
"Let's see who it is."
The internal dissent among the Silent Spooks disappeared as if it had
never been, as they faced a common foe. Once again they fell naturally
under Fueyo's leadership. "If it's cops," he said, "we'll give 'em the
grasshopper play we worked out. We'll show 'em."
"They can't fool with us," another boy said. "Sure. The grasshopper
play."
It was cops, all right. Lieutenant Lynch ran up the stairs waving his
billy in a heroic fashion, followed by a horde of blue-clad officers.
"Where's Malone?" Lynch shouted as he came through the doorway.
"Where's your what?" Mike yelled back, and the fight was on.
Later, Malone thought that he should have been surprised, but he
wasn't. There wasn't any time to be surprised. The kids didn't
disappear.
They spread out over the floor of the room easily and lightly, and the
cops charged them in a great blundering mass.
Naturally, the kids winked out one by one--and re-formed in the center
of the cops' muddle. Malone saw one cop raise his billy and swing it
at Mike. Mike watched it come down and vanished at the last instant.
The cop's billy descended on the head of another cop, standing just
behind where Mike had been.
The second cop, blinded by the blow on his head, swung back and hit
the first cop. Meanwhile, Mike was somewhere else.
Malone stayed crouched behind the boxes. Dorothea stood up and
shouted, "Mike! Mike! We just want to talk to you!"
Unfortunately, the police were making such a racket that this could
not be heard more than a foot or so from the speaker. Lynch himself
charged into the mass, swinging his billy and his free fist, and
laying others out one after the other. Pretty soon the floor was
littered with cops. Lynch was doing yeoman duty, but it was hard to
tell what side he was on.
The vanishing trick Mike had worked out was being used by all of the
kids. Cops were hitting other cops, Lynch was hitting everybody, and
the kids were winking on and off all over the loft. It was a scene of
tremendous noise and carnage.
Malone suddenly sprang to his feet and charged into the melee,
shouting at the top of his lungs and swinging both fists. The first
person he saw was one of the teen-agers, and he charged him with
abandon.
He should, he reflected, have known better. The kid disappeared.
Malone caromed off the stomach of a policeman, received a blow on the
shoulder from his billy, and rebounded into the arms of a surprised
police officer at the edge of the battle.
"Who're you?" the officer gasped.
"Malone," Malone said.
"You on our side?"
"How about you?" Malone said.
"I'm a lieutenant here," the officer said. "In charge of the warehouse
precinct. I--"
Malone and the lieutenant stepped nimbly aside as another cop careened
by them, waving his billy helplessly. They looked away as the crash
came. The cop had fallen over a table, and now lay with his legs in
the air, supported by the overturned table, blissfully unconscious.
"We seem," Malone said, "to be in an area of some activity. Let's
move."
They shifted away a few feet. Malone looked into the foray and saw
Boyd at work, roaring and going after the kids. One of them had
established a kind of game with him. He appeared just in front of
Boyd, who rushed at him, arms outstretched. As Boyd almost reached
him, the kid disappeared, and reappeared again just behind Boyd. He
tapped the FBI agent gently on the shoulder; Boyd turned and the
process was repeated.
Boyd seemed to be getting winded.
"Damn kids," the lieutenant muttered suddenly, and dashed back into
the fray. Malone looked around, saw Mike Fueyo flickering in and out
at the edges, and headed for him.
A cop swung at Mike, missed, and hit Malone on the arm. Malone swore.
The cop backed off, looking in a bewildered fashion for his victim,
who was nowhere in sight. Then Malone caught sight of him, at the
other edge of the fight. He started to work his way around.
He tried to avoid blows, but it wasn't always possible. A reeling cop
caught his lapel and tore it, and Lynch, indefatigable in battle,
managed to graze his chin with a blow meant for one of the
disappearing boys. Other cops were battling each other, going after
the kids and clutching empty air, cursing and screaming unheard orders
in the fracas.
Malone ducked past Lynch, rubbed at his chin and looked for Mike. In
the tangle of bodies it was getting hard to see. There was the sound
of breaking ceramics as a floor lamp went over, and then a table
followed it, but Malone avoided both. He looked for Mike Fueyo.
A cop clutched him around the middle, out of nowhere, said, "Sorry,
buddy. Who the hell are you?" and dove back into the mass of bodies.
Malone caught his breath and forged onward.
There was Mike, at the edge of the fight, watching everything coolly.
No cop was near him. In the dim light the place looked like a scene
from hell, a special hell for policemen.
Malone wove through battling hordes to the edge, and came out a few
feet away from Mike Fueyo.
Fueyo didn't see him. He was looking at Boyd instead--still stumbling
back and forth as the teen-ager baiting him winked on and off in front
of him and behind him. He was laughing.
Malone came up silently from behind. The trip seemed to take hours. He
was being very quiet, although he was reasonably sure that even if he
yelled he wouldn't be heard. But he didn't want to take the slightest
chance.
He sprang on Mike, and attached the handcuffs to his wrist and to
Mike's wrist within ten seconds.
"Ha!" he said involuntarily. "Now come with me!"
He gave his end of the handcuffs a tremendous yank.
He started to stagger, trailing an empty cuff behind him, flailing his
arms wildly. Ahead of him he could see a big cop with an upraised
billy. Malone tried to alter his course, but it was too late. He
skidded helplessly into the cop, who jerked round and swung the billy
automatically. Malone said: "Ugh," as he caught the blow on the
cheekbone, bounced off the cop and kept going.
He careened past a blur of figures, trying to avoid hard surfaces and
other human beings. But there was--
Oh, no, Malone thought. Lynch.
Lynch was ready to swing. His fist was cocked, and he was heading for
one of the teen-agers with murder in his eye. Malone knew their paths
were going to intersect. "Watch out," he yelled. "Watch out, it's me!
Stop me! Somebody stop me!" He went completely unheard.
Lynch swung and missed, hitting a cop who had been hiding behind the
teen-ager. The cop went down to join the wounded, and Lynch roared
like a bull and swung around, looking for more enemies.
That was when Malone hit him.
Long afterward, he remembered Lynch's hat sailing through the air, and
landing in the center of a struggling mass of policemen. He remembered
Lynch saying, "So there you are!" and swinging before he looked.
He remembered the blow on the chin.
And then he remembered falling, and falling, and falling. Somewhere
there was a voice: "Where the hell are they? They've disappeared for
good."
And then, for long seconds, nothing.
He woke up with a headache, but it wasn't too bad. Surprisingly, not
much time had passed; he got up and dusted off his trousers, looking
around at the battlefield. Wounded and groaning cops were lying all
over. The room was a shambles; the walking wounded--which comprised
the rest of the force--were stumbling around in a slow, hopeless sort
of fashion.
Lynch was standing next to him. "Malone," he said, "I'm sorry. I hit
you, didn't I?"
"Uh-huh," Malone said. "You seemed to be hitting every body."
"I was _trying_ for the kids," Lynch said.
"So was I," Malone said. "I got the cuffs on one and yanked him along,
but he disappeared and left me with the cuffs."
"Great," Lynch said. "Hell of a raid."
"Very jolly," Malone agreed. "Fun and games were had by all."
A cop stumbled up, handed Lynch his cap and disappeared without a
word. Lynch stared mournfully at it. The emblem was crushed, and the
cap looked rather worn and useless. He put it on his head, where it
assumed the rakish tilt of a hobo's favorite tam-o'-shanter, and said,
"I hope you're not thinking of blaming _me_ for this fiasco."
"Not at all," Malone said nobly. He hurt all over, but on reflection
he thought that he would probably live. "It was nobody's fault."
Except, he thought, his own. If he'd only told Lynch to come in when
called for--and under no other circumstances--this wouldn't have
happened. He looked around at the remains of New York's Finest, and
felt guilty.
The lieutenant from the local precinct limped up, rubbing a
well-kicked shin and trying to disentangle pieces of floor lamp from
his hair. "Listen, Lynch," he said, "What's with these kids? What's
going on here? Look at my men."
"Some days," Lynch said, "it just doesn't pay to get up."
"Sure," the local man said. "But what do I do now?"
"Make your reports."
"But--"
"To the Commissioner," Lynch said, "and to nobody else. If this gets
into the papers, heads will roll."
"My head is rolling right now," the local man said. "Know what one of
those kids did? Stood in front of a floor lamp. I swung at him and he
vanished. Vanished! I hit the lamp, and then the lamp hit me."
"Just see that this doesn't get out," Lynch said.
"It can't," the local man said. "Anybody who mentioned this to a
reporter would just be laughed out of town. It's not possible." He
paused thoughtfully, and added, "We'd all be laughed out of town."
"And probably replaced with the FBI," Lynch said morosely. He looked
at Malone. "Nothing personal, you understand," he said.
"Of course," Malone said. "We can't do any more here, can we?"
"I don't think we can do any more anywhere," Lynch said. "Let's lock
the place up and leave and forget all about it."
"Fine," Malone said. "I've got work to do." He looked around, found
Dorothea and signaled to her. "Come on, Dorothea. Where's Boyd?"
"Here I am," Boyd said, walking slowly across the big room to Malone.
He had one hand held to his chin.
"What's the matter with you?" Malone asked.
Boyd took his hand away. There was a bald spot the size of a quarter
on the point of his chin. "One of those kids," he said sadly, "has a
hell of a strong grip. Come on, Miss Fueyo. Come on, Malone. Let's get
out of here."
13
"Logically," Malone said, "there has to be _some_ way to catch them."
He looked around the hotel room as though he expected to find an
answer painted in big black letters on the wall. "Logically," he said
again, and tried to think of what came next. He liked the sound of the
word, but that was as far as it went.
"That's fine," Boyd said. He sat on a chair, staring gloomily at the
floor and rubbing the bald spot on his chin with a single, sad,
inquisitive forefinger. "There has to be an answer. You're probably
right. But what the hell is it?"
Malone started to answer, and then wondered what he had been going to
say. He sunk himself in thought. There was a knock at the door. "Who's
there?" he called, glad of any relief at all.
"It's me," a small voice said. "Dorothea."
"Come in," Malone said.
The door opened. Dorothea came in, shut the door behind her, and
looked around the room a little awkwardly.
"Did you get a good night's sleep?" Malone said.
She nodded. "I guess so," she said. "Sure. It was nice of you to get
me a room for the night. I mean, I guess I was--well..."
"Forget it," Malone said grandly. "You were upset and tired, that's
all. Hell, in the car on the way back here last night, you fainted."
"I did not faint," she said.
"Well," Malone said, "you sure looked like--"
"I was tired," Dorothea said.