Charles walked down the street and ran immediately into a challenge from
a police sergeant.
"Where you from, mister?" the cop demanded, balanced and ready to draw.
Charles gulped and let Lee Falcaro's drilling take over. "Oh, around,
sergeant. I'm from around here."
"What're you so nervous about?"
"Why, sergeant, you're such an exciting type, really. Did anybody ever
tell you you look well in uniform?"
The cop glared at him and said: "If I wasn't in uniform, I'd hang one on
you sister. And if the force wasn't all out hunting the lunatics, that
killed Mr. Regan I'd pull you in for spitting on the sidewalk. Get to
hell off my beat and stay off. I'm not forgetting your face."
Charles scurried on. It had worked.
It worked once more with a uniformed policeman. One of the Chicago
plain-clothes imports was the third and last. He socked Charles in the
jaw and sent him on his way with a kick in the rear. He had been
thoroughly warned that it would probably happen: "Count on them to
over-react. That's the key to it. You'll make them so eager to assert
their own virility, that it'll temporarily bury their primary mission.
It's quite likely that one or more pokes will be taken at you. All you
can do is take them. If you get--_when_ you get through, they'll be
cheap at the price."
The sock in the jaw hadn't been very expert. The kick in the pants was
negligible, considering the fact that it had propelled him through the
gate of the Michigan City Transport Terminal.
By the big terminal clock the Chicago-Buffalo Express was due in fifteen
minutes. Its gleaming single rail, as tall as a man crossed the far end
of the concourse. Most of the fifty-odd people in the station were
probably Buffalo-bound ... safe geldings who could be trusted to visit
Syndic Territory, off the leash and return obediently. Well-dressed, of
course, and many past middle-age, with a stake in the Mob Territory
stronger than hope of freedom. One youngster, though--oh. It was Lee,
leaning, slack-jawed, against a pillar and reading the Green Sheet.
Who were the cops in the crowd? The thickset man with restless eyes, of
course. The saintly-looking guy who kept moving and glancing into faces.
Charles went to the newsstand and put a coin in the slot for _The Mob--A
Short History_, by the same Arrowsmith Hunde who had brightened and
misinformed his youth.
Nothing to it, he thought. Train comes in, put your money in the
turnstile, show your permit to the turnstile's eye, get aboard and
that-is-that. Unless the money is phony, or the pass is phony in which
case the turnstile locks and all hell breaks loose. His money was just
dandy, but the permit now--there hadn't been any way to test it against
a turnstile's template, or time to do it if there had been a way. Was
the probability of boarding two to one?
The probability abruptly dropped to zero as a round little man flanked
by two huge men entered the station.
_Commander Grinnel._
The picture puzzle fell into a whole as the two plainclothesmen
circulating in the station eyed Grinnel and nodded to him. The big one
absent-mindedly made a gesture that was the start of a police salute.
Grinnel was Maurice Regan--the Maurice Regan mysteriously unknown to
Oliver, who knew the Chicago police. Grinnel was a bit of a lend-lease
from the North American Navy, called in because of his unique knowledge
of Charles Orsino and Lee Falcaro, their faces, voices and behavior.
Grinnel was the expert in combing the city without any nonsense about
rights and mouthpieces. Grinnel was the expert who could set up a
military interior guard of the city. Grinnel was the specialist
temporarily invested with the rank of a Regan so he could do his job.
The round little man with the halo of hair walked briskly to the
turnstile and there stood at a military parade rest with a look of
resignation on his face.
How hard on me it is, he seemed to be saying, that I have such dull damn
duty. How hard that an officer of my brilliance must do sentry-go for
every train to Syndic Territory.
The slack-jawed youth who was Lee Falcaro looked at him over her Green
Sheet and nodded before dipping into the Tia Juana past performances
again. She knew.
Passengers were beginning to line up at the turnstile, smoothing out
their money and fiddling with their permits. In a minute he and Lee
Falcaro would have to join the line or stand conspicuously on the
emptying floor. The thing was dead for twenty-four hours now, until the
next train--and then Grinnel headed across the floor looking very
impersonal. The look of a man going to the men's room. The station cops
and Grinnel's two bruisers drifted together at the turnstile and began
to chat.
Charles followed Grinnel, wearing the same impersonal look, and entered
the room almost on his heels.
Grinnel saw him in a wash-bowl mirror; simultaneously he half turned,
opened his mouth to yell and whipped his hand into his coat. A single
round-house right from Charles crunched into the soft side of his neck.
He fell with his head twisted at an odd angle. Blood began to run from
the corner of his mouth onto his shirt.
"Remember Martha?" Charles whispered down at the body. "That was for
murder." He looked around the tiled room. There was a mop closet with
the door ajar, and Grinnel's flabby body fitted in it.
Charles walked from the washroom to the line of passengers across the
floor. It seemed to go on for miles. Lee Falcaro was no longer lounging
against the past. He spotted her in line, still slack-jawed, still
gaping over the magazine. The monorail began to sing shrilly with the
vibration of the train braking a mile away, and the turnstile "unlocked"
light went on.
There was the usual number of fumblers, the usual number of "please
unfold your currency" flashes. Lee carried through to the end with her
slovenly pose. For her the sign said: "incorrect denominations." Behind
her a man snarled: "for Christ's sake, kid, we're all waiting on you!"
The cops only half noticed; they were talking. When Charles got to the
turnstile one of the cops was saying: "Maybe it's something he ate.
How'd _you_ like somebody to barge in--"
The rest was lost in the clicking of the turnstile that let him through.
* * * * *
He settled in a very pneumatic chair as the train accelerated evenly to
a speed of three hundred and fifty miles per hour. A sign in the car
said that the next stop was Buffalo. And there was Lee, lurching up the
aisle against the acceleration. She spotted him, tossed the Green Sheet
in the Air and fell into his lap.
"Disgusting!" snarled a man across the aisle. "Simply disgusting!"
"You haven't seen anything yet," Lee told him, and kissed Charles on the
mouth.
The man choked: "I shall certainly report this to the authorities when
we arrive in Buffalo!"
"Mmm," said Lee, preoccupied. "Do that, mister. Do that."