Part 13 (2/2)

But I kept trying. ”If you shoot me,” I said, ”it will make a h.e.l.l of a noise. And people will hear - ”

He chuckled and waved the gun in his hand, and I noted there was a big nozzle like a hunk of bathroom plumbing on the end of it. It was a dumb-gat, a silenced pistol.

”Well,” I said, ”I will make a h.e.l.l of a noise.”

”You won't make it long.” Blister jerked his head at Shadow and said, ”Frisk him for his heat. He's stupid enough he might try usin' it on us.”

”Stay the h.e.l.l away from me,” I said, my voice hard.

Blister grinned.

”Don't try it,” I said, my voice harder.

Blister kept grinning.

I sounded pretty tough to me. But it wasn't working. Blister said, ”Don't do that route with me, Scott. So you play it hard, so I got to shoot you.”

He aimed with a little more care, smack at my breastbone, and I'm convinced he had started to squeeze the trigger when I yelped, ”Hey, hold it! That's not - not - not the way to do it.”

”It's the only way I know.”

Shadow stood to one side, peeled back my coat and neatly s.n.a.t.c.hed my Colt. I let him do it - reluctantly, and with a vast sinking sensation in my middle, but without argument.

Shadow dropped my gun into his coat pocket and stepped back. ”I guess dat does it, Scott,” he said cheerily. ”But we all got to go sometime.” He laughed. Shadow had a high, weak, artificial-sounding voice, like those trained birds which squawk a few words and whistle a lot. Also he had a miserable sense of humor. The monicker, Shadow, suited him, since he was thin as a crutch, and so pale and puny the weight of his automatic bent him; I could have broken him in two with one hand - some other time, and in some other place.

Shadow kept grinning and nodding his sparrowlike head in unconscious emphasis of the words as Blister spoke to me. ”I really didn't want to shoot you, Scott,” Blister said, ”since Frank sends Doodle with the word, which he writ down on a paper, for a couple of us to check out all the rooms into which any cats was registered last night. If any of us finds you, we're to bring you down to the office, where he is at.” He paused. ”Frank wants to talk to you first.”

First, huh? It didn't look good at all, but I hadn't completely given up hope. Mainly, I suppose, it was because both of these characters were used to having somebody tell them what to do, and making their own decisions was not a highly developed art with them. It had been rumored that Blister once sat on his bed for ten minutes trying to decide which leg to put into his pants (he finally went back to sleep), and Shadow on one occasion not only shot the wrong guy but did it in the wrong city. I knew both these guys were pretty well confused to begin with, and if I could confuse them just a little bit more, there was a faint chance I could wallop Blister with Shadow, or maybe just run like h.e.l.l.

But how to confuse them? It was a very faint hope, and I wasn't feeling optimistic about my chances, when I noticed the expression on Shadow's face.

His mouth was open and round, his eyes were squinted, and he had his head c.o.c.ked on one side. He held the pose for long seconds, then said, ”Lissen. Hey, Blister, will you lissen?”

Blister listened, and on his face, too, grew an expression of marvelous perplexity.

Quinn's voice was filling the room, his words clear and recognizable; ”. . while we're waitin' on that, we might as well settle on who we're gonna elect . . .”

For a moment, looking at guns and so forth, awareness of the still-functioning TV set and speaker right behind me had been pushed from my mind. I grinned, partly because of the rigid, almost cataleptic, att.i.tudes of Shadow and Blister, but in greater part because they looked - confused.

I knew that, to these apes, television meant the Sat.u.r.day night wrestling matches, and maybe the Zest commercials, but that their understanding of closed-circuit TV would be on a par with their grasp of advanced trigonometry. They thought nuclear physics was a triple dose of salts plus two Ex-Lax, and a closed circuit was when a pal got executed in Sing Sing. So, while they could understand a hidden microphone, the concept that anybody could be bugged by television - except perhaps in the sense that everybody is bugged by television - would surely prove too great a strain on their mental equipment. At least, that's what I hoped.

The set was behind me, partly concealed by my body. I stepped aside slowly but didn't say a word. I just waited.

Both of them lamped the scene on the little tube at the same moment, but Shadow's reaction was first and loudest. He let out a high whistling squawk, like the mating call of a pa.s.sionate macaw, and pointed speechlessly, finger poking at the TV set. By about his fourth or fifth poke, a very odd expression had captured Blister's chops. He looked, leaned forward and looked a little harder, and his mouth dropped open and his brows pulled down in the same instant, as if his jaw hinge was attached to his eyebrows. Then his face went into reverse, jaw clicking shut and brows flying up as his eyes opened wide.

Then he pulled his head around toward me and said, ”You know, I - it . . .” He stopped.

Shadow said in a strained voice, ”Hey, Blister, that there actor looks like Doodle, don't it?”

”Yeah, it do, don't it?” Blister looked strenuously at the little screen, bent forward again, took one step closer, then another. ”Man,” he said wonderingly, ”if that ain't Doodle, I ain't Blister.”

”How can it be?” Shadow said. ”He was just downstairs. And what's he doin' on the television? He ain't no actor.”

”Sure he is,” I said. ”He's a bad actor.”

They didn't appear to have heard me. Despite their fascination with the view in the little box, it so happened that when one of them was eyeballing the screen, the other was looking at me, and both of them held their guns at the ready. The time was not yet.

Shadow said, ”What in h.e.l.l is Doodle doin'?” and Blister echoed, ”Yeah, what is Doodle doin'?”

”You jerks sound like a couple of roosters,” I said. ”Who cares what Doodle's - arrh. The important thing is that Frank is on the show. The boss. Doodle's just there to give him immoral support.”

Shadow peered at the picture, then glanced at me. ”Dere is some'p'n queer goin' on here,” he said.

”Dere is indeed,” said Blister. ”What is goin' on?” he asked n.o.body in particular.

”Quinn's this afternoon's guest on Slob For A Day,” I said. ”It's the human counterpart of - ”

”Slob?” Blister stared at me, mouth open, lower lip hanging down loose, with the blank, empty, dopey expression of a man whose brain had just been amputated.

”Sure,” I said. ”It's sponsored by the Mafia. If he wins, they give him a chromium-plated machine gun, but if he misses a question they shoot him. That's what Doodle's - ”

”You're kiddin',” Blister said. ”Frank's downstairs waitin' to get to kill you.”

”Don't be silly,” I said, as if amused. ”How can he be? He's on television, isn't he? You can believe your own eyes, can't you? Are you stupid or something?”

”No,” he said. ”I ain't stupid. But . . . but . . .”

Shadow said, ”Dere is some'p'n, queer goin' on here.”

”Look!” I yelled. ”Listen! They just asked him 'When's Al Capone's birthday?' He doesn't know! They're going to shoot him!”

I really had Blister convinced. His eyes were poking out and he was bent far over toward the screen. ”They ain't,” he mumbled. ”Is they?”

I thought for a moment I was going to make it. I had taken advantage of these last few seconds to slide my feet sideways toward the door. Both men were gawking at the screen, apparently lost in it, and I was about to leap the last few feet when Shadow straightened up and turned his head to look at me. Over the sights of his automatic. ”I don't know how you done it,” he said slowly. ”But . . . I think you done it.”

I stopped moving. I almost stopped breathing.

Blister said, ”Shadow, either it is or it ain't, either Frank's on the television or he ain't, but this is too much for me.” He paused. ”I got to find out what the boss thinks.”

Well, maybe that says something about the way Blister's mind functioned. Or malfunctioned. But pursuing his own peculiar logic he stepped to the room phone on a table a few feet from the TV receiver, picked it up and asked for Sullivan's office. From where he stood he could still see the front of the set.

I heard the phone ring - the phone downstairs in Sullivan's office, heard it ring here in the room, the sound coming from the speaker. I saw Frank Quinn jerk his head toward the phone on that gray desk, then reach over and pick it up. It was fascinating to me - but not that fascinating to Shadow. He didn't take his eyes off me. Or his gun.

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