Part 13 (2/2)

The story ended abruptly. Einstein did not get to see G.o.d. But G.o.d sent out an archangel who was boiling mad. He told Einstein that if he continued to destroy ghosts' respect for the audits, he was going to take Einstein's fiddle away from him for all eternity. So Einstein never discussed the audits with anybody ever again. His fiddle meant more to him than anything.

The story was certainly a slam at G.o.d, suggesting that He was capable of using a cheap subterfuge like the audits to get out of being blamed for how hard economic life was down here.

I made my mind a blank.

But then it started singing about Sally in the garden again.

Mary Kathleen O'Looney, exercising her cosmic powers as Mrs. Jack Graham, had meanwhile telephoned Arpad Leen, the top man at RAMJAC. She ordered him to find out what the police had done with me, and to send the toughest lawyer in New York City to rescue me, no matter what the cost.

He was to make me a RAMJAC vice-president after that. While she was at it, she said, she had a list of other good people who were to be rounded up and also made vice-presidents. These were the people I had told her about, of course-the strangers who had been so nice to me.

She also ordered him to tell Doris Kramm, the old secretary at The American Harp Company, that she didn't have to retire, no matter how old she was.

Yes, and there in my padded cell I told myself a joke I had read in The Harvard Lampoon The Harvard Lampoon when a freshman. It had amazed me back then because it seemed so dirty. When I became the President's special advisor on youth affairs, and had to read college humor again, I discovered that the joke was still being published many times a year-unchanged. This was it: when a freshman. It had amazed me back then because it seemed so dirty. When I became the President's special advisor on youth affairs, and had to read college humor again, I discovered that the joke was still being published many times a year-unchanged. This was it: SHE: How dare you kiss me like that? How dare you kiss me like that?HE: I was just trying to find out who ate all the macaroons.

So I had a good laugh about that there in solitary. But then I began to crack. I could not stop saying to myself, ”Macaroons, macaroons, macaroons ...”

Things got much worse after that. I sobbed. I bounced myself off the walls. I took a c.r.a.p in a corner. I dropped the bowling trophy on the top of the c.r.a.p.

I screamed a poem I had learned in grammar school: Don't care if I do die, Do die, do die!

Like to make the juice fly, Juice fly, juice fly!

I may even have m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed. Why not? We old folks have much richer s.e.x lives than most young people imagine.

I eventually collapsed.

At seven o'clock that night the toughest attorney in New York entered the police station upstairs. He had traced me that far. He was a famous man, known to be extremely ferocious and humorless in prosecuting or defending almost anyone. The police were thunderstruck when such a dreaded celebrity appeared. He demanded to know what had become of me.

n.o.body knew. There was no record anywhere of my having been released or transferred elsewhere. My lawyer knew I hadn't gone home, because he had already asked after me there. Mary Kathleen had told Arpad Leen and Leen had told the lawyer that I lived at the Arapahoe.

They could not even find out what I had been arrested for.

So all the cells were checked. I wasn't in any of them, of course. The people who had brought me in and the man who had locked me up had all gone off-duty. None of them could be reached at home.

But then the detective who was trying to placate my lawyer remembered the cell downstairs and decided to have a look inside it, just in case.

When the key turned in the lock, I was lying on my stomach like a dog in a kennel, facing the door. My stocking feet extended in the direction of the bowling trophy and the c.r.a.p. I had removed my shoes for some reason.

When the detective opened the door, he was appalled to see me, realizing how long I must have been in there. The City of New York had accidentally committed a very serious crime against me.

”Mr. Starbuck-?” he asked anxiously.

I said nothing. I did sit up. I no longer cared where I was or what might happen next. I was like a hooked fish that had done all the fighting it could. Whatever was on the other end of the line was welcome to reel me in.

When the detective said, ”Your lawyer is here,” I did not protest even inwardly that n.o.body knew I was in jail, that I had no lawyer, no friends, no anything. So be it: My lawyer was there.

Now the lawyer showed himself. It would not have surprised me if he had been a unicorn. He was, in fact, almost that fantastic-a man who, when only twenty-six years old, had been chief counsel of the Senate Permanent Investigating Committee, whose chairman was Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the most spectacular hunter of disloyal Americans since World War Two.

He was in his late forties now-but still unsmiling and nervously shrewd. During the McCarthy Era, which came after Leland Clewes and I had made such fools of ourselves, I had hated and feared this man. He was on my side now.

”Mr. Starbuck,” he said, ”I am here to represent you, if you want me to. I have been retained on your behalf by The RAMJAC Corporation. Roy M. Cohn is my name.”

What a miracle-worker he was!

I was out of the police station and into a waiting limousine before you could say, ”Habeas corpus!” ”Habeas corpus!”

Cohn, having delivered me to the limousine, did not himself get in. He wished me well without shaking my hand, and was gone. He never touched me, never gave any indication that he knew that I, too, had played a very public part in American history in olden times.

So there I was in a limousine again. Why not? Anything was possible in a dream. Hadn't Roy M. Cohn just gotten me out of jail, and hadn't I left my shoes behind? So why shouldn't the dream go on-and have Leland Clewes and Israel Edel, the night clerk at the Arapahoe, already sitting in the back of the limousine, with a s.p.a.ce between them for me? This it did.

They nodded to me uneasily. They, too, felt that life wasn't making good sense just now.

What was going on, of course, was that the limousine was cruising around Manhattan like a schoolbus, picking up people Mary Kathleen O'Looney had told Arpad Leen to hire as RAMJAC vice-presidents. This was Leen's personal limousine. It was what I have since learned is called a ”stretch” limousine. The American Harp Company could have used the backseat for a showroom.

Clewes and Edel and the next person we were going to pick up had all been telephoned personally by Leen-after some of his a.s.sistants had found out more about who they were and where they were. Leland Clewes had been found in the phonebook. Edel had been found behind the desk at the Arapahoe. One of the a.s.sistants had gone to the Coffee Shop of the Royalton to ask for the name of a person who worked there and had a French-fried hand.

Other calls had gone to Georgia-one to the RAMJAC regional office, asking if they had a chauffeur named Cleveland Lawes working for them, and another to the Federal Minimum Security Adult Correctional Facility at Finletter Air Force Base, asking if they had a guard named Clyde Carter and a prisoner named Dr. Robert Fender there.

Clewes asked me if I understood what was going on.

”No,” I said. ”This is just the dream of a jailbird. It's not supposed to make sense.”

Clewes asked me what had happened to my shoes.

”I left them in the padded cell,” I said.

”You were in a padded cell?” he said.

”It's very nice,” I said. ”You can't possibly hurt yourself.”

A man in the front seat next to the chauffeur now turned his face to us. I knew him, too. He had been one of the lawyers who had escorted Virgil Greathouse into prison on the morning before. He was Arpad Leen's lawyer, too. He was worried about my having lost my shoes. He said we would go back to the police station and get them.

”Not on your life!” I said. ”They've found out by now that I threw the bowling trophy down in the s.h.i.+t, and they'll just arrest me again.”

Edel and Clewes now drew away from me some.

”This has to be a dream,” said Clewes.

”Be my guest,” I said. ”The more the merrier.”

”Gentlemen, gentlemen-” said the lawyer genially. ”Please, you mustn't worry so. You are about to be offered the opportunity of your lives.”

”When the h.e.l.l did she see me?” said Edel. ”What was the wonderful thing she saw me do?”

”We may never know,” said the lawyer. ”She seldom explains herself, and she's a mistress of disguise. She could be anybody.”

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