Hail Hibbler Read online

  Hail Hibbler

  Ron Goulart

  A MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM BOOK

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  CHAPTER 1

  THE BODIES WERE PILING up.

  So far none of them was his.

  Jake Pace stood in the center of the quaint little Italian restaurant, fists up, surrounded by a medley of tipped-over tables, unfurled red and white check tableclothes, trampled soybread sticks, four fallen wide-shouldered androids and three more belligerent broad-chested andies who were still very much upright.

  Jake was a tall, lean man of thirty-six, dark and slightly leathery, grinning now in an unsettling way.

  “I’ma gonna puncha you face!” promised the burliest of the low-browed androids as he came charging through the debris, heavy feet crunching wax-encrusted candle bottles and stray lettuce leaves.

  “Not at all likely,” replied Jake, eyes narrowing.

  “Makea fun ofa Mama Rosa!”

  “Listen, I always mix my own salad,” said Jake, pivoting deftly to avoid the rumbling charge of the tux-suited mechanical man. “It’s never, until tonight, caused any trouble.” He dealt the stumbling android a chopping blow to his skull-base control center.

  The android oofed out, “Datsa hurt!” before collapsing, with considerable clanging and rattling, to the cluttered floor.

  That left two standing andies to worry about, plus the small dapper human sitting calmly in the alcove across the way and watching the brawl.

  Huddled against the opposite wall were a Chinese neopath and his wife. “I told you we shouldn’t have come here,” he was telling her.

  “But, Sun Yen, the place has five blooming spoons in the Slumming Guide.”

  “Any eating establishment calling itself Mama Rosa’s Mafia Stronghold is not my idea of—”

  “But, Sun Yen, it’s only the Technological Mafia that holds sway here, hence all those bullying robots who’re trying to coldcock Mr. Pace,” the wife carefully explained while Jake dispatched yet another of the thickish mechanisms, “It’s not as though we run the risk of being dragooned into a life of prostitution or drug abuse, since these fellows handle only mechanisms and—”

  “All I wanted was calamaretti with a little side order of pasta. I pointed out to you, Alice, as soon as I spotted Pace sitting there smugly mixing his own salad that we were in for a night of—”

  “Dear, you have to admit the robots started it,” cut in Alice. “I mean, overturning Mr. Pace’s table and then attempting to bend it over him isn’t—”

  “Pace is continually asking for trouble, he and that leggy titian-haired wife of his. Running that zany detective agency or whatever it is, calling it Odd Jobs, Inc., asking for trouble. We really ought to have gone to the Benevolent Order of Pimps & Procurers True Blue Cafeteria over in the Harlem Sector instead. It has six spoons and two razors in the Slumming—

  “I don’t care for soul food, Sun Yen, and—”

  “Jake, flatten!” A stunning red-haired woman, arms filled with plyowrapped parcels, had appeared on the threshold of the disarranged restaurant.

  Jake, who was crouched over the last of the androids, now also sprawled and disabled, didn’t turn around! He simply dropped to the floor, head tucked in.

  Zzzzztttzzzz!

  The yellowish beam of a kilgun went sizzling through the space occupied an instant before by Jake.

  Hildy Pace, very swiftly, set her packages aside and whipped a dainty silver stungun out of her thigh holster. Before the filmy sewdosilk of her skirt had settled again around her smooth tan legs, the stungun was aimed and humming.

  The dapper little man in the one-piece tuxsuit murmured, “Mama mia!” and slumped. The kilgun dropped from his beringed left hand, then he smacked over with his head slapping into his cooling plate of calamaretti.

  Slipping her stungun away, Hildy inquired, “Wasn’t that fella I just shot Johnny Dodo?”

  Jake performed an agile pushup and came to his feet. “Yep, Johnny Dodo, kingpin of the Tech Mafia, rumored Mechanical Capo of the entire Eastern Seaboard.”

  “Shouldn’t turn your back on illustrious criminals,” his wife mentioned. “Why are you limping?”

  Jake was quite obviously favoring his left foot as he came across to greet his lovely auburn-haired thirty-two-year-old wife. “Must be the damp weather.”

  “This is mid June, 2003 A.D., and we aren’t experiencing any damp weather whatsoever,” she said, cheek puckering very slightly. “I know what’s wrong, Jake, you’ve been trying that silly French style of fighting on these tin goons.”

  Wincing, Jake avoided the gaze of her green eyes. “Only a wee bit, Hildy,” he admitted. “Since I only recently learned the coup de savate style of self-defense, utilizing both fists and feet, I was maybe overly anxious to give it a—”

  “Boy, using your foot to smack a guy who’s built of metal and tough plaz ain’t too bright.”

  “Anybody can stub his toe once in a while.”

  “Not against an android’s jaw.”

  Jake gave a brief shrug.

  Hildy asked, “Why’d the alleged Capo turn his half-dozen andies loose on you anyway?”

  “Seven andies,” corrected Jake.

  “Okay, seven. Why?”

  “Something about mixing my own salad, they took it as a slight to Mama Rosa.”

  “You can be pretty offensive when you’re trying to show off your culinary abilities. Still, Mama Rosa is only a franchise, isn’t she?”

  Jake nodded. “Italians are very sentimental about motherhood, especially Italian androids. They’re programmed to be.”

  “Even so,” mused Hildy, rubbing a thumb knuckle across her pretty chin, “that doesn’t account for Johnny Dodo’s attempt to do you in. By the way, why were you fooling with the salad at all? Weren’t you going to wait till I—”

  “You’re twenty-six … make that thirty-four now … minutes late,” Jake pointed out. “I figured something’d delayed you and, since I was getting a shade hungry I—”

  “That’s strange, now I reflect on it.” Bending gracefully from the waist, she gathered up her parcels.

  “What exactly is strange?

  “A couple of robots tried to jump me on the skycar pad atop Macy-Gimbel’s just as I was departing the Manhattan Sector,” replied Hildy. “You know how Manhattan is, so I just decked them and didn’t think much of it. Now, however. …”

  “Tech Mafia controls all the parking attendant ’bots in this part of the country.” Jake frowned. “They could have set a pair to take care of you, fixed another eight rough ones to give me—”

  “Seven.”

  “But why would the TM have it in for us? We aren’t working on any cases that remotely touch on their activities. Far as I can tell.”

  Hildy said, “Got to be some reason, Jake.”

  “Marse Jake, Missy Hildy, Ise bodacious glad I done foun’ you all. Law me, has I got a mess for you to handle, I declare.” A large black man had come shuffling into the place. He stopped just inside the door, touchin
g his forelock with thumb and forefinger.

  Sun Yen’s wife whispered to him, “Now you’ll have to admit this is a classy restaurant. Do you know who that man is?”

  “Haven’t the faintest notion. What say we sneak out a side exit before another squabble gets—”

  “He’s the blooming Secretary of Big Business, a member of the cabinet of the blinking President of the United States,” she said. “Wonder why he’s here.”

  “It can’t be for the ambience,” said Sun Yen.

  CHAPTER 2

  “I AIN’ SIGNIFYIN’ NOR layin’ no line of jive, you dig?” inquired the Secretary of Big Business.

  He and the Paces were using one of the Manhattan offices of the Federal Police Agency, a slowly rotating plazdome fifty stories above the city. The nightlights of the pedramps made intricate connect-the-dots patterns across the clear darkness outside; the blasts of old-fashion explosives being used out in the Borough Skirmishes caused occasional splashes of orange and yellow far off.

  “Thought you were cured.” Jake was casually seated at a white office piano, noodling out some mid-20th century cocktail music.

  “I is, bass … that is, I am, Jake,” said the heavyset Negro. “Well, there are still lapses, not frequent, thank de lawd. Um … all in all I can state Ise bodacious fine, more or less.” He paced the gently turning room for a few seconds, watching Manhattan whirl by slowly, before settling into a floating plaz butterfly chair. “You don’t have any children, do you? No, I know you don’t because I was just chatting about you two with the Fax computer in D.C. It has a hefty store of material on you, did you know? You’ve led … well, back to my point. I was going to advise you, if you do have kids someday, be very careful how you name them.”

  “Does the Government have in mind hiring Odd Jobs, Inc., again, Roots?” Hildy was reclining in a lucite slingchair, parcels forming a neat pyramid near her booted left foot.

  Roots Stackhouse shifted his bulk. “Dey sho nuff does, honey chile … damn it! He fisted his right hand, tapped himself on the jaw several times. “With a first name like Roots it was only natural I’d become obsessed with my black heritage. Little did I realize, when a mere lad of sixteen, what I was getting into sending five bucks to a genealogical outfit that advertised in the back pages of Jive Magazine. I unleashed a multiple personality problem on myself that’ll go down in the annals of goofiness as—”

  “What sort of assignment?” Jake turned on the white piano stool to face the secretary.

  “It’s a booger,” admitted Stackhouse. “Dangerous as hell, wacky in many aspects, crammed with bizarre people and possibilities. Right up your alley.”

  Hildy crossed her long bare legs. “Specifics?”

  “Started off looking like a routine murder,” the Secretary of Big Business explained. “The Greater Los Angeles police weren’t even going to call in the Federal Police Agency, let alone anyone in D.C. There’s a possibility we’re still dealing with a simple everyday murder, even with all the strange fringe happenings.”

  “Your fringe happenings include three other killings,” Jake pointed out. “All in the ranks of the FPA.”

  Stackhouse slapped his knee. “I declare, Marse Jake, you am one of de smartest jokers I ever done … yes, excuse me. You seem to be aware of some of the details of the very case I’m alluding to.”

  Hildy asked, “Are you fellas talking about the murder of Statz Kazee out on the Malibu Sector of Greater Los Angeles last week?”

  “We are.” Jake glanced at Stackhouse. “Aren’t we?”

  Nodding, the Secretary of Big Business said, “Hours before he was killed Kazee promised his 140,000,000 viewers nationwide he had unearthed an incredible scandal in the business community and would reveal all on his very next broadcast.” Stackhouse paused, spreading his big hands wide apart. “If you watched his Muckcast show regularly, you know he was forever promising that sort of thing.”

  “And delivering,” said Hildy.

  “About 60 percent of the time,” added Jake.

  “More likely 90 and you’re prejudiced because of the dimple.”

  “Silly damn place for a dimple.”

  “Lots of men have dimpled chins. It’s quite sexy.”

  Jake faced the piano again, started pounding out a slow blues. “Hildy and I never quite agreed on the journalistic worth of the late Statz Kazee.”

  “He won three Pulitzer Prizes,” said Hildy, brows dipping.

  “So did that old woman on the Cleveland Plain Dealer who runs the Obscene Crossword Puzzle column.”

  “And a Nobel Prize.”

  “So they like cleft chins in Scandinavia.”

  Thump, thump, thump!

  “Jake, could you knock off the Race music,” requested Stackhouse, who was struggling to keep his foot from tapping on the thick plyofuz rug. “I had a blues singer ancestor, you know. Name of Arthritic Slim, who recorded on the Bluebird label in the 1930’s. If you keep that up I’m liable to turn into him and belt out several verses of ‘Blues Jumped a Rabbit.’ ”

  “Excuse it.” Jake ceased playing, steepled his fingers over the keys. “What’s made Washington decide Kazee was really on to something?”

  “For one thing, the fact that three Federal Police agents who were sent out there to make a routine check all ended up dead.”

  Hildy snapped her pretty fingers. “By machines,” she announced, eyes widening. “Jake, one of those FPA guys was strangled by a supposedly berserk cleaning robot at his suite in the Looney Tunes Plaza Hotel, the other two were knocked off by fatal doses of rocketeer’s disease dispensed by an allegedly faulty aircirc system.”

  Stackhouse said, “That’s right, you two were having some kind of fuss with five or six androids when I tracked you down earlier this evening.”

  “Seven,” said Jake. “We ought to have brought Johnny Dodo along, see what he knows.”

  “I explained to you on the spot, Jake, I don’t like to mess with local hoodlums. And if we’d pixphoned all the necessary local authorities it would have taken—”

  “Okay, let’s get back to the case,” suggested Jake. “Why did you put the Federal Police on Kazee’s murder at all?”

  “There was an anonymous tip sent to my office. It hinted Kazee had indeed run to ground something of the utmost significance, something which well might effect the entire business community in this broad land of ours, nay, the whole length and breadth of this round world upon which we tread: Implying events were afoot which might very well alter the form and fabric of life as it is lived in this, the first decade of the 21st century, events which—”

  “Wow,” said Hildy, “that’s some eloquent tipster you’ve got.”

  “Forgive me, I was elaborating too much,” said the Secretary of Big Business. “Something I fear I inherited from the Reverend Spontaneous Stackhouse.”

  Jake asked, “Why won’t the FPA send any more agents out to CalSouth?”

  “I’ll be frank with you.” Stackhouse cleared his throat. “They’re scared shitless. Three agents bumped off in less than a week is unusual. In fact, when I was with the District Director here earlier today, the Guiness Book of Records people were calling up to inform him they’d be listing—”

  “We’ll take the job,” said Jake.

  “We will,” seconded Hildy.

  “Our fee will be,” continued Jake, “$500,000.”

  “Lordy mama, you mot as well go upside ma haid, daddy … um.” Stackhouse shook his head, as if to clear it of ancestral memories. “A half million is a bit on the high side, Jake.”

  “So’s three FPA agents done in within a single work week.”

  “How about $250,000 in cash and the rest in postage stamps? I know for a fact the Postal Corporation has got piles and piles of both the Nixon Commemorative and the San Francisco Quake Commemorative left over. Consumers stayed away from the Nixon stamp like the plague because of the way his shifty eyes seemed to follow you while you were pasting the stamp on the envelope
. Little artistic tricks like that do hit people wrong sometimes. We thought Frisco’s having another big quake on the very day the first-day covers were to be mailed out would beef up the—”

  “Five hundred thousand in cash,” reiterated Jake. “In front.”

  “This is potential crisis,” said the Secretary thoughtfully. “There’s not a federal investigative agency that wants to touch it. Thus, I’m forced to come to a private inquiry agency like Odd Jobs, Inc. You do, after all, have a worldwide reputation for taking on the most wild and insane sort of cases. Messes like last year’s Dr. Patchwork trouble for example. Um … suppose you were paid in four-dollar bills. I’ll be frank with you and admit those new Lyndon Johnson fours haven’t gone over well at all. People seem to feel they’re unlucky. Just because one unfortunate man who got his torso teleported to Hong Kong and his legs to New Siam happened to have paid his fare in four-dollar bills is hardly reason enough for—”

  “Big bills,” said Hildy. “Or one of your nice pictorial checks, Roots. I liked the last one very much, with the pastel picture of the latest space colony on it.”

  Stackhouse let out a breath. “All right, we’ll pay your price. With a check. When can you start?”

  Jake watched his wife until she tilted her head very slightly forward. “Now,” he answered.

  “Doggone my soul, Ise happier nor a bullfrog chirpin’ in de … Yes, I appreciate this, Jake, Hildy,” said Stackhouse. “Before we leave here I’ll have FPA faxcop you whatever they have in their files on the case. Can you teleport out there to CalSouth by—”

  “We’ll use our own skycar,” said Jake.

  “That’ll take four, five hours. Teleportation’s much faster. Simply because one man with a lot of four-dollar bills happened to—”

  “A teleport pad can be tampered with,” Jake told him.

  Hildy stood and stretched. “But our skycar can’t. Not with the elec guard system we’ve set up.”

  Jake played a little one-handed Chopin for a moment. “Roots, you keep alluding to bizarre and unusual elements,” he said. “As I recall the media reports on Kazee’s death, it was relatively straightforward. Kilgun at close range in the livingpod of his boathouse in the Malibu Sector.”