Big Bang Page 11

  “There are two probable targets we know of,” said Jake.

  “There are two and that’s it period,” put in the siphoner. “I did my usual thorough job on this. There’s not going to be anybody else on the moon who qualifies.”

  “The most likely target for the Big Bang gang is Tilda Host,” said Jake, settling down next to Hildy. “She’s Chairman of the Board of Sinoil, Ltd.”

  “They make fuel oil out of jojoba beans,” said Hildy. “Meaning they compete with Newoyl.”

  “There’s also a merger in the works with another big synthetic oil outfit,” added Steranko. “Should something happen to the old squack that’d fall through. Another plus for Newoyl and Novem.”

  Jake said, “The other candidate is Bonny Prince Freddy of the Portugal Annex. There are rumors of rich untapped real oil deposits beneath most of his little country. His papa, Bonny King Freddy, is terminally goofy and the prince runs the country.”

  Folding her arms under her breasts, Hildy gazed out into space. “They might be going for both of them.”

  “So far they’ve been doing one at a time,” said Jake, “although that doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t change their pattern.”

  “Whatever they plan, they may go for their target during a session of the festival,” she said. “That can mean maybe a thousand innocent people going at the same time that—”

  “Two hundred and twenty-six with one blow is their record thus far.”

  “I don’t like this one, Jake,” she shook her head. “We’ve dealt with some wretched people before, like Adolph Hibbler and Dr. Patchwork, but these kids … do you know who they all are yet?”

  Jake nodded at Steranko the Siphoner. “We’ve come up with, by checking travel patterns and lists of Poorman’s Harvard grads, a list of five.”

  “I assume Screwball Smith’s name is near the top.”

  Steranko recited, “Screwball Smith, Christina Parkerhouse (DBA Trina Twain), Honey Chen, Lafcadio Latterly and Derrick Thrasher.”

  “Thrasher of the Foodopoly clan?”

  “A black sheep cousin of Bunny Thrasher’s, graduated with the Class of ’99,” filled in Jake.

  Hildy frowned. “What about Professor Barrel? Isn’t he the mastermind behind this all?”

  “He’s stone cold dead,” said Steranko. “Has been since his so-called flit from PMH last year. If the Federal Police Agency cops had the sort of facilities I have, they’d have discovered the fact months ago.”

  “Is that true, Jake?”

  He said, “Steranko went through untold numbers of morgue records, potters field archives, missing persons reports and a stewpot of other stuff.”

  “The prof died in a faked pedramp accident in Cuba-3 approximately two and a half weeks after he left the Boston area,” the siphoner said. “They’d done a quickie ID wipe on the poor bastard and he was cremated as a John Doe. It is absolutely Dickens Barrel, even though we maybe can’t prove it from his alleged ashes at this point.”

  “Why kill him?” Hildy asked.

  “Easier for them,” said Jake. “They’d been working on this idea ever since that accident back in school, when they blew up part of the building. Soon as they were ready to move, the Novem bunch didn’t want Barrel around.”

  “Even if he talked, they—”

  “Wasn’t just that, Hildy. I think they were afraid he’d be able to come up with a way to stop them.”

  Hildy said, “Did he leave any notes, any records on how you might—”

  “Nothing we’ve been able to dig out so far,” replied Jake. “But there’s got to be some way to turn off those gadgets implanted in their noggins.”

  “A nice blast with a kilgun would do the trick,” suggested Steranko.

  Hildy tapped her fingertips on her knee. “While I was a guest of Screwball Smith’s,” she said, “he talked about killing me, but—”

  “That son of a bitch,” said Jake.

  “But he never threatened an explosion,” she concluded. “One of them alone can’t do it, isn’t that it, Jake? They have to work as a team, it’s a synergistic setup. Sure, because he said something about never being able to get Palsy to work with them.”

  “Yep, they have to do it in tandem.” Jake stood. “That must be something they learned from the first, unintended, explosion. It takes the whole group for a Big Bang.”

  “Then if we can keep them apart,” Hildy said, “they—”

  “Hell,” said Steranko, “for all we know they’re already joining hands up on the moon this very minute.”

  CHAPTER 19

  THE VERY OLD WOMAN dabbed perfume behind her tin ear. This caused her fur-trimmed dressing gown to sprawl open and reveal the blend of flesh, metal and wires that was her chest. “No peeking, you rascal,” she rattled.

  The extremely blond young man reclining on the thermorug beside her glaz chair snickered. Then he reached up to tweak her surviving breast. “Can’t help it, doll baby.”

  Struggling to keep her nose from wrinkling, Hildy said, “Mrs. Host, you really are in danger.”

  Tilda Host dabbed perfume behind her flesh ear, squinting at the image of her ancient face that the floating mirror showed her. “Lon, who did this young lady say she was?”

  Lon Wranger yawned, gave a catlike stretch and reached into a hip pocket of his glojeans. He withdrew the business card. “Odd Jobs, Inc.,” he read.

  “Who are they?”

  “We’re private investigators.” Hildy crossed the boudoir section of the hotel suite toward the old Sinoil tycoon. “Working for the United States Government on this—”

  “I’ve never heard of you. Further … Oh, Lon, don’t be a naughty boy.”

  “Can’t control myself, doll baby.” He’d commenced licking at her aluminum foot.

  “Mrs. Host, it’s fairly certain an attempt on your life will—”

  “You’re just trying to upset her,” accused Wranger, rising up on one elbow and glaring at Hildy. “Her poor plaz ear can’t stand that, really.”

  “She probably can’t stand an explosion either,” Hildy told the blond boy. “That’s why you have to leave the moon before—”

  “Where’s my eye?” The old woman was patting the cluttered floating vanity table with her gnarled hands.

  “Silly, you’re wearing both your lovely eyes.”

  “I mean the emerald one,” said Tilda Host.

  Wranger pursed his lips. “That’s in the hotel safe, angel cakes. Along with your platinum leg.”

  “But I want to wear it.” With a silver suction tool she removed the glaz eye that had filled her left socket. “If you have nice eyes, you ought to show them.”

  “I know, doll baby, but this is a jazz festival we’re attending,” Wranger reminded. “Someone might rob you.”

  “I have bodyguards to prevent that and … young woman, why are you still here?”

  “To persuade you to leave. Right away,” said Hildy. “Otherwise you’re going to be the next Big Bang victim.”

  “Don’t keep talking like that,” warned Wranger, easing up and slipping a protective arm around the old woman’s narrow shoulders. “You’re upsetting angel cakes.”

  Tilda Host asked, “What’s she babbling about, Lon?”

  “Nothing. Pay no attention, doll baby.” He scowled at Hildy. “You don’t have any proof, do you?”

  “Nothing I can show you, but you’ll have to trust us when—”

  “I want to see the festival,” insisted the old woman. “All my favorites are appearing.” She patted Wranger’s tan young hand with copper fingers. “Who are my favorites, dear?”

  He slid a plazpaper advance program out of a hip pocket. “Tonight we’ll be catching Zootz Zankowitz and His Cyborg Swingers, plus—”

  “Is he the one with the tenor saxophone implanted in his—”

  “No, no, apple dumpling, that’s Bix Briggs. We’ll catch him and his Big Brass Band tomorrow afternoon in Jazz Pavilion 2.”

  “Who
else, hon? Doesn’t he have an exciting voice?”

  “Listen, please,” said Hildy, advancing toward Tilda Host. “An outfit called Novem is—”

  “Tomorrow it’s Switchit McBernie and His All Girl-All Boy Orchestra, Lafcadio Latterly and His Latter Day Saints,” read Wranger. “Robotman and His Non-Human Jug Band. Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers. That’s the Jazz Simulacra group from New Orleans. Then—”

  “Blowing up is going to give your business rivals a real advantage, Mrs. Host.”

  “Lon, I’m vacationing. I don’t want to hear a single word about business,” complained the old woman. “Send this gawky girl away.”

  After returning the program to his pocket, Wranger edged over to take hold of Hildy’s arm. “If you have any proof of real trouble, dear lady, go to the Moon Authority Police. Don’t come intruding in here anymore.”

  “You’ll go blooey, too,” Hildy said, allowing him to escort her to a door. “That’s the pattern, angel cakes.”

  “Nonsense.” He pushed her out into the corridor.

  The honey-blonde young woman said, “Oh, shoot!”

  Jake picked up her dictabox again, returned it to her shapely lap. “This really is an emergency situation, Miss …”

  Her eyes widened. “Darnation, don’t you actually know who I am?”

  “Private secretary to the Director of the Moonport Jazz Festival.” He began pacing the large oval reception room.

  “No, heckbeck, I mean my identity. I’m celebrated, besides being a crackerjack secretary.”

  He was gazing out the seethru wall at the nest of jazz pavilions spread out far below. Lightsigns were being strung up and tested over the half dozen separate auditorium domes; vendors were assembling souvenir and refreshment stands; a fat lady was inflating lifesize Switchit McBernie balloons with a gazgun. “If I guess right about who you are,” he said, turning and favoring the pretty blonde with a grim grin, “will you go in and tell your boss this is urgent?”

  “I have to take down the nature of you and your business first on this dingdang machine. That prints up a memo that the telebox zips into him.” She set the somewhat dented dictation machine on her tin desk. “Here. Maybe this’ll give you a hint.” After clearing her pretty throat, she put both hands behind her shapely back. “Pretend I’m tied up.”

  “Ah, yes.” Jake snapped his fingers. “You’re Taffeta Bearslair. Now then, tell Colonel Bunch that—”

  “I was Submissive Slave Centerfold of the Year in Docile in 2002,” she said, smiling at him. “Probably you didn’t recognize me right off without my chains.”

  “And the wisp of black lace nightie.” He came close to her desk. “Look, somebody is going to make an assassination try at the festival. Maybe at the first session tonight. The colonel is going to have to—”

  “Talk a bit slower if you can,” she requested. “I’ll tell you why I’m working as a private secretary at the present moment and not pursuing my career as one of the top masochist models on Earth. I woke up one morning a few months ago and I felt very dominant all of a sudden. ‘Heckbeck, Taffeta,’ I said, addressing myself while I proceeded to untie the realeather bonds I usually sleep in, ‘you ought to be more assertive. Stop letting people tie you up and work you over with whips.’ Maybe it was because I had just read Dr. Rocky Sarantonio’s wonderful faxbook on assertiveness, entitled How’d You Like A Punch In The Nose? Wellsir, I leaped out of my bed of nails, shed my filmy black nightie and—”

  “Taffeta,” said Jake, a shade impatiently, “I’m going to assert myself now.” He skirted her tin desk, sprinted across the white linofloor and pushed the door marked Col. Kissin’ Jim Bunch PRIVATE.

  “Oh, darnation. I’m still being trampled over by folks.”

  Bunch was in his office, a tall raw-boned man in a two-piece grey bizsuit. There was no desk in the vast octagonal room. Only a single glaz chair near the farthest wall. Bunch was in that chair, toying with a small self-waving Moonport Jazz Festival pennant. “This thing flaps far too fast, Taff … Sir, what causes you to come charging into my sanctum?”

  “I’m Jake Pace of Odd Jobs, Inc., and—”

  “Oh really? The notorious PI, eh?” said Bunch. “I received no memo from my stunning secretary announcing your—”

  “You’ve heard of the Big Bang Murders, haven’t you?”

  “Who hasn’t? Any well-read, well-viewed citizen of—”

  “The people responsible are on the moon, planning a new murder.”

  Bunch watched his rapidly waving pennant for a few seconds. “My goodness,” he said finally.

  Jake stalked over to him. “Okay, here’s the situation,” he said. “They are going to knock off either Tilda Host or Bonny Prince Freddy, both of whom are attending concerts at your festival tonight. What you have to do is postpone the concerts until we—”

  “Wouldn’t it be infinitely simpler, old man, to send Mrs. Host and the prince packing, get them off the moon entirely?”

  “It would,” agreed Jake. “Unfortunately the prince is wooing Wee Bettsi Bierstadt, the freefal vocalist with the Zootz Zankowitz group. He can’t be—I just tried—persuaded to depart. Neither can Tilda Host.”

  The colonel said, “You are the same chap who murdered that singer down in Chicago, are you not?”

  “I’m the chap falsely accused.”

  “Um.” Bunch reached into his tunic. “Just two and one half hours ago, Mr. Pace, I received a very interesting telegram.” He held up a rectangle of pale yellow faxpaper. “From the Federal Police Agency of the United States on Earth. I shall now read it to you in its entirety. ‘Believe crazed sex killer known as Jake Pace headed your way Stop Pay no attention to his ravings Stop Will arrive on moon soonest myself to look after him Stop FPA and your Government appreciate any effort you make to give this notorious habitual criminal bad cess Stop Copies of this urgent message also going to Moon Authority Police and Lunar Bureau of Investigation Stop Signed—’ ”

  “Bullet Benton,” said Jake.

  Hildy, a plyotowel wrapped around her just washed auburn hair, crossed the living room of their suite in the Statler-Moon and seated herself in a neo-silk slingchair.

  “Get out of phone range,” suggested Jake over his shoulder. He was, slightly hunched, stationed in the pixphone alcove. “I don’t want everybody in the Department of Security being distracted by visions of my naked wife.”

  “I am sedately clothed,” She adjusted the green towel around her torso.

  “Well, at least uncross your legs. You look naked in that pose.”

  “I never pose, Jake. You’re the actor in the family. While I—”

  “Ready with your call to DC,” announced the phone in a falsetto voice.

  Secretary Strump’s face was less pugnacious, there were sags of shadow under his eyes. “Try not calling me collect next time, Jake,” he commenced. “The Budget Office is bitching about—”

  “There’s going to be a Big Bang murder here,” Jake told the man on the phone screen. “Tonight. Maybe two murders.”

  “Is that why you’re on the moon?” asked the Secretary of Security. “I didn’t believe the toll charges they quoted me until—”

  “I can’t get any cooperation from the local law,” Jake went on. “Here’s what you have to do, and why. The Big Bang gang is on the moon. We know they’re going after either Tilda Host or Bonny Prince Freddy. Both of those nitwits will be attending the jazz festival tonight. If there’s an explosion, thousands of people will die along with—”

  “Never cared much for jazz. Polka music is my—”

  “Thanks to Bullet Benton, my standing on the moon isn’t at an all-time high,” Jake told the cabinet member. “But we have to postpone the concerts and evacuate the targets’ hotels. Right now. Then, while Hildy and I are tracking down—”

  “Can’t you just tell these alleged targets to scram? That would—”

  “Strump, we did that,” said Jake, “to no avail.”

&nbs
p; “Things,” said the chunky secretary, slumping some in his desk chair, “things are not going smoothly hereabouts. I, at your suggestion, ran a new, double-strength, seccheck. After all, who is better qualified than the Secretary of Security to check the security of his very own—”

  “What’s the point of this discourse?”

  “There was a leak in the organization. And I found it,” said Strump, a look of weary satisfaction on his face. “A young fellow with an excellent background dossier is who it turned out to be. He got all A’s in his classes at—”

  “Poorman’s Harvard,” said Jake. “Now, Strump, get busy on—”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Dogged detective work,” said Hildy.

  The secretary leaned to his left. “Oh, hello there, Hildy. How are you? Are you sitting there naked?”

  “Nope.”

  “From here it looks as though—”

  “I’m happy you found the spy,” cut in Jake. “But we have to take action about the situation up here on—”

  “I haven’t yet told you all the problems besetting me,” said Secretary Strump. “You see, in order to interfere with any law organization on the moon … this all goes back to the OffEarth Intrusion Act of 2001 and the Greim-Cosgrove Bill … At any rate, Jake, I need a presidential okay before I can do anything at all.”

  “Get it.”

  “Would that it were that simple,” sighed the secretary. “This is confidential, I don’t want the Intruder or Mammon or vidshows like Good Morning, White America to get hold of this, but Mike and Ike … well, they’ve had a little tiff. Actually it was over a squabble the First Ladies had as to who sleeps on which side of the official White House waterbed in—”

  “What does all this domestic stuff have to do with your getting those identical nitwits to authorize you to—”

  “They aren’t speaking,” explained Strump. “Mike isn’t speaking to Ike, Ike isn’t speaking to Mike. Consequently, they won’t agree on anything and nobody can get them to sign a damn thing.”

  “So get the White House name-signing robot to do it.”

  “No, Jake, that’s only for letters to school children, minor legislations and—”