Hail Hibbler Read online

  Waving his arms, he laughed. “I’m cured, I’m cured. Oh, bless St. Bubbles,” he shouted. “I no longer have an aversion to broccoli and chard. Moms will be so pleased.”

  A hefty woman jiggled to her feet, nudging into him. “I’ve been cured of my absentmindedness. Oh, it’s a miracle. I remember where I left my skycar keys. I remember what Otto told me to be sure and pick up at the skymart. I remember the time I. …”

  Jake checked over the crowd, head slowly turning. All at once he said, “Picture Stories From The Bible.”

  “How’s that?” inquired Hammersmith.

  “Fat gent over there in the two-piece priest suit, the one who’s tattooed all over.”

  “Why, that’s Father Oser of the Wee Kirk Beside the Burn in the Glen of—”

  “Nope, that’s the guy I’ve been trying to recollect. The killer who folds a victim’s arm over his chest after he does him or her in.”

  “Seems like an odd sideline for Father Oser to—”

  “His actual name is A. J. Bugleann, alias Picture Stories From The Bible,” said Jake side-mouthed. “The nickname derives from the fact he’s got a four-color comic book version of the Old Testament tattooed on his skin.”

  “You mean the man might be a killer?” Father Hammersmith’s head ticked forlornly. “He seemed such a pleasant fellow, as well as very decorative. He offered to show me Moses in the bullrushes, or at least as much as he can without dropping his—”

  “When’d he get here?”

  “Today, Mr. Pace, an hour or so before your advent.”

  “Before, huh? He must’ve been tipped off, or he’s after somebody else.”

  “Surely … he couldn’t be here to assassinate Pope Ed II?”

  “Nope, it’s most likely he’s after me.”

  The assassin, the man with the MO Jake had been trying to remember ever since he’d seen the pictures of Kazee’s body, was standing about a hundred feet from him. Hands folded over his ample midsection, he was watching the visitors to the miracle-working shrine. Beside him a wide-eyed nine-year-old boy was on tiptoe to scan the adventures of Noah on Bugleann’s plump cheeks.

  “Praise St. Bubbles!” exclaimed a lanky young man, hopping. “All my front teeth are straightened! My parents will avoid a costly orthodonist bill! Praise be.”

  “Thanks for your help, Father,” said Jake. “I’ll take care of A.J.”

  Jake kneed his way through the mostly prostrate pilgrims, closing in on the standing assassin.

  He ducked to avoid the flying crutch discarded by a joyful man whose charley horse had just miraculously left him.

  When he was behind A.J. Bugleann, he said quietly, “Walk along into Catacomb A.”

  “Looks like we think along similar lines, Pace,” said the tattooed assassin. “Both decking ourselves out like holy rollers to slip into this dump.”

  “Trot on along,” urged Jake.

  Bugleann obliged. “Would that be a kilgun or a stungun barrel I feel jabbing me at about page two of the Song of Solomon?”

  “You don’t want to find out, A.J. Continue your departing.”

  Shrugging, Bugleann kept pushing his way through the devout. “Feels more like a stunner,” he said. “This was a fatal slip, getting engrossed in these darn miracles. Let you get the drop on me. It is fascinating, though. Did you happen to catch the girl whose prickly heat vanished after a dip in the pool? Amazing, and no possibility of a trick far as I could tell!”

  Jake heard footsteps behind them as they moved deeper into the simulated catacomb tunnel. He risked a quick look over his shoulder.

  The nine-year-old was trailing them. “Hey, I didn’t get to finish reading him.”

  “Begone,” suggested Jake.

  “No fair. It was just getting interest—”

  “Depart.” Jake gave him a brief and bleak grin.

  “Yikes!” The boy turned on his heel, went scurrying back to the shrine.

  Bugleann said, “A man who’s mean to children can’t be—”

  “How’d you know I was here, A.J.?”

  “A tip.”

  “From whom?”

  “Oh, that’s privileged information, Pace,” the illustrated man told him. “You ought to keep up with the most recent decisions of the Automatic Supreme Court. An assassin now has the same right to secrecy as a priest, a doctor, a guru, a—”

  “Let us stroll a bit farther into the tunnel.”

  “You don’t scare me, Pace. You aren’t really going to get nasty with me. I’ve read your dossier and I’ve seen the printout of your—”

  “Who hired you to kill Kazee?”

  “Kazee? Kazee. … Oh, yeah, you must mean the muckraker? Never watched his show much, since it was on opposite Biblical Puppetoons. Did I ever tell you I’m planning to get the New Testament engraved on my—”

  “Who hired you?”

  “Nobody. I didn’t kill the man.”

  “Then somebody swiped your methods.”

  “Stands to reason, doesn’t it? I’m good, which always provokes imitation and sedulous aping.”

  “And it’s simply a coincidence you’re here?”

  “Exactly, Pace. Has nothing whatsoever to do with SIS or … um, another near fatal slip.”

  “What’s the Space Industries …” He paused, scowling.

  A faint whirring had started up inside A. J. Bugleann.

  Jake asked, “Christ, are you rigged with a bomb, you nitwit?”

  “Bomb? Not that I know.” He began frisking at himself, slapping at the bright drawings of Adam, Eve, David and the rest. “Don’t tell me those sneaky bastards implanted one on me while I snoozed at—”

  “I think they did.” Jake shoved at the assassin. Pivoting, he started to run back the way they’d come.

  The roaring explosion caught up with him before he’d run a dozen feet.

  CHAPTER 17

  SKYTRADER SMITH POINTED AT the wall. View screens blossomed there. Big ones, each the size of a queen-size bed sheet. “You just park there on your fantastic little ass, Princess Sanhammel-Graustark,” he suggested, beaming. “Cross them there long dreamy legs of yours and feast your splendid eyeballs on these screens. ’Thout ever movin’ outa my palatial office, we can look at ever’ dang type of colony SIS has to offer.”

  “How pleasant, Mr. Smith.”

  “Call me Sky, why don’t you?”

  “Very well, Sky.”

  “Gollee, if that don’t tickle the ol’ pecker.” Adjusting his fringe, polishing the gems set in his face, clearing his throat, he continued, “Well sir, let’s get us to the business at hand. Take yourself a gander at Screen Eight, Princess.”

  A scene appeared on the large rectangle of glaz.

  A long shot of a spherical colony that was sitting on the huge lot outside.

  As the camera rolled closer to it, Skytrader said, “This here one’s silver, but we can paint ’em just about any ol’ color you so desire. We can offer you such rainbow hues as Sow Belly Pink, Dog Leg Brown, Eyeball Pink, Armpit Black, Nose—”

  “The Prince will want his family colors.”

  “Sure, of course.” Skytrader Smith nodded. “You’re seeing inside the colony now. It’s our Endless Riviera model, wherein the atmosphere and decor suggest the sun-drenched ambience of the fabled resort area.”

  “I’m afraid the Prince loathes the Riviera,” said Hildy. “Ever since the unfortunate time two seasons ago when a dolphin insulted him.”

  “Well sir, okay, okay. We don’t want to offend him, that’s for sure, that’s for dang sure. Switch your gorgeous orbs to Screen Number Six.”

  On Number Six an egg-shaped colony showed. There was a jump cut to a field of corn.

  “I hope that isn’t corn,” Hildy said.

  “But it is, Princess. This now’s a very popular SIS model, based on the farming area of our own American heartland,” he explained. ‘If you and the Prince act quick, we’ll throw in a dozen real milk cows, two dozen android milk co
ws, a surrey with lots of fringe on top, a cracker barrel for putting your feet up—”

  “The Prince is notoriously allergic to corn.”

  “Shux, that’s what I get for not keeping up with the gossip sheets. Okay, let’s try Number Three.”

  The interior of this colony was filled with spacious lawns, stately trees and, in the hazy distance, colonial-style mansions.

  Hildy wrinkled her lovely nose. “I must say this looks uncomfortably like certain parts of Connecticut.”

  “You hit it right on the snoot, Princess,” said Skytrader Smith, chuckling hopefully. “That there is our Connecticut Upperclass colony. In a SIS colony such as this one you can live like the most affluent of Connecticut squires at a fraction of—”

  “The Prince and I already own an estate in Connecticut, the real Connecticut. We’d hardly wish to shuttle miles and miles into space to live exactly as we can already right here on—”

  “Sure, you’re absolutely right. So feast your lovely glims on Number Two.”

  “Seems to be snowing.”

  “Dang right it is. Now, to be real honest and frank with you, we don’t sell all that many lots in this particular model. But now and then we get a couple of hardy souls who want to rough it, who feel that space is truly the Last Frontier. To them folks we offer the Iceland model. You get an endless round of wind, snow, sleet, hail, frigid clime, with an earthquake tossed in now and then. If you can stick it—”

  “We have little or no interest in roughing it, Sky.” She shifted in her glaz slingchair, toying with the ring on her right hand.

  Skytrader Smith perched on the edge of his desk. “Danged if you ain’t got me just nigh to stumped, Princess Sanhammel-Graustark.”

  “Have I exhausted your catalog?”

  “Ain’t that. We still got a lot of models to choose from, but I got a feelin’ you ain’t gonna like a dang one of ’em. I mean, we got our popular Urban Violence model, wherein you get all the exciting problems of big city life. We sold sixteen of them lots in the past month, goin’ good. Then we also got a very nice Monster-Ridden colony. Where you are continually hassled by big ugly, bug-eyed critters. See, what disappoints lots of folks when they finally get out into space is the bareness of it. They don’t run in to none of the horrible critters, bloodthirsty space pirates, conquest-bent warty aliens that the media have led ’em to believe flourish out that way. This colony then offers a—”

  “The Prince has little interest in excitement.”

  Skytrader Smith tugged at some of his fringe. “You’ll pardon my mentioning this, Princess, but you are turnin’ into a royal pain in the toke.”

  “Really, Sky, I must ask you to—”

  “Hot darn! I’m tired of jawin’. Let’s have some dang action!” He left his desk, diving right for Hildy.

  She moved hardly at all, only enough to raise her knee so it took him full in the groin.

  “Yowee!” he howled.

  Spinning, Hildy sprang from her chair. She caught hold of his right arm, pulled it up behind his back and bent him forward till his head was on the level of his navel.

  “Oh, hot diggety damn! Are you one of them S-M broads? I got a whip and some chains in my—”

  “Enough badinage,” Hildy told him. She reached around with her free hand so he could get a good look at the ring. “Stare at this for a spell, Sky. Then we’ll have a talk.”

  CHAPTER 18

  “WHERE?”

  “Zayt. You’re sort of sooty.”

  “I got caught in an exploding catacomb. Where about is Zayt?”

  “You know, it’s one of the little countries in AOO, the Arab Oil Octopus. Why did the catacomb explode?”

  “Actually, Hildy, it was a chap named A.J. Bugleann who did the exploding,” Jake said in the direction of the landcar dash pixphone. “We happened to be sharing the catacomb tunnel at the time.”

  “Bugleann.” she snapped her fingers. “That’s the fella you were trying to dredge up out of your faltering memory. The MO on the Kazee killing matches his.”

  “That’s the very same Bugleann who blew up,” Jake said to his wife’s image. “Due to the fact they’d implanted a wipeoff bomb under his skin without his knowing. They had the usual mike in there, too, and were monitoring him. Soon as they knew he’d failed in his job, which was to cancel me, they flipped the remote switch. That took care of a source of information and, almost, got rid of me at the same time.”

  “I take it we still don’t know who they are?”

  “We are getting closer to knowing. I’m entertaining the notion Space Industries Systems is involved, at least on the edges of this.” He settled into the seat of his parked landcar. “See, it turns out the elusive Angel Tolliver is really Amanda Tenn.”

  “Jake! It is starting to link up,” Hildy said. “I’m on my way to pump Shiek Sahl al-Haml. He owns 21 percent of SIS.”

  “The shiek’s the one Skytrader Smith was working for?”

  “Yep. All Sky knows is—”

  “You get to know him that well, that you can call him Sky?”

  “Everybody calls him Sky. Anyway, he was instructed by the shiek to arrange that little business at the Looney Tunes. He doesn’t know why.”

  “But he’s not above killing people now and then?”

  “When someone as powerful as Shiek Sahl al-Haml orders it, sure. They’ve promised Sky better things up in the future, though he’s not clear on the specifics.”

  “Okay, so the shiek owns 21 percent and Amanda’s pappy owns 51 percent of Space Industries Systems.”

  “Sounds like we have around 72 percent of the folks behind the murder of State Kazee.”

  “Possibly, but we still don’t have a real motive.”

  “Something still bothering you, Jake?”

  “Don’t know. I just want to catch up with this damn girl.”

  “She wasn’t at New Rome?”

  “Been there and gone.”

  “Any idea where she headed?”

  “None.”

  “So?”

  “Going to check in with our Answer Box at our house in Connecticut,” he told his wife. “Then I think I’ll fly down to New Orleans, to see Steranko.”

  “Hey, are we that desperate? You really feel you have to use Steranko the Siphoner.”

  “That guy can dig information out of just about any computer or data system there is. I want to know more about SIS and about Amanda Tenn and her kin … and about this Dr. Adolph Hibbler.”

  Hildy shrugged. “Okay, I’ll phone you soon as I find out anything over in Zayt. Don’t get killed.”

  “Won’t. Bye.”

  “Bye-bye.”

  Jake turned from the screen to watch the afternoon thinning out over the flat desert countryside. A buzzing ran through his head for several seconds, probably an aftereffect of the explosion that had destroyed A.J. Bugleann.

  He’d gathered up as many pieces of the explosive device as he could find, snuck them out before the local cops had a chance at them. He’d teleported the debris to a lab he used in the Cleveland Redoubt. More than likely the bomb fragments wouldn’t lead to anything.

  Jake punched out a number on the pixphone. The screen was zigzagged with glitches for a few seconds before a replay of his Odd Jobs, Inc., calls began unrolling on the dash screen.

  “Mr. or Mrs. Pace, we don’t like to hound you, far from it. That is not Montgomery-Sears policy. However, we would like to call to your attention the fact that the payments on the—”

  “Hooey.” Jake accelerated the tape. “Thing never worked anyway.”

  Now Roots Stackhouse was on the screen. “Ise got the miseries somethin’ fierce. That is to say, Hildy and Jake, I’m at a loss to account for your behavior. Perhaps a half a million dollars isn’t all that much to you, but I can assure you it is still thought of as a substantial sum by the President of your country and by many of us who serve him,” said the Secretary of Big Business. “You people haven’t contacted me once sinc
e you journeyed westward. When one of my agents went hunting you at the really nice quarters we’d provided, there was not a trace of either of you. Instead we found only a dazed public relations man dressed up like a cowboy. Please, contact me soon and convince me I warn’t as dumb as a balky mule fer—”

  “Next.” Jake sped on to the next call.

  There was Billijean Trubble. Her face was bruised, one eye puffed and ringed with black. “I don’t know how else to warn you, Mr. Pace. Maybe you’ll get this darn message in time. I got myself jumped right after I crossed the border into Gringo Mexico. Didn’t even get a chance to shoot it out with ’em. They roughed me up plenty, shot some junk into me. After that I’m afraid I sort of told them all about you an’ Amanda. I’m really sorry. All things considered you ain’t such a bad fellow. Hope they don’t kill you. Bye.”

  “Thanks,” murmured Jake.

  “Perhaps you don’t recognize me in my workaday garb.” The next caller was Harlow Titts of the Columbia Wallvision System. He was clad in a conservative two-piece bizsuit now. “I’m Harlow Titts of CWS. We met recently here in CalSouth when you manhandled me and violated my civil rights. No hard feelings I hope. See, the reason I called, Mr. Pace, is to invite you to appear on CWS’s highly rated and critically acclaimed discussion show, Blab!. I know you’re darn busy, what with solving the Statz Kazee murder case and all, but if you could just spare an hour or two and pop out to our Valley Sector studios we’d love to have you do a segment of the show with our award-winning host, Sleepy Joe Bryan. You’re a celebrity of sorts and since the topic of the show is the place of the private investigator in our society, we think you’d be just perfect. If you’re interested pix me soon as you get this message. Use my special private number, which is 213-555-6678-90. Okay.”

  Jake shut off his call tape. Resting his chin on his fist, he said aloud, “I always look great on talk shows. Hildy kids me, but I am good at it. If I can tape the thing this afternoon or tonight, it won’t foul up the investigation too much. And Blab! does have a terrific rating. Be good publicity for us.”

  Nodding, he reached out to punch up Titts’ private number.