“You must understand what you are
contemplating. The dangers
involved . . . ” Aldrath Prang told me
gravely.
“I know the risks. Look, I’m not goin’ in
there to get captured or to get hooked. If I can keep from either
one, I swear I plan on doin’ just fine without ’em.
I’m realistic enough t’know I might and I’m
willin’ to take that risk just like I was riskin’ as
much for you three months ago. Besides, don’t give me no
jive, Aldrath. You been expectin’ me to do this for some time
and probably got itchy when I took so long.”
He looked hurt but you got to be a decent actor in his line of
work.
“I assure you I did not. However, I am willing to listen
and see if you have any chance.”
“Like on the last one, huh? Look, this is strictly me and
you. No big operation, no giant backup team. If they don’t
catch me I won’t need backup, and if they do it won’t
make no difference, now will it? What I’ll need from you,
aside from a complete briefin’ on this world, these people,
all you know to now and who you got workin’ the case so I
don’t shoot the wrong fella, access in, free access to the
Labyrinth if I got to get out, and some way to monitor me so I can
get information out to the right people, meanin’ you, without
gettin’ caught.”
“We have a resident agent there now, somebody local but
she knows about us, and she uses local talent who don’t know
about us. She will have to know, and at least arrange signals and
means of passing messages—if you can pass them.”
“They don’t keep these folks locked up, do they? Why
bother?”
“Good point. The other question is, if they catch
you and hook you instead of killing you outright, will you want to
pass anything to us? Those who have this thing inside them have an
overwhelming urge to self-preservation at all costs.”
“Then we got to agree absolutely to the opposite,” I
told him. “We got to agree that if I get hooked and then make
no attempt to communicate within, say, a month of my first observed
opportunity, you’ll come in and snatch me.”
“But that might kill you! At the very least—well,
you visited and talked with Donna.”
I nodded. “That’s why. If it takes
self-preservation, or preservation of that thing, to keep me
motivated, that should do it.”
He nodded. “Yes, yes. Very clever and original. All right.
But just what do you propose to do?”
“I don’t know and that’s the God’s
honest truth. I won’t know till I’m briefed and then
there on the scene with time to check it all out and learn all the
ropes. Uh—will I have any trouble like in Vogel’s
world?”
“If you mean color, no. At least, not any more than you
would have operating in your own. You will be in a rough democracy
which has the same sort of failings and virtues as your own,
although it’s different. But—I can’t let you go
in alone, with no plan, no backup.”
“Sure you can, if you want results. That’s part of
your problem all along. You’re so Mister Future, high tech,
computer modeled and the rest you don’t have no gut abilities
or feelin’s. That’s why you keep lockin’ the barn
door after the horse has already gone.”
“Such confidence. Anyone can be broken.”
“Yeah. Vogel came damned close to doin’ it to me, so
it don’t take a lot to break me, but I was ready the first
opportunity I got to wring his damned neck. I ain’t never
gonna be no Beth again. I might hav’ta act like her, or
worse, but I’ll never become her. I got you all to
thank for that much, and Vogel, too. I learned the difference
between havin’ to be a Beth and
wantin’ to be a Beth. That Donna girl down
there—for all her problems and for all that she’s a
shadow of what she coulda been ’cause of this, doesn’t
like it. She’s broken, body and soul; she’s
been raped in the mind as well as the body. Even if she
didn’t have no permanent brain damage she’d be broken
and in shock. But if she could get the ones who did it to her, she
would. If she could pass judgment on ’em, she’d demand
justice. That’s the difference.”
“All right.” He sighed. “I’ll make the
preparations. Fewer than six people will know, all under my control
except the resident agent and her people, who you’ll have to
watch out for.” He paused a moment. “You know,
you’re taking me at face value, too. If I were in your
position, I, too, would be a suspect.”
“You are,” I told him honestly, “but I got to
trust somebody. It’s that thing about feelin’s
again. I can’t get it out of my head that you really love
what you do, that you wouldn’t do nothin’ else, and
that the only thing that could scare you would be if you had to
quit. I can’t see how you could be bribed to sell out, and
somehow I kinda suspect you got somethin’ on everybody who
could fire you.”
He smiled, but said nothin’.
The next few days I spent goin’ over all the materials. I
didn’t trust no hypnoscan, but I’m a quick study when
I’m on a case. I memorized everything I could of this world,
the important people, the way the opposition’s organization
was set up. Aldrath, in the meantime, arranged to transfer some of
my funds into slush funds in the money of the new world,
so I wouldn’t even be takin’ a dime from the Company on
this.
We agreed only on objectives. How much did the players in the
game there know? Who knew the most? Did they have any orders on
what they was doin’, or was all the stuff they did directed
from above by the two controllers? Who were Addison and Carlos?
Could they be snatched? I didn’t expect to hand the whole
thing over—that woulda been beyond belief—but if we
could get one of them, another Vogel type, we’d have what we
needed. Incriminating, absolute evidence against their boss who
would tell Aldrath what he needed to know about the rest
of it. If I could also somehow put together just what it was they
was plottin’ to do, then we would be able to make sure that
nobody else could do it.
I went back home one last time, to close out a few things and
register a will. It was funny; just like last time, I was calm, I
didn’t have nightmares or other scary ideas—I was all
business. Not even this late in the game, not this time. I
don’t think I was committin’ suicide in a noble cause,
not now. I think it was just that, like Aldrath, I knew and loved
my job and I did one thing well and this time I was in
control.
All that stuff about clearin’ up personal things back home
was really an excuse to see Bill Markham without nobody
suspectin’ or knowin’ nothin’ about it. I had the
idea that Bill’s remorse over Sam was genuine, and even
though he was white and blue-eyed, he was one of my own kind. Since
his office was in the same downtown bank buildin’ as my
account and financial advisors, it wasn’t hard to arrange a
meet.
I told him what I was gonna do, and he did all the usual things
and said all the usual things, and a little bit more. I asked him
if he trusted Aldrath Prang.
“Yes and no,” he replied. “If you mean, do I
think he’s got any interest in this except catching these
people, no. If he could nail a Company director it would be the
highlight of his life. On the other hand, he sees people as game
pieces, not human beings. I guess it comes with the territory. If
he thought he could get more from exposing or sacrificing you, or
me, or all of us, he’d weigh the odds and then do it and feel
he was right. Are you sure he didn’t plant this idea in your
head somehow?”
It was a sobering question. “I don’t think
so, but with all them gadgets who’d ever know for sure? Do
you? About yourself, I mean? You can get too
paranoid in this job and then you’re as crazy as Vogel. Bill,
what the hell would you have me do?”
He sighed. “You see the Inquirer this
morning?”
“Nope. Why?”
“They had to cordon off four blocks of
Philadelphia—right here—because an interracial couple
moved into one of those white working class neighborhoods and there
was rioting, mob violence, and all the racist talk in the world.
We’ve elected black politicians, even mayors, and we’re
decades after full legal civil rights and lots of progress, yet
this still happens—not far off down south, but right
here.”
“I know a little bit about that myself,” I reminded
him. “I’m real sorry to hear it, but what’s that
got to do with this?”
“That’s the kind of hatred and violence and
unreasoning fear and madness that breeds Vogels and Hitlers and all
the rest. They’re not just out there, on other worlds, or
over there, in other countries, or down there in Mississippi or
someplace. They’re right here. Over there,
you’re going to be on unfamiliar ground, at a distinct
disadvantage, on their turf and alone. If you have to fight this
type of thing, wouldn’t it make more sense to fight it
here?”
I thought about that. “Bill, what you say is true and
maybe I’m nuts, but I think I’m right on this. Our
little Hitlers and Klansmen and the rest do a good bit of damage
here, but that kinda thing’s part of what we have to live
through and fight all the time. This is the Company, damn it! Good
old G.O.D., Inc. They didn’t pick them initials for
nothin’. That’s power. Real power. Lord knows
they’re a pretty unpleasant bunch as it is, but suppose
instead of a Board they had a Hitler? Never mind this drug
shit, I’m talkin’ ’bout the Company. I got just a
taste of what we folks could do to ourselves with a Hitler a few
months back without the Company’s power and resources and
knowledge. They could impose that on lots of worlds and hold
’em till the end of time. Billions, trillions of human
bein’s, all of ’em their toys and playthings forever.
Uh, uh, Bill.”
“Damn it! You’re only going to get yourself
killed—or worse!”
“If Sam’s uncle knew what was comin’ back in
the thirties and he had a big family but he also had one shot at
bumpin’ off Hitler, even though he’d get caught and
tortured to death, I think he’d’a done it. Instead they
sent that family to Auschwitz, where they lived hell for years, and
only one distant cousin survived at all and him a broken man.
Better to have gotten Hitler.”
Bill nodded, but made one last try. “A worst-case
scenario. You get in, they catch you and hook you and try to turn
you to them. Sam survives, recovers, and in the meantime you find
yourself blocked and trapped, learning nothing. Finally we take you
out, as we would have to, and rush you to the Center, and you wind
up like this Donna, say.”
“Then I’d say I’d still be better off than
bein’ Beth all my life, or walkin’ aimlessly around
through life watchin’ this thing go down bad and always
wonderin’ if I coulda done something to prevent it. And it
wouldn’t be nice, but Sam would be no worse off than if Vogel
had killed me.”
He threw up his hands. “All right, then! It’s your
funeral! Now, what do you want me to do?”
“Be an independent monitor. Use whatever you can to keep
some independent track of me—without Aldrath knowin’.
And be here in case they double-cross me so somebody gets what I
know.”
He thought a moment. “I’m pretty limited here, and
I’m just a regional security man. Compared to Aldrath,
I’m next to powerless. But I’ll do all that I can, I
promise you that. I’ll tell you something nobody is supposed
to know that may help. When we went in for Vogel, we also went into
his two chief experimental labs in North Carolina and Houston.
That’s how we got Donna and some of the others you saw still
in advanced stages. We also captured more than three hundred doses
of the stuff. Some of it went to research, of course, but some
didn’t get reported. Some of us wanted to make sure that
nobody got us hooked so we had no way out and no supply to
get to the Center fully charged. I have more than a month’s
supply in a safe-deposit box in this very bank. As far as we know
it’ll keep almost forever at normal temperatures and
conditions. I doubt if I could get a line of communication in there
much; you’ll be on your own with just Aldrath’s few
people. But if it really goes bad, and you can manage somehow to
get into the Labyrinth and get here, I can keep you going until the
Center.”
I stared at him. “If it comes to that, you better damned
well be here and answer your phone.”
It was like our world, and it wasn’t nothin’ like
our world, all at the same time. In this world, we lost
the Revolutionary War. Washington was hung as a traitor and
Benedict Arnold was a great hero. The French Revolution started
different, but it still happened and it wound up the same, so they
had a real fight with Napoleon anyways. The British claimed and
seized most of what we called the Louisiana Purchase by force, not
cash. Texas and California revolted and set up their own republics,
which Britain recognized and helped defend. California later came
into the Empire after the gold rush. That’s more history than
I knew in school, but that’s what they told me happened.
So we had in the end a Dominion of North America, except Texas
and some parts of New Mexico and Arizona. Spain hung on to Mexico
and most of Spanish Latin America ’cept Brazil and the places
the Brits had colonies, but they mostly governed themselves.
Britain wiped out slavery in the whole Empire in the eighteen
thirties, but it was the old pattern here, convertin’ slaves
into sharecroppers. As machines and industry grew up, as we had it,
in the north, a lot of black folks went up there lookin’ for
work and you had the ghettos formin’ anyways pretty much as
they looked back home. But, in a number of ways, it was worse.
There hadn’t been near as many wars, they hadn’t yet
discovered the bomb or transistors, for that matter, airplanes was
still for the rich and was real funny lookin’, and radio was
there but TV, while invented, wasn’t a big commercial thing
and wasn’t in nobody’s homes. The public schools was
really private schools, and the ones for the poor folks was lousy.
There was still segregation of sorts, too; not no back-of-the-bus
stuff, but there was black schools and white schools, black
neighborhoods and white neighborhoods, and the blacks, as usual,
got the poorest education, lousiest jobs, and most of the
unemployment. Not that there wasn’t black doctors, dentists,
lawyers, and the rest, but they came from black colleges and had
black practices. You needed money to vote, and that was where the
power was. This was an America without the Votin’ Rights Act,
the Civil Rights Act, and a lot of the rest.
Each of the commonwealths, which was what they called states,
was much bigger—Pennsylvania, which still called itself a
commonwealth in my world, went all the way to the Mississippi,
for example, and parts of Canada and Michigan were in New York.
They ran themselves like little independent countries ’cept
for money, trade, and foreign affairs, which was taken care of by a
national Parliament with only them powers. The country’s
capital was Philadelphia, of all places. Washington, D.C., just
didn’t exist. It was like steppin’ back in time to the
forties, or maybe the thirties. The cars looked funny and
old-fashioned and drove on the left side of the road with the
steerin’ wheel on the right, and although they had penicillin
and a few other things medicine wasn’t that great,
neither.
The American pound was the currency, divided into twenty
shillin’s or a hundred pennies. Football was soccer, somebody
did invent basketball but there was cricket fields instead of
baseball. The national drink was tea, but somehow Coke and Pepsi
managed to get invented but beer was the standard. The pound bought
about what a dollar buys here, but the average wage was less than a
hundred pounds a week. What medical care there was, though, was
free, only if you had money you could see somebody real good and
real quick. Abortions was illegal and back-alley affairs, and the
only birth control they seemed to have was condoms. I had the
Center do their version of tyin’ my tubes; it was quick,
painless, and you couldn’t tell, but it relieved my mind a
little in a place like this.
I had to come in down in Tennessee; they forced the weak point
open just long enough to get me in and close it down again. The
other side controlled the only regular substation—and it was
theirs, not ours—and that was in Pennsylvania near State
College, which wasn’t called that or nothin’ else,
there bein’ no Penn State there. There was only a few sleepy
little farm towns around there—and the country estate of one
George Thomas Wycliffe, a real nice name for a country gentlemen
who happened to be the boss of organized crime from New York to the
Virginia border. It also happened to completely contain not just
the weak point there but also just about all views of the weak
point.
I stepped out into the late afternoon of what in my world would
be the Tennessee countryside but was now just the Boone District of
the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Labyrinth closed behind me.
Aldrath worked it so it opened when it did by forcing a spontaneous
opening of the thing so one of his agents could go to a world
nearby on that track on some pretend mission. Fact was, only three
people really knew I was here—Aldrath Prang, Bill
Markham, and Aldrath’s resident agent in the world who
was meetin’ me. She was supposed to be born here, and knew
her way around. Even she was told as little as she could, only that
I was on some mission for Aldrath. To her, too, I was Beth Parker.
No sense in takin’ a chance that this Carlos or Addison might
know who Brandy Parker Horowitz really was.
She was there, all right; a thin, slightly built young woman
maybe five two or three, with shoulder-length black hair. Her face
was long and she had a real sharp nose and thin lips. She was
wearin’ a fur jacket, knee-length skirt, and high-heeled
boots. Me, I had on a blue wool sweater, jeans, and sneakers, and I
had one of my satchel handbags packed with toiletries and stuff and
a small suitcase with just things I thought I might need and might
not be able to pick up here.
“Hello,” she called to me. “Over here.”
She had one of those middle voices and middle accents that seemed
just about average for American women. I half expected some kind of
British accent or something, but I guess we was already polluted in
our talk by the time of the Revolution. Of course, the Canadians of
my world had been with the British and they didn’t sound like
no Brits, now that I thought of it. As I went over to her, though,
I could see on her face that I wasn’t exactly what she was
expectin’.
“I’m Beth Parker,” I told her, bein’
friendly as I could.
“Lindy Crockett,” she responded, but she
didn’t offer a hand. “I—I’ve seen that
thing work a couple of times, but it always gives me the chills.
Sorry.”
“That’s okay. Somethin’ else is
botherin’ you, though. Better clear the air right now;
I’m gonna hav’ta depend on you a lot from here on
in.”
“Uh—nothing, really. I just wasn’t expecting
you to be a Negro.”
My old defenses went up automatically, but I was under control.
This wasn’t my world and I wasn’t invited, I invited
myself. I might not like the place much, but it was better to have
a comment like that than to be what that meant in, say,
Vogel’s old world.
“You got problems with that? If so, we better try to set
up some alternate people right now, before this goes much
further.”
“Uh, no, no. It may even work to our advantage once we
begin, but it does complicate things a little. We’re going to
have a very long drive, and this commonwealth has some pretty rigid
segregation laws. Until we get out of Virginia, there might be some
problems just finding restaurants we could eat in or motor inns if
we need to sleep. I planned on driving to Richmond and taking the
train from there, giving you a feel for the place and briefing you
as best I can, but we wouldn’t even be in the same
cars.”
Just like home, huh, Aldrath? Of course, they was still
blockin’ off a whole neighborhood of the good old northern
City of Brotherly Love back home ’cause a black woman moved
into a neighborhood, and my daddy grew up in a place and society
like this.
“Then how ’bout we drive north instead of the
train?” I suggested. “Or would a black woman and a
white woman in a car prove embarrassin’?”
“Not so long as we were both women, no. The roads
aren’t too great, but we could go up to Huntington and get
the train east from Cincinnati to Philadelphia. If I got a
compartment we wouldn’t have problems.”
“Let’s do it, then. Anything else?”
“Well, women in pants are pretty rare in this country, and
those shoes aren’t seen much off the squash courts. Did you
bring anything else to wear?”
“Well, I got one skirt in there and some high boots, but I
didn’t expect to risk my lone pair of pantyhose so
early.”
She stared at me. “What are pantyhose?”
Now I knew I was livin’ in a primitive place.
I changed in the woods and got pronounced all right to travel,
although I got the idea that my stuff was a little out of style
here. We hiked over the fields and through the woods to a country
road where a small car was parked to one side. It was a real tiny,
boxy car and it bounced a lot, but the only real problem I had with
it was that I was sittin’ where I felt I should be
drivin’ and she was sittin’ in the passenger side with
a steerin’ wheel and we drove opposite of all I was used to.
It took some gettin’ used to, I’ll tell you. Crockett
also was the kind of driver who liked to go sixty on roads you
wouldn’t dare do thirty on and brake at the last minute.
She was a cigarette smoker, though, and relieved that I was,
too. She smoked these long, thin, unfiltered things, though, and I
began to realize that I better hoard my two cartons ’cause I
was universes away from any more Virginia Slims menthol.
Lindy—her real name was Linda but nobody called her
that—was originally from Buffalo but she went east like so
many did in my world to make her fame and fortune in New York. Most
women here were housewives and you could still live here on one
income, but the professional types tended to wind up as secretaries
and clerks. Lindy was from the well-off middle class, and
she’d gotten a law degree from one of the two colleges in the
whole east that let women study law. She never could get into no
law firm, though, and couldn’t get much business on her own,
so she wound up a full lawyer workin’ as a legal secretary
for a big law firm. She met a guy there who did their PI work, they
got married, and she moved over to be his secretary. About
a year and a half later the husband died from pneumonia he caught
on a long stakeout and she inherited the business. She was
twenty-six then.
The thing wasn’t no Spade & Marlowe, though. It was a
nice, comfortable operation with five full-time male investigators
all of whom were willin’ to let her be the boss so long as
they kept doin’ all the real work. It was only after a while
that she discovered that one of her most regular clients who had
’em goin’ all over and doin’ all sorts of
seemingly crazy things was really the Company. Because there really
wasn’t no Company here, only a few of Aldrath’s agents
tryin’ to run down what they could, security employed a bunch
of private eye companies to help it get information. Since some of
her agents had contacts inside “Big Georgie”
Wycliffe’s organization, she was the one they finally picked
as resident agent.
“In a sense, it saved my agency,” she told me.
“A number of the men didn’t like working for a woman
and were looking around to jump to other agencies, and business was
drying up. Not any more. Plenty of cash, plenty of work, as you
probably know.”
Yeah, I knew what the Company could do, even if it wasn’t
in a world where it was set up and fully operating.
“The Gurneys—sorry, the National Police—have
been trying to nail him for years, but he always slips away,”
she said about Big Georgie. “He came up as a dock union
leader and made the big time by being smarter and tougher than
anyone else. He got where he is by a combination of big favors,
mostly assassinations, for the higher-ups and while still a union
leader he seized control of the illegal narcotics trade and made
millions. Opium, heroin, cocaine—you name it, he controls it,
north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Officially, if you can believe it,
he is a brewer in northern New Jersey and also a tea importer.
He’s highly visible, at charitable events, sporting events,
and the like, but very well protected and insulated by a top
organizational staff.”
“And you think he knows about the Labyrinth and the
rest?”
“He knows, because what is being done is being done by his
subordinates in his territory. It couldn’t be otherwise. The
main man for this horrible new drug, though, is a lieutenant named
Arnie Siegel who controls the narcotics underworld in the south New
Jersey and Philadelphia areas. He works this part of the operation
out of Atlantic City, New Jersey, rather than Philadelphia because
the mob owns and controls Atlantic City, while Philadelphia is the
headquarters of the National Police. They run the Philadelphia
vice, too, and own some of the best politicians money can buy, but
there’s no use in tweaking them too far.”
I nodded. “But so far this operation is only the fifty
prostitutes? No more?”
“That we know of, although things do appear to be
changing. The work done up on the farm—the estate
up-country—on the gate there seems to be very extensive, and
they wouldn’t do that if they weren’t planning some
real expansion. We also believe that they are importing a lot more
of the drug than before, and one dose a day is not only the minimum
but the maximum you need. Any more has no real effect on an addict.
Then there’s this Addison woman. She tends to show up now and
again, much more in the last few months than ever before, but she
never uses the Pennsylvania gate. She has also been seen in the
large compound they’re building in Guiana.”
“Then why don’t you have pictures of her? At least
I’d think you would have them places staked out as best you
could.”
“We do, and we’ve had half a dozen chances, brief
ones, to photograph her and a couple of opportunities to photograph
Dr. Carlos, but no matter what the photos turn out too blurry to be
used. They must have some sort of device that makes it impossible.
That’s all we can figure.”
Well, to folks who could build and run the Labyrinth, a gadget
like that would be no trouble at all, I thought. Still, it brought
up a real point. “If they don’t want their pictures
taken that bad, then there must be somebody somewheres who might
recognize them,” I pointed out. “That means they
ain’t no flunkies and messengers. Have you tried composite
sketches?”
“Oh, yes. We sent some fairly detailed ones to security,
but they were unable to get anything from them. It’s another
of those mysteries.”
“Other than this Addison, has there been any contact
between this Carlos and Siegel? Anything?”
“We think there must be, but we haven’t been able to
document anything as yet. Consider that the National Police at
least know of the drug and are scared by it, too. They think
it’s locally made and they’re scared stiff that it
might be mass-produced for general use. They, and we, have staked
out, bugged, and tapped both operations as much as humanly possible
and come up with nothing at all. The odds are very good that
Wycliffe and Siegel have anti-bugging technology far in advance of
ours. For them, this is a strictly business proposition. They are
getting new technology for their operations that make a joke out of
the police efforts, and in exchange they are doing this on the
side. None of it, however, makes sense. I mean, why hook fifty
young girls on it, all under nineteen when hooked, when you can use
far more conventional drugs the same way? And why no
men?”
“Any link between the fifty? Families?
Anything?”
“The first thing we looked for. Most are runaways or the
sort that decided to go on the street on their own. None come from
powerful or influential families, although a few are from the
middle class, God help us. They are all well built and attractive,
but none are much more than that. The bulk are white, but there are
some Negro girls in there and also some Chinese girls. At the
start, when there were only a dozen or so, they were kept together,
but now they’re in small groups working in various cities
along the eastern seaboard, no more than six to eight. Siegel keeps
three around his personal home at the Jersey shore as virtually his
slaves, although even they occasionally work the
streets.”
Well, we managed to make it to Huntington. After bein’
Vogel’s Beth I didn’t mind eatin’ mostly
carry-out food and mostly sleepin’ in the car. The train ride
was real nice—we don’t have trains like this back home,
I’ll tell you—and most everybody just assumed I was
Lindy’s personal maid or something like that. Their
assumptions pissed me off a little, but I played along with it
because it was handy and the laugh was on them. Most of the train
crew was black, though—the porters, cooks, waiters, that sort
of thing—and every damned black man on there seemed to think
he was God’s gift to women and were the most arrogant bunch I
ever was around.
Philadelphia was very much different and still pretty much the
same. There was no Schuylkill Expressway or I-95 or like
that—no expressways to speak of at all, and no U.S. 1 as
such, either—but it was still a big city, it was still laid
out based on Market and Chestnut, and it had elevated railways,
streetcars down every street, and trolley buses, too. The downtown
buildings, even the new ones, tended to look old-fashioned and not
all box and glass, but it was familiar enough, and out on all sides
was the row houses and tiny streets lookin’ much the same.
They had a couple of northern bridges across the Delaware, but the
big ones I was used to, like the Franklin, Whitman, and Ross, just
didn’t exist. Most folks took ferries across the Delaware to
Camden, which was more wide open than in my world.
Blacks lived in their own sections and only there, comin’
out only to work or shop, but things wasn’t so bad otherwise.
Philadelphia stores took the same money no matter what the color,
although some of the big department stores had separate
dressin’ rooms for colored and white. On the other hand, you
rode anywhere on the trolley or train you wanted and all but the
fancy restaurants didn’t care if you ate there so long as you
had the money. The most real trouble I had was that I kept
lookin’ the wrong way before steppin’ into a street and
almost got run over, and when a streetcar—they called
’em trams—or somethin’ stopped, I half the time
would have to keep from walkin’ to the wrong side, without
the door. Same with taxis, which were all real old-fashioned types
and black.
Still, I managed to pick up a decent and in-style wardrobe.
Seemed most skirts was at or above the knee, and worn with
stockings and real high high-heeled leather boots with fur trim.
While they hadn’t thought of pantyhose yet, they did have
nylons. Tops were mostly blouses, although you could get leather
open vests to match the boots and stuff. Bras were real
old-fashioned and real stiff, but all “decent” women
wore ’em. My biggest problem used to be fit. I needed a lot
of half-sizes and I got real wide feet, and it’s always been
a problem to get a good fit, which was why I dressed so casual and
cheap most times even after I had money, but in Lindy’s world
they actually would measure and tailor stuff for you and have you
pick it up—in twenty-four hours! There was something to be
said for this world. Guys came out and pumped your gas and cleaned
your car windows and checked your oil all automatically, for
example.
I admit I had trouble gettin’ cabs and the attention of
salesclerks and waitresses, and I knew why, but white folks almost
never did—even if the waitresses or cab drivers or clerks
themselves was black, which some were. I ain’t sure it was
the color itself so much as in this place bein’ black
signaled “poor.”
Once I started to feel comfortable gettin’ around
here—learnin’ the rules, you might say—and got
all the briefings I could, it was time to go to work. Lindy had a
service where you could call collect from most any phone anyplace
and either get hold of her or leave detailed messages, even
information, that would be taken and passed on in strict
confidence. She also had contracts with local agencies in
Philadelphia and New Jersey who’d come runnin’ if I
called with the right code words. I also had a driver’s
license, passport and other documents, and a bank account as Beth
Louise Parker in an Atlantic City bank. I needed to have some ready
cash around, since they didn’t get around to inventin’
the MasterCard there yet and I wasn’t a likely candidate for
individual store accounts. I did like the fact that all my IDs
listed my right birth date but the wrong year. It was nice to be so
suddenly under thirty again, even if only on paper and only by half
a year.
Atlantic City was never much in early November, and here it
didn’t have the casinos. The boardwalk was mostly deserted,
most of its businesses shut down till summer, and the place was
left to the permanent residents. The rest of the city didn’t
look no better than it did in my world; the whole place looked and
smelled like the worst of Camden. I took a small apartment in the
black section of the city that was no great shakes as a furnished
apartment but wasn’t no roach motel, neither. I also hired a
small car—no problem parkin’ on the streets in
November—that was old and sad-lookin’ but ran okay, but
it took a little time for me to make a turn and wind up on the left
side of the road.
The general agreement was that I would call Lindy’s
special number once a week without fail, even if I had
nothin’ to report. Of course, I could use it sooner to get
information and the like if I needed. If she didn’t hear from
me for two straight weeks, she would assume that I was taken and
check up on me. If she couldn’t find me or I didn’t
report for a full six weeks, she would communicate with Aldrath to
send in the Marines.
I spent a couple of weeks gettin’ to know the city and its
haunts and own special rules, and checkin’ out Mr. Siegel and
his operation. He had a real nice house right on the ocean down
near Ocean City, with high fences and a gate and gate guard. The
land around there is so flat that there was no way to really see
inside except by air or by boat. Since I knew what kind of crates
these people flew and a balloon would be a little obvious, that
left boat and I was no sailor, particularly in fall’s rough
seas and changing weather. They said that Siegel tried to buy here
a few years before and was told it was
“restricted”—no Jews allowed. So all of a sudden
a lot of houses down here started catchin’ fire, and there
was a real crime wave, and lots of businesses them WASP folks had
suddenly went bad or had troubles, and then this strictly blonde
and blue-eyed bank came in and made nice offers and bought a lot of
the property—and that’s how Siegel came not only to
have the place, but privacy, too.
But Siegel wasn’t no prisoner. He liked goin’ down
to the lowlife sections, to the bars and clubs he owned and the
projects he controlled, and he spent some time in the Oceanside Tea
and Spice Company, Ltd., offices, which was just a big warehouse
and a small, stucco office in front. He drove a fancy-lookin’
red Daimler sports car and was pretty easy to spot or find.
He turned out to be young, fairly good-lookin’, thin and
trim with a thick, bushy moustache. He was said to be
somethin’ of a health nut, and drank little if at all,
didn’t smoke, and swung both ways. He’d go to bed with
women, yeah, but he didn’t have much other use for ’em,
’cept to wait on him maybe. You had to know your place around
him. I took one look at him and knew that if he hadn’t been
Jewish he and Vogel’s blackshirts woulda gotten along just
fine.
He didn’t manage nothin’ personally, of course, and
particularly not illegal stuff like prostitutes, since the law
would just love to get him on most any technicality. That
didn’t stop him from visitin’ the worst districts and
payin’ calls on the little fish who worked for him. They was
just old friends, see, and what they done for a livin’ was no
bother to him. Their boss? Heaven forbid! He was in the tea and
spice business and that paid just
fine . . .
I needed to get closer in to get a real look at things, and that
was one thing I’d done many times before. After you cruise a
district for a while you get a feel for it, and this one
wasn’t much different than most. I got to admit I
didn’t exactly get excited over dressin’ down to it,
since them streetwalkers wanted to advertise and I was still
havin’ trouble with a November chill and a brisk wind from
the ocean just with a short skirt, but it was part of the job.
The uniform of the place wasn’t that much different.
Real high spiked heels, fishnet stockings, a real short leather
skirt and top that left little to the imagination, real heavy
makeup with some sparkles mixed in, and the only concession to cold
weather allowed, a fur coat, usually rabbit, that was
never buttoned. There was always new girls comin’ on
and old ones vanishin’, so that wasn’t no big thing,
but it took some outside detective work to give the right answers
if questions came up, and they always did.
Armed with all that, I had no trouble fittin’ right in and
almost vanishin’ into the scenery. This was the kind of
neighborhood I grew up in, and these were the same kind of people I
always knew. There were, however, some problems I knew I’d
have to face. I’d used an identity as a whore many times, but
only for a day or two, on stakeouts and like that. Now I had to
blend in and stay in for some time, till folks got used to me and
talked relaxed and felt I was one of them. That meant movin’
into a flophouse room right in the district with only the stuff
I’d be expected to have—stuff that could fit in a
handbag, mostly—and very little money. I could stay
independent for a while, but there was no question I’d have
to turn a few tricks to be completely accepted. Gettin’ a
barmaid’s job or somethin’ like that was out of the
question; November was the off season and there was only so much of
anything, even tricks, to go around.
So, in a way, I finally completed my destiny and it was anything
but glamorous or even particularly pleasant, but I actually took
money for sex. Not bad money, either, considerin’ my expenses
and the fact I didn’t have to split with no pimp. Not that
several didn’t try to move in, but I managed to put ’em
off without them gettin’ too riled. That wouldn’t last
forever, but I didn’t plan on this bein’ forever.
Still and all, doin’ a few tricks and scorin’ a
little pot did just what I hoped. In under two weeks’ time, I
was a part of the scenery and I had enough credibility to sit
around a burger joint or places like that and just talk friendly to
people. I started learnin’ one hell of a lot, and I even got
some warnings about Siegel. They bought my story—ex-stripper
from Philadelphia who got married to a real stud and took a hike
the second time he beat me up. It was familiar.
My best friend and source turned out to be a guy named Harley
who ran the only porn shop I ever seen with a sandwich thing on the
side. Harley was fat and fiftyish and only about five feet tall and
as flaming swishy as a three-pound note, but he liked to talk to
“the girls.” I think he wished he was one of us. One
night we got to talkin’ ’bout the odd types even for
the district.
“You seen a shadow dancer yet? Now there’s
one to give you the creeps!” he said, shiverin’.
“Huh? I heard that name used by some folks talkin’
to other folks. What’s it mean?”
“That’s what we call ’em on the street. A
string of half a dozen girls run by Fast Eddie Small—one of
Arnie’s pimps. All real young, real pretty. They work the
streets like bitches in heat, sometimes do real vulgar
strip shows—it’s an art form, you know, or should be.
You know—you were one.”
I nodded. “Yeah, but where’s the name come
from?”
“They got hooked on something new, some new drug we think
they’re making in a lab someplace and it’s
scary! Not like dope—hell, half the streetwalkers
here have fifty-pound-a-day habits. They’re like, well,
slaves, damn it. They wash his car, they clean his house,
they do everything he tells ’em. He has fun showin’
them off to people, making them do disgusting things just
to show what a big man he is. I mean, I look in your eyes and I see
a person there. You look in their eyes and you get a
chill. Nothin’ there. Not even hope. Shadows of pretty girls
dancin’ to Fast Eddie’s tune. I hear there are others
around, in Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, all over. You watch
out and stay away from them. I don’t want to ever look in
your eyes and see only a shadow dancer there.”
Well, of course, to stay away I had to know how to find one, and
where, and where they sometimes did their simply vulgar
shows, too. Fast Eddie and his girls worked out of a joint called
the Purple Pussycat about three blocks over diagonally from the
bright lights, on the edge of the district. I’d been warned
more than once not to work that area, that no freelancers were
allowed. I decided to check it out first, so I went back to the
original apartment where most of my things were. I put my hair up
and put a blonde wig on over it. It looked good, but it was pretty
obviously a wig and not a dye job.
One thing I learned on the street was that Lindy had been right.
Any girl who put on long, tight pants, and went braless under a
shirt or sweater, was automatically a lesbian to just about
everybody. I didn’t want to get roughed up or raped or
anything bad by workin’ in an exclusive territory, and
respectable women just didn’t go into them neighborhoods or
places alone. Some butch girls, though, got a real charge out of
strip shows, although they usually went in pairs or more. Still,
this was a more repressed society than mine, and I’d already
seen a couple of women come down to the district, usually under
wigs, glasses, and the like, alone to see a show and even pay a
female hooker for a good time they didn’t dare have or try in
their ordinary lives. Lots of closeted gay men did it with male
hookers, after all.
So it might not be unusual for a black lesbian, whose culture
was real macho, to come over in disguise and see a show and maybe
try for a good time. My eyes ain’t great, like I said, but I
used contact lenses I brought with me when I was on the streets and
regular glasses off-hours. Now I got my tinted sunglasses, even
though it was night. It was the right added touch. I did have to go
out and buy a butch leather jacket, to make it just right, but
while the saleswoman looked at me real odd she sold me the coat and
took the money.
About nine-thirty that night, I took a taxi up to the Purple
Pussycat. The driver hardly said a word to me. I got out a block or
so before the club, so I could kinda cruise the area. It
wasn’t a lot of joints and shit like the main street of the
district, just real run-down old houses and a mission and the one
club near the end of the block with a garish neon sign and
blinkin’ lights, but I could see why Arnie wanted it. The
corner near the club was one of the main drags in or out of
Atlantic City, and it was on a main feeder street to there. The
lights at the intersection was maybe five minutes long one way and
three the other. In season, you could probably proposition or check
out a hundred cars, and a John lookin’ for it would be able
to find it and set somethin’ up without ever bein’
obvious. There was even a big arrow sign on both streets for the
club sayin’, free car park in rear!
There wasn’t much traffic now, particularly on a
Wednesday, and nobody seemed to be workin’ that
intersection.
Now, undercover work’s like method actin’ only more
so—you really got to get into and live the part, ’cause
if an actor bombs she maybe gets tomatoes or boos, but if somebody
undercover makes a slip, just one, they can wind up floatin’
in the ocean. That’s why when I moved into the district I had
to take some tricks, like it or not. If I didn’t,
they’d smell cop or narc or somethin’ and it was
bye-bye Brandy. I’d played a few dykes in my time,
too—sometimes it was the only way to get
information—and I had it down pretty good. Like back home,
this only had to be a one-night stand, but I would be pretty damned
conspicuous.
I stuck a cigarette in the side of my mouth, lit it, and walked
into the Purple Pussycat.
As expected, it wasn’t exactly New Year’s Eve in
there. Maybe a dozen customers, all men in suits and ties, one
barmaid and one cocktail waitress. They all gave me a look when I
came in, but I could see right away that their first impression was
exactly what I wanted. The juke box, which was piped into the whole
place, was playin’ some jazzy French song with naughty
lyrics. I sat down at an empty table and the mere fact that not one
of them guys in there made a move was nice.
The waitress had on a sort of bikini, though they didn’t
call ’em that in this world, the fishnet stockings, and
spiked heels, all with purple glitter stuff in them. She came up to
me. “What’cha havin’, honey?” She looked
like she should be out findin’ Johns, but she didn’t
look like no shadow dancer.
“Rum and Coke,” I told her. I’d eaten well
before this, and also drank a whole glass of buttermilk. I figured
I might have to drink a fair amount.
Now, one trick in this kinda thing is that you got to show you
got money, and a fair amount, without showin’ so much that
somebody’s tempted to just take it the easy way. I brought a
hundred pounds, not super dangerous money but still an average
week’s salary in this world, and I brought it in mostly
smaller bills. The money was different colors and sizes for
different amounts so it was clearly not a huge wad in real value to
an experienced spotter—like the waitress—but it was a
huge wad physically and it made an impression. She gave my order to
the barmaid, waited, brought it, got paid and saw the wad, then
vanished in the back for a minute before reappearing.
For a while, nothin’ happened, but I saw that none of the
guys left and a couple more came in. My first rum and Coke tasted
mostly like Coke, but my second tasted mostly like rum—the
over-a-hundred-proof variety. I was mostly through it when the show
they was all waitin’ for started.
It used canned music and hokey lights and the runway down the
center of the bar, but the show was like no other these joints ever
did. I knew from the joints on the strip that what they had in
prudery everywhere else they didn’t have in their shows, at
least not here. There seemed little you could do in a joint like
this that was against the law. But this—this was
somethin’ else.
The show involved three girls with the best bodies I ever seen
in my life, one white and a real blonde, one black, and one
Chinese. They got naked ’cept for real high spiked heels in
record time—no pasties, no nothin’—and
then they started really doin’ it to each other in ways I
never even dreamed of. I didn’t even know the human body
could bend that way or that three girls could do it to one another
all at the same time with no conflict of interest, as it
were—and all to the beat of the music! And they was all three
clearly really enjoyin’ it.
It didn’t take too long to see what Harley meant. The
three girls didn’t look real somehow. For one thing,
they looked absolutely perfect, and I do mean
perfect. They had them lady bodybuilder’s muscles,
too—had to to do the kind of things they was doin’ and
hold them positions while doin’ ’em. There was also
somethin’ else, harder to describe. A feelin’, really,
but real just the same, ’cause Harley and the folks
who’d named them felt it, too. An emptiness, somehow. The
feelin’ that you was watchin’ three perfect and
perfected Disneyland robots, not livin’, thinkin’,
feelin’ women. Shadow
dancers . . .
I was told by everybody that all the shadow dancers was
twenty-one or under, even by Lindy, but that was true only of the
white girl and the Chinese girl. The black girl was older, though
she still looked real young and fantastic. I couldn’t take my
eyes off her, almost from the start.
The black shadow dancer was me.
“You must understand what you are
contemplating. The dangers
involved . . . ” Aldrath Prang told me
gravely.
“I know the risks. Look, I’m not goin’ in
there to get captured or to get hooked. If I can keep from either
one, I swear I plan on doin’ just fine without ’em.
I’m realistic enough t’know I might and I’m
willin’ to take that risk just like I was riskin’ as
much for you three months ago. Besides, don’t give me no
jive, Aldrath. You been expectin’ me to do this for some time
and probably got itchy when I took so long.”
He looked hurt but you got to be a decent actor in his line of
work.
“I assure you I did not. However, I am willing to listen
and see if you have any chance.”
“Like on the last one, huh? Look, this is strictly me and
you. No big operation, no giant backup team. If they don’t
catch me I won’t need backup, and if they do it won’t
make no difference, now will it? What I’ll need from you,
aside from a complete briefin’ on this world, these people,
all you know to now and who you got workin’ the case so I
don’t shoot the wrong fella, access in, free access to the
Labyrinth if I got to get out, and some way to monitor me so I can
get information out to the right people, meanin’ you, without
gettin’ caught.”
“We have a resident agent there now, somebody local but
she knows about us, and she uses local talent who don’t know
about us. She will have to know, and at least arrange signals and
means of passing messages—if you can pass them.”
“They don’t keep these folks locked up, do they? Why
bother?”
“Good point. The other question is, if they catch
you and hook you instead of killing you outright, will you want to
pass anything to us? Those who have this thing inside them have an
overwhelming urge to self-preservation at all costs.”
“Then we got to agree absolutely to the opposite,” I
told him. “We got to agree that if I get hooked and then make
no attempt to communicate within, say, a month of my first observed
opportunity, you’ll come in and snatch me.”
“But that might kill you! At the very least—well,
you visited and talked with Donna.”
I nodded. “That’s why. If it takes
self-preservation, or preservation of that thing, to keep me
motivated, that should do it.”
He nodded. “Yes, yes. Very clever and original. All right.
But just what do you propose to do?”
“I don’t know and that’s the God’s
honest truth. I won’t know till I’m briefed and then
there on the scene with time to check it all out and learn all the
ropes. Uh—will I have any trouble like in Vogel’s
world?”
“If you mean color, no. At least, not any more than you
would have operating in your own. You will be in a rough democracy
which has the same sort of failings and virtues as your own,
although it’s different. But—I can’t let you go
in alone, with no plan, no backup.”
“Sure you can, if you want results. That’s part of
your problem all along. You’re so Mister Future, high tech,
computer modeled and the rest you don’t have no gut abilities
or feelin’s. That’s why you keep lockin’ the barn
door after the horse has already gone.”
“Such confidence. Anyone can be broken.”
“Yeah. Vogel came damned close to doin’ it to me, so
it don’t take a lot to break me, but I was ready the first
opportunity I got to wring his damned neck. I ain’t never
gonna be no Beth again. I might hav’ta act like her, or
worse, but I’ll never become her. I got you all to
thank for that much, and Vogel, too. I learned the difference
between havin’ to be a Beth and
wantin’ to be a Beth. That Donna girl down
there—for all her problems and for all that she’s a
shadow of what she coulda been ’cause of this, doesn’t
like it. She’s broken, body and soul; she’s
been raped in the mind as well as the body. Even if she
didn’t have no permanent brain damage she’d be broken
and in shock. But if she could get the ones who did it to her, she
would. If she could pass judgment on ’em, she’d demand
justice. That’s the difference.”
“All right.” He sighed. “I’ll make the
preparations. Fewer than six people will know, all under my control
except the resident agent and her people, who you’ll have to
watch out for.” He paused a moment. “You know,
you’re taking me at face value, too. If I were in your
position, I, too, would be a suspect.”
“You are,” I told him honestly, “but I got to
trust somebody. It’s that thing about feelin’s
again. I can’t get it out of my head that you really love
what you do, that you wouldn’t do nothin’ else, and
that the only thing that could scare you would be if you had to
quit. I can’t see how you could be bribed to sell out, and
somehow I kinda suspect you got somethin’ on everybody who
could fire you.”
He smiled, but said nothin’.
The next few days I spent goin’ over all the materials. I
didn’t trust no hypnoscan, but I’m a quick study when
I’m on a case. I memorized everything I could of this world,
the important people, the way the opposition’s organization
was set up. Aldrath, in the meantime, arranged to transfer some of
my funds into slush funds in the money of the new world,
so I wouldn’t even be takin’ a dime from the Company on
this.
We agreed only on objectives. How much did the players in the
game there know? Who knew the most? Did they have any orders on
what they was doin’, or was all the stuff they did directed
from above by the two controllers? Who were Addison and Carlos?
Could they be snatched? I didn’t expect to hand the whole
thing over—that woulda been beyond belief—but if we
could get one of them, another Vogel type, we’d have what we
needed. Incriminating, absolute evidence against their boss who
would tell Aldrath what he needed to know about the rest
of it. If I could also somehow put together just what it was they
was plottin’ to do, then we would be able to make sure that
nobody else could do it.
I went back home one last time, to close out a few things and
register a will. It was funny; just like last time, I was calm, I
didn’t have nightmares or other scary ideas—I was all
business. Not even this late in the game, not this time. I
don’t think I was committin’ suicide in a noble cause,
not now. I think it was just that, like Aldrath, I knew and loved
my job and I did one thing well and this time I was in
control.
All that stuff about clearin’ up personal things back home
was really an excuse to see Bill Markham without nobody
suspectin’ or knowin’ nothin’ about it. I had the
idea that Bill’s remorse over Sam was genuine, and even
though he was white and blue-eyed, he was one of my own kind. Since
his office was in the same downtown bank buildin’ as my
account and financial advisors, it wasn’t hard to arrange a
meet.
I told him what I was gonna do, and he did all the usual things
and said all the usual things, and a little bit more. I asked him
if he trusted Aldrath Prang.
“Yes and no,” he replied. “If you mean, do I
think he’s got any interest in this except catching these
people, no. If he could nail a Company director it would be the
highlight of his life. On the other hand, he sees people as game
pieces, not human beings. I guess it comes with the territory. If
he thought he could get more from exposing or sacrificing you, or
me, or all of us, he’d weigh the odds and then do it and feel
he was right. Are you sure he didn’t plant this idea in your
head somehow?”
It was a sobering question. “I don’t think
so, but with all them gadgets who’d ever know for sure? Do
you? About yourself, I mean? You can get too
paranoid in this job and then you’re as crazy as Vogel. Bill,
what the hell would you have me do?”
He sighed. “You see the Inquirer this
morning?”
“Nope. Why?”
“They had to cordon off four blocks of
Philadelphia—right here—because an interracial couple
moved into one of those white working class neighborhoods and there
was rioting, mob violence, and all the racist talk in the world.
We’ve elected black politicians, even mayors, and we’re
decades after full legal civil rights and lots of progress, yet
this still happens—not far off down south, but right
here.”
“I know a little bit about that myself,” I reminded
him. “I’m real sorry to hear it, but what’s that
got to do with this?”
“That’s the kind of hatred and violence and
unreasoning fear and madness that breeds Vogels and Hitlers and all
the rest. They’re not just out there, on other worlds, or
over there, in other countries, or down there in Mississippi or
someplace. They’re right here. Over there,
you’re going to be on unfamiliar ground, at a distinct
disadvantage, on their turf and alone. If you have to fight this
type of thing, wouldn’t it make more sense to fight it
here?”
I thought about that. “Bill, what you say is true and
maybe I’m nuts, but I think I’m right on this. Our
little Hitlers and Klansmen and the rest do a good bit of damage
here, but that kinda thing’s part of what we have to live
through and fight all the time. This is the Company, damn it! Good
old G.O.D., Inc. They didn’t pick them initials for
nothin’. That’s power. Real power. Lord knows
they’re a pretty unpleasant bunch as it is, but suppose
instead of a Board they had a Hitler? Never mind this drug
shit, I’m talkin’ ’bout the Company. I got just a
taste of what we folks could do to ourselves with a Hitler a few
months back without the Company’s power and resources and
knowledge. They could impose that on lots of worlds and hold
’em till the end of time. Billions, trillions of human
bein’s, all of ’em their toys and playthings forever.
Uh, uh, Bill.”
“Damn it! You’re only going to get yourself
killed—or worse!”
“If Sam’s uncle knew what was comin’ back in
the thirties and he had a big family but he also had one shot at
bumpin’ off Hitler, even though he’d get caught and
tortured to death, I think he’d’a done it. Instead they
sent that family to Auschwitz, where they lived hell for years, and
only one distant cousin survived at all and him a broken man.
Better to have gotten Hitler.”
Bill nodded, but made one last try. “A worst-case
scenario. You get in, they catch you and hook you and try to turn
you to them. Sam survives, recovers, and in the meantime you find
yourself blocked and trapped, learning nothing. Finally we take you
out, as we would have to, and rush you to the Center, and you wind
up like this Donna, say.”
“Then I’d say I’d still be better off than
bein’ Beth all my life, or walkin’ aimlessly around
through life watchin’ this thing go down bad and always
wonderin’ if I coulda done something to prevent it. And it
wouldn’t be nice, but Sam would be no worse off than if Vogel
had killed me.”
He threw up his hands. “All right, then! It’s your
funeral! Now, what do you want me to do?”
“Be an independent monitor. Use whatever you can to keep
some independent track of me—without Aldrath knowin’.
And be here in case they double-cross me so somebody gets what I
know.”
He thought a moment. “I’m pretty limited here, and
I’m just a regional security man. Compared to Aldrath,
I’m next to powerless. But I’ll do all that I can, I
promise you that. I’ll tell you something nobody is supposed
to know that may help. When we went in for Vogel, we also went into
his two chief experimental labs in North Carolina and Houston.
That’s how we got Donna and some of the others you saw still
in advanced stages. We also captured more than three hundred doses
of the stuff. Some of it went to research, of course, but some
didn’t get reported. Some of us wanted to make sure that
nobody got us hooked so we had no way out and no supply to
get to the Center fully charged. I have more than a month’s
supply in a safe-deposit box in this very bank. As far as we know
it’ll keep almost forever at normal temperatures and
conditions. I doubt if I could get a line of communication in there
much; you’ll be on your own with just Aldrath’s few
people. But if it really goes bad, and you can manage somehow to
get into the Labyrinth and get here, I can keep you going until the
Center.”
I stared at him. “If it comes to that, you better damned
well be here and answer your phone.”
It was like our world, and it wasn’t nothin’ like
our world, all at the same time. In this world, we lost
the Revolutionary War. Washington was hung as a traitor and
Benedict Arnold was a great hero. The French Revolution started
different, but it still happened and it wound up the same, so they
had a real fight with Napoleon anyways. The British claimed and
seized most of what we called the Louisiana Purchase by force, not
cash. Texas and California revolted and set up their own republics,
which Britain recognized and helped defend. California later came
into the Empire after the gold rush. That’s more history than
I knew in school, but that’s what they told me happened.
So we had in the end a Dominion of North America, except Texas
and some parts of New Mexico and Arizona. Spain hung on to Mexico
and most of Spanish Latin America ’cept Brazil and the places
the Brits had colonies, but they mostly governed themselves.
Britain wiped out slavery in the whole Empire in the eighteen
thirties, but it was the old pattern here, convertin’ slaves
into sharecroppers. As machines and industry grew up, as we had it,
in the north, a lot of black folks went up there lookin’ for
work and you had the ghettos formin’ anyways pretty much as
they looked back home. But, in a number of ways, it was worse.
There hadn’t been near as many wars, they hadn’t yet
discovered the bomb or transistors, for that matter, airplanes was
still for the rich and was real funny lookin’, and radio was
there but TV, while invented, wasn’t a big commercial thing
and wasn’t in nobody’s homes. The public schools was
really private schools, and the ones for the poor folks was lousy.
There was still segregation of sorts, too; not no back-of-the-bus
stuff, but there was black schools and white schools, black
neighborhoods and white neighborhoods, and the blacks, as usual,
got the poorest education, lousiest jobs, and most of the
unemployment. Not that there wasn’t black doctors, dentists,
lawyers, and the rest, but they came from black colleges and had
black practices. You needed money to vote, and that was where the
power was. This was an America without the Votin’ Rights Act,
the Civil Rights Act, and a lot of the rest.
Each of the commonwealths, which was what they called states,
was much bigger—Pennsylvania, which still called itself a
commonwealth in my world, went all the way to the Mississippi,
for example, and parts of Canada and Michigan were in New York.
They ran themselves like little independent countries ’cept
for money, trade, and foreign affairs, which was taken care of by a
national Parliament with only them powers. The country’s
capital was Philadelphia, of all places. Washington, D.C., just
didn’t exist. It was like steppin’ back in time to the
forties, or maybe the thirties. The cars looked funny and
old-fashioned and drove on the left side of the road with the
steerin’ wheel on the right, and although they had penicillin
and a few other things medicine wasn’t that great,
neither.
The American pound was the currency, divided into twenty
shillin’s or a hundred pennies. Football was soccer, somebody
did invent basketball but there was cricket fields instead of
baseball. The national drink was tea, but somehow Coke and Pepsi
managed to get invented but beer was the standard. The pound bought
about what a dollar buys here, but the average wage was less than a
hundred pounds a week. What medical care there was, though, was
free, only if you had money you could see somebody real good and
real quick. Abortions was illegal and back-alley affairs, and the
only birth control they seemed to have was condoms. I had the
Center do their version of tyin’ my tubes; it was quick,
painless, and you couldn’t tell, but it relieved my mind a
little in a place like this.
I had to come in down in Tennessee; they forced the weak point
open just long enough to get me in and close it down again. The
other side controlled the only regular substation—and it was
theirs, not ours—and that was in Pennsylvania near State
College, which wasn’t called that or nothin’ else,
there bein’ no Penn State there. There was only a few sleepy
little farm towns around there—and the country estate of one
George Thomas Wycliffe, a real nice name for a country gentlemen
who happened to be the boss of organized crime from New York to the
Virginia border. It also happened to completely contain not just
the weak point there but also just about all views of the weak
point.
I stepped out into the late afternoon of what in my world would
be the Tennessee countryside but was now just the Boone District of
the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Labyrinth closed behind me.
Aldrath worked it so it opened when it did by forcing a spontaneous
opening of the thing so one of his agents could go to a world
nearby on that track on some pretend mission. Fact was, only three
people really knew I was here—Aldrath Prang, Bill
Markham, and Aldrath’s resident agent in the world who
was meetin’ me. She was supposed to be born here, and knew
her way around. Even she was told as little as she could, only that
I was on some mission for Aldrath. To her, too, I was Beth Parker.
No sense in takin’ a chance that this Carlos or Addison might
know who Brandy Parker Horowitz really was.
She was there, all right; a thin, slightly built young woman
maybe five two or three, with shoulder-length black hair. Her face
was long and she had a real sharp nose and thin lips. She was
wearin’ a fur jacket, knee-length skirt, and high-heeled
boots. Me, I had on a blue wool sweater, jeans, and sneakers, and I
had one of my satchel handbags packed with toiletries and stuff and
a small suitcase with just things I thought I might need and might
not be able to pick up here.
“Hello,” she called to me. “Over here.”
She had one of those middle voices and middle accents that seemed
just about average for American women. I half expected some kind of
British accent or something, but I guess we was already polluted in
our talk by the time of the Revolution. Of course, the Canadians of
my world had been with the British and they didn’t sound like
no Brits, now that I thought of it. As I went over to her, though,
I could see on her face that I wasn’t exactly what she was
expectin’.
“I’m Beth Parker,” I told her, bein’
friendly as I could.
“Lindy Crockett,” she responded, but she
didn’t offer a hand. “I—I’ve seen that
thing work a couple of times, but it always gives me the chills.
Sorry.”
“That’s okay. Somethin’ else is
botherin’ you, though. Better clear the air right now;
I’m gonna hav’ta depend on you a lot from here on
in.”
“Uh—nothing, really. I just wasn’t expecting
you to be a Negro.”
My old defenses went up automatically, but I was under control.
This wasn’t my world and I wasn’t invited, I invited
myself. I might not like the place much, but it was better to have
a comment like that than to be what that meant in, say,
Vogel’s old world.
“You got problems with that? If so, we better try to set
up some alternate people right now, before this goes much
further.”
“Uh, no, no. It may even work to our advantage once we
begin, but it does complicate things a little. We’re going to
have a very long drive, and this commonwealth has some pretty rigid
segregation laws. Until we get out of Virginia, there might be some
problems just finding restaurants we could eat in or motor inns if
we need to sleep. I planned on driving to Richmond and taking the
train from there, giving you a feel for the place and briefing you
as best I can, but we wouldn’t even be in the same
cars.”
Just like home, huh, Aldrath? Of course, they was still
blockin’ off a whole neighborhood of the good old northern
City of Brotherly Love back home ’cause a black woman moved
into a neighborhood, and my daddy grew up in a place and society
like this.
“Then how ’bout we drive north instead of the
train?” I suggested. “Or would a black woman and a
white woman in a car prove embarrassin’?”
“Not so long as we were both women, no. The roads
aren’t too great, but we could go up to Huntington and get
the train east from Cincinnati to Philadelphia. If I got a
compartment we wouldn’t have problems.”
“Let’s do it, then. Anything else?”
“Well, women in pants are pretty rare in this country, and
those shoes aren’t seen much off the squash courts. Did you
bring anything else to wear?”
“Well, I got one skirt in there and some high boots, but I
didn’t expect to risk my lone pair of pantyhose so
early.”
She stared at me. “What are pantyhose?”
Now I knew I was livin’ in a primitive place.
I changed in the woods and got pronounced all right to travel,
although I got the idea that my stuff was a little out of style
here. We hiked over the fields and through the woods to a country
road where a small car was parked to one side. It was a real tiny,
boxy car and it bounced a lot, but the only real problem I had with
it was that I was sittin’ where I felt I should be
drivin’ and she was sittin’ in the passenger side with
a steerin’ wheel and we drove opposite of all I was used to.
It took some gettin’ used to, I’ll tell you. Crockett
also was the kind of driver who liked to go sixty on roads you
wouldn’t dare do thirty on and brake at the last minute.
She was a cigarette smoker, though, and relieved that I was,
too. She smoked these long, thin, unfiltered things, though, and I
began to realize that I better hoard my two cartons ’cause I
was universes away from any more Virginia Slims menthol.
Lindy—her real name was Linda but nobody called her
that—was originally from Buffalo but she went east like so
many did in my world to make her fame and fortune in New York. Most
women here were housewives and you could still live here on one
income, but the professional types tended to wind up as secretaries
and clerks. Lindy was from the well-off middle class, and
she’d gotten a law degree from one of the two colleges in the
whole east that let women study law. She never could get into no
law firm, though, and couldn’t get much business on her own,
so she wound up a full lawyer workin’ as a legal secretary
for a big law firm. She met a guy there who did their PI work, they
got married, and she moved over to be his secretary. About
a year and a half later the husband died from pneumonia he caught
on a long stakeout and she inherited the business. She was
twenty-six then.
The thing wasn’t no Spade & Marlowe, though. It was a
nice, comfortable operation with five full-time male investigators
all of whom were willin’ to let her be the boss so long as
they kept doin’ all the real work. It was only after a while
that she discovered that one of her most regular clients who had
’em goin’ all over and doin’ all sorts of
seemingly crazy things was really the Company. Because there really
wasn’t no Company here, only a few of Aldrath’s agents
tryin’ to run down what they could, security employed a bunch
of private eye companies to help it get information. Since some of
her agents had contacts inside “Big Georgie”
Wycliffe’s organization, she was the one they finally picked
as resident agent.
“In a sense, it saved my agency,” she told me.
“A number of the men didn’t like working for a woman
and were looking around to jump to other agencies, and business was
drying up. Not any more. Plenty of cash, plenty of work, as you
probably know.”
Yeah, I knew what the Company could do, even if it wasn’t
in a world where it was set up and fully operating.
“The Gurneys—sorry, the National Police—have
been trying to nail him for years, but he always slips away,”
she said about Big Georgie. “He came up as a dock union
leader and made the big time by being smarter and tougher than
anyone else. He got where he is by a combination of big favors,
mostly assassinations, for the higher-ups and while still a union
leader he seized control of the illegal narcotics trade and made
millions. Opium, heroin, cocaine—you name it, he controls it,
north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Officially, if you can believe it,
he is a brewer in northern New Jersey and also a tea importer.
He’s highly visible, at charitable events, sporting events,
and the like, but very well protected and insulated by a top
organizational staff.”
“And you think he knows about the Labyrinth and the
rest?”
“He knows, because what is being done is being done by his
subordinates in his territory. It couldn’t be otherwise. The
main man for this horrible new drug, though, is a lieutenant named
Arnie Siegel who controls the narcotics underworld in the south New
Jersey and Philadelphia areas. He works this part of the operation
out of Atlantic City, New Jersey, rather than Philadelphia because
the mob owns and controls Atlantic City, while Philadelphia is the
headquarters of the National Police. They run the Philadelphia
vice, too, and own some of the best politicians money can buy, but
there’s no use in tweaking them too far.”
I nodded. “But so far this operation is only the fifty
prostitutes? No more?”
“That we know of, although things do appear to be
changing. The work done up on the farm—the estate
up-country—on the gate there seems to be very extensive, and
they wouldn’t do that if they weren’t planning some
real expansion. We also believe that they are importing a lot more
of the drug than before, and one dose a day is not only the minimum
but the maximum you need. Any more has no real effect on an addict.
Then there’s this Addison woman. She tends to show up now and
again, much more in the last few months than ever before, but she
never uses the Pennsylvania gate. She has also been seen in the
large compound they’re building in Guiana.”
“Then why don’t you have pictures of her? At least
I’d think you would have them places staked out as best you
could.”
“We do, and we’ve had half a dozen chances, brief
ones, to photograph her and a couple of opportunities to photograph
Dr. Carlos, but no matter what the photos turn out too blurry to be
used. They must have some sort of device that makes it impossible.
That’s all we can figure.”
Well, to folks who could build and run the Labyrinth, a gadget
like that would be no trouble at all, I thought. Still, it brought
up a real point. “If they don’t want their pictures
taken that bad, then there must be somebody somewheres who might
recognize them,” I pointed out. “That means they
ain’t no flunkies and messengers. Have you tried composite
sketches?”
“Oh, yes. We sent some fairly detailed ones to security,
but they were unable to get anything from them. It’s another
of those mysteries.”
“Other than this Addison, has there been any contact
between this Carlos and Siegel? Anything?”
“We think there must be, but we haven’t been able to
document anything as yet. Consider that the National Police at
least know of the drug and are scared by it, too. They think
it’s locally made and they’re scared stiff that it
might be mass-produced for general use. They, and we, have staked
out, bugged, and tapped both operations as much as humanly possible
and come up with nothing at all. The odds are very good that
Wycliffe and Siegel have anti-bugging technology far in advance of
ours. For them, this is a strictly business proposition. They are
getting new technology for their operations that make a joke out of
the police efforts, and in exchange they are doing this on the
side. None of it, however, makes sense. I mean, why hook fifty
young girls on it, all under nineteen when hooked, when you can use
far more conventional drugs the same way? And why no
men?”
“Any link between the fifty? Families?
Anything?”
“The first thing we looked for. Most are runaways or the
sort that decided to go on the street on their own. None come from
powerful or influential families, although a few are from the
middle class, God help us. They are all well built and attractive,
but none are much more than that. The bulk are white, but there are
some Negro girls in there and also some Chinese girls. At the
start, when there were only a dozen or so, they were kept together,
but now they’re in small groups working in various cities
along the eastern seaboard, no more than six to eight. Siegel keeps
three around his personal home at the Jersey shore as virtually his
slaves, although even they occasionally work the
streets.”
Well, we managed to make it to Huntington. After bein’
Vogel’s Beth I didn’t mind eatin’ mostly
carry-out food and mostly sleepin’ in the car. The train ride
was real nice—we don’t have trains like this back home,
I’ll tell you—and most everybody just assumed I was
Lindy’s personal maid or something like that. Their
assumptions pissed me off a little, but I played along with it
because it was handy and the laugh was on them. Most of the train
crew was black, though—the porters, cooks, waiters, that sort
of thing—and every damned black man on there seemed to think
he was God’s gift to women and were the most arrogant bunch I
ever was around.
Philadelphia was very much different and still pretty much the
same. There was no Schuylkill Expressway or I-95 or like
that—no expressways to speak of at all, and no U.S. 1 as
such, either—but it was still a big city, it was still laid
out based on Market and Chestnut, and it had elevated railways,
streetcars down every street, and trolley buses, too. The downtown
buildings, even the new ones, tended to look old-fashioned and not
all box and glass, but it was familiar enough, and out on all sides
was the row houses and tiny streets lookin’ much the same.
They had a couple of northern bridges across the Delaware, but the
big ones I was used to, like the Franklin, Whitman, and Ross, just
didn’t exist. Most folks took ferries across the Delaware to
Camden, which was more wide open than in my world.
Blacks lived in their own sections and only there, comin’
out only to work or shop, but things wasn’t so bad otherwise.
Philadelphia stores took the same money no matter what the color,
although some of the big department stores had separate
dressin’ rooms for colored and white. On the other hand, you
rode anywhere on the trolley or train you wanted and all but the
fancy restaurants didn’t care if you ate there so long as you
had the money. The most real trouble I had was that I kept
lookin’ the wrong way before steppin’ into a street and
almost got run over, and when a streetcar—they called
’em trams—or somethin’ stopped, I half the time
would have to keep from walkin’ to the wrong side, without
the door. Same with taxis, which were all real old-fashioned types
and black.
Still, I managed to pick up a decent and in-style wardrobe.
Seemed most skirts was at or above the knee, and worn with
stockings and real high high-heeled leather boots with fur trim.
While they hadn’t thought of pantyhose yet, they did have
nylons. Tops were mostly blouses, although you could get leather
open vests to match the boots and stuff. Bras were real
old-fashioned and real stiff, but all “decent” women
wore ’em. My biggest problem used to be fit. I needed a lot
of half-sizes and I got real wide feet, and it’s always been
a problem to get a good fit, which was why I dressed so casual and
cheap most times even after I had money, but in Lindy’s world
they actually would measure and tailor stuff for you and have you
pick it up—in twenty-four hours! There was something to be
said for this world. Guys came out and pumped your gas and cleaned
your car windows and checked your oil all automatically, for
example.
I admit I had trouble gettin’ cabs and the attention of
salesclerks and waitresses, and I knew why, but white folks almost
never did—even if the waitresses or cab drivers or clerks
themselves was black, which some were. I ain’t sure it was
the color itself so much as in this place bein’ black
signaled “poor.”
Once I started to feel comfortable gettin’ around
here—learnin’ the rules, you might say—and got
all the briefings I could, it was time to go to work. Lindy had a
service where you could call collect from most any phone anyplace
and either get hold of her or leave detailed messages, even
information, that would be taken and passed on in strict
confidence. She also had contracts with local agencies in
Philadelphia and New Jersey who’d come runnin’ if I
called with the right code words. I also had a driver’s
license, passport and other documents, and a bank account as Beth
Louise Parker in an Atlantic City bank. I needed to have some ready
cash around, since they didn’t get around to inventin’
the MasterCard there yet and I wasn’t a likely candidate for
individual store accounts. I did like the fact that all my IDs
listed my right birth date but the wrong year. It was nice to be so
suddenly under thirty again, even if only on paper and only by half
a year.
Atlantic City was never much in early November, and here it
didn’t have the casinos. The boardwalk was mostly deserted,
most of its businesses shut down till summer, and the place was
left to the permanent residents. The rest of the city didn’t
look no better than it did in my world; the whole place looked and
smelled like the worst of Camden. I took a small apartment in the
black section of the city that was no great shakes as a furnished
apartment but wasn’t no roach motel, neither. I also hired a
small car—no problem parkin’ on the streets in
November—that was old and sad-lookin’ but ran okay, but
it took a little time for me to make a turn and wind up on the left
side of the road.
The general agreement was that I would call Lindy’s
special number once a week without fail, even if I had
nothin’ to report. Of course, I could use it sooner to get
information and the like if I needed. If she didn’t hear from
me for two straight weeks, she would assume that I was taken and
check up on me. If she couldn’t find me or I didn’t
report for a full six weeks, she would communicate with Aldrath to
send in the Marines.
I spent a couple of weeks gettin’ to know the city and its
haunts and own special rules, and checkin’ out Mr. Siegel and
his operation. He had a real nice house right on the ocean down
near Ocean City, with high fences and a gate and gate guard. The
land around there is so flat that there was no way to really see
inside except by air or by boat. Since I knew what kind of crates
these people flew and a balloon would be a little obvious, that
left boat and I was no sailor, particularly in fall’s rough
seas and changing weather. They said that Siegel tried to buy here
a few years before and was told it was
“restricted”—no Jews allowed. So all of a sudden
a lot of houses down here started catchin’ fire, and there
was a real crime wave, and lots of businesses them WASP folks had
suddenly went bad or had troubles, and then this strictly blonde
and blue-eyed bank came in and made nice offers and bought a lot of
the property—and that’s how Siegel came not only to
have the place, but privacy, too.
But Siegel wasn’t no prisoner. He liked goin’ down
to the lowlife sections, to the bars and clubs he owned and the
projects he controlled, and he spent some time in the Oceanside Tea
and Spice Company, Ltd., offices, which was just a big warehouse
and a small, stucco office in front. He drove a fancy-lookin’
red Daimler sports car and was pretty easy to spot or find.
He turned out to be young, fairly good-lookin’, thin and
trim with a thick, bushy moustache. He was said to be
somethin’ of a health nut, and drank little if at all,
didn’t smoke, and swung both ways. He’d go to bed with
women, yeah, but he didn’t have much other use for ’em,
’cept to wait on him maybe. You had to know your place around
him. I took one look at him and knew that if he hadn’t been
Jewish he and Vogel’s blackshirts woulda gotten along just
fine.
He didn’t manage nothin’ personally, of course, and
particularly not illegal stuff like prostitutes, since the law
would just love to get him on most any technicality. That
didn’t stop him from visitin’ the worst districts and
payin’ calls on the little fish who worked for him. They was
just old friends, see, and what they done for a livin’ was no
bother to him. Their boss? Heaven forbid! He was in the tea and
spice business and that paid just
fine . . .
I needed to get closer in to get a real look at things, and that
was one thing I’d done many times before. After you cruise a
district for a while you get a feel for it, and this one
wasn’t much different than most. I got to admit I
didn’t exactly get excited over dressin’ down to it,
since them streetwalkers wanted to advertise and I was still
havin’ trouble with a November chill and a brisk wind from
the ocean just with a short skirt, but it was part of the job.
The uniform of the place wasn’t that much different.
Real high spiked heels, fishnet stockings, a real short leather
skirt and top that left little to the imagination, real heavy
makeup with some sparkles mixed in, and the only concession to cold
weather allowed, a fur coat, usually rabbit, that was
never buttoned. There was always new girls comin’ on
and old ones vanishin’, so that wasn’t no big thing,
but it took some outside detective work to give the right answers
if questions came up, and they always did.
Armed with all that, I had no trouble fittin’ right in and
almost vanishin’ into the scenery. This was the kind of
neighborhood I grew up in, and these were the same kind of people I
always knew. There were, however, some problems I knew I’d
have to face. I’d used an identity as a whore many times, but
only for a day or two, on stakeouts and like that. Now I had to
blend in and stay in for some time, till folks got used to me and
talked relaxed and felt I was one of them. That meant movin’
into a flophouse room right in the district with only the stuff
I’d be expected to have—stuff that could fit in a
handbag, mostly—and very little money. I could stay
independent for a while, but there was no question I’d have
to turn a few tricks to be completely accepted. Gettin’ a
barmaid’s job or somethin’ like that was out of the
question; November was the off season and there was only so much of
anything, even tricks, to go around.
So, in a way, I finally completed my destiny and it was anything
but glamorous or even particularly pleasant, but I actually took
money for sex. Not bad money, either, considerin’ my expenses
and the fact I didn’t have to split with no pimp. Not that
several didn’t try to move in, but I managed to put ’em
off without them gettin’ too riled. That wouldn’t last
forever, but I didn’t plan on this bein’ forever.
Still and all, doin’ a few tricks and scorin’ a
little pot did just what I hoped. In under two weeks’ time, I
was a part of the scenery and I had enough credibility to sit
around a burger joint or places like that and just talk friendly to
people. I started learnin’ one hell of a lot, and I even got
some warnings about Siegel. They bought my story—ex-stripper
from Philadelphia who got married to a real stud and took a hike
the second time he beat me up. It was familiar.
My best friend and source turned out to be a guy named Harley
who ran the only porn shop I ever seen with a sandwich thing on the
side. Harley was fat and fiftyish and only about five feet tall and
as flaming swishy as a three-pound note, but he liked to talk to
“the girls.” I think he wished he was one of us. One
night we got to talkin’ ’bout the odd types even for
the district.
“You seen a shadow dancer yet? Now there’s
one to give you the creeps!” he said, shiverin’.
“Huh? I heard that name used by some folks talkin’
to other folks. What’s it mean?”
“That’s what we call ’em on the street. A
string of half a dozen girls run by Fast Eddie Small—one of
Arnie’s pimps. All real young, real pretty. They work the
streets like bitches in heat, sometimes do real vulgar
strip shows—it’s an art form, you know, or should be.
You know—you were one.”
I nodded. “Yeah, but where’s the name come
from?”
“They got hooked on something new, some new drug we think
they’re making in a lab someplace and it’s
scary! Not like dope—hell, half the streetwalkers
here have fifty-pound-a-day habits. They’re like, well,
slaves, damn it. They wash his car, they clean his house,
they do everything he tells ’em. He has fun showin’
them off to people, making them do disgusting things just
to show what a big man he is. I mean, I look in your eyes and I see
a person there. You look in their eyes and you get a
chill. Nothin’ there. Not even hope. Shadows of pretty girls
dancin’ to Fast Eddie’s tune. I hear there are others
around, in Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, all over. You watch
out and stay away from them. I don’t want to ever look in
your eyes and see only a shadow dancer there.”
Well, of course, to stay away I had to know how to find one, and
where, and where they sometimes did their simply vulgar
shows, too. Fast Eddie and his girls worked out of a joint called
the Purple Pussycat about three blocks over diagonally from the
bright lights, on the edge of the district. I’d been warned
more than once not to work that area, that no freelancers were
allowed. I decided to check it out first, so I went back to the
original apartment where most of my things were. I put my hair up
and put a blonde wig on over it. It looked good, but it was pretty
obviously a wig and not a dye job.
One thing I learned on the street was that Lindy had been right.
Any girl who put on long, tight pants, and went braless under a
shirt or sweater, was automatically a lesbian to just about
everybody. I didn’t want to get roughed up or raped or
anything bad by workin’ in an exclusive territory, and
respectable women just didn’t go into them neighborhoods or
places alone. Some butch girls, though, got a real charge out of
strip shows, although they usually went in pairs or more. Still,
this was a more repressed society than mine, and I’d already
seen a couple of women come down to the district, usually under
wigs, glasses, and the like, alone to see a show and even pay a
female hooker for a good time they didn’t dare have or try in
their ordinary lives. Lots of closeted gay men did it with male
hookers, after all.
So it might not be unusual for a black lesbian, whose culture
was real macho, to come over in disguise and see a show and maybe
try for a good time. My eyes ain’t great, like I said, but I
used contact lenses I brought with me when I was on the streets and
regular glasses off-hours. Now I got my tinted sunglasses, even
though it was night. It was the right added touch. I did have to go
out and buy a butch leather jacket, to make it just right, but
while the saleswoman looked at me real odd she sold me the coat and
took the money.
About nine-thirty that night, I took a taxi up to the Purple
Pussycat. The driver hardly said a word to me. I got out a block or
so before the club, so I could kinda cruise the area. It
wasn’t a lot of joints and shit like the main street of the
district, just real run-down old houses and a mission and the one
club near the end of the block with a garish neon sign and
blinkin’ lights, but I could see why Arnie wanted it. The
corner near the club was one of the main drags in or out of
Atlantic City, and it was on a main feeder street to there. The
lights at the intersection was maybe five minutes long one way and
three the other. In season, you could probably proposition or check
out a hundred cars, and a John lookin’ for it would be able
to find it and set somethin’ up without ever bein’
obvious. There was even a big arrow sign on both streets for the
club sayin’, free car park in rear!
There wasn’t much traffic now, particularly on a
Wednesday, and nobody seemed to be workin’ that
intersection.
Now, undercover work’s like method actin’ only more
so—you really got to get into and live the part, ’cause
if an actor bombs she maybe gets tomatoes or boos, but if somebody
undercover makes a slip, just one, they can wind up floatin’
in the ocean. That’s why when I moved into the district I had
to take some tricks, like it or not. If I didn’t,
they’d smell cop or narc or somethin’ and it was
bye-bye Brandy. I’d played a few dykes in my time,
too—sometimes it was the only way to get
information—and I had it down pretty good. Like back home,
this only had to be a one-night stand, but I would be pretty damned
conspicuous.
I stuck a cigarette in the side of my mouth, lit it, and walked
into the Purple Pussycat.
As expected, it wasn’t exactly New Year’s Eve in
there. Maybe a dozen customers, all men in suits and ties, one
barmaid and one cocktail waitress. They all gave me a look when I
came in, but I could see right away that their first impression was
exactly what I wanted. The juke box, which was piped into the whole
place, was playin’ some jazzy French song with naughty
lyrics. I sat down at an empty table and the mere fact that not one
of them guys in there made a move was nice.
The waitress had on a sort of bikini, though they didn’t
call ’em that in this world, the fishnet stockings, and
spiked heels, all with purple glitter stuff in them. She came up to
me. “What’cha havin’, honey?” She looked
like she should be out findin’ Johns, but she didn’t
look like no shadow dancer.
“Rum and Coke,” I told her. I’d eaten well
before this, and also drank a whole glass of buttermilk. I figured
I might have to drink a fair amount.
Now, one trick in this kinda thing is that you got to show you
got money, and a fair amount, without showin’ so much that
somebody’s tempted to just take it the easy way. I brought a
hundred pounds, not super dangerous money but still an average
week’s salary in this world, and I brought it in mostly
smaller bills. The money was different colors and sizes for
different amounts so it was clearly not a huge wad in real value to
an experienced spotter—like the waitress—but it was a
huge wad physically and it made an impression. She gave my order to
the barmaid, waited, brought it, got paid and saw the wad, then
vanished in the back for a minute before reappearing.
For a while, nothin’ happened, but I saw that none of the
guys left and a couple more came in. My first rum and Coke tasted
mostly like Coke, but my second tasted mostly like rum—the
over-a-hundred-proof variety. I was mostly through it when the show
they was all waitin’ for started.
It used canned music and hokey lights and the runway down the
center of the bar, but the show was like no other these joints ever
did. I knew from the joints on the strip that what they had in
prudery everywhere else they didn’t have in their shows, at
least not here. There seemed little you could do in a joint like
this that was against the law. But this—this was
somethin’ else.
The show involved three girls with the best bodies I ever seen
in my life, one white and a real blonde, one black, and one
Chinese. They got naked ’cept for real high spiked heels in
record time—no pasties, no nothin’—and
then they started really doin’ it to each other in ways I
never even dreamed of. I didn’t even know the human body
could bend that way or that three girls could do it to one another
all at the same time with no conflict of interest, as it
were—and all to the beat of the music! And they was all three
clearly really enjoyin’ it.
It didn’t take too long to see what Harley meant. The
three girls didn’t look real somehow. For one thing,
they looked absolutely perfect, and I do mean
perfect. They had them lady bodybuilder’s muscles,
too—had to to do the kind of things they was doin’ and
hold them positions while doin’ ’em. There was also
somethin’ else, harder to describe. A feelin’, really,
but real just the same, ’cause Harley and the folks
who’d named them felt it, too. An emptiness, somehow. The
feelin’ that you was watchin’ three perfect and
perfected Disneyland robots, not livin’, thinkin’,
feelin’ women. Shadow
dancers . . .
I was told by everybody that all the shadow dancers was
twenty-one or under, even by Lindy, but that was true only of the
white girl and the Chinese girl. The black girl was older, though
she still looked real young and fantastic. I couldn’t take my
eyes off her, almost from the start.
The black shadow dancer was me.