THE ROBOT WHISTLED. “ZOWIE!” he exclaimed, steam hissing appreciatively out of his hearslots. “What a smasheroo pair of gams!”
“Why, thank you, Bozo,” said Hildy sweetly as she slid the rest of the way out of the idling landcar.
“Oops,” said the tin-plated parking attendant, clapping a metal hand to his mouthole and clicking off the tiny jets of steam. “Didn’t realize it was you, Mrs. Pace.”
Smoothing her short spunplaz skirt, Hildy said, “Think nothing of it.”
“Most of the middle-aged Westport Sector bimbos who come here like a little flattery and crapola,” the robot told her as he arranged himself on the driveseat. “So they got me rigged to spout gross compliments. Even if a broad’s got legs like the pillars in front of a neoclassical bank and knees like a bulldog’s jowls, I got to ogle and smirk. Sometimes I even clap my mitts like a seal in heat. Remember what a seal was? Furry things with flippers that the Japs killed off up in—”
“Yes, Bozo, I have many fond memories of seals. Right now, I have to see Ross.”
“Okay, kiddo.” The robot pressed the shift button on the dash. “You really do, by the way, have terrific stems.”
“Yes, I know.” Hildy went striding across the pink-tinted clients parking/landing lot.
Bozo roared her car two hundred pink yards into a very tight parking slot.
Hildy’s low-heel walkshoes made determined clicks on the plaz ramp which went arching out over the sluggish Saugatuck River to the cream-color doors of Wall Street Wally’s.
A huge lightsign above the portals made a small barking sound. Its numbers jogged ahead and it now read Over 7,600,000 Sold.
“Impressive,” murmured the auburn-haired Hildy, stepping through the doorway that had silently opened for her.
The receptionist giggled when Hildy asked for Ross. She was an enormous fat girl, wearing a zebra-stripe sarong. “Oh, heavens, excuse me,” she said, blushing from tip to toe. “Whatever must you think of me, Miss. …”
“Mrs. Pace.”
“Whatever must you think of me, Mrs. Pace?” sighed the immense young receptionist. “I’m new here at the Wall Street Wally’s branch, you see, and I still can’t get used to the fact my boss has a silly name like Ross Turd III.”
“It’s a fine old New England name.”
“Oh, I know. He keeps telling me Boston has been full of Turds for generations, but that just makes me. …” She let out a whoop of laughter, rested her head on her green glaz desk for a few seconds while she quivered with amusement. “Forgive me, Mrs. Pace. Goodness. I’ll buzz him.”
“Thank you.” Hildy turned to gaze out the viewall. Several sooty gulls were swooping at the surface of the river.
“Mr. tee hee hee … Oh, golly, excuse me, Mr … tee hee hee hee … Um. Mr. Turd, sir, Mrs. Pace hee hee hee is here to see you.”
“Send her right in, Blimpie.”
“Really, I do wish you wouldn’t call me that, Mr … tee hee hee … oh, the hell with it. Go right on in, Mrs. P.”
Ross Turd III was an incredibly handsome and sunburned man of exactly thirty-five. He had wavy golden hair, sparkling sky-blue eyes and was five feet four inches high. “That pinhead,” he said, standing up behind his silver boomerang desk. “I wish to hell I could fire her.”
Hildy sat in a platinum-tinted shapehug chair, crossing her long legs. “Can’t you?”
“The last time I dumped a fat girl I had Fat Power pickets all over my ramps for weeks. And all seventy-six Wall Street Wally stock and bond shops across the nation were boycotted by the Overweight Liberation Army and the House Committee on Fairplay for Gross and Disgusting People threatened to hold hearings.” He shook his handsome head forlornly.
“I suppose you’ve thought about changing your name?”
“What?” He’d been about to sit down, but now he bounced up to his full height. “I’m surprised, surprised and stunned, surprised and stunned and dumbfounded, Hildy, that you of all people could suggest such a thing. After all, you’re a keen and astute student of American history—”
“I know, Ross, the Turds played an important part in the epic of American—”
“Important and significant, important and significant and unique,” he said, sitting, tentatively, down again. “There were Turds on the Mayflower, Hildy. A Turd with Washington at Valley Forge. And who can forget Remington’s immortal painting of the Battle of San Juan Hill? There’s a Turd in that one, too.”
“Even so, Ross—”
“Ah, but enough of my family pride,” said Ross Turd III. “What can I do for you, Hildy? Is Jake contemplating further invest—”
“This has to do with a case Jake and I are involved in.” She leaned forward. “I’m hoping you can provide me with some information. If I go after it in the usual way, it’ll take too darn long.”
“I can’t betray confidences, even for you.” He was watching her gently swinging right leg.
“You know Jake’s been accused of murder.”
“Yes, but I’m too discreet to mention it to you.”
“The information I need has nothing to do with business secrets,” she assured the broker.
“I am a great admirer of yours,” he acknowledged, still watching her leg. “And of Jake’s as well. Ah, well, then, what the devil. Certainly, I’ll help if I can, Hildy.”
She smiled, relaxing some in her snug chair. “I’ve been going over, with the new computer system Jake designed, all the data sent to us by Secretary Strump.”
Turd sank some in his chair. “Don’t tell me anything too secret.”
“I already told you, when I pixphoned, that we’ve been retained to investigate the Big Bang Murders.”
“Yes, and I think it’s splendid, splendid and courageous, of our government to attempt to rehabilitate Jake in this—”
“For cripe’s sake, Ross, he didn’t really kill that poor dippy girl.”
“Of course. All his friends and admirers, friends and admirers and well-wishers … but get on to how I can help you two swell people.”
Hildy said, “The government intelligence agencies, ours and those of most other nations, have concentrated on the assassinations that are, seemingly, of a political nature.”
“And they’ve missed something about the explosion murders that’ve occurred in the private sector?”
“Right you are,” she said, smiling across at him. “When you compare all the Big Bang deaths, certain patterns, heretofore ignored, pop up. The most intriguing thing is that every single murder, private and public, helped the status of certain stocks.” She dipped slender fingers into a slitpocket in her scant skirt. “I’ve brought a printout of them.”
Ross Turd III was frowning. “Surely, Hildy dear, you’re not hinting that someone would be so crass as to commit murder, commit a series of brutal murders, simply to influence the stock market?”
“Not hinting, Ross, stating,” Hildy informed him as she unfolded her list. “The company whose position has benefited most is an outfit called Newoyl. They’re based out West and before I—”
“Newoyl has been climbing,” he agreed. “The death of Mjomba Bata Mzinga makes Black Africa—22 look much more iffy as a new source of oil, and the blowing up last week of Sheikh Moumic Moutaab also dealt a blow to the cause of real oil. He was the key man in the Federation of Oil Billionaires.”
“Okay, I looked into who the major shareholders in Newoyl are,” Hildy continued. “It proved to be trickier than I had anticipated. Turns out, after you sort through the fake names and dummy holding companies, that 52 percent of Newoyl is owned by something called Novem, Ltd.” She rested her list on one pretty knee. “This Novem outfit also owns impressive hunks of every other company that’s taken a great leap forward because of the Big Bang killings.”
He nodded, saying nothing.
“Even using the sophisticated, and sort of unorthodox, equipment Jake’s designed I can’t find out a darn thing about Novem, Ltd. Not even an address or a pixphone number that’s legit.”
The handsome stockbroker cleared his throat.
“Well?” asked Hildy.
“This is what you came to me to find out about?”
Her head bobbed up and down. “It is, yes,” she said. “Now, though, I get the feeling you’re too scared to tell me.”
“Scared isn’t the accurate word,” he said. “Apprehensive, apprehensive and cautious—”
“Apprehensive and cautious and chickenshit.” She rose. Walked to his desk. Placed her fists on the desk top, glaring down at him. “C’mon, Ross, this is important.”
He held up both hands, as though he were afraid she’d come leaping across the desk to pop him one. She had, he well knew, done such things to people. “I honestly don’t know who runs Novem,” he said. “I do know, however, they’re becoming increasingly powerful and secretive. Powerful and secretive and nasty.”
“How nasty?”
Turd III rubbed his fingers across his cheek a few times. “Well, people who try to dig too deeply into the true structure of Novem sometimes have accidents; actually they frequently have accidents.”
“Fatal accidents?”
“In some cases,” he quietly replied.
Hildy moved back in the direction of her chair. “Looks like I’ll have to keep digging.”
“You could. …”
She spun, eyeing him. “Could what?”
“Talk to the Reverend Gully Lomax.”
“That sanctimonious fascist? Reverend Gully Lomax, Chairman of the Board of the PlainKlothes Klan.”
“Him, yes. You have to admit, Hildy, they’re an improvement on the Ku Klux Klan.”
“They dress better,” she conceded. “But what does the rev have to do with Novem? His name didn’t show up on any of the—”
“I happen to know, though I wouldn’t like to be credited as the source of this information,” said Turd carefully, “that Reverend Lomax has been trying to buy up Newoyl stock. He hasn’t had much luck.”
“He might know more than you do about the competition, about Novem.”
“Exactly, yes, Hildy.” Standing, he brushed his hands together as if he’d just touched something dirty. “Since you can teleport to the national PKK headquarters in Houston in half a jiffy, you might just be able to get some info quickly. That is, if Lomax will talk to you.”
“He’ll talk to me,” Hildy said.