Gladiator-At-Law Read online

  And all the while she had been a pickpocket in a dope joint, sold into it by her parents.

  There was a knock on the door.

  Virginia said through her teeth, “If that brat’s come back before I told——” and swung it open. She screamed.

  Norvell, greatly to his surprise, found he had the revolver in his hand. He was pointing it at the middle of the hulking, snaggle-toothed figure hi the doorway.

  The figure promptly raised its enormous hands over its small, shock-haired head and told him, grinning, “Don’t shoot, mister. I’m harmless. I know I’m not pretty but I’m harmless. Came here to help you out. Show you where to register and all. The name’s Shep. I’ll give you a fair shake. Show you the best places for firewood, wise you up on the gangs. Hear you have a little girl. You want to sell her, I’ll get you a price.

  You want to go into business? I canjpjiiyou next to a guy who’ll start you out with hemp seed. If you got real money, I know a sugar dealer and a guy with a still to rent. I’m just Shep, mister. I’m just trying to get along.”

  Virginia said, “Keep the gun on him, Norvell. Shep, you come in and sit down. What do you want?”

  “Surplus rations,” the giant said, with a childlike smile. “Cash, if you have any. Always I’m desperate, but now I’m out of my mind.” His arm swept at the open door. “See the rain? I have to catch it. It’s the front end of the rainbow, mister. See it? I have to catch it; I never saw it before. And to catch it I’ve got to have some crimson lake. Some other things too, but the crimson lake. You don’t see crimson in it, do you? Well, you won’t see crimson in the canvas, but it’ll be there—in the underpainting, and because it’s there 111 have the pot of tears, the bloody, godawful rainsweep caught gloom-driving down on two hundred thousand desolations.”

  Norvell, lowering the pistol, said stupidly, “You paint.”

  “I paint. And for fifty bucks I can get what I need, which leaves me only the problem of getting fifty bucks.”

  Virginia said, “With your build you could get it.”

  Shep shrugged apologetically. “Not like you mean, not with rough stuff. Not since I started painting,” he said. “You can’t be half a virgin. So I run errands.”

  He put his hands down, peering at them out of his Neanderthal skull. “Any errands? I’ve got to raise the fifty before the rain stops.”

  Virginia appeared to come to a conclusion. “Norvell, give Shep fifty dollars.” He shot his wife a horrified look; that would leave them with eighteen dollars and sixty-five cents. She said contemptuously, “Don’t worry. He won’t skip; there’s no place to hide for long in Belly Rave.” She told Shep, “You’ll work for it. One week’s hard work. The outhouse is probably brim-full. The chimney looks like it’s blocked. We need firewood. This place needs patching all around. Also my husband doesn’t know the ropes and he might get in trouble. You’ll watch him?”

  “For fifty, sure!” he glowed. “Want me to watch the kid?”

  “No,” she said shortly.

  The giant nodded, his eyes dark. “You know what you’re doing, lady. It’ll be-rough on her. Can I have the fifty now?

  It’ll fake two, three days to get the stuff. Ten bucks for the kid wbo does the running. / can’t miss this rain.”

  Norvell counted out fifty dollars and handed them over. “Okay!” Shep boomed happily. “We’ll get my crimson lake out of the way, then registration.”

  They walked through the driving rain to a tumbledown building guarded by a ratfaced boy of twelve. Shep told him cryptically, “Got a message for Monmouth.”

  The boy raised his head and hooted mournfully, “Wa-wa-wa-wa-wabbit twacks!”

  Norvell blinked his eyes. Kids! Everywhere. From nowhere. Ratfaced, gimlet-eyed, appearing from the rainshroud, silently and suddenly before him as though they had condensed out of the watery air.

  Shep told them, “Like last time, but with crimson lake too. Got it?”

  A haggard girl of perhaps thirteen said dispassionately, “Cack like last time. The Goddams joined up with the Goering Grenadiers. It’ll be a busted-bottle job getting through the West Side.”

  Shep said, “I’m in a hurry, Lana. Can you do it or can’t you?”

  She mildly told him, “Who said ‘can’t,’ you or me? I said it’d be a busted-bottle job.”

  The ratfaced twelve-year-old said sullenly, “Not me. They know I was the one got Stinkfoot’s kid brother. Besides——”

  “Shut your mouth about Stinkfoot’s kid brother,” Lana blazed. “You stay here; 111 talk to you when I get back.” The boy cowered away. Lana called to the kids, “Bwuther wabbits, inspection harms!”

  Jagged glass edges flashed. Norvell swallowed at what they implied.

  “Good kids,” Shep cried, and handed Lana the fifty dollars.

  “Wa-wa-wa-wa-wabbit twacks!” She hooted mournfully, and the kids were gone, vanished back into the shrouding rain.

  Norvell swallowed his questions, trudging after Shep through the floods. He had learned that much, at least.

  The Resident Commissioner lived hi an ordinary house, to Norvell’s surprise. He had expected the man who was responsible for the allowances of thousands of people to be living

  in a G.M.L.; certainly Ms rank entitled him to one. There were only twenty commissioners scattered through Belly Rave.

  Then Norvell saw the Resident Commissioner. He was a dreary old hack; he told Norvell dimly, “Carry your cards at all times. Be sure and impress that on your wife and the little girl. There’s all kinds of work to getting duplicate cards, and you might go hungry for a week before they come through if you lose these. As head of the family you get a triple ration, and there’s a separate one for the wife. Is the little girl a heavy eater?”

  Norvell guessed so. He nodded vaguely.

  “Well, we’ll give her an adult ration then. Lord knows there’s no shortage of food. Let’s see, we’ll make your hours of reporting on Wednesdays, between three and five. It’s important to keep to your right hours, otherwise there’s likely to be a big rush here sometimes, and nobody at all others. Is all that pretty clear? You’ll find that it’s mostly better to travel in groups when you come down for your allowance. Shep can tell you about that It—it prevents trouble. We don’t want any trouble here.” He tried to look stern. And pathetically added, “Please don’t make trouble in my district. There are nineteen others, aren’t there?”

  He consulted a checklist, whispering to himself. “Oh. Your ration cards entitle you and the whole family to bleacher seats at all bouts and Field Days.” Norvell’s heart was torn by the words. The rest was a blur. “Free transportation, of course

  —hope you’ll avail yourself—no use to stay home and brood

  —little blood clears the air—door always open——”

  Outside in the rain Norvell asked Shep: “Is that all he

  does?” Shep looked at him. “Is there something else to do?” He

  swung around. “Let’s get some firewood.”

  Chapter Twelve

  As a disappearing act, it was a beaut.

  Mundin tried everything. No Norma Lavin. Gone.-After Ryan’s phone call, the track was lost.

  Mundin went first to the police, of course, and when he told them Norma Lavin was a Belly Raver they tried not to laugh right in his face.

  “Look, mister,” a kindly missing-persons sergeant explained. “People are one thing. Belly Ravers are something else. Are these people on the tax rolls? Do they have punch-card codes? Do they have employment-contract identification tattoos? No. No, they don’t. So what can we do? We can find missing persons, sure, but this gal ain’t a person. She’s a Belly Raver.” The sergeant shrugged philosophically. “Maybe she just took a notion to wander off. Maybe she’s got her toes turned up in a vacant lot. Maybe not. We just wouldn’t know, see?”

  But he kindly took Charles Mundin’s name, just in case.

  However Mundin bought a gun and started his own inquiries in Belly Rave. Lots of peop
le had seen Norma and her ancient Cadillac the day of the disappearance. But not afterward.

  And that was that

  It took a week, during which Mundin found himself making regular trips to the Lavin Ryan home loaded down with groceries. He also found that Ryan was tapping him for cash to feed his habit.

  Don Lavin was sinking into a kind of catatonia without his sister. Ryan, sometimes coldly confident with a bellyful of yen pox, other times devoured by the weeping shakes, begged Mundin to try something, anything. Mundin tried a doctor.

  The doctor made one visit—during which Don Lavin, sparked by some flickering pride, rallied wonderfully and conversed good-humoredly with the doctor. The doctor left, with an indignant glare at Mundin, and Don lapsed back into

  his twilight gloom. “All right, Ryan,” Mundin said bitterly, “now what?” —^

  Ryan shook the last pill out of the tin, swallowed it, and told Mundin now what.

  And Mundin found himself calling on William Choate IV.

  Poor Willie’s office was a little smaller than a landing field. He sprinted the length of it to embrace good old Charles.

  “Gosh,” he burbled, “I’m so glad you could come and see me! They just put me in here, after old Sterling died. It used to be his office, see? So when he died, they put——”

  “I see,” Mundin said gently. “They put you in here.”

  “Yep. Say, Charles, how about some lunch?”

  “Maybe. Willie, I need a little help.”

  Willie said reproachfully, “Now, Charles, it isn’t about a job, is it? Gee, that’d be an awful spot to put me in.”

  Well, Mundin thought, they had succeeded in beating one thing into his head, though not two. “No,” he said. “I just want a little advice. I’d like to know when and where the annual stockholder’s meeting of G.M.L. Homes comes off.”

  Willie said happily, “/ don’t know. Don’t they have to publish it somewhere? In a newspaper?”

  “Yes, they have to publish it in a newspaper, Willie. The trick is to find out what newspaper. There are maybe fifty thousand of them in the country, and the law just says that it has to be published in one—not necessarily English language.”

  Willie looked sorrowful. “I only speak English, Charles,” he said.

  “Yes, Willie. Why don’t you ask your Periodical Search Department?”

  Willie nodded vigorously. “Oh, sure, Charles. Anything to oblige. Anything at all!” Willie uncertainly asked his squawk box whether they had anything like a Periodical Research Department, and the squawk box said yes, sir, and connected him. Half an hour later, deep in the intricacies of the preliminary pre-hearing of the Group E Debenture Holder’s Protective Committee, the squawk box coughed and announced that the G.M.L. Homes meeting was advertised in the Lompoc, California, Picayune-Intelligencer. Time, day after tomorrow. Place, Room 2003, Administration Building, Morristown, Lone Island.

  “Whew!” said Willie dubiously. “They won’t get many people to come there, will they?”

  The next morning Mundin was waiting at a two-dollar ticket window of the New York Stock Exchange when the opening bell rang.

  He examined the crumpled instructions from Ryan nervously, as sweating and tense as any of the passionate throng of devotees pressing around him, but for other reasons. •

  Ryan’s instructions were complete and precise, except for one thing: They didn’t tell how to get the two thousand dollars to put them into effect. Mundin swore under his breath, shrugged, and swiftly punched Number 145. Anaconda Copper. He inserted his token, threw the lever and tore off his ticket At 19,999 other windows in the gigantic hall, 19,999 other investors were doing the same. And outside, on the polychrome street, ten thousand late-comers milled and murmured, waiting for their turn inside.

  The market moved.

  The angular Big Board in the center of the hall flashed and twinkled—fast, then slow, then dead slow. It locked. The lights stopped. The pari-mutuel computers began to hum.

  Mundin leveled his field glasses on 145, but it was hard to stay on it. His hands were trembling.

  The gong rang, and the line he was watching flashed: 145, np 3.

  The great hall trembled with noise, of which Mundin’s obscene monosyllable was only the twenty-thousandth part. A lousy six cents profit, he groaned. Not worth taking to the cashier’s window.

  A passing broker, a grimy Member’s button hi his lapel, said intimately: “Hey, bud—watch metals.”

  “Beat it or I’ll have you run in,” Mundin snapped. He had no time to waste on phony touts. He swept his field glasses over the Big Board, trying to make some sense out of the first movement of the day.

  Industrials were down an average of four, the helpful summary told him. “Rails”—meaning, mostly, factory-site land developments—were up three. Chemicals, up eight.

  Mundin figured. That meant that the investors would lay off chemicals because they would figure everybody would be

  TSrTHefhicals because of the rise—except for the investors who would be on chemicals because~tEey would figure everybody would lay off chemicals because they’d figure everybody would be on chemicals. Because of the rise.

  Thirty-second warning bell!

  “Bud,” said the broker insistently, “watch metals?’

  “Go to hell,” Charles said hoarsely, his fingers shaking over the buttons. He punched Anaconda again, bought five tickets, cursed himself and waited.

  When he heard the great groan at last he opened his eyes and swept the board with his glasses. 145, up 15

  “Remember who told ya,” the broker was saying.

  Mundin gave him a dollar. He would, after all, need a pair of hands… . “Thanks, bud,” the broker said. “You’re doing a smart thing. Look, don’t switch. Not yet. I’ll tell ya when. This is a morning crowd—Tuesday morning at that Not a crazy hysterical Monday-morning crowd that gets in fast and gets cleaned out fast. Look around and see for yaself. Little fellows taking a day off. The family men that play it smart—they, think. Smart and small.. I been watching them for twenny years. Don’t switch.” *

  Charles didn’t switch.

  He kept feeding a dribble of dollars to the broker, who was either lucky or a genius that day. By noon Charles had a well-diversified portfolio of metals with a cash-in value of four hundred and eighty dollars.

  “Now,” the broker said hoarsely. He had borrowed Charles’s field glasses to scan the crowd. “See?” Some of them’s leaving. Some of them breaking out sannicb.es. The handle’s dropping. They’re getting not-so-smart now, not-so-small. I been watching them twenny years. Now they start doing the stupid, obvious things, because they’re gettin’ hungry and a hungry man ain’t smart. I feel it, mister, the way I never felt it before. Sell twenny points short. Jeez, I wish I had the nerve to say thirty!”

  Two minutes later he was pounding Charles on the back and yelling, “We did it, bud! We made it!. We made it!”

  Metals had broken—thirty-eight points*:Charles, by now icy-calm, gave him five dollars. Step One in Ryan’s instructions; build up a stake. He’d done it.

  He turned the dial to the five-hundred-dollar range. “Give me a winner,” he told the tout.

  The broker gasped and stuttered.

  “I’ve got to,” Charles said. “This is taking too long. I’m in a hurry.”

  The broker stammered: “Solid fuels ought to rise now—but —but—please, bud, make it two-fifty. One on solid fuels and one on—on——” He swept the board with his glasses. “Can’s been sleepin’ all day,” he muttered. “A Tuesday crowd stays off Can, but after metals break——”

  He said slowly, “Buy solid fuels and .Can.”

  By two in the afternoon Charles had a cash-in value of $2,300 and the broker’s pockets were bulging with small change. He was talking to himself hi an undertone.

  Charles said abruptly, “Okay. Now I want a share of G.M.L.”

  The broker blinked at him. “Old 333? No, you can’t do that.”

  “Yes
I can. I want it.”

  The broker shook his head. He said reasonably, “Bud, you don’t understand. You’re new here; I been around for twenny years. They have an investor, see? All day long he just punches 333.1 know-him well. That’s him over there, third tier, second aisle. Like Steel and A&P—they don’t take no chances on anybody claimin’ no stock.”

  “I want it,” said Mundin,

  The broker, horrified, said, “Bud, ain’t you made enough for one day? Come on, let’s go get a drink; I’ll buy. You fool around with the big boys, they punish you. Like G.M.L. You try to grab a share and you’ll get hurt. Unlimited resources, see—un-lim-it-ed. They’ve got ‘em. Every movement, all day long, he has a ‘buy’ bid in. He bids ten thousand bucks, way over real value. You get a wild idea and bid over ten thousand and you’ll get it, sure. So next movement, what happens? He sells short, maybe. Maybe he waits. But sooner or later he does, and then you’re squashed. You know what they say, bud—‘Him who sells what isn’t his’n must buy it back or go to prison.’ And plenty have.”

  Mundin sai4 coldly, “What’s G.M.L. par?”

  •Two thousand. But ya can’^eiaim it, didn’t I just tell you?

  He’s got a bid in every movement. So ya see?”

  Charles set himself to persuade the broker to do the thing Ryan had planned. Two movements went~by7 while Charles pleaded and threatened and bribed.

  At last the broker, shaking, stumbled off toward the third tier, second aisle. Mundin followed him with his field glasses.

  It was working. Mundin, sweating, saw in miniature, through the glasses, the greeting, the silent shove, the wordless rejoinder, the growing heat of the quarrel. The G.M.L. investor was a small, elderly fat man. The broker was small too, but lean and why.

  The fight broke out as the thirty-second warning bell rang. Charles took his eyes off the fighters and the for once un-tended investor’s window, and steadily punched its two-bun-dred-and-fifty dollar tickets on Old 333.

  One bid and no offerings did not constitute a transaction according to the electronic definitions of the New York Stock Exchange pari-mutuel machine. As it had all day, the Big Board said: