Before he could recover, Kleist had been injected with a serum that Kickaha had brought from Wolff’s palace in that other world.
During the next hour, they learned much about the workings and the people of what Kleist referred to as The Group. His immediate boss was a man named Alfredo Roulini. He lived in Beverly Hills, but Kleist had never been in his home. Always, Roulini gave orders over the phone or met Kleist and other underlings at Kleist’s or Cambring’s home.
Roulini, as described by Kleist, could not be Red Orc.
Kickaha paced back and forth, frowning, running his fingers through his long red hair.
“Red Orc will know, or at least surmise, that we’ve gotten Roulini’s name and address from Kleist. So he’ll warn Roulini, and they’ll have a trap set for us. He may have been arrogant and overconfident before, but he knows now we’re no pushovers. We’ve given him too hard a time. We won’t be able to get near Roulini, and even if we did, I’ll bet we’d find out that he has no more idea of the true identity or location of Red Orc than Kleist.”
“That’s probably true,” Anana said. “So the only thing to do is to force Red Orc to come into the open.”
“I’m thinking the same thing,” he said. “But how do you flush him out?”
Anana exclaimed, “The Beller!”
Kickaha said, “So far, we don’t know where the Beller is, and, much as I hate to think about it, may never.”
“Don’t say that!” she said. “We have to find him!”
Her determination, he knew, did not originate from concern for the inhabitants of Earth. She was terrified only that the Bellers might one day become powerful enough to gate from Earth into other universes, the pocket worlds owned by the Lords. She was concerned only for herself and, of course, for him. Perhaps for Luvah, the wounded brother left behind to guard Wolff’s palace. But she would never be able to sleep easily until she was one hundred percent certain that no Bellers were alive in the one thousand and eight known universes. Nor would Red Orc sleep any more easily.
Kickaha tied Kleist’s hands behind him, tied his feet together, and taped his mouth. Anana could not understand why he didn’t just kill the man. Kickaha explained, as he had done a number of tunes, that he would not do so unless he thought it was necessary. Besides, they were in enough trouble without leaving a corpse behind them.
After removing Kleist’s wallet, he put him in the closet. “He can stay there until tomorrow when the cleaning woman comes in. But I think we’ll move on. Let’s go across the street and eat. We have to put something in our bellies.”
They walked across the street at the corner, and went down half a block to the restaurant. They got a booth by the window, from which he could see the motel.
While they were eating, he told her what his plans were. “A Lord will come as swiftly for a pseudo-Beller as for the real thing, because he won’t know for sure which is which. We make our own Beller and get some publicity, too, and so make sure that Red Orc finds out about it.”
“There’s still a good chance that he won’t come personally,” she said.
“How’s he going to know whether or not the Beller is for real unless he does show?” he said. “Or has the Beller brought to him.”
“But you couldn’t get out then!” she said.
“Maybe I couldn’t get out, but I’m not there yet. We’ve got to play this by ear. I don’t see anything else to do, do you?”
They rose, and he stopped at the register to pay their bill. Anana whispered to him to look through the big plate glass window at the motel. A police car was turning into the motel grounds.
Kickaha watched the two policemen get out and look at the license plate on the rear of the Rolls. Then one went into the manager’s office while the other checked out the Rolls. In a moment, the officer and the manager came out, and all three went into the motel room that Anana and Kickaha had just left.