Norma straggled with the immovable door until two matrons peeled her away and shoved her in the direction of the ready room.
“Ill think of something,” Norvell kept saying. “I’ll think of something.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
norvell tried the chummy approach with the ready-room manager. He was brushed off. Norvell tried entreaties, and then threats. He was brushed off. The ready-room manager droned, “You made yer bed, now lay in it. Alluva sudden you an’ yer frenns get yella, it’s no skin offa my checks. Derby audience ya stood up for, derby audience yer gonna be.”
“What’s the trouble, Kemp?” A fussy and familiar voice suddenly demanded.
It was Stimmens, strolling through the pits like an Elizabethan fop through Bedlam. Nome’s ex-assistant, Norvie’s Judas of an ex-assistant who had quietly and competently betrayed his boss into Belly Rave.
It would have been delicious to jump him, but the stakes were too high.
“Mr. Stimmens,” Norvell said humbly.
“Why, Mr. Bluh—why, Norvie! What are you doing here?”
Norvie brutishly wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Trying to make a buck, Mr. Stimmens,” he whined. “You know how it is in Belly Rave. I stood up for the Roller Derby audience, but—but Mr. Kemp here says I got yellow. Maybe I did, but I want a switch. From Derby Audience to High-Wire Heckler. I know it’s only ten bucks, but you don’t get one of those spiked-elbow girls in your lap. Can you do it for me, Mr. Stimmens? And a couple of friends of mine?”
Stimmens basked. “It’s unusual, Norvie. It makes trouble. It creates confusion.”
Norvell knew what he was waiting for. “Pleasef he wept.
Stimmens said tolerantly, “We can bend some rules for an old employee, eh, Kemp? See that he’s switched.”
“And my friends, please, Mr. Stimmens?”
Stimmens shrugged. “And his friends, Kemp.” He sauntered on, glowing with the consciousness of a good deed done that humiliated his ex-boss and caused him no trouble at all.
“You heard him,” Norvell snarled. “Switch!”
Kemp growled and reached for his cards.
Back on the bench, Norvell told the others briefly, “We’re in. It ups his chances plenty. We might even fish him out, . if—”
“Nah,” said Shep. “Excuse me. But nah. Tell you what, though. Any of you got money on you, real folding money? Pass some around to the other High-Wire Hecklers when we go on. Tell them to lay off.”
“Or else,” seconded Norvell, after a momentary resentment. “That’s all right, Shep. Reward ’em if they lay off, into the drink if they don’t. Hubble, you’ve got money?”
Hubble had. And then there was nothing to do but watch through the glass wall. Norvell inconspicuously pointed out the Wabbits, spotted throughout the ringside seats—trust Lana’s gang to worm their way to the front. “Zip guns,” he whispered. “She promised. The idea was, knock off the hecklers if necessary.”
The Old Tuner’s Battle Royal was on. They saw Ryan laid out by a vicious swipe to the groin by a lady of eighty or more. The clubs were padded, but there was a lot hi knowing how to use them. He was carried past the wall, groaning, to the infirmary. Mundin and Norma glanced at each other with masked eyes; there simply was no time for sympathy.
It was a responsive audience, Norvell noted with dull technical interest, laughing, howling, and throwing things at the right time. He heard the familiar chant of the vendors, “Gitcha rocks, gitcha brickbats, ya ca-a-an’t hit the artists without a brickbat——”
It would be a good show, all of it, even if they had to louse up the feature spectacle a little. Norvell shivered and took his mind away from the feature spectacle. He glanced at the others. He felt queerly alert, as though he were ready for something big and new——
But he wasn’t, precisely, happy. Because he knew what he very probably might have to do.
Click, click, and the Scandinavian knife-fighters were on, and snip-snap, the knives Sashed and the blood flowed; there were two double-kills out of the six pairs and the band blared from Grieg to Gershwin for the Roller Derby, which would last a good ten minutes. . . .