When Williams learned that the FBI and perhaps the CIA had been questioning his physicians about him, he reported this to his contact. Orders came back within the hour for him to go to Los Angeles and infiltrate the Black Muslims. The contact gave Williams a bus ticket, explaining that the KGB could not afford airline passage for him.
While riding westward, as every young man should, Williams contracted gonorrhea in the back seat of a Greyhound.
“Yeah, you’re laughing again, Burton! It does sound funny now. But, believe me, it wasn’t so funny to me then.”
Williams’ story, in its many details, convoluted windings, and lengthy asides, had consumed an hour. Burton was interested in it, but he felt that he had stayed away from the others too long.
Bill Williams managed to become a member of the Black Muslims. But when they found out that he had gonorrhea— contracted in Los Angeles after the Greyhound dose had been cured—they kicked him out. Then, having discovered that he was a spy—they mistakenly thought that he was an FBI agent—they put an assassin on his trail.
His story became, from this point, somewhat confusing. Burton could have used a diagram to keep it clear, what with all the flights, doublings back, shootings and mishaps Williams had suffered. He had fled to Chicago, then to San Francisco, where he had gotten into a brawl in a gay bar, been beaten up and raped. Afflicted with gonorrhea fore and aft, as he put it, he had gone to a city in Oregon. Not, however, until he had financed his trip by mugging the KGB contact, who had refused to give him any money at all.
Star Spoon appeared in the doorway. She said softly, “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
“Come in,” Burton said. “You’ve met Bill Williams, haven’t you?”
She bowed and said, “So nice to see you again, Mr. Williams. Dick, you seem to be deep in conversation. My apologies for interrupting you. I’ll return to the party, if you don’t mind.”
Burton asked her where she would be, and she said that Tur-pin was with a small and select group in his suite. He had asked her to find Burton and invite him to the party.
“I’ll be along in a while,” Burton said.
She bowed again, said goodbye to Williams, and left.
“A beautiful woman,” Williams said, and he sighed.
“She knows how to keep a man happy.”
“Do you now how to make her happy?”
“Of course!” Burton said.
“Don’t get hot around the collar, nothing personal. I’d say she’s a quiet but deep one. I’m pretty good at character analysis on short order. I’ve had to be. Matter of survival.”
“She’s had a very hard life,” Burton said. “It’s a wonder she’s kept her sanity.”
“You trying to be subtle and tell me I’m not the only one who’s had a rough time?”
“You’re overly sensitive, my friend.”
Williams took thirty minutes more to finish his story. He had married a deeply religious black woman who, unfortunately, could not say No to her overpassionate minister. Result: Williams caught the clap again. Overcoming the desire to find her and kill her, he had decided to go hunting instead and sublimate his wish for violence by shooting birds and rabbits. While he was in the woods, he was fatally wounded by a shotgun blast from behind a bush. Dying, he wondered which of the many candidates had shot him. An agent of the KGB, the CIA, the Black Muslims, the Albanians, or the Salvation Army? Actually, the SA itself was not after him, but a soldier in its ranks was. While in Los Angeles, he had pretended to be converted to Christianity during a sermon given by a Major Barbara. Then he had joined the Army, but a corporal, Rachel Goggin, had fallen in love with him and he with her. At that time, he thought that he was clean, free of VD, but after he and Rachel had made love, he discovered that his nemesis had struck again. Moreover, Rachel had caught the disease from him.
Williams had promised to marry her, but his enemies were closing in, and he had left her to save his own life. Corporal Goggin had apparently gone psychotic because of his unexplained desertion and because of her overreaction to infection with a disease that he had become quite accustomed to. He heard, while he was in Portland, that a woman resembling Rachel was asking about him and that she was packing a gun.
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