“I get the idea,” I said. “I can make it out under my own power.” I turned to the door.
“Stick around, Mister. Lefty’s just kind of like a test for separating the men from the boys.”
“You mean I’m hired?”
He sighed. “You come at a good time. I’m short of good boys.”
I helped Lefty up, then dusted off a chair and listened to a half-hour briefing on conditions in the city. They weren’t good. Then I went upstairs to the chart room to wait for a call.
* * ** * *
It was almost ten o’clock when Lefty came into the room where I was looking over the maps of the city. He jerked his head.
“Hey, you.”
A weasel-faced man who had been blowing smoke in my face slid off his stool, dropped his cigarette and smeared it under his shoe.
“You,” Lefty said. “The new guy.”
I belted my coat and followed him down the dark stairway, and out across the littered tarmac, glistening wet under the polyarcs, to where Haug stood talking to another man I hadn’t seen before.
Haug flicked a beady glance my way, then turned to the stranger. He was a short man of about fifty with a mild expressionless face and expensive clothes.
“Mr. Stenn, this is Smith. He’s your escort. You do like he tells you and he’ll get you into the city and see your party and back out again in one piece.”
The customer looked at me. “Considering the fee I’m paying, I sincerely hope so,” he murmured.
“Smith, you and Mr. Stenn take Number 16 here.” Haug patted a hinge-sprung hood, painted a bilious yellow and scabbed with license medallions issued by half a dozen competing city governments.
Haug must have noticed something in Stenn’s expression.
“It ain’t a fancy-looking hack, but she’s got full armor, heavy-duty gyros, crash shocks, two-way music and panic gear. I ain’t got a better hack in the place.”
Stenn nodded, popped the hatch and got in. I climbed in the front and adjusted the seat and controls to give me a little room. When I kicked over the turbos they sounded good.
“Better tie in, Mr. Stenn,” I said. “We’ll take the Canada turnpike in. You can brief me on the way.”
I wheeled 16 around and out under the glare-sign that read “HAUG ESCORT.” In the eastbound linkway I boosted her up to 90. From the way the old bus stepped off, she had at least a megahorse under the hood. Maybe Haug wasn’t lying, I thought. I pressed an elbow against the power pistol strapped to my side.
I liked the feel of it there. Maybe between it and old 16 I could get there and back after all.
* * *
“My destination,” Stenn said, “is the Manhattan section.”
That suited me perfectly. In fact, it was the first luck I’d had since I burned the uniform. I looked in the rear viewer at Stenn’s face. He still wore no expression. He seemed like a mild little man to be wanting into the cage with the tigers.
“That’s pretty rough territory, Mr. Stenn,” I said. He didn’t answer.
“Not many tourists go there,” I went on. I wanted to pry a little information from him.
“I’m a businessman,” Stenn said.
I let it go at that. Maybe he knew what he was doing. For me, there was no choice. I had one slim lead, and I had to play it out to the end. I swung through the banked curves of the intermix and onto the turnpike and opened up to full throttle.
It was fifteen minutes before I saw the warning red lights ahead. Haug had told me about this. I slowed.
“Here’s our first roadblock, Mr. Stenn,” I said. “This is an operator named Joe Naples. All he’s after is his toll. I’ll handle him; you sit tight in the hack. Don’t say anything, don’t do anything, no matter what happens. Understand?”
“I understand,” Stenn said mildly.
I pulled up. My lights splashed on the spikes of a Mark IX tank trap. I set the parking jacks and got out.
“Remember what I told you,” I said. “No matter what.” I walked up into the beam of the lights.
A voice spoke from off to the side.
“Douse ’em, Rube.”
I went back and cut the lights. Three men sauntered out onto the highway.
“Keep the hands away from the sides, Rube.”
One of the men was a head taller than the others. I couldn’t see his face in the faint red light from the beacon, but I knew who he was.
“Hello, Naples,” I said.
He came up to me. “You know me, Rube?”
“Sure,” I said. “The first thing Haug told me was pay my respects to Mr. Naples.”
Naples laughed. “You hear that, boys? They know me pretty good on the outside, ha?”
* * *
He looked at me, not laughing any more. “I don’t see you before.”
“My first trip.”
He jerked a thumb at the hack. “Who’s your trick?”
“A businessman. Name is Stenn.”
“Yeah? What kind business?”
I shook my head. “We don’t quiz the cash customers, Joe.”
“Let’s take a look.” Naples moved off toward the hack, the boys at his side. I followed. Naples looked in at Stenn. Stenn sat relaxed and looked straight ahead. Naples turned away, nodded to one of his helpers. The two moved off a few yards.
The other man, a short bullet-headed thug in a grease-spatted overcoat, stood by the hack, staring in at Stenn. He took a heavy old style automatic from his coat pocket, pulled open the door. He aimed the gun at Stenn’s head and carefully squeezed the trigger.
The hammer clicked emptily.
“Ping,” he said. He thrust the gun back in his pocket, kicked the door shut and went over to join Naples.
“Okay, Rube,” Naples called.
I went over to him.
“I guess maybe you on the level,” he said. “Standard fee. Five hundred, Old Federal notes.”
I had to be careful now. I held a bland expression, reached in—slowly—took out my wallet. I extracted two hundred C notes and held them out.
Naples looked at them, unmoving. The thug in the dirty overcoat moved up close, and suddenly swung the edge of his palm at my wrist. I was ready; I flicked my hand aside and chopped him hard at the base of the neck. He dropped.
I was still holding out the money.
“That clown isn’t worthy of a place in the Naples organization,” I said.
Naples looked down at the man, stirred him with his foot.
“A clown,” he said. He took the money and tucked it in his shirt pocket.
“Okay, Rube,” he said. “My regards to Haug.”
I got in the hack and moved up to the barrier. It started up, trundled aside. Naples was bending over the man I had downed. He took the pistol from the pocket of the overcoat, jacked the action and aimed. There was a sharp crack. The overcoat flopped once. Naples smiled over at me.
“He ain’t worthy a place in the Naples organization,” he said.
I waved a hand vaguely and gunned off down the road.
2
The speaker in my ear hummed.
I grunted an acknowledgment and a blurred voice said, “Smith, listen. When you cross the South Radial, pick up the Midwest Feed-off. Take it easy and watch for Number Nine Station. Pull off there. Got it?”
I recognized the voice. It was Lefty, Haug’s Number One boy. I didn’t answer.
“What was the call?” Stenn asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Nothing.”
The lights of the South Radial Intermix were in sight ahead now.
I slowed to a hundred and thought about it. My personal motives told me to keep going, my job as a paid Escort was to get my man where he wanted to go. That was tough enough, without detours. I eased back up to one-fifty, took the intermix with gyros screaming, and curved out onto the thruway.
The speaker hummed. “What are you trying to pull, wise guy?” He sounded mad. “That was the South Radial you just passed up—”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s right. Smitty takes ’em there and he brings ’em back. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
There was a long hum from the speaker. “Oh, a wiseacre,” it said finally. “Listen, rookie, you got a lot to learn. This guy is bankrolled. I seen the wad when he paid Haug off. So all right, we cut you in. Now, get this . . .”
He gave me detailed instructions. When he was finished, I said, “Don’t wait up for me.”
I took the speaker out of my ear and dropped it into the disposal slot. We drove along quietly for quite a while.
I was beginning to recognize my surroundings. This section of the turnpike had been opened the year before I left home. Except for the lack of traffic and the dark windows along the way it hadn’t changed.