my office. Early as you can make it."
Carl got up to let her out of the booth. She reached up and bussed his cheek. He felt confused; did not know how to react, what to do.
"Uh . . . you didn't tell me what your second job is," he mumbled.
Lori smiled sweetly. "Same as it was when we met."
"Belly dancing?" Carl blurted.
Lifting one hand before her face in imitation of a veil, Lori said, "I am Yasmin, the Armenian Dervish. But only from nine to midnight, three nights a week."
Purchase Requisition 98021
Title of Work: The Terror from Beyond Hell
Author: Sheldon Stoker
Agent: Murray Swift
Editor: Scarlet Dean (upon arrival)
Contract terms: To be negotiated; offering will be same terms as
Stoker's last book
Advance: To be negotiated; offering $1,000,000.00
Purchase Requisition 98022
Title of Work: Midway Diary
Author: Ron Clanker (Capt., U.S.N., [Ret.])
Agent: none
Editor: L. Tashkajian
Contract terms: Standard, all rights retained by Bunker Books
Advance: Minimum, $5,000, returnable
SIX
Long after the end of the business day, P. Curtis Hawks remained in his office, sitting glumly at his desk, staring out the wide windows as Manhattan turned on its lights to greet the encroaching night.
Bugged my office, he kept repeating to himself as he chewed ceaselessly on his plastic cigar butt. The Old Man has bugged my office. My office. Bugged.
There were wheels within wheels here, he realized. The Old Man, up there in the dotty jungle he had turned his office into, was playing crazy, senile games. Hawks remembered from history when other great tyrants had gone mad: Ivan the Terrible, Hitler, Stalin—they had all gone on paranoid sprees of suspicion and wholesale murder. Even within the publishing industry right here in New York, Kordman and Dyson and even Wanly had all gone nuts toward the end; each one of them pulled their own houses down on top of them.
Weldon was clearly cracking up. One minute he wants to buy out Bunker, the next he doesn't. Then he wants this kid Lewis's invention copied, or stolen, or the guy himself snatched away from Bunker. It's crazy.
Why is the Old Man behaving this way? Hawks asked himself for the thousandth time that evening. Some electronic gadget that shows books on its screen can't be that important. Something else is going on; something he hasn't told me about.
Then it hit him, with the clarity and bone-chilling certainty of absolute truth. He knows about the warehouse! Hawks blanched with terror. He knows about the warehouse! There was no other explanation for it. The Old Man was toying with him, like a grinning Cheshire cat playing with a very tiny, very terrified mouse.
With a shaking hand, Hawks reached for the telephone. But as soon as his fingers touched the instrument he yanked them away as if they had been scorched by molten lava.
He's bugging my office. Damnation! He's probably tracing all my phone and computer traffic, too.
Pull yourself together, he commanded himself fiercely. You can't let yourself go to pieces. This is life or death, man! It's him against me! Hawks shifted the plastic cigar butt from one side of his mouth to the other.
He's out to get me. Just because of that goddamned warehouse the old bastard is after my ass. Hawks grunted with the realization of it. Despite years of the Old Man's calling him "son" and grooming him to take over the top slot at Tarantula, Hawks could not escape the conclusion that the only thing he was at the very top of was Weldon W. Weldon's personal hit list. One little mistake. That's all it takes in this business.
Well, two can play at that game, by god. If the senile old bastard wants to do away with me, I've got to do away with him first.
But how? he asked himself. There's nobody in the whole corporation that you can trust. Anybody might be a spy for the Old Man. You'll have to get outside help.
Which meant going to New Jersey and having a talk with the Beast from the East.
*
". . . so I'm sitting there, just a
Carl got up to let her out of the booth. She reached up and bussed his cheek. He felt confused; did not know how to react, what to do.
"Uh . . . you didn't tell me what your second job is," he mumbled.
Lori smiled sweetly. "Same as it was when we met."
"Belly dancing?" Carl blurted.
Lifting one hand before her face in imitation of a veil, Lori said, "I am Yasmin, the Armenian Dervish. But only from nine to midnight, three nights a week."
Purchase Requisition 98021
Title of Work: The Terror from Beyond Hell
Author: Sheldon Stoker
Agent: Murray Swift
Editor: Scarlet Dean (upon arrival)
Contract terms: To be negotiated; offering will be same terms as
Stoker's last book
Advance: To be negotiated; offering $1,000,000.00
Purchase Requisition 98022
Title of Work: Midway Diary
Author: Ron Clanker (Capt., U.S.N., [Ret.])
Agent: none
Editor: L. Tashkajian
Contract terms: Standard, all rights retained by Bunker Books
Advance: Minimum, $5,000, returnable
SIX
Long after the end of the business day, P. Curtis Hawks remained in his office, sitting glumly at his desk, staring out the wide windows as Manhattan turned on its lights to greet the encroaching night.
Bugged my office, he kept repeating to himself as he chewed ceaselessly on his plastic cigar butt. The Old Man has bugged my office. My office. Bugged.
There were wheels within wheels here, he realized. The Old Man, up there in the dotty jungle he had turned his office into, was playing crazy, senile games. Hawks remembered from history when other great tyrants had gone mad: Ivan the Terrible, Hitler, Stalin—they had all gone on paranoid sprees of suspicion and wholesale murder. Even within the publishing industry right here in New York, Kordman and Dyson and even Wanly had all gone nuts toward the end; each one of them pulled their own houses down on top of them.
Weldon was clearly cracking up. One minute he wants to buy out Bunker, the next he doesn't. Then he wants this kid Lewis's invention copied, or stolen, or the guy himself snatched away from Bunker. It's crazy.
Why is the Old Man behaving this way? Hawks asked himself for the thousandth time that evening. Some electronic gadget that shows books on its screen can't be that important. Something else is going on; something he hasn't told me about.
Then it hit him, with the clarity and bone-chilling certainty of absolute truth. He knows about the warehouse! Hawks blanched with terror. He knows about the warehouse! There was no other explanation for it. The Old Man was toying with him, like a grinning Cheshire cat playing with a very tiny, very terrified mouse.
With a shaking hand, Hawks reached for the telephone. But as soon as his fingers touched the instrument he yanked them away as if they had been scorched by molten lava.
He's bugging my office. Damnation! He's probably tracing all my phone and computer traffic, too.
Pull yourself together, he commanded himself fiercely. You can't let yourself go to pieces. This is life or death, man! It's him against me! Hawks shifted the plastic cigar butt from one side of his mouth to the other.
He's out to get me. Just because of that goddamned warehouse the old bastard is after my ass. Hawks grunted with the realization of it. Despite years of the Old Man's calling him "son" and grooming him to take over the top slot at Tarantula, Hawks could not escape the conclusion that the only thing he was at the very top of was Weldon W. Weldon's personal hit list. One little mistake. That's all it takes in this business.
Well, two can play at that game, by god. If the senile old bastard wants to do away with me, I've got to do away with him first.
But how? he asked himself. There's nobody in the whole corporation that you can trust. Anybody might be a spy for the Old Man. You'll have to get outside help.
Which meant going to New Jersey and having a talk with the Beast from the East.
*
". . . so I'm sitting there, just a
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