Candy hastily drew back her hands although no motion to shake had occurred. "I am not pleased to meet you," she twittered. Then she was off onto something else. "Music. Oh, dear Pinchy, please turn on some music."
Miss Pinch hurriedly raced over and opened up a casket. It was a stereo. She put on a record.
A low sound filled the room. It was coming from the mouths of two devil masks on either side of a brick fireplace evidently used for heating torture tongs.
Wagner! One of his more stern, foreboding symphonic works.
Candy listened for a while. Then she began to massage her very ample breasts. The nipples began to stand up.
"Oh, Pinchy," she said, "would you think me forward if I said it's time we really began to prepare for the evening's sex?"
Miss Pinch petted her head and kissed her on the cheek. "Whatever you say, my darling."
I flinched at the look in Pinch's eyes.
Miss Pinch walked over to a closet, her naked body moving like a man's. She reached inside. She was selecting one of several somethings.
She stepped back. She was slapping a fourteen-inch rubber truncheon against her palm.
Candy was sitting up, eyes bright. Wagner rolled through the room. Miss Pinch checked the chains that held me spread-eagled.
Her eye was moving up and down my nakedness with calculating selection.
Candy had her legs apart. She was all bright attention.
Miss Pinch chose the sole of my foot.
WHACK!
"Go ahead and scream," said Miss Pinch. "It's no good without screaming."
I vowed I wouldn't give her that satisfaction. I clenched my teeth.
She aimed for my foot again.
WHAP!
The pain shot through me. It stung!
She moved up the side of the bed. She turned on a red light that put me in a spot.
She chose my stomach.
SPLAT!
Then she got to work.
Teeth bared, laying on with all her might, she began to hit my body everywhere!
She hit my (bleeps).
I screamed!
Candy was panting. Miss Pinch's eyes glared with hate. The rubber truncheon rose and fell in rhythm to Wagner.
Agony!
I screamed and screamed and screamed!
Miss Pinch had descended now to fists!
Candy was whimpering. "Pinchy, Pinchy, Pinchy! Oh, my God, Pinchy, take me, take me quick!"
Miss Pinch whirled. She seized Candy's nakedness in her arms. She raced with her into the other room and slammed the door behind her.
Gibbering moans. Then shrieks and shrieks and shrieks!
Silence. Had Miss Pinch killed her?
At length, a low snarling. It sounded like curses.
Then silence.
Minutes later, the door opened. Miss Pinch came in carrying Candy. She dumped her on the sofa and then got down and began to massage her wrists and ankles.
Candy came to and flung her arms around Miss Pinch's neck.
Miss Pinch said to me, "You're a dirty (bleepard), Inkswitch. You have an evil mind. Get your lustful eyes off this poor, innocent girl."
Miss Pinch had some beer and Candy had a joint.
After a while Candy said, "Music. I must have some more music, dear Pinchy."
Miss Pinch found A Night on Bare Mountain. The awesome strains were shortly coming through the devil masks.
Oh, Gods, they were going to do it again!
The truncheon was even worse!
I passed out.
When I came to a long time later, they were on the couch again but Candy was collapsed on her knees, her hair against Miss Pinch's lean belly.
"Ah," said Miss Pinch. "Decided to stop faking, did you?" She spat at me.
The music had run out. But the beer and marijuana hadn't.
After a while, Candy was stroking Miss Pinch's hair. She said, "Music. I must have music. Dear Pinchy, something soulful, please."
Miss Pinch found a medley of death marches and put them on. Then she went and found an even bigger truncheon.
I didn't even wait for her to hit. I passed out cold to the mournful strains of a dirge. From way off somewhere I could sense the slaps and thuds of blows against my body in funereal cadence.
It was probably hours later that I came to.
Candy's body was draped across the end of the sofa. She had designs drawn on her in lipstick. Her hands flopped over on the floor. Her mouth, wet and smeared, was half-open in sleep.
But Miss Pinch looked deadlier than ever. She saw I had come to. She stood up and with her feet apart and hands on her hips, she said, "You owe me an apology."
That was enough to startle me into total wariness.
"You thought I stole your money. I could tell. When I put the last wad in my purse, I knew that that was what you were thinking. Now admit it."
I wasn't going to talk. But she reached down toward the floor and picked up a truncheon.
"Yes," I said. "And I thought you'd given part of it to the Chief of Security."
"Hogger? Why, how could you think that of Chief Hogger? Believe me, Inkswitch, you won't go far in a Rockecenter company thinking lies about the very pillars on which it is built! He's an honest man. Did he say something?"
"He had a pile of money on his desk," I said.
"Oh, that was probably his collections from drug sales to staff. He has the pusher monopoly for the Octopus Building and you better be careful not to buy from anybody else. How could you think evil of such a fine man?"
She looked up and down my bruised and naked body with disgust. "Men are all evil. You prove it. No, Ink-switch, you have not been the victim of any skulduggery. Your entire $80,000 is right here."
Miss Pinch went over to her discarded overcoat. She began to take packets of money out of the inside pockets. She stacked it up on a table with skulls on each of its four corners. Then she began to flutter it down over my body, a shower of floating, settling bank notes until they covered my thighs.
Then she took out something else. A small sheaf. She came over and leaned her naked chest close above mine. She was holding a piece of paper.
"These are copies of the actual receipts in my office," she said. "Knowing what you would do, I ran off the duplicates I am showing you here. Now, three of these, as you can see, are just vouchers, copies of the ones you signed. But look at these other ones."
I looked. What a strange receipt. Superimposed on it was a picture of my face from below and in the corner, a fingerprint.
"Few know," said Miss Pinch through thin lips, "that there is a camera below the signing ledge. It shoots a picture of the face seen through the voucher and makes them both one. And few know that the pen that people are handed at Window 13 takes a fingerprint and relays it with electronic scan to make it part of the receipt. So the receipt is a composite of money, date, face and fingerprint. The name you sign it with doesn't matter."
"You mean Rockecenter ..."
"Oh, no, no, no, not that idiot," said Miss Pinch. "Miss Grabball had this installed herself. A refinement of the system. These face-and-fingerprint ones don't go in company files. You thought I was untrained. But she showed me exactly how to work it."
She smiled evilly at me and dug an elbow into my bruised and naked chest. "It's quite clever. It's how Miss Grabball could pick up half of all the petty cash issued. You see, all she had to do, if there was a squawk, was threaten to report the withdrawal to IRS. Unreported income gets three years in a Federal prison. Minimum. And the person who spots the unreported income and tells IRS gets 10 to 20 percent of the money."
She slapped at me and smiled. "So you see, Ink-switch, you are very much in my power. Miss Grabball liked money. I like other things. I have refined the system. If you don't do exactly what I say, I can send you to a Federal pen for three years just like that. And be rewarded in the bargain with 10 to 20 percent of it, all legal. Miss Grabball was deficient in imagination, even though cunning in her way. Using this system, I can blackmail half the employees of Octopus. And get far more in favors and money than Miss Grabball ever dreamed of."
She got up. She stood there naked in the red light. She picked up handfuls of money and showered them down on me. They floated eerily this way and that, settling on and around my bruised nakedness. She was humming a little wordless tune.
At length she said, "So it's all your money, Ink-switch. Every bit of it. Isn't it lovely?" She smeared some against my body and injured thighs.
Then, in a hurricane of motion, she gathered it all up and stuffed it in a big white bag. She put the bag in the lower part of the casket. When she closed the door I saw it was really a safe. She gave the combination a spin.
Then she came back to the bed. "Only I know the combination to that safe. And it can't be beaten out of me. So there's your money, Inkswitch."
She stood there, legs apart, shameless. She held out one hand. It had a hundred-dollar bill in it. "This," she said, "will pay your taxi fare home. It will also pay your taxi fare back here again, tomorrow night."
She dropped the bill on me in contempt. "And maybe," she said, "tomorrow night, I may take pity on you and give you even more of your money."
I gazed at this monster in horror!
"Now promise, if I let you loose right now, you won't kick up a fuss."
I wanted to kill her and she could see it.
"There's a bank camera up in that corner of the room," she said, "so don't get any ideas about murder. Promise?"
What could I do? I promised.
She undid the wrist and ankle cuffs. As I rose, aching and wounded, she kicked my clothes toward me.
I dressed. I picked up the hundred-dollar bill.
"One more thing," this vicious (bleepch) said, "if you come near Window 13 again, I will simply fire off the counter shotgun and say it accidentally discharged. The only place you're going to get any money, Inkswitch, is right here."
She opened the front door and wrought-iron grate. She stood there, naked and thin-lipped in the icy blast. "The first time you came to my window, Inkswitch, I told you to beat it. I didn't think you'd last. But due to Psychiatric Birth Control, all the males around have lately turned into gays to help cut down world population. And I refuse to risk the danger of separating two dear gays. So you're better than nothing, Inkswitch. Although not much. So I will see you right here tomorrow night. It's better than three years in a Federal pen. The homos there would murder you. Don't be late."
I would have slapped her but my fingers were too sore.
I staggered outside into the cold and cheerless night.
But I was not without hope, no matter if dim. The next time I saw this (bleepch) I would kill her.
Chapter 7
I awoke in a world that was against me.
The repairers had patched up the penthouse. My baggage had not been sitting in the lobby so I had to assume that Utanc had paid the damages bill.
The resident doctor, with a midnight "Tch, tcn, tch. We must learn we must not let our fingers stray," had patched up my hands.
Right now, a December sun was streaming in the French doors, closed upon the wintry terrace. It was hurting my eyes.
Working as well as I could with cotton-thickened hands, I pushed down the sheet. The bruises had not yet turned as blue and yellow as I knew they would. I felt like I had been mistaken for a piece of pavement and run over by a steamroller. That feeling was confirmed whenever I moved.
But an Apparatus officer is made of stern stuff. I still had a pair of guns. They were black-powder duelling pistols, a pair. I had picked them up cheap one day, thinking they were originals. They were just replicas, modernly built on an 1810 pattern. They were flintlock. They had nine-inch barrels. They were .50 caliber and that half-inch slug could almost cut a body in half. Clumsily, since my bandages were in the way, I cocked and snapped each one. Very gratifying sparks! Powder and balls were in the case. Grunting and hurting my fingers, I got them loaded with enough charge to kill an elephant. That done, I got on to less important things.
I showered as best I could. Every drop inflicted near mortal injury. I got the bandages wet. I had to dry them by holding my hands in the gas fireplace. I was encouraged. They only caught fire twice.
Moaning a bit at the pain of holding the phone, I ordered breakfast.
And with it, of course, came that Gods (bleeped) morning paper.
Masochism knows no limits.
I opened it. There it was, front page:
WHIZ KID COURT TRIUMPH
In a startling development, the Whiz Kid has won his court battle with M.I.W.
Boggle, Gouge and Hound, today announced that in the case of Wister vs. Massachusetts Institute of Wreckology, an instant out-of-court settlement had been reached for an undisclosed amount.
The president of M.I.W. himself verified that Wister was back in class and on the job in the restaurant.
Student riots ceased at once.
(See photos page 23, "Victorious Students Flood Back to Classes Throughout Nation.")
Speculation was rife in court circles as to the amount of settlement. Herman T. Guesswinkle, the noted astrologer, placed it in the millions... .
I slammed the paper down—and hurt my hands. That (bleeping) Madison had followed orders. He had gotten rid of at least one suit. But he had done it in such a way as to make the Whiz Kid a hero! (Bleep), Bury had been wrong about Madison. The man was far worse than I or anyone else had thought!
Somehow, I got the doorknob to open. A stack of papers from the news vendor fell in. I kicked them and hurt my foot.
I did not turn on the TV. I did not—could not actually—manage the radio. I knew what I would find. Whiz Kid, Whiz Kid, Whiz Kid. Jesus!