The Rip-Off Read online

  The handmade shoes were eternally new, ever-magnificent despite their chronological age. The cambric shirt from Sulka, and the watered-silk Countess Mara tie, were new—long-ago Christmas presents which I had only glanced at, and returned to their gift box. And a decade had been wonderfully kind to the Bond Street suit, swinging full circle through fads and freakishness, and bringing it back in style again.

  I frowned, studying my hair.

  The shagginess was not too bad, not unacceptable, but a trim was certainly in order. The gray temples, and the gray streak down the center, were also okay, a distinguished contrast for the jet blackness. However, that yellowish tinge which gray hair shittily acquires, was not all right. I needed to see a truly good hair man, a stylist, not the barber-college cruds that I customarily went to.

  I examined my wallet—twelve dollars plus the fifty Jason had given me. So I could properly finish the job I had started, hair and all. And the wonders it would do for my frazzled morale to look decent again, the way Britton Rainstar had to look…having so little else but looks.

  But if I did that, if I didn’t make at least a token payment to Amicable Finance—!

  The phone rang. It had not been disconnected, as Jason had assumed. Calling me at other numbers was simply part of the “treatment.”

  I picked up the phone, and identified myself.

  A cheery man’s voice said that he was Mr. Bradley, Amicable comptroller. “You have quite a large balance with us, Mr. Rainstar. I assume you’ll be dropping in today to settle up?”

  I started to say that I was sorry, that I simply couldn’t pay the entire amount, as much as I desired to. “But I’ll pay something; that’s a promise, Mr. Bradley. And I’ll have the rest within a week—I swear I will! J—just don’t do anything. D—don’t hurt me. Please, Mr. Bradley.”

  “Yes, Mr. Rainstar? What time can I expect you in today?”

  “You can’t,” I said.

  “How’s that?” His voice crackled like a whip.

  “Not today or any other day. You took my car. I repaid your loan in full, and you still took my car. Now—”

  “Late charges, Rainstar. Interest penalties. Repossession costs. Nothing more than your contract called for.”

  I told him he could go fuck what the contract called for. He could blow it out his ass. “And if you bastards pull any more crap on me, any more of this calling me to the phone in the middle of the night…”

  “Call you to the phone?” He was laughing at me. “Fake emergency calls? What makes you think we were responsible?”

  I told him why I thought it; why I knew it. Because only Amicable Finance was lousy enough to pull such tricks. Others might screw their own mothers with syphilitic cocks, or pimp their sisters at a nickel a throw. But they weren’t up to Amicable’s stunts.

  “So here’s some advice for you, you liver-lipped asshole! You fuck with me any more, and it’ll be shit in the fan! Before I’m through with you, you’ll think lightning struck a crapper…!”

  I continued a minute or two longer, growing more elaborate in my cursing. And not surprisingly, I had quite a vocabulary of curses. Nothing is sacred to children, just as anything unusual is an affront to them, a challenge which cannot be ignored. And when you have a name like Britton Rainstar, you are accepted only after much fighting and cursing.

  I slammed up the phone. Frightened stiff by what I had done, yet somehow pleased with myself. I had struck back for a change. For once, in a very long time, I had faced up to the ominous instead of ignoring or running from it.

  I fixed the one drink I had in the house, a large drink of vodka. Sipping it, feeling the dullness go out of my heart, I decided that I would by God get the needful done with my hair. I would look like a man, by God, not the Jolly Green Giant, when Amicable Finance started giving me hell.

  Before I could weaken and change my mind, I made an appointment with a hair stylist. Then, I finished my drink, dragging it out as long as I could, and stood up.

  And the phone rang.

  I almost didn’t answer it; certain that it would get me nothing but a bad time. But few men are strong enough to ignore a ringing telephone, and I am not one of them.

  A booming, infectiously good-natured voice blasted into my ear.

  “Mr. Rainstar, Britt? How the hell are you, kid?”

  I said I was fine, and how the hell was he? He said he was just as fine as I was, laughing uproariously. And I found myself smiling in spite of myself.

  “This is Pat Aloe, Britt. Patrick Xavier Aloe, if you’re going to be fussy.” Another roar of laughter. “Look, kid. I’d come out there, but I’m tied up tighter than a popcorn fart. So’s how about you dropping by my office in about an hour? Well, two hours, then.”

  “But—well, why?” I said. “Why do you want to see me, Mr. uh, Pat?”

  “Because I owe you, Britt, baby. Want to make it up to you for those pissants at Amicable. Don’t know what’s the matter with the stupid bastards, anyway.”

  “But…Amicable?” I hesitated. “You have something to do with them?”

  A final roar of laughter. Apparently, I had said something hilariously funny. Then, good humor flooding his voice, he declared that he not only wanted to see me, but I also wanted to see him, even though I didn’t know it yet. Thus, the vote for seeing each other was practically unanimous, by his account.

  “So how about it, Britt, baby? See you in a couple of hours, okay?”

  “Who am I to buck a majority vote?” I said. “I’ll see you, Pat, uh, baby.”

  3

  I got out of the car at a downtown office building. I entered its travertine-marble lobby, and studied the large office directory affixed to one wall. It was glassed-in, a long oblong of white plastic lettering against a black-felt background. The top line read:

  PXA HOLDING CORPORATION

  Beneath it, in substantially smaller letters, were the names of sixteen companies, including that of Amicable Finance. The final listing, in small red letters, read:

  P. X. ALOE

  ––P. H.

  M. FRANCESCA ALOE

  ’allo, Aloe, I thought, stepping into the elevator. Patrick Xavier and M. Francesca, and Britt, baby, makes three. Or something. But whereof and why, for God’s sake?

  I punched the button marked P.H., and was zoomed forty floors upward to the penthouse floor. As I debarked into its richly furnished reception area, a muscular young man with gleaming black hair stepped in front of me. He looked sharply into my face, then smiled and stepped back.

  “How are you, Mr. Rainstar? Nice day.”

  “How are you?” I said, for I am nothing if not polite. “A nice day so far, at least.”

  A truly beautiful, beautifully dressed woman came forward, and urgently squeezed my hand.

  “Such a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rainstar! Do come with me, please.”

  I followed her across a hundred feet or so of carpet (a foot deep, or so) to an unmarked door. She started to knock, then jerked her hand back. Turned to me still smiling, but rather whitishly.

  “If you’ll wait just a moment, please…”

  She started to shoo me away, then froze at the sound from within the room. A sound that could only be made by a palm swung against a face. Swung hard, again, again. Like the stuttering, staccato crackling of an automatic rifle.

  It went on for all of a minute, a very long time to get slapped. Abruptly, as though a gag had been removed, a woman screamed.

  “N—No! D—don’t, please! I’ll never do—!”

  The scream ended with the suddenness of its beginning. The slapping also. The beautiful, beautifully dressed young woman waited about ten seconds. (I counted them off silently.) Then, she knocked on the door and ushered me inside.

  “Miss Manuela Aloe,” she said. “Mr. Britton Rainstar.”

  A young woman came toward me smiling; rubbing her hand, her right hand, against her dress before extending it to me. “Thank you, Sydney,” she said, dismissing the receptionist with a nod. “Mr. Rainstar, let’s just sit here on the lounge.”

  We sat down on the long velour lounge. She crossed one leg over the other, rested an elbow on her knee, and looked at me smiling, her chin propped in the palm of her hand. I looked at her—the silver-blond hair, the startlingly black eyes and lashes, the flawlessly creamy complexion. I looked around and found it impossible to believe that such a delicious bon bon of a girl would do harm to anyone.

  Couldn’t I have heard a recording? And if there had been another woman, where was she? The only door in the room was the one I had entered by, and no one had passed me on the way out.

  “You look just like him,” Manuela was saying. “We-ell, almost just. You don’t have your hair in braids.”

  I said, What? And then I said, Oh, for several questions in my mind had been answered. “You mean Chief Britton Rainstar,” I said. “The Remington portrait of him in the Metropolitan.”

  She said, No, she’d missed that one, darn it. “I was talking about the one in the Royal Museum by James McNeill Whistler. But tell me. Isn’t Britton a kind of funny name for an Indian chief?”

  “Hilarious,” I said. “I guess we got it from the nutty whites the Rainstars intermarried with, early and often. Now, if you want a real honest to Hannah, jumpin’ by Jesus Indian name—well, how does George strike you?”

  “George?” she laughed. “George?”

  “George Creekmore. Inventor of the Cherokee alphabet, and publisher of the first newspaper west of the Mississippi.”

  “And I guess that’ll teach me,” she smiled, coloring slightly. “But, anyway, you certainly bear a strong resemblance to the Chief. Of course, I’d heard that all the Rainstar men did, but—”

  “We’re hard to tell apart,” I agreed
. “The only significant difference is in the pockets of later generations.”

  “The pockets?”

  “They’re empty,” I said, and tapped myself on the chest. “Meet Lo, the poor Indian.”

  “Hi, Lo,” she said, laughing. And I said, Hi, and then we were silent for a time.

  But it was not an uncomfortable silence. We smiled and looked at each other without self-consciousness, both of us liking what we saw. When she spoke it was to ask more questions about the Rainstar family; and while I didn’t mind talking about it, having little else to be proud of, there were things I wanted to know, too. So, after rambling on awhile, I got down to them.

  “Like when and why the heck,” I said, “am I seeing P.X. Aloe?”

  “I don’t think you’ll be able to see Uncle Pat today,” she said. “Some last minute business came up. But there’s nothing sinister afoot”—she gave me a reassuring little pat on the arm. “Now, unless you’re in a hurry…”

  “Well, I am due in Washington to address the cabinet,” I said. “I thought it was already addressed, but I guess someone left off the zone number.”

  “You dear!” she laughed delightedly. “You absolute dear! Let’s go have some drinks and dinner, and talk and talk and talk.…”

  She got her hat and purse from a mahogany cabinet. The hat was a sailor with a turned-up brim, and she cocked it over one eye, giving me an impish look. Then, she grinned and righted it, and the last faint traces of apprehension washed out of my mind.

  Give another woman a vicious slapping? This darling, diminutive child? Rainstar, you are nuts!

  We took the elevator down to PXA’s executive dining room, in a sub-basement of the building. A smiling maitre d’, with a large menu under his arm, came out of the shadows and bowed to us graciously.

  “A pleasure to see you, Miss Aloe. And you, too, sir, needless to say.”

  “Not at all,” I said. “My pleasure.”

  He looked at me a little startled. I am inclined to gag it up and talk too much when I am uneasy or unsure of myself, which means that I am almost always gagging it up and talking too much.

  “This is Mr. Britton Rainstar, Albert (Albehr),” Manuela Aloe said. “I hope you’ll be seeing him often.”

  “My own hope. Will you have a drink at the bar, while your table is being readied?”

  She said we would, and we did. In fact, we had a couple, since the night employees were just arriving at this early hour, and there was some delay in preparing our table.

  “Very nice,” I said, taking an icy sip of martini. “A very nice place, Miss Aloe. Or is it Mrs.?”

  She said it was Miss—she had taken her own name after her husband died—and I could call her Manny if I liked. “But yes”—she glanced around casually. “It is nice, isn’t it? Not that it shouldn’t be, considering.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Or should I say ah-ha? I’m afraid I’m going to have to rush right off to Geneva, Manny.”

  “Wha-aat?”

  “Just as soon as I pay for these drinks. Unless you insist on going dutch on them.”

  “Silly!” She wriggled deliciously. “You’re with me, and everything’s complimentary.”

  “But you said considering,” I pointed out. “A word hinting at the dread unknown, in my case at least. To wit, money.”

  “Oh, well,” she shrugged, dismissing the subject. “Money isn’t everything.”

  4

  With an operation as large and multifaceted as PXA, one with so many employees and interests, it was impossible to maintain supervision and surveillance in every place it might be required. It would have been impossible, even if PXA’s activities were all utterly legitimate instead of borderline, with personnel which figuratively cried out to be spied upon. Pat Aloe had handed the problem to his niece Manny, a graduate student in psychology. After months of consultation with behaviorists and recording experts, she had come up with the bugging system used throughout the PXA complex.

  It was activated by tones, and was uncannily accurate in deciding when a person’s voice tone was not what it should be. Thus, Bradley, the man who had called me this morning, had been revealed as a “switcher,” one who diverted business to competitors. So all of his calls were completely recorded, instead of receiving a sporadic spot check.

  “I see,” I nodded to Manny, as we dawdled over coffee and liqueurs, “about as clearly as I see through mud. Everything is completely opaque to me.”

  “Oh, now, why do you say that?” she said. “I’d seen that portrait when I was a little girl, and I’d never gotten it out of my mind. So when I found out that the last of the Rainstars was right here in town…!”

  “Recalling part of the conversation,” I said, “you must have felt that the last of the Rainstars needed his mouth washed out with soap.”

  She laughed and said, Nope, cursing out Bradley had been a plus. “That was just about the clincher for you with Pat. Someone of impeccable background and breeding, who could still get tough if he had to.”

  “Manny,” I said, “exactly what is this all about, anyway? Why PXA’s interest in me?”

  “Well…”

  “Before you answer, maybe I’d better set you straight on something. I’ve never been mixed up in anything shady, and PXA seems to be mixed up in nothing else but. Oh, I know you’re not doing anything illegal, nothing you can go to prison for. But, still, well—”

  “PXA is right out in the open,” Manny said firmly. “Anyone that wants to try, can take a crack at us. We don’t rewrite any laws, and we don’t ask any to be written for us. We don’t own any big politicians. I’d say that for every dollar we make with our so-called shady operations, there’s a thousand being stolen by some highly respectable cartel.”

  “Well,” I nodded uncomfortably, “there’s no disputing that, of course. But I don’t feel that one wrong justifies another, if you’ll pardon an unpardonable cliché.”

  “Pardoned”—she grinned at me openly. “We don’t try to justify it. No justifications, no apologies.”

  “And this bugging business.” I shook my head. “It seems like something right out of Nineteen Eighty-four. It’s sneaky and Big Brotherish, and it scares the hell out of me.”

  Manny shrugged, remarking that it was probably everything I said. But bugging wasn’t an invention of PXA, and it didn’t and wouldn’t affect me. “We’re on your side, Britt. We’re against the people who’ve been against your people.”

  “My people?” I said, and I grimaced a little wryly. “I doubt that any of us can be bracketed so neatly any more. We may be more of one race than we are another, but I suspect we’re all a little of everything. White, yellow, black and red.”

  “Oh, well”—she glanced at her wristwatch. “You’re saying that there are no minorities?”

  I said that I wasn’t sure what I was saying, or, rather, what the point to it was. “But I don’t believe that a man who’s being pushed around has a right to push anyone but the person pushing him…if you can untangle that. His license to push is particular, not general. If he starts lashing out at everyone and anyone, he’s asking for it and he ought to get it.”

  It was all very high-sounding and noble, and it also had the virtue, fortunately or otherwise, of being what I believed. What I had been bred to believe. And now I was sorry I had said it. For I seemed to be hopelessly out of step with the only world I had, and again I was about to be left alone and afraid in that world, which I had had no hand in making. This lovely child, Manny, the one person to be kind to me or show interest in me for so very long, was getting ready to leave.

  She was looking at me, brows raised quizzically. She was patting her mouth with her napkin, then crumpling it to the table. She was glancing at herself in the mirror in her purse. Then, snapping the purse shut, and starting to rise.

  And then, praise be, glory to the Great Mixedblood Father, she sat back down.

  “All right,” she said crisply. “Let’s say that PXA is interested in using the Rainstar name. Let’s say that. It would be pretty stupid of us to dirty up that name, now, wouldn’t it?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose it would,” I said. “And look. I’m sorry if I said anything to offend you. I always kid around and talk a lot whenever I’m—”