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The Writer

In his miserable roach-infested room in the welfare hotel, the Writer pored over the current issue of Publishers Weekly that he had stolen from the local branch of the public library.

The State had stepped in and taken charge of his life. When the drugged-out staff of the warehouse had tried to burn the building down (with materials and helpful instructions from the management, incidentally), the apparatus of the State wheeled itself up in the form of (in order of appearance) Fire Department, Police Department, Bureau of Drug Enforcement, the Public Defender's Office, Department of Rehabilitation, Bureau of Unemployment, and the welfare offices of the state of New Jersey and the City of New York, borough of Queens.

Now he lived in a crumbling welfare hotel in Queens, detoxified, unemployed, and seething with an anger that seemed to grow hotter and deeper with every passing useless day.

But now it all focused down to a single point in space and time. For in his trembling hands he saw how and why it would all come together.

 
BUNKER SALES FORCE SUIT
OPENS IN FEDERAL COURT
 

The headline in Publishers Weekly caught his eye. Bunker Books. They were in a courtroom. All of them. The publisher, the editors. Out there in a public courtroom, where any member of the public could come in and see them, face to face.

With an immense effort of will, the Writer forced his hands to stop trembling so he could read the entire article and learn exactly where they would be and when.

As he finished reading, he looked up and saw a single ray of light shining through the filth that covered the room's only window. The shaft was blood red. Sunset.

The Writer smiled. Where can I get a gun? he asked himself.

 

Twenty-One

It was not easy being the son of Pandro T. Bunker. Junior sat in the last row of the half-empty courtroom, listening with only half his attention to the testimony being given up on the witness stand. No one sat near him; he had the entire pew of seats to himself. None of the sales people in the audience wanted to be seen sitting near the son of the publisher. And all of his dad's people, including his mom, were up in the front.

But Junior smiled to himself. They all think I'm just the owner's son, he told himself. They all think I'm a spoiled brat who doesn't know nothing and gets everything handed to him on a silver tray. I'll show them. I'll show them all. Even Mom and Dad.

Junior's work in the office, as a special assistant to the publisher, had not been terribly successful. Most of the editors either distrusted him as a snoop for his parents or belittled his intelligence. After weeks of being alternately ignored and avoided, he transferred to the sales department just in time for Woody's lawsuit to explode in everybody's face. Naturally, the sales people regarded him as a pariah.

But Junior leaned back on the hard wooden bench of the courtroom and grinned openly. I'm smarter than they think. I'm smarter than any of them.

Up on the witness stand, Woody Baloney was being questioned by the cowboy lawyer the sales department had brought in from Colorado.

"And what, in your professional estimation, will be the result of the Cyberbooks program?" asked the cowboy, his weathered, crinkle-eyed face looking serious and concerned.

"The result?" Woody said, glancing at the judge. "We'll all be tossed out on our butts, that's what the result will be!"

"Objection!" shouted three of the five defense clones in unison.

"Overruled," snapped the judge. "The witness will continue."

The lawyer prompted, "So this electronic book gadget, this  . . . thing they call Cyberbooks, will result in the whole sales force being laid off?"

"That's right," said Woody.

"In your professional opinion," the lawyer amended.

"Uh-huh."

Junior slouched farther on the hard wooden pew. Mom and Dad have pinned everything they've got on this Cyberbooks idea, and the sales force is going to stop it cold. Then what happens? They can't fire Woody or anybody else; they'll be back in court before you could say "prejudice." They won't be able to work with Woody or the rest of the sales force; too much hard feeling.

No, Junior concluded, the company's doomed. Finished. Mom and Dad are going down the tubes.

Which only made him smile more. Because I've been smart enough to take the money I have and invest it wisely. In one of the biggest multinational, diversified corporations in the world. My fortune isn't going to depend on some crazy invention, or on a lawsuit by my own employees.

Two days earlier, P.T. Bunker, Jr., had taken every penny in his trust fund and sunk it into Tarantula Enterprises (Ltd.). He had not merely acted on his own, nor did he trust a stockbroker with his money. Junior had first bought the latest computer investment program, and used his own office machine to examine all the various possibilities of the stock market.

Tarantula Enterprises was a great investment, the computer had told him. In order to fight off an unfriendly takeover bid, Tarantula was buying its own stock back at inflated prices. Although this had removed most of the stock from the open market and made the price for Tarantula shares artificially high, the computer program predicted that the price would go even higher as the takeover battle escalated. So Junior instructed his computer to automatically buy whatever Tarantula stock was available, and to keep on buying it until he told it to stop.

Glowing with self-satisfied pride, he told himself that he could even retire right now and just live on the dividends.

 

Lt. Moriarty, meanwhile, was causing no end of anguish among the staff tending the intensive care unit at St. Vincent's Hospital.

The usual routine was to keep ICU patients calm and quiet, sedated if necessary. Usually such patients were so sick or incapacitated by trauma that there was little trouble with them. Generally the intensive care ward looked somewhat like a morgue, except for the constant beepings and hums of monitoring equipment. Except when there was an emergency, and then a team of frantic doctors and nurses shouted and yelled at one another, dragged in all sorts of heavy equipment, and even pounded on the poor patient as if beating the wretch would force him or her to get better.

No one knew how many times a screaming emergency at bed A had resulted in heart failure at bed B. No one dared even to think about it.

Moriarty was different, though. All the monitors showed that he was in fine fettle, and since he had been in the hospital less than twenty-four hours, the nurses could not even claim that he was too weak to be allowed to get out of bed. But the hospital rules were ironclad: no one got out of the intensive care ward until their physician had okayed a transfer or release—and his insurance company had initiated payment for the bill.

Moriarty insisted that he was detoxed and feeling fine. They had removed the IV from his arm; the only wires connected to him were sensor probes pasted to various portions of his epidermis. He wanted out. But Dr. Kildaire was out for the day; he would not return until the midnight shift started. And the accounting department, its computer merrily tabulating hourly charges, absolutely refused to discharge a patient whose insurance was provided by the city.

Threatening bodily harm and a police investigation produced only partial results. The head ICU nurse, a slim Argentinean with a will of tempered steel, at last agreed to allow Moriarty to sit up and use a laptop computer.

"If you stay quiet and do not disturb the other patients," she added as her final part of the bargain.

Moriarty reluctantly agreed. He had to check out a thousand ideas that were buzzing through his head, and he needed access to the NYPD computer files to do it. The laptop was not as good as his own trusty office machine, but it was better than nothing.

For hours he tapped at its almost silent keys and examined the data flowing across the eerily blood-red plasma discharge screen. Yes, all of the victims had indeed been Tarantula stock owners; most of them had owned shares for years, decades. But he himself had only recently purchased a few shares. So new owners were just as vulnerable to the Retiree Murderer as old ones. The murders had nothing to do with being retired, the victims were owners of Tarantula stock who lived in New York.

Which meant that the murderer was connected in some way to Tarantula. And lived in New York. Or close enough to commute into town to commit the murders.

Pecking away at the keyboard, Moriarty used special police codes to gain access to the New York Stock Exchange files. What happened to the stock of the murder victims? Who was buying the shares?

It was impossible to trace the shares one for one, but there was a buyer for the shares of the murder victims. Within weeks after each murder, the victim's shares were sold—and bought immediately. But by whom? Tarantula shares were traded by the thousands every day of the week. Who was buying the shares of the murder victims?

For hours that question stumped Moriarty. Then he got an inspiration. He asked the NYSE computer if any one particular individual person was acquiring shares of Tarantula on a regular basis.

The stock exchange computer regarded corporations as individual persons, and gave Moriarty a long list of buyers that included corporations headquartered in New York, Tokyo, Messina, and elsewhere. It was almost entirely corporations, rather than human beings, who were regularly buying Tarantula stock.

Again Moriarty stared at a blank wall. But slowly it dawned on him that Tarantula Enterprises (Ltd.) was itself one of the largest regular buyers of its own stock. The corporation was buying back its stock wherever and whenever it could. Not an uncommon tactic when a company was trying to fend off an unfriendly takeover, and if Moriarty read the data correctly, Tarantula was fighting savagely to beat off a takeover attempt by a Sicilian outfit.

The Mob? Moriarty asked himself. Could be.

Then could it be the Mob that is knocking off these little stockholders and buying their shares?

Not likely, he concluded. The Mafia-owned corporations were buying Tarantula stock in big lots, tens of thousands of shares. Not the onesey-twoseys that the Retiree Murder victims had owned. Moreover, there hadn't been much selling to the Mobsters over the past several months. Tarantula was buying back its own stock pretty successfully and preventing the Mafia from gaining a controlling interest.

So who's buying the murder victims' stock? Moriarty asked himself for the hundredth time that afternoon. The computer could not tell him.

It takes two talents to be a good detective: the ability to glean information where others see nothing, and the ability to piece together bits of information in ways that no one else would think of. Perspiration and inspiration, Moriarty called the two.

He had sweated over the computer for practically the entire day. It had told him everything he asked of it; a most cooperative witness. But it had not been enough. Now he had an inspiration.

While the nurses were making their rounds, replacing the IV bottles that fed the comatose patients in the intensive care ward, Moriarty asked the computer for photographs of the members of Tarantula's board of directors. Maybe. Just maybe.

The pictures were slow in coming. The simple laptop computer, with its limited capability, built up each photo a line at a time, rastering back and forth across the screen like the pictures sent by an interplanetary probe from deep space.

The chief nurse herself brought Moriarty a skimpy dinner tray and laid it on the swinging table beside his bed with an expression on her face that said, "Eat everything or we'll stick it into you through an IV tube. Or worse."

Moriarty actually felt hungry enough to reach for the tray and munch on the bland hospital food while the computer screen slowly, slowly painted pictures of Tarantula's board members, one by one, for him to examine.

It wasn't until the very last picture that his blood pressure bounced sky high and his heart rate went into overdrive.

"It's him!" Moriarty shouted. "I'd recognize those eyes anywhere!"

He flung back the bedsheet and started to get to his feet, only to be surrounded instantaneously by a team of nurses and orderlies that included two hefty ex-football players. Despite Moriarty's struggles and protests, they pushed him back in the bed. The chief nurse herself stuck an imperial-sized hypodermic syringe into Moriarty's bare backside and squirted enough tranquilizer into him to calm the entire stock exchange.

"You don't unnerstand," Moriarty mumbled at the faces hovering over his suddenly gummy eyes. "There's a life at stake. Whoever bought Tarantula stock  . . . his life's in danger . . . ."

Then he fell fast asleep and the team of nurses and orderlies left, with satisfied smiles on their faces.

 

Weldon W. Weldon was forced to call a recess to the board of directors meeting after the orderlies had finally cornered the all-singing, all-dancing Gunther Axhelm and carted him away. The conference table was a scuffed-up mess, and several of the older directors needed first aid.

He sat in his powered chair, Angora blanket across his lap, and watched the maintenance robots polish the table and rearrange everyone's papers neatly. The conference room's only door swung open, and a malevolently smiling P. Curtis Hawks stepped in. His red toupee was slightly askew, but Weldon said nothing about it.

"You wanted to see me?" Hawks snapped. He self-consciously planted his fists on his hips, just above the pearl handles of imitation Patton pistols.

"Yes I did," Weldon replied, adding silently, You stupid two-faced idiotic clown.

"Well?"

"Close the door and come down here," said Weldon. "What I have to tell you shouldn't be shouted across the room."

Hawks pushed the leather-padded door shut and slowly walked down the length of the long conference table, avoiding the robots that were industriously polishing its surface back to a mirror-quality sheen.

Pulling up a heavy chair and sitting directly in front of the Old Man, Hawks slowly took the pacifier from his mouth and said, "You forced me to do this."

"Did I?"

"Yes you did," the younger man said, his voice trembling just a little. Like a little boy, Weldon thought. A little boy who's mad at his daddy but knows in his heart that he's being naughty.

Weldon said carefully, "You thought that I sent Axhelm into your operation to destroy you."

"Didn't you?"

"No. I sent him to Webb Press because the operation had to be cleaned out before we could transfer to electronic publishing. And you wouldn't have the kind of cold-blooded ruthlessness it took to clean house."

"Clean house? He's driven us out of business!"

"Not quite," said Weldon. Then he added with a smirk, "Your losses are going to save Tarantula a walloping tax bite next fiscal year."

"Webb Press shouldn't be run as a tax loss . . . ."

"And it won't be," said Weldon softly, soothingly, "once you've converted to electronic publishing."

"You mean you  . . ."

"Haven't you been paying attention to the industry news?" The old man was suddenly impatient. "Haven't you seen what's happening at Bunker Books? Their own sales force is suing Bunker over Cyberbooks."

Hawks gaped at him, uncomprehending.

"I had to clean out Webb Press," Weldon explained, "before you could even hope to start with electronic publishing. One thing I've learned over the years, never expect a staff to change the way it does business. If you're going to go into a new venture, get a new staff. That's an ironclad rule."

"So you were going to get rid of me, too," said Hawks grimly.

Weldon felt exasperation rising inside him like boiling water. "Dammit, Curtis, you can be absolutely obtuse! I told you your job was safe! I told you I wanted Webb to lead the world into electronic book publishing. What do I have to do, adopt you as my son and heir?"

Hawks thought it over for a long moment, chewing hard on his pacifier.

"It would help," he said at last.

Now it was Weldon's turn to go silent as he thought furiously. This is no time for a split on the board. The Sicilians will take advantage of it and move in for good. Yet—Hawks has already risen to his level of incompetence. If I promote him one more step  . . .

The old man smiled at his erstwhile protege, a smile that had neither kindness nor joy in it, the kind of smile a cobra might make just before it strikes, if cobras could smile.

He wheeled his powered chair up to Hawks's seat and reached out to pat the younger man on his epauletted shoulder.

"All right, Curtis," Weldon said softly, almost in a whisper, "I'll do just that. Make you my heir. How would you like to take over the responsibilities of chief executive officer of Tarantula Enterprises?"

The pacifier dropped out of Hawks's mouth. "CEO?"

Nodding, Weldon said, "I'll remain chairman of the board. You will still report to me. But instead of merely running Webb Press, you'll have the entire corporation under your command."

Hawks looked as if he were hyperventilating. It took several gasping tries before he could say, "Under  . . . my  . . . command!"

"I take it you accept the offer?"

"Yes!"

"Fine. Now let's get the rest of the board in here and finish our business."

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Hawks agreed, "Right. Let's tell them the good news."

Weldon smiled again. Chief executive officer, he snorted to himself. I'll let you enjoy the office and the perks for a few months, and then out you go, my boy, on your golden parachute. Or maybe without it.

Hawks was grinning ear to ear. Chief executive officer! From that power base I'll be able to get rid of the Old Man in six months and take over the board. You're a gone goose, Weldon W. Weldon, only you don't know it yet.

 

 

Telephone Transcript

 

Harold D. Lapin: Hello, this is Lapin.

Mobile Phone: (Sounds of street traffic in background) Yes, I can hear you.

Lapin: The trial adjourned for the day, just five minutes ago.

Mobile: Justice only works a short day, eh?

Lapin: It will resume tomorrow at ten o'clock.

Mobile: Okay, okay. So how did it go today?

Lapin: The plaintiff scored all the points. Judge Fish seems to be leaning over backwards in their favor. I don't think Bunker has a chance.

Mobile: Good. Good.

Lapin: Bunker himself did not show up. His wife and several of his editorial employees were present. And the inventor, Carl Lewis.

Mobile: He didn't recognize you, did he?

Lapin: No, certainly not. I sat in the last row, while he was all the way up front. I'm wearing a false mustache and an entirely different style of clothing.

Mobile: Good. Good.

Lapin: Bunker Junior was there, too.

Mobile: What did you find out about him?

Lapin: It wasn't easy. I had to bribe three members of the family's personal law firm.

Mobile: But what did you find out? Has he made out a will or hasn't he?

Lapin: He has not.

Mobile: So if he should suddenly die, he dies intestate.

Lapin: That's right.

Mobile: His estate will be tied up in probate court for months, maybe years.

Lapin: Yes.

Mobile: And the Tarantula stock the little fool has been buying will be tied up along with everything else. No one will be able to vote the stock. Not even the Sicilians.

Lapin: I believe that means his proxies will automatically be voted by the corporation, isn't that right?

Mobile: I'm not sure. The lawyers will have to look into it. But at least the Sicilians won't be able to get their hands on it.

Lapin: If young Bunker should suddenly die.

Mobile: When he dies, yes. When he dies.

 

Twenty-Two

Scarlet Dean ran a lovingly manicured blood-red fingernail along Ralph Malzone's hairless chest and all the way down to his navel.

"Don't stop there," Ralph said, pulling her closer to him.

She giggled girlishly. They were in Scarlet's apartment, where Malzone spent almost every night. It was a spacious room in an old Manhattan building that had once been used as the setting for a horror movie. But although the outside of the building was dark and ornately Gothic, it had been completely modernized inside. The only way to tell it was an old building, from the inside, was to realize that no modern building would have such high ceilings. Nor such elegant moldings where the walls and ceiling met.

Scarlet's bedroom was completely mirrored. All of the walls, including the closet doors (where roughly half of Malzone's haberdashery was stored) and the high ceiling. On the rare occasions when sunshine made it through the polluted air and grime-covered window, the room dazzled and sparkled. It was like being inside a gigantic jewel.

But now the window blinds were drawn tight, and the only light was a dull red flicker from the artificial fireplace.

"Do you still love me?" Scarlet asked him.

Malzone turned his rusty-thatched head to gaze into her emerald eyes. "You bet I do."

"Even though our romance started with chemical warfare?"

It was by now a private joke between them. "I don't care how it started, Red. It started. And I never want it to end."

"Me neither," she said, snuggling closer.

Malzone sighed. "But we'll probably both be out of a job in another few days, the way the trial's going."

"This was just the first day," Scarlet said. "Our side didn't even get a chance to speak, yet."

"You mean management's side."

Propping herself on one elbow, Scarlet replied, "You're on management's side, aren't you?"

"Kinda." Malzone shifted uncomfortably on the bed.

"What do you mean?"

His lean, long face contorting into a miserable frown, Malzone admitted, "I know how Woody and the rest of the sales staff feel. Hell, I was one of them for a lot of years before I got kicked upstairs to sales manager . . . ."

Scarlet's expression softened. "You feel sorry for them."

"I feel sorry for all of us. I don't see this as one side versus the other side. I don't think of us as management versus labor. This is a family fight. It's damned unhappy when members of the same family have to fight. In public, yet."

She plopped back on the mattress and looked at their reflection in the ceiling mirror. Ralph was a coiled bundle of muscle and nervous energy; it excited her to look at his naked body. And she was glad that she kept herself ruthlessly to her diet and exercises; she wanted to keep on looking good to him.

"Maybe there's a way to get both sides together," Ralph was saying, "so we can stop this fighting and be all one happy family again."

Scarlet shook her head. "I don't see how."

"I do," he muttered, so low that she barely heard him.

Without taking her eyes off the ceiling mirror, she asked, "How?"

"We give up on Cyberbooks."

"What?"

"It's the only way. We tell Carl to pack up and leave."

"But you can't do that to him! And P.T. would never—"

"I know P.T. won't back down, so it's all a pipe dream. And I know Carl's a good guy, a friend, somebody I like a lot." Malzone hesitated a moment, then went on, "But the only way to save Bunker Books is to drop the Cyberbooks project. If we don't, the company's going to be torn apart and go down the tubes."

She turned toward him again, her heart suddenly beating faster. "Ralph, I have a confession to make to you."

"Another one? You sure you're not a closet Catholic?"

"Be serious!"

"Okay."

"I was planted at Bunker Books by my boss at Webb Press. I was supposed to be a spy. My assignment was to steal Cyberbooks away from Bunker."

Malzone's face brightened. "Great idea! Let's give it to them! Let them tear themselves apart!"

Scarlet stared at him. "Do you think  . . . I mean  . . ."

Ralph slid a wiry arm around Scarlet's trim bare waist. "Let's do it! And afterward, let's figure out how to get Cyberbooks to Webb Press."

 

Alba Blanca Bunker was in bed also, but for more than an hour she had nothing to say except moans and howls of passion. The voice-activated computer that ran the bedroom's holographic decor system had run its gamut from deep under the sea to the exhilarating peaks of the Himalayas, from a silent windswept desert in the moonlight to the steaming raucous orchid-drenched depths of the Amazonian jungle.

Ever since his body-restructuring operations, Pandro had been a half-wild animal: a passionate, powerful animal who would sweep Alba up in his strong arms the minute she arrived home from the office and carry her off to bed, like some youthful Tarzan overwhelming a startled but unresisting Jane.

Over the months since his operation, Alba had expected his ardor to cool. It did not. It was as if Pandro were trying to make up for all the years he had allowed business to get in the way of their lovemaking; as if he had stored all this passion inside himself and now, with his newly youthful and energetic body, was sharing his pent-up carnal fury with her.

Now they lay entwined together, tangled in a silk sheet that was thoroughly ripped, soaked with the sweaty musky aura of erotic sexual love. The room's decor had shifted to a warm moonlit meadow. Alba could hear trees rustling in the soft wind, smell fresh-cut grass. Fireflies flickered across the ceiling.

As if struggling up from a deep, deep sleep, P.T. asked in the darkness, "How did things go today?"

"Oh—all right, I suppose. It's only the first day of the trial." She hadn't the heart to tell him her worst fears.

But he sensed them. "All right, you suppose? That doesn't sound too good."

"It wasn't so bad."

Bunker looked into his wife's face. Even in the flickering shadows he could see how troubled she was.

"Maybe I should go to the court with you tomorrow," he muttered.

Her heart fluttered. He's willing to leave the house, in spite of his fear of people and crowds, just for me. He's willing to face the world, for me!

Struggling to hold her emotions in check, Alba said, "That's not necessary, darling."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, of course. It's all right."

"Are you sure?" he repeated.

All day long in that dreadful courtroom Alba had maintained her self-control. She had not cried or screamed when Woody's lawyer accused her of being a heartless money-mad despoiler of the poor. She had not taken after him with one of her spike-heeled shoes, as she had wanted to. She had remained cool and reserved, and had not said a word.

But now, after the evening's wild lovemaking, all her defenses were down. She broke into uncontrollable, inconsolable sobs.

"Oh, Pandro," she wept, "we're going to lose everything. Everything!"

 

The Writer was astonished at how easy it had been to acquire enough armaments to equal the firepower of a Vietnam War infantry platoon. He had been asweat with nervous fear when he walked into the gun shop. He had nothing bolstering him except the memory of an ancient video of an old Arnold Schwarzenegger flick.

The gun shop owner had been wary at first; a shabby-looking customer coming in just before closing time, dressed in a threadbare gray topcoat and baggy old slacks. But the Writer smiled and explained that he was doing research for a new novel about terrorists, and needed to know the correct names and attributes of the kinds of guns terrorists would use. Within fifteen minutes the owner had locked his front door and pulled down the curtain that said CLOSED. He picked out an array of Uzi, Baretta, Colt, and laser-aimed Sterling guns. With the smile of a man who really cares about his merchandise, the shop owner proceeded to explain the virtues and faults of each weapon.

"And they all use the same ammunition?" the Writer asked naively.

"Oh no! The Baretta takes nine-millimeter  . . ." Before long the owner was showing how each gun is loaded.

It was simple, then, for the Writer to pick up the massive Colt automatic and point it at the owner's head.

"Stick 'em up," he said with a slightly crazy grin.

The owner laughed.

The Writer cocked the automatic and repeated, minus the grin, "Stick 'em up."

He walked out of the gun shop burdened by nearly thirty pounds of hardware. He actually clanked as he hurried down the street. The owner lay behind his counter, bound and gagged with electrician's tape that the Writer had bought earlier from a nearby hardware store with his last five dollars.

 

"I can't believe it," Carl said with a shake of his head.

He and Lori were strolling slowly around Washington Square, still numb with the shock of the first day of the trial. They had gone to a tiny restaurant in the Village for dinner, but neither of them had much of an appetite. They left the food on the table, paid the distraught waiter, and now they walked aimlessly toward the big marble arch at the head of the square.

The November evening was nippy. Carl wore an old tennis sweater under his inevitable tweed jacket; Lori had a black imitation leather midcalf coat over her dress. A chilly breeze drove brittle leaves rattling across the grass and walkways. Only a few diehard musicians and panhandlers sat on the park benches in the gathering darkness, under the watchful optics of squat blue police robots.

"I just can't believe it," Carl repeated. "That lawyer made Cyberbooks sound like something Ebenezer Scrooge would invent just to throw people out of work and make them starve."

"And the judge let him get away with it," Lori said.

"This isn't a trial. It's an inquisition."

With a deep sigh, Lori asked, "What will you do if the Bunkers lose? If the judge actually issues an injunction against Cyberbooks?"

Carl shrugged. "Go find another publishing house, I guess, and sell the idea to them."

"But don't you understand? If the judge issues an injunction against Cyberbooks, it will be a precedent that covers the whole industry!"

Carl looked at her, puzzled.

"If Bunker is enjoined from developing Cyberbooks," Lori explained, "it sets a legal precedent for the entire publishing industry."

"That doesn't mean  . . ."

"If any other publishing house decided to develop Cyberbooks with you, what's to stop their sales force—or their editorial department, or anybody else—from doing just what Woody's doing? And they'll have the legal precedent of the Bunker case."

Carl stopped in his tracks, his face awful.

Lori felt just as bad. "No other publishing house will go anywhere near Cyberbooks if we lose this case."

"Cyberbooks will be dead," he muttered.

"That's right. And I'll never get to publish Mobile, USA."

"Huh? What's that?"

"The novel I told you about."

"Oh, that great work of literature." Carl's tone was not sarcastic, merely unbelieving, defeated.

"I'll have to spend the rest of my life working on idiot books and dancing nights to make ends meet."

"You could leave Bunker Books."

"It would be just the same at another publishing house."

"You could leave the publishing business altogether," Carl said.

"And go where? Do what?"

Before he realized what he was saying, Carl answered, "Come back to Boston. I'll take care of you."

And before she knew what she was saying, Lori snapped, "On an assistant professor's salary?"

"But I'll have Cyber—" His words choked off in midsentence.

Lori fought back tears. "No, Carl, you won't have Cyberbooks. You'll be back to teaching undergraduate software design and I'll be belly dancing on Ninth Avenue and we'll never see each other again."

His face became grim. He pulled himself to his full height and squared his shoulders. "Then we damned well had better win this trial," he said firmly.

"How?" Lori begged. "Even the judge is against us."

"I don't know how," said Carl. "But we've just got to, that's all."

 

 

PW Forecasts

 

The Terror from Beyond Hell

 

Sheldon Stoker.

Bunker Books

$37.50. ISBN 9-666-8822-5

Sheldon Stoker's readers are legion, and they will not be disappointed in this latest gory terror by the Master. Terror, devil worship, hideous murders and dismemberments, and—the Stoker trademark—an endangered little child, fill the pages of this page-turner. The plot makes no sense, and the characters are as wooden as usual (except for the child), but Stoker's faithful readers will pop this novel to the top of the best-seller charts the instant it hits the stores. (January 15. Author tour. Major advertising/promotion campaign. First printing of 250,000 copies.)

 

Passion in the Pacific

 

Capt. Ron Clanker. USN (Ret.)

Bunker Books.

$24.95. ISBN 6-646-1924-0

A better-than-average first novel by the last living survivor of the epic Battle of Midway (World War II). Tells the tale of a bittersweet romance in the midst of stirring naval action, with the convincing authenticity of a sensitive man capable of great wartime deeds. The characters are alive, and the human drama matches and even surpasses the derring-do of battle. (January 15. No author tour. No advertising/promotion campaign. First printing of 3,500 copies.)

 

Twenty-Three

As a bullet seeks its target, dozens of men and women from all parts of greater New York converged on the single oak-panelled courtroom in which the Bunker vs. Bunker drama was to be played out.

Lori Tashkajian, foreseeing a lifetime of dreary editorial offices and smoky Greek nightclubs ahead of her, rode the Third Avenue bus to the courthouse.

Carl Lewis, after a sleepless night trying to think of some way to turn the tide that was so obviously flowing against Cyberbooks, decided that he could use the exercise and so walked the forty blocks to the courthouse, through the crisp November sunshine.

Scarlet Dean and Ralph Malzone took a taxi together, each of them wrapped in their own gloomy thoughts.

The Writer rode the crowded subway downtown, his heavily laden topcoat clanking loudly every time the train swayed.

P. Curtis Hawks, glowing with his new title of CEO, directed his chauffeur to whisk down the FDR Drive for a firsthand look at the trial that was going to break Bunker Books. Even though his limousine was soon snarled in the usual morning traffic jam (which often lasted until the late afternoon traffic jam overtook it), Hawks smiled happily to himself at the thought of Bunker going down the drain.

P.T. Bunker, Jr., rode with his mother in her white limo the few blocks that separated their Lower East Side mansion from the courthouse. Junior hummed a pop tune to himself, grinning, as he contemplated how the computer in his room at home was busily buying up every spare share of Tarantula stock it could find.

Alba Bunker did not notice her son's self-satisfied delight. She dreaded another day in court and longed to be in the powerful arms of her oversexed husband.

Dozens of curious and idle people with nothing better to do headed for the courtroom, after learning from their TV and newspapers of the fireworks the cowboy attorney had lit off the day before.

Lt. Jack Moriarty had the most difficult course. Upon awakening from the sedatives administered to him the previous evening, he realized with the absolute certainty of the true hunch-player that the Retiree Murderer was going to be in that courtroom. Half an hour with his laptop computer convinced him that P.T. Bunker, Jr., was grabbing Tarantula stock like a drunken sailor reaching for booze, and the murderer was going to strike again that very morning.

Knowing it was hopeless to try to gain release from the hospital through normal channels (which meant waiting for Dr. Kildaire, who had just signed out at the end of his midnight-to-eight shift), Moriarty slowly, carefully detached the sensors monitoring his body functions and, clutching the array of them in his hands so that they would not set off their shrill alarms, he tiptoed to the bed next to his and attached them to the sleeping hemorrhoid case there. The spindly wires stretched almost to the breaking point, but the alarms did not go off.

With barely a satisfied nod, Moriarty raced to the closet and pulled on his clothes. Years of shadowing suspects had taught him how to seem invisible even in plain daylight, so he slithered his way out of the ward, along the corridor, down the elevator, and out the hospital's front entrance in a matter of minutes.

Using his pocket two-way he summoned a patrol car to take him to the courthouse. When the dispatcher asked what authority he had to request the transportation, Moriarty replied quite honestly, "It's a matter of life and death, fuckhead!"

 

Justice Hanson Hapgood Fish allowed his clerk to help him into his voluminous black robes, then dismissed the young man for his morning pretrial meditation. He sank onto his deep leather desk chair and closed his eyes. The vision of all the lovely women in his courtroom immediately sprang to his mind. Mrs. Bunker, looking so vulnerable and hurt in virginal white. The one in red: stunning. The dark-haired one with the great boobs. This was going to be an enjoyable trial. Justice Fish determined that he would drag it out as long as possible.

Let the goddamnable lawyers talk all they want to, he said to himself. Let them jabber away for weeks. I'll give them all the latitude they want. They'll love it! After all, they bill their clients by the minute. The longer the trial, the more money they squeeze out of their clients. And the longer I can sit up there and gaze at those three beauties. He smiled benignly: a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette. Too bad they're all on the losing side of this case.

 

One other person was thinking about the Bunker trial, even though he was not heading toward the courtroom.

P.T. Bunker sat alone in his half-unfinished mansion, at the old pine desk he had used since childhood, reviewing the videotape of the previous day's session in court. Thanks to freedom of information laws and instant electronic communications, it was possible for any informed citizen to witness any open trial.

He wore an old Rambo XXV T-shirt, from an ancient promotional drive to tie in the novelization with the movie. It was spattered with bloody bullet holes, and showed a crude cartoon of the elderly Rambo shooting up a horde of Haitian zombies from his wheelchair. Below the shirt Bunker was clad only in snug bikini briefs, his legs and feet bare. He no longer needed padding to look impressive.

His handsome face grimaced as he watched the plaintiff's attorney attacking Bunker Book's management—himself! his wife!—in his relentless western invective.

A low animal growl issued from P.T. Bunker's lips as he watched the videotape. After nearly an hour, he glanced once at the Mickey Mouse clock on his desk top, then rose and headed for his clothes closet.

 

Carl Lewis arrived in the courtroom precisely at one minute before ten. Half a dozen other people were filing in through the double doors and finding seats on the hard wooden pews. Carl saw Lori up in the front row, talking earnestly with Scarlet Dean and Ralph Malzone. As he started toward them, a scruffy man of indeterminate age, wearing a long shapeless gray topcoat and a day's growth of beard, accidentally bumped against him. Carl felt something hard and metallic beneath the man's coat, heard a muffled clank.

But his mind was on Lori and the others. He mumbled a "Pardon me," as he pushed past the man and headed for his friends. He did not even notice Harold D. Lapin sitting on the aisle in the next-to-last row. Lapin sported a dashing little mustache and wore a yachting outfit of white turtleneck, double-breasted navy-blue blazer, and gray flannel slacks. Hidden in plain sight.

P.T. Junior entered the courtroom right behind Carl. He was followed by P. Curtis Hawks, dressed in a fairly conservative business suit. Neither of them recognized the other.

"All rise."

Carl had not yet sat down. The courtroom buzz quieted as Justice Fish made his slow, dramatic, utterly dignified way to his high-backed padded swivel chair. His completely bald skull and malevolently glittering eyes made Carl think once again of a death's head.

There was more of a crowd this morning. The news of the western lawyer's tirade had drawn dozens of onlookers and news reporters, the way a spoor of blood draws hyenas. Just as Judge Fish rapped his gavel to open the morning's proceedings, two more men slipped through the double doors and took seats on opposite sides of the central aisle, in the very last row. One of them was Detective Lieutenant Jack Moriarty, freshly escaped from St. Vincent's Hospital. Just behind him came a rather tall, slim figure in a blue trenchcoat. Neither man paid the slightest notice to the other; their attention was concentrated on the drama at the front of the courtroom.

Judge Fish leaned forward slightly in his chair and smiled a vicious smile at the western lawyer.

"Is the plaintiff ready to continue?"

The man was dressed in a tan suede suit cut to suggest an old frontiersman's buckskins. "We are, Your Honor."

"Are you ready to call your first witness?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then proceed."

"I call Mr. Ralph Malzone to the witness stand."

Carl felt a moment of stunned surprise. The courtroom fell absolutely silent for the span of a couple of heartbeats, then buzzed with whispered chatter. The judge banged his gavel and called for silence.

Ralph looked more surprised than anyone as he slowly got to his feet and made his way to the witness box. He ran a nervous hand through his wiry red hair, glanced at Woody Balogna sitting at the plaintiff's table, then at Mrs. Bunker, at the defense table with her five interchangeable lawyers.

The bailiff administered the oath and Ralph sat down. Uneasily.

The western lawyer strolled slowly over to the witness box, asking Ralph to state his name and occupation. Ralph complied.

"Sales manager," drawled the lawyer. "Would y'all mind explaining to us just exactly what that means?"

Slowly, reluctantly, Ralph explained what a sales manager does. The lawyer asked more questions, and over the next quarter of an hour Ralph laid out the basics of the book distribution system: how books go from printer to wholesalers and jobbers, then from those distributors to the retail stores.

"There's a lot of different steps involved in getting the books from the publisher's warehouse to the ultimate customer, the reader, wouldn't you say?" the lawyer prompted.

Nodding, Ralph replied, "Yes, that's right."

No one noticed P. Curtis Hawks, sitting in the audience, wincing at the word "warehouse."

"A lot of jobs involved in each of those steps?" asked the lawyer.

"Yes."

"Now, if Bunker Books went into this Cyberbooks scheme, how would your distribution system change?"

Ralph hesitated a moment, then replied, "We would market the books electronically. We could send the books by telephone directly from our office to the bookstores."

"Eliminating all those steps you just outlined?"

"All but the final one."

"Isn't it true that you could also sell your books directly to the ultimate customer, the reader? Transmit books directly to readers over the phone?"

"Yeah, I guess we could, sooner or later."

"Thereby eliminating even the bookstores?"

"I don't think we'd—"

"Thereby eliminating"—the lawyer's voice rose dramatically—"all the jobs of all the people you deal with today: the printers, the wholesalers, the jobbers, the truck drivers, the store clerks—and even your own sales force!"

"We have no plans to eliminate our sales force," Ralph snapped back with some heat.

"Not today."

"Not ever. Books don't sell themselves. You need sales people."

The lawyer strolled away from the witness box a few steps, then whirled back toward Ralph. "But you admit, don't you, that all the jobs in the middle—all the jobs involved with book distribution—will be wiped out by this devilish new invention."

"The distribution system will be totally different, that's right,"

With a triumphant gleam in his eye, the lawyer strode to his table and pulled a batch of papers from his slim leather saddle bag.

"Your Honor," he said, approaching the bench, "I have here affidavits from each of the nation's major book distribution companies, and both of the national bookstore chains. They all ask that their interests be considered in this trial. Therefore, I ask you to consider enlarging the venue of this trial. I ask that this trial be considered a class action by the thousands—nay, tens of thousands—of warehouse personnel, truck drivers, bookstore clerks, wholesalers, jobbers, distributors, and their associated office personnel, against Bunker Books!"

The courtroom broke into excited babbling. Judge Fish whacked away with his gavel until everyone quieted down, then said, "I will consider the motion."

The news reporters sitting at the media bench along the side wall of the courtroom tapped frantically at their computer keyboards.

With a satisfied grin, the western lawyer handed his papers to the bailiff, who passed them up to the judge. Then he smirked at the quintet of defense attorneys and made a little bow.

"Your witness," he said.

"No questions," squeaked five mousey voices in unison.

"Court will recess to examine these papers," said Justice Fish. Glancing at the clock on the rear wall of the courtroom, he added, "We might as well break for lunch while we're at it."

 

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