Supermind Part 40

"And that," Malone said, "sounds like an insult. It's much plainer than that. Suppose you tell me."

Boyd considered. "Over here," he said at last, "there are a lot of confused jerks and idiots. Right?"

"Correct," Malone said.

"And in Russia," Boyd went on, "there's a lot of confusion. Right?"

"Sure," Boyd said. "It's perfectly clear. I wonder why I didn't see it before."

"That's it!" Malone cried. "That's the difference!"

"Sure," Boyd said. "It's perfectly clear. I wonder why I didn't see it before."

"Because you weren't looking for it," Malone said. "Because n.o.body was. But there's one more check I want to make. There's one area I'm not sure of, simply because I don't have enough to go on."

"What area is that?" Boyd said. "It seems to me we did a pretty good job--"

"The Mafia," Malone said. "We know they're having trouble, but--"

"But we don't know what kind of trouble," Boyd finished. "Right you are."

Malone nodded. "I want to talk to Manelli," he said. "Can we set it up?"

"I don't see why not," Boyd said. "The A-in-C can give us the latest on him. You want me with you?"

"No," Malone said after some thought. "No. You go and see Mike Sand, heading up the International Truckers' Union. We know he's tied up with the Syndicate, and maybe you can get some information from him.

You know what to dig for?"

"I do now," Boyd said. He reached for the intercom phone.

Cesare Antonio Manelli was a second-generation Prohibition mobster, whose history can most easily be described by reference to the various affairs of State which coincided with his development. Thus:

When Cesare was a small toddler of uncertain gait and chubby visage, the Twenty-First Amendment to the Const.i.tution of the United States canceled out not only the Eighteenth Amendment, but the thriving enterprises conducted by Manelli, Sr., and many of his friends.

When Cesare was a young schoolboy, poring over the multiplication tables, his father and his father's friends were busy dividing. They were dividing, to put it more fully, husbands from families as a means of requesting ransom, and money from banks as a means of getting the same cash without use of the middleman, or victim. This was the period of the Great Readjustment, and the frenzied search among gangland's higher echelons for a subst.i.tute for bootlegging.

And when Cesare was an innocent high-schooler, sporting a Paleolithic switchblade knife and black leather jacket, his father and his father's friends had reached a new plateau. They consolidated into a Syndicate, and began to concentrate on gambling and the whole, complex, profitable network of unions.

And then World War II had come along, and it was time for Cesare to do his part. Bidding a fond farewell to his father and such of his father's friends as had survived the disagreements of Prohibition, the painful legal processes of the early Thirties and the even more painful consolidations of the years immediately before the war, young Cesare went off to foreign lands, where he distinguished himself by creating and running the largest single black-market ring in all of Southern Europe.

Cesare had followed in his father's footsteps. And, before his sudden death during a disagreement in Miami, Giacomo "Jack the Ripper"

Manelli was proud of his son.

"Geez," he often said. "Whattakid, huh? Whattakid!"

At the war's end, young Cesare, having proven himself a man, took unto himself a nickname and a shotgun. He did not have to use the shotgun very much, after the first few lessons; soon he was on his way to the top.

There was nowhere for Cesare "Big Cheese" Antonio Manelli to go, except up.

Straight up.

Now, in 1973, he occupied a modestly opulent office on Madison Avenue, where he did his modest best to pretend to the world at large that he was only a small cog--indeed, an almost invisible cog--in a large advertising machine. His best was, for all practical purposes, good enough.

Though it was common knowledge among the spoil-sport law enforcement officers who cared to look into the matter that Manelli was the real owner of the agency, there was no way to prove this. He didn't even have a phone under his own name. The only way to reach him was by going through his front man in the agency, a blank-faced, truculent Arab named Atif Abdullah Aoud.

According to the agent-in-charge of the New York office, Malone had his choice of two separate methods of getting to Manelli. One, more direct, was to walk in, announce that he was an agent of the FBI, and insist on seeing Manelli. If he had a search warrant, the A-in-C told him, he might even get in. But, even if he did, he would probably not get anything out of Manelli.

The second and more diplomatic way was to call up Atif Abdullah Aoud and arrange for an appointment.

Malone made his decision in a flash. He flipped on the phone and punched for a PLaza exchange.

The face that appeared on the screen was that of a fairly pretty, if somewhat vapid, brunette. "Rodger, Willcoe, O'Vurr and Aoud, good afternoon," she said.

Malone blinked.

"Who is calling, please?" the girl said. She snapped gum at the screen and Malone winced and drew away.

"This is Kenneth J. Malone," he said from what he considered a safe distance. "I want to talk to Mr. Aoud."

"Mr. Aoud?" she said in a high, unhelpful whine.

"That's right," Malone said patiently. "You can tell him that there may be some government business coming his way."

"Oh," she said. "But Mr. Aoud isn't in."

Mr. Aoud wasn't in. Mr. Aoud was out. Malone turned that over in his mind a few times, and decided to try and forget it just as quickly as possible. "Then," he said, "let me talk to one of the other partners."

"Partners?" the girl said. She popped her gum again. Malone moved back another inch.

"You know," he said. "The other people he works with. Rodger, or Willcoe, or O'Vurr."

"Oh," the girl said. "Them."

"That's right," Malone said patiently.

"How about Mr. Willcoe?" the girl said after a second of deep and earnest thought. "Would he do?"

"Why not let's try him and see?" Malone said.

"Okay," the girl said brightly. "Let's." She flashed Malone a dazzling smile, only slightly impeded by the gum, and flipped off. Malone stared at the blank screen for a few seconds, and then the girl's voice said, invisibly: "Mr. Willcoe will speak to you now, Mr. Melon.

Thank you for waiting."

"I'm not--" Malone started to say, and then the face of Frederick Willcoe appeared on the screen.

Willcoe was a thin, wrinkle-faced man with very pale skin. He seemed to be in his sixties, and he looked as if he had just lost an all-night bout with Count Dracula. Malone looked interestedly for puncture marks, but failed to find any.

"Ah," Willcoe said, in a voice that sounded like crinkled paper. "Mr.