Status Quo Part 18

When they pulled up before his auto-bungalow, LaVerne whistled appreciatively. "Quite a neighborhood you're in."

He grunted. "A good address. What our friend Professor Voss would call one more status symbol, one more social-label. For it I pay about fifty per cent more rent than my budget can afford."

He ushered her inside and took her jacket. "Look," he said, indicating his living room with a sweep of hand. "See that volume of Klee reproductions there next to my reading chair? That proves I'm not a weird. Indicates my culture status. Actually, my appreciation of modern art doesn't go any further than the Impressionists. But don't tell anybody. See those books up on my shelves. Same thing. You'll find everything there that _ought_ to be on the shelves of any ambitious young career man."

She looked at him from the side of her eyes. "You're really soured, Larry."

"Come along," he said. "I want to show you something."

He took her down the tiny elevator to his den.

"How hypocritical can you get?" he asked her. "This is where I really live. But I seldom bring anyone here. Wouldn't want to get a reputation as a weird. Sit down, LaVerne, I'll make a drink. How about a Sidecar?"

She sank onto the couch, kicked her shoes off and slipped her feet under her. "I'd love one," she said.

His back to her, he brought brandy and cointreau from his liquor cabinet, lemon and ice from the tiny refrigerator.

"What?" LaVerne said mockingly. "No auto-bar?"

"Upstairs with the rest of the status symbols," Larry grunted.

He put her drink before her and turned and went to the record player.

"In the way of corny music, how do you like that old-timer, Nat Cole?"

"King Cole? Love him," LaVerne said.

The strains of "For All We Know" penetrated the room.

Larry sat down across from her, finished half his drink in one swallow.

"I'm beginning to wonder whether or not this Movement doesn't have something," he said.

She didn't answer that. They sat in silence for a while, appreciating the drink. Nat Cole was singing "The Very Thought of You" now. Larry got up and made two more c.o.c.ktails. This time he sat next to her. He leaned his head back on the couch and closed his eyes.

Finally he said softly, "When Steve Hackett and I were questioning Susan, there was only one other person who knew that we'd picked her up. There was only one person other than Steve and me who could have warned Ernest Self to make a getaway. Later on, there was only one person who could have warned Frank Nostrand so that he and the Professor could find a new hideout."

She said sleepily, "How long have you known about that, darling?"

"A while," Larry said, his own voice quiet. "I figured it out when I also decided how Susan Self was spirited out of the Greater Was.h.i.+ngton Hilton, before we had the time to question her further. Somebody who had access to tapes made of me while I was making phone calls cut out a section and dubbed in a voice so that Betsy Hughes, the Secret Service matron who was watching Susan, was fooled into believing it was I ordering the girl to be turned over to the two Movement members who came to get her."

LaVerne stirred comfortably and let her head sink onto his shoulder.

"You're so warm and ... comfortable," she said.

Larry said softly, "What does the Movement expect to do with all that counterfeit money, LaVerne?"

She stirred against his shoulder, as though bothered by the need to talk.

"Give it all away," she said. "Distribute it all over the country and destroy the nation's social currency."

It took him a long moment to a.s.similate that.

"What have the rockets to do with it?"

She stirred once again, as though wis.h.i.+ng he'd be silent. "That's how it will be distributed. About twenty rockets, strategically placed, each with a _warhead_ of a couple of tons of money. Fired to an alt.i.tude of a couple of hundred miles and then the money is spewed out. In falling, it will be distributed over cities and countryside, everywhere. Billions upon billions of dollars worth."

Larry said, so softly as hardly to be heard, "What will that accomplish?"

"Money is the greatest social-label of them all. The Professor believes that through this step the Movement will have accomplished its purpose.

That people will be forced to utilize their judgment, rather than depend upon social-labels."

Larry didn't follow that, but he had no time to go further now. He said, still evenly soft, "And when is the Movement going to do this?"

La Verne moved comfortably. "The trucks go out to distribute the money tonight. The rockets are waiting. The firing will take place in a few days."

"And where is the Professor now?"

"Where the money and the trucks are hidden, darling. What difference does it make?" LaVerne said sleepily.

"And where is that?"

"At the Greater Was.h.i.+ngton Trucking Corporation. It's owned by one of the Movement's members."

He said. "There's a pa.s.sword. What is it?"

"Judgment."

Larry Woolford bounced to his feet. He looked down at her, then over at the phone. In three quick steps he was over to it. He grasped its wires and yanked them from the wall, silencing it. He slipped into the tiny elevator, locking the door to the den behind him.

As the door slid closed, her voice wailed, still sleepily husky, "Larry, darling, where are you-"

He ran down the walk of the house, vaulted into the car and snapped on its key. He slammed down the lift lever, kicked the thrust pedal and was thrown back against the seat by the acceleration.

Even while he was climbing, he flicked on the radio-phone, called Personal Service for the location of the Greater Was.h.i.+ngton Trucking Corporation.

Fifteen minutes later, he parked a block away from his destination, noting with satisfaction that it was still an hour or more to go until dark. His intuition, working doubletime now, told him that they'd probably wait until nightfall to start their money-laden trucks to rolling.

He hesitated momentarily before turning on the phone and dialing the Boss'

home address.

When the other's face faded in, it failed to display pleasure when the caller's ident.i.ty was established. His superior growled, "Confound it, Woolford, you know my privacy is to be respected. This phone is to be used only in extreme emergency."

"Yes, sir," Larry said briskly. "It's the Movement-"

The other's face darkened still further. "You're not on that a.s.signment any longer, Woolford. Walter Foster has taken over and I'm sympathetic to his complaints that you've proven more a hindrance than anything else."

Larry ignored his words, "Sir, I've tracked them down. Professor Voss is at the Greater Was.h.i.+ngton Trucking Corporation garages here in the Alexandria section of town. Any moment now, they're going to start distribution of all that counterfeit money on some scatterbrain plan to disrupt the country's exchange system."

Suddenly alert, the department chief snapped, "Where are you, Woolford?"