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takeoff. Her Spang wasn t nearly as good as her XX, so I left her on the shuttle and went to the main
desk myself to find out what the tsimmes was.
I reasoned with the smart-asses and they argued back computer check (infallible) indicated the tickets
were faulty. I planked down a gold-colored thousand and asked for a new voucher. Quick, please. They
quick, but the automatics took over and the shuttle lofted while I was waiting. A hundred feet up it burst
into an explosion that shattered it, smashed the walls of the port building, and knocked me into oblivion.
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11
No one knew what his real name was and nobody asked. It was a lethal offense to ask that kind of
question in the Underbelly. He was called Capo Rip. No one knew his origins. There were a dozen
stories but he was such a liar that none could be believed: orphanage (there hadn t been an orphanage in
a hundred years), street gangs, adopted by the Mafia International, synthesized in a laboratory, product
of the artificial insemination of a gorilla. He was cold-blooded, indifferent to women, men,
companionship, friendship. Icy and hard. He was a percentage player with such a keen memory for
numbers and probabilities that he was barred from all gambling tables; he was a losing proposition for the
house.
But percentage prevented him from killing. Not that he gave a damn about murder, but he didn t like the
odds against. He never took a chance when the odds were against.  Bod once wrote that all life was
six-to-five against, Rip said.  I don t try anything unless it s six-to-five for. Yes, Capo Rip could read,
and he didn t play even-money bets. He always looked for the edge.
That made him the ideal cannon and the idol of the Bellyworld. He was strictly business; robbery,
burglary, extortion, blackmail, bribery. He won tremendous respect. Best of all, the Belly learned that he
was dependable; he never slashed, he paid all contract cuts promptly, and never welshed on an
obligation. Bad percentage. He knew that loyalty could only be bought.
He lived quietly in small hotels, drop-ins, lodges, gambling houses provided he kept away from the
tables. He was never armed but had shown himself to be a cold crusher when cornered into a gut-fight.
He always preferred the coward s copout from one-on-one trouble no percentage in that but some
goons on a machismo trip wouldn t let it alone. Then he crunched. The Belly believed he could be
light-heavy champion in all-out if he wanted to.
Capo Rip won so much respect that a small coterie gathered around him, uninvited. They were unknown
bods without records and therefore of no account, but they seemed to be serviceable. One was a
woman, also uninvited and unwanted but she remained loyal and laughed off outside propositions. No
odds in them for her. Mercenary.
Rip s capers were ingenious. A few examples: The Exchange Brokerage House protected itself with a
quicksand moat. The drawbridge was raised after hours and no one could pogo onto the pointed roof.
Capo Rip froze a path across the quicksand with dry ice and skipped quietly over the skulls of long-gone
failures for the heist. He bribed a secretary at the Foreclosure Trust to type on her terminal keyboard in
Morse clicks giving him crucial security information. He ripped the vaults.
A governor s fifty-year-old wife began to turn youthful; hair glossy, skin transparent and lovely. Rip
checked the governor s staff. A ravishing young secretary. He checked the rejuvenation salons. The wife
had no accounts.  Arsenious poisoning, he said, and the governor paid, and paid and paid. Posing as a
pianolo tuner he came to the home of a celebrated but cautious collector, casing for a rare Russian gem,
a seven-inch goddess carved out of the largest emerald in history by Fabergé three centuries ago.
Nowhere in sight. He returned with a compass and located her in a steel casket plastered up in a wall.
He sold seven replicas molded out of synthetics to demented collectors and then had the chutzpah to
return the original gem to its original owner. The Belly loved that.
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Between the heavies he worked the petty buncos: medical frauds, radium pitchers, glass caskets, the
honeymoon and obituary racks, the cataracts swindle, building lots in Atlantis;Atlantis , for God s sake!
begging cassettes, fading-tape contracts. Oh, he was versatile and busy, busy, busy. His energy was
unbelievable. The Underbelly estimated that his vigorish must come close to a million a month.
His capers were quiet. Capo Rip did not care for publicity, and that was one of the constraints he
required of his coterie, which they respected. For unknowns they were remarkable; as silent as knives,
never speaking. The Belly could not persuade them to talk, drink, gas, trip, gamble, communicate. They
were dead-face deadly, so no one cared to get acquainted through a gut-rap.
The Underbelly could not believe it when Capo Rip and his Merry Men disappeared. He had started on
a job and then there was none. They thought he d been busted (improbable) but when discreet questions
were asked of his professional fixer, who was in possession of a generous retainer, he reported that
Capo had not been in touch with him. Capo Rip had gone up like a skyrocket, burst in a blaze of glory,
and then vanished.
He was belted down in a berth that rocked. The belts were locked, he found out soon enough, but there
was a dark stranger hatefully smiling at him constantly, always calling him  Great Capo. The woman was
there, too, feeding him meals with a runcible spoon. Rip still didn t know her name and didn t want to,
now more than ever. He took some pleasure from spitting the food into her face.
Whatever the place was, it swarmed with nurses and doctors in agitated conversation, using words like
 platysma myoides,  abdominal aponeurosis,  rectus femori, and  ligamentum cruciatum cruris.
Bewildering. The only one who made sense was a young surgeon who was a lycanthropist. He kept
turning into a fanged wolfman and devouring the shrieking nurses alive, usually starting with the gluteus
maximus. The dark man and the woman paid no attention to them.
 This a hospital? Capo Rip growled.
 No, Great Capo. You re watching a kiddie show,Young Doctor Prevert . I m sorry. We can t block
the broadcasts. And he took the captive to the head and guarded him with a burner.
 You bastard. I hate you.
 But of course, Great Capo. Lunch now.
Back to the rocking berth and the woman came to feed him.
 You bastard s bitch. You sold me out.
 Yes, Capo, but you don t know why, yet.
 Where am I? What am I doing here?
 On a schooner in the middle of Lake Mitchigan, the dark stranger said.  What are you doing?
Preparing to pay a price.
 How much?
 First for what. No?
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 To hell with that. Name the price, you damned bastardly barber. I ll pay it, and I promise you you ll
never barber anyone in the Belly again.
 I believe you, Great Capo. He started to leave and then turned.  The price is telling me where I can
find a man named Edward Curzon.
 Who?
 Edward Curzon.
 Never heard of him.
 Oh, come now, Great Capo. With your connections and experience you must have come across him. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]