"What?" she said, turning again.

Malone looked judicious. "I think," he said weightily, "that, considering all the fun we've had, and all the adventuring and everything else, the least you could do would be to kiss me goodbye."

"On Fifth Avenue?"

"No," Malone said. He tapped his lips. "Here."

She laughed, bent closer and pecked him on the cheek. Then, before he could say anything else, she was gone.

10

On the way to FBI Headquarters on 69th Street, he read the _Post_ a little more carefully. The judge and his union suit weren't the only things that were fouled up, he saw. Things were getting pretty bad all over.

One story dealt with the recent factional fights inside the American a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Medicine. A new group, the United States Medical-Professional Society, appeared to be forming as a compet.i.tor to the AAAM, and Malone wasn't quite so sure, when he thought about it, that this news was as bad as it appeared on the surface. Fights between doctors, of course, were reasonably rare, at least on the high hysterical level the story appeared to pinpoint. But the AAAM had held a monopoly in the medical field for a long time; maybe it was about time some compet.i.tion showed itself. From what he could find out in the story, the USMPS seemed like a group of fairly sensible people.

But that was one of the few rays of light Malone could discern amid the encircling bloom of the news. The gang wars had reached a new high; the _Post_ was now publishing what it called a Daily Scoreboard, which consisted in this particular paper of six deaths, two disappearances and ten hospitalizations. The six deaths were evenly scattered throughout the country: two in New York, one each in Chicago and Detroit, and two more in San Francisco. The disappearances were in Los Angeles and in Miami, and the hospitalizations were pretty much all over.

The unions had been having trouble, too. Traditional forms of controversy appeared to have gone out the window, in favor of startling disclosures, beatings, wild cries of foul and great ma.s.ses of puzzling evidence. How, for instance, Malone wondered, had the president of Local 7574 of the Fishermen's Fraternal Brotherhood managed to mislay a pile of secret records, showing exactly how the membership was being bilked of dues, on a Boston subway train? But, somehow, he had, and the records were now causing shakeups, denials and trouble among the fishermen.

Of course, the news was not all bad. There were always the comic strips. Pogo was busily staving off an approaching wedding between Albert Alligator and a new character named Tranquil Portly, who appeared to be a brown bear. He was running into some resistance, though, from a wolflike character who planned to abscond with Albert's cigars while Albert was honeymooning. This character, Don Coyote by name, looked like a trouble-maker, and Malone vowed to keep a careful eye on him.

And then there were other headlines:

FUSION POWER SOON COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE SAYS AEC HEAD Sees Drastic Cut in Power Rates

UN POLICE CONTINGENT OKAYED: MILLION MEN TO FORM 1ST GROUP Member Countries Pledge $20 Billion in Support Moneys

OFFICIAL STATES: "WE'RE AHEAD AFTER 17 YEARS!"

US s.p.a.ce Program Tops Russian Achievements

ARMED FORCES TO TOUGHEN TRAINING PROGRAM IN 1974 Gen. Foote: "Our aim is to train fighting men, not to run a country club."

GOVERNMENT TO SAVE $1 BILLION ANNUALLY?

Senator Hits Duplication of Effort in Government, Vows Immediate Reform

Malone read that one a little more carefully, because it looked, at first sight, like one of the bad-news items. There had been government-spending reforms before, almost all of which had resulted in confusion, panic, loss of essential services--and twice as many men on the payroll, since the government now had to hire useless efficiency experts, accountants and other such supernumerary workers.

But this time, the reform looked as if it might do some good. Of course, he told himself sadly, it was still too early to tell.

The senator involved was Deeks, of Ma.s.sachusetts, who was also in the news because of a peculiar battle he had had with Senator Furbisher of Vermont. Congress, Malone noted, was still acting up. Furbisher claimed that the moneys appropriated for a new Vermont dam were really being used for the dam. But Deeks had somehow come into possession of several letters written by a cousin of Furbisher's, detailing some of the graft that was going on in the senator's home state. Furbisher was busily denying everything, but his cousin was just as busy confessing all to anybody who would listen. It was building up into an extremely interesting fracas, and, Malone thought, it would have been even funnier than Pogo except that it was happening in the Congress of the United States.

He heaved a sigh, folded up the paper and entered the building that housed the New York contingent of the FBI.

Boyd was waiting in his office when he arrived.

"Well, there, Kenneth," he said. "And how are all our little Slavic brothers?"

"Unreasonable," Malone said, "and highly unpleasant."

"You refer, no doubt," Boyd said, "to the _Meeneestyerstvoh Vnootrenikh Dyehl_?"

_"Gesundheit,"_ Malone said kindly.

"The MVD," Boyd said. "I've been studying for days to pull it on you when you got back."

Malone nodded. "Very well, then," he said in a stately, orotund tone.

"Say it again."

"d.a.m.n it," Boyd said, "I _can't_ say it again."

"Cheer up," Malone said. "Maybe some day you'll learn. Meantime, Thomas, did you get the stuff we talked about?"

Boyd nodded. "I think I got enough of it," he said. "Anyhow, there is a definite trend developing. Come on into the private office, and I'll show you."

There, on Boyd's ma.s.sive desk, were several neat piles of paper.

"It looks like enough," Malone said. "As a matter of fact, it looks like too much. Haven't we been through all this before?"

"Not like this, we haven't," Boyd said. "Information from all over, out of the everywhere, into the here." He picked up a stack of papers and handed them to Malone.

"What's this?" Malone said.

"That," Boyd said, "is a report on the Pacific Merchant Sailors'

Brotherhood."

"Goody," Malone said doubtfully.

Boyd came over, pulling at his beard thoughtfully, and took the top few sheets out of Malone's hands. "The report," he said, looking down at the sheets, "includes the checks we made on the office of the president of the Brotherhood, as well as the Los Angeles local and the San Francisco local."

"Only two?" Malone said. "That seems as if you've been lying down on the job."

"They're the top two in membership," Boyd said. "But listen to this: the president and three of his underlings resigned day before yesterday, and not quite in time. The law--by which I mean us, and a good many other people--is hot on their tails. It seems somebody accidentally mixed up a couple of envelopes."

"Sounds like a case for the Post Office," Malone said brightly.

"Not these envelopes," Boyd said. "There was a letter that was supposed to go to the head of the San Francisco local, dealing with a second set of books--not the ones used for tax purposes, but the real McCoy. The letter didn't get to the San Francisco man. Instead, it went to the attorney general of the state of California."

"Lovely," Malone said. "Meanwhile, what was San Francisco doing?"

Boyd smiled. "San Francisco was getting confused," he said. "Like everybody else. The San Francisco man got a copy of an affidavit dealing with merchant-ship tonnage. That was supposed to go to the attorney general."

"Good work," Malone said. "So when the Fris...o...b..ys woke up to what was happening--"

"They called the head man, and he put two and two together, resigned and went into hiding. Right now, he's probably living an undercover life as a shoe salesman in Paris, Kentucky."

"And, after all," Malone added, "why not? It's a peaceful life."

"The attorney general, of course, impounded the second set of books,"