The Syndic Read online

  I

  Charles Orsino was learning the business from the ground up--even though"up" would never be very high. He had in his veins only a drop or two ofFalcaro blood: enough so that room had to be made for him; not enoughfor it to be a great dearth of room. Counting heavily on the good willof F. W. Taylor, who had taken a fancy to him when he lost his parentsin the Brookhaven Reactor explosion of '83, he might rise to a ratherresponsible position in Alky, Horsewire, Callgirl, recruitment andRetirement or whatever line he showed an aptitude for. But at 22 onespring day, he was merely serving a tour of duty as bagman attached tothe 101st New York Police Precinct. A junior member of the Syndiccustomarily handled that job; you couldn't trust the cops not to squeezetheir customers and pocket the difference.

  He walked absently through the not-unpleasant routine of the shakedown.His mind was on his early-morning practice session of polo, in which hehad almost disgraced himself.

  "Good afternoon, Mr. Orsino; a pleasure to see you again. Would you likea cold glass of beer while I get the loot?"

  "No, but thanks very much, Mr. Lefko--I'm in training, you know. Wish Icould take you up on it. Seven phones, isn't it, at ten dollars aphone?"

  "That's right, Mr. Orsino, and I'll be with you as soon as I lay off theseventh at Hialeah; all the ladies went for a plater named Hearthmousebecause they thought the name was cute and left me with a dutch book. Iwon't be a minute."

  Lefko scuttled to a phone and dickered with another bookie somewherewhile Charles absently studied the crowd of chattering, laughinghorseplayers. ("Mister Orsino, did you come out to make a monkey ofyourself and waste my time? Confound it, sir, you have just fifty roundto a chukker and you must make them count!" He grinned unhappily. OldGilby, the pro, could be abrasive when a bone-head play disfigured thegame he loved. Charles had been sure Benny Grashkin's jeep would conkout in a minute--it had been sputtering badly enough--and that he wouldhave had a dirt-cheap scoring shot while Benny changed mounts. ButGilby blew the whistle and wasn't interested in your fine-spun logic."Confound it, sir, when will you young rufflers learn that you mustcrawl before you walk? Now let me see a team rush for the goal--and Imean _team_, Mr. Orsino!")

  "_Here_ we are, Mr. Orsino, and just in time. There goes the seventh."

  Charles shook hands and left amid screams of "Hearthmouse! Hearthmouse!"from the lady bettors watching the screen.

  High up in the Syndic Building, F. W. Taylor--Uncle Frank toCharles--was giving a terrific tongue-lashing to a big, stooped old man.Thornberry, president of the Chase National Bank, had pulled a butch andF. W. Taylor was blazing mad about it.

  He snarled: "One more like this, Thornberry, and you are out on yourpadded can. When a respectable member of the Syndic chooses to come toyou for a line of credit, you will in the future give it without anytom-fool quibbling about security. You bankers seem to think this is themiddle ages and that your bits of paper still have their old blackmagic.

  "Disabuse yourself of the notion. Nobody except you believes in it. TheInexorable Laws of Economics are as dead as Dagon and Ishtar, and forthe same reason. No more worshippers. You bankers can't shove anybodyaround any more. You're just a convenience, like the non-playing bankerin a card game.

  "What's real now is the Syndic. What's real about the Syndic is its ownmorale and the public's faith in it. Is that _clear_?"

  Thornberry brokenly mumbled something about supply and demand.

  Taylor sneered. "Supply and demand. Urim and Thummim. Show me a supply,Thornberry, show me a--oh, hell. I haven't time to waste re-educatingyou. Remember what I told you and don't argue. Unlimited credit toSyndic members. If they overdo it, _we'll_ rectify the situation. Now,get out." And Thornberry did, with senile tears in his eyes.

  At Mother Maginnis' Ould Sod Pub, Mother Maginnis pulled a long facewhen Charles Orsino came in. "It's always a pleasure to see you, Mr.Orsino, but I'm afraid this week it'll be no pleasure for you to seeme."

  She was always roundabout. "Why, what do you mean, Mrs. M.? I'm alwayshappy to say hello to a customer."

  "It's the business, Mr. Orsino. It's the business. You'll pardon me if Isay that I can't see how to spare twenty-five dollars from the till, notif my life depended on it. I can go to fifteen, but so help me--"

  Charles looked grave--graver than he felt. It happened every day. "Yourealize, Mrs. Maginnis, that you're letting the Syndic down. What wouldthe people in Syndic Territory do for protection if everybody took yourattitude?"

  She looked sly. "I was thinking, Mr. Orsino, that a young man like youmust have a way with the girls--" By a mighty unsubtle maneuver, Mrs.Maginnis' daughter emerged from the back room at that point and begandemurely mopping the bar. "And," she continued, "sure, any young ladywould consider it an honor to spend the evening with a young gentlemanfrom the Syndic--"

  "Perhaps," Charles said, rapidly thinking it over. He would infinitelyrather spend the evening with a girl than at a Shakespeare revival as hehad planned, but there were drawbacks. In the first place, it would bebribery. In the second place, he might fall for the girl and wake upwith Mrs. Maginnis for his mother-in-law--a fate too nauseating tocontemplate for more than a moment. In the third place, he had alreadybought the tickets for himself and bodyguard.

  "About the shakedown," he said decisively. "Call it fifteen this week.If you're still doing badly next week, I'll have to ask for a look atyour books--to see whether a regular reduction is in order."

  She got the hint, and colored. Putting down fifteen dollars, she said:"Sure, that won't be necessary. I'm expecting business to take a turnfor the better. It's sure to pick up."

  "Good, then." To show there were no hard feelings, he stayed for amoment to ask: "How are your husbands?"

  "So-so. Alfie's on the road this week and Dinnie's got the rheumatismagain but he can tend bar late, when it's slow."

  "Tell him to drop around to the Medical Center and mention my name, Mrs.Maginnis. Maybe they can do something for him."

  She glowed with thanks and he left.

  It was pleasant to be able to do things for nice people; it was pleasantto stroll along the sunny street acknowledging tipped hats and friendlywords. (That team rush for the goal had been a sorry mess, but not hisfault--quite. Vladek had loosed a premature burst from his fifty caliberat the ball, and sent it hurling off to the right; they had braked andbacked with much grinding of gears to form V again behind it, whenGilby blew the whistle again.)

  * * * * *

  A nervous youngster in the National Press Service New York drop wasfacing his first crisis on the job. Trouble lights had flashedsimultaneously on the Kansas City-New York, Hialeah-New York andBoston-New York trunks. He stood, paralyzed.

  His supervisor took it in in a flash and banged open the circuit toService. To the genial face that appeared on the screen, he snapped:"Trace Hialeah, Boston and Kansas City--in that order, Micky."

  Micky said: "Okay, pal," and vanished.

  The supervisor turned to the youngster. "Didn't know what to do?" heasked genially. "Don't let it worry you. Next time you'll know. Younoticed the order of priority?"

  "Yes," the boy gulped.

  "It wasn't an accident that I gave it to him that way. First, Hialeahbecause it was the most important. We get the bulk of our revenue fromserving the horse rooms--in fact, I understand we started as a horsewire exclusively. Naturally the horse-room customers pay for it in thelong run, but they pay without pain. Nobody's forcing them to improvethe breed, right?

  "Second, Boston-New York trunk. That's common-carrier while the FairGrounds isn't running up there. We don't make any profit oncommon-carrier service, the rates are too low, but we owe it to thepublic that supports us.

  "Third, Kansas City-New York. That's common carrier too, but with oneterminal in Mob Territory. No reason why we should knock ourselves outfor Regan and his boys, but after the other two are traced and closed,we'll get around to them. Think you got it straight now?"

  "Yes," the you
ngster said.

  "Good. Just take it easy."

  * * * * *

  The supervisor moved away to do a job of billing that didn't needimmediate doing; he wanted to avoid the very appearance of nagging theboy. He wondered too, if he'd really put it over, and decided he hadn't.Who could, after all. It took years on the wires to get the feel. Slowlyyour motivation changed. You started by wanting to make a place foryourself and earn some dough. After years you realized, not with ablinding flash, but gradually, that you were working for quite anotherreason. Nice gang here that treats you right. Don't let the Syndic down.The customers pay for their fun and by God, you see that they get it orbust a gut trying.

  * * * * *

  On his way to the 101st Precinct station house, the ears of CharlesOrsino burned as he thought of the withering lecture that had followedthe blast on Gilby's whistle. "_Mister_ Orsino, is it or is it not yourresponsibility as team captain to demand that a dangerous ball be takenout of play? And did or did not that last burst from Mister Vladek beatthe ball out of round, thus giving rise to a distinct possibility ofdangerous ricochets?" The old man was right of course, but it had been apocked and battered practice ball to start with; in practice sessions,you couldn't afford to be fussy--not with regulation 18 inch armor steelballs selling for thirty dollars each at the pro shop.

  He walked between the two green lamps of the precinct station and dumpedhis bag on the sergeant's desk. Immediately the sergeant started a taleof woe: "Mr. Orsino, I don't like to bother you with the men's personaltroubles, but I wonder if you could come through with a hundred dollarpresent for a very deserving young fellow here. It's Patrolman Gibney,seven years in the old 101st and not a black mark against him. Onecitation for shooting it out with a burglar and another for nabbing apast-post crook at Lefko's horse room. Gibney's been married for fiveyears and has two of the cutest kids you ever saw, and you know thattakes money. Now he wants to get married again, he's crazy in love withthe girl and his first wife don't mind, she says she can use a helpinghand around the house, and he wants to do it right with a big wedding.

  "If he can do it on a hundred, he's welcome to it," Charles said,grinning. "Give him my best wishes." He divided the pile of bills intotwo orderly stacks, transferred a hundred dollars to one and pocketedthe other.

  He dropped it off at the Syndic Building, had an uninteresting dinner inone of its cafeterias and went to his furnished room downtown. He read achapter in F. W. Taylor's--Uncle Frank's--latest book, _Organization,Symbolism and Morale_, couldn't understand a word he read, bathed andgot out his evening clothes.

  * * * * *

  A thin and attractive girl entered a preposterously-furnished room inthe Syndic Building, arguing bitterly with a white-bearded, hawk-nosedold man.

  "My dear ancestor," she began, with exaggerated patience.

  "God-damn it, Lee, don't call me an ancestor! Makes me feel as if I wasdead already."

  "You might as well be for all the sense you're talking."

  "All right, Lee." He looked wounded and brave.

  "Oh, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, Edward--" She studied his facewith suddenly-narrowed eyes and her tone changed. "Listen, you olddevil, you're not fooling me for a minute. I couldn't hurt your feelingswith the blunt edge of an axe. You're not talking me into anything. It'djust be sending somebody to his death. Besides, they were bothaccidents." She turned and began to fiddle with a semi-circular screenwhose focus was a large and complicated chair. Three synchronizedprojectors bore on the screen.

  The old man said very softly: "And what if they weren't? Tom McGurn andBob were good men. None better. If the damn Government's knocking us offone by one, something ought to be done. And you seem to be the onlyperson in a position to do it."

  "Start a war," she said bitterly. "Sweep them from the seas. Wasn't DickReiner chanting that when I was in diapers?"

  "Yes," the old man brooded. "And he's still chanting it now that you'rein--whatever young ladies wear nowadays. Promise me something, Lee. Ifthere's another try, will you help us out?"

  "I am so sure there won't be," she said, "that I'll promise. And Godhelp you, Edward, if you try to fake one. I've told you before and Itell you now that it's almost certain death."

  * * * * *

  Charles Orsino studied himself in a three-way mirror.

  The evening suit was new; he wished the gunbelt was. The holster rodeawkwardly on his hip; he hadn't got a new outfit since his eighteenthbirthday and his chest had filled out to the last hole of thecross-strap's buckle since then. Well, it would have to wait; theevening would cost him enough as it was. Five bodyguards! He winced atthe thought. But you had to be seen at these things and you had to do itright or it didn't count.

  He fell into a brief reverie of meeting a beautiful, beautiful girl atthe theater, a girl who would think he was interesting and handsome anda wonderful polo player, a girl who would happily turn out to be in thedirect Falcaro line with all sorts of powerful relations to speak up forhim....

  Someone said on his room annunciator: "The limousine is here, Mr.Orsino. I'm Halloran, your chief bodyguard."

  "Very well, Halloran," he said casually, just as he'd practiced it inthe bathroom that morning and rode down.

  The limousine was a beauty and the guards were faultlessly turned out.One was democratic with one's chief guard and a little less so with theothers. As Halloran drove, Charles chatted with him about the play,which was Julius Caesar in modern dress. Halloran said he'd heard it wasvery good.

  * * * * *

  Their arrival in the lobby of the Costello created no sensation. Fivebodyguards wasn't a lot of bodyguards, even though there seemed to be noother Syndic people there. So much for the beautiful Falcaro girl.Charles chatted with a television director he knew slightly. Thedirector explained to him that the theater was sick, very sick, thatHarry Tremaine,--he played Brutus--made a magnificent stage picture butcouldn't read lines.

  By then Halloran was whispering in his ear that it was time to taketheir seats. Halloran was sweating like a pig and Charles didn't getaround to asking him why. Charles took an aisle seat, Halloran wasacross the aisle and the others sat to his side, front and rear.

  The curtain rose on "New York--A Street."

  The first scene, a timekiller designed to let fidgeters subside andcoughers finish their coughing, was a 3-D projection of Times Square,with a stylized suggestion of a public relations consultant's office"down in one" on the apron.

  When Caesar entered Orsino started, and there was a gratified murmuraround the auditorium. He was made up as French Letour, one of theMobsters from the old days--technically a hero, but one who had sailedmighty close to the wind. This promised to be interesting.

  "Peace, ho! Caesar speaks."

  And so to the apron where the soothsayer--public relationsconsultant--delivered the warning contemptuously ignored byLetour-Caesar, and the spotlight shifted to Cassius and Brutus for theirlong, foreboding dialogue. Brutus' back was to the audience when itstarted; he gradually turned--

  "What means this shouting? I do fear the people will choose Caesar fortheir king!"

  And you saw that Brutus was Falcaro--old Amadeo Falcaro himself, withthe beard and hawk nose and eyebrows.

  Well, let's see now. It must be some kind of tortured analogy with theTreaty of Las Vegas when Letour made a strong bid to unite Mob andSyndic and Falcaro had fought against anything but a short-term,strictly military alliance. Charles felt kind of sore about Falcaro notgetting the title role, but he had to admit that Tremaine played Falcaroas the gutsy magnifico he had been. When Caesar re-entered, the contrastbecame clear; Caesar-Letour was a fidgety, fear-ridden man. The rest ofthe conspirators brought on through Act One turned out to be goodfellows all, fresh and hearty; Charles guessed everything was all rightand he wished he could grab a nap. But Cassius was saying:

&nbs
p; "Him and his worth and our great need of him--"

  All very loyal, Charles thought, smothering a yawn. A life for theSyndic and all that, but a high-brow version. Polite and dignified, likea pavanne at Roseland. Sometimes--after, say, a near miss on the polofield--he would wonder how polite and dignified the great old daysactually had been. Amadeo Falcaro's Third Year Purge must have been anaffair of blood and guts. Two thousand shot in three days, the historybooks said, adding hastily that the purged were unreconstructed,unreconstructable thugs whose usefulness was past, who couldn't realizethat the job ahead was construction and organization.

  * * * * *

  And Halloran was touching Charles on the shoulder. "Intermission in asecond, sir."

  They marched up the aisle as the curtain fell to applause and the restof the audience began to rise. Then the impossible happened.

  Halloran had gone first; Charles was behind him, with the four otherguards hemming him in. As Halloran reached the door to the lobby at thetop of the aisle, he turned to face Charles and performed aninexplicable pantomime. It was quite one second before Charles realizedthat Halloran was tugging at his gun, stuck in the holster.

  The guard to the left of Charles softly said: "Jesus!" and threw himselfat Halloran as the chief guard's gun came loose. There was a .45 caliberroar, muffled. There was another that crashed, unmuffled, a yard fromCharles' right ear. The two figures at the head of the aisle collapsedlimply and the audience began to shriek. Somebody with a very loud voiceroared: "Keep calm! It's all part of the play! Don't get panicky! It'spart of the play!"

  The man who was roaring moved up to the aisle door, fell silent, sawand smelled the blood and fainted.

  A woman began to pound the guard on Charles' right with her fists,yelling: "What did you do to my husband? You shot my husband!" She meantthe man who had fainted; Charles peeled her off the bodyguard.

  Somehow they got into the lobby, followed by most of the audience. Thethree bodyguards held them at bay. Charles found he was deaf in hisright ear and supposed it was temporary. Least of his worries. Halloranhad taken a shot at him. The guard named Weltfisch had intercepted it.The guard named Donnel had shot Halloran down.

  He said to Donnel: "You know Halloran long?"

  Donnel, not taking his eyes from the crowd, said: "Couple of years, sir.He was just a guy in the bodyguard pool."

  "Get me out of here," Orsino said. "To the Syndic Building."

  In the big black car, he could almost forget the horror; he could hopethat time would erase it completely. It wasn't like polo. That shot hadbeen _aimed_.

  The limousine purred to a halt before the titanic bulk of the SyndicBuilding, was checked and rolled on into the Unrestricted Entrance. Anelevator silently lifted the car and passengers past floors devoted toAlcohol Clerical, Alcohol Research, and Testing, Transport, CollectionsAudit and Control, Cleaning and Dying, Female Recruitment andRetirement, up, up, up, past sections and sub-sections Charles had neverentered, Syndic member though he was, to an automatic stop at a floorwhose indicator said: _enforcement and public relations_.

  It was only 9:45 P.M.; F. W. Taylor would be in and working. Charlessaid: "Wait here, boys," and muttered the code phrase to the door. Itsprang open.

  F. W. Taylor was dictating, machine-gun fashion, to a mike. He lookeddog-tired. His face turned up with a frown as Charles entered and thenthe frown became a beam of pleasure.

  "Charles, my boy! Sit down!" He snapped off the machine.

  "Uncle--" Charles began.

  "It was so kind of you to drop in. I thought you'd be at the theater."

  "I was, Uncle, but--"

  "I'm working on a revision for the next edition of _Organization,Symbolism and Morale_. You'd never guess who inspired it."

  "I'm sure I wouldn't, Uncle. Uncle--"

  "Old Thornberry, President of the Chase National. He had the infernalgall to refuse a line of credit to young McGurn. _Bankers!_ You won'tbelieve it, but people used to _beg_ them to take over their property,tie up their incomes, virtually enslave them. People _demanded_ it. Thesame way they demanded inexpensive liquor, tobacco and consumer goods,clean women and a chance to win a fortune and our ancestors obligedthem. Our ancestors were sneered at in their day, you know. They werecalled criminals when they distributed goods and services at a pricepeople could afford to pay."

  "Uncle!"

  "Hush, boy, I know what you're going to say. You can't fool the peopleforever! When they'd had enough hounding and restriction, they rose intheir might.

  "The people demanded freedom of choice, Falcaro and the rest rose tolead them in the Syndic and the Mob and they drove the Government intothe sea."

  "Uncle Frank--"

  "From which it still occasionally ventures to annoy our coastal cities,"F. W. Taylor commented. He warmed to his subject. "You should have seenthe old boy blubber. The last of the old-time bankers, and they deservedeverything they got. They brought it on themselves. They had what theycalled laissez-faire, and it worked for awhile until they got totinkering with it. They demanded things called protective tariffs, taxremissions, subsidies--regulation, regulation, regulation, always of theother fellow. But there were enough bankers on all sides for everybodyto be somebody else's other fellow. Coercion snowballed and theGovernment lost public acceptance. They had a thing called the publicdebt which I can't begin to explain to you except to say that it wassomething written on paper and that it raised the cost of everythingtremendously. Well, believe me or not, they _didn't_ just throw away thepiece of paper or scratch out the writing on it. They let it ride untilordinary people couldn't afford the pleasant things in life."

  "Uncle--"

  * * * * *

  A cautious periscope broke the choppy water off Sea Island, Georgia. Atthe other end of the periscope were Captain Van Dellen of the NorthAmerican Navy, lean as a hound, and fat little Commander Grinnel.

  "You might take her in a little closer, Van," said Grinnel mildly.

  "The exercise won't do you any lasting damage," Van Dellen said. Grinnelwas very, very, near to a couple of admirals and normally Van Dellengave him the kid-glove treatment in spite of ranking him. But this was_his_ ship and no cloak and dagger artist from an O.N.I. desk wastelling him how to con it.

  Grinnel smiled genially at the little joke. "I could call it adisguise," he said patting his paunch, "but you know me too well."

  "You'll have no trouble with a sea like this," Van Dellen said, strictlybusiness. He tried to think of some appropriate phrase to recognize thedanger Grinnel was plunging into with no resources except quick wits, atrick ring and a pair of guns. But all that bubbled up to the top of hishead was; thank God I'm getting rid of this bastardly little Sociocrat.He'll kill me some day if he gets a clean shot and the chance ofdetection is zero. Thank God I'm a Constitutionist. We don't go in forthings like that--or do we? Nobody ever tells me anything. A hack of apigboat driver. And this little bastard's going to be an admiral someday. But that boy of mine'll be an admiral. He's brainy, like hismother.

  Grinnel smiled and said: "Well, this would be it, wouldn't it?"

  "Eh?" Van Dellen asked. "Oh. I see what you mean. Chuck!" he called asailor. "Break out the Commander's capsules. Pass the word to stand byfor ejection."

  The Commander was fitted, puffing, into the capsule. He growled at thestorekeeper: "You sure this was just unsealed? It feels sticky already."

  A brash jayee said: "I saw it unsealed myself three minutes ago,Commander. It'll get stickier if we spend any more time talking. Youhave"--he glanced at his chronometer--"seventeen minutes now. Let mesnap you in."

  The Commander huddled down after a searching glance at the jayee's facewhich photographed it forever in his memory. The top snapped down. Someday--some happy day--that squirt would very much regret telling him off.He gave an okay sign to Van Dellen who waved back meagerly and managed asmile. Three crewmen fitted the capsule into its lock.

  Foomf!


  It was through the hatch and bobbing on the surface. Its color matchedthe water's automatically. Grinnel waggled the lever that aimed itinshore and began to turn the propellor crank. He turned fast; thecapsule--rudders, crank, flywheel, shaft and all--would dissolve inapproximately fifteen minutes. It was his job to be ashore when thathappened.

  And ashore he'd be practically a free agent with the loosest sort ofroving commission, until January 15th. Then his orders became mostspecific.