Free 01. Labyrinth of Dreams by Jack L. Chalker Page A

bet my booties that old Martin was a man until just recently and would still be more castrated man than full-figured gal."
    "They said this started more than two years ago, and they saw her then."
    I nodded. "So this leads me to a deduction, Watson."
    "We don't make enough to pay taxes now."
    "Quiet. Us geniuses need clear heads. The only way I can figure that we have the Marty Whitlock everybody knows and the female Marty down here is if there isn't much kinky going on at all. You get an estimate of height and weight?"
    "Hard to tell. She wore heels there, and dear old Honey noted that she wore real finely made elevator shoes as a man. They all thought it was a great scam, and they didn't look much closer because of the money."
    "Few do. But the height?"
    "Honey said, with heels, they were about the same height. Call it five ten."
    I nodded. "Uh huh. And Marty was five ten as well. Now, if we assume that the real Marty Whitlock didn't wear elevators, let alone heels, we can account for maybe three inches."
    "Brother and sister, maybe? Real close look-alikes?"
    "Have to be real close. The trouble is, he does have two sisters, both accounted for and neither one likely to be able to pass for him even with Hollywood special effects working on his side."
    "He could have just passed her once and seen the resemblance and got her on the payroll. He'd have a hell of a good payroll. It'd beat workin'."
    I considered it. "Maybe, but it's unlikely. The clue here is that she looked enough like him to convince everybody down here that there was a masquerade. Remember what Joey told us? As a woman, he looked like somebody totally different, a real woman. Except for one thing, we've been led down a garden path. Not only does he vanish into this sexual anywhere, but he leads us to a point where it appears he's either a drag queen or a transsexual. Now, why?"
    She shrugged. "Maybe it's because he knew he'd have to disappear someday, and he figured this was a real neat dead end. Everybody would now be looking for a drag queen or a transsexual, not for him."
    "And left it in place for a couple of years?" I thought about it. "It's almost too clever. You wonder how somebody with his background would even know about these places, let alone work them out that neatly. It explains the call to his wife, though, even though it's one of only two mistakes he made. She knows what's going on. Most of it, anyway. Damn! This is frustrating! You don't hire somebody to go through this kind of elaborate shit for two years just as a blind alley, and even if you have this kind of shit going you can't buy much more time than if you got a fake passport, went up to Canada, and took the plane to Rio or whatever. No, this smells. This stinks. He did this for a reason other than to cover his tracks. This was something ongoing, something he rnaybe needed to develop so he could get out from under the Little Jimmys of the world one step ahead of the feds. Why stick around here at all? He could just as easily and untraceably have called her changing planes in Chicago."
    "Unfinished business. He had to move in a hurry, faster than he figured. You said two mistakes, though."
    "Uh huh. Get another description of that guy who came by to pick up her gear?"
    "Yeah, it was pretty much as Joey told us. About five ten, blue eyes, long blond hair and moustache. ..."
    "The operative stuff is at the start. Five ten, blue eyes. Probably a real good blond wig and a real professional matching fake moustache."
    "The real Marty Whitlock," she sighed. "But why come at all? Testing out the disguise, or what?"
    "Uh uh. Remember, he was spooked into moving a few days early. His girlfriend was told to stay away. Considering the trail he laid, they'd be more likely to be looking for her than him, or so he'd think. Those rich upper-class types really believe the cops are that good and that fast. But she needs some stuff from there, or something in the locker was traceable. So he puts on an old