Free Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester by Alfred Bester Page B

Right?”
    Ruysdale ran across the room to a cluttered bookshelf. He withdrew a tattered journal and flipped it open. He wet his fingers and turned pages.
    “Here it is,” he said. “The Avon Moving Company. Truck No. G-4.”
    The Avon Moving Company had no record of the removal of a Buchanan family from an apartment in Washington Heights. “The kid was pretty careful at that,” Herod murmured. But it did have a record of the men working truck G-4 on that day. The men were interviewed when they checked in at closing time. Their memories were refreshed with whiskey and cash. They recalled the Washington Heights job vaguely. It was a full day’s work because they had to drive the hell and gone to Brooklyn. “Oh God! Brooklyn!” Warbeck muttered. What address in Brooklyn? Something on Maple Park Row. Number? The number could not be recalled.
    “Joe, buy a map.”
    They examined the street map of Brooklyn and located Maple Park Row. It was indeed the hell and gone out of civilization and was twelve blocks long. “That’s Brooklyn blocks,” Joe grunted. “Twice as long as anywhere. I know.”
    Herod shrugged. “We’re close,” he said. “The rest will have to be legwork. Four blocks apiece. Cover every house, every apartment. List every kid around ten. Then Warbeck can check them, if they’re under an alias.”
    “There’s a million kids a square inch in Brooklyn,” Joe protested.
    “There’s a million dollars a day in it for us if we find him. Now let’s go.”
    Maple Park Row was a long, crooked street lined with five-story apartment houses. Its sidewalks were lined with baby carriages and old ladies on camp chairs. Its curbs were lined with parked cars. Its gutter was lined with crude whitewash stickball courts shaped like elongated diamonds. Every manhole cover was a home plate.
    “It’s just like the Bronx,” Joe said nostalgically. “I ain’t been home to the Bronx in ten years.”
    He wandered sadly down the street toward his sector, automatically threading his way through stickball games with the unconscious skill of the city-born. Warbeck remembered that departure sympathetically because Joe Davenport never returned.
    The first day, he and Herod imagined Joe had found a hot lead. This encouraged them. The second day they realized no heat could keep Joe on the fire for forty-eight hours. This depressed them. On the third day they had to face the truth.
    “He’s dead,” Herod said flatly. “The kid got him.”
    “How?”
    “He killed him.”
    “A ten-year-old boy? A child?”
    “You want to know what kind of genius Stuart Buchanan has, don’t you? I’m telling you.”
    “I don’t believe it.”
    “Then explain Joe.”
    “He quit.”
    “Not on a million dollars.”
    “But where’s the body?”
    “Ask the kid. He’s the genius. He’s probably figured out tricks that would baffle Dick Tracy.”
    “How did he kill him?”
    “Ask the kid. He’s the genius.”
    “Herod, I’m scared.”
    “So am I. Do you want to quit now?”
    “I don’t see how we can. If the boy’s dangerous, we’ve got to find him.”
    “Civic virtue, heh?”
    “Call it that.”
    “Well, I’m still thinking about the money.”
    They returned to Maple Park Row and Joe Davenport’s four-block sector. They were cautious, almost furtive. They separated and began working from each end toward the middle; in one house, up the stairs, apartment by apartment, to the top, then down again to investigate the next building. It was slow, tedious work. Occasionally they glimpsed each other far down the street, crossing from one dismal building to another. And that was the last glimpse Warbeck ever had of Walter Herod.
    He sat in his car and waited. He sat in his car and trembled. “I’ll go to the police,” he muttered, knowing perfectly well he could not. “The boy has a weapon. Something he invented. Something silly like the others. A special light so he can play marbles at night, only it murders men. A