The Collection (52 page)

He himself had never testified, or even appeared, in a
courtroom. And while he knew every important underworld character in a dozen
cities, no member of the underworld knew him, except fleetingly, under some
transient identity which he seldom resumed.

Now, over his morning coffee, Bela Joad read through his
micrographer the two stories in the
Sun-Tribune
which had interested
him. One concerned a case that had been one of his few failures, the
disappearance—possibly the kidnapping—of Dr. Ernst Chappel, professor of
criminology at Columbia University. The headline read NEW LEAD IN CHAPPEL CASE,
but a careful reading of the story showed the detective that the lead was new
only to the newspapers; he himself had followed it into a blind alley two years
ago, just after Chappel had vanished. The other story revealed that one Paul
(Gyp) Girard had yesterday been acquitted of the slaying of his rival for
control of North Chicago gambling. Joad read that one carefully indeed. Just
six hours before, seated in a beergarten in New Berlin, Western Germany, he had
heard the news of that acquittal on the video, without details. He had immediately
taken the first stratoplane to Chicago.

When he had finished with the micronews, he touched the
button of his wrist model timeradio, which automatically attuned itself to the
nearest timestation, and it said, just loudly enough for him to hear "Nine-oh-four."
Chief Dyer Rand would be in his office, then.

Nobody noticed him as he left the superdrug. Nobody noticed
him as he walked with the morning crowds along Randolph to the big, new
Municipal Building at the corner of Clark. Chief Rand's secretary sent in his
name—not his real one, but one Rand would recognize—without giving him a second
glance.

Chief Rand shook hands across the desk and then pressed the
intercom button that flashed a blue not-to-be-disturbed signal to his
secretary. He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers across the
conservatively small (one inch) squares of his mauve and yellow shirt. He said,
"You heard about Gyp Girard being acquitted?"

"That's why I'm here.”

Rand pushed his lips out and pulled them in again. He said, "The
evidence you sent me was perfectly sound, Joad. It should have stood up. But I
wish you had brought it in yourself instead of sending it by the tube, or that
there had been some way I could have got in touch with you. I could have told
you we'd probably not get a conviction. Joad, something rather terrible has
been happening. I've had a feeling you would be my only chance. If only there
had been some way I could have got in touch with you—"

"Two years ago?"

Chief Rand looked startled. "Why did you say
that?" "Because it was two years ago that Dr. Chappel disappeared in
New York."

"Oh," Rand said. "No, there's no connection.
I thought maybe you knew something when you mentioned two years. It hasn't been
quite that long, really, but it was close."

He got up from behind the strangely-shaped plastic desk and
began to pace back and forth the length of the office.

He said, "Joad, in the last year—let's consider that period,
although it started nearer two years ago—out of every ten major crimes
committed in Chicago, seven are unsolved. Technically unsolved, that is; in
five out of those seven we know who's guilty but we can't prove it. We can't
get a conviction.

"The underworld is beating us, Joad, worse than they
have at any time since the Prohibition era of seventy-five years ago. If this
keeps up, we're going back to days like that, and worse.

"For a twenty-year period now we've had convictions for
eight out of ten major crimes. Even before twenty years ago—before the use of
the lie-detector in court was legalized, we did better than we're doing now.
'Way back in the decade of 1970 to 1980, for instance, we did better than we're
doing now by more than two to one; we got convictions for six out of every ten
major crimes. This last year, it's been three out of ten.

"And I know the reason, but I don't know what to do
about it. The reason is that the underworld is beating the lie-detector!"

Bela Joad nodded. But he said mildly, "A few have always
managed to beat it. It's not perfect. Judges always instruct juries to remember
that the lie-detector's findings have a high degree of probability but are not
infallible, that they should be weighed as indicative but not final, that other
evidence must support them. And there has always been the occasional individual
who can tell a whopper with the detector on him, and not jiggle the graph
needles at all."

"One in a thousand, yes. But, Joad, almost every
underworld big-shot has been beating the lie-detector recently."

"I take it you mean the professional criminals, not the
amateurs."

"Exactly. Only regular members of the
underworld—professionals, the habitual criminals. If it weren't for that, I'd
think—I don't know what I'd think. Maybe that our whole theory was wrong."

Bela Joad said, "Can't you quit using it in court in
such cases? Convictions were obtained before its use was legalized. For that
matter, before it was invented."

Dyer Rand sighed and dropped into his pneumatic chair again.
"Sure, I'd like that if I could do it. I wish right now that the detector
never had been invented or legalized. But don't forget that the law legalizing
it gives either side the opportunity to use it in court. If a criminal knows he
can beat it, he's going to demand its use even if we don't. And what chance
have we got with a jury if the accused demands the detector and it backs up his
plea of innocence?"

"Very slight, I'd say."

"Less than slight, Joad. This Gyp Girard business
yesterday. I know he killed Pete Bailey. You know it. The evidence you sent me
was, under ordinary circumstances, conclusive. And yet I knew we'd lose the
case. I wouldn't have bothered bringing it to trial except for one thing."

"And that one thing?"

"To get you here, Joad. There was no other way I could
reach you, but I hoped that if you read of Girard's acquittal, after the
evidence you'd given me, you'd come around to find out what had happened."

He got up and started to pace again. "Joad, I'm going
mad. How is the underworld beating the machine? That's what I want you to find
out, and it's the biggest job you've ever tackled. Take a year, take five
years, but crack it, Joad.

"Look at the history of law enforcement. Always the law
has been one jump ahead of the criminal in the field of science. Now the
criminals—of Chicago, anyway—are one jump ahead of us. And if they stay that
way, if we don't get the answer, we're headed for a new dark age, when it'll no
longer be safe for a man or a woman to walk down the street. The very
foundations of our society can crumble. We're up against something very evil
and very powerful."

Bela Joad took a cigarette from the dispenser on the desk;
it lighted automatically as he picked it up. It was a green cigarette and he
exhaled green smoke through his nostrils before he asked, almost disinterestedly,
"Any ideas, Dyer?"

"I've had two, but I think I've eliminated both of
them. One is that the machines are being tampered with. The other is that the
technicians are being tampered with. But I've had both men and machines checked
from every possible angle and can't find a thing. On big cases I've taken
special precautions. For example, the detector we used at the Girard trial; it
was brand-new and I had it checked right in this office." He chuckled.
"I put Captain Burke under it and asked him if he was being faithful to
his wife. He said he was and it nearly broke the needle. I had it taken to the
courtroom under special guard."

"And the technician who used it?"

"I used it myself. Took a course in it, evenings, for
four months."

Bela Joad nodded. "So it isn't the machine and it isn't
the operator. That's eliminated, and I can start from there."

"How long will it take you, Joad?"

The little man in the red suit shrugged. "I haven't any
idea."

"Is there any help I can give you? Anything you want to
start on?"

"Just one thing, Dyer. I want a list of the criminals
who have beaten the detector and a dossier on each. Just the ones you're
morally sure actually committed the crimes you questioned them about. If
there's any reasonable doubt, leave them off the list. How long will it take to
get it ready?"

"It's ready now; I had it made up on the chance that
you'd come here. And it's a long report, so I had it microed down for
you." He handed Bela Joad a small envelope.

Joad said, "Thank you. I won't contact you till I have
something or until I want your cooperation. I think first I'm going to stage a
murder, and then have you question the murderer."

Dyer Rand's eyes went wide. "Whom are you going to have
murdered?"

Bela Joad smiled. "Me," he said.

He took the envelope Rand had given him back to his hotel
and spent several hours studying the microfilms through his pocket
micrographer, memorizing their contents thoroughly. Then he burned both films
and envelope.

After that Bela Joad paid his hotel bill and disappeared,
but a little man who resembled Bela Joad only slightly rented a cheap room
under the name of Martin Blue. The room was on Lake Shore Drive, which was then
the heart of Chicago's underworld.

The underworld of Chicago had changed less, in fifty years,
than one would think. Human vices do not change, or at least they change but
slowly. True, certain crimes had diminished greatly but on the other hand,
gambling had increased. Greater social security than any country had hitherto
known was, perhaps, a factor. One no longer needed to save for old age as, in
days gone by, a few people did.

Gambling was a lush field for the crooks and they cultivated
the field well. Improved technology had increased the number of ways of
gambling and it had increased the efficiency of ways of making gambling
crooked. Crooked gambling was big business and underworld wars and killings
occurred over territorial rights, just as they had occurred over such rights in
the far back days of Prohibition when alcohol was king. There was still
alcohol, but it was of lesser importance now. People were learning to drink
more moderately. And drugs were passe, although there was still some traffic in
them.

Robberies and burglaries still occurred, although not quite
as frequently as they had fifty years before.

Murder was slightly more frequent. Sociologists and
criminologists differed as to the reason for the increase of crime in this
category.

The weapons of the underworld had, of course, improved, but
they did not include atomics. All atomic and subatomic weapons were strictly
controlled by the military and were never used by either the police or by
criminals. They were too dangerous; the death penalty was mandatory for anyone
found in possession of an atomic weapon. But the pistols and guns of the
underworld of 1999 were quite efficient. They were much smaller and more
compact, and they were silent. Both guns and cartridges were made of superhard
magnesium and were very light. The commonest weapon was the .19 calibre
pistol—as deadly as the .45 of an earlier era because the tiny projectiles were
explosive—and even a small pocket-pistol held from fifty to a hundred rounds.

But back to Martin Blue, whose entrance into the underworld
coincided with the disappearance of Bela Joad from the latter's hotel.

Martin Blue, as it turned out, was not a very nice man. He
had no visible means of support other than gambling and he seemed to lose, in
small amounts, almost more often than he won. He almost got in trouble on a bad
check he gave to cover his losses in one game, but he managed to avoid being
liquidated by making the check good. His only reading seemed to be the
Racing
Microform
, and he drank too much, mostly in a tavern (with clandestine
gambling at the back) which formerly had been operated by Gyp Girard. He got
beaten up there once because he defended Gyp against a crack made by the
current proprietor to the effect that Gyp had lost his guts and turned honest.

For a while fortune turned against Martin Blue and he went
so broke that he had to take a job as a waiter in the outside room of a
Michigan Boulevard joint called Sloppy Joe's, possibly because Joe Zatelli, who
ran it, was the nattiest dresser in Chicago—and in the
fin de siecle
era when leopard-skin suits (synthetic but finer and more expensive than real
leopard skin) were a dime a dozen and plain pastel-silk underwear was dated.

Then a funny thing happened to Martin Blue. Joe Zatelli
killed him. Caught him, after hours, rifling the till, and just as Martin Blue
turned around, Zatelli shot him. Three times for good measure. And then
Zatelli, who never trusted accomplices, got the body into his car and deposited
it in an alley back of a teletheater.

The body of Martin Blue got up and went to see Chief Dyer Rand
and told Rand what he wanted done. "You took a hell of a chance,"
Rand said.

"Not too much of a chance," Blue said. "I'd
put blanks in his gun and I was pretty sure he'd use that. He won't ever find
out, incidentally, that the rest of the bullets in it are blanks unless he
tries to kill somebody else with it; they don't look like blanks. And I had a
pretty special vest on under my suit. Rigid backing and padded on top to feel
like flesh, but of course he couldn't feel a heartbeat through it. And it was gimmicked
to make a noise like explosive cartridges hitting—when the duds punctured the
compartments."

"But if he'd switched guns or bullets?"

"Oh, the vest was bulletproofed for anything short of
atomics. The danger was in his thinking of a fancy way of disposing of the
body. If he had, I could have taken care of myself, of course, but it would
have spoiled the plan and cost me three months' build-up. But I'd studied his
style and I was pretty sure what he'd do. Now here's what I want you to do,
Dyer—"