Randall Garrett

“ Sternly telling himself that he was stopping there to make a phone call, a business phone call, and not to have a drink, he marched right past the friendly bartender and went into the phone booth, where he made a call to New York Police Commissioner John Henry Fernack.
Fernack's face was that of an old man, but there was no telling how old. The early seventies was one guess, Malone imagined; the late fifties might be another. He looked tough, as if he had spent all of his life trying to persuade other people that he was young enough for the handball tournament. ”

“ By God, he told himself, no car in the world—not even a Cadillac—can get away with beaning Kenneth J. Malone!
Malone was not quite certain that he agreed with Burris' idea of a self-operating car, but at least it was something to work on. A car that could reach out, crown an investigator, and then drive off humming something innocent under its breath was certainly a unique and dangerous machine within the meaning of the act. ”

“ Fernack said. "Bars are only part of it. Malone, why are you asking me to tell you this?"
"Because I want to know," Malone said patiently.
"I still think—" Fernack began, and then said, "Never mind.. But it hasn't been only bars. Supermarkets. Homes. Cleaning and tailoring shops. Jewelers. Hell, Malone, you name it and it's been hit."
Malone tried valiantly to resist temptation, but he was not at his best, and he lost. "All right," he said. "I will name it. Here's a list of places that haven't even been touched by the rising crime wave. Banks, for one." ”

“ Malone felt all choked up.
None of the Silent Spooks drank. He remembered Kettleman telling him that. And the Queen never touched the stuff either.
"What's wrong?" Boyd said.
"Malone, you look green."
"I feel green," Malone said. "I feel like newly sprung grass. I feel as if I had just hatched out of something. I feel wonderful."
"It's the strain," Boyd said. "That's what it is, strain. You've cracked at last."
Malone ignored him. "Tell me," he said to Dorothea with elaborate casualness, "when your brother says that, what does he mean?" ”

“ I ended up in Greenwich Village—which is a hell of a place for a self-respecting man to end up."
"I know just what you mean," Sam said sympathetically. "Bohemians, they call themselves. Crazy people."
"Not the people," Malone said. "The streets. I got sort of lost." Chicago, he reflected, was a long way from the easiest city in the world to get around in. And he supposed you could even get confused in Washington if you tried hard enough. But he knew those cities. He could find his way around in them. Greenwich Village was different. ”

“ He hung up and went back to the bar, walking very carefully.
"Well?" Dorothy said. "Where do we go tonight? Joe's hot-dog stand? Or a revival of The Wild Duck in a loft on Bleecker Street?"
There was pride in Malone's manner as he stood there on his feet.
There was just a touch of hauteur as he said, "We'll see Hot Seat."
And he was repaid for all of the Agent-in-Charge's efforts. Dorothy's eyes went wide with appreciation and awe. "My goodness," she said. "A man of his word—and what a tough word, too! Mr. Malone, I congratulate you."
"Nothing," Malone said. "A mere absolute nothing." ”

“ It made him feel as if Leibowitz liked him, and approved of him. He grinned back.
"But a coat of paint isn't very much," Malone said.
"It doesn't have to be very much," Leibowitz said. "Not these days. I've often told Emily—that's my wife, Mr. Malone—that I could hide a TV circuit under her lipstick. Not that there would be any use in it; but the techniques are there. Mr. Malone. And if your conjecture is correct, someone is using them."
"Oh," Malone said. "Sure. But you can find the circuits, if they're there?"
Leibowitz nodded slowly. "We can, Mr. Malone," he said. "They betray themselves. ”

“ Fernack said. "It doesn't succeed in looking anything but horrible. You remind me of a convicted murderer trying to steal thirty cents from the prison chaplain."
"What would I have to do with all these crimes?" Malone said. "And what kind of crimes were they, anyway?"
"What you'd have to do with them," Fernack said, "is an unanswered question. And so long as it remains unanswered, Malone, you're safe. But when I come up with enough facts to answer it—"
"Don't be silly. Commissioner," Malone said. "How about those crimes?
What kind were they?"
"Burglaries," Fernack said. ”

“ Ray was down at the other end of the bar, chatting with a red-headed woman and her pale, bald escort. Malone sighed and set himself to the job of serious, constructive thinking.
How, he asked himself, do you go about catching a person who can vanish away like so much smoke?
Well, Malone could think of one solution, but it was pretty bloody.
Nailing the kids to a wall would probably work, but he couldn't say much else for it. There had to be another way out. For some reason, Malone just couldn't see himself with a mouthful of nails, a hammer, and a teen-ager. ”

“ Mike Fueyo's sister dresses fit to kill, like a high-fashion model. And the Grito kid—"
"Wait a minute," Malone said. "From what you tell me, this isn't just a little extra money. These kids must be rolling in the stuff. Up to their ears in dough."
"Listen," Lynch said sadly, "Those kids spend more than I do. Hell, they do better than that—they spend more than I earn." He looked remotely sorry for himself, but not for long. "Every one of those kids spends like a drunken sailor, tossing his money away on all sorts of things." ”

“ There was a crick in his neck, but he decided he could stand it. "My head still hurts," he said accusingly.
"Sure it still hurts," the doctor agreed.
"But you—"
"What did you expect?" the doctor said. "Even an FBI agent isn't immune to blackjacks, you know." He resumed his work on Malone's skull.
"Blackjacks?" Malone said. "What blackjacks?"
"The ones that hit you," the doctor said. "Or the one, anyhow."
Malone blinked. Somehow, though he could manage a fuzzy picture of a car reaching out to hit him, the introduction of a blackjack into this imaginative effort confused things a little. ”

“ Kettleman said, "working on an individual basis with these—social groups that the adolescents have formed. It's my job to make friends with them, become accepted by them, and try to turn their hostile impulses toward society into more useful, more acceptable channels."
"I see," Malone said, feeling that something was expected of him.
"That's fine."
"Oh, we don't expect praise, we social workers," Kettleman said instantly. "The worth of a good job well done, that's enough for us." ”

“ Lynch said grudgingly. "How old are they?" Malone said.
"Fourteen to seventeen," Lynch said. "Somewhere in there. You know how these kid things run."
"The Silent Spooks," Malone said meditatively. It was a nice name, in a way; you just had to get used to it for a while. When he had been a kid, he'd belonged to a group that called itself the East Division Street Kids. There just wasn't much romance in a name like that. Now the Silent Spooks...
With a wrench, he brought his mind back to the subject at hand. "Do they get into much trouble?" he said. ”

“ Of course, there had been someone in the car when it had been driving along the West Side Highway. Someone who had teleported himself right out of the car when it had gone over the embankment.
That, of course, meant that there would be no secret machines found in the red Cadillacs Leibowitz and Hardin were examining now. But Malone had already decided to let that phase of things go on. First of all, it was always possible that he was wrong, and that some such machine really did exist. Second, even if they didn't find a machine, they might find something else. ”

“ People were polite to their bosses, she pointed out, even though they were perfectly sure that they could do a better job than the bosses were doing.
So she insisted on the surface pretense that Malone was going through, treating her like a Queen.
The psychiatrists had called her delusion a beautifully rationalized one. As far as Malone was concerned, it made more sense than most of real life.
"That's very nice of you, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said. "But I ask you again, what kind of detective are you? Haven't you got any common sense at all?" ”

“ All we want to do is talk to them for awhile."
"All right," she whispered back.
"They can vanish any time they want to," Malone said, "so there's no reason for them not to listen to—"
He stopped suddenly, listening. Over the shouting, screaming, and cursing of the kids, he heard motion on the floor below.
Cops?
It couldn't be, he told himself. But when he took out his radiophone, his hands were shaking a little.
Lynch's voice was already coming over it when Malone thumbed it on.
"...so hang on, Malone! I repeat: We heard the ruckus, and we're coming in! We're on our way! Hang on, Malone!" ”

“ Lighting a cigarette—and wishing he were alone in his own room, so that he could smoke a cigar and not have to worry about looking dashing and alert—Malone strolled out of the office with a final wave to Boyd. He was thinking about Mike Fueyo, and he stopped his chain of reasoning just long enough to look in at the office of the Agent-in-Charge, and ask him to pry loose two tickets for The Hot Seat for that night.
"My God," the agent said. He was a tall thin man who looked as if he suffered from chronic stomach trouble. "You must be crazy. ”

“ Lynch said, brushing Malone's question away with a wave of his hand. "So now I hear all this stuff from Kettleman. And it begins to add up. The kids can disappear somehow, and reappear some place else. Walk through walls?" He shrugged. "How should I know? But they can sure as hell do something like it." ”

“ If the process is at all parallel with psychokinesis, or with levitation"—he stared at Malone, as if daring him to say that it wasn't—"if that parallel exists, then the subject is mentally limited by his own physical strength."
Malone said, "What?"
"Try and be patient, Mr. Malone," O'Connor said calmly. "Please. As I was saying, the subject is limited by his own physical strength. In other words, he cannot move psionically any subject larger than he can lift physically. ”

“ Spooks didn't get into trouble. They didn't have to.
They could get into any place big enough to hold them, take what they wanted and just disappear. They'd been doing it for about eight months, according to the figures Malone had received from Fernack; maybe teleportative ability didn't develop until you were around fourteen or fifteen.
But it had developed in these kids—and they were using it in the most obvious way. They had a sure method of getting away from the cops, and a sure method of taking anything they wanted. No wonder they had so much money. ”

“ Malone said.
"Well," Leibowitz said, and chuckled, "quite large enough to locate without trouble, at any rate. They're very hard to conceal. And the leads from the brain to the power controls are even easier to find—comparatively speaking, of course."
"Of course," Malone said.
"All the brain does, you see," Leibowitz said, "is control the mechanism that steers the car. But it takes real power to steer—a great deal more than it does to compute the steering." ”

“ Her gaze never wavered. "You know he is not," she said. "Ten minutes ago the policemen were taking him away to the police station. How then could he be here?"
"Ten minutes ago?" Malone blinked. Ten minutes ago he had been looking for this apartment. Probably it hadn't taken Lynch's men ten minutes to find it; they weren't strangers in New York. "He was arrested?" Malone said.
"I said so, didn't I?" the woman said. "You must be crazy or else something." Her eyes were still cold points, but Malone suddenly saw a glow behind them, the glow of tears. Mike was her son. ”

“ Malone hadn't moved at all when the two cops came along.
One of them was a big man with a brassy voice and a face that looked as if it had been overbaked in a waffle iron. He came up behind Malone and tapped him on the shoulder, but Malone barely felt the touch. Then the cop bellowed into Malone's ear: "What's the matter, buddy?" ”

“ Fernack said. "I'd like a little information too, you know. I'd like to know just what the hell is going on, if it isn't too much trouble."
"It's not that, John Henry," Malone said earnestly. "Really. It's just that I—"
"All this about vanishing boys," Fernack said. "Disappearing into thin air. All this nonsense."
"It isn't nonsense," Malone said.
"All right," Fernack said indulgently. "Boys disappear every day like that. Sure they do." He leaned toward the screen and his voice was as hard as his face. "Malone, are these kids mixed up with those impossible robberies you had me looking up?" ”