Robert Wilson - The Illuminatus! Trilogy

"When I reached the can, the boy came at me," Drake drawled, his mild erection becoming warm and rubbery. "What happened to the other sixteen?" He hung up quickly. ("The analysis is brilliant," Professor Tochus at Harvard had said of his paper on the last words of Dutch Schultz. "I particularly like the way you've combined both Freud and Adler in finding sexuality and power drives expressed in the same image at certain places. That is quite original." Drake laughed and said: "The Marquis de Sade anticipated me by a century and a half, I fear. Power- and possession- are sexual, to some males.")

Drake's brilliance had also been noted by Jung's circle in Zurich. Once- when Drake was off taking mescaline with Paul Klee and friends on what they called their Journey to the East- Drake had been a topic of long and puzzled conversation in lung's study. "We haven't seen his like since Joyce was here," one woman psychiatrist commented. "He is brilliant, yes," Jung said sadly, "but evil. So evil that I despair of comprehending him. I even wonder what old Freud would think. This man doesn't want to murder his father and possess his mother; he wants to murder God and possess the cosmos."

Maldonado got two phone calls the third morning. The first was from Louis Lepke, and was crudely vehement: "What's up, Banana Nose?" The insult of using the forbidden nickname in personal conversation was deliberate and almost unforgivable, but Maldonado forgave it.

"You spotted my boys following you, eh?" he asked genially.

"I spotted your soldiers," Lepke emphasized the word, "and that means you wanted me to spot them. What's up? You know if I get hit, you get hit."

"You won't get hit, caromio," Don Federico replied, still cordial. "I had a crazy idea about something I thought might be coming from inside and you're the only one who would know enough to do it, I thought. I was wrong. I can tell by your voice. And if I was right, you wouldn't have called me. A million apologies. Nobody will be following you anymore. Except maybe Tom Dewey's investigators, eh?" he laughed.

"Okay," Lepke said slowly, "Call them off, and I'll forget it. But don't try to scare me again. I do crazy things when I'm scared."

"Never again," Maldonado promised.

He sat frowning at the phone, after Lepke hung up. Now I owe him, he thought. I'll have to arrange to bump off somebody who's annoying him, to show the proper and most courteous apology.

But, Virgin Mother, if it isn't the Butcher, who is it? A real witch?

The phone rang again. Crossing himself and calling on the Virgin silently, Maldonado lifted the receiver.

"Let him harness himself to you and then bother you," Robert Putney Drake quoted pleasantly, "fun is fun." He did not hang up.

"Listen," Don Federico said, "who is this?"

"Dutch died three times," Drake said in a sepulchral tone. "When Mendy Weiss shot him, when Vince Coil's ghost shot him and when that dumb junkie, the Teacher, shot him. But Dillinger never even died once."

"Mister, you got a deal," Maldonado said. "I'm sold. I'll meet you anywhere. In broad daylight. In Central Park. Any place you'll feel safe."

"No, you will not meet me just now," Drake said coolly. "You are going to discuss this with Mr. Lepke and Mr. Capone, first. You will also discuss it with-" he read, off a card in his hand, fifteen names. "Then, after you have all had time to consider it, you will be hearing from me." Drake farted, as he always did in the nervous moments when an important deal was being arranged, and hung up quickly.

Now, he said to himself, insurance.

A photostat of his second analysis of the last words of Dutch Schultz- the private one, not the public version which he had turned in to the Department of Psychology at Harvard- was on the hotel desk before him. He folded it smartly and pinned on top of it a note saying, "There are five copies in the vaults of five different banks." He then inserted it in an envelope, addressed it to Luciano and strolled out to drop it down the hotel mail chute.

Returning to his room he dialed Louis Lepke, born Louis Buchalter, of the organization later to be named Murder Inc. by the sensational press. When Lepke answered, Drake recited solemnly, still quoting the Dutchman, "I get a month. They did it. Come on, Illuminati."

"Who the hell is this?" Lepke's voice cried as Drake gently cradled the phone. A few moments later, he completed checking out of the hotel and flew home on the noon flight, to spend five grueling twenty-hour days reorganizing and streamlining his father's bank. On the fifth night he relaxed and took a young lady of the Lodge family to dance to Ted Weems's orchestra and listen to their new young vocalist, Perry Como. Afterwards, he fucked her thirteen to the dozen and seven ways to a Sunday. The next morning, he took out a small book, in which he had systematically listed all the richest families in America, and placed her first name and a check after Lodge, as he had done with Morgan the week before. A Rockefeller would be next.

He was on the noon flight to New York and spent the day negotiating with Morgan Trust officials. That night he saw a breadline on Fortieth Street and became profoundly agitated. Back in his hotel, he made one of his rare, almost furtive diary entries:

Revolution could occur at any time.

If Huey Long hadn't been shot last year, we might have it already. If Capone had let the Dutchman hit Dewey, the Justice Department would be strong enough now, due to the reaction, to ensure that the State would be secure. If Roosevelt can't maneuver us into the war when it starts, all will be lost. And the war may be three or four years away yet. If we could bring Dillinger back, the reaction might strengthen Hoover and Justice, but John seems to be with the other side. My plan may be the last chance, and the Illuminati haven't contacted me yet, although they must have tuned in. Oh, Weishaupt, what a spawn of muddleheads are trying to carry on your work.

He tore the page out nervously, farted and crumbled it in the ashtray, where he burned it slowly. Then, still agitated, he dialed Mr. Charles Luciano on the phone and said softly, "I am a pretty good pretzler, Winifred. Department of Justice. I even got it from the department."

"Don't hang up," Luciano said softly. "We've been waiting to hear from you. Are you still there?"

"Yes," Drake said carefully, with tight lips and a tighter sphincter.

"Okay," Mr. Lucky said. "You know about the Illuminati. You know what the Dutchman was trying to say to the police. You even seem to know about the Liberteri and Johnnie Dillinger. How much do you want?"

"Everything," Drake replied. "And you are all going to offer it to me. But not yet. Not tonight." And he hung up.

(The wheel of tune, as the Mayans knew, spins three ways; and just as the earth revolves on its own axis, simultaneously orbits about the sun and at the "same" time trails after the sun as that star traverses the galaxy's edge, the wheel of time, which is a wheel of ifs, is come round again, as Drake's phone clicks off, to Gruad the Grayface calculating the path of a comet and telling his followers: "See? Even the heavenly bodies are subject to law, and even the lloigor, so must not men and women also be subject to law?" And in a smaller cycle, Semper Cuni Linctus, centurion stationed in a godforsaken outpost of the Empire, listens in boredom as a subaltern tells him excitedly: "That guy we crucified last Friday-people all over town are swearing they've seen him walking around. One guy even claims to have put a hand through his side!" Semper Cuni Linctus smiles cynically. "Tell that to the gladiators," he says. And Albert Stern turns on the gas, takes one last fix, and full of morphine and euphoria, dies slowly, confident that he will always be remembered as the man who shot Dutch Schultz, not knowing that Abe Reles will reveal the truth five years later.)