Mack Reynolds - Once Departed

Quint said, “So?”

“So, what’s the dope that you have that you wouldn’t tell me yesterday? Maybe you can reword it a little so you won’t be betraying any confidence.”

Quint was silent, scowling to himself. He shook his head in an attempt to achieve complete clarity.

Mike said urgently, “Especially, what’s the jazz about Martin Bormann and Doktor Stahlecker?”

The columnist shifted in his bed, uncomfortably. “Well, I was told a bit more about this Doc Stahlecker last night. It seems as if this is the doctor who patched Hitler up when he was blown to smithereens by the German generals in 1944. Sewed an arm on him and that sort of thing.”

Mike said nothing. Obviously digesting.

Quint said impatiently. “Evidently Doktor Stahlecker is almost as big an authority on organ transplants and such as Professor Ferencsik. What do I have to do, draw you a blueprint?”

Mike said, “Jesus.”

Quint said sarcastically, “May I suggest you get your fanny over to wherever it is Nicolas Ferencsik is staying and interview him on the question of just why he’s come to Spain, of all places?”

Mike grunted, “Uh huh. Swell.”

“Well, what’s more obvious?”

“Nothing, except Ferencsik absolutely refuses to see all reporters.”

“Pull some wires. Get hold of Joe Garcia or somebody and make some hints. Put some pressure to bear on the guy. Lean on him. He obviously knows plenty.”

The reporter said, “I’ll let you in on a secret, chum. Nobody, but nobody, twists the arm of a guy with as big a name as Nobel Prize winning Professor Ferencsik. This is a nasty world we live in, but not even here in Spain would the public allow the authorities to give Nicolas Ferencsik a hard time. It’d be like lowering the boom on Einstein, or Albert Schweitzer. Any more bright ideas?”

Quint Jones scratched himself unhappily through his pajamas. His mouth tasted like last week’s crop of maggots. He said, “Listen, where is Ferencsik staying?”

“What do you mean, where is he staying? He’s staying at the Dempsey’s, of course.”

“The Dempsey’s . You mean Marty and Ferd’s? A man with an international name like that!”

“Friend, you must have come in late. How’d you think Marty and Ferd ever got him to come to a party at their place? He’s living with them. He’s old family friends of Marty’s people. Her old man, way back before the war, before Hungary went commie, financed some deal of Nicolas Ferencsik before he got famous. Staked him to a lot of dough for research materials and all. He’s got a soft spot for Marty, or something. Knew her when she was a girl.”

Quint pursed his lips, as though to whistle. He said, “Okay, Mike, I’ll see what I can do. Call you back later.”

Mike Woolman sneered. “Oh, you think you can get in to see him, where I can’t, hey? Let me tell you friend, when Ferencsik says he won’t see reporters, believe me, he won’t see reporters.”

“That’s because you reporters don’t bathe, don’t gargle your throats in the morning and are illiterate clods.” Quint told him earnestly. “Now a columnist is something else again.”

“Go marry your mother,” Mike told him and hung up.

Quint grinned at the phone for a minute before returning it to its place. He grunted and swung his legs over the side of bed and fumbled his feet around for his slippers. They weren’t in their usual place. He grunted again and made his way to the kitchen barefooted. At least he didn’t have a blockbuster hangover this time. Marylyn Worth must have spotted him right at the crucial time and got him there to Botin’s and some food into him.

Nice girl, if she wasn’t so square, he told himself as he fished a bitterly cold bottle of coke from his refrigerator. Coffee for others, but the morning after he’d been drinking, it was coke for him. As a matter of fact, he had read somewhere, in a consumer’s union report, or something, that there was three and half times as much caffeine in a bottle of coke as there was in a cup of coffee. Be that as it may, it settled his stomach and gave him a lift.

He finished the coke and started breakfast proper a-going. That was another bit of wisdom he’d accumulated over the years. To get over a binge, get hot food into your stomach as soon as possible. Once you’ve been able to hold two hot meals down, the hangover is through.

When he’d forced down two eggs and some Spanish bacon—which he despised—along with some toast, he felt moderately better. Bacon, he remembered all over again, was the one thing he wished he could get into the American PX for. Except for the Danes and British, the Europeans didn’t have the word on bacon.

Breakfast safely down, he went into the bathroom to shower, shave and brush his teeth. He wished the hell he knew more about Nicolas Ferencsik’s subject, organ transplants. He wondered if it would be possible—if he was able to get an interview with him at all—to bring Marylyn in on it. As a science teacher, she evidently kept up on all fields, including recent medical developments. He had her phone number out at the base, but, as he recalled, this was first day at school, and he doubted there was any way to get her away before evening.

Thinking of Marylyn brought back her conversation of the evening before. As he dressed, he thought about her. Who was he to call the girl a square?

Now that he thought of it, the very term irritated him. When he was a boy, the word square meant honest, a person of integrity. Now it had come to mean somebody who was stupid, not with it, old fashioned. What had happened to our civilization when a honest man was sneered at?

And maybe she was right about him. By modern criteria, he was a celebrity. He had it made. He earned more money than he knew what to do with. Could travel anywhere he wanted, or live anywhere he wished. He had made it.

Yeah?

He went back to the phone and rang the Dempsey phone number.

A maid answered. “ Digame ?”

“ For favor, senorita, deseo hablar con Senor Dempsey ,” Quint told her.

“Un momento, por favor.”

Ferd Dempsey, his voice slurring, was on the line. “Hello, hello, hello. You must be selling something. Nobody I know’d be up this early.”

“Ferd,” Quint said. “This is Quint Jones.”

“Oh yeah, hi Quint. What’s the deal? Brother, it was rugged last night. A bunch of us were over the Hilton and guess who turned up? Remember that queer muscle man movie star, was here doing the lead in that show about Cortes and the Aztecs and all? Well, he’s back in town. Talmadge. Clark Talmadge. He’s going to do another movie with Clara Lucciola that wop star, with old Manny King directing. They were all there, and Bert Fix, the flack and Lonny Bait the photographer. Anyway, we started at the Hilton and then Manny said how about coming up to his place. He had some real Swiss absinthe. The real old stuff. So we took along a couple of bottles to last us till we got there. He’s got a hell of a big estate in Mirasierra. Big swimming pool and all. Christ did we laugh. We threw Clark in the pool and then we all stood around the edge and when he tried to get out, we’d give him a drink, but we wouldn’t let him out until he could prove he was too swacked to swim. It was a riot. Then about two o’clock in the morning, Marty decided what we needed was a weiner roast, but nobody had any weiners, so we all got back in the cars and…”

Quint listened for awhile, his face expressionless. He could have heard substantially the same report from Ferd Dempsey five days out of seven. Or from Marty, for that matter. Or from four out of five of his Madrid acquaintances.

He said, finally, when the other stopped for breath, “Listen, Ferd. What I wanted to ask you about. Professor Ferencsik is staying with you, right?”