It worked once more with a uniformed policeman. One of the Chicago
plain-clothes imports was the third and last. He socked Charles in the
jaw and sent him on his way with a kick in the rear. He had been
thoroughly warned that it would probably happen: "Count on them to
over-react. That's the key to it. You'll make them so eager to assert
their own virility, that it'll temporarily bury their primary mission.
It's quite likely that one or more pokes will be taken at you. All you
can do is take them. If you get--_when_ you get through, they'll be
cheap at the price."
The sock in the jaw hadn't been very expert. The kick in the pants was
negligible, considering the fact that it had propelled him through the
gate of the Michigan City Transport Terminal.
By the big terminal clock the Chicago-Buffalo Express was due in fifteen
minutes. Its gleaming single rail, as tall as a man crossed the far end
of the concourse. Most of the fifty-odd people in the station were
probably Buffalo-bound ... safe geldings who could be trusted to visit
Syndic Territory, off the leash and return obediently. Well-dressed, of
course, and many past middle-age, with a stake in the Mob Territory
stronger than hope of freedom. One youngster, though--oh. It was Lee,
leaning, slack-jawed, against a pillar and reading the Green Sheet.
Who were the cops in the crowd? The thickset man with restless eyes, of
course. The saintly-looking guy who kept moving and glancing into faces.
Charles went to the newsstand and put a coin in the slot for _The Mob--A
Short History_, by the same Arrowsmith Hunde who had brightened and
misinformed his youth.
Nothing to it, he thought. Train comes in, put your money in the
turnstile, show your permit to the turnstile's eye, get aboard and
that-is-that. Unless the money is phony, or the pass is phony in which
case the turnstile locks and all hell breaks loose. His money was just
dandy, but the permit now--there hadn't been any way to test it against
a turnstile's template, or time to do it if there had been a way. Was
the probability of boarding two to one?
The probability abruptly dropped to zero as a round little man flanked
by two huge men entered the station.
_Commander Grinnel._
The picture puzzle fell into a whole as the two plainclothesmen
circulating in the station eyed Grinnel and nodded to him. The big one
absent-mindedly made a gesture that was the start of a police salute.
Grinnel was Maurice Regan--the Maurice Regan mysteriously unknown to
Oliver, who knew the Chicago police. Grinnel was a bit of a lend-lease
from the North American Navy, called in because of his unique knowledge
of Charles Orsino and Lee Falcaro, their faces, voices and behavior.
Grinnel was the expert in combing the city without any nonsense about
rights and mouthpieces. Grinnel was the expert who could set up a
military interior guard of the city. Grinnel was the specialist
temporarily invested with the rank of a Regan so he could do his job.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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