"Of course," Malone said, "you'll be on call in case I need you."
"I am always in touch with my subjects," Her Majesty said with dignity, "and most especially with you, Sir Kenneth. I shall so remain."
And then there was a little paperwork to take care of. By the time Malone had finished, he would have been glad to teleport to New York on his own. But on reflection he decided that he would much rather travel with Lou, and hurried down to the airport.
By the time the plane landed at La Guardia, and they'd taken a 'copter to the East Side Terminal and a taxi to the big blue-aluminum-and-glass Ravell Building, Malone had reached a new decision. It would be nothing short of wonderful, he felt, if he could spend the rest of his life traveling around with Luba Garbitsch.
Of course, that name was something of a handicap. It was hardly a romantic one. He wondered, very briefly, whether or not "Luba Malone" were an improvement. But he buried the thought before it got any further. Enough, he told himself firmly, was enough.
"It's been a nice trip," Lou said. She, too, sounded subdued, as if she were thinking about something terribly serious.
"Great," Malone said happily. "A wonderful trip."
"I enjoyed being with you," Lou said.
"Me, too," Malone said. He paid off the taxi-driver and they got out at the corner. Malone went to the newsstand there and picked up a copy of the Post.
"That," Lou said over his shoulder, "is one whole hell of a headline."
It filled the entire page, four lines of thick black capitals:
JUDGE DROPS UNION SUIT!
"Well, well," Malone said. "Let's see what this is all about." He flipped to page three. Lou craned her neck over his shoulder and they read the start of the story together.
DISTRICT COURT RULES UNION HAS NO CASE
New York (AP), August 23. Judge James Lefkowitz of the New York Supreme Court ruled today that the International Truckers' Brotherhood had no grounds for their suit against the United Transport Corp. and its officers. The action, a bitterly fought contest, involved a complaint by the Brotherhood that UTC had violated their contract with the Brotherhood by hiring "unqualified drivers" to work for the corporation.
In a statement made immediately after the ruling, Judge Lefkowitz said: "It is obvious that a man with a state-certified chauffeur's license is not an 'unqualified driver.'"
Effects of this ruling are thought to be far-reaching. Comment from the international Truckers' Brotherhood...
There was more to it, a lot more, but Malone didn't feel like reading it. It sounded just as confused as he expected news to sound these days, but it also sounded a little dull. He could feel Lou's breathing against his ear as he read, and he lost interest in the paper almost at once.
"My, my," she said. "And I expected a real exposé of a story, after that headline."
"This is an exposé," Malone said. "But I'm not sure what of."
"It sounds pretty confused," Lou said.
"Everything seems to, these days," Malone said. "Including any story of what's been happening during the last little while."
"Agreed," Lou said. "Without argument."
"Listen," Malone said suddenly. "Would it help if I went up and told Sir Lewis that there's no mark against your record?"
"Mark?" Lou said. "Against my record?"
"Well," Malone said, "I mean--well, he isn't the sort of man who'd fire somebody, because of--because of something like this?"
"You mean because I know an FBI man?" Lou said.
"I--"
"Never mind," she said. "I know what you mean. And he won't. He'll understand." She came round to face him, and patted his cheek. "Thanks," she said. "Thanks a lot, anyway."
"If there's anything I can do--"
"There won't be," Lou said. "You'll call me, though, about tonight?"
"Sure I will," Malone said. He hoped that the tentative date he'd made with her for that evening wouldn't be broken up because of a sudden onslaught of work. "I'll let you know before five, for sure."
"Fine," Lou said. "I'll wait to hear from you."
She turned to walk away.
"Hey," Malone said. "Wait a minute."
"What?" she said, turning again.
Malone looked judicious. "I think," he said weightily, "that, considering all the fun we've had, and all the adventuring and everything else, the least you could do would be to kiss me goodbye."
"On Fifth Avenue?"
"No," Malone said. He tapped his lips. "Here."
She laughed, bent closer and pecked him on the cheek. Then, before he could say anything else, she was gone.
Chapter 10
On the way to FBI Headquarters on 69th Street, he read the Post a little more carefully. The judge and his union suit weren't the only things that were fouled up, he saw. Things were getting pretty bad all over.
One story dealt with the recent factional fights inside the American Association for the Advancement of Medicine. A new group, the United States Medical-Professional Society, appeared to be forming as a competitor to the AAAM, and Malone wasn't quite so sure, when he thought about it, that this news was as bad as it appeared on the surface. Fights between doctors, of course, were reasonably rare, at least on the high hysterical level the story appeared to pinpoint. But the AAAM had held a monopoly in the medical field for a long time; maybe it was about time some competition showed itself. From what he could find out in the story, the USMPS seemed like a group of fairly sensible people.
But that was one of the few rays of light Malone could discern amid the encircling bloom of the news. The gang wars had reached a new high; the Post was now publishing what it called a Daily Scoreboard, which consisted in this particular paper of six deaths, two disappearances and ten hospitalizations. The six deaths were evenly scattered throughout the country: two in New York, one each in Chicago and Detroit, and two more in San Francisco. The disappearances were in Los Angeles and in Miami, and the hospitalizations were pretty much all over.
The unions had been having trouble, too. Traditional forms of controversy appeared to have gone out the window, in favor of startling disclosures, beatings, wild cries of foul and great masses of puzzling evidence. How, for instance, Malone wondered, had the president of Local 7574 of the Fishermen's Fraternal Brotherhood managed to mislay a pile of secret records, showing exactly how the membership was being bilked of dues, on a Boston subway train? But, somehow, he had, and the records were now causing shakeups, denials and trouble among the fishermen.
Of course, the news was not all bad. There were always the comic strips. Pogo was busily staving off an approaching wedding between Albert Alligator and a new character named Tranquil Portly, who appeared to be a brown bear. He was running into some resistance, though, from a wolflike character