Part 2

The doorman smiled and tipped his hat. At first Heck, who smiled back a little self-consciously, did not know how the maroon-uniformed doorman knew him. But then he saw a big full-color portrait of himself hanging just to the left of the bank of elevators. Apparently the blonde had found it somewhere, or had had it made from a snapshot. The blonde thought of everything.

Heck got into the elevator. It was crowded with white-collar workers all of whom, Heck realized with a start, worked for him. They'd been talking animatedly when he entered the car, but the talk settled quickly into nervous silence. After all, weren't they in the presence of The Boss?

When the elevator got to the top floor and when the last of the other passengers got off, Heck stepped out on a plush red carpet and across it through a gate and past a row of smiling secretaries to an opaque-glass-walled suite of offices marked with the legend: _Executive Offices_.

There must have been half a dozen secretaries and clerks in the large ante-room. All were busy. All were gorgeous. If the blonde was responsible for hiring them, the blonde had taste. And obviously wasn't the jealous type. Or perhaps, Heck thought, Baldid had done the hiring. Or perhaps the girls just came with the building. Were they Earth girls? wondered Heck, or girls from the blonde's world? He found himself sighing with contentment. If they all had a collective moral sense the equal of the blonde's.... But what am I thinking? There's Patty. Isn't there?

* * * * *

"... waiting for you," a voice said.

"Er, what was that?" Heck realized that the secretary closest to the door leading to the Executive Offices had spoken to him.

"I said, sir, there is a Miss O'Conner waiting for you in your office."

Patty, Heck thought. He gulped. How had Patty learned of his new business so quickly? He was going to tell her, of course, but not immediately. He needed time to think. Unprepared, how could you explain a setup like this to a girl like Patty?

"... has called twice," the secretary was saying.

"I--uh--whom did you say has called twice?"

"Miss Laara, sir. The procurement agent."

"Ah, yes. Miss Laara. I'd better see her. At once. Yes. Yes, at once. Don't tell Miss O'Conner...."

Just then the door to the Executive Offices opened. An angry Patty stood there, hands on hips. "Don't tell Miss O'Conner what?" she demanded. "Heck, are you trying to avoid me?"

"Why, no, sweetheart. Whatever--"

Then Patty's face changed. The anger and the certainty were replaced by a small-girl look of surprise and awe. "Heck," she said in a soft voice, "what is all this? What has happened to you? How--how can you afford a setup that could bankrupt Amos Weatherby?"

"I can explain everything," Heck said, realizing how ridiculous and incriminating the words sound. "No, I mean it, I can." Of course he could. But whether she believed or not was another story.

"Now?" Patty asked.

"Not now. Right now I'm busy."

Patty had a new expression on her face. Hurt look. "At least give me some idea," she pleaded.

Heck stared at her blankly. There was nothing he could say. She would never believe his story about Mr. Baldid. Who in his right mind would? "I--I saved up!" he said, blurting the words.

"Saved up? If you'd been saving half your paycheck since I met you you couldn't have put a down payment on just the furniture in this one room. Heck! Heck, you're lying to me!"

He didn't deny it. He stared at Patty and shrugged his shoulders and adjusted his tie and teleported. The last thing he saw was Patty's very angry face....

* * * * *

Heck re-materialized in the Procurement Office, or rather in the waiting room of the procurement office. He looked around. He shuddered. He wanted to run.

The faces. You didn't have to study the WANTED posters in the post offices to recognize them. They were all of a type--and the type belonged on wanted posters. They were hard faces, brutal faces, cynical faces. They went with big, powerful bodies and heavily-padded, loud-styled clothing. They went with suspicious jacket-bulges and unreadable expressions. They went with organized crime.

The secretary, a very small brunette in a low-cut dress, did not seem to mind. In fact, she seemed a shade disappointed when Heck's comparatively small form pushed its way through to her desk. "There's something?" she said, then gave Heck a closer scrutiny. "Mr. Finch! I'm sorry, sir. I didn't recognize you."

"Is Miss Laara in?"

"Yes, sir. Of course. Interviewing, sir."

"For what?"

The receptionist stared at him in surprise. "For the procurement staff, naturally. Shall I tell Miss Laara you're here?"

"No. I'll go right in, thanks."

And Heck went to the door, and opened it.

"... ten percent of the price received for all material procured by you," Miss Laara, her blonde hair in an upsweep and harlequin glasses perched on her pretty nose, was saying.

She looked up. "Oh, hi. Hi, Heck."

Heck grunted, sat down in the one empty chair. The second visitor's chair in the room was well-filled by the enormous bulk of one of the hoodlum types being interviewed for the procurement staff. "Gee, lady," he said. "I dunno. Ten percent ain't so hot. If we was to sell to a fence we could figure on maybe thirty percent of the value of the merchandise."

* * * * *

"Sure, but working with a fence is catch as catch can. I guarantee you a steady market. Besides, you will also be guaranteed a capture-proof method of procurement. I already explained that to you."

"Prohibition was never like this," said the thug.

"Well, what do you say, my man? Come, come. There are others. If you don't want--"

"Naw, I didn't say that. I guess I'll take the deal. Only, lemme see that trick again. Walk through that wall."

"I already told you it wasn't really walking through walls. It is teleporting."

"Teleporting, shmeleporting. Gimme the gadget."

"There is no gadget. You are now working for us. You can teleport. And your specialty, Mr. Manetti--?"

"Tires. Automobile tires." Manetti walked toward the wall, chuckling happily.

"We'll expect a shipment today."

"Today? But--"

"You can teleport it, remember?"

Manetti nodded his head, got halfway to the wall and disappeared.

Laara flashed a smile. "How'm I doing, Heck?"

* * * * *

"I don't know. I just don't know."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Laara asked in a hurt voice. "By noon I ought to have the whole procurement force, and you say--"

"Crooks. Gangsters."

"What did you expect, a staff of Little Lord Fauntleroys? After all, if they have to burgle--"

"Burgle!"

"Of course. We don't have any working capital. How do you expect to get any merchandise to sell? We burgle it--but safely--via teleportation."

"That's against the law," Heck said.

Laara looked at him blankly. "Is it? Do you really care?"

"I really, definitely, truly care! Call off your procurement force, Laara. That's an order. Go out and get us some money."

"Where?"

"Why, from Baldid, of course."

"But Baldid doesn't have any money."

"No? No money?" Heck said in alarm.

"But I can get some. I can rob a bank via teleportation. Shall I go now?"

"No." Heck cried. "Don't do that. I didn't mean like that. Dismiss the staff. Forget the whole thing. I'll get a job. Maybe Jason Spooner will hire me. But I won't be a party to any wholesale burglaries."

"Very well," the blonde Laara said. "If that's what you want. But first I'd like to point out we have a staff of over five hundred in this building. They've all been here an hour or so. They'll all demand at least a day's pay, if you let them go. Some of them will demand two weeks pay and the courts might decide they're entitled to it. Do you imagine--_can_ you imagine--where that would put you? In debt for life, Hector Finch, unless you go through with our business arrangements."

"Crooks and all?" Heck said in despair.

"I'm handling this. Crooks and all, is that clear?" The blonde stared at him defiantly. Defiantly? he wondered. But defiantly meant she was trying to defy him. It wasn't that way at all. If there was any defying that had to be done, it would be on Heck's part. The blonde was in the driver's seat. Heck wondered: who really runs _Hector Finch. We Sell Anything_? It certainly wasn't Heck.

Gangsters, he thought. Criminals. And how many robberies a day? He shuddered, and teleported.

* * * * *

He blinked.

He stared.

He gaped.

He had begun to materialize in a locker room. He had of course been in locker rooms before. But never in ladies' locker rooms.

And this was very definitely a ladies' locker room.

Heck heard the hiss and roar of showers, heard the talk of many girls. He saw them, too, in the aisles between the lockers. Some were dressed in mufti. Some were dressed in a kind of uniform with the letters HF stitched across the left breast. Some were dressed in fractions of each, or either. Some were in undies. Some were in towels. Some were not dressed at all. And every girl in the locker room was a beauty, sleek and well-formed and lovely to look at except that with all of them there, Heck thought, it was something like a man dying of thirst in the middle of the Sahara being thrust suddenly head first into a vat of beer. He'd want to drink a lot but he couldn't drink that fast and if he didn't watch out he might even go--in seconds--from dying of thirst to drowning.

Heck flushed, and decided to teleport. Before he could, however, a woman wearing a towel and a lot of wet skin grabbed his arm. "Stick around, honey," she said. "You're the boss, aren't you?"

"That's right, Miss. I--"

"You like the new uniform?"

"Well, I--"

"Georgette!" called the woman, who seemed to be several years older than the others and reminded Heck of his impression of what a madam ought to be like.

A strawberry blonde came over in the HF uniform and slowly pirouetted for Heck. The uniform was maroon and silver, with a tight clinging bodice and tapered slacks that fit her buttocks and legs like sun-tan oil. Heck gaped.

"Like it?" the strawberry blonde asked.

"That's enough, Georgette," the older woman said. "This is the boss."

Georgette went away, wagging an acre of pulchritude.

"What are you all going to be," Heck asked, "elevator operators?"

"Elevator operators?" repeated the woman, and laughed. It was a loud, unrestrained sort of laugh, but somehow not uncouth--exactly what Heck would have expected if the woman had been what Heck thought the woman looked like. "Dear me, no. Elevator operators!" And she went off into a second fit of laughter.

"Then what?"

"We're the sales staff, of course."

"Sales?" Blankly.

"Sales. It's Miss Laara's feeling that a sales staff ought to be expert at selling."

"Obviously," Heck said.

"Look at these girls! Can they sell, d'you think? In those uniforms they could sell Union Station to the police chief and make it stick."

"But their experience--"

"They're all experienced. They're chorus girls or burlesque girls or party girls or pr--"

"That's enough!" Heck cried. "You've made your point."

"Then all I want to know is, do you approve of the uniform or don't you approve of the uniform?"

Heck couldn't think. Everybody was running _Hector Finch_ but Hector Finch. He took one more look around the locker room. Most of the girls were in their uniforms now. They had not minded Heck's being there. Why should they? They were all used to that sort of thing.

* * * * *

Heck should have been happy. Access to this room alone might have been worth five years of a healthy young bachelor's life. But he wasn't happy at all. Yesterday the ace salesman of a big electronics outfit. An ace salesman, who loved selling, perfectly, splendidly, magnificently adjusted. Today, the owner of a huge--and illegally functioning or soon to be illegally functioning--company. Well, the so-called owner. The owner in name only.

Because he hadn't made one decision....

"Excuse me," a voice said timidly. "I was told I might find Hector Finch here. Is Hector--" The voice trailed off. It was Patty's voice and now Patty saw Heck, sitting apparently unconcernedly, among all the uniformed and ununiformed and partially uniformed beauties.

"Heck!" she cried. "You come out of there! You come with me this minute." But then she looked at his face, saw the worry, the indecision, the confusion. "Heck," she said, her voice softening. "Heck, you poor guy. You look so befuddled. You come on with me, Heck."

Mechanically, he went. Laara ran procurement. The madam-like woman ran selling. Patty ran Heck. He was one hell of an executive.

* * * * *

They ran smack into their first serious trouble three days after the company began to function.

In those three days, Heck almost succeeded in turning his own head. His job apparently consisted of signing a few routine interoffice memorandums, making a daily tour of inspection, spending as much time as he wanted with the sales force, arbitrating disputes between some of the more tempestuous beauties either of the sales force or the secretarial staff, and trying to convince Patty, who had come that first day because she had seen an ad Laara had placed in the papers in Heck's name, that everything was going to be all right. He never did actually get right down to it and tell Patty the truth, but he didn't have to. On the second day, Laara told her. And, coming from Laara, not Heck, Patty believed every word.

And they were making money, as the expression goes, hand over fist. The first day, four hundred thousand in net profits. The second day, six hundred and fifty thousand. The third day, just short of a million. In three years at this rate, Heck thought, he'd be a billionaire. So why worry about little details like how the procurement force got merchandise to sell or how the sales force did the selling?

Then on the third day, while Heck was settling a petty dispute between Georgette and another saleswoman named Marcia, he got an intercom call from Laara.

"Heck, you'd better come down to my office. There seems to be some trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

"Procurement trouble. Hurry up, before the police get here."

The word police sent Heck teleporting instantly. To hell with elevators and corridors, he told himself. To hell with a billion dollars. Police.... And if they were caught, they were caught with a warehouse full of stolen goods.

Heck materialized in the procurement office. A thug sat there nibbling at a finger half the size of a baseball bat. Laara was looking at him angrily. The thug resembled Manetti, but seemed bigger if not tougher. They all seemed to resemble Manetti.

"This is Mr. Fanetti," Laara said. "Mr. Fanetti, Mr. Finch."

"You mean, The Boss?" Fanetti said in a deep but awed voice. "A time like this I got to meet the boss? Jeez, boss, I'm sorry." For all his size and bulk, Fanetti cowered in front of Heck. He looked as if he expected Heck to hit him.

"What did Fanetti do?" Heck asked Laara. He was surprised that he could be so calm. It was Fanetti's attitude, he supposed. Fanetti's awe and respect did things for his ego.

"Let Fanetti tell it," Laara said, and Fanetti began:

"I work out of wholesale liquor, boss. Man, for three days it's just like prohibition all over again. Hell, I was a punk kid then, but I remember. You know? Honest, boss, I didn't--"

"Get to the point, Fanetti," Heck said curtly.

"We had this deal. The National Liquor Warehouse is in this city, you know?"

* * * * *

"That was Fanetti's first mistake," Laara cut in. "I told them. I tried to drum it into their stupid heads. It would be better to work other cities. With teleportation at their fingertips, what's the difference how far they went? They could have crossed oceans in split-seconds. But Fanetti couldn't get that through his thick skull."

Heck stood up impatiently, lighting a cigarette. Fanetti misunderstood the gesture, and raised a hand in front of his face to ward off an expected blow.

"Go ahead, for crying out loud," Heck said.

"Well, anyhow," Fanetti continued, "I been heisting Scotch and bourbon at the National Warehouse and doing great on my ten percent, boss. When, all of a sudden, along comes Scarface Willy."

"Scarface Willy?" repeated Heck. He smiled: it sounded too much like a TV crime melodrama for him to do otherwise. Then he remembered what Laara had said about the police. He stopped smiling. "Who is Scarface Willy?" he asked Fanetti.

"Just the kingpin bootlegger in Metropolitan City during prohibition, that's all!" Fanetti cried in a hoarse voice.

"But that was over twenty years ago," Heck protested.

Laara pointed out: "Don't you think Scarface Willy has to go on making a living?"

Fanetti said: "Scarface Willy is real mad, see? After prohibition, Scarface gets into the protection racket. He knows the liquor trade, see? He knows the liquor people. So he starts protecting all the liquor distributors in Metropolitan City, back in the thirties. And ever since."

"Including National, from which Fanetti has been taking out several hundred cases of liquor a day."

"Including National," Heck groaned.

"Today," Fanetti finished, "Scarface Willy meets me there. He's mad. He's boiling, lemme tell you. Fanetti, he tells me, you're looking to get killed. Fanetti, you're as good as dead if you take as much as another shot of liquor from National. Fanetti, he screams, I get fifty thousand bucks a year in protection money from National Liquor. How in hell can I protect National, he hollers, from guys like you who just make the goddamn liquor disappear? Fanetti, if you ever do that again, I will have you hit in the head and put in a cement overcoat and dropped in the river. So I tell him I ain't the boss and this gets Scarface Willy mad, too. He figures he is the boss of liquor in this city. He wants I should take him to you. As we have strict orders from Miss Laara that nobody but ourselves is to ever get telewachamacallited, I tell him he will have to come here on shank's mare. So, he's coming."

"Scarface Willy?" said Heck.

"Scarface Willy," said Laara, looking worried for almost the first time since Heck had known her.

* * * * *

"But what about the cops?" Heck asked.

"What can you tell Scarface Willy? That we'll stop? If we do, and he gets wise to the rest of our business, he can blackmail us for every cent we're worth. Or that we'll give him a cut? But then he'll want a cut of everything."

"You said the cops."

"That's after you kick Scarface Willy out on his rear end. He's got political connections in this city. Doubtless he'll use them."

"I'm going to do what to Scarface Willy?"

Fanetti got up and came over and pounded Heck's back with a hand like a punch-press. "You can do it, boss," he said. "I know you can do it."

Just then the intercom buzzed and a voice said: "This is Main Floor Reception, Miss Laara. A Mr. William Talese has just reached the elevator and is now going up. He has an appointment with--"

"I know who he has an appointment with," said Laara, and cut the connection.

"With me?" Heck asked glumly.

"Not yet with you. Want to soften him up first. Remember Georgette?"

Indeed he did. "Georgette?" he said. "Oh, yes."

"Mr. Scarface Willy Talese's first appointment is with Sales. With Georgette, to be precise. So, we wait an hour or so and see how much Georgette can soften him up. Then we bring him upstairs to see you. How does it sound?"

"Great, lady," Fanetti said, going over to Laara and raising the flat of his hand to repeat the optimistic thumping he had administered to Heck's spine.

"If you use that thing on me, Fanetti," Laura shouted, "you're finished here."

"Aw, lady," Fanetti said, looking at his hand. In repose his hand was not very big. In repose it looked only half the size of a whale's fluke.

They waited. For Heck, time crawled. Not that he was in a hurry to see Scarface Willy. But time crawled agonizingly because he didn't know exactly what Willy wanted and knew he'd have to wait a while before he found out. It was hard to believe that three days ago he was a salesman in love with his work and in love with his girl. Now he wasn't a salesman any longer although that had seemed to be Baldid's original idea. Now he hardly had time for his girl....

* * * * *

_Buzz_ went the intercom. "Yes?" said Laara.

"This is Sophie," said a voice. Sophie was the madam-like woman. "Mr. Talese was here."

"What do you mean, _was_ there?" asked Laara.

"Because he's come and gone. He wouldn't even look at Georgette. He had too much business on his mind to think of dames, he said. He meant it, Miss Laara. He said the only kind of dames he really liked, anyhow, was tall redheads with plenty of Irish in them. So--" here Sophie's voice suddenly took on a foxy quality--"I sent him right up to Mr. Finch's office."

"Mr. Finch's office?" repeated Laara. "But he was supposed to see us right here in Procurement. After all, it's a procurement problem."

"But a tall redhead with plenty of Irish in her!" cried Sophie with professional enthusiasm. "Don't you see?"

"Patty!" shouted Heck in dismay. "You want Patty to try what Georgette--"

He forgot all about teleportation. He began to run from the room.

"Stop him, Fanetti!" Laara cried. "Stop him!"

"The Boss?" Fanetti asked in an awed voice.

"You're in Procurement. You work for me. I'm The Boss. Stop him. Stop him or you're fired."

Fanetti let out what sounded almost like a sob, but rushed across the room at Heck. They came together and went down in a heap and in a moment Fanetti sat on Heck, pinning him to the floor.

"If you don't get the hell up, you oaf, you're fired," Heck said.

"And you're fired if you don't stay where you are," Laara said.

Clearly, Fanetti did not know what to do. He sat there looking sadly at Heck, looking sadly at Laara.

Then Heck remembered.

Heck teleported.

But Fanetti clung to him.

* * * * *

"I don't get you dames a-tall," Scarface Willy Talese said. "The skinny little strawberry blonde was all for it. I figure, that's the general idea. But I don't go for the skinny little strawberry blonde. You know? Some dames you go for and some dames you don't."

"I wouldn't know," Patty said coldly.

"Well, I go for you, baby," Scarface Willy said. "I go for you in a big way. And what Willy Talese goes for, he gets."