Day After Tomorrow

Greater Washington Hilton, until things are cleared up. They don’t want the newspapers to get wind of this until they’ve got that inventor father of hers and whatever he’s cooked up to turn out perfect reproductions of Uncle Sam’s money. Look, I won’t be leaving until tomorrow. What’d you say we get out on the town tonight?”

“Why, Larry Woolford,” she gushed. “How nice of you to ask me. What did you have in mind for a weird type like myself? I understand that Mort Lenny’s at one of the night clubs.”

Larry winced. “You know what he’s been saying about the administration. That so called stand-up comedian is one of the biggest weirds in town.” She smiled sweetly at him.

Larry said, “Look, we could take in the Brahms concert, then we could—”

Still sweetly, she said, “Do you like Brahms? I go for popular music myself. Preferably the sort of thing they wrote back in the 1930s. Something you can dance to; something you know the words to. Corny, they used to call it. Remember ‘Sunny Side of the Street,’ and ‘Just the Way You Look Tonight’?”

Larry winced again. He said, “Look, I admit, I don’t go for concerts either but it doesn’t hurt you to—”

“I know,” she said sweetly. “It doesn’t for a bright young bureaucrat to be seen at concerts.”

“How about Dixieland?” he said. “It’s rapidly becoming all the thing now.”

“I like corn. Besides, my wardrobe is all out of style. Paris, London and Rome just got in a huddle a couple of months ago and antiquated everything I own. You wouldn’t want to be seen with a girl a few weeks out of date, would you?”

“Oh, now, LaVerne, get off my back.” He thought about it. “Look, you must have something you could wear.”

“Get out of here, you vacant-minded conformist! I like Mort Lenny, he makes me laugh. I hate vodka martinis, they give me a sour stomach. I don’t like the current women’s styles, they look ridiculous and are uncomfortable. And I don’t like the men’s styles either; they’re too boyish.” LaVerne spun back to her auto-typer and began to dictate into it.

Larry glared down at her. “All right, okay. What do you like?”

She snapped back irrationally, “I like what I like.”

He laughed at her in ridicule.

This time it was she who glared at him. “That makes more sense than you’re capable of assimilating, Mr. Walking Status Symbol. My likes and dislikes aren’t dictated by someone else. If I like corny music, I’ll listen to it and the devil with Brahms or Dixieland or anything else that somebody else tells me is all the thing!”

He turned on his heel angrily. “Okay, okay, it takes all sorts to make a world, weirds and all.”

“One more label to hang on people,” she snarled after him. “Everything’s labels. Be sure and never come to any judgements of your own!”

What a woman! He wondered why he had ever bothered to ask her for a date. There were so many women in this town you waded through them. And most were happy and anxious to be laid. And here he was exposing himself to be seen in public with a girl that everybody in the department knew was as weird as they came. It didn’t do your standing any good to be seen around with the type. He wondered all over again why the boss tolerated her as his receptionist-secretary.

Well, he wouldn’t have minded screwing her. LaVerne Polk had one of the pertist bodies he’d ever admired.

He got his car from the parking lot and drove home on a high level. Ordinarily, the distance being what it was, he drove in the lower and slower traffic levels but now his frustration demanded some expression.

VIII

Back at his suburban auto-bungalow, he threw all except the high priority switch and went on down into his small cellar den. He didn’t really feel like a night on the town anyway. A few vodka martinis under his belt and he’d sleep late and he wanted to get up in time for an early start for Astor, Florida and his bass fishing. Besides, in that respect he agreed with that irritating wench, LaVerne Polk. Vermouth was never meant to mix with Polish vodka. He wished that Sidecars would come back into popularity.

In his den, he shucked off his tweed jacket, kicked off his shoes and shuffled into Moroccan slippers. He went over to his reading rack and scowled at the paperbacks there. His status books were upstairs where they could be seen. He pulled out a suspense yarn, tossed it over to the cocktail table that sat next to his favorite chair, and then went over to the bar.

Up above in his living room, he had one of the new auto-bars. You could dial any of more than thirty drinks. Auto-bars were all the rage. The Boss had one that gave a selection of a hundred different drinks, running from Absinth Coolers to Zombis. But what difference did it make when nobody but eccentric old-timers of flighty blondes drank anything except vodka martinis? He didn’t like auto-bars anyway. A well mixed drink is a personal thing, a work of competence, instinct and art, not something measured to the drop, iced to the degree, shaked or stirred to a mathematical formula.

Out of the tiny refrigerator he brought a four-ounce cube of frozen pineapple juice, touched the edge with his thumbnail and let the ultra thin plastic peel away. He tossed the cube into his mixer, took up a bottle of light rum and poured in about two ounces. He brought an egg from the refrigerator and added that. An ounce of whole milk followed and a teaspoon of powdered sugar. He flicked the switch and let the conglomeration froth together.

He poured it into a king-size highball glass and took it over to his chair. Vodka martinis be damned, he liked a slightly sweet long drink.

He sat down in the chair, picked up the suspense novel and scowled at the cover. He ought to be reading that Florentine history of Machiavelli’s, especially if the Boss had gotten to the point where he was quoting from the guy. But the hell with it, he was on vacation. He didn’t think much of the Italian diplomat anyway.

He couldn’t get beyond the first page or two.

And when you can’t concentrate on a suspense yarn, you just can’t concentrate.

He finished his drink, went over to his phone and dialed Department of Records and then Information. When the bright young thing answered, he said, “I’d like the brief on an Ernest Self who lives on Elwood Avenue, Baltimore section of Greater Washington. I don’t know his code number.”

She did things with switches and buttons for a moment and then brought forth a sheet from a delivery chute. “Do you want me to read it to you, sir?”

“No, I’ll scan it,” Larry said.

Her face faded to be replaced by the brief on Ernest Self.

It was astonishingly short. Records seemed to have slipped up on this occasion. A rare occurence. He considered requesting the full dossier, then changed his mind. Instead, he dialed the number of the Sun-Post and asked for its science columnist.

Sam Sokolski’s puffy face eventually faded it.

Larry said to him sourly, “You drink too much. You can begin to see veins breaking in your nose.”

Sam looked at him patiently.

Larry said, “How’d you like to come over and toss back a few tonight?”

“I’m working. I thought you were going on a vacation down to Florida, or someplace.”

Larry sighed. “I am,” he said. “Okay, so you can’t take a night off and lift a few with an old buddy.”

“That’s right, I can’t,” the columnist told him. “Anything else, Larry?”

“Yes. Look, have you ever heard of an inventor named Ernest Self?”

The other nodded. “Sure I’ve heard of him. I covered a hassle he got into some years ago. A nice guy.”

“I’ll bet,” Larry said. “What does he invent, something to do with printing presses, or something?”

“Printing presses?” Sokolski’s expression was blank. “Don’t you remember the story about him?”

“Brief me,” Larry said.

“Well—briefly does it. It got out a couple of years back that some of our rocketeers had bought a solid fuel formula from an Italian research outfit for the star probe project. Paid them a big hunk of Uncle’s change for it. So Ernest Self sued.”

Larry said, “You’re being too brief. What do you mean, he sued. Why?”