'Is he still alive?' asked a reporter who had followed the ambulance.
'Who knows?' said MacMordie enthusiastically. Piper was carried into Casualty while a bloodstained Sonia tried to calm the nurse who was having hysterics.
'It was too terrible. Never in my whole life have I known such a thing and in my ambulance too,' she screamed at the TV cameras and reporters before being led away after her patient. As the crimson stretcher with Piper's body was lifted on to a trolley and wheeled away, MacMordie wiped his hands with satisfaction. Around him the TV cameras buzzed. The product had got exposure. Mr Hutchmeyer would be pleased.
Mr Hutchmeyer was. He watched the riot on TV with evident satisfaction and all the fervour of a fight enthusiast.
'That's my boy,' he yelled as a young Zionist flattened an innocent Japanese passenger off the ship with a placard saying 'Remember Lod'. A cop tried to intervene and was promptly felled by something in drag. The picture joggled violently as the cameraman was hit from behind. When it finally steadied it was focused on an elderly woman lying bleeding on the ground.
'Great,' said Hutchmeyer, 'MacMordie's done a great job. That boy's got a real talent for action.'
'That's what you think,' said Baby, who knew better.
'What the hell do you mean by that?' said Hutchmeyer, momentarily diverted. Baby shrugged.
'I just don't like violence is all.'
'Violence? So life is violent. Competitive. That's the way the cookie crumbles.'
Baby studied the screen. 'There's two more cookies just crumbled now,' she said.
'Human nature,' said Hutchmeyer, 'I didn't invent human nature.'
'Just exploit it.'
'Make a living.'
'Make a killing if you ask me,' said Baby. 'That woman's not going to make it.'
'Shit,' said Hutchmeyer.
'Took the word out of my mouth,' said Baby. Hutchmeyer concentrated on the screen and tried to ignore Baby. A police posse with Piper came out of Customs.
'That's him,' said Hutchmeyer. 'The motherfucker looks like he's pissing himself.'
Baby looked and sighed. The haunted Piper was just as she had hoped, young, pale, sensitive and intensely vulnerable. Like Keats at Waterloo she thought.
'Who's the fatso with MacMordie?' she asked as Sonia kneed a Ukrainian who had just spat on her dress.
'That's my girl,' shouted Hutchmeyer enthusiastically. Baby looked at him incredulously.
'You've got to be joking. One bounce with that female Russian shotput and you'd bust your truss.'
'Never mind my goddam truss,' said Hutchmeyer, 'I'm just telling you that that baby there is the greatest little saleswoman in the world.'
'Great she may be,' said Baby, 'little she ain't. That Muscovite doubled up with lover's balls knows that. What's her name?'
'Sonia Futtle,' said Hutchmeyer dreamily.
'I could have guessed,' said Baby, 'she's just futtled an Irishman now. He'll never ride again.'
'Jesus,' said Hutchmeyer and retreated to his study to avoid the disillusionment of Baby's commentary. He put a call through to the New York office for a computer forecast on predicted sales of Pause O Men for the Virgin in the light of this great new publicity. Then he got through to Production and ordered another half million copies. Finally a call to Hollywood and a demand for another five per cent in TV serial takings. And all the time his mind was busy with wanton thoughts of Sonia Futtle and same natural way of killing what remained of Miss Penobscot 1935 so that he wouldn't have to part with twenty million dollars to get a divorce. Maybe MacMordie could
