customs, the Federal police had person after person put his or her hands against the walls, legs outspread, while efficient and snarling frisking went on.
The Countess and Mamie walked on through, bags all chalked with okay to go, talking about fashions, fashions, fashions and clothes, clothes, clothes-babes in the lion's den without a glimmer of finding out any lions were around.
Gods! At those moments I was cursing the corrupt inefficiency of the bureaucracy, let me tell you! They not only didn't find the locket, they didn't even search her.
They stood at last Admitted and Inside The Country. Mamie Boomp had a baggage mound that almost compared to Krak's. But she was an efficient and seasoned traveller. She bopped two otherwise busy porters over the head with her Parisienne parasol and the baggage was promptly loaded on two separate handcarts.
"That's Bonbucks Teller's JFK branch right over there, dearie. The one with the gold and diamond front. See the sable flag flying in the wind? And so I'll leave you now. I have a date with the mayor tonight and all he does is talk about his awful wife so I got to get home and rest up first. Here's my business card, dearie. Look me up and don't let them paint your head blue."
They kissed and the Countess was on her own.
Like a regiment with nothing but ruin in mind, the Countess descended upon Bonbucks Teller's.
She had the list. She sped, prebriefed, from department to department, pointing at a thousand-dollar item here and a ten-thousand-dollar item there.
Her only pause was in footwear. They had an elegant display of "disposable shoes" at one hundred dollars a pair, Not guaranteed if worn more than one day, boxed in thirty-day handy supply packages. She went conservative suddenly and only bought one box. Her splurge here was on soft Moroccan leather boots, blue, red and white, that went with The Pirate Look. She thought she had better have two of each as they were on sale at only five hundred dollars the pair.
How apt, I thought. Pirate boots for a real bloodthirsty pirate with a record as long as the Spanish Main!
The "marionette shoes" that gave one The True Puppet Look were just flap-flaps of colored plastic that looked like they were riveted to the sides of the legs and toes. She didn't favor them and I completely understood why: she was not a true-blue marionette: others danced to the Countess Krak's puppet strings, she didn't dance to their tunes worth a (bleep)! She only bought twenty pairs.
Clerks were following her about like jackals hanging around a lioness to pick up bits of the kill. They were tallying up a list so long it took a second clerk to carry it.
Oh, Heller, you are not just into it, you are done. I was a man of experience. I knew.
There was quite a row in the hair salon. Not with the Countess but between two coiffateurs. One said that it would wrench his soul if he could not shave her head and paint it blue and the other, fending off the flashing scissors with two deadly curling irons, said, "Touch not one hair of that golden head but wreck your country's flag instead," and won! A dreadful battle! They made her an emergency appointment for a half hour hence, to give her a "golden aura windswept with ruby dust," and rushed her to the accounts office to tally up the wounded and slain.
The accounts manager was dressed in a cutaway morning coat with tails. But he didn't fool me. He had digitals running at a greedy pace for eyes.
Seated at a plush, upholstered desk, the Countess Krak, in her dingy veil and hooded, dirty robe with holes in it, must have looked like a poor risk. She had yet to remove the healing cup above one eye and this certainly must not have added to her appearance of being an accounts receivable.
The yards of bills added up to $178,985.65 plus New York sales tax of 11 percent. Oh, marvelous! That locket would not even cover a third of it! Heller, I gloated, you have had it!
"Address?" said the accounts manager. It is too forward
The Countess and Mamie walked on through, bags all chalked with okay to go, talking about fashions, fashions, fashions and clothes, clothes, clothes-babes in the lion's den without a glimmer of finding out any lions were around.
Gods! At those moments I was cursing the corrupt inefficiency of the bureaucracy, let me tell you! They not only didn't find the locket, they didn't even search her.
They stood at last Admitted and Inside The Country. Mamie Boomp had a baggage mound that almost compared to Krak's. But she was an efficient and seasoned traveller. She bopped two otherwise busy porters over the head with her Parisienne parasol and the baggage was promptly loaded on two separate handcarts.
"That's Bonbucks Teller's JFK branch right over there, dearie. The one with the gold and diamond front. See the sable flag flying in the wind? And so I'll leave you now. I have a date with the mayor tonight and all he does is talk about his awful wife so I got to get home and rest up first. Here's my business card, dearie. Look me up and don't let them paint your head blue."
They kissed and the Countess was on her own.
Like a regiment with nothing but ruin in mind, the Countess descended upon Bonbucks Teller's.
She had the list. She sped, prebriefed, from department to department, pointing at a thousand-dollar item here and a ten-thousand-dollar item there.
Her only pause was in footwear. They had an elegant display of "disposable shoes" at one hundred dollars a pair, Not guaranteed if worn more than one day, boxed in thirty-day handy supply packages. She went conservative suddenly and only bought one box. Her splurge here was on soft Moroccan leather boots, blue, red and white, that went with The Pirate Look. She thought she had better have two of each as they were on sale at only five hundred dollars the pair.
How apt, I thought. Pirate boots for a real bloodthirsty pirate with a record as long as the Spanish Main!
The "marionette shoes" that gave one The True Puppet Look were just flap-flaps of colored plastic that looked like they were riveted to the sides of the legs and toes. She didn't favor them and I completely understood why: she was not a true-blue marionette: others danced to the Countess Krak's puppet strings, she didn't dance to their tunes worth a (bleep)! She only bought twenty pairs.
Clerks were following her about like jackals hanging around a lioness to pick up bits of the kill. They were tallying up a list so long it took a second clerk to carry it.
Oh, Heller, you are not just into it, you are done. I was a man of experience. I knew.
There was quite a row in the hair salon. Not with the Countess but between two coiffateurs. One said that it would wrench his soul if he could not shave her head and paint it blue and the other, fending off the flashing scissors with two deadly curling irons, said, "Touch not one hair of that golden head but wreck your country's flag instead," and won! A dreadful battle! They made her an emergency appointment for a half hour hence, to give her a "golden aura windswept with ruby dust," and rushed her to the accounts office to tally up the wounded and slain.
The accounts manager was dressed in a cutaway morning coat with tails. But he didn't fool me. He had digitals running at a greedy pace for eyes.
Seated at a plush, upholstered desk, the Countess Krak, in her dingy veil and hooded, dirty robe with holes in it, must have looked like a poor risk. She had yet to remove the healing cup above one eye and this certainly must not have added to her appearance of being an accounts receivable.
The yards of bills added up to $178,985.65 plus New York sales tax of 11 percent. Oh, marvelous! That locket would not even cover a third of it! Heller, I gloated, you have had it!
"Address?" said the accounts manager. It is too forward
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