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Kickaha explained what had happened. Kleist did not believe him. He said, "What kind of a fool do you think I am?"
Kickaha gri
He drove on until he saw a sign which indicated a parking lot behind a business building. He drove down the alley and turned into it. The lot was a small one, enclosed on three sides by the building. There were no windows from which he could be seen, and, for the moment, there was no one in the lot or the alley. He parked, then got out and motioned to Kleist to get out. Anana held the pen against his side.
Kickaha dragged Cambring's body out and rolled it under a panel truck. Then they got back into the car and drove off, toward the motel.
Kickaha was worried. He may have pushed Red Orc to the point where he would report the Rolls as stolen. Up to now he had kept the police out of it, but Kickaha did not doubt that the Lord would bring them in if he felt it necessary. The Lord must have great influence, both politically and financially, even if he remained an anonymous figure. With Kickaha and Anana picked up by the police, the Lord could then arrange for his men to seize them. All he had to do was to pay the bail and catch them after they'd gone a few blocks from the police station.
And if Kleist knew anything which might give Kickaha a lead to Red Orc, the Lord might act to make sure that Kleist could not do so.
Kleist, at this moment, was not cooperating. He would not even reply to Kickaha's questions. Finally, he said, "Save your breath. You'll get nothing from me."
When they reached the motel, Kleist got out of the car slowly. He looked around as if he would like to run or shout, but Kickaha had warned him that if he tried anything, he would get enough power from the pen to knock his head off. He stepped into the motel room ahead of Kickaha, who did not even wait for Anana to shut the door before stun-ning bis prisoner with a minimum jolt from the pen.
Before he could recover, Kleist had been injected with a serum that Kickaha had brought from Wolff's palace in that other world.
During the next hour, they learned much about the workings and the people of what Kleist referred to as The Group. His immediate boss was a man named Alfredo Roulini. He lived in Beverly Hills, but Kleist had never been in his home. Always, Roulini gave orders over the phone or met Kleist and other underlings at Kleist's or Cambring's home.
Roulini, as described by Kleist, could not be Red Orc.
Kickaha paced back and forth, frowning, ru
"Red Orc will know, or at least surmise, that we've gotten Roulini's name and address from Kleist. So he'll warn Roulini, and they'll have a trap set for us. He may have been arrogant and overconfident before, but he knows now we're no pushovers. We've given him too hard a time. We won't be able to get near Roulini, and even if we did, I'll bet we'd find out that he has no more idea of the true identity or location of Red Orc than Kleist."
"That's probably true," Anana said. "So the only thing to do is to force Red Orc to come into the open."
"I'm thinking the same thing," he said. "But how do you flush him out?"
Anana exclaimed, "The Beller!"
Kickaha said, "So far, we don't know where the Beller is, and, much as I hate to think about it, may never."
"Don't say that!" she said. "We have to find him!"
Her determination, he knew, did not originate from concern for the inhabitants of Earth. She was terrified only that the Bellers might one day become powerful enough to gate from Earth into other universes, the pocket worlds owned by the Lords. She was concerned only for herself and, of course, for him. Perhaps for Luvah, the wounded brother left behind to guard Wolff's palace. But she would never be able to sleep easily until she was one hundred percent certain that no Bellers were alive in the one thousand and eight known universes. Nor would Red Orc sleep any more easily.
Kickaha tied Kleist's hands behind him, tied his feet together, and taped his mouth. Anana could not understand why he didn't just kill the man. Kickaha explained, as he had done a number of tunes, that he would not do so unless he thought it was necessary. Besides, they were in enough trouble without leaving a corpse behind them.
After removing Kleist's wallet, he put him in the closet. "He can stay there until tomorrow when the cleaning woman comes in. But I think we'll move on. Let's go across the street and eat. We have to put something in our bellies."
They walked across the street at the corner, and went down half a block to the restaurant. They got a booth by the window, from which he could see the motel.
While they were eating, he told her what his plans were. "A Lord will come as swiftly for a pseudo-Beller as for the real thing, because he won't know for sure which is which. We make our own Beller and get some publicity, too, and so make sure that Red Orc finds out about it."
"There's still a good chance that he won't come personally," she said.
"How's he going to know whether or not the Beller is for real unless he does show?" he said. "Or has the Beller brought to him."
"But you couldn't get out then!" she said.
"Maybe I couldn't get out, but I'm not there yet. We've got to play this by ear. I don't see anything else to do, do you?"
They rose, and he stopped at the register to pay their bill. Anana whispered to him to look through the big plate glass window at the motel. A police car was turning into the motel grounds.
Kickaha watched the two policemen get out and look at the license plate on the rear of the Rolls. Then one went into the manager's office while the other checked out the Rolls. In a moment, the officer and the manager came out, and all three went into the motel room that Anana and Kickaha had just left.
"They'll find Kleist in the closet," Kickaha murmured. "We'll take a taxi back to L.A. and find lodging somewhere else."
They had the clothes they were wearing, the case with the Horn of Shambarimen, their beamer rings with a number of power charges, the beamer-pen, their ear receivers and wrist chronometer transmitters, and the money they'd taken from Baum, Cambring, and Kleist. The latter had provided another hundred and thirty-five dollars.
They went outside into the heat and the eye-burning, sinus-searing smog. He picked up the morning Los Angeles Times from a corner box, and then waited for a taxi. Presently, one came along, and they rode out of the Valley. On the way, he read the personals column, which contained his ad. None of the personals read as if it had been planted by Wolff. The two got out of the taxi, walked two blocks, and took another taxi to a place chosen at random by Kickaha.
They walked around for a while. He got a haircut and purchased a hat and also talked the clerk out of a woman's hatbox. At a drugstore, he bought some hair dye and other items, including shaving equipment, toothbrushes and paste, and a nail file. In a pawnshop he bought two suitcases, a knife which had an excellent balance, and a knife-sheath.
Two blocks away, they checked in at a third-rate hotel. The desk clerk seemed interested only in whether they could pay in advance or not. Kickaha, wearing his hat and dark glasses, hoped that the clerk wasn't paying them much attention. Judging from the stink of cheap whiskey on his breath he was not very perceptive at the moment.
Anana, looking around their room, said, "The place we just left was a hovel. But it's a palace compared to this!"
"I've been in worse," he said. "Just so the cockroaches aren't big enough to carry us off."