“Remember,” the police captain said, “it was boarded up just now, within the last three days. Or at least the painting was just now done, to be absolutely accurate about it.”
“These flies,” Hood said. “They’re not even dead yet.” So it had not even been three days. Probably the boarding-up had been done yesterday.
What had this room been used for? He turned to the Greek, who had come after them, still tense and pale, his dark eyes flickering rapidly with concern. This is a smart man, Hood realized. We will get little out of him.
At the far end of the storeroom the police flashlights picked out a cabinet, empty shelves of bare, rough wood. Hood walked toward it.
“Okay,” the Greek said thickly, swallowing. “I admit it. We have kept bootleg gin stored here. We became scared. You Centaurians—” He looked around at them with fear. “You’re not like our local bosses; we know them, they understand us. You! You can’t be reached. But we have to make a living.” He spread his hands, appealing to them.
From behind the cabinet the edge of something protruded. Barely visible, it might never have been noticed. A paper which had fallen there, almost out of sight; it had slipped down farther and farther. Now Hood took hold of it and carefully drew it out. Back up the way it had come.
The Greek shuddered.
It was, Hood saw, a picture. A heavy, middle-aged man with loose jowls stained black by the grained beginnings of a beard, frowning, his lips set in defiance. A big man, wearing some kind of uniform. Once this picture had hung on the wall and people had come here and looked at it, paid respect to it. He knew who it was. This was Benny Cemoli, at the height of his political career, the leader glaring bitterly at the followers who had gathered here. So this was the man.
No wonder the Times showed such alarm.
To the Greek grocery store owner, Hood said, holding up the picture, “Tell me. Is this familiar to you?”
“No, no,” the Greek said. He wiped perspiration from his face with a large red handkerchief. “Certainly not.” But obviously, it was.
Hood said, “You’re a follower of Cemoli, aren’t you?”
There was silence.
“Take him along,” Hood said to the police captain. “And let’s start back.” He walked from the room, carrying the picture with him.
As he spread the picture out on his desk, Hood thought, It isn’t merely a fantasy of the Times. We know the truth now. The man is real and twenty-four hours ago this portrait of him hung on a wall, in plain sight. It would still be there this moment, if CURB had not put in its appearance. We frightened them. The Earth peoplehave a lot to hide from us, and they know it. They are taking steps, rapidly and effectively, and we will be lucky if we can—
Interrupting his thoughts, Joan said, “Then the Bleekman Street address really was a meeting place for them. The pape was correct.”
“Yes,” Hood said.
“Where is he now?”
I wish I knew, Hood thought.
“Has Dietrich seen the picture yet?”
“Not yet,” Hood said.
Joan said, “He was responsible for the war and Dietrich is going to find it out.”
“No one man,” Hood said, “could be solely responsible.”
“But he figured largely,” Joan said. “That’s why they’ve gone to so much effort to eradicate all traces of his existence.”
Hood nodded.
“Without the Times” she said, “would we ever have guessed that such a political figure as Benny Cemoli existed? We owe a lot to the pape. They overlooked it or weren’t able to get to it. Probably they were working in such haste; they couldn’t think of everything, even in ten years. It must be hard to obliterate every surviving detail of a planet-wide political movement, especially when its leader managed to seize absolute power in the final phase.”
“Impossible to obliterate,” Hood said. A closed-off storeroom in the back of a Greek grocery store… that was enough to tell us what we needed to know. Now Dietrich’s men can do the rest. If Cemoli is alive they will eventually find him, and if he’s dead—they’ll be hard to convince, knowing Dietrich. They’ll never stop looking now.
“One good thing about this,” Joan said, “is that now a lot of innocent people will be off the hook. Dietrich won’t go around prosecuting them. He’ll be busy tracking down Cemoli.”
True, Hood thought. And that was important. The Centaurian police would be thoroughly occupied for a long time to come, and that was just as well for everyone, including CURB and its ambitious program of reconstruction.
If there had never been a Benny Cemoli, he thought suddenly, It would almost have been necessary to invent him. An odd thought… he wondered how it happened to come to him. Again he examined the picture, trying to infer as much as possible about the man from this flat likeness. How had Cemoli sounded? Had he gained power through the spoken word, like so many demagogues before him? And his writing… Maybe some of it would turn up. Or even tape recordings of speeches he had made, the actual sound of the man. And perhaps video tapes as well. Eventually it would all come to light; it was only a question of time. And then we will be able to experience for ourselves how it was to live under the shadow of such a man, he realized.
The line from Dietrich’s office buzzed. He picked up the phone. “We have the Greek here,” Dietrich said. “Under drug-guidance he’s made a number of admissions; you may be interested.”
“Yes,” Hood said.
Dietrich said, “He tells us he’s been a follower for seventeen years, a real old-timer in the Movement. They met twice a week in the back of his grocery store, in the early days when the Movement was small and relatively powerless. That picture you have—I haven’t seen it, of course, but Stavros, our Greek gentleman, told me about it—that portrait is actually obsolete in the sense that several more recent ones have been in vogue among the faithful for some time now. Stavros hung onto it for sentimental reasons. It reminded him of the old days. Later on when the Movement grew in strength, Cemoli stopped showing up at the grocery store, and the Greek lost out in any personal contact with him. He continued to be a loyal dues-paying member, but it became abstract for him.”
“What about the war?” Hood asked.
“Shortly before the war Cemoli seized power in a coup here in North America, through a march on New York City, during a severe economic depression. Millions were unemployed and he drew a good deal of support from them. He tried to solve the economic problems through an aggressive foreign policy—attacked several Latin American republics which were in the sphere of influence of the Chinese. That seems to be it, but Stavros is a bit hazy about the big picture … we’ll have to fill in more from other enthusiasts as we go along. From some of the younger ones. After all, this one is over seventy years old.”
Hood said, “You’re not going to prosecute him, I hope.”
“Oh, no. He’s simply a source of information. When he’s told us all he has on his mind we’ll let him go back to his onions and canned apple sauce. He’s harmless.”
“Did Cemoli survive the war?”
“Yes,” Dietrich said. “But that was ten years ago. Stavros doesn’t know if the man is still alive now. Personally I think he is, and we’ll go on that assumption until it’s proved false. We have to.” Hood thanked him and hung up.
As he turned from the phone he heard, beneath him, the low, dull rumbling. The homeopape had once more started into life.
“It’s not a regular edition,” Joan said, quickly consulting her wristwatch. “So it must be another extra. This is exciting, having it happen like this; I can’t wait to read the front page.”
What has Benny Cemoli done now? Hood wondered. According to the Times, in its misphased chronicling of the man’s epic… what stage, actually taking placeyears ago, has now been reached. Something climactic, deserving of an extra. It will be interesting, no doubt of that. The Times knows what is fit to print. He, too, could hardly wait.