Chapter 68

The room is familiar, I have been here as Fats. The same stains on the table top, the same cage in the corner, the same smell of stale bodies and bad coffee, and of course cigarette smoke. I squirm on the hard seat, the chair is more uncomfortable than I remember, maybe because of the lack of padding in my nether regions. Doil is standing by the door with the frosted glass saying Incide t Room One, with the n missing. He is smoking intensively taking large tokes on the Camel as if it was a joint. He is still wearing his hat pushed back on his head. The room is gradually filling up with smoke.

I get up to open the window.

'sit down Smuck", says Doil.

"Can we open the window?"

Doil laughs. " The whole of the maintenance department have painted it shut for years. You may need the help of a chisel and a few days." He twirls my return time travel band around his fore finger, then slams it down onto the desk. "This little beauty has gotten you into a scrape Houdini couldn"t escape from. How do you think it makes me seem at IGBI headquarters when one of the operatives under my command goes AWOL?"

I tell him I don"t know. It would seem everyone even Doil is afraid of the IGBI.

"Where exactly is the IGBI based", I ask.

"They are everywhere in all time zones and in all Galaxies." Everywhere and nowhere. They may have this room bugged, or one of the untouchables may be silently standing over there unseen and unheard."

"Can they do that?"

"Not only that but I may be a humanoid. The real Doil in suspended animation in the freezers on the ice planet. Now how can we repair the damage your unwise trip to Earth 1935 has caused to the time continuum?" Lets hope you haven"t had time to father any children."

I think of Amie. Her little tits with and beehive hairdo, I certainly didn"t withdraw.

"Well I have good news for you, seeing as you like it so much here, I am going to hang onto this little bracelet and let you loose for a week or so. You will report back to me everyday."

He hands me a wrist watch. "When it vibrates you must call the number on the dial." I take the watch and look at the face of the dial. The dial has twelve digits but not the normal one to twelve. It starts at naught and goes around to eleven.

"Dial all the numbers including the naught in ten and the two ones in eleven, I will spell it out for you,

01234567891011. Got that?"

I nod. "Now fuck off."

I leave the building by the back and exit onto Mott Street. I decide to look up Mike Swartz in E 42nd St. It's a long walk and the restaurants in Mott Street are nearer so I settle for a plate of noodles in the Pho Bang.