Walk on the Wild Side - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,127
Steele, along with a plea to be granted an interview. Webley never gave up hope, despite Miss Kent’s unbroken silence.
When he at last did receive a letter from Miss Kent graciously granting him the long-sought interview, Webley knew that life is just and that the faithful shall be rewarded.
He caught one of those red-eye-special flights out to Los Angeles, but was too excited to catch any sleep on the way. Instead he reread a well-worn paperback novelization of one of his favorite Agency episodes, “The Chained Lightning Caper,” and mentally reviewed the questions he would ask Miss Kent still not quite able to believe that he would be talking with her in another few hours.
Webley checked into a Thrifti-Family Motel near the airport, unpacked, tried without success to sleep, got up, showered and shaved. The economy flight he had taken hadn’t served a meal, but then it had been all Webley could manage just to finish his complimentary soft beverage. The three-hour time change left his system rather disordered in any event, so that he wasn’t certain whether he actually should feel tired or hungry were it not for his anxiousness over the coming interview. He pulled out his notes and looked over them again, managing to catch a fitful nap just before dawn. At daylight he made himself eat a dismal breakfast in the motel restaurant, then returned to his room to shave again and to put on the clothes he had brought along for the interview.
It was the best of Webley’s several Harrison Dane costumes, carefully salvaged from various Thrift Shops and yard sales. Webley maintained a wardrobe of vintage mod clothing, and he had twice won prizes at convention masquerades.The pointed-toe Italian boots were original to the period—a lovingly maintained treasure discovered ten years before at Goodwill Industries. The suede bell-bottoms were custom-made by an aging hippie at an aging leather crafts shop that still had a few psychedelic posters tacked to its walls. Webley tried them on at least once a month and adjusted his diet according to snugness of fit. The jacket, a sort of lavender thing that lacked collar or lapels, was found at a vintage clothing store and altered to his measurements. The paisley shirt, mostly purples and greens, had been discovered at a yard sale, and the beads and medallions had come from here and there.
Webley was particularly proud of his Dane Cane, which he himself had constructed after the secret agent’s famous weapon. It appeared to be a normal walking stick, but it contained Dane’s arsenal of secret weapons and paraphernalia including a radio transmitter, recording device, tear gas, and laser. Harrison Dane was never without his marvelous cane, and good thing, too. Alex Webley had caused rather a stir at the airport check-in, before airline officials finally permitted him to transport his Dane Cane via baggage.
Webley still clung to the modified Beatles haircut that Harrison Dane affected. He combed it now carefully and he studied his reflection in the room’s ripply mirror. The very image of Harrison Dane. Stacey Steele Miss Kent—would no doubt be impressed by the pains he had taken. It would have been great to drive out in a Shelby Cobra like Dane’s, but instead he called for a cab.
Not a Beverly Hills address, Webley sadly noted, as the taxi drove him to one of those innumerable canyon neighborhoods tottering on steep hillsides and the brink of shabbiness. Her house was small and featureless, a little box propped up on the hillside beside a jagged row of others like it—distinguishable one from another chiefly by the degree of seediness and the cars parked in front. Some cheap development from the 1950s, Webley judged, and another ten years likely would see the ones still standing bought up and the land used for some cheap condo development. He felt increasingly sad about it all; he had been prepared to announce his arrival to some uniformed guard at the subdivision’s entrance gate.
Well, if it were within his power to do so, Webley intended to bring to bear the might and majesty of Special Assignment to pressure these stupid producers into casting Elisabeth Kent in new and important roles. That made this interview more important than ever to Webley—and to Miss Kent.
He paid off the cab—tipping generously, as Harrison Dane would have done. This was perhaps fortuitous, as the driver shouted after him that he had forgotten his attache case. Webley wondered how Dane would have handled such an embarrassing lapse—of