The crying of lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon Read Free Book Online Page B

a lawyer." A snarl rose along with some smoke from among pleasure boats strung like piglets along the pier, indicating the Paranoids had indeed started someone's outboard. "Come on, then," they called. Suddenly, a dozen boats away, a form, covered with a blue polyethylene tarp, rose up and said, "Baby Igor, I need help."
"I know that voice," said Metzger.
"Quick," said the blue tarp, "let me hitch a ride with you guys."
"Hurry, hurry," called the Paranoids.
"Manny Di Presso," said Metzger, seeming less than delighted.
"Your actor/lawyer friend," Oedipa recalled.
    "Not so loud, hey," said Di Presso, skulking as best a polyethylene cone can along the landing towards them. "They're watching. With binoculars." Metzger handed Oedipa aboard the about-to-be-hijacked vessel, a ly-foot aluminum trimaran known as the "Godzilla II," and gave Di Presso what he intended to be a hand also, but he had grabbed, it seemed, only empty plastic, and when he pulled, the entire covering came away and there stood Di Presso, in a skin-diving suit and wraparound shades.
"I can explain," he said.
"Hey," yelled a couple voices, faintly, almost in unison, from up the beach a ways. A squat man with a crew cut, intensely tanned and also with shades, came out in the open running, one arm doubled like a wing with the hand at chest level, inside the jacket.
"Are we on camera?" asked Metzger dryly.
"This is real," chattered Di Presso, "come on." The Paranoids cast off, backed the "Godzilla H" out from the pier, turned and with a concerted whoop took off like a bat out of hell, nearly sending Di Presso over the fantail. Oedipa, looking back, could see their pursuer had been joined by another man about the same build. Both wore gray suits. She couldn't see if they were holding anything like guns.
"I left my car on the other side of the lake," Di Presso said, "but I know he has somebody watching."
"Who does," Metzger asked.
"Anthony Giunghierrace," replied ominous Di Presso, "alias Tony Jaguar."
"Who?"
"Eh, sfacim'," shrugged Di Presso, and spat into their wake. The Paranoids were singing, to the tune of "AdesteFideles":
Hey, solid citizen, we just pinched your bo-oat,
Hey, solid citizen, we just pinched your boat . . . grabassing around, trying to push each other over the side. Oedipa cringed out of the way and watched Di Presso. If he had really played the part of Metzger in a TV pilot film as Metzger claimed, the casting had been typically Hollywood: they didn't look or act a bit alike.
"So," said Di Presso, "who's Tony Jaguar. Very big in Cosa Nostra, is who."
"You're an actor," said Metzger. "How are you in with them?"
"I'm a lawyer again," Di Presso said. "That pilot will never be bought, Metz, not unless you go out and do something really Darrowlike, spectacular. Arouse public interest, maybe with a sensational defense."
"Like what."
"Like win the litigation I'm bringing against the estate of Pierce Inverarity." Metzger, as much as cool Metzger could, goggled. Di Presso laughed and punched Metzger in the shoulder. "That's right, good buddy."
    "Who wants what? You better talk to the other executor too." He introduced Oedipa, Di Presso tipping his shades politely. The air suddenly went cold, the sun was blotted out. The three looked up in alarm to see looming over them and about to collide the pale green social hall, its towering pointed windows, wrought-iron floral embellishments, solid silence, air somehow of waiting for them. Dean, the Paranoid at the helm, brought the boat around neatly to a small wooden dock, everybody got out, Di Presso heading nervously for an outside staircase. "I want to check on my car," he said. Oedipa and Metzger, carrying picnic stuff, followed up the stairs, along a balcony, out of the building's shadow, up a metal ladder finally to the roof. It was like walking on the head of a drum: they could hear their reverberations inside the hollow building beneath, and the delighted yelling of the Paranoids. Di Presso, Scuba suit