The who to jump Mike the Angel were in a of ways, but they a mistake when they with Mike the Angel.
They’d done their work well enough. They had the job thoroughly, and they had the to take of it. Their mistake was not in their planning; it was in not taking Mike the Angel into account.
There is a of New York’s Manhattan Island, on the West Side, that has been known, for over a century, as “Radio Row.” All through this are stores, large and small, where every of and sub-electronic device can be bought, ordered, or designed to order. There is an old shop, as Ye Quainte Olde Elecktronicks Shoppe, where you can such as vacuum-tube FM and twenty-four-inch cathode-ray television sets. And, if you want them, to match, so you can watch the work.
Mike the Angel had an office in the of the district, near West 112th Street—a very of rooms on the of the half-mile-high Timmins Building, the two-hundred-year-old Gothic of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The on the door of the said, very simply:
m. r. gabriel
power design
But, once or twice a week, Mike the Angel liked to take off and around Radio Row, just shopping around. Usually, he didn’t work too late, but, on this particular afternoon, he’d been in his office until after six o’clock, on some papers for the Interstellar Commission. So, by the time he got to Radio Row, the only shop left open was Harry MacDougal’s.
That didn’t much to Mike the Angel, since Harry’s was the place he had to go, anyway. Harry MacDougal’s was more than a in the wall—a narrow, long two larger stores. Although not a specialist, like the of Ye Quainte Olde Elecktronicks Shoppe, Harry did of every and every make. If you wanted something that hadn’t been in decades, and in quantity, Harry’s was the place to go. The were with bins, all unlabeled, helter-skelter with every of gadget, most of which would have been hard to unless you were an expert and a historian.
Old Harry didn’t need or a system. He was a small, lean, bony, sharp-nosed Scot who had Scotland the Panic of ’37, in New York, and stopped. He that he had been west of the Hudson River north of 181st Street in the more than fifty years he had been in the country. He had a mind like that of a cabinet. Ask him for a particular piece of equipment, and he’d one closed, at the end of his nose with the other, and say:
“An M-1993 hexode, eh? Ah. Um. Aye, I got one. Picked it up a years back. Put it— Let ma see, now....”
And he’d go to his ladder, push it along that narrow hallway, moving boxes as he went, and stop along the wall. Then he’d up the ladder, out a bin, around in it, and come out with the article in question. He’d the off it, it with a rag, the ladder, and say: “Here ’tis. Thought I had one. Let’s go in the and give her a test.”
On the other hand, if he didn’t have what you wanted, he’d shake his just a trifle, then up at you and say: “What d’ye want it for?” And if you tell him what you planned to do with the piece you wanted, nine times out of ten he come up with something else that would do the job as well or better.
In either case, he always that the piece be tested. He either to or sell something that didn’t work. So you’d him that long to the in the rear, where all the was. The lab, too, was cluttered, but in a different way. Out front, the was dead; here, there was power through the and nerves of the half-living machines. Things were in neat, script—not for Old Harry’s benefit, but for the of his customers, so they wouldn’t put their in the places. He had to worry about his to for themselves; a minutes in talking was to tell Harry a man about the science and art of and sub-electronics to be in the lab. If you didn’t measure up, you didn’t to the lab, to watch a test.
But he had very people like that; nobody came into Harry MacDougal’s place unless he was sure of what he wanted and how he wanted to use it.
On the other hand, there were very men Harry would allow into the unescorted. Mike the Angel was one of them.
Meet Mike the Angel. Full name: Michael Raphael Gabriel. (His mother had that on him at the time of his baptism, which had his father in compassion, but there had been nothing for him to say—not in the middle of the ceremony.)
Naturally, he had been “Mike the Angel.” Six seven. Two hundred sixty pounds. Thirty-four years of age. Hair: yellow. Eyes: blue. Cash value of holdings: well into eight figures. Credit: almost unlimited. Marital status: eligible, if the right woman him.
Mike the Angel pushed open the door to Harry MacDougal’s shop and took off his to the from it. Farther uptown, the were with clear plastic roofing, but that of stopped at Fifty-third Street.
There was no one in in the long, narrow store, so Mike the Angel looked up at the ceiling, where he the was hidden.
“Harry?” he said.
“I see you, lad,” said a voice from the air. “You got here just in time. I’m closin’ up. Lock the door, would ye?”
“Sure, Harry.” Mike around, pressed the locking switch, and it satisfactorily.
“Okay, Mike,” said Harry MacDougal’s voice. “Come on back. I ye that bottle of I asked for.”
Mike the Angel his way the of as he answered. “Sure did, Harry. When did I you?”
And, as he moved toward the of the store, Mike the Angel into his pocket and the of a small but powerful that he always when he walked the of New York at night.
He was into trouble, and he it. And he he was for it.
