The way it started, Leo Stern decided I should make a publicity appearance at this soiree up in Bel Air. I wasn't happy about the deal. These Bel Air soirees are usually loaded with earnest intellectuals, and if there's one thing that upsets me, it's mingling with earnest intellectuals. But Leo is my manager. What he decides I should do, I do.

"Being seen at this brain brawl will be smart box office, Freddy," Leo told me. "You can use a little high-brow publicity."

I could have used a little premonition and second sight too. It would have kept me from getting mixed up with Panda, the beautiful Ph.D. It would have kept me from taking that fatal fall to Dr. Stanley MacCluett's synthetic symbiotic wave. I could have gone on for the rest of my life being the same old obnoxious Freddy Booten.

That's my legal name—Freddy Booten. Professionally I am known as Don Diablo. This is because I am supposed to look very sinister. I have basilisk black eyes, a satanic-type Vandyke, and I am all over with muscle. I am what is very loosely termed a wrestler.

Very, very loosely. On any given day you can pick up at least a hundred heavies around and about the country who can easily whip me no hands. The reason they consistently refrain from doing this is merely because promoters dearly love to amass money. Time and time again cash customers will come back to the arena in the hopes of seeing some clean-cut American kid twist me up like a cruller.

This never happens, of course. What happens is I leave the clean-cut American kid writhing in frightful agony on the canvas. Sneering horribly, a red nylon robe tossed rakishly around my shoulders, I make my victory strut up the aisle. While I strut and sneer, kindly old ladies try to beat me to death with their canes. I am indeed a very obnoxious character.

Being obnoxious never bothered me. It was, I always figured, a fast way to stack a buck on top of a buck. In a year or two, if some kindly old lady didn't maim me first, I'd have enough to retire to my pig farm back in Fishhook, Illinois. I'm proud of that pig farm. People may detest me, but I get along fine with pigs. We're real compatible.

The party Leo picked out for me to attend that night was being held in one of those mansions which come equipped with their own private mountain. It was jammed clear to the upstairs maid with artists, swamis, and people, and I was prepared to have a very dull night. What I wasn't prepared for was to meet 

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