Five Great Novels Part 15

"All right," Hank said nodding, then glancing at Fred. He had Fred's medical report before him and was glancing at it. "Go ahead with your tape."

". . . half of Southern California tomorrow night," the male's voice, identified by the informant as Bob Arctor's, continued. "The Air Force a.r.s.enal at Vandenberg AFB will be hit for automatic and semiautomatic weapons--"

Hank stopped reading the medical report and listened, c.o.c.king his scramble-suit-blurred head. To himself and now to all in the room, Barris grinned; his fingers fiddled with paper clips taken from the table, fiddled and fiddled, as if knitting with metal webs of wine, knitting and fiddling and sweating and knitting. The female, identified as Donna Hawthorne, said, "What about that disorientation drug the bikers ripped off for us? When do we carry that crud up to the watershed area to--"

"The organization needs the weapons first," the male's voice explained. "That's step B."

"Okay, but now I gotta go; I got a customer."

_Click. Click_. Barris aloud, s.h.i.+fting in his chair, said, "I can identify the biker gang mentioned. It is mentioned on another--"

"You have more material of this sort?" Hank said. "To build up background? Or is this tape substantially it?"

"Much more."

"But it's this same sort of thing."

"It refers, yes, to the same conspiratorial organization and its plans, yes. This particular plot."

"Who are these people?" Hank said. "What organization?"

"They are a world-wide--"

"Their names. You're speculating."

"Robert Arctor, Donna Hawthorne, primarily. I have coded notes here, too . . ." Barris fumbled with a grubby notebook, half dropping it as he tried to open it. Hank said, "I'm impounding all this stuff here, Mr. Barris, tapes and what you've got. Temporarily they're our property. We'll go over them ourselves."

"My handwriting, and the enciphered material which I--"

"You'll be on hand to explain it to us when we get to that point or feel we want anything explained." Hank signaled the uniformed cop, not Barris, to shut off the ca.s.sette. Barris reached toward it. At once the cop stopped him and pushed him back. Barris, blinking, gazed around, still fixedly smiling. "Mr. Barris," Hank said, "you will not be released, pending our study of this material. You're being charged, as a formality to keep you available, with giving false information to the authorities knowingly. This is, of course, only a pretext for your own safety, and we all realize that, but the formal change will be lodged anyhow. It will be pa.s.sed on to the D.A. but marked for hold. Is that satisfactory?" He did not wait for an answer; instead, he signaled the uniformed cop to take Barris out, leaving the evidence and s.h.i.+t and whatnot on the table. The cop led grinning Barris out. Hank and Fred sat facing each other across the littered table. Hank said nothing; he was reading the psychologists' findings. After an interval he picked up his phone and dialed an inbuilding number. "I've got some unevaluated material here--I want you to go over it and determine how much of it is fake. Let me know about that, and then I'll tell you what to do with it next. It's about twelve pounds; you'll need one cardboard box, size three. Okay, thanks." He hung up. "The electronics and cnypto lab," he informed Fred, and resumed reading. Two heavily armed uniformed lab technicians appeared, bringing with them a lock-type steel container.

"We could only find this," one of them apologized as they canefully filled it with the items on the table.

"Who's down there?"

"Hurley."

"Have Hurley go over this sometime today for sure, and report when he's got a spurious index-factor for me. It must be today; tell him that."

The lab technicians locked the metal box and lugged it out of the office. Tossing the medical-findings report on the table, Hank leaned back and said, "What do you-- Okay, what's your response to Barris's evidence so far?"

Fred said, "That is my medical report you have there, isn't it?" He reached to pick it up, then changed his mind. "I think what he played, the little he played, it sounded genuine to me."

"It's a fake," Hank said. "Worthless."

"You may be right," Fred said, "but I don't agree."

"The a.r.s.enal they're talking about at Vandenberg is probably the OSI a.r.s.enal." Hank reached for the phone. To himself, aloud, he said, "Let's see--who's the guy at OSI I talked to that time . . . he was in on Wednesday with some pictures . . ." Hank shook his head and turned away from the phone to confront Fred. "I'll wait. It can wait for the prelim spurious report. Fred?"

"What does my medical--"

"They say you're completely cuckoo."

Fred (as best he could) shrugged. "Completely?"

_Wie kalt ist es in diesem unterirdischen Gewolbe!_ "Possibly two brain cells still light up. But that's about all. Mostly short circuits and sparks."

_Das ist naturlich, es ist ja tief_.

"Two, you say," Fred said. "Out of how many?"

"I don't know. Brains have a lot of cells, I understand-- trillions."

"More possible connections between them," Fred said, "than there are stars in the universe."

"If that's so, then you're not batting too good an average right now. About two cells out of--maybe sixty-five trillion?"

"More like sixty-five trillion trillion," Fred said.

"That's worse than the old Philadelphia Athletics under Connie Mack. They used to end the season with a percentage--"

"What do I get," Fred said, "for saying it happened on duty?"

"You get to sit in a waiting room and read a lot of _Sat.u.r.day Evening Posts_ and _Cosmopolitans_ free."

"Where's that?"

"Where would you like?"

Fred said, "Let me think it over."

"I'll tell you what I'd do," Hank said. "I wouldn't go into a Federal clinic; I'd get about six bottles of good bourbon, I. W. Harper, and go up into the hills, up into the San Bernardino Mountains near one of the lakes, by myself, and just stay there all alone until it's over. Where no one can find me."

"But it may never be over," Fred said.

"Then never come back. Do you know anyone who has a cabin up there?"

"No," Fred said.

"Can you drive okay?"

"My--" He hesitated, and a dreamlike strength fell over him, relaxing him and mellowing him out. All the spatial relations.h.i.+ps in the room s.h.i.+fted; the alteration affected even his awareness of time. "It's in the . . ." He yawned.

"You don't remember."

"I remember it's not functioning."

"We can have somebody drive you up. That would be safer, anyhow."

Drive me up where? he wondered. Up to what? Up roads, trails, paths, hiking and striding through Jell-O, like a tomcat on a leash who only wants to get back indoors, on get free. He thought, _Em Engel, der Gattin, so gleich, der fuhrt mich zur Freiheit ins himmlische Reich_. "Sure," he said, and smiled. Relief. Pulling forward against the leash, trying and striving to get free, and then to lie down. "What do you think about me now," he said, "now that I've proved out like this-- burned out, temporarily, anyhow. Maybe permanently."

Hank said, "I think you're a very good person."

"Thank you," Fred said.

"Take your gun with you."

"_What?_" he said.

"When you go off to the San Bernardino Mountains with the fifths of I. W. Harper. Take your gun."

"You mean for if I don't come out of it?"

Hank said, "Either way. Coming down off the amount they say you're on . . . Have it there with you."

"Okay."

"When you get back," Hank said, "call me. Let me know."

"h.e.l.l, I won't have my suit."

"Call me anyhow. With or without your suit."

Again he said, "Okay." Evidently it didn't matter. Evidently that was over.

"When you go pick up your next payment, there'll be a different amount. A considerable change this one time."

Fred said, "I get some sort of bonus for this, for what happened to me?"

"No. Read your penal code. An officer who willingly becomes an addict and does not promptly report it is subject to a misdemeanor change--a fine of three thousand dollars and/or six months. You'll probably just be fined."

"_Willingly?_" he said, marveling.

"n.o.body held a gun to your head and shot you up. n.o.body dropped something in your soup. You knowingly and willingly took an addictive drug, brain-destructive and disorienting."

"I had to!"

Hank said, "You could have pretended to. Most officers manage to cope with it. And from the quant.i.ty they say you were dropping, you have to have been--"

"You're treating me like a crook. I am not a crook."

Picking up a clipboard and pen, Hank began to figure. "How much are you at, paywise? I can calculate it now if"

"Could I pay the fine later on? Maybe in a series of monthly installments over like two years?"

Hank said, "Come on, Fred."

"Okay," he said.

"How much per hour?"

He couldn't remember.

"Well, then, how many logged hours?"

That, neither. Hank tossed his clipboard back down. "Want a cigarette?" He offered Fred his pack.

"I'm getting off that, too," Fred said. "Everything including peanuts and . . ." He couldn't think. They both sat there, the two of them, in their scramble suits, both silent.

"Like I tell my kids," Hank began.

"I've got two kids," Fred said. "Two girls."

"I don't believe you do; you're not supposed to."

"Maybe not." He had begun to try to figure out when withdrawal would begin, and then he began to try to figure how many tabs of Substance D he had hidden here and there. And how much money he would have, when he got paid, for scoring.

"Maybe you want me to continue figuring what your payoff amount will consist of," Hank said.

"Okay," he said, and nodded vigorously. "Do that." He sat waiting, tensely, drumming on the table, like Barris.

"How much per hour?" Hank repeated, and then presently reached for his phone. "I'll call payroll."

Fred said nothing. Staring down, he waited. He thought, Maybe Donna can help me. Donna, he thought, please help me now.

"I don't think you're going to make it to the mountains," Hank said. "Even if somebody drives you."

"No."

"Where do you want to go?"

"Let me sit and think."

"Federal clinic?"

"No."

They sat. He wondered what _not supposed to_ meant.

"What about over to Donna Hawthorne's?" Hank said. "From all the information you've brought in and everyone else has, I know you're close."

"Yes." He nodded. "We are." And then he looked up and said, "How do you know that?"

Hank said, "By a process of elimination. I know who you _aren't_, and there aren't an infinite number of suspects in this group--in fact, they're a very small group. We thought they'd lead us up higher, and maybe Barris will. You and I have spent a lot of time rapping together. I pieced it together a long time ago. That you're Arctor."

"I'm _who?_" he said, staring at Hank the scramble suit facing him. "I'm Bob Arctor?" He could not believe it. It made no sense to him. It did not fit anything he had done on thought, it was grotesque.

"Never mind," Hank said. "What's Donna's phone number?"