What Barris claimed to have did bear a certain resemblance to what he, Bob Arctor, as an undercover law-enforcement officer did have in his own car radio; but beyond that, in regard to other modifications such as suspension, engine, transmission, etc., there had been no alterations whatsoever. That would be uncool and obvious. And secondly, millions of car freaks could make equally hairy modifications in their cars, so he simply had gotten allocation for a fairly potent mill for his wheels and let it go at that. Any high-powered vehicle can overtake and leave behind any other. Barris was full of shit about that; a Ferrari has suspension and handling and steering that no “special secret modifications” can match, so the hell with it. And cops can’t drive sports cars, even cheap ones. Let alone Ferraris. Ultimately it is the driver’s skill that decides it all.
He did have one other law-enforcement allocation, though. Very unusual tires. They had more than steel bands inside, like Michelin had introduced years ago in their X types. These were all metal and wore out fast, but they had advantages in speed and acceleration. Their disadvantage was their cost, but he got them free, from his allocation service, which was not a Dr. Pepper machine like the money one. This worked fine, but he could get allocations only when absolutely necessary. The tires he put on himself, when no one was watching. As he had put in the radio alterations.
The only fear about the radio was not detection by someone snooping, such as Barris, but simple theft. Its added devices made it expensive to replace if it got ripped off; he would have to talk fast.
Naturally, too, he carried a gun hidden in his car. Barris in all his lurid acid-trip, spaced-out fantasies would never have designed its hiding place, where it actually was. Barris would have directed there to be an exotic spot of concealment for it, like in the steering column, in a hollow chamber. Or inside the gas tank, hanging down on a wire like the shipment of coke in the classic flick Easy Rider, that place as a stash place, incidentally, being about the worst spot on a hog. Every law-enforcement officer who had caught the film had flashed right away on what clever psychiatrist types had elaborately figured out: that the two bikers wanted to get caught and if possible killed. His gun, in his car, was in the glove compartment.
The pseudo-clever stuff that Barris continually alluded to about his own vehicle probably bore some resemblance to reality, the reality of Arctor’s own modified car, because many of the radio gimmicks which Arctor carried were SOP and had been demonstrated on late-night TV, on network talk shows, by electronic experts who had helped design them, or read about them in trade journals, or seen them, or gotten fined from police labs and harbored a grudge. So the average citizen (or, as Barris always said in his quasieducated lofty way, the typical average citizen) knew by now that no black-and-white ran the risk of pulling over a fast-moving souped-up, racing-striped ‘57 Chevy with what appeared to be a wild teen-ager spaced out behind the wheel on Coors beer—and then finding he’d halted an undercover nark vehicle in hot pursuit of its quarry. So the typical average citizen these days knew how and why all those nark vehicles as they roared along, scaring old ladies and straights into indignation and letter-writing, continually signaled their identity back and forth to one another and their peers … what difference did it make? But what would make a difference—a dreadful one—would be if the punks, the hotrodders, the bikers, and especially the dealers and runners and pushers, managed to build and incorporate into their own similar cars such sophisticated devices.
They could then whiz right on by. With impunity.
“I’ll walk, then,” Arctor said, which was what he had wanted to do anyhow; he had set up both Barris and Luckman. He had to walk.
“Where you going?” Luckman said.
“Donna’s.” Getting to her place on foot was almost impossible; saying this ensured neither man accompanying him. He put on his coat and set off toward the front door. “See you guys later.”
“My car—” Barris continued by way of more copout.
“If I tried to drive your car,” Arctor said, “I’d press the wrong button and it’d float up over the Greater L.A. downtown area like the Goodyear blimp, and they’d have me dumping borate on oil-well fires.”
“I’m glad you can appreciate my position,” Barris was muttering as Arctor shut the door.
Seated before the hologram cube of Monitor Two, Fred in his scramble suit watched impassively as the hologram changed continually before his eyes. In the safe apartment other watchers watched other holograms from other source points, mostly playbacks. Fred, however, watched a live hologram unfolding; it recorded, but he had by-passed the stored tape to pick up the transmission at the instant it emanated from Bob Arctor’s allegedly run-down house.
Within the hologram, in broad-band color, with high resolution, sat Barris and Luckman. In the best chair in the living room, Barris sat bent over a hash pipe he had been putting together for days. His face had become a mask of concentration as he wound white string around and around the bowl of the pipe. At the coffee table Luckman hunched over a Swanson’s chicken TV dinner, eating in big clumsy mouthfuls while he watched a western on TV. Four beer cans—empties—lay squashed by his mighty fist on the table; now he reached for a fifth half-full can, knocked it over, spilled it, grabbed it, and cursed. At the curse, Barris peered up, regarded him like Mime in Siegfried, then resumed work.
Fred continued to watch.
“Fucking late-night TV,” Luckman gargled, his mouth full of food, and then suddenly he dropped his spoon and leaped staggering to his feet, tottered, spun toward Barris, both hands raised, gesturing, saying nothing, his mouth open and half-chewed food spilling from it onto his clothes, onto the floor. The cats ran forward eagerly.
Barris halted in his hash-pipe making, gazed up at hapless Luckman. In a frenzy, now gargling horrid noises, Luckman with one hand swept the coffee table bare of beer cans and food; everything clattered down. The cats sped off, terrified. Still, Barris sat gazing fixedly at him. Luckman lurched a few steps toward the kitchen; the scanner there, on its cube before Fred’s horrified eyes, picked up Luckman as he groped blindly in the kitchen semidarkness for a glass, tried to turn on the faucet and fill it with water. At the monitor, Fred jumped up; transfixed, on Monitor Two he saw Barris, still seated, return to painstakingly winding string around and around the bowl of his hash pipe. Barris did not look up again; Monitor Two showed him again intently at work.
The aud tapes clashed out great breaking, tearing sounds of agony: human strangling and the furious din of objects hitting the floor as Luckman hurled pots and pans and dishes and flatware about in an attempt to attract Barris’s attention. Barris, amid the noise, continued methodically at his hash pipe and did not look up again.
In the kitchen, on Monitor One, Luckman fell to the floor all at once, not slowly, onto his knees, but completely, with a sodden thump, and lay spread-eagled. Barris continued winding the string of his hash pipe, and now a small snide smile appeared on his face, at the corners of his mouth.
On his feet, Fred stared in shock, galvanized and paralyzed simultaneously. He reached for the police phone beside the monitor, halted, still watched.
For several minutes Luckman lay on the kitchen floor without moving as Barris wound and wound the string, Barris bent over like an intent old lady knitting, smiling to himself, smiling on and on, and rocking a trifle; then abruptly Barris tossed the hash pipe away, stood up, gazed acutely at Luckman’s form on the kitchen floor, the broken water glass beside him, all the debris and pans and broken plates, and then Barris’s face suddenly reacted with mock dismay. Barris tore off his shades, his eyes widened grotesquely, he flapped his arms in helpless fright, he ran about a little here and there, then scuttled toward Luckman, paused a few feet from him, ran back, panting now.
He’s building up his act, Fred realized. He’s getting his panic-and-discovery act together. Like he just came onto the scene. Barris, on the cube of Monitor Two, twisted about, gasped in grief, his face dark red, and then he hobbled to the phone, yanked it up, dropped it, picked it up with trembling fingers … he has just discovered that Luckman, alone in the kitchen, has choked to death on a piece of food, Fred realized; with no one there to hear him or help him. And now Barris is frantically trying to summon help. Too late.
Into the phone, Barris was saying in a weird, high-pitched slow voice, “Operator, is it called the inhalator squad or the resuscitation squad?”
“Sir,” the phone tab squawked from its speaker by Fred, “is there someone unable to breathe? Do you wish—”
“It, I believe, is a cardiac arrest,” Barris was saying now in his low, urgent, professional-type, calm voice into the phone, a voice deadly with awareness of peril and gravity and the running out of time. “Either that or involuntary aspiration of a bolus within the—”
“What is the address, sir?” the operator broke in.
“The address,” Barris said, “let’s see, the address is—”
Fred, aloud, standing, said, “Christ.”
Suddenly Luckman, lying stretched out on the floor, heaved convulsively. He shuddered and then barfed up the material obstructing his throat, thrashed about, and opened his eyes, which stared in swollen confusion.
“Uh, he appears to be all right now,” Barris said smoothly into the phone. “Thank you; no assistance is needed after all.” He rapidly hung the phone up.
“Jeez,” Luckman muttered thickly as he sat up. “Fuck.” He wheezed noisily, coughing and struggling for air.
“You okay?” Barris asked, in tones of concern.
“I must have gagged. Did I pass out?”
“Not exactly. You did go into an altered state of consciousness, though. For a few seconds. Probably an alpha state.”
“God! I soiled myself!” Unsteadily, swaying with weakness, Luckman managed to get himself to his feet and stood rocking back and forth dizzily, holding on to the wall for support. “I’m really getting degenerate,” he muttered in disgust. “Like an old wino.” He headed toward the sink to wash himself, his steps uncertain.
Watching all this, Fred felt the fear drain from him. The man would be okay. But Barris! What sort of person was he? Luckman had recovered despite him. What a freak, he thought. What a kinky freak. Where’s his head at, just to stand idle like that?
“A guy could cash in that way,” Luckman said as he splashed water on himself at the sink.
Barris smiled.
“I got a really strong physical constitution,” Luckman said, gulping water from a cup. “What were you doing while I was lying there? Jacking off?”
“You saw me on the phone,” Barris said. “Summoning the paramedics. I moved into action at—”
“Balls,” Luckman said sourly, and went on gulping down fresh clean water. “I know what you’d do if I dropped dead—you’d rip off my stash. You’d even go through my pockets.”
“It’s amazing,” Barris said, “the limitation of the human anatomy, the fact that food and air must share a common passage. So that the risk of—”
Silently, Luckman gave him the finger.
A screech of brakes. A horn. Bob Arctor looked swiftly up at the night traffic. A sports car, engine running, by the curb; inside it, a girl waving at him.
Donna.
“Christ,” he said again. He strode toward the curb.
Opening the door of her MG, Donna said, “Did I scare you? I passed you on my way to your place and then I flashed on it that it was you truckin’ along, so I made a U-turn and came back. Get in.”
Silently he got in and shut the car door.
“Why are you out roaming around?” Donna said. “Because of your car? It’s still not fixed?”