The next morning, by Yellow Cab, since now not only was his cephscope laid up for repairs but so was his car, he appeared at the door of Englesohn Locksmith with forty bucks in cash and a good deal of worry inside his heart.
The store had an old wooden quality, with a more modern sign but many little brass doodads in the windows of a lock type: funky ornate mailboxes, trippy doorknobs made to resemble human heads, great fake black iron keys. He entered, into semigloom. Like a doper’s place, he thought, appreciating the irony.
At a counter where two huge key-grinding machines loomed up, plus thousands of key blanks dangling from racks, a plump elderly lady greeting him. “Yes, sir? Good morning.”
Arctor said, “I’m here …
… to pay for a check of mine which the bank returned. It’s for twenty dollars, I believe.”
“Oh.” The lady amiably lifted out a locked metal file, searched for the key to it, then discovered the file wasn’t locked. She opened it and found the check right away, with a note attached. “Mr. Arctor?”
“Yes,” he said, his money already out.
“Yes, twenty dollars.” Detaching the note from the check, she began laboriously writing on the note, indicating that he had shown up and purchased the check back.
“I’m sorry about this,” he told her, “but by mistake I wrote the check on a now closed account rather than my active one.”
“Umm,” the lady said, smiling as she wrote.
“Also,” he said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d tell your husband, who called me the other day—”
“My brother Carl,” the lady said, “actually.” She glanced over her shoulder. “If Carl spoke to you …” She gestured, smiling. “He gets overwrought sometimes about checks. I apologize if he spoke … you know.”
“Tell him,” Arctor said, his speech memorized, “that when he called I was distraught myself, and I apologize for that, too.”
“I believe he did say something about that, yes.” She laid out his check; he gave her twenty dollars.
“Any extra charge?” Arctor said.
“No extra charge.”
“I was distraught,” he said, glancing briefly at the check and then putting it away in his pocket, “because a friend of mine had just passed on unexpectedly.”
“Oh dear,” the lady said.
Arctor, lingering, said, “He choked to death alone, in his room, on a piece of meat. No one heard him.”
“Do you know, Mr. Arctor, that more deaths from that happen than people realize? I read that when you are dining with a friend, and he or she does not speak for a period of time but just sits there, you should lean forward and ask him if he can talk? Because he may not be able to; he may be strangling and can’t tell you.”
“Yes,” Arctor said. “Thanks. That’s true. And thanks about the check.”
“I’m sorry about your friend,” the lady said.
“Yes,” he said. “He was about the best friend I had.”
“That is so dreadful,” the lady said. “How old was he, Mr. Arctor?”
“In his early thirties,” Arctor said, which was true: Luckman was thirty-two.
“Oh, how terrible. I’ll tell Carl. And thank you for coming all the way down here.”
“Thank you,” Arctor said. “And thank Mr. Englesohn too, for me. Thank you both so much.” He departed, finding himself back out on the warm morning sidewalk, blinking in the bright light and foul air.
He phoned for a cab, and on the journey back to his house sat advising himself as to how well he had gotten out of this net of Barris’s with no real overly bad scene. Could have been a lot worse, he pointed out to himself. The check was still there. And I didn’t have to confront the dude himself.
He got out the check to see how closely Barris had been able to approximate his handwriting. Yes, it was a dead account; he recognized the color of the check right away, an entirely closed one, and the bank had stamped it ACCOUNT CLOSED. No wonder the locksmith had gone bananas. And then, studying the check as he rode along, Arctor saw that the handwriting was his.
Not anything like Barris’s. A perfect forgery. He would never have known it wasn’t his, except that he remembered not having written it.
My God, he thought, how many of these has Barris done by now? Maybe he’s embezzled me out of half I’ve got.
Barris, he thought, is a genius. On the other hand, it’s probably a tracing reproduction or anyhow mechanically done. But I never made a check out to Englesohn Locksmith, so how could it be a transfer forgery? This is a unique check. I’ll turn it over to the department graphologists, he decided, and let them figure out how it was done. Maybe just practice, practice, practice.
As to the mushroom jazz—He thought, I’ll just walk up to him and say people told me he’s been trying to sell them mushroom hits. And to knock it off. I got feedback from somebody worried, as they should be.
But, he thought, these items are only random indications of what he’s up to, discovered on the first replay. They only represent samples of what I’m up against. Christ knows what else he’s done: he’s got all the time in the world to loaf around and read reference books and dream up plots and intrigues and conspiracies and so forth. … Maybe, he thought abruptly, I better have a trace run on my phone right away to see if it’s tapped. Barris has a box of electronic hardware, and even Sony, for example, makes and sells an induction coil that can be used as a phone-tapping device. The phone probably is. It probably has been for quite a while.
I mean, he thought, in addition to my own recent—necessary—phone tap.
Again he studied the check as the cab jiggled along, and all at once he thought, What if I made it out myself? What if Arctor wrote this? I think I did, he thought; I think the motherfucking dingey Arctor himself wrote this check, very fast—the letters slanted—because for some reason he was in a hurry; he dashed it off, got the wrong blank check, and afterward forgot all about it, forgot the incident entirely.
Forget, he thought, the time Arctor …
… oozed out of that huge dope happening in Santa Ana, where he met that little blond chick with odd teeth, long blond hair, and a big ass, but so energetic and friendly … he couldn’t get his car started; he was wired up to his nose. He kept having trouble—there was so much dope dropped and shot and snorted that night, it went on almost until dawn. So much Substance D, and very Primo. Very very Primo. His stuff.
Leaning forward, he said, “Pull over at that Shell station. I’ll get out there.”
He got out, paid the cab driver, then entered the pay phone, looked up the locksmith’s number, phoned him.
The old lady answered. “Englesohn Locksmith, good—”
“This is Mr. Arctor again, I’m sorry to bother you. What address do you have for the call, the service call for which my check was made out?”
“Well, let me see. Just a moment, Mr. Arctor.” Bumping of the phone as she set it down.
Distant muffled man’s voice: “Who is it? That Arctor?”
“Yes, Carl, but don’t say anything, please. He came in just now—”
“Let me talk to him.”
Pause. Then the old lady again. “Well, I have this address, Mr. Arctor.” She read off his home address.
“That’s where your brother was called out to? To make the key?”
“Wait a moment. Carl? Do you remember where you went in the truck to make the key for Mr. Arctor?”