A Scanner Darkly Part 14

"You interested in scoring on some organic psychedelics?"

"Well, I don't know ..." Unease. "You sure this is Jim? You don't sound like him."

"I've got something unbelievable, a rare organic mushroom from South America, used in Indian mystery cults thousands of years ago. You fly, become invisible, your car disappears, you are able to understand the speech of animals-"

"My car disappears all the time. When I leave it in a tow-away zone. Ha-ha."

"I can lay perhaps six caps of this Psilocybe Psilocybe on you." on you."

"How much?"

"Five dollars a cap."

"Outrageous! No kidding? Hey, I'll meet you somewhere." Then suspicion. "You know, I believe I remember you-you burned me once. Where'd you get these mushrooms. .h.i.ts? How do I know they're not weak acid?"

"They were brought to the U.S. inside a clay idol," Barris said. "As part of a carefully guarded art shipment to a museum, with this one idol marked. The customs pigs never suspected." Barris added, "If they don't get you off I'll refund your money."

"Well, that's meaningless if my head's been eaten and I'm swinging through the trees."

"I dropped one two days ago myself," Barris said. "To test it out. The best trip I ever had-lots of colors. Better than mescaline, for sure. I don't want my customers burned. I always test my stuff myself. It's guaranteed."

Behind Fred another scramble suit was watching the holo-monitor now too. "What's he peddling? Mescaline, he says?"

"He's been capping mushrooms," Fred said, "that either he picked or someone else picked, locally."

"Some mushrooms are toxic in the extreme," the scramble suit behind Fred said.

A third scramble suit knocked off its own holo scrutiny for a moment and stood with them now. "Certain Amanita Amanita mushrooms contain four toxins that are red-blood-cell cracking agents. It takes two weeks to die and there's no antidote. It's incalculably painful. Only an expert can tell what mushroom he's picking for sure when they're wild." mushrooms contain four toxins that are red-blood-cell cracking agents. It takes two weeks to die and there's no antidote. It's incalculably painful. Only an expert can tell what mushroom he's picking for sure when they're wild."

"I know," Fred said, and marked the indent numbers of this tape section for department use.

Barris again was dialing.

"What's the statute violation cited on this?" Fred said.

"Misrepresentation in advertising," one of the other scramble suits said, and both laughed and returned to their own screens. Fred continued watching.

On Holo Monitor Four the front door of the house opened and Bob Arctor entered, looking dejected. "Hi."

"Howdy," Barris said, gathering his caps together and thrusting them deep into his pocket. "How'd you make out with Donna?" He chuckled. "In several ways, maybe, eh?"

"Okay, f.u.c.k off," Arctor said, and pa.s.sed from Holo Monitor Four, to be picked up in his bedroom a moment later by scanner five. There, with the door kicked shut, Arctor brought forth a number of plastic bags filled with white tabs; he stood a moment uncertainly and then he stuffed them down under the covers of his bed, out of sight, and took off his coat. He appeared weary and unhappy; his face was drawn.

For a moment Bob Arctor sat on the edge of his unmade bed, all by himself. He at last shook his head, rose, stood uncertain ... then he smoothed his hair and left the room, to be picked up by the central living room scanner as he approached Barris. During this time scanner two had witnessed Barris hiding the brown bag of mushrooms under the couch cushions and placing the mushroom textbook back on the bookshelf where it was not noticeable.

"What you been doing?" Arctor asked him.

Barris declared, "Research."

"Into what?"

"The properties of certain mycological ent.i.ties of a delicate nature." Barris chuckled. "It didn't go too well with little miss big-t.i.ts, did it?"

Arctor regarded him and then went into the kitchen to plug in the coffeepot.

"Bob," Barris said, following him leisurely, "I'm sorry if I said anything that offended you." He hung around as Arctor waited for the coffee to heat, drumming and humming aimlessly.

"Where's Luckman?"

"I suppose out somewhere trying to rip off a pay phone. He took your hydraulic axle jack with him; that usually means he's out to knock over a pay phone, doesn't it?"

"My axle jack," Arctor echoed.

"You know," Barris said. "I could a.s.sist you professionally in your attempts to hustle little miss-"

Fred shot the tape ahead at high-speed wind. The meter at last read a two-hour pa.s.sage.

"-pay up your G.o.dd.a.m.n back rent or G.o.dd.a.m.n get to work on the cephscope," Arctor was saying hotly to Barris.

"I've already ordered resistors which-"

Again Fred sent the tape forward. Two more hours pa.s.sed.

Now Holo Monitor Five showed Arctor in his bedroom, in bed, a clock FM radio on to KNX, playing folk rock dimly. Monitor Two in the living room showed Barris alone, again reading about mushrooms. Neither man did much for a long period. Once, Arctor stirred and reached out to increase the radio's volume as a song, evidently one he liked, came on. In the living room Barris read on and on, hardly moving. Arctor again at last lay back in bed unmoving.

The phone rang. Barris reached out and lifted it to his ear. "h.e.l.lo?"

On the phone tap the caller, a male, said, "Mr. Arctor?"

"Yes, this is," Barris said.

I'll be f.u.c.ked for a nanny goat, Fred said to himself. He reached to turn up the phone-tap volume level.

"Mr. Arctor," the unidentified caller said in a slow, low voice, "I'm sorry to bother you so late, but that check of yours that did not clear-"

"Oh yes," Barris said. "I've been intending to call you about that. The situation is this, sir. I have had a severe bout of intestinal flu, with loss of body heat, pyloric spasms, cramps ... I just can't get it all together right now to make that little twenty-dollar check good, and frankly I don't intend to make it good."

"What?" the man said, not startled but hoa.r.s.ely. Ominously.

"Yes, sir," Barris said, nodding. "You heard me correctly, sir."

"Mr. Arctor," the caller said, "that check has been returned by the bank twice now, and these flu symptoms that you describe-"

"I think somebody slipped me something bad," Barris said, with a stark grin on his face.

"I think," the man said, "that you're one of those-" He groped for the word.

"Think what you want," Barris said, still grinning.

"Mr. Arctor," the man said, breathing audibly into the phone, "I am going to the D.A.'s office with that check, and while I'm on the phone I have a couple of things to tell you about what I feel about-"

"Turn on, tune out, and good-by," Barris said, and hung up.

The phone-tap unit had automatically recorded the digits of the caller's own phone, picking them up electronically from an inaudible signal generated as soon as the circuit was in place. Fred read off the number now visible on a meter, then shut off the tape-transport for all his holo-scanners, lifted his own police phone, and called in for a print-out on the number.

"Englesohn Locksmith, 1343 Harbor in Anaheim/' the police info operator informed him. "Lover boy."

"Locksmith," Fred said. "Okay." He had that written down and now hung up. A locksmith ... twenty dollars, a round sum: that suggested a job outside the shop-probably driving out and making a duplicate key. When the "owner's" key had gotten lost.

Theory. Barris had posed as Arctor, phoned Englesohn Locksmith to have a "duplicate" key made illicitly, for either the house or the car or even both. Telling Englesohn he'd lost his whole key ring ... but then the locksmith, doing a security check, had sprung on Barris a request for a check as I.D. Barris had gone back in the house and ripped off an unfilled-out checkbook of Arctor's and written a check out on it to the locksmith. The check hadn't cleared. But why not? Arctor kept a high balance in his account; a check that small would clear. But if it cleared Arctor would come across it in his statement and recognize it as not his, as Jim Barris's. So Barris had rooted about in Arctor's closets and located- probably at some previous time-an old checkbook from a now abandoned account and used that. The account being closed, the check hadn't cleared. Now Barris was in hot water.

But why didn't Barris just go in and pay off the check in cash? This way the creditor was already mad and phoning, and eventually would take it to the D.A. Arctor would find out. A skyful of s.h.i.t would land on Barris. But the way Barris had talked on the phone to the already outraged creditor ... he had slyly goaded him into even further hostility, out of which the locksmith might do anything. And worse-Barris's description of his "flu" was a description of coming off heroin, and anybody would know who knew anything. And Barris had signed off the phone call with a flat-out insinuation that he was a heavy doper and so what about it? Signed all this off as Bob Arctor.

The locksmith at this point knew he had a junkie debtor who'd written him a rubber check and didn't care s.h.i.t and had no intention of making good. And the junkie had this att.i.tude because obviously he was so wired and s.p.a.ced and mind-blown on his dope it didn't matter to him. And this was an insult to America. Deliberate and nasty.

In fact, Barris's sign-off was a direct quote of Tim Leary's original funky ultimatum to the establishment and all the straights. And this was Orange County. Full of Birchers and Minutemen. With guns. Looking for just this kind of uppity sa.s.s from bearded dopers.

Barris had set Bob Arctor up for a fire-bombing. A bust on the bad check at the least, a fire-bombing or other ma.s.sive retaliatory strike at worst, without Arctor having any notion what was coming down.

Why? Fred wondered. He noted on his scratch pad the ident code on this tape sequence, plus the phone-tap code as well. What was Barris getting Arctor back for? What the h.e.l.l had Arctor been up to? Arctor must have burned him pretty bad, Fred thought, for this. This is sheer malice. Little, vile, and evil.

This Barris guy, he thought, is a motherf.u.c.ker. He's going to get somebody killed.

One of the scramble suits in the safe apartment with him roused him from his introspection. "Do you actually know these guys?" The suit gestured at the now blank holo-monitors Fred had before him. "You in there among them on cover a.s.signment?"

"Yep," Fred said.

"It wouldn't be a bad idea to warn them in some way about this mushroom toxicity he's exposing them to, that clown with the green shades who's peddling. Can you pa.s.s it on to them without faulting your cover?"

The other near scramble suit called from his swivel chair, "Any time one of them gets violently nauseous-that's sometimes a tip-off on mushroom poisoning."

"Resembling strychnine?" Fred said. A cold insight grappled with his head then, a rerun of the Kimberly Hawkins dog-s.h.i.t day and his illness in his car after what- His.

"I'll tell Arctor," he said. "I can lay it on him. Without him flashing on me. He's docile."

"Ugly-looking, too," one of the scramble suits said. "He the individual came in the door stoop-shouldered and hung over?"

"Aw," Fred said, and swiveled back to his holos. Oh G.o.dd.a.m.n, he thought, that day Barris gave us the tabs at the roadside-his mind went into spins and double trips and then split in half, directly down the middle. The next thing he knew, he was in the safe apartment's bathroom with a Dixie cup of water, rinsing out his mouth, by himself, where he could think. When you get down to it, I'm Arctor, he thought. I'm the man on the scanners, the suspect Barris was f.u.c.king over with his weird phone call with the locksmith, and I was asking, What's Arctor been up to to get Barris on him like that? I'm slushed; my brain is slushed. This is not real. I'm not believing this, watching what is me, is Fred- that was Fred down there without his scramble suit; that's how Fred appears without the suit!

And Fred the other day possibly almost got it with toxic mushroom fragments, he realized. He almost didn't make it here to this safe apartment to get these holos going. But now he has.

Now Fred has a chance. But only barely.

Crazy G.o.dd.a.m.n job they gave me, he thought. But if I wasn't doing it someone else would be, and they might get it wrong. They'd set him up-set Arctor up. They'd turn him in for the reward; they'd plant dope on him and collect. If anyone, he thought, has to be watching that house, it better ought to be me by far, despite the disadvantages; just protecting everybody against kinky f.u.c.king Barris in itself justifies it right there.

And if any other officer monitoring Barris's actions sees what I probably will see, they'll conclude Arctor is the biggest drug runner in the western U.S. and recommend a- Christ!-covert snuff. By our unidentified forces. The ones in black we borrow from back East that tiptoe a lot and carry the scope-site Winchester 803's. The new infrared sniper-scope sights synched with the EE-trophic sh.e.l.ls. Those guys who don't get paid at all, even from a Dr. Pepper machine; they just get to draw straws to see which of them gets to be the next U.S. President. My G.o.d, he thought, those f.u.c.kers can shoot down a pa.s.sing plane. And make it look like one engine inhaled a flock of birds. Those EE-trophic sh.e.l.ls- why f.u.c.k me, man, he thought; they'd leave traces of feathers in the ruins of the engines; they'd prime them for that.

This is awful, he thought, thinking about this. Not Arctor as suspect but Arctor as ... whatever. Target. I'll keep on watching him; Fred will keep on doing his Fred-thing; it'll be a lot better; I can edit and interpret and do a great deal of "Let's wait until he actually" and so on, and, realizing this, he tossed the Dixie cup away and emerged from the safe apartment's bathroom.

"You look done in," one of the scramble suits said to him.

"Well," Fred said, "funny thing happened to me on the way to the grave." He saw in his mind a picture of the supersonic tight-beam projector which had caused a forty-nine-year-old district attorney to have a fatal cardiac arrest, just as he was about to reopen the case of a dreadful and famous political a.s.sa.s.sination here in California. "I almost got there," he said aloud.

"Almost is almost," the scramble suit said. "It's not there."

"Oh," Fred said. "Yeah. Right."

"Sit down," a scramble suit said, "and get back to work, or for you no Friday, just public a.s.sistance."

"Can you imagine listing this job as a job skill on the-" Fred began, but the two other scramble suits were not amused and in fact weren't even listening. So he reseated himself and lit a cigarette. And started up the battery of holos once more.

What I ought to do, he decided, is walk back up the street to the house, right now, while I'm thinking about it, before I get sidetracked, and walk in on Barris real fast and shoot him.

In the line of duty.

I'll say, "Hey, man, I'm hurtin'-can you lay a joint on me? I'll pay you a buck." And he will, and then I'll arrest him, drag him to my car, throw him inside, drive onto the freeway, and then pistol-whip him out of the car in front of a truck. And I can say he fought loose and tried to jump. Happens all the time.

Because if I don't I can never eat or drink any open food or beverage in the house, and neither can Luckman or Donna or Freck or we'll all croak from toxic mushroom fragments, after which Barris will explain about how we were all out in the woods picking them at random and eating them and he tried to dissuade us but we wouldn't listen because we didn't go to college.

Even if the court psychiatrists find him totally burned out and nuts and toss him in forever, somebody'll be dead. He thought, Maybe Donna, for instance. Maybe she'll wander in, s.p.a.ced on hash, looking for me and the spring flowers I promised her, and Barris will offer her a bowl of Jell-O he made himself special, and ten days later she'll be thrashing in agony in an intensive-care ward and it won't do any good then.

If that happens, he thought, I'll boil him in Drno, in the bathtub, in hot Drno, until only bones remain, and then mail the bones to his mother or kids, whichever he has, and if he hasn't either then just toss the bones out at pa.s.sing dogs. But the deed will be done to that little girl anyhow.

Excuse me, he rolled in his head in fantasy to the other two scramble suits. Where can I get a hundred-pound can of Drno this time of night?

I've had it, he thought, and turned on the holos so as not to attract any more static from the other suits in the safe room.

On Monitor Two, Barris was talking to Luckman, who apparently had rolled in the front door dead drunk, no doubt on Ripple. "There are more people addicted to alcohol in the U.S.," Barris was telling Luckman, who was trying to find the door to his bedroom, to go pa.s.s out, and having a terrible time, "than there are addicts of all other forms of drugs. And brain damage and liver damage from the alcohol plus impurities-"

Luckman disappeared without ever having noticed Barris was there. I wish him luck, Fred thought. It's not a workable policy, though, not for long. Because the f.u.c.ker is there.

But now Fred is here, too. But all Fred's got is hindsight. Unless, he thought, unless maybe if I run the holo-tapes backward. Then I'd be there first, before Barris. What I do would precede what Barris does. If with me first he gets to do anything at all.

And then the other side of his head opened up and spoke to him more calmly, like another self with a simpler message flashed to him as to how to handle it.

'The way to cool the locksmith check," it told him, "is to go down there to Harbor tomorrow first thing very early and redeem the check and get it back. Do that first, before you do anything else. Do that right away. Defuse that, at that end. And after that, do the other more serious things, once that's finished. Right?" Right, he thought. That will remove me from the disadvantage list. That's where to start.

He put the tape on fast forward, on and on until he figured from the meters that it would show a night scene with everyone asleep. For a pretext to sign off his workday, here.

It now showed lights off, the scanners on infra. Luckman in his bed in his room; Barris in his; and in his room, Arctor beside a chick, both of them asleep.

Let's see, Fred thought. Something. We have her in the computer files as strung out on hard stuff and also turning tricks and dealing. A true loser.

"At least you didn't have to watch your subject have s.e.xual intercourse," one of the other scramble suits said, watching from behind him and then pa.s.sing on by.

"That's a relief," Fred said, stoically viewing the two sleeping figures in the bed; his mind was on the locksmith and what he had to do there. "I always hate to-"

"A nice thing to do," the scramble suit agreed, "but not too nice to watch."