Five Great Novels Part 8

"Flowers," Fred murmured. "You mean plastic flowers on real flowers? Real ones, I guess."

"The plastic ones are no good," the seated deputy said. "They look like they're . . . well, fake. Somehow fake."

"Can I leave now?" Fred asked. After an exchange of glances, both deputies nodded. "We'll evaluate you some other time, Fred," the standing one said. "It's not that urgent. Hank will notify you of a later appointment time."

For some obscure reason Fred felt like shaking hands with them before he left, but he did not; he just left, saying nothing, a little down and a little bewildered, because, probably, of the way it had shot out of left field at him, so suddenly. They've been going over and over my material, he thought, trying to find signs of my being burned out, and they did find some. Enough, anyhow, to want to nun these tests. Spring flowers, he thought as he reached the elevator. Little ones; they probably grow close to the ground and a lot of people step on them. Do they grow wild? Or in special commercial vats on in huge enclosed farms? I wonder what the country is like. The fields and like that, the strange smells. And, he wondered, where do you find that? Where do you go and how do you get there and stay there? What kind of trip is that, and what kind of ticket does it take? And who do you buy the ticket from? And, he thought, I would like to take someone with me when I go there, maybe Donna. But how do you ask that, ask a chick that, when you don't even know how to get next to her? When you've been scheming on her and achieving nothing--not even step one. We should hurry, he thought, because later on all the spring flowers like they told me about will be dead.

8.

On his way over to Bob Arctor's house, where a bunch of heads could usually be found for a mellow turned-on time, Charles Freck worked out a gag to put ol' Barris on, to pay him back for the spleen jive at the Fiddler's Three restaurant that day. In his head, as he skillfully avoided the radar traps that the police kept everywhere (the police radar vans checking out drivers usually took the disguise of old raunchy VW vans, painted dull brown, driven by bearded freaks; when he saw such vans he slowed), he ran a preview fantasy number of his put-on: FRECK: (_Casually_) I bought a methedrine plant today. BARRIS: (_With a snotty expression on his face_) Methedrine is a benny, like speed; it's crank, it's crystal, it's amphetamine, it's made synthetically in a lab. So it isn't organic, like pot. There's no such thing as a methedrine plant like there is a pot plant. FRECK: (_Springing the punch line on him_) I mean I inherited forty thousand from an uncle and purchased a plant hidden in this dude's garage where he makes methedrine. I mean, he's got a factory there where he manufactures meth. Plant in the sense of-- He couldn't get it phrased exactly right as he drove, because part of his mind stayed on the vehicles around him and the lights; but he knew when he got to Bob's house he'd lay it on Barris super good. And, especially if a bunch of people were there, Barris would rise to the bait and be visible to everyone flat-out as a clear and evident a.s.shole. And that would super pay him back, because Barris worse than anybody else couldn't stand to be made fun of. When he pulled up he found Barris outdoors working on Bob Arctor's car. The hood was up, and both Barris and Arctor stood together with a pile of car tools.

"Hey, man," Freck said, slamming his door and sauntering casually over. "Barris," he said right off in a cool way, putting his hand on Barris's shoulder to attract his attention.

"Later," Barris growled. He had his repair clothes on; grease and like that covered the already dirty fabric. Freck said, "I bought a methedrine plant today."

With an impatient scowl, Barris said, "How big?"

"What do you mean?"

"How big a plant?"

"Well," Freck said, wondering how to go on.

"How much'd you pay for it?" Arctor said, also greasy from the car repair. They had the carb off, Freck saw, air filter, hoses, and all. Freck said, "About ten bucks."

"Jim could have gotten it for you cheaper," Arctor said, resuming his labors. "Couldn't you, Jim?"

"They're practically giving meth plants away," Barris said.

"This is a whole f.u.c.king garage!" Freck protested. "A factory! It turns out a million tabs a day--the pill-rolling machinery and everything. _Everything!_"

"All that cost ten dollars?" Barris said, grinning widely.

"Where's it located?" Arctor said.

"Not around here," Freck said uneasily. "Hey, f.u.c.k it, you guys."

Pausing in his work--Barris did a lot of pausing in his work, whether anyone was talking to him or not--Barris said, "You know, Freck, if you drop or shoot too much meth you start talking like Donald Duck."

"So?" Freck said.

"Then n.o.body can understand you," Barris said. Arctor said, "What'd you say, Barris? I couldn't understand you."

His face dancing with merriment, Barris made his voice sound like Donald Duck's. Freck and Arctor grinned and enjoyed it. Barris went on and on, gesturing finally at the carburetor.

"What about the carburetor?" Arctor said, not smiling now. Barris, in his regular voice, but still grinning widely, said, "You've got a bent choke shaft. The whole carb should be rebuilt. Otherwise the choke's going to shut on you while you're driving along the freeway and then you'll find your motor is flooded and dead and some a.s.shole will rear-end you. And possibly in addition that raw gas was.h.i.+ng down the cylinder walls--if it goes on long enough--will wash the lubrication away, so your cylinders will be scored and permanently damaged. And then you'll need them neboned."

"Why is the choke rod bent?" Arctor asked. Shrugging, Barris resumed taking apart the carb, he did not answer. He left that up to Arctor and to Charles Freck, who knew nothing about engines, especially complex repairs like this. Coming out of the house, Luckman, wearing a snazzy s.h.i.+rt and tight high-style Levi jeans, carrying a book and weaning shades, said, "I phoned and they're checking to see what a rebuilt carb will set you back for this car. They'll phone in a while, so I left the front door open."

Barris said, "You could put a four-barrel on instead of this two, while you're at it. But you'd have to put on a new manifold. We could pick up a used one for not very much."

"It would idle too high," Luckman said, "with like a Rochester four-barrel--is that what you mean? And it wouldn't s.h.i.+ft properly. It wouldn't ups.h.i.+ft."

"The idling jets could be replaced with smaller jets," Barris said, "that would compensate. And with a tach he could watch his rpms, so it didn't over-rev. He'd know by the tach when it wasn't ups.h.i.+fting. Usually just backing off on the gas pedal causes it to ups.h.i.+ft if the automatic linkage to the transmission doesn't do it. I know where we can get a tach, too. In fact, I have one."

"Yeah," Luckman said, "well, if he tromped down heavy on the step-down pa.s.sing gear to get a lot of torque suddenly in an emergency on the freeway, it'd downs.h.i.+ft and rev up so high it'd blow the head gasket or worse, a lot worse. Blow up the whole engine."

Barris, patiently, said, "He'd see the tach needle jump and he'd back right off."

"While pa.s.sing?" Luckman said. "Halfway past a f.u.c.king big semi? s.h.i.+t, he'd have to keep barreling on, high revs or not; he'd have to blow up the engine rather than back off, because if he backed off he'd never get around what he was trying to pa.s.s."

"Momentum," Barris said. "In a car this heavy, momentum would carry him on by even if he backed off."

"What about uphill?" Luckman said. "Momentum doesn't carry you very far uphill when you're pa.s.sing."

To Arctor, Barris said, "What does this car . . ." He bent to see what make it was. "This . . ." His lips moved. "Olds."

"It weighs about a thousand pounds," Arctor said. Charles Freck saw him wink toward Luckman.

"You're right, then," Barris agreed. "There wouldn't be much inertia ma.s.s at that light weight. On would there?" He groped for a pen and something to write on. "A thousand pounds traveling at eighty miles an hour builds up force equal to--"

"That's a thousand pounds," Arctor put in, "with the pa.s.sengers in it and with a full tank of gas and a big carton of bricks in the trunk."

"How many pa.s.sengers?" Luckman said, deadpan.

"Twelve."

"Is that six in back," Luckman said, "and six in--"

"No," Arctor said, "that's eleven in back and the driver sitting alone in front. So, you see, so there will be more weight on the rear wheels for more traction. So it won't fishtail."

Barris glanced alertly up. "This car fishtails?"

"Unless you get eleven people riding in the back," Arctor said.

"Be better, then, to lead the trunk with sacks of sand," Barris said. "Three two-hundred-pound sacks of sand. Then the pa.s.sengers could be distributed more evenly and they would be more comfortable."

"What about one six-hundred-pound box of gold in the trunk?" Luckman asked him. "Instead of three two-hundred--"

"Will you lay off?" Barris said. "I'm trying to calculate the inertial force of this car traveling at eighty miles an hour."

"It won't go eighty," Arctor said. "It's got a dead cylinder. I meant to tell you. It threw a rod last night, on my way home from the 7-11."

"Then why are we pulling the carb?" Barris demanded. "We have to pull the whole head for that. In fact, much more. In fact, you may have a cracked block. Well, that's why it won't start."

"Won't your car start?" Freck asked Bob Arctor.

"It won't start," Luckman said, "because we pulled the carb off."

Puzzled, Barris said, "Why'd we pull the carb? I forget."

"To get all the springs and little d.i.n.ky parts replaced," Arctor said. "So it won't f.u.c.k up again and nearly kill us. The Union station mechanic advised us to."

"If you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds wouldn't rappity-rap on," Barris said, "like a lot of speed freaks, I could complete my computations and tell you how this particular car with its weight would handle with a four-barrel Rochester carb, modified naturally with smaller idling jets." He was genuinely sore now. "So SHUT UP!"

Luckman opened the book he was carrying. He puffed up, then, to much larger than usual; his great chest swelled, and so did his biceps. "Barris, I'm going to read to you." He began to read from the book, in a particularly fluent way. "'He to whom it is given to see Christ _more real_ than any other reality . . .'"

"What?" Barris said. Luckman continued reading. "'. . . than any other reality in the World, Christ everywhere present and everywhere growing more great, Christ the final determination and plasmatic Principle of the Universe--'"

"What is that?" Arctor said.

"Chardin. Teilhand de Chandin."

"Jeez, Luckman," Arctor said.

"'. . . that man indeed lives in a zone where no multiplicity can distress him and which is nevertheless the most active workshop of universal fulfilment.'" Luckman shut the book. With a high degree of apprehension, Charles Freck moved in between Barris and Luckman. "Cool it, you guys."

"Get out of the way, Freck," Luckman said, bringing back his right arm, low, for a vast sweeping haymaken at Barris. "Come on, Barris, I'm going to coldc.o.c.k you into tomorrow, for talking to your betters like that."

With a bleat of wild, appealing terror, Barris dropped his felt pen and pad of paper and scuttled off erratically toward the open front door of the house, yelling back as he ran, "I hear the phone about the rebuilt carb."

They watched him go.

"I was just kidding him," Luckman said, rubbing his lower lip.

"What if he gets his gun and silencer?" Freck said, his nervousness off the scale entirely. He moved by degrees in the direction of his own parked car, to drop swiftly behind it if Barris reappeared firing.

"Come on," Arctor said to Luckman; they fell back together into their car work, while Freck loitered apprehensively by his own vehicle, wondering why he had decided to bop over here today. It had no mellow quality today, here, none at all, as it usually did. He had sensed the bad vibes under the kidding right from the start. What's the motherf.u.c.k wrong? he wondered, and got back somberly into his own car, to start it up. Are things going to get heavy and bad here too, he wondered, like they did at Jerry Fabin's house during the last few weeks with him? It used to be mellow here, he thought, everybody kicking back and turning on, grooving to acid rock, especially the Stones. Donna sitting here in her leather jacket and boots, filling caps, Luckman rolling joints and telling about the seminar he planned to give at UCLA in dope-smoking and joint-rolling, and how someday he'd suddenly roll the perfect joint and it would be placed under gla.s.s and helium back at Const.i.tution Hall, as part of American history with those other items of similar importance. When I look back, he thought, even to when Jim Barris and I were sitting at the Fiddler's, the other day . . . it was better even then. Jenny began it, he thought; that's what's coming down here, that there which carried off Jerry. How can days and happenings and moments so good become so quickly ugly, and for no reason, for no real reason? Just--change. With nothing causing it.

"I'm splitting," he said to Luckman and Arctor, who were watching him rev up.

"No, stay, hey, man," Luckman said with a warm smile. "We need you. You're a brother."

"Naw, I'm cutting out."

From the house Barris appeared cautiously. He carried a hammer. "It was a wrong number," he shouted, advancing with great caution, halting and peering like a crab-thing in a drive-in movie.

"What's the hammer for?" Luckman said. Arctor said, "To fix the engine."

"Thought I would bring it with me," Barris explained as he returned gingerly to the Olds, "since I was indoors and noticed it."

"The most dangerous kind of person," Arctor said, "is one who is afraid of his own shadow." That was the last Freck heard as he drove away; he pondered over what Arctor meant, if he meant him, Charles Freck. He felt shame. But s.h.i.+t, he thought, why stick around when it's such a super b.u.mmer? Where's the chicken in that? Don't never partic.i.p.ate in no bad scenes, he reminded himself; that was his motto in life. So he drove away now, without looking back. Let them snuff each other, he thought. Who needs them? But he felt bad, really bad, to leave them and to have witnessed the darkening change, and he wondered again why, and what it signified, but then it occurred to him that maybe things would go the other way again and get better, and that cheered him. In fact, it caused him to roll a short fantasy number in his head as he drove along avoiding invisible police cars: THERE THEY ALL SAT AS BEFORE.

Even people who were either dead or burned out, like Jerry Fabin. They all sat here and there in a sort of clear white light, which wasn't daylight but better light than that, a kind of sea which lay beneath them and above them as well. Donna and a couple other chicks looked so foxy--they had on halters and hot pants, or tank tops with no bras. He could hear music although he could not quite distinguish what track it was from what LP. Maybe Hendrix! he thought. Yeah, an old Hendrix track, or now all at once it was J.J. All of them: Jim Croce, and J.J., but especially Hendrix. "Before I die," Hendrix was murmuring, "let me live my life as I want to," and then immediately the fantasy number blew up because he had forgotten both that Hendrix was dead and how Hendrix and also Joplin had died, not to mention Croce. Hendrix and J.J. OD'ing on smack, both of them, two neat cool fine people like that, two outrageous humans, and he remembered how he'd heard that Janis's manager had only allowed her a couple hundred bucks now and then; she couldn't have the rest, all that she earned, because of her junk habit. And then he heard in his head her song "All Is Loneliness," and he began to cry. And in that condition drove on toward home.

In his living room, sitting with his friends and attempting to determine whether he needed a new carb, a rebuilt carb, on a modification carb-and-manifold, Robert Arctor sensed the silent constant scrutiny, the electronic presence, of the holoscanners. And felt good about it.

"You look mellow," Luckman said. "Putting out a hundred bucks wouldn't make me mellow."

"I decided to cruise along the street until I come across an Olds like mine," Arctor explained, "and then unbolt their carb and pay nothing. Like everyone else we know."

"Especially Donna," Barris said in agreement. "I wish she hadn't been in here the other day while we were gone. Donna steals everything she can carry, and if she can't carry it she phones up her rip-off gang buddies and they show up and carry it off for her."

"I'll tell you a stony I heard about Donna," Luckman said. "One time, see, Donna put a quarter into one of those automatic stamp machines that operate off a coil of stamps, and the machine was dingey and just kept cranking out stamps. Finally she had a marketbasket full. It _still_ kept cranking them out. Ultimately she had like--she and her ripoff friends counted them--over eighteen thousand U.S. fifteen-cent stamps. Well, that was cool, except what was Donna Hawthorne going to do with them? She never wrote a letter in her life, except to her lawyer to sue some guy who burned her in a dope deal."

"Donna does _that?_" Arctor said. "She has an attorney to use in a default on an illegal transaction? How can she do that?"

"She just probably says the dude owes her bread."

"Imagine getting an angry pay-up-or-go-to-court letter from an attorney about a dope deal," Arctor said, marveling at Donna, as he frequently did.

"Anyhow," Luckman continued, "there she was with a marketbasket full of at least eighteen thousand U.S. fifteen-cent stamps, and what the h.e.l.l to do with them? You can't sell them back to the Post Office. Anyhow, when the P.O. came to service the machine they'd know it went dingey, and anyone who showed up at a window with all those fifteen-cent stamps, especially a coil of them--s.h.i.+t, they'd flash on it; in fact, they'd be waiting for Donna, right? So she thought about it--after of course she'd loaded the coil of stamps into her MG and drove off--and then she phoned up more of those rip-off freaks she works with and had them drive over with a jackhammer of some kind, water-cooled and water-silenced, a real kinky special one which, Christ, they ripped off, too, and they dug the stamp machine loose from the concrete in the middle of the night and carried it to her place in the back of a Ford Ranchero. Which they also probably ripped off. For the stamps."

"You mean she sold the stamps?" Arctor said, marveling. "From a vending machine? One by one?"

"They remounted--this is what I heard, anyhow--they relocated the U.S. stamp machine at a busy intersection where a lot of people pa.s.s by, but back out of sight where no mail truck would spot it, and they put it back in operation."

"They would have been wiser just to knock over the coin box," Barris said.

"So they were selling stamps, then," Luckman said, "for like a few weeks until the machine ran out, like it naturally had to eventually. And what the f.u.c.k next? I can imagine Donna's brain working on that during those weeks, that peasant-thrift brain . . . her family is peasant stock from some European country. Anyhow, by the time it ran out of its coil, Donna had decided to convert it over to soft drinks, which are from the P.O.--they're really guarded. And you go into the bucket forever for that."

"Is this true?" Barris said.

"Is what true?" Luckman said. Barris said, "That girl is disturbed. She should be forcibly committed. Do you realize that all our taxes were raised by her stealing those stamps?" He sounded angry again.

"Write the government and tell them," Luckman said, his face cold with distaste for Barris. "Ask Donna for a stamp to mail it; she'll sell you one."

"At full price," Barris said, equally mad. The holos, Arctor thought, will have miles and miles of this on their expensive tapes. Not miles and miles of dead tape but miles and miles of tripped out tape. It was not what went on while Robert Arctor sat before a holo-scanner that mattered so much, he considered; it was what took place--at least for him . . . for whom? . . . for Fred--while Bob Arctor was elsewhere or asleep and others were within scanning range. So I should split, he thought, as I planned it out, leaving these guys, and sending other people I know over here. I should make my house super-accessible from now on. And then a dreadful, ugly thought rose inside him. Suppose when I play the tapes back I see Donna when she's in here--opening a window with a spoon or knife blade--and slipping in and destroying my possessions and stealing. _Another_ Donna: the chick as she really is, or anyhow as she is when I can't see her. The philosophical "when a tree falls in the forest" number. What is Donna like when no one is around to watch her? Does, he wondered, the gentle lovely shrewd and very kind, superkind girl transform herself instantly into something sly? Will I see a change which will blow my mind? Donna on Luckman, anyone I care about. Like your pet cat or dog when you're out of the house . . . the cat empties a pillowcase and starts stuffing your valuables in it: electric clock and bedside radio, shaver, all it can stuff in before you get back: another cat entirely while you're gone, ripping you off and p.a.w.ning it all, or lighting up your joints, or walking on the ceiling, or phoning people long distance. . . G.o.d knows. A nightmare, a weird other world beyond the mirror, a terror city reverse thing, with unrecognizable ent.i.ties creeping about; Donna crawling on all fours, eating from the animals' dishes . . . any kind of psychedelic wild trip, unfathomable and horrid. h.e.l.l, he thought; for that matter, maybe Bob Arctor rises up in the night from deep sleep and does trips like that. Has s.e.xual relations with the wall. Or mysterious freaks show up who he's never seen before, a whole bunch of them, with special heads that swivel all the way around, like owls'. And the audio-scanners will pick up the far-out demented conspiracies hatched out by him and them to blow up the men's room at the Standard station by filling the toilet with plastic explosives for G.o.d knows what brain-charred purpose. Maybe this sort of stuff goes on every night while he just imagines he's asleep--and is gone by day. Bob Arctor, he speculated, may learn more new information about himself than he is ready for, more than he will about Donna in her little leather jacket, and Luckman in his fancy duds, and even Barris--maybe when n.o.body's around Jim Barris merely goes to sleep. And sleeps until they reappear. But he doubted it. More likely Barris whipped out a hidden transmitter from the mess and chaos of his room--which, like all the other rooms in the house, had now for the first time come under twenty-four-hour scanning--and sent a cryptic signal to the other bunch of cryptic motherf.u.c.kers with whom he currently conspired for whatever people like him or them conspired for. Another branch, Bob Arctor reflected, of the authorities. On the other hand, Hank and those guys downtown would not be too happy if Bob Arctor left his house, now that the monitors had been expensively and elaborately installed, and was never seen again: never showed up on any of the tape. He could not therefore take off in order to fulfill his personal surveillance plans at the expense of theirs. After all, it was their money. In the script being filmed, he would at all times have to be the star actor. Actor, Arctor, he thought. Bob the Actor who is being hunted; he who is the El Primo huntee. They say you never recognize your own voice when you first hear it played back on tape. And when you see yourself on video tape, or like this, in a 3-D hologram, you don't recognize yourself visually either. You imagined you were a tall fat man with black hair, and instead you're a tiny thin woman with no hair at all . . . is that it? I'm sure I'll recognize Bob Arctor, he thought, if by nothing else than by the clothes he wears or by a process of elimination. What isn't Barris or Luckman and lives here must be Bob Arctor. Unless it's one of the dogs or cats. I'll try to keep my professional eye trained on something which walks upright.

"Barris," he said, "I'm going out to see if I can score some beans." Then he pretended to remember he had no car; he got that sort of expression. "Luckman," he said, "is your Falcon running?"

"No," Luckman said thoughtfully, after consideration, "I don't think so."

"Can I borrow your car, Jim?" Arctor asked Barris.

"I wonder. . . if you can handle my car," Barris said. This always arose as a defense when anyone tried to borrow Barris's car, because Barris had had secret unspecified modifications done on it, in its (a) suspension (b) engine (c) transmission (d) rear end (e) drive train (f) electrical system (g) front end and steering (h) as well as clock, cigar lighter, ashtray, glove compartment. In particular the glove compartment. Barris kept it locked always. The radio, too, had been cunningly changed (never explained how or why). If you tuned one station you got only one-minute-apart blips. All the push-b.u.t.tons brought in a single transmission that made no sense, and, oddly, there was never any rock played over it. Sometimes when they were accompanying Barris on a buy and Barris parked and got out of the car, leaving them, he turned the particular station on in a special fas.h.i.+on very loud. If they changed it while he was gone he became incoherent and refused to speak on the trip back or ever to explain. He had not explained yet. Probably when set to that frequency his radio transmitted (a) to the authorities. (b) to a private paramilitary political organization. (c) to the Syndicate. (d) to extraterrestrials of higher intelligence.

"By that I mean," Barris said, "it will cruise at--"

"Aw f.u.c.k!" Luckman broke in harshly. "It's an ordinary six-cylinder motor, you humper. When we park in it downtown L.A. the parking-lot jockey drives it. So why can't Bob? You a.s.shole."

Now, Bob Arctor had a few devices too, a few covert modifications built into his own car radio. But he didn't talk about them. Actually, it was Fred who had. Or anyhow somebody had, and they did a few things a little like what Barris claimed his several electronic a.s.sists did, and then on the other hand they did not. For example, every law-enforcement vehicle emits a particular full-spectrum interference which sounds on ordinary car radios like a failure in the spank-suppressors of that vehicle. As if the police car's ignition is faulty. However, Bob Arctor, as a peace officer, had been allocated a gadget which, when he had mounted it within his car radio, told him a great deal, whereas the noises told other people--most other people--no information at all. These other people did not even recognize the static as information-bearing. First of all, the different subsounds told Bob Arctor how close the law-enforcement vehicle was to his own and, next, what variety of department it represented: city or county, Highway Patrol, or federal, whatever. He, too, picked up the one-minuteapart blips which acted as a time check for a parked vehicle; those in the parked vehicle could determine how many minutes they had waited without any obvious arm gestures. This was useful, for instance, when they had agreed to hit a house in exactly three minutes. The _zt zt zt_ on their car radio told them precisely when three minutes had pa.s.sed. He knew, too, about the AM station that played the top-ten-type tunes on and on plus an enormous amount of DJ chatter in between, which sometimes was not chatter, in a sense. If that station had been tuned to, and the racket of it filled your car, anyone casually overhearing it would hear a conventional pop music station and typical boring DJ talk, and either not hang around at all or flash on in any way to the fact that the so-called DJ suddenly, in exactly the same muted chatty style of voice in which he said, "Now here's a number for Phil and Jane, a new Cat Stevens tune called--" occasionally said something more like "Vehicle blue will proceed a mile north to Bastanchury and the other units will--" and so on. He had never--with all the many dudes and chicks who rode with him, even when he had been obliged to keep tuned to police info-instruct, such as when a major bust was going down or any big action was in progress which might involve him--had anyone notice. Or if they noticed, they probably thought they were personally s.p.a.ced and paranoid and forgot it. And also he knew about the many unmarked police vehicles like old Chevys jacked up in the back with loud (illegal) pipes and racing stripes, with wild-looking hip types driving them erratically at high speed--he knew from what his radio emitted in the way of the special information-carrying station at all frequencies when one buzzed him or shot past. He knew to ignore. Also, when he pushed the bar that supposedly switched from AM to FM on his car radio, a station on a particular frequency groaned out indefinite Muzak-type music, but this noise being transmitted to his car was filtered out, unscrambled, by the microphone-transmitter within his radio, so that whatever was said by those in his car at the time was picked up by his equipment and broadcast to the authorities; but this one funky station playing away, no matter how loud, was not received by them and did not interfere at all; the grid eliminated it. 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 s.h.i.+t about that; a Ferrari has suspension and handling and steering that no "special secret modifications" can match, so the h.e.l.l 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, s.p.a.ced-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 s.h.i.+pment of c.o.ke in the cla.s.sic 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 s.p.a.ced 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 ident.i.ty 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.