“So I do the playback at that apartment,” Fred said.
“We use it as a playback-monitor spot for about eight– on perhaps it’s nine, now–houses on apartments under scrutiny in that particular neighborhood. So you’ll be bumping into other undercover people doing their playbacks. _Always have your suit on then_.”
“I’ll be seen going into the apartment. It’s too close.”
“Guess so, but it’s an enormous complex, hundreds of units, and it’s the only one we’ve found electronically feasible. It’ll have to do, at least until we get legal eviction on another unit elsewhere. We’re working on it . . . two blocks farther away, where you’ll be less conspicuous. Week on so, I’d guess. If holo-scans could be transmitted with acceptable resolution along micro-relay cables and ITT lines like the older–”
“I’ll just use the shuck that I’m balling some broad in that complex, if Arctor on Luckman or any of those heads see me entering.” It really didn’t complicate matters that much; in fact, it would cut down his in-transit unpaid time, which was an important factor. He could easily truck on over to the safe apartment, do the scanning replay, determine what was relevant to his reports and what could be discarded, and then return very soon to–
To my own house, he thought. Arctor’s house. Up the street at the house I am Bob Arctor, the heavy doper suspect being scanned without his knowledge, and then every couple of days I find a pretext to slip down the street and into the apartment where I am Fred replaying miles and miles of tape to see what I did, and this whole business, he thought, depresses me. Except for the protection–and valuable personal information–it will give me.
Probably whoever’s hunting me will be caught by the holoscanners within the first week.
Realizing that, he felt mellow.
“Fine,” he said to Hank.
“So you see where the holos are placed. If they need servicing, you probably can do it yourself while you’re in Arctor’s house and no one else is around. You do get into his house, normally, don’t you?”
Well shit, Fred thought. If I do that, then I will be on the holo-replays. So when I turn them over to Hank I have to be, obviously, one of the individuals visible on them, and that cuts it down.
Up to now he had never actually laid it on Hank as to how he knew what he knew about his suspects; he himself as Fred the effective screening device carried the information. But now: audio- and holo-scanners, which did not automatically edit out as did his verbal report all identifying mention of himself. There would be Robert Arctor tinkering with the holos when they malfunctioned, his face mushrooming up to fill the screen. But on the other hand _he_ would be the first to replay the storage tapes; he could still edit. Except that it would take time and care.
But edit out _what?_ Edit out Arctor–entirely? Arctor was the suspect. Just Arctor when he went to fiddle with the holos.
“I’ll edit myself out,” he said. “So you won’t see me. As a matter of conventional protection.”
“Of course. You haven’t done this before?” Hank reached to show him a couple of pictures. “You use a bulk erasing device that wipes out any section where you as the informant appear. That’s the holos, of course; for audio, there’s no set policy followed. You won’t have any real trouble, though. We take it for granted that you’re one of the individuals in Arctor’s circle of friends who frequent that house–you are either Jim Barris on Ernie Luckman on Charles Freck or Donna Hawthorne–”
“Donna?” he laughed. The suit laughed, actually. In its way.
“Or Bob Arctor,” Hank continued, studying his list of suspects.
“I report on myself all the time,” Fred said.
“So you will have to include yourself from time to time in the holo-tapes you turn over to us, because if you systematically edit yourself out then we can deduce who you are by a process of elimination, whether we want to or not. What you must do, really, is edit yourself out in–what should I call it?–an inventive, artistic . . . Hell, the word is _creative_ way . . . as for instance during the brief intervals when you’re in the house alone and doing research, going through papers and drawers, or servicing a scanner within view of another scanner, on–”
“You should just send someone to the house once a month in a uniform,” Fred said. “And have him say, ‘Good morning! I’m here to service the monitoring devices covertly installed on your premises, in your phone, and in your car.’ Maybe Arctor would pick up the bill.”
“Arctor would probably off him and then disappear.”
The scramble suit Fred said, “If Arctor is hiding that much. That’s not been proved.”
“Arctor may be hiding a great deal. We’ve got more recent information on him gathered and analyzed. There is no substantial doubt of it: he is a ringer, a three-dollar bill. He is _phony_. So keep on him until he drops, until we have enough to arrest him and make it stick.”
“You want stuff planted?”
“We’ll discuss that later.”
“You think he’s up high in the, you know, the S. D. Agency?”
“What we _think_ isn’t of any importance in your work,” Hank said. “We evaluate; _you_ report with your own limited conclusions. This is not a put-down of you, but we have information, lots of it, not available to you. The broad picture. The computerized picture.”
“Arctor is doomed,” Fred said. “If he’s up to anything. And I have a hunch from what you say that he is.”
“We should have a case on him this way soon,” Hank said. “And then we can close the book on him, which will please us all.”
Fred stoically memorized the address and number of the apartment and suddenly recalled that he had seen a young head-type couple who had recently abruptly disappeared now and then entering and leaving the building. Busted, and their apartment taken over for this. He had liked them. The girl had long flaxen hair, wore no bra. One time he had driven past as she was lugging groceries and offered her a lift; they had talked. She was an organic type, into megavitamins and kelp and sunlight, nice, shy, but she’d declined. Now he could see why. Evidently the two of them had been holding. Or, more likely, dealing. On the other hand, if the apartment was needed, a possession rap would do, and you could always get that.
What, he wondered, would Bob Arctor’s littered but large house be used for by the authorities when Arctor had been hauled off? An even vaster intelligence-processing center, most likely.
“You’d like Arctor’s house,” he said aloud. “It’s rundown and typically doper dirty, but it’s big. Nice yard. Lots of shrubs.”
“That’s what the installation crew reported back. Some excellent possibilities.”
“They _what?_ They reported it had ‘plenty of possibilities,’ did they?” The scramble suit voice clacked out maddeningly without tone or resonance, which made him even angrier. “Like what?”
“Well, one obvious possibility: its living room gives a view of an intersection, so passing vehicles could be graphed and their license plates . . .” Hank studied his many, many papers. “But Burt What’s-his-face, who headed the crew, felt the house had been allowed to deteriorate so badly that it wouldn’t be worth our taking over. As an investment.”
“In what way? In what fashion deterioriated?”
“The roof.”
“The roof’s perfect.”
“The interior and exterior paint. The condition of the floors. The kitchen cabinets–”
“Bullshit,” Fred said, or anyhow the suit droned. “Arctor may have let dishes pile up and the garbage and not dusted, but after all, three dudes living there with no chicks? His wife left him; women are supposed to do all that. If Donna Hawthorne had moved in like Arctor wanted her to, begged her to, she would have kept it up. Anyhow, any professional janitorial service could put the whole house in top shape as far as cleaning goes in a half a day. Regarding the roof, that really makes me mad, because–”
“Then you recommend we acquire it after Arctor’s been arrested and loses title.”
Fred, the Suit, stared at him.
“Well?” Hank said impassively, ballpoint pen ready.
“I have no opinion. One way on another.” Fred rose from his chair to leave.
“You’re not splitting yet,” Hank said, motioning him to reseat himself. He fished among the papers on his desk. “I have a memo here–”
“You always have memos,” Fred said. “For everybody.”
“This memo,” Hank said, “instructs me to send you over to Room 203 before you leave today.”
“If it’s about that anti-drug speech I gave at the Lions Club, I’ve already had my ass chewed about it.”
“No, this isn’t that.” Hank tossed him the fluttery note. “This is something different. I’m finished with you, so why don’t you head right over there now and get it done with.”