“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 . .
_Was grinsest du mir, hohier Schädel, her?
Als dass dein Him, wie meines, einst verwirret
Den leichten Tag gesucht und in der Dämmrung schwer,
Mit Lust nach Wahrheit, jämmerlich geirret_.
. . . 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?”
Distant man’s rumble: “On Katella.”
“Not his home?”
“On Katella!”
“Somewhere on Katella, Mr. Arctor. In Anaheim. No, wait–Carl says it was in Santa Ana, on Main. Does that–”
“Thanks,” he said and hung up. Santa Ana. Main. That’s where the fucking dope party was, and I must have turned in thirty names and as many license plates that night; that was not your standard party. A big shipment had arrived from Mexico; the buyers were splitting and, as usual with buyers, sampling as they split. Half of them now probably have been busted by buy agents sent out . . . Wow, he thought: I still remember–or never will correctly remember–that night.
But that still doesn’t excuse Barris from impersonating Arctor with malice aforethought on that phone call coming in. Except that, by the evidence, Barris had made it up on the spot–improvised. Shit, maybe Barris was wired the other night and did what a lot of dudes do when they’re wired: just sort of groove with what’s happening. Arctor wrote the check for a certainty; Barris just happened to pick up the phone. Thought, in his charred head, that it was a cool gag. Being irresponsible only, nothing more.
And, he reflected as he dialed Yellow Cab again, Arctor has not been very responsible in making good on that check over this prolonged period. Whose fault is that? Getting it out once more, he examined the date on the check. A month and a half. Jesus, talk about irresponsibility! Arctor could wind up inside looking out, for that; it’s God’s mercy that nutty Carl didn’t go to the D.A. already. Probably his sweet old sister restrained him.
Arctor, he decided, better get his ass in gear; he’s done a few dingey things himself I didn’t know about until now. Barris isn’t the only one or perhaps even the primary one. For one thing, there is still to be explained the cause of Barris’s intense, concerted malice toward Arctor; a man doesn’t set out over a long period of time to burn somebody for no reason. And Barris isn’t trying to burn anybody else, not, say, Luckman or Charles Freck or Donna Hawthorne; he helped get Jerry Fabin to the federal clinic more than anyone else, and he’s kind to all the animals in the house.
One time Arctor had been going to send one of the dogs– what the hell was the little black one’s name, Popo or something?–to the pound to be destroyed, she couldn’t be trained, and Barris had spent hours, in fact days, with Popo, gently training her and talking with her until she calmed down and could be trained and so didn’t have to go be snuffed. If Barris had general malice toward all, he wouldn’t do numbers, good numbers, like that.
“Yellow Cab,” the phone said.
He gave the address of the Shell station.
And if Carl the locksmith had pegged Arctor as a heavy doper, he pondered as he lounged around moodily waiting for the cab, it isn’t Barris’s fault; when Carl must’ve pulled up in his truck at 5 A.M. to make a key for Arctor’s Olds, Arctor probably was walking on Jell-O sidewalks and up walls and batting off fisheyes and every other kind of good dope-trip thing. Carl drew his conclusions then. As Carl ground the new key, Arctor probably floated around upside down or bounced about on his head, talking sideways. No wonder Carl had not been amused.
In fact, he speculated, maybe Barris is trying to cover up for Arctor’s increasing fuckups. Arctor is no longer keeping his vehicle in safe condition, as he once did, he’s been hanging paper, not deliberately but because his goddamn brain is slushed from dope. But, if anything, that’s worse. Barris is doing what he can; that’s a possibility. Only, his brain, too, is slushed. _All_ their brains are . . .
_Dem Wumme gleich’ ich, der den Staub durchwühlt,
Den, wie er sich im Staube nährend lebt,
Des Wandrers Tmitt vernichtet and begrabt_.
. . . slushed and mutually interacting in a slushed way. It’s the slushed leading the slushed. And right into doom.
Maybe, he conjectured, Arctor cut the wires and bent the wires and created all the shorts in his cephscope. In the middle of the night. But for what reason?