“Okay,” one of the husky pols said genially to Jason, “let’s see when yours were printed.”
Jason said, “I’ve been carrying these for years.” He handed his wallet, with the seven ID cards, to the pols.
“Graph his signatures,” the senior pol told his companion. “See if they superimpose.”
Kathy had been right.
“Nope,” the junior pol said, putting away his official camera. “They don’t super. But it looks like this one, the military service chit, had a trans dot on it that’s been scraped off. Very expertly, too, if so. You have to view it through the glass.” He swung the portable magnifying lens and light over, illuminating Jason’s forged cards in stark white detail. “See?”
“When you left the service,” the senior pol said to Jason, “did this record have an electronic dot on it? Do you remember?” Both of them scrutinized Jason as they awaited his response.
What the hell to say? he asked himself. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t even know what a”–he started to say, “microtransmitter dot,” but quickly corrected himself–soon enough, he hoped–“what an electronic dot looks like.”
“It’s a dot, mister,” the junior pol informed him. “Aren’t yqu listening? Are you on drugs? Look; on his drug-status card there isn’t an entry for the last year.”
One of the thungly pols spoke up. “Proves they’re not faked, though, because who would fake a felony onto an ID card? They’d have to be out of their minds.”
“Yes,” Jason said.
“Well, it’s not part of our area,” the senior pol said. He handed Jason’s ID cards back to him. “He’ll have to take it up with his drug inspector. Move on.” With his nightstick the pol shoved Jason out of the way, reaching meanwhile for the ID cards of the man behind him.
“That’s it?” Jason said to the thungly pols. He could not believe it. Don’t let it show, he said to himself. Just move on!
He did so.
From the shadows beneath a broken streetlight, Kathy reached out, touched him; he froze at the touch, feeling himself turn to ice, starting with his heart. “What do you think of me now?” Kathy said. “My work, what I did for you.”
“They did it,” he said shortly.
“I’m not going to turn you in,” Kathy said, “even though you insulted and abandoned me. But you have to stay with me tonight like you promised. You understand?”
He had to admire her. By lurking around the random checkpoint she had obtained firsthand proof that her forged documents had been well enough done to get him past the pols. So all at once the situation between them had altered: he was now in her debt. He no longer held the status of aggrieved victim.
Now she owned a moral share of him. First the stick: the threat of turning him in to the pols. Then the carrot: the adequately forged ID cards. The girl had him, really. He had to admit it, to her and to himself.
“I could have gotten you through anyhow,” Kathy said. She held up her right arm, pointing to a section of her sleeve. “I’ve got a gray pol-ident tab, there; it shows up under their macrolens. So I don’t get picked up by mistake. I would have said–”
“Let it lie there,” he broke in harshly. “I don’t want to hear about it.” He walked away from her; the girl skimmed after him, like a skillful bird.
“Want to go back to my Minor Apartment?” Kathy asked.
“That goddamn shabby room.” I have a floating house in Malibu, he thought, with eight bedrooms, six rotating baths and a four-dimensional living room with an infinity ceiling. And, because of something I don’t understand and can’t control, I have to spend my time like this. Visiting run-down marginal places. Crappy eateries, crappier workshops, crappiest one-room lodgings. Am I being paid back for something I did? he asked himself. Something I don’t know about or remember? But nobody pays back, he reflected. I learned that a long time ago: you’re not paid back for the bad you do nor the good you do. It all comes out uneven at the end. Haven’t I learned that by now, if I’ve learned anything?
“Guess what’s at the top of my shopping list for tomorrow,” Kathy was saying. “Dead flies. Do you know why?”
“They’re high in protein.”
“Yes, but that’s not why; I’m not getting them for myself. I buy a bag of them every week for Bill, my turtle.”
“I didn’t see any turtle.”
“At my Major Apartment. You didn’t really think I’d buy dead flies for myself, did you?”
“_De gustibus non disputandum est_,” he quoted.
“Let’s see. In matters of taste there’s no dispute. Right?”
“Right,” he said. “Meaning that if you want to eat dead flies go ahead and eat them.”
“Bill does; he likes them. He’s just one of those little green turtles . . . not a land tortoise or anything. Have you ever watched the way they snap at food, at a fly floating on their water? It’s very small but it’s awful. One second the fly’s there and then the next, glunk. It’s inside the turtle.” She laughed. “Being digested. There’s a lesson to be learned there.”
“What lesson?” He anticipated it then. “That when you bite,” he said, “you either get all of it or none of it, but never part.”
“That’s how I feel.”
“Which do you have?” he asked her. “All or none?”
“I–don’t know. Good question. Well, I don’t have Jack. But maybe I don’t want him anymore. It’s been so fucking long. I guess I still need him. But I need you more.”
Jason said, “I thought you were the one who could love two men equally.”
“Did I say that?” She pondered as they walked. “What I meant was is that’s ideal, but in real life you can only approximate it . . . do you see? Can you follow my line of thought?”
“I can follow it,” he said, “and I can see where it’s leading. It’s leading to a temporary abandonment of Jack while I’m around and then a psychological returning to him when I’m gone. Do you do it every time?”
“I never abandon him,” Kathy said sharply. They then continued on in silence until they reached her great old apartment building with its forest of no-longer-used TV masts jutting from every part of the roof. Kathy fumbled in her purse, found her key, unlocked the door to her room.
The lights had been turned on. And, seated on the moldering sofa facing them, a middle-aged man with gray hair and a gray suit. A heavy-set but immaculate man, with perfectly shaved jowls: no nicks, no red spots, no errors. He was perfectly attired and groomed; each hair on his head stood individually in place.
Kathy said falteringly, “Mr. McNulty.”
Rising to his feet, the heavy-set man extended his right hand toward Jason. Automatically, Jason reached out to shake it.
“No,” the heavy-set man said. “I’m not shaking hands with you; I want to see your ID cards, the ones she made for you. Let me have them.”
Wordlessly–there was nothing to say–Jason passed him his wallet.
“You didn’t do these,” McNulty said, after a short inspection. “Unless you’re getting a hell of a lot better.”
Jason said, “I’ve had some of those cards for years.”
“Have you,” McNulty murmured. He returned the wallet and cards to Jason. “Who planted the microtrans on him? You?” He addressed Kathy. “Ed?”
“Ed,” Kathy said.
“What do we have here?” McNulty said, scrutinizing Jason as if measuring him for a coffin. “A man in his forties, well dressed, modern clothing style. Expensive shoes. . . made of actual authentic leather. Isn’t that right, Mr. Taverner?”
“They’re cowhide,” Jason said.
“Your papers identify you as a musician,” McNulty said. “You play an instrument?”
“I sing.”
McNulty said, “Sing something for us now.”
“Go to hell,” Jason said, and managed to control his breathing; his words came out exactly as he wanted them to. No more, no less.
To Kathy, McNulty said, “He’s not exactly cowering. Does he know who I am?”
“Yes,” Kathy said. “I–told him. Part of it.”
“You told him about Jack,” McNulty said. To Jason he said, “There is no Jack. She thinks so but it’s a psychotic delusion. Her husband died three years ago in a quibble accident; he was never in a forced-labor camp.”
“Jack is still alive,” Kathy said.
“You see?” McNulty said to Jason. “She’s made a pretty fair adjustment to the outside world except for this one fixed idea. It will never go away; she’ll have it for the balance of her life.” He shrugged. “It’s a harmless idea and it keeps her going. So we’ve made no attempt to deal with it psychiatrically.”
Kathy, quietly, had begun to cry. Large tears slid down her cheeks and dropped, bloblike, onto her blouse. Tear stains, in the form of dark circles, appeared here and there.