A girl with short black hair and green eyes entered, smiling at me. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” I said, shutting off the takes of Let’s Play! To the girl I said, “What can I do for you?”
“I’m Vivian Kaplan,” the girl said, seating herself. I now noted the FAP armband and recognized her; this was the FAPer my friend Phil had told me about, the one who had wanted him to write a political loyalty report on me. What was she doing here? On my desk, on the portable Ampex tape recorder, was the reel of takes from Let’s Play! in plain sight of the girl. But fortunately off.
Seating herself, Vivian Kaplan arranged her skirt, then brought out a note pad and pen. “You have a girlfriend named Sadassa Aramchek,” she said. There is also the subversive organization calling itself Aramchek. And the extraterrestrial slave satellite which the Soviets just blew up has sometimes been called the „Aramchek satellite.““ She glanced at me, writing a few words with her pen. “Doesn’t that seem to you an astonishing coincidence, Mr Brady?” I said nothing.
“Do you wish to make a voluntary statement?” Vivian Kaplan said.
“Am I under arrest?” I said.
“No, not at all. I tried without success to get a statement of political loyalty about you from your friends, but none of them cared enough about you to comply. In investigating you we came across this anomaly, the word „Aramchek“ showing up repeatedly in relation to you – “
“The only one that’s related to me,” I broke in, “is Sadassa’s maiden name.”
“You have no relationship to the organization Aramchek or the satellite?”
“No,” I said.
“How did you happen to meet Ms Aramchek?” I said, “I don’t have to answer these questions.”
“Oh, yes, you do.” From her purse Vivian Kaplan got a black flatpack of identification; I gazed at it, seeing that she was a bona fide police agent. “You can talk to me here in your office or you can come downtown with me. Which do you prefer?”
“Can I call my attorney?”
“No.” Vivian Kaplan shook her head. „This is not that kind of investigation – yet. You haven’t been charged with any crime. Please tell me how you met Sadassa Aramchek.”
“She came here looking for a job.”
“Why did you hire her?”
“I felt sorry for her, because of her recent bout with cancer.”
Vivian Kaplan wrote that down. “Did you know her actual name to be Aramchek? She goes under the name Silvia.”
“The name she gave me was Mrs Silvia.” That certainly was true.
“Would you have hired her if you knew her true name?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so; I’m not sure.”
“Do you have a personal relationship with her as well as a business one?”
“No,” I said. “I’m married and I have a child.” .”You were seen together at Del Rey’s Restaurant and at the La Paz Bar, both in Fullerton; once at Del Rey’s and six times at the La Paz Bar, all recently.”
“They serve the best margaritas in Orange County,” I said.
“What do you two talk about when you go to the La Paz Bar?” Vivian Kaplan asked.
“Various things. Sadassa Silvia -”
“Aramchek.”
“Sadassa is a devout Episcopalian. She’s been trying to convert me into going to her church. She tells me all the church gossip, though, and that turns me off.” This was true too.
“We taped your last conversation at the La Paz Bar,” Vivian Kaplan said.
“Oh?” I said with fear, trying to remember what we had said.
Vivian Kaplan said, “What is this record you are going to be bringing out? There was a good deal of emphasis on it. A new LP by the Playthings.”
That’s going to be our new hit record,” I said; I could feel the sweat standing out on my forehead, and my pulse racing. “Everybody at Progressive is talking about it.”
“You supplied the lyrics for the record?”
“No,” I said. “Just supplementary material, not the basic lyrics.”
Vivian Kaplan wrote all this down.
“It’s going to be one hell of a record,” I said.
“Yes, it sounds as if it would be. You’re going to press how many copies?”
“We hope to sell two million.” I said. “The initial pressing will be only fifty thousand, however. To see how it goes over.” Actually, I planned to get them to press three times that number.
“When can you make a copy available to us?”
“It isn’t even mastered yet,” I said.
“A tape, then?”
“Yeah, we could get a tape to you sooner.” It came into my mind that I could give her a tape which lacked the subliminal material; we would simply not add that layer of sound-on-sound.
“It is our opinion,” Vivian Kaplan said, “after examining the evidence, that you are having a sexual affair with Ms Aramchek.”
“Well,” I said, “you can stick it up your ass.”
Vivian Kaplan gazed at me for a time; then she wrote a few words with her pen.
“It’s my business entirely,” I said.
“What does your wife say?”
“She says fine.”
“She knows, then?”
I could think of no answer to that. I had walked into a verbal trap, but one which meant nothing; they were on the wrong track entirely. I thought, They have the wrong ball; let them run it to the wrong goal line. Fine.
“As far as we can tell,” Vivian Kaplan said, “you have completely severed your ties with your leftist Berkeley past. Is that so, Mr Brady?”
“It is so,” I said.
“Would you like to draw up a statement of political loyalty about Ms Aramchek for our files? Since you know her and can speak reliably with her?”
“No,” I said.
“We have great confidence in you, Mr Brady, in terms of your patriotism.”
“You should have,” I said.
“Why would you turn this chance down to ratify your standing? This would virtually close your files.”
“Nobody’s file is ever closed,” I said.
“Inactive, then.”
“Sorry,” I said. Ever since the displacement of my own will by the ETI helper I had found it difficult to lie. “I can’t oblige you,” I said. “What you want is evil and immoral; this is what is destroying the fabric of our society. Mutual spying by friend upon friend is the most insidious wickedness that Ferris Fremont has inflicted on a formerly free people. You can write that down, Miss Kaplan, and put it in my file; better yet, you can paste it on the outside of my file as my official statement to all of you.”
Vivian Kaplan laughed. “You must feel you have a pretty good lawyer.”
T feel I have a pretty good grasp of the situation,” I said. “Now if you’re through, get out of my office. I have tapes to listen to.”
Rising, Vivian Kaplan said, “When will you have the tape for us?”
“A month.”
“It will be the tape you’ll use to transfer onto the master?”
“More or less.” >
““More or less“ is not good enough, Mr. Brady. We want the exact master tape.”
“Sure,” I said. “Whatever.”
Lingering for a moment, Vivian Kaplan said, “We got a telephone tip from one of your sound engineers. He said there’s some very funny stuff in some of the subtracks.”
“Hmmm,” I said.
“It made him suspicious.”
“Which sound engineer is that?”
“We protect the anonymity of our informants.”
“You certainly should,” I said.
“Mr Brady,” Vivian Kaplan said briskly, “I want to inform you at this time that you are terribly, terribly close to arrest, you and Ms Aramchek, in fact your entire record firm and anyone connected intimately with you, your families, and friends.”
“Why?”
“We have reason to believe that there will be subversive sentiments expressed in the Let’s Play! album, put there probably by you and Ms Aramchek and possibly others. We are giving you the benefit of the doubt, however; we will examine the record before its release and if we find nothing in it, you may release it on schedule and distribute as planned. But after analysis, if we find anything – “
“The curtain comes down,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“The Iron Curtain,” I said.
“What does that mean, Mr Brady?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just tired of all the suspiciousness, all the spying and accusing. All the arrests and murders.”
“What murders, Mr Brady?”
“Mine,” I said. “I’m thinking specifically of that.”
She laughed. “You’re highly neurotic, as your profile indicates. You worry too much. You know what is going to kill you, Mr Brady, if anything does? Screwing around with that Aramchek girl at your age. The last time you had a physical exam you showed elevated blood pressure; that was when you were admitted to the hospital in Downey following -”
“The elevated blood pressure,” I said, “was because -” I broke off.
“Yes?”
“Nothing.”
Vivian Kaplan waited for an interval, and then she said in a low, quiet voice, “You don’t have the satellite to help you any more, Mr Brady. They got the satellite.”