Show Control
by
Keith Snyder


For Kathleen

Copyright © 1995 Keith Snyder

Write Way Publishing
3806 S. Fraser
Aurora, Colorado 80014

First Edition; 1996

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form,
except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief
passages in connection with a review.

Queries regarding rights and permissions should be addressed to Write
Way Publishing, 3806 S. Fraser, Aurora, CO 80014

ISBN: 1-885173-11-3
123456 789 10

Prologue

JL reeze.

The woman is motionless between bright jets of suddenly still flame. He
leans closer and notes her position and the time on the frozen clock,
glances at the computer screen to verify that its clock reads the same,
clicks the mouse, types "end of 4 turns" on the computer keyboard.

Play.

The woman stands for a moment at the front of the stage and then reaches
for the collar of her oddly cut costume.

Freeze.

The woman is motionless. He verifies that the clock times are still
synchronized, clicks the mouse, types "bitch starts to undress" on the
computer keyboard.

Play.

Facing the audience, the woman removes the outer layer of her costume.

She now wears only the bottom half of a bikini. A very small black box
is clipped to the waistband. Pale pinpoints of light flicker over her
bare stomach.

Freeze.

The woman is motionless. He verifies that the clock times are still
synchronized, clicks the mouse, types "start of light show--bitch shows
tits."

Play.

USERNAME: NOTE-ON PASSWORD: ..... HELLO NOTE-ON

Logon at 16:07:32 You have 1 new mail message.

From: CYBERFINGERS 31-DEC 10:52:47.16 To: NOTE-ON Subj: gig! Happy New
Year!

I'm doing a run-through of my new thing at the Rust Garden on the
fourth. I'm scheduled for ten, so probably ten thirty or so. You're on
the guest list 1. Hope to finally meet you. Roland > go forum MUSE
Public Forum > read new 29805

RE: News article From: MUSE-1 To: ALL

This was on page eight of the L. A. Times today under the headline,
"Performance Artist Dies Onstage." Pasadena, CA (UPI) - Performance
artist Monica Gleason, 27, was pronounced dead on arrival Sunday night
after being fatally wounded by a laser during a performance of her work,
"Light Dance," on the last night of the Technoarts conference which is
held every December at the Pasadena Convention Center.

Gleason was known in the performance art community for her highly
symbolic performance pieces, which incorporated extensive use of
electronic synthesizers. An official police spokesman said that suicide
is suspected and an investigation is underway.

*

29806

RE: News article (Re: msg 29805)

From: KENQ To: MUSE-1

I was at Garrison Sound Labs this morning and some of the techies were
trying to figure out what could have gone wrong. She wasn't using
anything out of the ordinary, from what they've been able to find out;
just a pretty standard stage light setup and some little lasers, all
controlled with a Mac.

Did anybody online know Monica Gleason or see the performance?

29807

RE: News article (Re: msg 29806)

From: CYBERFINGERS To: KENQ I was at the show and saw the whole thing..

It all happened really quick.. She was at this part in the show where
she dances right up close to the laser. She had it hooked up so it homes
in on a radio transmitter and she had the transmitter on her so the
laser would follow her. Anyway she did this dance where she's got her
top off and the laser writes sexual words on her stomach, and she's kind
of teasing it, The whole piece was very sexual. Anyway instead of
writing words on her, the laser just cuts right through her, and kills
her on the spot!. She couldn't get

away from it because of the radio tracking. Pretty awful. Nobody knew
if it was for real at first.

_*_

> bye NOTE-ON off at 16:04:23 Session time: 2 minutes. MUSE DISCONNECTED



z\t six-thirty in the morning on January 1, Jason Keltner sat with his
friend Paul Reno on the wide, flat-roofed porch of Marengo Manor, the
huge, wrecked remains of a turn-of the-century boarding house, and
watched a stream of people and cars flow sluggishly north on Marengo
Avenue, toward the Rose Parade route. The locals toted ladders, and
people from nearby cities carried collapsed lawn chairs. People from
farther than that had arrived on the 31st and hauled Hibachis and
mattresses with them. The parade route was on Colorado Boulevard, three
short blocks away, and the parade hadn't started yet.

Before Jason lived in the Manor, it had been abandoned, boarded up,
de-boarded by industrious high school students, appropriated by homeless
people, re-boarded, and finally rented by a bunch of artists, musicians,
and college students. Jason had been among the first of the new tenants,
and had helped to patch the sagging upstairs ceilings, and hang drywall
over the exposed and rotting downstairs timbers, despite a roof that let
in water and plumbing that didn't.

The rent was cheap; Jason paid $300 a month for roughly the middle third
of the first floor. His friend Robert Goldstein, an actor, rented a
drafty upstairs room with no plaster on the east wall for $235.

Behind Paul, through the open front door, two synthesizer keyboards and
some smaller rectangular units perched with Jason's little Macintosh
computer on a black, L-shaped support system, that loomed like evil
Tinkertoys in the corner of the front room. A snaky tangle of colored
cables dangled against the wall behind the supports. The open door had a
blue bathroom towel pinned up on the inside to block the view from the
street. Jason occasionally considered buying mini-blinds, but never got
around to it. The back door had an orange towel.

A man humming through a kazoo and wearing cheap, luminous green
bracelets, made bug-eyes at them from the sidewalk and went,
"googa-googa-googa." Paul bugged his own eyes out, wiggled his fingers
in a loose approximation of werewolf claws, and said
"heeby-heeby-heeby," in a nasal voice. Paul was built for heebying. He
had a malleable face and long, slender limbs.

A yellow Toyota pickup truck with twelve noisy teenagers in the bed,
crawled slowly past the Manor in the thick traffic. Six boys in a
metallic-blue 1981 Cutlass inched by in the opposite direction and
hooted suavely at girls. Some of the girls jeered back at them. Jason
angled around to watch additional teenagers pile into the truck bed. The
truck looked as though it was on its way to the Puberty Landfill.

Paul stood up and said, "Stuff to do. Happy New Year. Get a haircut, ya
goddamn hippie!"

"You're leaving?" said Jason. "Well, happy New Year. Get a job, ya bum."

Paul half-waved and half-saluted, stepped off the porch, and disappeared
around a sagging corner of the Manor.

The door behind Jason scraped open and Martin Altamirano came out,
yawning. He was short and coffee colored, with a sleepy expression, and
his dark hair shot out in random directions.

He squinted at Jason. "Where's Paul?" "He had things to do," Jason said.

"Did you guys stay up all night?"

"Yeah."

Behind Martin, the door opened again and Robert Goldstein, six-foot-four
and dark-haired, stood in the doorway with three paper-wrapped packages.

Robert wiggled his eyebrows meaningfully and said, "Food," in a booming
baritone voice.

Martin said, "Gimme." He looked at Jason. "On New Year's morning? Like
what kind of things?"

"I don't know," Jason said.

Robert crossed the porch and sat on the edge with his feet down on the
dirt where a lawn would have been if the Manor had one. "What do you
want," he said. "We have ... lox on a bagel, we have ... pastrami on
rye, we have ... lox on a bagel." "Pastrami," Jason said.

"No, no, I get the pastrami," Martin said. "You can have the raw fish."

"It's not raw fish," Robert said. "It's smoked."

"Oh, smoked fish," Martin said. "Sure. I get the pastrami."

Robert handed out the sandwiches. The tide of parade-goers on the
sidewalk swelled and spilled over the curb and into the street, where
people in cars honked at it. It had a rhythm.

A middle-aged woman with compressed lips and a green canvas pouch looked
at Jason and Robert keenly from the sidewalk, and then crossed the dirt
lawn and gave them handbills with "Fugitive Pope" printed on them in
bold letters above a grainy picture of the Pope shaking hands with
Castro. Jason dropped his on the ground. The woman glared at him.

"I already have that one," he said. Her lips compressed further and she
moved on. Robert tried to fold his handbill into a hat, but couldn't
remember how, so he stuffed it into his back pocket. The Fugitive Pope
was followed closely by two Secret Vatican Conspiracies and a Save The
World's Most Endangered Species: The White Race.

When the actual Rose Parade started on Colorado Boulevard, Jason,
Martin, and Robert took their food into the Manor and sat on Jason's
sofa, watching the floats and marching bands on TV while a man-and-woman
commentator team said stupid things.

Martin got up off the sofa and went toward the back of the Manor. Jason
said to Robert, "Is there more coffee?" "Nope," Robert said. Jason got
up and followed Martin into what he called his "pseudo-kitchen."His old
green Coleman camp stove sat atop a chipped propane tank between the
mini-refrigerator and a cheap dish cabinet that housed the remains of a
good set of china. The sleek black Krups coffee and espresso maker sat
on the cabinet, next to a rinsed-out tuna can that held matchbooks with
colorful restaurant logos on them.

There was a real kitchen in the front part of the Manor, but it was out
the front door, across the porch, through another door, and across a
room, so the tenants almost never used it.

Jason ground four measures of Chocolate Mocha beans in an electric
grinder and started coffee brewing. When it began to trickle
asthmatically into its pot, he went into the front room. Robert was
sitting on a piano bench in front of the compact Macintosh computer that
Jason used for music. The Rose Parade was still going on TV, but with
the sound off, which made the man-and-woman commentator team seem more
intelligent.

The Macintosh screen displayed a fantasy adventure game to which Jason
had unthinkingly introduced Robert.

"Did your character get eaten again?" said Jason.

"All my characters get eaten. This one's name is 'Snack.'"

Jason fished in his pocket for a rubber band and pulled his hair back
into a ponytail. Robert turned back to the Macintosh, carefully
considered his game options, and carefully hit a key. Snack was eaten by
a Huge Brown Bat. Robert started another game and named the new
character "Morsel."

Jason glanced at the TV screen. The parade was over and the commentators
were gone. "Second half s starting," Jason said. Robert got up and they
both went out onto the porch, ate more delicatessen food, and watched
the ex-paradegoers march south with less energy than they had marched
north. Martin came out and joined them.

"Ai shoth--" said Robert thickly. He shook his head and gestured for
time out while he swallowed. Then he said, "I thought you had to work
today." "No, yesterday," said Jason. "Month's end."

"What's month's end?"

"Last day of every month I have to read all the big meters so Municipal
Water knows how much to charge the cities it supplies water to. Not that
they use what I tell them, but I have to do it anyway."

"Why don't they use what you tell them?"

"Because they already know what figures they need to put in their
billing."

"Then why do you have to do it anyway?" "I don't know, Robert," Jason
said impatiently. "It's a day job. Day people don't know why they do
anything." "Anybody make resolutions?" Martin asked through his bagel.

"Resolutions?" Robert echoed through his own.

Jason attempted a squinty-eyed bandido. "We dohn need no steenking
reso..4resolucidnes." Martin said, "Sounds good to me." When no one
answered his question, he said, "So? Anybody make resolutions?" Robert
said, "I resolved to spend more time going on auditions and working on
my career." "That's cool," said Martin. "Jason?"

Jason shook his head. "I don't make resolutions. I figure either you're
going to do something or you're not, and talking about it doesn't do
much either way." Robert said, "Do you think Paul makes resolutions?" "I
don't know," said Jason. "I stopped trying to figure him out. Could you
pass the cream cheese?"

Robert was staring into space in the general direction of the dead tree
in the front yard, so Jason reached past him and took the cream cheese.

The other turn-of-the-century houses along Marengo sported big live
trees. A big live tree in front of the Manor would have looked like a
corsage on a corpse.

"I bet he does," said Robert, finally. "'I resolve to be mysterious and
not tell anyone more than half the truth about anything.'"

Jason grinned. "'I resolve to buy more camera equipment and music
equipment than anyone I know and not tell anyone where I got the
money.'"

Robert grinned back. "'I resolve to claim bizarre sexual adventures with
at least a dozen women known to all my friends.'"

Martin looked back and forth at them. "Is Paul really that full of
shit?" "Yes, he is," said Jason. "Yep." Robert said, "I actually
believed him for a little while." Jason said, "Everyone does, for a
little while."

Martin frowned. "So where does he really get the money?"

"I don't know. I never know what I can believe from him, so I just don't
believe any of it." Robert nodded, smiling. "He told me once that he was
making a living as an anonymous contact for members of the federal
witness relocation program."

"Yeah, right," Jason said. "I remember that. And another time, he said
he was doing some programming for the government, but he wasn't allowed
to talk about the details. The only computer he's ever owned is so old
that he can't even find software for it, so either he's full of it, or
the government's even more messed up than we thought. So, what about
you, Martin? Any resolutions?"

"Definitely. I resolve to get my butt in gear and get art jobs, save up
some money, and get off your couch."

"It's not as though I'm using it," said Jason.

Martin pointed his bagel at Jason. "Now, that's not the point and you
know it."

"Yeah, well. You're welcome to stay another few months if you want to."

Robert said, "My valuable opinion, for which there is consistently an
overwhelming demand, is that you should resolve

to finish your comic book instead of getting lots of art jobs."

Jason said, "The Mega Mole comic book? Yeah, I think so, too."

"Furthermore," said Martin, "I resolve to find a nice, regular, normal,
healthy, gorgeous, intelligent, sexy woman who thinks I'm a god."

Robert put his hand on Martin's shoulder sympathetically and said, "I
was really with you until the thinking you're a god part."

"Anyway, finding them isn't the hard part," said Martin. "It's keeping
them." He laughed.

Robert looked quickly at Jason, who rotated his bagel absently and
stared at it.

Martin followed Robert's gaze and then grimaced. "Oops," he said. "I'm
sorry." "It's okay," said Jason.

There was silence.

"I'm sorry," Martin said again. "When's it final?"

"Twenty-sixth of this month."

"How do you feel?"

Jason stopped playing with his bagel and considered the question.

"I don't know," he said, finally. "I'm not feeling a lot these days."

Martin made a warning sound in his throat. "Mmmmmm, that's not good."

"You're probably right." Jason raised his eyebrows. "But that's how it
is." He stood up. "More coffee?" Martin and Robert both said yes, so he
went into the house.

When he came back out with the pot, Robert was saying, "Oh, I think it's
safe to say that the chances of that are so close to zero as to make
very little difference."

Jason poured coffee into Robert's out-held mug and said, "No chance of
what?"

Martin and Robert glanced at each other, and then Robert said, "Of you
changing the channel on the Beat Up Jason

Show and finding a girl."

Jason smiled a little.

"True," he said. "Martin? Coffee?" When Jason was sitting again, he
said, "Actually, I met somebody at that electronic music conference."
Martin said, "No way! Who?" "Her name was Monica Gleason," Jason said.

Martin frowned. "I know I know that name. Why do I know that name?" "She
was in the news," Jason said. "She performed at that electronic music
thing I went to."

Martin frowned and then suddenly looked horrified.

"Monica, the performance artist Monica? The one who ... her?"

"Yeah."

"I read about her in the paper! You and her were seeing each other?"

Jason sipped his coffee. "No. We spent a little time together. Nothing
serious. Just some conversation at the Salt Shaker before her
performance on Saturday night. Nothing serious." "Wow," said Robert.

"I'm sorry." "No reason for you to be sorry," said Jason. "You didn't do
it."

Martin ducked his head in anger. "You know, I really wish you would stop
doing that."

"What."

"You're purposely avoiding what I really mean when you know better."

"What should I say instead when someone apologizes for somebody being
dead? 'Good?'" "You know," said Martin, "you're really pissing me off.
And you're pissing Robert off, too, and if you had more friends, you'd
be pissing them off as well."

Jason nodded. "I know." His right hand fluttered. He put it in his lap
and picked up his coffee with his left hand. "Just how it goes, I
guess." "We both care about you," said Martin.

"I know you do," said Jason.

"You shouldn't blame yourself," Robert said.

Jason said, "For which? The divorce or Monica being killed?"

"Well, either, but I meant the divorce."

"It's not about blame." "Then what?" said Martin.

"It's about having half of yourself suddenly torn off and killed," said
Jason. "It's exactly about that." He sipped his coffee and then looked
around the porch. "Did I forget the sugar? I did." He got up and went
into the house. Behind him, he heard Robert say quietly, "Can't argue
with that," and Martin say, "Nope."



January 2 was a stupid day.

After falling dead asleep in his clothes and shoes midafternoon on New
Year's Day, Jason found himself lying in the dark at 2:30 AM, staring at
the ceiling and listening to the grating of the automatic garage door in
the condos behind the Manor.

At 4:15, he got up, changed his socks, and drove his old Plymouth to
Denny's, where he failed to understand the Los Zlnoeles Times' stock
market pages over pancakes fashioned from some amazing new
super-expanding syrup-absorbing foam substance. If a tanker ship
carrying fake maple syrup ever cracked open and started harming the
environment, Jason would know what to do.

The coffee was awful. There was a small notice in the Metro section for
a gathering of the Gleason family. He looked at it for a while.

After reading most of the headlines and all of the comics except for
"Apartment 3-G," for which he compensated by reading

"Calvin and Hobbes"

twice, Jason drove the Plymouth aimlessly around the San Gabriel Valley,
humming to fill the void in the dashboard where the radio should have
been, and ended up on the Ventura Freeway. In Van Nuys, he switched

onto the southbound San Diego Freeway, drove the two and a half hours
to San Diego, filled up the tank, and drove back to Pasadena.

His jaw hurt from gnashing the drum parts of the songs he had been
humming when he arrived back at the Manor a little after noon. His phone
was ringing. He shouldered the back door open and snapped the receiver
up before the answering machine on the bookcase could click on.

"Hello?" said the voice on the phone, and Jason's heart and lungs
stopped working. When he got them going again, he said, "Hello, Marisa.

What's up?"

"Well, I was just calling to see if maybe you'd like to get together
tonight with me and have a drink?"

Jason stopped talking and took a breath. Maybe ten seconds passed and
then she said, "Hello?" "Yes," he said, "I'm here. I don't know if that
would be a good idea."

"Why not? I think it would be nice if we could be friends. Louis thinks
so, too. He's very concerned about you."

There was a buzzy tightening in his chest that always happened when she
said

"Louis."

"Mr. Benz has never met me."

"He can still be very concerned. He doesn't need to meet someone to be
very concerned about them. Besides, I think Mercedes Benzes are nice
cars. So look, do you want to have a drink with me or not?"

"I don't know. Every time we get together, you end up hurting me. I
mean," he said quickly, "I end up getting hurt.

I didn't mean to imply that it was your fault." "That's a very valid
point," she said.

Valid point, Jason thought. She's still in therapy. "Well," he said,
"maybe we could get together and see what happens."

"Have you been to Giggles? It's kind of hard to find. I'll pick you up.

Is six o'clock okay?"

"Fine. Wait, no. How's seven?"

"Okay, seven o'clock. It's a date."

When he hung up, Martin was standing in the doorway to the front room,
looking at him.

"Shut up," said Jason.

"What?" protested Martin. Someone on the porch knocked authoritatively
on the front door, rattling its loose panes of glass. "What?" Martin
asked again, half-turning to the door. "Nothing."

Shaking his head, Martin peeked behind the blue towel that covered the
door's little windows. Then he looked at Jason, shrugged, and opened the
door. A red-haired woman in her mid-thirties stood on the doorstep. She
was wearing slacks and a blouse with a little black ribbon thing that
wanted to be a tie.

"Jason Keltner?" she asked Martin.

Jason said, "That's me."

The woman produced a police shield in a plastic slipcase. "Detective
Johns. May I come in?" She had a pleasant alto voice, smooth, with a
slight burr to it.

"Sure," said Jason. Martin stepped back and opened the door wider and
Jason grabbed a red plastic folding chair that was leaning against the
piano and set it up, and she sat down. Behind her, Martin excused
himself, gave Jason a "not beautiful, but not bad" look that Jason
ignored, eyed her rump pointedly, and went into the pseudo-kitchen.

Jason sat on the piano bench, facing her, put his hands together flat on
the surface of the bench between his legs and leaned forward a little.

"What can I do for you?"

She folded her hands calmly in her lap. "I'm investigating the death of
Monica Gleason. I understand that you knew her. What can you tell me?"
"Not very much," Jason said, shaking his head. "I only knew her for
about a day."

"Which day would that be?"

"Um ... Saturday. I met her at a convention and we talked for a while
and had some coffee over at the Salt Shaker."

"About what time was that?"

"Oh, I don't know. I'm not good with time. Maybe eleven thirty or so,
until maybe one-thirty. More or less."

"What did you talk about?"

"Electronic music stuff, mostly. She has some ... had some equipment
that I'd like to have, so I was asking her a lot of questions about how
it worked and how flexible it was, things like that." Detective Johns
looked at the studio in the corner of the front room. "It looks like you
have a lot of equipment already."

Jason turned around and looked at it. "I guess so. But it's never
enough."

"Are you familiar with the MIDI Show Control protocol?"

"I've read about it."

"Do you know how to run a MIDI stage laser set?"

Jason looked at her with interest. "You've done some homework."

"I always do my homework."

"Really? What is MIDI an acronym for?"

"Do you know how to run a MIDI stage laser set, Mr. Keltner?"

"No, I don't."

She waited and looked at him, and didn't say anything. It was a trick
Jason used sometimes to get people to talk to him. He folded his hands
in his lap and waited, too.

The silence got uncomfortable, but she still didn't say anything. How
smart was it to play mental chicken with a

cop? Maybe not very. He let it go for a few more seconds, and then
said, "I still don't."

"We could do this downtown," she said.

"Good. You could tell me how to run a MIDI stage laser set on the way."

"Maybe you already know how."

Jason spread his hands, palms up.

She said, "What did you talk about besides her MIDI laser setup?"

"We discussed the lack of subtlety you find in so many cops these days."

Her eyes narrowed. "I will take you downtown if I have to, Mr. Keltner,"
she said. "Would you like that?"

Jason leaned back and said, "Does anybody ever say 'yes' to that?"

"Answer my questions, please."

"Ask me some that aren't veiled implications."

"What did you talk about at the Salt Shaker?"

"Like I said, mostly technical stuff. The things at the conference.

There was a lot of new music technology there, and it's not very often
you find someone who thinks that's interesting, so we spent most of the
time talking about that. We also made a tentative date for tonight. Um
... we talked about religion for a while. She's Baha'i. I mean, was. I
never heard of it before, so we talked about that."

"Anything else?"

"We both liked the carrot cake."

She did the waiting trick again and he waited again. "Nothing else?" she
said finally.

"The amazing carrot cake caper doesn't interest you strangely?"

"No," "Oh."

"What else?"

"She was thinking about blowing off her performance.

She was nervous."

"Why?"

"Because people get nervous before they perform."

"What did you say to that?" "I told her she shouldn't let nervousness
prevent her from performing."

"And then she did the performance and died."

"You probably don't feel too good about that."

Jason shrugged, without looking at her. Detective Johns looked patient,
pursed her lips thoughtfully, and stood up.

"If you remember anything else, call me at this number," she said, and
gave him a business card.

He took it and opened the door. "We're not going downtown?"

"Not this time. But stay where I can find you." Halfway off the porch,
she paused, and then turned and said, "By the way: Musical Instrument
Digital Interface." "Very good," Jason said. "A cookie for you."

She didn't smile. Instead, she turned around and left. Martin came into
the front room, wide-eyed, and said, "Man, are you out of your mind,
talking to a cop like that?"

"I was kind of hoping she would take me downtown."

Martin pointed at him and said, "You better snap out of this soon,
dude."

At 4:30,Jason was sitting in the Plymouth outside a blight of
condominiums in Chatsworth, watching the Gleason family gathering and
wondering what it said about him that he was there.

The guests came and went, and the general noise level ebbed and surged.

After a while, a little girl about ten years old ran out of the brown
condo and slammed the door behind her. She ran onto the condo greenbelt
and sat on one of the swings, looking down.

Jason watched her for a few minutes and then got out of his car and
walked over.

"Do you want to be by yourself, or is it okay for me to sit here?" he
asked.

She shrugged. "Yeah."

"Yeah it's okay, or yeah you want to be by yourself?."

"Yeah, it's okay."

Jason sat on a swing. Swings had gotten narrower since he'd last sat on
one. He crossed his ankles and sat farther back, and had a flash of
being scared of going so high on a swing that the chains would go slack
and drop him head down onto the hard distant ground. There was a small,
gusty breeze; it was about the right time of the afternoon for the Santa
Anas.

"I'm Jason," he said, extending his hand around the chains of the swing.

She shook his hand. "My name is Aileen Elizabeth Gleason."

"Nice to meet you. What's up?"

"Nothing."

"Oh." Why was this little girl able to sit outside by herself and talk
to strangers?

"You don't look too happy," he said.

"Do you think my sister committed suicide?" She looked obliquely around
the chain between them. "'Cause she didn't." "Uh," Jason said. "Well."

"She didn't. I want to be like her when I'm a woman. I'm going to run
away to Los Angeles when I'm sixteen." "Uh, I see," Jason said. "Well,
you can't have a driver's license here until you're eighteen, and you
can't rent an apartment, either. Maybe you could wait until you're
eighteen or nineteen." "Whatever," Aileen said. She started to swing a
little. It was probably good that he had had no children with Marisa.
"Want me to push you?" Jason said. She said, "No," and stopped swinging.

It got cooler, and a short blond woman came into the doorway of the
apartment and called for Aileen, and Aileen went in. No one came out and
called for Jason. He walked to his car and went home.

Giggles was on the ground floor of a corporate building, a big bar with
a split-level floor and red vinyl booths. Jason had figured on ferns in
wicker hangers, and was disappointed to find that he'd figured
correctly. He sat with Marisa in a booth, and a waitress with a name tag
that said "Cyndi" gave them plastic-laminated menus. Cyndi wore her hair
gathered atop her head in a poofy spill that looked like a lawn
sprinkler. All Jason could think of to drink was a rum and Coke, and
Marisa ordered a flossy ice cream thing.

"I'm very glad you came," said Marisa. She was dressed smartly in a
businessy-skirt outfit with a white blouse that she wore with the collar
open. It contrasted nicely with the dark skin of her throat. A pair of
large sunglasses with a graduated tint lay folded on the table.

Jason said, "I almost didn't."

"I know. What do you think of the place?"

"Lots of ferns," Jason said.

She leaned forward earnestly and placed her hand on his. Her hand felt
small and cool. "I'm hoping we can be friends. Do you think we can?"

He started to answer twice before giving up and saying, "I don't know."

"I understand."

Jason doubted that.

"I think I'm getting a raise at work," she said.

"Ah," he said, in a tone he hoped sounded meaningful. She looked at him
expectantly.

"A raise means more money," he said finally, nodding. "I think so," she
agreed. "I'm thinking of moving to one of the beach communities. I have
a new friend with a house on the beach. It's really great."

They'd once gone to the beach with her family and played smashball with
a little purple rubber ball. Jason said, "Marisa, I don't think I want
to hear about your new friend."

The corner of her mouth quirked up and she looked bored and said, "Okay,
whatever."

He stared at his drink. "I'm sorry. I'm still not used to this."

"Well, I think you should just get over it. Louis thinks so, too." Fatck
Louis, thought Jason, and then could see her doing exactly that, except
that he'd never met Louis, so he had no face. He closed his eyes, but it
didn't help.

When he opened them, she was looking casually off into the corner of the
room at nothing.

"So ..." he said, groping, "Have you talked to any of our friends
lately?"

"I saw Martin Altamirano at the video store. And Paul Reno and I went to
Santa Barbara for a music festival."

"That's nice. No problems because of the divorce?"

"No. Why would there be?"

"No reason. It just seemed like there might be."

"Do you think there's something wrong with that?" "No," he said,
surprised. Why is she getting defensive? "Because I think there's
nothing wrong with it."

The chest tightness came faintly. He finished his drink. She said,
"How's work?" "Okay," he said. "Let's talk about you and Paul."

"I don't think there's anything wrong with it."

The tightness grew. His fingers felt cold. "With what?"

"Like ... going to Santa Barbara and stuff like that."

"Anything you want to tell me?"

"I don't think you are in any state to have a calm conversation."

The tightness went away, and a clear coldness came. He spoke quietly.

"Am I yelling? Am I banging on things?"

Cyndi the sprinkler-head bopped up to the table and said, "Anything else
for you folks?" "I'm fine," said Marisa.

"Another rum and Coke, please," said Jason.

Cyndi said, "One rum and Coke," and bopped away with her hair cutely
bouncing.

"Okay," Marisa said. "Do you mean am I sleeping with him or am I in love
with him?"

He felt like ice. "Either will do."

Cyndi came perkily back with his drink. He drank it. Marisa said, "I
don't know if I shouid talk about it." Jason said, "Yes or no?"

She studied his face. "Well ... okay, yes we slept together." Everything
stopped. The ice receded.

She looked uncertain and toyed with her straw. "So ... what do you
think?"

The restaurant noise faded and there was no sound or motion anywhere in
the world, only a small sensation of trembling or spinning, with Jason
at its center, immobile.

He couldn't say anything.

In a few moments, the world started sluggishly again, and his breath
and heartbeat returned simultaneously with the restaurant clatter. He
stood up and said, "I think you're a sleaze and I think I'm walking
home."

It wasn't a very good parting line. He put ten dollars on the table,
turned, and walked the wrong way, nearly into the kitchen, got his
bearings, and finally found the front door. On the way out, he saw
Marisa talking urgently into one of the pay telephones by the restrooms.

It was cool outside. Giggles was on Buena Vista, which curved somewhere.

Jason wasn't sure which side of the curve he was on. He chose a
direction and started walking. Shouldn't have let her drive.

Yes or no?

... yes we slept together.

Hot spurts of rage and pain tried to break through the nothing, but were
immediately damped. It would be nice to cry. That he could feel the
spurts at all was probably due to the rum-and-Cokes.

... yes we slept together.

He smashed savagely at the door of an empty office building with his
forearm. Pain surged up through his arm. There/I can fiel something/

Well ... okay, yes we slept He'd gone the wrong way on Buena Vista.
Sitting down heavily on a low brick wall in front of an office building,
he looked at the traffic and the Warner Brothers' water tower that poked
up over the trees and some three-story buildings. He soon realized that
he was looking for Marisa's black Celica, and shook his head; even if
she were out searching for him, which seemed unlikely, she'd never find
him, because he'd walked the wrong way on Buena Vista.

The unreal picture of Marisa at the pay phone, giving her attention and
support to the other guy-to Paul-came to him. She wasn't supposed to
feel that way about someone else.

His arm throbbed where he'd hit it, the pain less welcome.

He stood up and started walking. He could find an automated teller
machine, take out three hundred dollars, and another three hundred in
another day, and not go home for a couple of weeks.

He jammed his hands into his jacket pockets, fit something in the left
one, and pulled it out. It was a cheap white business card: Monica
Gleason, with her Oxnard Avenue address on it. Oxnard was two main
streets away.

Something to do.

At the corner of Lankershim Boulevard, he turned and caught sight of his
reflection in the glass of a Denny's restaurant, his dark image
superimposed over an old couple wearing identical baseball caps and
eating their Senior's Specials in the lighted window. He looked like
some divorced loser holding a business card. What a stupid day, he
thought.

It started to hail.

ing the whir of its electric fan to the sounds in the room and a
further bluish cast to the skim milk light. The whir was marred by a
soft and repetitive scrape. Jason's Macintosh had once had the same
problem, and he'd taken it to a repair shop. He wondered if Monica had
been planning to fix hers; probably, a woman who would take apart a
Mini-Moog would repair her own cooling fan.

... yes, we slept together.

While he waited for the Macintosh to remember that it was a Macintosh,
he put his head sideways and looked at the spines of the books on the
bookshelves.//Brief History of Time shared a shelf with Love's Foolish
Fury and Gb'de Escher, Bach. On a lower shelf, The Design of Everyday
Things, one of the only hardcovers, nestled uncomfortably between The
Lathe of Heaven and a battered Hollywood Wives.

He straightened from the bookshelves. Eclectic.

When the computer was ready, Jason looked behind it. From one of its
rear connectors, a thin cable snaked across the countertop and along the
wall to a three-inch plastic box plugged into a wall socket. Another
cable ran from the little box to a telephone jack.

He browsed through the computer and discovered that Monica used a
program called Vision to make music. Jason used a competing program
called Performer. If she hadn't been dead, they could have argued about
it. He also found Phone Courier, a program that he used on his own Mac
for communicating with other computers over the telephone lines.

He put his index finger to his lips and thought for a minute. Then he
started up Phone Courier. When it was running, he changed its
configuration, felt around the front of the Mac through his jacket
sleeve until he found the small

dial that controlled screen brightness, and turned it counterclockwise.

The screen faded to black.

Then he climbed out, pulled the window through its opening and hooked it
into its tracks, and waited for the eastbound bus, relatively dry under
a Plexiglas shelter on the corner. What had Marisa said to Paul on the
phone?

After ten minutes of waiting, he thought of looking for a bus schedule,
and found one mounted in the shelter, but couldn't read it, because
there wasn't enough light. As he squinted at it, a blue Trans-Am with
Trini Lopez blaring from half-open windows stopped at the intersection,
and he was able to make out in the light from its headlights that the
last bus had run while he had been sitting among the ferns with Marisa.

He started walking again, noting the doppler effect on "Lemon Tree" as
the Trans-Am roared past.

He shoved his back door open at five-fifty in the morning. Martin wasn't
there. He took off his wet clothes and called Municipal Water, asked for
the pipeline maintenance crew, told them he was sick, and reminded them
that it was the day for taking water samples for taste-and-odor tests.

Someone on the crew would pull the easy duty, fill all fourteen one
quart glass bottles from the first test spigot on the patrol route, make
up some reasonable-looking meter readings, and spend the day in the cool
dark of the Village Saloon. Jason's readings would come out funny the
next day.

He sat on the bed for a long time, staring straight ahead at nothing.

Then he put on an old bathrobe, went into the front room, and started
Phone Courier on his Macintosh. Then he stood up, got Monica Gleason's
business card from his jacket in the bedroom, and set Phone Courier to
dial her number.

Nothing happened at first, and he was afraid he hadn't configured her
copy of Phone Courier correctly, but then the words, "Connect 2400"

appeared on the screen. He tapped a few commands on the keyboard and
then went into the pseudo kitchen and made coffee from whatever grounds
were left in the grinder, drank three old-fashioned Coca-Cola glasses
full of coffee with milk and sugar, shuffled across the flat gray
carpet, lay down on his futon, and fell immediately asleep.

He awoke several times during the evening, and finally got up at 8:30,
the time he usually went to bed, in order to get up at 4:30 in the
morning for work. He'd call in sick again when morning came, and lose
another sick day. In the bathroom, he stared at his scruffy reflection
in the mirrored plastic medicine cabinet and decided not to brush his
teeth because the mint would conflict with the coffee he was going to
drink.

In the pseudo-kitchen, he pulled the pot out of the coffeemaker and went
carefully outside on bare feet to dump the dark, overboiled coffee on
the dirt. Waldo, a dingy gray and-white cat from the condos, crouched
under the tree behind the Manor, eating a dead sandwich from the
dumpster and growling. He was having a hard time growling and swallowing
at the same time, but the effort was impressive. Jason shook the last
drops out of the empty coffeepot and went back inside.

Ten minutes later, on his way into the living room, he glanced at the
answering machine. There were four new messages. He sat down in the dark
in front of the Macintosh and started looking at the things that Phone
Courier had copied

from Monica Gleason's Macintosh while he'd been asleep.

Following standard Macintosh convention, things were kept in imaginary
folders. Jason looked through them without a directed purpose, moving
the mouse and clicking it to look in folders with his right hand and
holding his coffee mug with his left. The official rule was No Open
Beverages In Jason's Studio, but Martin wasn't around to see it broken.

Probably out bowling with nice, normal, gorgeous, intelligent, sexy
women.

Monica's Macintosh had a copy of Goget, a program that automated
interaction with MUSE, an international musicians' network that Jason
belonged to. He'd have to look further into that.

He opened a folder called "Music," and realized that he had all the data
that comprised Monica's music and her stage show. He thought about
privacy for a minute before turning on his music gear, but it didn't
seem right that no one should hear her art.

Since he and Monica had used different synthesizers, he wouldn't be able
to reproduce the same sounds that she had used; he would just have to
play her music using sounds from his own equipment. He hoped that she
had used informative words like "piano" or

"Moog bass" for the musical parts, instead of gossamer New Agey names
like "Eternity" or "Celestial Twilight."

It took an hour to configure things so that her music would play back
correctly on his system, longer than things usually took him, but he
didn't know her software, and had no manual. The first piece he tried
was called

"Aileen." After half an hour of reconfiguration, he was able to start
playback.

"Aileen" was in three movements. The first was upbeat. Jason began
adjusting volumes and placements in the stereo

field as it played, refining it for his setup. Stop engineering, he
thought suddenly, Stop messing with MID1 controllers and just listen to
the music, lat does the music say?

The music danced and lilted, and Jason thought of Aileen with a bubble
wand, or dragging a kitten around, and Monica being a snotty big sister.

The theme restarted itself, and then a swirl of orchestral sounds swept
in like wind, clearing away the first movement and ushering in the
second.

The theme from the first movement played again, but lower and transposed
into a sadder scale. From a string section, dissonant swells, bending in
pitch, shifted and jockeyed with a sustaining bowed bass sound that
Monica had transposed lower than the lowest note of a real bass.

Synthetic flute sounds trilled unsettlingly, answering the theme.

Percussion entered: low drums rolled dully under quick rhythms of sticks
hitting sticks. Talking drums responded in confident cadences, breathed
for a bar, answered again.

Strengthless under the battery, the orchestra faded and waited, and the
percussion continued for eight bars and stopped cold, and Jason was
slapped by the sudden silence.

Monica's Unfinished Symphony. Or maybe Synthony. There wasn't really a
word for it. It seemed wrong to make any sound in the silence where the
third movement should have been, so Jason sat and watched the on screen
counter dutifully count off hundreds of silent beats and unused
measures. When Martin came in at two o'clock, the reluctant sound of the
back door being forced away from its frame seemed an appropriate ending,
so Jason stopped playback and the counter ceased counting at measure
3386, beat 3.

Martin poked his head into the front room and said, "Hey." Jason nodded.

He didn't feel like talking. "Mind if I turn on the light?"

Jason gestured toward the light switch. Martin picked his way across
the room and turned it on.

"Well," Martin said, "it's nice to see you finally working on ... Are
you okay?" Jason said, "Yeah, I'm fine," but it got hung up somewhere on
the way out and ended up as an unintelligible gargle. Clearing his
throat didn't help much, either. After another try, he got it right.
That was weird.

Martin was looking at him strangely.

"What?" Jason said.

Still with the strange look, Martin shook his head slightly. "You don't
even know you're crying, do you?"

Surprised, Jason reached a hand toward his face, saying, "I'm not-" and
then fell silent.

Martin sat down on the couch and didn't say anything. Jason looked at
the wetness on his fingertips and raised his eyebrows. After a little
while, he said, "You want to go to Shakers?" "Sure," Martin said. After
Jason changed into jeans and a shirt, they went onto the porch, and
Martin waited for Jason to lock the front door.

Then they walked three blocks, past a gas station, an auto painting
business, and the Pasadena train station, to the Salt Shaker Coffee
Shop, where they drank average coffee and talked about other things.

As they walked home in the dark, Martin said, "So what's going on?"

"You know," Jason said. "Same thing."

"The divorce."

"Not so much the divorce itself. I keep having this feeling like, 'No,
no, this is not the way it's supposed to go.'"

"Like you wish you could change things?"

"No, I don't really wish anything."

"How are you sleeping?"

Jason shrugged.

While they were cutting diagonally through the Mobile gas station, Martin
asked again, "How are you sleeping?" Jason said, "I stay up late and
wear myself out so I'll go to sleep right away and not lie there awake."

"So you won't think about it?"

"Yeah."

"Why were you crying when I came in before?"

Jason answered slowly. "I'm not sure. I drove to where Monica's family
was gathered."

At the Manor, Jason unlocked the front door, and they went in.

"So you were at this family thing," prompted Martin.

"Yeah. I met her little sister. She was absolutely sure that Monica
didn't kill herself."

Martin sat on the couch and Jason sat on the piano bench. "I mean
absolutely. She had no doubt at all. Total belief."

"That's little kids."

"I guess."

"So what was going on when I came in?" Jason told him about entering
Monica's apartment and playing her music.

"All because her little sister said she didn't kill herself," said
Martin.

Yes."

"And maybe because you feel a little responsible for Monica being on
stage at all."

Jason shrugged. It felt redundant.

Martin took in a long breath, held it, and released it.

"And maybe because you've been in this blue funk for the last year-"

"Six months."

"Six months, and now you get a little crazy?"

Jason stared at the wall.

Martin said, "Are you sure you didn't leave fingerprints?"

"Pretty sure."

"Can anybody trace your little computer phone trick?"

"I don't know."

"What are you going to do now?"

"I don't know."

"But you're not done with this."

Jason was silent.

Martin said, "Easier than actually dealing with live women." Jason
looked at him. "Sorry."

"Okay." Martin said, "But mostly because of the little sister." "Tell me
a better reason," Jason said.

"I'm not the one who needs a better reason, you idiot," Martin said. He
looked at the Macintosh. Its on screen clock read 4:15. "Isn't it time
for you to call in sick?"



USERNAME: MGLEASON

PASSWORD: oooo-o, o HELLO MGLEASON

Logon at 06:44:18 You have 2 new mail messages.

#1

From: TINKERTOY 29-DEC 08:01:56 To: MGLEASON

Subj: show Hi, M!

I don't think I'll be able to get out to Pasadena, but thanks for the
offer anyway. I'm interested in hearing how the new gear works out.

Maybe next time! :)

Break a leg!

#2

From: Metamusic 30-DEC 20:15:48 To: MGLEASON

Subj:

Monica, what is your problem??? I've been calking you for the last
three days and keep getting your machine!! Are you going to talk to me
or what!?!?!?!

Call me, okay??

bye N©TE-ON off at 06:46:03 Session time: 2 minutes.

MUSE DISCONNECTED

"Hey," said Jason, as Goget, finished with the session, severed the
connection between his Macintosh and MUSE.

Martin looked up from the sofa, where he was idly flipping the pages of
Jason's music magazines. "What?"

"I think it's a clue."

Martin sat up. "What kind of clue?"

"I don't know. Are there kinds of clues? Come look at this."

Martin swiveled around on the sofa to see the Macintosh screen. Goget
was sorting the messages it had just retrieved from MUSE, and a little
picture of a wristwatch on the screen meant it wasn't quite done yet.

"Wait a minute until the watch goes away," said Jason. "Monica's copy of
Goget has her MUSE password in it, so I logged in as her and picked up
her unread mail. MUSE doesn't know the difference." The watch
disappeared. He clicked the mouse to call up the second private mail
message and they both read it.

Martin said, "'N.'"

"Let's find out who that is." Clicking the mouse again, he called up a
list of the MUSE members and sent Goget searching for the entry for
"Metamusic." After a few seconds, the information was displayed on the
screen.

"'N. Platt,'" said Jason.

Martin read the rest of the entry. "'Focus: Sound design and audio for
video. Company: Sound Reasoning, Inc., Eight Four Two Four Sunset Blvd.,
Suite Eighty-Three, Hollywood, C. A.' What's sound design?"

"Just what it sounds like. Making noises for movies, designing sounds
for synthesizers. Stuff like that."

"He's in Hollywood. You going to go see him?"

"Or her. Urn, I guess so. I hadn't really thought that far. Yeah, I
think I will."

I'll go, too. Robert made me promise I'd keep an eye on you."

"I don't want you to go. Where is Robert?"

"At work. I'm going anyway."

"what's he doing today?"

"The same. Office temp stuff. I'm going." "He should get a real job,"
said Jason, standing. "If you're going, you can buy breakfast."

Eighty-four Twenty-four Sunset Boulevard was a twenty four-hour
telephone and mailbox service called Mailbox City. Jason found box
number 83, and then he and Martin walked a couple of blocks to a Denny's
and ate breakfast.

"This is the only Denny's I've ever been in that has a bar," said Jason.

"This is the only bar I've ever been in that has a Denny's," said
Martin.

"Oh yeah," said Jason. "I forgot. Everything is relative. Thank you for
pointing out to me the error of my assump

tion of the absoluteness of the concepts, 'Denny's' and 'bar.'" He
flagged down a passing waiter and said, "Could I have some coffee,
please?"

The waiter said, "Sure," and then, in a louder voice, and apparently to
the room at large, "Would someone please coffee this gentleman?"

Martin looked appraisingly at him. "How you feeling?"

"Weird. Last night I felt focused. Now I don't. I'm still not going to
leave this thing alone, but at the moment, it doesn'tel like an
obsession."

"What does it feel like?"

"Feels a lot like a day job." Martin made a face that said I don'tget
it, but whatever.

Another waiter brought Jason a cup of coffee and went away.

"Egad," Jason said. "I've been coffee'd."

After a couple of minutes of eating, Martin said, "If you don't mind my
asking, now what?"

"You think I know?" Jason sprinkled Tabasco Sauce and salt over his hash
browns and warily took a bite. He could still taste them. He ate some
anyway.

Martin sipped his coffee. "So what are you going to do next?"

"Heck, I don't know." His eyes were starting to water from the Tabasco
Sauce. "Hoo," he said, and drank most of his water. "I don't know. I
don't even know what I would have said to N. Platt had he or she been
there. But at least now that I've rented a mailbox, I have an excuse to
be around sometimes. Unlike you."

"Hey," Martin protested, throwing his hands up in deferment of
responsibility, "I promised Robert I'd babysit you."

"Martin, of the three of us, who needs the most babysitting?"

"Robert. Usually. Me, sometimes. These days, you."

A beautiful blonde waitress appeared at their table with two pots of
coffee and said, "Hi, guys. Refills?" in a Midwestern twang.

"Martin?" Jason said, "More weird black caustic substance?"

"Decaf, please," Martin said, holding his mug out. Jason smiled
pleasantly and covered his with his hand when the waitress gestured with
the pot.

"Actress," they both said when she left.

"But she really wants to direct," Jason added.

Martin watched her shapely departure. "She can direct me any time."

Jason shook his head. "Men."

"Ain't we dogs?"

At the register, Jason impatiently waited while Martin got the waitress
talking so that he could then listen understandingly to how hard it was
to make it in this town.

After Martin struck out, they walked past music stores and clothing
stores back to Jason's car, looking at the Hollywood people with their
shredded denim and various piercings. After he and Marisa separated,
Jason had tried to keep busy at night by occasionally playing keyboards
with local rock bands in clubs on Sunset, but he'd never enjoyed it.

Short of knitting, he couldn't think of a duller way to spend an evening
than playing whole-note chords behind a noisy guitar band while snaky
leather-clad weasels perfected their bored expressions. And without
exception, the women he'd met had all the warmth and none of the
sincerity of a tax audit. Actually, he thought, knitting might be more
interesting, and it never makes your ears ring for a week.

On the way home, Jason said, "You want to go out to night? I've got two
comps at the Rust Garden for some MIDI performance art stuff. Guy on
MUSE and I have been failing to connect for the better part of a year,
and he's playing tonight."

"Sure," Martin said. "Is there a drink minimum?"

"I don't think so."

"Okay."

"How about we leave around nine-thirty?"

"Oh, that's fine." A little later, Martin said, "Man, you must feel
exhausted," and Jason suddenly did.

At the Manor, Martin went out to get a newspaper from a coin-operated
machine on the corner, and Jason went to bed.



Anyone can be anyone in the Net. Or no one. Or more than one. He prefers
to remain anonymous, a shadow figure, allowing himself to be glimpsed
only rarely, and fleetingly, and then only in planned excursions under a
name created expressly for the occasion, and permanently discarded
immediately thereafter.

A word for him is "lurker," an awkward party guest hunkered down in the
datastream, never participating in the conversation, but never leaving.

Anyone can find anything on the Net. Nestled together on Net connected
hard disks are libraries of software: essays and computer games; digital
sound recordings and lists of telephone numbers for computer services;
engineering data and book reviews; sex pictures and employment
opportunities; the archives of thousands of "chats," conversations
between people who might be thousands of miles separate, yet who
converse in realtime over the Net. All this is available to the
computer-owning public for a few dollars a month and cents a minute.

For somewhat more money, the computer-owning public can take advantage
of online services. Sending a fax without a fax machine is as easy as
booking a flight to Rio and ordering traveler's checks and new luggage.

After double-checking your available credit, of course.

And other services. Like any community, the Net has its red light
districts: Husbands stay up late while their wives are in bed, and type
hotly to unseen virtual bed companions they believe to be slim and
female. Their wives dally in the datastream during the day, while their
husbands work.

And other services.

Although he has many accounts on the Net, he does not pay for them, and
never receives a bill. The illegality of his presence does not bother
him at al" its flexibility and numerous points of entry leave the Net
vulnerable, and he goes where he is able. He comes in through the
window, and f that doesn't work, he tries the plumbing.

A skulking ghost striking business deals with transparent phantasms, he
takes advantage of other services not sanctioned by the Net, services
offered by others who also do not pay for their Net accounts.

This day-or maybe night-he calls himself "Raptor" and sends a message to
a man, woman, or child called "Pollux," who has done similar work for
him previously. He likes that he has dealt with Pollux before. It's
better that way.

It isn't long before Pollux responds.

"I'Ve shooting happened while Jason and Robert were sitting in two bent
lawn chairs on the porch of the Manor, enjoying the chilly air of early
evening and arguing about autonomy. Robert had just said, "But that's
circular logic again," and Jason was in the middle of saying, "Yeah? So
what?" when a battered gold AMC Javelin with mirror-film on its windows
pulled to the curb and slowed directly in front of them. The front
passenger window rolled halfway down and a rifle barrel poked out,
swaying a little in the odd way that long things do when they're being
held at only one end. It took about two seconds for Jason to turn to
yell something wordless at Robert and jump half-backward into the open
front door just as Robert did the same. The rifle fired at the same
instant as they collided in the doorway and fell, still half outside,
legs caught in their chairs. Jason raised his head to see outside, but
glass shards fell on him, and Robert's head and shoulder blocked his
vision. He shoved Robert off and wrenched himself out of the twisted
tangle of chair and Robert legs, stood up and moved toward the sidewalk,
hooked his foot on a chair, and crashed to the concrete porch. The gold
Javelin spun its tires turning left onto Del Mar and disappeared,
trailing the sound of a badly tuned engine.

Looking where the Javelin had gone, Jason raised himself carefully off
the porch and hobbled into the house. Robert, white faced, had the phone
against his ear.

"Wha!" said Jason. He wasn't sure what he had meant to say, but that
hadn't been it.

Robert enunciated clearly, "I am calling the police. Hello?

I, yes, hello? Hello?" He looked at Jason. "I'm on hold." "Yhah," said
Jason. Comebacks are my game.

"Hello? Yes, I'm at Marengo and Del Mar, and I was just shot at ...
what? What? Del Mar. I was just ... what? Marengo and Del Mar. This guy
just drove up and ... what? Robert Goldstein. Goldstein.

G-O-L-D-S-T-E-I-N. Yes, Robert. What? Yes, I live here. No, he's gone.

Hold on." He covered the phone. "Did you get a license number?"

Robert uncovered the phone. "No, we didn't. Urn, hold on." He covered
the phone again. "Do you know what kind of car it was?"

Jason made a gimme-the-phone gesture and Robert handed it over.

"Hello?" he said.

"Who is this?" said a male voice.

"This is Jason Keltner, K-E-L-T-N-E-R. I live here, too. We were both
shot at by somebody in a gold AMC Javelin with mirrored windows."

"Did you get the license number?"

"No ..." Jason noticed that he was shaking. An adrenaline rush he hadn't
even noticed was wearing off. "No, I didn't get the license number! How
many people could there possibly be in the San Gabriel Valley with gold
Javelins with silver windows?"

"Yes, sir."

"It's not exactly an everyday automotive fashion choice."

"I understand, sir."

"Sorry. It's not your fault. I don't get shot at often."

"I understand, sir. Two officers are on their way. They will be there
within two minutes. Would you like me to remain on the line with you
until they get there?"

"No, that won't be necessary. Thank you."

"You're welcome, sir."

Xiaou from one of the upstairs rooms, and Patrice from the attic, came
downstairs with surprised and questioning looks on their faces. Xiaou
was a student at the Art Center, and Patrice was a secretary who spent
most of her salary on rock musicians. They'd heard the shooting. Robert
filled them in and they said appropriate things and went back upstairs.

Jason made coffee. The cops came, found a bullet hole in the drywall
between Jason's front room and the empty apartment behind, found another
hole in the flimsy exterior wall of the rear apartment, searched the
parking lot for the bullet, found nothing, and questioned Robert and
Jason, who gave them the facts and left out the Laurel and Hardy routine
in the doorway.

When the cops left, Jason swept the bigger pieces of glass onto a folded
piece of newspaper and threw them away while Robert went upstairs for a
couple of minutes and then came down with Patrice's Handi-Vac. The glass
was from two panes in the door. While Jason vacuumed, Robert leaned
against the wall, looked at the bullet hole in the drywall, and brooded.
"Speak," Jason said.

Robert took a minute to answer. "Were you thinking or just acting?"

"When we jumped?"

"Yes," "Both, I guess."

"What were you thinking?"

"Well," Jason straightened on his knees. "It went something like, 'Car
... Ugly car ... Pointy thing ... Gun ... That's dangerous'-"

Robert's explosive laugh cut him off. "I thought that, too! 'That's
dangerous! They shouldn't be waving that around!' Then what?"

"After that it was just, 'Eeaaugghhh!!'"

"Yeah. What did you yell at me?"

"I don't know. I couldn't make words."

He finished vacuuming the broken glass.

"Well," Robert said, "thanks for yelling any thing."

"You're welcome.

Sorry I shoved you."

"It's okay. What were you going to do once you got up?"

"I have no idea." He stood up and looked at the door. A month
previously, he had replaced three missing panes with cardboard and wide
silver duct tape.

"They couldn't have shot out the cardboard ones? Now I only have seven
glass panes left, and five of those are cracked." "What happened to the
door?" said Martin's voice behind them.

"You tell him," Jason said. "I'm tired of talking about it." He went
into the pseudo-kitchen and drank his coffee, listening to Robert
explain. Then Martin came in, ashen-faced.

"Hey," Jason said, "you look paler than Robert, and he was here for it."
"Man," Martin said, "did you see the article in the paper I left for
you?"

"No, what article?"

Martin talked as he walked through the bathroom into the bedroom. "I
didn't want to wake you, and you were still asleep when I left, so I
left it on the ... where is it? Oh, here it is."

He emerged from the bathroom with a section of the Los Angeles mes. "You
covered it up with the blankets. Here, look."

Jason took the paper. It was the front section, folded back to page
three. A headline read, "Onstage Death Now Believed Murder." In smaller
bold type, it said, "Deadly Laser the Culprit in Bizarre Death." He
skimmed over the rest of the article, which took up two six-inch
columns, and said nothing more than the headline.

Jason said, "Watson, the game is afoot. Another astounding clue."

"Yeah, let's just hope there's not another astounding shooting at your
astounding fool head."

Jason didn't say anything for a minute. Then he said, "I hadn't put that
together yet."

"You hadn't put that together yet?" Martin's expression said, Hoz dumb
can you be? "These are some heavy-duty dudes you're dealing with, man!

I'm not going to let you keep this going."

Jason nodded. "Heavy-duty dudes."

"I'm serious. I'm not going to sit by and watch you take a bullet."

"Okay."

"Don't mess around with me on this, Jase! Just let the police do what
they're paid to do. You are paid to take water samples, and they are
paid to catch bad guys."

"Okay."

The phone rang. Jason said "Okay!" and picked it up. "Jason." It was
Paul Reno. "Paul." "I'll talk to you later," Martin said, sotto voce,
and left. "How you doing?" said Paul's voice.

Spiffy. "What's up?"

"Listen, I need to talk to you."

"This doesn't count?"

"In person. I don't want to talk to you on the phone. Where can we
meet?"

"I don't really have anything to say to you, Paul."

A note of disgust crept into Paul's voice. "Maybe you don't, but I do.

Are you going to meet me or not?"

"Nope." Jason hung up and waited. The phone rang. Paul's phone had a
redial button. Jason picked it up. "what."

"Jason, what are you mad at me for?"

Jason shook his head. There were some things about Paul that you just
couldn't make him understand. "Never mind. Are you free now?"

"Right now? Yes."

"The E-Bar. Meet me in half an hour. Wear a red carnation." He hung up
again before Paul could answer.

The E-Bar was a little coffeehouse ten minutes from the Manor by foot,
down an alley near the Pasadena Train Station, around a corner by the
tracks, and into an unmarked red door. The "E" stood for "Espresso."

There were usually folding tables and chairs set up in the alley, and a
tarot-card reader had taken up residence there recently. On Friday and
Saturday nights, it was overrun with wistfully neo-beatnik high school
kids smoking clove cigarettes, college students talking football and
Kafka, and patiently predatory grownup faux- philosopher/artist/poets
who knew Ravi Shankar's discography. There was "entertainment" almost
every night.

Jason turned the dark corner in the alley and an ampli fled whiny
sing-song female drone drifted out of the door, accelerated down the
alley, and slugged him between the eyes, punching through the cartilage
and piercing his brain. "Oh, damn," he groaned. It was Poetry Night.
Should have met Paul at The Talking Room instead. The Talking Room never
had Poetry Nights.

A hand-scrawled sign on the door claimed "No feet, no torso, no
service." He stepped inside and looked around. There were mismatched
chairs for about thirty people and enough mismatched chess pieces for
two simultaneous games, a counter just inside the door, a big chalkboard
with prices on it, a cappuccino machine, a glass-fronted refrigerator
with fruit juice and Jolt Cola, a pay phone, a small stage at the back,
and an out-of-tune upright piano against one wall. It was crowded. Paul
wasn't there yet, of course; if he got there first, he couldn't make an
entrance.

The white-faced, black-haired, red-lipped poetess perched on a green
barstool on the stage, holding a gray microphone and reading from a
yellow spiral notebook. The bulk of her anguish and ennui evidently
spent, she concluded her performance with " ... and bleeding leaves kiss
my festive face, And fondle my pain, With spiteful thorny tears." The
mostly underaged audience applauded and whistled. Jason refrained from
rolling his eyes.

The counterperson was a college-aged girl with black rimmed glasses and
light brown hair bunched in a wide band. When she looked his way, Jason
ordered a Cafe Royale and pointed outside to indicate that he'd be
sitting there.

Two of the three outdoor tables for customers were empty. He picked one
against the old brick wall at the end of the alley and wiggled each of
the two chairs experimentally before sitting and leaving the wobbly one
for Paul.

Inside, the Poetry Night ME introduced the next poetess, and then the
poetess began to emit her poetry. Why don't these people ever rhyme or
stick to a meter?. Jason thought, suspecting not for the first time that
he was just too bluntly built for poetry, though there was one by Robert
Frost that seemed to sum up his separation from Marisa. It wasn't about
a divorce, though. It was about a haunted house.

The counterperson with the glasses brought him a double sized mug on a
thick saucer, took his four dollars and went away. Jason took a sip. Caf
Royale was hot chocolate with espresso in it and chocolate syrup
drizzled on top.

Paul came around the corner in his leather jacket and black pants and
sat down.

"Thanks for meeting me," he said.

Jason lowered his mug halfway and said, "'I dwell in a lonely house I
know, that vanished many a summer ago, and left no trace but the cellar
walls, and a cellar in which the daylight falls, and the purple-stemmed
raspberries grow.'"

Paul looked at him as though he were nuts and said, "Yeah, whatever."

"Don't ask me to recite the next verse, because I don't know it."

"Don't worry, I won't," Paul said dryly. "What was that crap?"

"You know, Paul," Jason said pleasantly, "one very small part of your
considerable problem is that besides being an asshole, a fuckup, and a
pathological liar, you don't know the difference between that," he said,
indicating the amplified voice inside, "and a poem."

Paul stiffened and stood up. "I don't know what your problem is, but I
don't need to take this from you."

Jason smashed his mug on the table and, in the same motion, flew to his
feet and slapped Paul hard across the face with the back of his hand.
Paul's hand went up and he reeled backward and tried to find his
balance. Jason took advantage of Paul's momentum, stepping quickly
around the table and shoving him backward into a plant against the wall
of the E-Bar.

"What is your fucking problem, Jason?" Paul's voice was unsteady and his
fingers kept finding his mouth, searching for damage. There was no
blood, but Jason figured the side of his face would be discolored in a
little while.

"Well, let's see." Jason pretended to consider. "Here's one big problem:
Sometimes I don't pick my friends well and they betray me with my wife."

"Ex-wife."

Jason hit him hard again with his open hand, putting his shoulder behind
the blow and his anger into it. Paul staggered against the wall and
Jason said, "Yes. Ex-wife."

Paul blinked rapidly, and Jason realized with sudden discomfort that he
was trying not to cry. With the discomfort came an almost overpowering
revulsion. Paul's tongue flicked into the corner of his mouth. The
second blow had drawn a little blood.

"You called me," Jason said. "I didn't call you. We both know what you
did, and you and I are no longer friends. If you have something to say
to me, say it, but if it's an apology, I swear I'll hurt you badly."

Paul didn't say anything for a few moments.

"Okay," he said after a while. "Let's sit down."

Jason backed up. The noise he'd made had drawn some people into the
doorway.

"Go listen to crappy poetry," Jason said. The people murmured and
trickled slowly back in.

The counterperson came out with a bundle of rags and a trash bag and
started mopping up the Caf Royale and putting the ceramic pieces in the
bag.

"I'll pay for the mug," Jason said to her.

Paul said, "You won't be playing keys for a couple of days when that
hand stiffens up." He was still exploring his mouth with his tongue and
fingers.

"I haven't been anyway," Jason said. "But I'm touched by your concern."

Paul sat down again. The counterperson came to the table and offered
Jason a clean rag, and he realized that his jeans were covered with Cafe
Royale.

"Thanks," he said, taking the rag and trying to clean his jeans. When
they were a little less damp, he sat down and said, "So what did you
want to meet me for?"

"Do you mind if I order first?" In Paul's tone was something that strove
to sound annoyed, but achieved only petulance. "Cappuccino, please.

Jason, would you care for another mug of whatever you were having?"
Jason said, "No, thank you," to the counterperson. When she left, Paul
said, "Look, I wanted to talk to you because some things have happened
that you might want to know about."

"Such as."

"Do you really want to know, or are you going to go bazerk on me again?"

"Berserk."

"Look. Do you want me to tell you or not?" It took an effort for Jason
to say, "Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Either tell me or don't, Paul. I have to go out with Martin at
nine-thirty, so I don't have a lot of time to dance around and be cute."

"Okay." Paul leaned forward. "I think you might be in danger."

"Really."

"I heard through the grapevine that somebody's out to get you. Somebody
dangerous."

"Some heavy-duty dudes?"

"Uh ... yeah."

"Where'd you hear that?"

"Around."

"Don't pull the Mr. Enigmatic act on me, Paul. If you're rot going to
tell me, say, 'I'm not going to tell you.'"

"Okay, I'm not going to tell you." "Thanks," Jason said. He took out his
wallet, put ten dollars on the table, and pushed his chair back, "You're
a pal. I'll have my service put you on the holiday mailing list." He got
up and walked up the alley.

When he was close to the corner, Paul called, "Jason!"

Jason stopped without turning. He heard Paul's footsteps. "Jase," Paul
said, closer. Jason turned to face him. "Jason, there's a lot you don't
know about me."

"So?"

"And some of what you don't know means I know a lot of people that you'd
never want to meet."

"Name six."

"Why are you giving me a hard time? It doesn't matter who they are."

When Jason turned away, he said, "Look, I can't tell you who I got the
information from because I don't know myself."

"Paul-"

"Will you listen to me? The people I deal with are extremely secretive.

If they don't want you to know who they are, you don't know."

"Well, mil grdcias, Paul, but what do you want me to do, move to Nova
Scotia under an assumed name?" Cutting off Paul's reply, he continued,
"But hey, thanks for being so specific. Most mysterious warnings you get
these days are so vague and unsubstantial."

"Look, just be careful. Jeez."

"Wow," Jason said, "glad you told me that."

He walked out of the alley and around the block, and along the train
tracks toward the Manor. Fifteen minutes later, he was in the Plymouth
with Martin, going south on the Pasadena Freeway.



The Rust Garden was in Hollywood, on an alley parallel with Highland
Avenue, near Melrose. It had started life as a small parking lot for a
coffeehouse, and was still more parking lot than building. The floor was
uneven asphalt with parking spaces still marked in faded paint, and
there was no food service.

Jason and Martin parked in front of the coffeehouse and entered through
its front door. Inside, four failed-actor types were draped over the
circular iron staircase to the loft, speaking opaque dialogue written by
a failed-writer type. The clientele was sparse, and no one seemed to be
paying attention. Walking toward the back with Martin, Jason waved to
the two women behind the counter, and they looked surprised and said,
"Hi, Jason!"

Farther back, a man in a long black coat was gesturing with a wooden
flute and saying to three people at a table, "So the cops say to me,
"Have you seen anything unusual tonight?'" The people at the table
laughed, and Jason clapped him on the shoulder.

"Jason!" the man said. "How you doing? You haven't been around!"

"Hey, David, how you doing?"

"Doing unbelievably. Playing out a lot, man. A lot. Did you hear about
Lori?"

"No, what?"

"She got fired, man! They said she was stealing."

Jason frowned. "That's ridiculous." "No kidding! I'll tell her you said
hello. Hey, I heard about your divorce. That's rough. I know."

"Yeah, well. Anyway, we're going to the Garden for some stuff you hate,
but nice seeing you."

"Later."

When they parted, Martin said "Do you know everybody here?"

"Not any more," Jason said. "I haven't been around for a long time."

At the back door of the coffeehouse--which was the front door of the
Rust Garden--he gave his name to the doorperson, wondered why it always
took three searches through the guest list, and walked in behind Martin.

The Garden was a little more than half full, which meant there were
about twenty-five people sitting in the metal chairs or milling around.

A dozen microphones perched on thin stands around the edge of the room,
aimed at the audience.

The small stage had been carefully cut on the bottom edge to follow the
contour of the pavement. On it, a slender man with glasses pushed up
over closely-trimmed black hair, leaned on a wheeled white case that
looked like a coffin freezer, intent on the screen of a big Macintosh
computer much more powerful than Jason's. Cables snaked everywhere, some
of them duct-taped to the pavement and the floor of the stage. A large
screen video monitor sat on a tall rolling stand at the back of the
stage.

Jason said, "Roland?"

The man looked away from the screen with an amiably vague expression
and said, "Yes?"

Jason extended his hand. "Hi, I'm Jason Keltner, NOTE ON from MUSE. We
finally meet."

Roland's expression became sincerely friendly as he shook Jason's hand.

"Yes, finally! What a pleasure to meet you."

"This is my friend, Martin." "Hi," Martin said. "This is quite a setup
you've got here."

Roland looked sourly at the coffin freezer. "Thanks. It's being
temperamental right now, I'm afraid." "Need some help?" Jason said.

"Sure, have a look. I'm stumped."

"Martin, could you save us a table?"

"Okay." Martin found a table near the stage and sat down. Jason stepped
up onto the stage and said, "What's wrong with it?" It was strange to be
on stage again.

Roland swiveled the screen so Jason could see it better. "I don't know
what the problem is. This is a borrowed computer. It was working before,
but now I can't open my librarian."

Jason looked at the screen. "You're doing digital audio. Did you
optimize the disk before the performance?" Roland said, "Yes ..." Then
realization dawned on his face. "Oh. Oops. I bet I lost a hard disk
install." He rolled his eyes. "Duh."

Jason grinned. "That's why you try out your new material here."

"Right, so I can screw up and hardly anybody sees it." He shook his head
and sighed. "This is an awful lot to go through for a twenty-minute
show. Anyway, thanks."

"Sure."

Roland flipped his glasses down over his face and Jason stepped down and
joined Martin at a table near the stage.

"You fixed it?" Martin said.

"No. I don't know how. I just guessed right. He's fixing it now."

"There you go. It's better to be lucky than good."

"I think the saying goes sometimes it's better."

Martin was looking around. "There're no women here."

"It's mostly men at these things."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Maybe because most tech types are men."

"Tech types?"

Jason looked around. "Like that guy with the blue plaid shirt."

Martin studied the man. "He looks like those guys in high school who
spent all day in the computer lab."

"How come the girls never did that?"

"I don't know." "Ah," Jason said sagely, "When you have discovered the
reason, Grasshopper, you will have discovered the answer." Martin said,
"Sure thing, Master Po, dude."

Jason inclined his head and bowed slightly as the house lights dimmed.

Roland's show was mesmerizing. Constantly entering commands with the
mouse, keyboard, and a small, flat bank of sliders, he wove music
together with recordings of found sounds: conversations, engine noises,
restaurant ambiences, and things Jason couldn't identify. The sounds
looped and fragmented, became seeds of new sounds, and grew stranger.

Jason was startled to hear his own voice say, "Martin, could you save us
a table?" through the speakers, and Martin's voice reply, "Okay."

Martin leaned over and whispered in clear awe, "How'd he do that?"

Jason whispered back, "See those microphones? They've been on the whole
time."

Martin shook his head slightly and said, "Whoa."

Their recorded and amplified voices mutated under Roland's control,
warbling and wobbling until they were no longer recognizable as natural
sounds, becoming indistinguishable components of the bizarre texture of
sound generated by the gear in the coffin freezer, metamorphosing under
the flicks of Roland's hands on the sliders.

The melange of sounds grew in a slow crescendo and, although there was
nothing that could be called a tempo, the rate of mutation of the layers
of sound increased, creating the impression of an accelerando. The
screen reflected in Roland's glasses as his sound structure built to a
thundering climax of unnatural sounds that rattled the Rust Garden's
thin walls and burst sharply into a sudden return to the original
sounds, which faded and repeated, until the only sound was the swishing
hum of Roland's gear through his amplifier.

Martin was the first to applaud, and the room filled with the sounds of
stomps and whistles. As the audience moved toward the back of the room
and was reabsorbed by the coffeehouse, Jason and Martin walked to the
stage. A pudgy man with messy dark hair and smeared glasses had cornered
Roland, who was nodding politely and obviously trying to ignore the fact
that the pudgy man sprayed a little when he talked. When Roland noticed
Jason and Martin, he broke into the stream of technical talk with,
"Jason, hi! This is ... I'm sorry, what was your name?"

The man took a moment to answer, as though it took time for him to
understand the question. "Virgil."

"Virgil, this is Jason and Martin. Virgil's on MUSE, too." "Really,"
Jason said. "What's your username?" "Oh," Virgil said, and there was
another pause. Jason waited. "I'm sure you wouldn't know it," Virgil
finally finished.

"Maybe. What is it?"

Another long pause. "BIGVIRG." An impish look stole into his eyes, and
after another pause, he said,"I told you you wouldn't know it."

"And you were right," Jason said. "Well, it was nice to meet you." He
turned to Roland and said, "Listen, I need to talk to you."

"Okay," Roland said. "Virgil, it was nice to meet you. I'll see you
around on MUSE." Virgil said, "Okay," waited for a moment, and then
ambled away.

"Thanks," Roland said in a low voice. "I owe you several."

"No problem. That must happen to you all the time. It happens to me a
lot, and my setup is about a tenth as impressive as yours." Martin said,
"What happens?"

Roland said, "Every time I play out, some techie comes up afterward and
wants to talk equipment. I can hang with it sometimes, but the
equipment's not really the point. I like talking to people afterward; I
just don't like to get into endless gear specs."

Martin said, "What was that guy's problem?"

"He's a programmer," Roland said. "Mainframes."

Martin looked blank, so Jason said, "A lot of good programmers I know
talk like that. It's as though English is a second language to them,
with their first language being code."

"Code?" Roland said, "What computer programs are written in."

"Oh." "So," Jason continued, "in extreme cases, you get guys like that,
who seem to even think in code, and when they actually

have to communicate with human beings, they have to translate back and
forth from code to English. Those long silences are kind of time-outs to
assemble sentences." "Exactly," Roland said.

"That's really weird," Martin said.

"I get that way myself when I'm heavily into performing or composing,"
Jason said, and Roland nodded. "I start thinking like a quarter note and
can't talk. 'There are more things under heaven than are dreamt of in
your philosophy,' Martin." "Oh, I'm quite sure of that," Martin said.
"That's why I don't have a philosophy. Was that Hamlet otmacbeth? I
always get them mixed up."

"Me too, but it's one or the other," Jason said, at the same time as
Roland said, "Hamlet."

"It's from Hamlet" Jason said.

"How can you confuse Hamlet andmacbetht" Roland said.

"I'm a musician and he's an artist," Jason said. "We can confuse
anything."

They helped Roland coil his cables and carry his equipment cases to his
car. When he left, they went into the coffeehouse and drank cappuccino.

Jason picked up an LJi. Reader and read Cecil Adams' column to Martin. A
three-piece band that had been setting up when they came in started to
play. Jason winced and glanced at Martin. Martin was wincing, too. They
put money on the table and left hastily.

Down the street where they had parked, there was a car just like Jason's
with a smashed rear window. As they approached it, it took Jason a
minute to make the jump from This im't my car because my car doesn't
have a smashed, rear window to Somebody smashed my window!

"Oh!" Martin said. Jason's mouth tightened and he walked around the car.

It seemed to be just the rear window.

"Great." "Oh, gosh," Martin said.

Jason unlocked the driver's door and looked inside. There was broken
glass all the way to the front floorboard and on top of the dash.

He sighed heavily and straightened up.

"Should we call the cops?" Martin said, still wide-eyed.

"I don't see why," Jason said, walking to the back of the car. "I don't
think anything's missing. It'll take them an hour to get here, if they
come at all, and what are they going to do?" "I guess," Martin said.
Jason unlocked the trunk and thumped it sharply with the side of his
fist just above the lock. A few pieces of loose glass fell out of the
rear window frame and the trunk opened a few inches. Jason propped it
open with a stick that he kept next to the bumper jack, and took a thick
gray blanket out, removed the stick, and closed the trunk. He brushed
most of the glass off the front seat with a newspaper section from the
back, and then unfolded the blanket and refolded it to fit the front
seat, and they got into the car.

"That's a shame," Martin said, twisting to see the rear window. "Are you
insured?"

"Yeah, but only liability." Jason started the car and looked behind him
for traffic.

"That's really a shame. Why would somebody do that?"

Jason had no answer, so he didn't say anything and pulled onto Highland.

For the next few blocks, Martin started to say something and then
didn't, three times.

"What?" Jason finally demanded, exasperated.

"I don't know if I should say, because it might be nothing."

«"\r \»

Yes?

"Well ... do you think this could be related to your poking around
about Monica Gleason?"

"I don't think so."

"Why not? Maybe N. Platt found out you were after him." Jason pondered.

"Or her. Well, I guess it could be."

"I think maybe you should go see that lady cop."

"Detective Johns."

"Right, her."

On the Pasadena Freeway, Jason said, "Martin?"

"Yeah?"

"How come Detective Johns is a lady cop, and not just a

~\n cop?

Martin looked surprised. "Uh, I don't mean anything by that. It's just
how I talk."

Jason nodded.

"You think it's wrong?"

"I don't think anything. I was just wondering."

In his peripheral vision, Jason could see Martin inspecting him.

"Yes?"

"How are you feeling?"

"Fine. How are you?"

Martin didn't answer. They were silent all the way back to the Manor.



USERNAME: NOTE-ON PASSWORD: ..... HELLO NOTE-ON

Logon at 6-JAN 08:32:38 You have 2 new mail messages.

#1

From: CYBERFINGERS 5-JAN 03:22:17.59

To: NOTE-ON

Subj: gig!

I enjoyed meeting you last night. Thanks for the help! I'll let you know
when I'm playing again. Take it easy, Roland

#2

From: PREDATOR 5-JAN 04:12:33.00

To: NOTE-ON

Subj: bang bang your dead!!!

hi jason keltner. I no you but you dont no me. next time I

wont miss you. did you like what I did to your car. hahahahahaha *_

MAIL> send To: Metamusic

From: NOTE-ON

Subj: Hello Enter your message below. When finished, enter AZ.

What happened to Monica Gleason?

AZ

Message sent.

MAIL> bye NOTE-ON off at 08:33:12 Session time: 2 minutes. MUSE
DISCONNECTED

The phone rang at 6:30 in the morning. Jason got up from the computer
table and picked it up.

"Unh," he said in a sleepy voice. He was awake, but he wanted whoever it
was to feel guilty for calling at 6:30 in the morning.

A female voice said, "May I speak to Jason Keltner, please?"

He dropped the sleepy voice. "Yeah, this is Jason."

"Mr. Keltner, this is Detective Johns. I called you several times
yesterday, but your answering machine is not accepting messages."

"Really?" He leaned over and looked at it. The little message indicator
was flashing furiously. "No wonder. It's full."

"I understand you were involved in a shooting yesterday."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Why was I involved in a shooting?"

"Yes."

"Uh, because it's hard to stab somebody from a car thirty feet away?"

"Why else?"

"Because my position in the spacetime continuum intersected with the
trajectory of a bunch of bullets?"

"Why else?"

"Because of my widespread reputation for making funny noises when
wounded?"

"Why else?"

"Because ... ignorant of the contract that had been put out on my
folding chair by an international consortium of rocker-recliners, I
accidentally wandered into the middle of a Chair Mafia hit?"

"Why else?" Jason said, "Detective Johns, these witty gems don't
spontaneously generate from a void. You have to give me better straight
lines than "Why else.'"

"Okay, how about this? You were involved in a shooting because you've
been poking around in the Monica Gleason investigation and somebody got
mad at you and decided that it would be better if you were dead."

Jason leaned against the bookcase and cocked the telephone against his
shoulder. "Sounds pretty mundane. I found the mafia chair theory much
more entertaining."

"Or maybe somebody knows you killed Monica Gleason and wants revenge."

"If you really thought that, I wouldn't be comfy at home, exchanging
sparkling banter with you over the phone, dumbfounded and agog that some
people still don't know not to call musicians before noon."

"Your slothfulness is not my problem, Mr. Keltner. I have a job to do."

"'Neither sleet nor snow nor darkest night,'" Jason said.

"'Slothfulness,' Detective Johns?"

"'Agog,' Mr. Keltner?" "Great word," Jason said. "I also like 'shrub.'"

"I believe the shooting happened because you've been poking your nose
where it doesn't belong."

"Could be. Know what I believe?"

"What." The tone was flat, not at all that of someone gripped by
suspense.

"I believe you're jealous that somebody shot at me and not at you,
because that means that I'm on to something and you're not."

There was no answer, so Jason said, "The problem is, I don't know what
I'm on to. But I might be very pleased to tell you what I've been up to
because maybe one of us, and I'm not saying which one, has no idea what
he or she is involved in, but suspects that whatever it is could
severely limit his or her long-term plans for metabolism."

«/~i n Go on.

"If you come over to my place, I'll have fresh coffee for you and two
things to show you that just happened." "Fifteen minutes," Detective
Johns said, and hung up.

Jason hung up the phone, said, "Terse, competent, professional," in a
deep voice to the empty room, and went and made coffee.

"Nice how you told me this 'just happened.'" Detective Johns was wearing
a blue blouse with the same little black stringy limp bow thing or its
sister and sitting in front of Jason's Macintosh, reading the e-mail
message from

PREDATOR. Her coffee was in a cream-colored china cup on a matching
saucer on the floor. Jason was wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt that
said (^Rtajlvl N/|u^i£lan6 C/yt^J\vm. He said, "Urn, it did."

She turned and looked at him levelly. "Really."

"Really."

Still looking at him, she tapped the screen with one nail. "This says
January fifth, at three-twelve in the morning."

"Oh," Jason said, "That's when the message was sent, not when I received
it. Also, that's Eastern time. The big computer where this all happens
is on the east coast." She didn't respond. "Either that or I went to the
trouble of lying and inviting a detective over, but goofy me, I forgot
to change the dates on the screen. Oh, that wacky, bumbling,
investigation side-tracking Jase."

She maintained the level look. Jason said, "I confess. It was me. I did
it in the study with the candlestick."

She turned slightly so that she was facing him more directly. The look
didn't falter. Jason said, "If you're planning to continue affixing me
with your steely gaze, you have to intone something gravely."

"Mr. Keltner-"

"If you have no portents of doom to intone gravely, some will be
appointed for you. Do you wish to give up the right to intone portents
of doom?" She said,"Mr. Keltner," again, and then bit down on it and
didn't continue. She sat and looked at her fingertips silently for a
minute.

Then she said, "You are going to be this kind of a pain in the ass every
time you feel accused, aren't you?"

"You're much smarter than my ex-wife."

She pursed her lips and nodded. The look and the nod said fifteen years
to retirement."'What's he talking about with your car?"

"Or she. That's the second thing I wanted to show you. Come outside."

He showed her the Plymouth.

"Did you make a police report?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"For a broken window in Hollywood?"

"Tell me what happened."

Jason told her about the evening, trying not to leave anything out. When
he finished, she said, "What about this Roland guy?"

Jason shook his head. "No, I really don't think so. When you move your
own electronics around for a living all the time, you get extra
sensitive about other people's things. And besides, Martin and I were
with him pretty much the whole time."

"How about this Virgil character?"

"I thought of that, but isn't our, uh, perpetrator somebody who targeted
me specifically, both with the shooting and with the window smashing? So
it couldn't have been somebody I met just last night."

"What about this Martin guy? Would he have any reason to want to bother
you?"

Jason smiled. "Martin's about as vindictive as a Fig Newton. We've been
friends for a long time, and he's crashing on my couch these days."

"Can you think of anyone who would want to harass you?"

"I've been trying to, but I can't think of anybody. I suppose there are
plenty of people who don't like me, despite my sweet disposition and
radiant countenance, but as far as I know, I've never made any serious
enemies."

Detective Johns leaned against the staircase handrail and almost lost
her balance when it wobbled. She moved a few feet

to her left and leaned against the flimsy siding that contained the
storage area under the staircase. "Well, you've managed to make a
serious enemy now. What exactly have you been getting into?"

"I went to Monica Gleason's wake and met her little sister."

"That's all?"

"Yes."

"You're sure that's all."

(t\r J

Yes.

The level look came back. "Mr. Keltner, people are not shot at for
attending wakes."

Jason pursed his lips and drew his breath in. "Have you ever been
divorced?"

She looked taken aback."Why?"

"Have you?"

"I don't think it's relevant."

"If you have been, do you remember how exhausted and numb you were?"

She pursed her lips.

"Remember how you did maybe one or two things that just weren't the kind
of thing you do?"

She studied him for a long time. He didn't see any change in her face to
indicate that she had reached a conclusion. "All right. Tell me what
else you did." Jason took a deep breath and told her about entering
Monica Gleason's apartment through the window. He didn't tell her about
taking the data from Monica's computer. Then he stopped talking and
waited for her reaction.

She eventually said, "Breaking and entering and interfering in a
homicide investigation." She nodded. The set look was back. "We have
been a busy boy, haven't we, Mr. Keltner?"

Jason couldn't think of anything to say, so he just looked around the
parking lot uncomfortably. Waldo, the gray and white cat, was
half-hidden in the tall weeds near the staircase, half asleep. Somebody
from the condos came out with a briefcase and got into a dark green
Saab, started the engine, and left for work. Waldo's tail flicked and he
pounced on something a few inches in front of him and then backed off an
inch and stared at it intently. He repeated the pounce, back off, stare
sequence several times as whatever it was moved across the patch of
weeds. Jason ran out of things to look at, so he looked at Detective
Johns.

"So?" he said. "Are you taking me downtown?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"You're not a suspect. I'm only here because your getting shot at might
mean you're involved in some way. We checked you out, just like
everybody else. You don't fit the profile or the circumstances."

"Which are?"

"Which are police business and none of yours."

"Oh."

"Let's go back inside and you'll tell me everything you know."

"I did already."

"Then you can tell me again." "Oh boy," Jason said, "The sound of my own
voice!"



zilfter he told her all the same things twice more, Detective Johns left
him, with a stern warning to stay out of the investigation. Jason spent
half an hour sweeping glass out of the Plymouth with a yellow plastic
whisk-broom and then spent an hour trying to devise clever ways of
covering the opening where the rear window had been. Around 9:00, he
gave up and left it open and drove to Hollywood, vigilant for unmarked
police cars, because he felt paranoid after his talk with the detective.

He didn't see any. He decided to interpret that as meaning that there
weren't any.

He pulled into the parking structure for patrons of the Chinese Theatre,
told the attendants who sat in folding chairs near the entrance that he
was going to see a movie so they'd let him park there, and walked twenty
minutes to Mailbox City, where he hung around in front, pretending to
read the free LA. Reader that he'd gotten from a yellow newsrack,
watching nobody open Box 83.

Four hours later, annoyed as hell, he gave up, got a piece of paper and
a pen from the mailbox clerk, wrote,"Who killed Monica Gleason? Contact
NOTE-ON on MUSE," and slipped it into Box 83.

The walk back to the Parking Structure did nothing to reduce his
annoyance. He got the Plymouth and went to a newsstand on Cahuenga,
bought two paperback copies of The Art Of War, and read one while he ate
two pieces of pepperoni and mushroom pizza at Numero Uno.

He drove home and took a pink Post-It notepad from under the papers on
his computer table, wrote

"Please look through this and meet me tomorrow at noon" on two Post-Its,
and stuck them to the covers of the two books.

He put one copy on Martin's pillow on the couch and then went out the
front door and back into the house through a neighboring door, and up
the wooden stairs to the second floor. A short entryway to the right of
the top landing was filled with cardboard boxes of dusty paperbacks. He
threaded his way through them and propped the other book against
Robert's door.

In his apartment, he hunted through his books until he found his own old
copy, went back upstairs and borrowed a yellow Hi-Liter marker from
Patrice, and sat on the back stairs, reading and Hi-Liting. After about
four hours, he got a pad of paper from inside and walked to The Talking
Room.

The Talking Room was newer, classier, and more expensive than the E-Bar,
and had real food and didn't have poetry nights, so mostly adults went
there. The furniture and trim were wood, and there was always either
jazz or classical music playing. This time it was jazz. Jason sat
halfway back in the long room and read and Hi-Li ted The Art Of War over
a series of Cafe Mochas, occasionally writing on the pad. When afternoon
ended and it began to get dark outside, he tore the top sheet off the
pad, folded it, put it inside the book, paid for the Cafe Mochas and
walked back to the Manor, undressed, and went to sleep.

He presses RETURN and the message is sent through the Net. The message
is very short. It is encoded. When decoded, it consists only of a time
and a telephone number.

He looks again at the clock on the computer screen. He has time to eat
dinner. Then he will go to a pay telephone and receive his call. Then
things will be taken care of.



I ason's clock-radio alarm went off at eleven. He got up, showered, and
had coffee while he made chicken-flavored Top Ramen the wrong way,
without the broth. At noon, there was a knock on the front door and he
let Martin and Robert in. They both had their copies of The Art of War.

Martin sat on the couch and Robert sat on the floor. Jason sat on the
piano bench and said, "Well." Martin glanced at Robert, held up his
book, and said, "We decided to wait to see what you have to say, but I
just want to say that whatever it is, you're insane, and we won't let
you do it."

Jason looked at Robert. Robert didn't look away, but he didn't say
anything, either.

Jason tapped his book against his knee and said, "That's not an option.

Robert and I were attacked. I didn't declare war on anybody, but
somebody's declared war on me. I don't know yet how to respond, but your
options consist of helping me or not helping me. 'Not letting me do it'
is not one of your choices." Martin said, "See--" explosively at the
same time as Robert said, "Jason ..." They looked at each other and then
Martin made an eloquent gesture of deference with his shoulders and
palms. Robert said, "Jason, what is it exactly that you're thinking
about doing with this book?"

"I'm not sure, exactly."

"Then how about not exactly?"

"Not exactly, I'm going to respond to someone shooting at Robert and
me." Martin's restraint expired and he said, "'Respond?' What does that
mean, "Respond?'" Robert said, "Martin--"

Jason said, "I don't know yet." Robert said, "If we don't help you, what
will you do?"

"Something less than I would do if you helped me." "Oh, that's clear,"
Martin said.

Robert said, "Could you be a little more descriptive?"

Jason tapped his other knee. "No." When he saw Martin gearing up for
another explosion, he said, "You think I'm being uncommunicative, but
I'm not. Or maybe I am, but the reason is that I don't have anything to
communicate. I don't know what exactly I want to do. I just thought that
it would be a good idea for us to have a talk about what's been going on
and what we're going to do about it." "What we're going to do about it,"
Martin said, "is let the cops handle it." "Nope," said Jason. "Cops
think the shooting was a random drive-by. And even if they don't believe
that, what do they have to go on? Next time I get shot at by someone in
a car, I'll think to get the license plate, but that doesn't do any good
for now. The cops aren't going to get anywhere." Martin said, "Maybe it
was a random drive-by. It could have been." Jason nodded and said,
"Sure,"and waited.

After some time, Robert said, "So much for the random drive-by."

"Here's what I think," Jason said. "I think whoever shot at 8us was not
the same person as whoever killed Monica and smashed my car window."
"Why not?" said Martin.

"Think about it. The sequence is wrong. Don't you think that smashing
someone's car window should come before shooting at them?"

Martin started to say something, but stopped and looked thoughtful.

Robert stared at him, and then nodded slowly and said, «/~^ 5)

Go on.

Jason put the book down. "That says to me that there may be two
different people or groups of people who want to kill or harass me. If
Monica's killer is one of them, there's a clear motive; I must be on to
something I don't know about. But who's the other person and what's the
motive?" Robert said, "Do you have any theories who the second person
might be?"

"None. Any ideas?"

Robert looked into the corner of the room with a glassy expression.

Martin looked at his feet. Jason had already been over it so many times
that he just sat and waited.

"Maybe," Robert said, without looking away from the corner, "Monica's
killer hired a shooter, but good help is hard to find these days and the
shooter screwed it up." "No way," said Martin. "Think about it. Why
would he bother to do that and then break the car window?" Robert said,
"Because he was so peeved that the guy with the gun missed." Martin
said, "Peeved?"

"Irked?"

Martin made a doubtful noise.

Robert said, "Okay, let's call the guy with the gun 'Mr. Gun' and
Monica's killer 'Mr. Fluffy.'" Martin said, "Why 'Mr. Fluffy?'"

"We can say that there are only two ways that Mr. Gun and Mr. Fluffy can
relate to each other: Either they know each other, or they don't. Let's
take each possibility, one at a time." Jason said, "Okay, so let's say
that they don't know each other."

"If they don't know each other ..." Maintaining his cornerward gaze,
Robert rocked back and forth slightly. "If they don't know each other,
then Mr. Gun is either working for himself or for someone else. Do we
have any evidence to support that he was working for himself?"

There was silence.

"Do we have any evidence to support that he was working for someone
else?" Jason said, "Well ..." and then the silence resumed.

Finally, Martin said, "This is probably nothing."

Robert looked away from the corner and looked expectant.

"Well," Martin said, "it's just that, don't you think that someone who
was trying to kill you for their own personal reason would try to finish
the job, and not just shoot once and run away?"

Robert looked up at nothing and his expression became searching. "Jason,
what do you think?"

"Could be." Jason thought about it. "And furthermore, I don't think
someone who shoots once, misses, and then runs away sounds very
professional. I got the definite impression of only one person in the
car. Wouldn't a professional have a driver so he could concentrate, and
not have to worry about parking and shooting at the same time? And it's
only maybe ten yards from the street to the porch; wouldn't a
professional hit something at that range?" "Right," said Robert.

Martin nodded and said, "Makes sense to me." "Okay," Jason said, "So
maybe we're dealing with a low budget hit man."

Robert looked at the ceiling and said, "Which means that we are dealing
now with three people; Mr. Fluffy, Mr. Gun, and Mr. Gun's boss, who
we'll call--" He narrowed his eyes and made a
dredging-for-the-right-word gesture with the tips of his thumb and
forefinger.

"Who we'll call 'Mr. Gun's Boss,'" Martin said. "So we can remember it."

"What do we know about Mr. Gun's Boss?" Robert said.

Martin said, "He's a cheap son-of a-bitch." Jason said, "He's a coward.
Won't do it himself." Martin said, "Hey!"

Robert looked at him. Jason didn't say anything.

Martin said, "We're helping you, and we weren't going to do that!" He
turned to Robert. "Right?"

Robert's gaze drifted distractedly back toward the corner and he said,
"Why would Mr. Gun's Boss want to hire someone to shoot at me and Jason
and miss?"

Martin made a disgusted sound and threw his hands up.

Jason said, "Oh yeah! Maybe to scare us." Martin said, "It's too bad it
didn't work."

Robert said, "But if it were just to scare us, we're back down to two
people, because now there's no reason someone acting on their own
wouldn't just shoot once, miss, and run away."

"Which leaves us just where we were," Jason said.

Robert snapped his fingers. "Hey! Do you think Leonard Bernstein stole
that car and shot at us?" Jason said, "Leonard Bernstein's dead."

Robert raised a forefinger. "Aha! We're not just where we were."

Martin said, "Great. We've eliminated Leonard Bernstein as a suspect."
"Thank God we've got Robert," said Jason. "Let's call him 'Mr. Useful.'"

Martin looked back and forth from Robert to Jason. "So now what?" Nobody
said anything for a few minutes.

"Well," Jason finally said, "I don't think we can really deduce much
about the Bad Guys with the little evidence we have. I think maybe we
ought to worry instead about the fact that we have no evidence that this
stuff isn't going to continue."

Robert pursed his lips and looked pensive.

"Oh, I feel incredibly comforted now," Martin said.

Jason picked up his The Art of War. "Did you guys have a chance to look
through this?"

"A little," Martin said.

"I've read it before," Robert said.

"Any thoughts?" Jason opened his. "I figure we should assume that we are
outnumbered and outskilled." Robert said, "I agree. Since we don't know
anything, we have to assume an enemy exists. And since we don't know
anything about the enemy's goals, we have to try to be ready for all the
possible situations we can think of." "Like what?" Jason said.

Martin sat forward on the couch. "If I was someone with resources and
manpower, and my enemy wasn't, I'd probably just try to strong-arm him."

Jason said, "And I'd do it soon."

Robert nodded in agreement. "Do you accept the premise that all warfare
is based on deception?" Jason said, "Okay," and Martin shrugged and
said, "Sure." Robert said, "Then since the enemy probably knows we have
no resources or manpower, we should do everything we can to bolster
both." Jason said,"We've already bolstered manpower just by allying with
each other. We're three instead of one. We oughta have a name." "First
Unarmored Division," Robert said.

Jason grinned and said, "Joint Sheafs of Chaff." Martin said, "The
Screamin' Pink Tigers." Robert said, "The Fightin' Gastropods." Jason
said, "Let's worry about the name later." He took the folded piece of
paper out of his book. "I made a list of some of the basics. There seems
to be a lot of emphasis placed on not fighting."

Robert gave him a thumbs-up without saying anything.

Martin said, "I like that. I like the not fighting part." Jason said, "I
think our strategy, whatever it is, should hinge on, ah, thwarting his
or her plans, rather than confrontation where we might be expected. In a
direct confrontation, we're sunk." Martin said, "Don't get me wrong;
I've got nothing against a clean fight, but I'm not crazy about the idea
of suicide. This boy ain't no kamikaze." Robert said thoughtfully,
"Assuming we have time to implement it, I might have an idea."



Solomon and Tony were crooks. Before they'd been hired full-time, Tony
had hurt people for money, and Solomon had been a concert promoter. Tony
was five-eight and 195 pounds, all of it muscle. He wore slacks and a
yellow shirt and a blue windbreaker that hung down more on the left than
the right. Solomon was an inch taller and slender, with a goatee and
even, white teeth. He wore a dark, shiny suit and black shoes with
tassels.

They stood in the bleak light of the Manor's porch lightbulb on January
sixth, in front of Jason's taped cardboard windows. It was a few minutes
before midnight. No light showed through the windows or under the door.

Tony said softly, "You sure this the place?" His speech had the cadence
and accent of West African pidgin English.

Solomon lifted a folded piece of white paper and showed it to Tony
without looking at it. Tony made a show of squinting at the paper. In a
moment, he said, "Oh, yeah, that one, uh-huh." He nodded.

Solomon pointed with one slender, manicured finger at the corroded metal
numerals nailed over the Manor's front doorbell.

Tony nodded. "Ah, yes, I see."

With his finger still pointing at the number, Solomon looked silently
at Tony for a moment, and then pressed the doorbell. Tony looked sagely
at the metal numerals and nodded as though reverifying something very
important.

No light went on inside. Tony shuffled from foot to foot.

Some women walked by on the sidewalk, speaking Spanish. Tony let his
breath out in a disdainful hiss. He glanced at Solomon and said,
"Mexicans, man," and shook his head. Solomon ignored him. Tony got
closer to the front door and tried to see in. "Maybe the doorbell don't
work." He rapped on one of the still-intact panes of glass and called,
"Hello, anybody?"

There was no answer, and no light went on.

"What we do if nobody here?"

Solomon stroked his goatee and thought. Then he said, in an accent quite
different than Tony's, "We were instructed to intimidate the occupant of
this domicile. Now, one can intimidate, or one can intimate. You see the
difference?" Tony nodded vigorously and said, "You're so right."

"A man can intimidate, you see, or he can intimate. I consider that this
time is, perhaps, a time for intimation. We should intimate while he is
gone, so that we may intimidate when he returns."

Tony nodded furiously. "Yes, yes," he said. Solomon was so smart that
Tony didn't even understand what he said most of the time.

Solomon looked around. The women had passed and there was no one on the
street or the sidewalks. The Manor was still dark. Solomon tried the
knob. It was locked, but the pane of glass next to it had a hole in it
that looked big enough to get Tony's hand through. Some of the other
panes were closed up with cardboard.

"Tony, reach your hand through that hole and open the door."

Tony's brow furrowed. "Why me?"

Solomon looked irritated. "This a thousand dollar suit, bro! You want me
snag it on something?"

Tony grumbled and reached his hand through the hole, fished around on
the knob for the lock button, and rotated it with his forefinger.

Pulling out, he jerked suddenly and said, "Ah!" Moving more carefully,
he withdrew his hand and put his mouth on the cut on the back of his
wrist. Solomon clucked sagely and said, "Aspire to be more vigilant,
bro." He turned the knob and slowly opened the door, and they stepped
into Jason's front room.

There was a couch with a blanket spread over it, an upright piano, and a
stand made of black tubing in the corner with some things on it under
dust covers. A doorway with no door in it opened farther back into
darkness. Solomon closed the door. When Tony's eyes had adjusted to the
darkness, he looked at Solomon for a clue about what to do next.

"See what's in there," Solomon whispered. Tony took a short length of
one-inch heavy pipe from his left jacket pocket and walked quietly
through the doorway into a very short passage with a bookshelf, and into
the pseudo-kitchen. The floor creaked under his steps. He stepped
gracefully to the perimeter of the room to skirt the noisy floorboards,
but the floor creaked there, too.

He went into the bathroom. The door on the opposite wall was ajar, and
Tony tried to creep across the linoleum to it, but the floor creaked
even more loudly than in the pseudo kitchen. He listened at the door.

There was no sound. Slowly, he pushed the door open and looked into
Jason's bedroom. There was nobody in there either, just bare, ugly
wooden floor and a futon on a wooden frame.

He closed the door, went back into the front room and said to Solomon,
"Nobody here. What we do now?"

"Now we intimate, bro." Solomon pulled back one side of his jacket and
withdrew the crowbar that hooked over his waistband and hung down into
his left trouser leg. Tony smiled and slapped the pipe into his right
palm. Solomon raised one warning finger and said, "But remember, bro, we
must definitely be quick and efficient, because noise will draw unwanted
attention. Dig?" "Dig," Tony said. He grinned and slapped his palm with
the pipe again.

Solomon hefted the crowbar and brought it down violently onto one of the
covered things on the black stand. Something shattered like glass; he
raised the crowbar again and crashed it down onto something else, which
also shattered. Tony flipped the piece of pipe into the air in a little
circle, caught it at one end, and smashed the remaining panes of glass
in the front door, then pocketed the pipe, gripped the back edge of the
piano, rocked it twice, and pulled it over onto the floor. The piano
made a huge overturned-piano noise, and Tony chuckled gleefully.

"Okay, bro," Solomon said. His eyes danced with excitement. Let's go!"

The sound of the scrape of a shoe on concrete froze both of them. There
was another scrape, and then the sound of a shotgun being cocked. Tony's
jaw dropped and he said, "Oh!" Solomon pointed toward the back of the
apartment and whispered, "There a door there?"

Tony nodded and pointed.

Solomon said, "Go that way! Hurry!" Tony leaped agilely over the piano
and sped through the apartment. The back door wasn't quite shut. He
wrenched it open and took one running step outside.

Behind Tony, Solomon saw the square-headed shovel arc down from above
the open doorway and hit Tony hard in the face, with a dull clang.

Tony's piece of pipe didn't stop as suddenly as Tony did. It flew
forward into the windshield of the Plymouth, which was parked nose-in to
the door. As Tony hit the hood of the Plymouth, Solomon skidded to a
stop and looked around, panicked. From the front room came the sound of
another shotgun being cocked. He glanced sideways, into the bathroom.

There was an open window in the bedroom, through the open door on the
opposite bathroom wall.

Bolting through the bathroom, he took one running step into the bedroom,
and the wooden floor under him heaved up at an angle and threw him
completely off balance. He wind milled his arms and twisted to regain
his step, and his crowbar whipped up into his face and knocked out three
teeth. Jason stepped in from the side and followed the crowbar with a
round headed shovel swung hard into Solomon's forehead. Solomon
crumpled. Jason dropped the shovel, took an extension cord from the
futon, and bound Solomon's hands behind his back, making an extra few
loops around the futon frame. Then he got another cord and did the same
to Solomon's feet. Outside, Martin yelled, "Did you get him?" Jason was
grinning hard. "We got him! Did you get yours?" Martin yelled, "I got
him! I got him I got him I got him!" The floor thumped, and Solomon
groaned. Jason pulled the cord tight around Solomon's feet and then
shoved him until he rolled off the basement door. The door heaved open
and Robert, covered in cobwebs and old dirt and leaves, came up the
wooden steps into the room with a disgusted expression, holding his arms
away from his sides. He shook himself and said, "Bleaaaggh!" Jason said,
"Pick up the shovel and stay here with this one." He snatched Solomon's
crowbar from the bathroom floor and ran out the back door, where Martin
was tying Tony's hands behind his back to his feet. Tony's face was
bloody, but he seemed more or less conscious.

Martin said, "It worked!" He tugged once on the knot to verify its
security, and stood up.

Jason said, "Yeah, it worked!"

They grinned happily at each other, did a three-part handshake and
lightly bumped fists, and looked back down at Tony, who was wincing and
starting to focus. From inside the house, Robert's voice said, loudly,
"That'll teach ya to mess with the Fightin' Gastropods, Mr. Scrotum!"



It took all three of them to carry Tony into the bedroom. They bumped
his head against the sink on their way through the bathroom and Martin
said, "Sorry." Robert seemed to think that was really funny, and giggled
for two minutes.

None of the other tenants seemed to be home, so Jason didn't have to
tell them that Robert had gotten carried away rehearsing a scene. He
hadn't liked that explanation, anyway.

He left Robert and Martin to watch the two captives, went outside and
put the shovels back in the shed, and took down Martin's perch: a long
two-by-twelve that stretched above the doorway, suspended by the stair
landing and one of the rickety ladders. He gathered up the dozen orange,
dirty utility cones that had blocked access to the back of the house and
put them in the storage area under the stairs. There was a half eaten
sandwich still on the stair landing. He left it there for Waldo the cat.

Inside, he climbed over the wounded piano and went into the front room.

Flipping up the blanket that covered the couch, he got on his hands and
knees, reached under the couch, and turned a switch, cutting off the
sound effect of a doorknob being turned.

He straightened, went to his keyboard stand, and pulled up one edge of
a dustcover. Under it, broken soda bottles sat on a flat plank. He
replaced the dustcover. His keyboards were in their road cases in the
trunk of the Plymouth.

He went back through the bathroom into the bedroom. The window had been
shut and the mini-blinds closed. Solomon and Tony were on the floor.

Martin was bandaging Tony's nose, and Robert was leaning against the
wall, still cob webby from the basement, holding a pitchfork from the
storage area and leering wildly around the room. Solomon's mouth was
split, and blood covered his chin and neck, and soaked the top of his
shirt. There was a wad of wet, reddened gauze in his mouth. His forehead
was starting to swell. Tony's nose looked odd, and his face and shirt
were covered in blood too.

When Jason came in, Martin said softly, "Hey, man, we didn't think about
painkillers." Jason said, "I've got some Percoset from when I had my
wisdom teeth out.

I'll get it." He went into the pseudo-kitchen, got a little straw basket
down from a shelf above the counter, and rooted through the vitamins and
old prescriptions until he found the plastic bottle of Percoset.

Rattling the pills absently, he took the bottle into the bedroom with
two big glasses of water, and two pink drinking straws with Mickey
Mouse's face molded in the plastic.

"There's only six left," he said. "Better just give them one each after
they've talked to us, or they'll really be in pain later when there
aren't any left."

Robert gestured for Jason to come closer, and, still maintaining the
wild expression, whispered, "What if we injured them really badly?"

Jason knelt and looked closely at Solomon for a minute, and then at
Tony, and said, "I can't tell how bad they are. Martin, can you?"
Martin said, "They'll live. I saw guys hurt worse than this when I was
tending bar up in Turlock." Solomon said something muffled through the
gauze and tried to spit it out. Martin looked at Jason. Jason nodded,
and Martin pulled the gauze out. Solomon said, "We kill you,
motherfucker." Robert said, "He's so delirious that he's gotten his
pronouns mixed up." Jason knelt again in front of him and said quietly,
"You broke into my home and destroyed my property. If you do not shut up
and tell me only what I ask, I may let Big Bob there put that pitchfork
against your adam's apple and stomp on it until it comes out the back of
your neck.

He likes that." Robert leered and said crazily, "Last time, I got Mr.
Pitchfork all the way through this guy's head with just one stomp." He
accentuated the last word by jabbing the pitchfork toward Solomon, and
then leaned forward and said conspiratorially, in a horrified whisper,
"And the guy lived." He leered sideways. "Kind of." Solomon said, "Not
afraid of you."

Robert laughed hollowly with his head back and said, "You will be, in
time, Mr. Scrotum." Jason stood up and said, "Give these guys their
Percoset." While Martin did that, Jason said, "Watch them for a while,
while we pack the camping gear, Big Bob. You can maim them however you
want, but no actual death, is that clear?"

Robert was still doing the Psycho Killer. "Okay, boss," he said. He took
a bottle of pale green typewriter correction fluid out of his pocket and
leered at it with his eyebrows going. Solomon and Tony stared
uncomprehendingly at the bottle. Jason and Martin left the room as
Robert slowly unscrewed the cap.

***

"Trapped in a little room with Robert with a bottle of Liquid Paper,"
Martin said. "A fate worse than death." He hoisted Jason's tent bag into
the back seat of the Plymouth and pushed it all the way to the side.

Robert was singing something in the house.

Jason put his Coleman cooler on the ground. "I know. He's really getting
into it, isn't he?"

"Yeah."

They went back into the house for another load. Carrying the small
propane camp stove, Jason stopped just shy of the bathroom door on the
way out and stood there, trying to make out what Robert was singing.

Martin came up next to him, holding an orange backpack. Jason strained
to hear, not quite able to make it out. Robert must have changed
position, because it suddenly got a little louder, and Jason recognized
it. It was the

"Brady Bunch" theme, but Robert was improvising his own words about it
being The Story/Of A Man Named Scrotum/Who Was Coughing Up A Very Lovely
Spleen. Sudden laughter bubbled up into Jason's chest.

He looked quickly at Martin, who had just bitten down on his backpack to
stifle his own. Jason clapped his free hand over his mouth and backed
into the front room, dropped the little stove on the carpet, dropped
headfirst onto the couch, and let it out into the cushions. Martin came
in with tears streaming down his face onto the backpack.

Every few minutes, they'd get it under control and then look at each
other and lose it again, until finally, exhausted, they sat on the floor
against the couch and wiped their eyes with the backs of their hands,
their chests still occasionally shuddering with giggles that didn't
quite materialize.

"Oh, man," Martin said, when he could talk.

"Jeez," Jason agreed.

They sat for a few more minutes, and then Martin sighed shakily and took
a pair of coveralls and an auburn wig and fake moustache out of the
backpack and put them on. Then he carried the sleeping bags outside past
the open bathroom door, looking away from the door and limping just as
he passed it. He did the same thing when he came back in for another
load. Then he clomped back and forth a few times.

"Did they see you?" Jason said.

Martin nodded and said, "The skinny one looked."

When all the camping gear was in the car and most of the contents of his
refrigerator had been transferred to the cooler, Jason picked up a brown
paper bag from the counter, took a deep breath, told himself not to
laugh, and went into the bedroom.

Robert was crouched across the room from the captives, holding the
pitchfork upright and staring straight into Tony's eyes. Tony wasn't
meeting his gaze. Everybody had pale green correction fluid on them.

Robert had it on his face and arms in squiggly lines and dots, Tony had
little smiley faces from his neck to his hairline, and Solomon's
forehead said, in block capital letters, "I'm Mr. Scrotum." Two wallets
lay on the futon.

Jason said, "I'll take it from here, Big Bob." Robert said, "But I
didn't get to maim them yet." Jason said, "You had plenty of time to
maim them. You should have thought of that before you started singing
and doing arts and crafts.

I'll take it from here. You go help with the camping provisions."

Reluctantly, Robert said, "Okay." He handed over the pitchfork, snarled,
and left the room.

Jason sat on the futon and looked at Solomon and Tony.

"What are your names?" he said, looking from one to the other.

They didn't answer. He said, "Okay, I'll look for myself," and picked
up the first wallet. There was no driver's license. A California ID Card
bore the name "Solomon Adewale." Jason said, "Solomon ... how do you
pronounce the last name?" Solomon said derisively, "Do you know who you
are dealing with?" Jason said, "Yes." He looked through the rest of the
wallet. There were no credit cards, just a portrait-studio headshot of a
woman in her twenties, and sixteen fifty-dollar bills. He took the
fifties out of the wallet, folded them over once, and said to Solomon,
"'Live on the enemy.'" Solomon said, "If you know who you are dealing
with, you know that you are going to die."

Jason pocketed the money and picked up the other wallet. There was no
identification at all in it, and no credit cards, just a ten-dollar bill
and two Trojan condoms. He held up one of the little square packages and
said, "Considering the lack of any other ID, how about we just call you
Reservoir Tip?" "Preacher gonna kill you," Tony said.

Solomon said, "Shut up, Tony."

Jason added the ten to the money in his pocket and said, "Yeah right.

I'd like to see him try."

"Oh, he'll try, all right," Tony said. Solomon said, "Shut up," again,
but Tony wasn't having it. "You better believe he'll try. He'll come for
you with the juju, American Boy, and you'll die with your soul gone down
to everlasting torment." Jason said, "Really." Solomon said, "Tony, you
shut your mouth now or you'll be the one gone down to everlasting
torment." Tony said, "You'll see. You'll see," and fell silent.

They weren't going to talk any more, at least not soon enough. Jason
put Tony's condom and his wallet on the futon and started taking things
out of the brown bag.

A party of four armed thugs entered the house through the open back door
the next morning. They found Tony and Solomon tied up with smiley faces
and "I'm Mr. Scrotum" written on them in green correction fluid,
drinking Percoset-laced Liquid Nutrition for Invalids from two jumbo
hamster bottles, saying that there were four of them, the red haired one
had a limp, Big Bob had a pitchfork, and they were going camping.



Jtvobert lay on the floor on a closed sleeping bag, while Martin sat on
the cooler in the empty apartment behind Jason's, and peered out between
the mini-blind slats that faced the parking lot. Jason watched out a
similarly mini-blinded side window. The apartment had been empty since
the end of November. It had a leaky roof, and no one had yet wanted to
rent it. Someone would probably want it in February or March. The cooler
and the sleeping bags had never made it into the Plymouth, which was two
blocks away, with a car cover over it.

Jason's Macintosh was set up on the floor, with a thin cable running
from its back to a telephone jack along the room's baseboard. Its fan
whirred softly. He showed Martin and Robert how to connect to the Net
and send messages, and then disconnected everything and put it by the
back door in a carrying case. They rotated two-hour watches: one looking
out the back window, one looking out the side, and one sleeping.

When the four armed thugs arrived in a black Lincoln, Robert was on
back-window watch. He made a soft hissing sound to get Martin's
attention and tapped Jason lightly on the back. All three of them
watched out the back window as the four thugs helped Solomon and Tony
hobble to the Lincoln and get in.

 102 keith snyder The Lincoln pulled out, and as soon as it was out of
sight around the corner of the parking lot, Martin and Robert ran out of
the apartment to Martin's little green Honda CVCC, and Jason grabbed the
Macintosh and ran to a navy blue Mitsubishi compact with a Hertz sticker
on the bumper.

He put the Macintosh on the floor in front of the passenger's seat, got
in and started the ignition, picked up a walkie-talkie from the seat,
turned it on, and said, "You there?"

Martin's CVCC was already out of its parking space and heading out of
the lot. The walkie-talkie crackled and Robert's voice said, "That's a
big ten-four, good buddy." "Good," Jason said. He rolled down his
window. "Just don't let them see you talking. Hold the walkie-talkie in
your lap and use one click for yes and two for no, like we agreed,
okay?"

The walkie-talkie clicked four times. Jason pulled out of the parking
space, but didn't exit the lot. "Are you on the road?"

One click.

"Are you behind them?"

One click.

"I'm exiting the lot now. Do I turn right?"

Two clicks.

"Left onto Del Mar."

One click.

He drove partway out of the lot and stopped with the nose butting
slightly into the street and looked to his left. The Lincoln was two
blocks down, waiting in the left turn lane for a red light to turn
green, and the CVCC was a block behind it, stopped at a signal. Jason
picked up the walkie-talkie and said, "I'm going to guess he's heading
south down Arroyo onto the One Ten freeway. I'll parallel you on
Marengo. Give me three 1

show control 103

clicks if he turns off Arroyo before the One-ten. If you think you might
have been spotted, stop following him and let me take over."

Martin's voice, very softly, came over the speaker and said, "Anything
else you want to tell us for the third time?" Jason depressed the talk
button and said, "Nope." He put the walkie talkie on the seat, opened
the window, and turned left out of the driveway, and then left onto
Marengo.

The Lincoln entered the freeway at the end of Arroyo. Jason stayed in
the middle lanes, about a quarter of a mile behind Martin and Robert,
who stayed in the left lane, four cars behind the Lincoln. At the Dodger
Stadium offramp, Jason clicked the talk button several times quickly,
and they traded places. At the Exposition exit, they traded again. Just
after Exposition, the Lincoln signaled right and moved over into the
right lane. The CVCC stayed in the left lane, and Jason sped up a little
in the second lane and then moved into the right lane, three cars back
from the Lincoln. In his rear view mirror, he saw the CVCC fade back and
get out of the fast lane.

The Lincoln exited at Martin Luther King Drive and turned left. Jason
stayed behind it. As he turned, he saw the CVCC appear at the top of the
off ramp behind him.

He followed the Lincoln for several city blocks, until a red light
separated them. While he waited impatiently at the light, the Lincoln
turned left into a long, narrow parking lot that stretched the length of
two blocks. The solid, windowless buildings on the far side of the
parking lot looked as though they'd been warehouses around the turn of
the century, but some of them had since been converted to business
spaces. The Lincoln stopped in front of one that had been painted pale
yellow, and two men got out, with Tony between them. The Lincoln started
up again, and disappeared behind the build 104 keith snyder ing. A huge
sign held above the building by a massive metal post said church of the
believers in what were probably twenty-foot-high letters.

Below that, ten-foot letters said, rev. billy A. cryer, pastor.

Jason said, "Gotcha," and glanced in the mirror. The CVCC was a block
behind him, stopped at another signal. His light changed. Now what? He
was in the middle lane, so turning wasn't an option. He didn't want to
go past the Church of the Believers and run the risk of being
recognized, but it looked necessary.

As Jason began to accelerate, he looked to his left; he saw the Lincoln
come to a stop at the intersection. In the front seat, facing him, was
Solomon.

Recognition dawned on Solomon's face and Jason's lungs stopped working.

He floored the accelerator as Solomon pointed urgently at him and yelled
something at the driver. The Lincoln jackrabbited into the intersection
against the light and made it through the cross traffic without being
hit. It swung in behind him and started to gain. Jason accelerated
toward the red light at the intersection ahead of him and got into the
left lane. When the Lincoln moved left to follow him, he wrenched the
wheel right and cut across three lanes into a gas station, jolting hard
as the car bottomed out on the driveway.

He shot through the gas station diagonally, hit a wire trash can on the
sidewalk next to a bus stop, and went off the curb onto the
cross-street. He couldn't see the CVCC. The Lincoln had gone around
traffic in the left turn lane, and was creeping into the intersection.

When there was no cross traffic, it hung a sharp right in front of the
stopped cars and sped forward toward Jason, who pressed harder on the
already-floored accelerator pedal and said, "Goddamn four-banger" under
his breath. The Lincoln gained steadily. The signal ahead was green. The

show control 105

orange speedometer needle in the Mitsubishi vibrated a little at the
ninety-miles-per-hour mark, and increased very slowly. The Lincoln was
two car lengths back with no cars between them, and someone's torso was
sticking out one of the passenger's side windows and pointing something
at Jason.

Both cars hit the intersection in the left lane at ninety-five miles per
hour. Jason cut into the right lane and hit the Mitsubishi's brakes
hard. As the compact began to fishtail clockwise, the Lincoln shot past
on his left with its brake lights on. The Mitsubishi's angle to its
direction of momentum became sharper and Jason's sense of balance went
crazy as he turned in the direction of the skid. The Mitsubishi started
to come under control, but then it shuddered and spun out fast in a
shriek of friction, coming to rest finally in a driveway, pointed toward
the street. Jason blinked in confusion at the burnt rubber smell and the
red dashboard lights and tried to get his bearings as the Lincoln backed
past him, going fast, and then shifted into low gear while still moving
and came at him. He hit the accelerator pedal and nothing happened.

Staring stupidly at the dashboard lights, he tried it again. Nothing.

What the hell was going on? Dash lights on and no power ... what did
that mean?

He couldn't think straight. The Lincoln stopped with squealing tires in
front of him, and the two passenger's doors opened. Solomon got out of
the front, and a well-dressed, slender man with a triangular face and a
handgun got out of the back and ran toward the Mitsubishi. Jason stared
at the dashboard. Lights and no power. Lights and no power.

The engine had stalled out in the spin! He grabbed the key, still in the
ignition, and turned it, and the engine started as the slender man
reached the compact, grabbed Jason's throat with one hand through the
open window, and brought the

106 keith snyder handgun up to bear on him with the other. Jason shoved
his left arm out the window, got it firmly around the man's neck, yanked
him in close to the car, and floored the accelerator. The Mitsubishi's
first gear was strong, and his arm slammed backward into the window
frame, but he managed to hang on until the compact was in the street,
where the man fell away. He made a one-armed right, still foggy from the
spinout, and glanced at the rear view mirror. Solomon was back in the
front seat, and the slender man was on the ground, crawling with his gun
into the Lincoln. It took a few seconds for him to get in, and then the
Lincoln lurched into motion. Jason's damaged left arm and shoulder hurt
like hell. With the Lincoln behind him, he turned the wheel to the right
to enter a side street, but pain lanced through his arm and he flinched
and botched the turn, sliding into the curb instead and braking hard to
avoid hitting the cars parked in front of him. The Lincoln veered to its
right to block him in, and a huge, dirty, brown Mercury Marquis shot out
of the side street, swerved around Jason, and rammed the Lincoln
broadside so hard that both cars ended up on the other side of the
street in front of a donut shop, the Lincoln half atop the hood of the
Marquis so that Jason could see its undercarriage. A tall man with tea
colored skin and long brown hair slipped nimbly out of the Marquis'
driver's window, bowed deeply to Jason, and ran behind the donut shop.

There was movement inside the Lincoln. Martin's CVCC came around the
corner and slowed next to the Mitsubishi. Martin and Robert both looked
at him with shocked expressions. Martin had his walkie-talkie to his
mouth, and his voice said, "Are you okay, man?" in Jason's lap. Jason
nodded, waved them on with his right arm, and got behind them when they
passed. Sirens sounded somewhere, and a block later, they pulled over to
let two LAPD black and whites speed by in the opposite direction.

show control 107

17

It was just past twilight, and Jason was sitting on the cooler, boiling
Kraft Macaroni on the Coleman stove in the light of his propane lantern.

The stove was in the Plymouth's propped-open trunk, and the lantern hung
from the latch on the raised trunk lid. Two open blue and orange
Macaroni and Cheese boxes stood next to the stove, with their tops torn
off and the cheese packets inside.

The Plymouth was parked next to Martin's CVCC on a turnoff from the
Angeles Crest Highway that overlooked a small valley. Below, the highway
threaded around and between the lower hills, and several minutes elapsed
between passing cars. Jason had chosen the spot because he figured the
Preacher's thugs would be checking all the local campgrounds, and
because it didn't cost anything to stay there in their cars for a night,
and because it had a good view of the approaching highway from the Los
Angeles direction.

He'd returned the Mitsubishi at one o'clock--the only damage was an
almost unnoticeable tilt to the rear bumper, probably from when he'd
gone off the curb--and then the three of them had gone shopping with
Solomon's eight hundred and Tony's ten dollars. Jason hadn't wanted to
walk around in the 108 keith snyder open in the Pasadena area, so
they'd driven fifteen miles to Burbank and shopped at a big indoor mall.
A sporting goods store at the mall sold shotguns, but after discussing
it over Hot Dogs on Sticks, they had all agreed that since none of them
knew how to shoot, a gun would be marginally useful at best.

Instead, they spent a hundred dollars on camping supplies and food, and
twenty-five on books: Chaos and Illusions for Robert, and a stack of
thick, oversized comic books for Martin. Jason wasn't in a reading mood,
but he bought some music magazines anyway. Then they'd gone to a
Salvation Army store and bought some old clothes and a pair of pink
plastic sunglasses, and gotten a Clairol hair-coloring kit from a drug
store next to the Salvation Army store. They had their car keys copied
while they were there, and exchanged them.

After Jason told them about the tall man with the long hair, they talked
all afternoon about him, but none of their theories seemed any more
likely than the others. When Robert's scenarios began to involve crop
circles and the Face on Mars, Jason had called the discussion to an end
and they'd driven to the turnoff, which was partially hidden from the
highway by a semicircle of large boulders. They'd tucked the cars back
behind the boulders; Jason didn't expect anyone to notice them there,
but he looked at the highway every so often anyway, in case a car
slowed.

The air was chilly. Jason put on the torn purple ski jacket with fluff
coming out of it that he wore to the filtration plant when it was cold.

Martin and Robert sat in two of Robert's webbed aluminum lawn chairs
near the edge of the flat dirt area. The collar of Martin's denim jacket
was turned up, and his hands were in its pockets, through which he
maintained a wobbly grip on an open comic book. Every few minutes, he
took one hand out and turned a page. A saucer next to him held two
cigarette butts.

show control 109

Robert was reading Chaos. A shiny new blanket-sided canteen hung on a
khaki strap over the quilted black fabric of his nylon jacket.

The soft hiss of the propane lantern was familiar, the same hiss Jason
remembered from when his family had gone camping when he was younger.

Reading by propane light had always seemed somehow magical, even when he
had to shoo away the mosquitoes that were attracted to the gleaming
white pages of his book.

For a minute, he felt a kind of nostalgic loss. Jason's parents hadn't
ended up happy together, and his father had never liked or understood
most of the things Jason had done. Still didn't. But when Jason
considered the abuse that he saw around him, he figured a few years of
garden-variety wrongness was nothing to mist up about.

And none of it detracted from the magic of reading by gaslight. He
sighed softly, turned off the burner, walked to the edge of the turnoff,
and drained the macaroni into the brush below, tipping the pot slowly so
the macaroni wouldn't fall out with the water.

Without looking up, Martin said, "Dinnertime?" "Yeah," Jason said. He
righted the pot and walked back to the Plymouth.

"Why don't you kids set the table?"

Martin and Robert got up from the lawn chairs and ambled over.

"Did you bring plates?" Robert said.

"In the back seat." Jason added milk and butter from the cooler to the
pot and stirred in the cheese mix with a knife until most of the lumps
were gone. Robert got metal plates, forks, and cups out of the Plymouth,
and Jason doled out the macaroni and cheese. They sat in the lawn chairs
and poured coffee from Martin's dented silver Thermos.

110 keith snyder Martin got up, opened the CVCC's hatchback, and hunted
around for a decent radio signal. The reception wasn't very good in the
hills, and the little bursts of noise and static made the turnoff seem
very far from civilization and normality, even though it was only a
fifteen-minute drive to Colorado Boulevard.

"Go back to that," Jason said, as Martin turned the radio dial. Youssou
N'Dour and Peter Gabriel were singing

"Shakin' the Tree."

Martin tuned it in and sat down in his lawn chair. "How's your arm?"
"Hurts," Jason said, "but it doesn't feel permanently damaged."

They ate their dinner. It got darker and colder. Jason pulled the stove
and propane tank out of the trunk, set them up in front of the chairs,
and lit both burners for heat. Traffic was more infrequent, the cars
swishing by every twenty or thirty minutes.

Nobody said anything for a long time. On the radio, Bob Marley sang
"Redemption Song." Then Paul Simon sang

"Spirit Voices."

Jason said, "I know you guys want to talk more about all this, but I'm
just not up to it. Can we have a meeting in the morning?"

Martin said, "Sure," and Robert said, "We'll do breakfast."

They looked at the hills and the sky, though it was slightly too
overcast to see many stars. Somebody sang something in a language Jason
didn't know.

After a while longer, Martin said, in a sleepy voice, "Good night,"
turned off the radio, closed the hatchback, and got into the front of
the CVCC.

Jason looked at Robert. He looked asleep. "Robert," Jason show control
111

said softly. Robert's head slumped a little and he breathed heavily.

Jason sat for an hour and looked up at the sky for meteors, but didn't
see any. When his neck hurt from looking up, he went to the Plymouth,
got The Art Of War, and read it by the softly hissing light of the
propane lantern until he fell asleep.

112 keith snyder 18

I ason woke up when it started to get light. Robert wasn't in his chair
any more, and the propane lantern was still going. His eyes felt sandy.

He turned off the lantern, stood up and stretched.

It was Saturday morning. The valley was filled with fog, and the turnoff
and the little brush that Jason could see were almost gray in the thin
morning light. It was cold. Jason puffed his breath out and watched the
vapor dissipate. Martin was asleep in his survival bag in the tiny front
seat of the CVCC, and Robert was in the back seat of the Plymouth with a
yellow blanket wrapped around his head.

Jason walked briskly around the turnoff eight times to get his body
going, and then lugged the frigid propane tank over to the Plymouth,
hooked the stove up to it, and put a scratched and unevenly-colored
rectangular griddle on it.

All the sounds--the scraping clink of the propane tank on the ground,
the little metal squeak that the hose connector made when he tightened
it, the dull clank of the griddle against the stove's steel rack--were
strangely isolated. He opened the cooler--plastic click, small sucking
noise, slight drag of weight against dirt-- and fished half a stick of
butter and six eggs for pancake batter out of the icewater. When the
first batch was almost done, Martin got out of the CVCC, rubbed his eyes

show control 113

and yawned, and walked carefully in his socks over the rocky ground to
the far end of the turnoff. Jason put the pancakes on a metal plate,
covered them with a bowl, and poured more. Martin came back and went to
the CVCC and put his shoes on.

The Plymouth rocked and its door opened, and Robert got out, grinned
lopsidedly, looked around, and went to the far end of the turnoff where
Martin had been. When he came back, he said, "Good morning," in a
cheerfully booming announcer voice.

"Morning," Jason said.

"Shut up," Martin said, with his eyes closed.

Robert cocked one eyebrow. "Ah, I see someone's feeling cranky this
fine, fine morning. And it is, indeed, a fine, fine morning."

"Robert," Martin began. He opened his eyes very slightly and gestured
emptily with one hand. "Never mind." Jason said, "Get your plates."

They banged their plates against the CVCC's front bumper until most of
the macaroni remains fell off, and then shook their coffee cups over the
edge of the turnoff while Jason turned off the stove and got a bottle of
real maple syrup out of the cooler. Then they all sat and ate.

Martin finished his coffee and poured more from the Thermos. Robert
said, in a hushed voice, "Martin never has seconds at home." Martin
said, "Robert, I love you dearly." He put his hand on Robert's arm,
looked at him imploringly, and said, "But could you at least wait for my
coffee to kick in? Please?"

Robert put his fists on his hips like a superhero and said, "For you, my
friend Martin, anything." Then he put his head back and said, "Ha ha
ha!" in the same superhero voice, without moving his lips.

"Thanks," Martin said, "I'm so glad I asked."

Jason got up with his plate and silverware and tossed them into the
trunk of the Plymouth. "Let's break camp."

114 keith snyder Half an hour later, everything was packed into the
cars. Jason checked the fluids in the Plymouth and the CVCC, and topped
up the CVCC's battery from an antifreeze bottle full of water. Then they
left the turnoff and drove forty-five minutes to the Castaic Lake
recreation area, where they spent the day sitting on covered benches
next to the Lake's forebay, reading and playing chess on Martin's small
folding magnetic chess board. Martin and Robert were evenly matched, and
they both beat Jason consistently. Jason pointed out features of the
huge dam and the hydroelectric plant. The plant was a daily stop on his
meter run, and supplied electric power to several cities, just as the
reservoir was a source of water for much of southern California.

The pipes that carried water from the Colorado River Aqueduct to the
filtration plant where Jason worked were huge. An empty twenty-foot
section of pipeline sat on the dirt next to the access road, where it
had been left during the plant's construction after failing its stress
tests. A high point of Municipal Water's bus tours was when the bus
drove through it on the way to the plant.

The recreation area closed at five o'clock. They left with everyone
else, and drove aimlessly around Castaic.

Castaic was a truckstop town in a sort of architectural adolescence. New
housing developments were popping up on the big flat area west of the
Interstate and sprouting on the chunky hills immediately east: long,
uniform stretches of pink and yellow houses and orange banners that
said, "If you lived here, you'd be home now." One of the men at the
filtration plant was thinking about buying one. Jason couldn't imagine.

Most of the businesses on the main strip catered to truck drivers. There
was a truck wash, a donut shop, a hot dog shack, a bar, a gas station,
and a Seven-Eleven. Jason, Robert, and Martin went to the donut shop
after they were finished driving around Castaic, and stayed there for
the better part of show control 115

an hour. Jason recommended the apple fritters. He and Martin each had
one, and Robert had two. Then they stopped at the gas station and filled
the propane tank, and then drove back to the entrance to the forebay.

Ten feet in from the road, a gate made from three-inch metal pipe
painted white blocked the road. Jason got out of the Plymouth, leaving
the door open and the motor running. He took a round, flat retractable
keychain out of his pocket, and unlocked the padlock that held one end
of the gate to another piece of pipe sunk vertically into the ground
next to the access road. Then he grabbed the free end of the gate and
shoved hard; the gate wobbled around on its pivot and swung into a
bracket that held it open. That done, he got back into the Plymouth and
pulled it forward twenty feet. The CVCC pulled in behind him, and he got
out and closed and locked the gate.

They turned their headlights off and drove past the recreation area,
stopping at a chain-link gate, where they repeated the procedure. With
the CVCC in his rear view mirror, Jason drove into the plant compound on
a dusty access road, around rows of white cabinets in a chain-link pen,
and to the far side of a low, squat building, where they stopped the
cars and turned off the engines.

The building was to their left. To the right was a low depression
flanked by foothills. Two brown meter cabinets, six-foot-high narrow
metal boxes, stood in the low area, and there was a loud, constant sound
of rushing water.

Jason got out of the Plymouth and his shoes crunched on the gravel. The
flatness of sound in the depression enhanced the effect, making every
footstep and truck noise seem subtly Western.

Robert must have noticed it too, because after he liberated himself from
the CVCC, he squinted his eyes in the dim glow from the yellow parking
lights and said in a tough whisper, "Do I look like Jack Palance?"

116 keith snyder Jason considered it seriously and then said, "Robert,
as much as I know this will crush you, you will never look like Jack
Palance."

Martin got out of the CVCC. Robert squinted tighter and whispered, "Need
more crags, you think?" Jason said, "Even if you had crags surgically
implanted."

Robert nodded dangerously and whispered, "Hmmm." Jason said, "The
dangerous nod is good, though." Robert nodded dangerously again. Martin
said, "You sure we'll be safe here?" Jason said, "Pretty sure. Nobody's
scheduled to read anything until Monday morning, so unless a meteorite
hits nearby and Ooze People from Planet Q_steal the dam, no one has any
reason to be around. We just have to be sure we're out of this
fenced-off area before the boating crowd gets here in the morning. We
don't want Jack here to scare them."

Martin looked carefully at Robert and said, "Jack who?"

Robert looked evilly through eyes like knife slits and whispered, "Jack
Palance." Martin said, "Oh, I thought you were doing Glint Eastwood."
"No," Robert said. "This is Glint Eastwood." He squinted. Jason thought
it looked just like Jack Palance. He shot a quick glance at Martin, who
was shooting a quick glance back at him. Martin shrugged.

They spread their sleeping bags near the cars, and then went on foot up
a dirt path to the top of the concrete rim of the spillway from the
other side of the dam. Water flowed turbulently from the top and spread
when it hit the forebay. They sat and looked at the faint moonlight
gleaming on the shifting, corrugated surface.

"That's a lot of water," Martin said.

show control 117

"That's a lot of water," Robert whispered dangerously.

Jason took out what was left of Solomon and Tony's money. There was
still almost six hundred dollars left. He counted out eight fifties, put
the rest back in his wallet, and handed four each to Robert and Martin.

Martin said, "What's this?" "Funds," Jason said. "Gas, food, whatever.
Night sight goggles, shoe phones."

Robert nodded and jammed his into a back pocket.

Martin said, "Thanks."

Jason said, "Robert, stuff falls out of your back pockets when you
walk." Robert said, "Really?" and dug the money back out and jammed it
into a front pocket.

Jason said, "Any new ideas about the guy from the car chase? If there's
no new ideas, let's just leave it alone for now and talk about it when
we have more information." Martin said, "Nope, not me."

Robert squinted and whispered, "You mean any information." Jason said,
"Should we go over tomorrow's stuff?" Martin said, "I think we've got
it."

Robert whispered, "No need." He shook his head slowly and threateningly.

"No need."

"Okay."

They sat up and talked about how acting, music, and art were like and
unlike each other. Then they talked about which was best for getting
girls. There was no consensus. Then they climbed down and slept in their
sleeping bags until Robert's new travel alarm went off at six o'clock
Sunday morning.

118 keith snyder 19

tie presses ENTER.

The machine, in communication with other machines, performs a series of
subtractions, followed by a series of additions.

He causes a string of similar operations to be performed; all consist of
a series of subtractions, followed by a series of additions.

When he is finished, numbers that were previously large have been
reduced to zero. Previous zeroes have been transformed into figures of
six and seven digits.

He'd prepared his luggage earlier.

He disappears.

show control 119

20

Ounday mornings glittered and shone at the Church of the Believers. The
congregation, mostly west African, decked themselves out in their
second-finest clothes for the weekly services. Their first-finest were
reserved for holiday-specific services. Their second-finest beat most
people's first-finest by a long shot.

At nine o'clock, in front of the church, no man was without a fresh
shine to his shoes and a patterned vest under his shiny coat. No smear
could be found on a spectacle lens; no rough, frayed part on a leather
belt. The heads of the men were up and proud; their shoulders were
square and straight.

The women swathed themselves in expensive, glistening fabrics that
flattered good curves and artfully concealed others. Those women who
came with men stayed close to them. Those who didn't come with men
stayed close to their families.

Their headwear was crafted from the same fabric that wrapped their
bodies, and their makeup was applied skillfully and subtlely, flattering
good features and artfully concealing others, so that their faces shone
gracefully and radiantly, as though burnished, in coruscating, elegant
beauty. They chose their perfumes well, and applied them lightly.

All of them smelled good. God deserved no less.

120 keith snyder There were three dirty people on the sidewalk outside
the door that admitted the Believers into the Church. One of them was
sitting up, a short black woman with flyaway hair, wearing a dark blue
running suit with red and white stripes around one arm. She didn't smell
good. Her lower half was wrapped in a mass of shredded blankets that
looked vaguely pink. She watched the narrow parking lot, looking past
the finery, and said, "Can you spare any change, ma'am?" softly. Most of
the people gave her a dollar without looking at her. When a man saw the
man ahead of him give two dollars, and when he knew that the man knew he
knew, he would give four dollars. The woman would say, "Thank you, sir.

Can you spare any change, ma'am?"

The second dirty person was asleep on a big flattened cardboard box with
a filthy blue blanket around him. He lay in a fetal position with his
back to the pretty churchgoers. The hair that stuck out between his
collar and his dirty knit cap was salt and-pepper gray. He didn't move,
except to breathe heavily.

The third dirty person was Robert in his Salvation Army clothes, pink
sunglasses, three-day beard, and Autumn Mist Blond hair, squatting on a
Nigerian Times newspaper on the sidewalk and muttering. A faded orange
baseball cap that said cal trans was jammed onto Robert's head. He'd
pushed one of the sunglass lenses out, and he stared blindly with one
eye past the churchgoers. The Nigerian Times was from a stack near the
door.

"Good Master Mustard-seed," he growled, "I know your patience well; that
same cowardly, giant-like ox-beef hath devour'd many a gentleman of your
house." A young family approached him. The father steered his wife and
children around Robert.

"I promise you your kindred hath made my eyes water ere now!" Robert
yelled suddenly. The young mother jumped. "I

show control 121

desire you more acquaintance, good Master Mustard-seed!" As the family
passed him, he muttered, "Goddamn Squash. Goddamn Peas-blossom," in the
Jack Palance whisper.

Across the street, Jason and Martin sat in Martin's CVCC with a Thermos
of coffee and watched Robert. They had removed the license plates from
both cars earlier in the morning. The Plymouth was parked with the cover
over it, in the parking structure in Hollywood near the Chinese theater.

Jason was wearing Wayfarer sunglasses and had his hair bunched under a
blue baseball cap. Martin was wearing aviator sunglasses, brown slacks
and a tan Marvel Comics T-shirt with holes in it. On his head was the
auburn wig and an ugly green canvas cap with ear flaps.

Martin said, "So that's what five cups of coffee will do to you." Jason
said, "He was supposed to not attract attention." Martin said, "Maybe we
should talk to him about it. But you know," he twisted around to face
Jason, "this is Robert we're talking about here."

"You look really stupid," Jason said.

"You look like a DEA agent," Martin said. "I'll take stupid."

Across the street, Robert stood up and assumed a shaky en pointe
position with his hands stuck out like an Egyptian tomb painting.

Jason muttered, "Goddamnit, Robert." When Robert seemed to be looking
toward the CVCC, Jason threw his hands up.

Robert mimicked the gesture, putting his whole body into it. Jason drew
one forefinger sharply across his throat, and Robert went off on a whole
new routine, apparently arguing with someone invisible.

"Well, hell," Jason said.

The flock of churchgoers outside the building had begun 122 keith
snyder

to thin. After a few minutes, the ones mingling on the sidewalk looked
at their watches and entered the church. Robert got up and paced back
and forth in front of the church, and then sat down next to the door,
cross legged, and played with his feet.

Jason relaxed a little. For Robert, sitting cross legged on the sidewalk
and playing with his feet was low-key.

A few minutes later, Jason pointed at a white Cadillac that was leaving
the parking lot. "Is that Solomon whatsisname?"

Martin squinted. "Could be."

The Cadillac drove away.

The next hour went quickly. Jason found Car Talk just starting on an NPR
station, so they listened to that. Martin didn't know much about cars,
but he liked the show anyway. Jason tried to diagnose the callers' car
problems before the hosts could, and invariably failed.

When Car Talk ended, they listened to The Best Of The 'Eighties on
another station and agreed only upon the Police and Thomas Dolby.

At ten-twenty, people came out of the church.

Martin looked inquiringly at Jason. Jason nodded and climbed over the
seat into the back. Martin started the car, put it in gear, and pulled
into traffic. Half a block down, he made a U-turn and entered the long
parking lot at the far end, put it into Park, unlatched the passenger
door, and sat there with the engine running. Robert didn't acknowledge
their presence, though they were close enough to overhear the louder
conversations of the people leaving the church. Jason pulled his cap
lower to cover his face, and Martin did the same.

The Preacher came out.

"That's him," Jason said.

There was no question. The Preacher was close to seven feet tall, a
slender man with dark skin. He wore a gray robe and carried a
black-bound Bible. His bearing was that of an important man, and Jason
had no doubt that he was very rich.

show control 123

As the churchgoers paid their respects to the Preacher, Robert lurched
to his feet, picked up his Nigerian Times, staggered a few steps, fell
against the Preacher, and yelled, "I can see! It's a miracle!"

The Preacher's back was toward the CVCC, but after a pause of only a
fraction of a second, Jason heard the Preacher say, in a mellifluous,
unaccented baritone voice, "Amen, brother. The Lord has truly blessed
you." "Smooth," Martin said in the CVCC. Some of the churchgoers said,
"Amen."

"It's a miracle! A miracle!"Robert yelled, whipping off his pink
sunglasses and flinging them against the church wall. "I can see!"

The Preacher said, "The power of the Lord has made itself manifest here
today, brothers and sisters." Robert said, "Hallelujah!"

Several more churchgoers said, "Amen!"

A look of shock passed over Robert's face, and he said, "Let me hear you
say Amen again!" The churchgoers said, "Amen!"

Tears appeared in Robert's eyes and he shouted, "I can hear! It's a
miracle! I can hear again!"

"We are thankful for the blessing of our God," the Preacher said, with a
slight edge to his tone. "Because we know that the Lord punishes those
who do not deserve His mercy."

Some of the congregation looked at each other uncertainly. Robert
frowned in concentration and made snuffling sounds in his nose. The
Preacher turned to his flock. "Brothers and Sisters--"

Robert made a very loud snuffling sound and yelled, "I can smell!"

The Preacher laid his hand on Robert's shoulder and said, "Let us pray
for this poor soul."

124 keith snyder Robert flinched and canted as though the Preacher were
squeezing his shoulder painfully, and whined, "Ow, ow, ow, ow." The
flock exchanged uncertain whispers.

Two bulky men in gray suits and white shirts stepped onto the sidewalk
from inside the church. One of them was Tony. His face was still puffy
and bruised.

Robert swiveled toward the Pastor, did his tough squint, and grated,
"Who killed Monica Gleason?"

Tony pointed excitedly and said, "This is Big Bob, Pastor!" He took a
step out of the doorway. The Preacher took his hand off Robert's
shoulder and stayed Tony with it without looking away from Robert.

Robert whispered dangerously, "I'm sorry. I didn't quite hear your
answer." He inhaled deeply, put his face up into the Preacher's, and
bellowed, "Who killed Monica Gleason?"

The Preacher angled his hand slightly, and the staying gesture turned to
a beckoning one. Robert saw it and held one hand away from his side with
two fingers pointing down.

Martin said, "There's the signal," put the CVCC in gear, and pulled
forward. Robert said, "That's okay, never mind," twisted out of the
Preacher's grip and off the curb, pulled the passenger door open, and
jumped in. Martin accelerated smoothly. Jason turned around in the back
seat and looked out the window. Tony and the other bulky man were
standing with the Preacher, looking at the car. The Preacher's arms were
up to encompass his people, as in a benediction, but his gaze was on the
CVCC as it reached the end of the parking lot and exited onto Martin
Luther King Drive.

"Harass your enemy ceaselessly," Martin said.

"Now that we've done it," Jason said. "I'm not quite sure it was such a
good idea."

show control 125

21

Ma Lartin dropped Jason off at his car on the third level of the parking
structure, where it was parked between a beautiful black 1967 fastback
Mustang and a raised Chevy Suburban with primer and no paint. It was
covered with a blue, locking car cover.

"See you at the Square," Jason said, after he unlocked and removed the
car cover.

Robert laughed.

"What," Jason said.

Robert said, "That's not the kind of car you usually see under a locking
car cover."

Jason looked at the Plymouth. Robert was right. Most cars you found
under locking car covers had complete windshields and didn't sport
gaping holes where their rear windows were supposed to be. And probably
weren't dented, and had only one visible layer of paint. And had
matching tires.

"It'll be a classic next year," Jason said.

Martin leaned forward to see past Robert and said, "Uh, no, it won't."

"I love this car," Jason protested. "This is a great car." "Goodbye,
Jason," Martin said, as the CVCC slowly crept forward.

Jason said, "Later."

126 keith snyder Robert waved, and the CVCC drove away.

Jason bunched the car cover up and put it in the back seat, and got in
the driver's seat. He rolled down the window, and put the key in the
ignition, and a fortyish man with tea colored skin and long brown hair
got out of the passenger side of the Suburban and squatted so his face
was in the Plymouth's window. He rested his forearms there, pointed a
very small handgun at Jason, and said in a friendly voice, "I wouldn't
suggest turning the key."

Jason didn't move, except to turn his eyes toward the man. He had brown
eyes, and long, deep crow's feet, and was wearing a dark green T-shirt
and a wristwatch with a brown strap. His straight hair was parted in the
middle and fell loosely past his shoulders. His moustache was slightly
darker than his hair, and his expression was amiable, which Jason found
difficult to reconcile with the handgun.

The man's expression didn't change, and the gun stayed where it was, not
quite pointing at Jason, but rather simply an informal part of the
tableau, like an hors d'oeuvre.

Jason said slowly, "The Suburban suits you better than the Marquis did."

The man grinned suddenly, and the crow's feet deepened. He said, "It
runs better, too." Jason said carefully, "Why wouldn't you suggest that
I turn the key?" The man said, "Get out of the car," and stood up and
stepped back. He was wearing gray corduroys and tan sneakers. Jason
opened the door and got out. The man had about an inch on him, but
wasn't as tall as Robert.

"Open the hood," the man said. Jason walked to the front of the car,
found the lever that stuck through the grill, and hit the hood with his
fist while he pulled it. The hood opened an inch, and Jason reached in
with two fingers, released the catch show control 127

inside, and raised the hood.

On top of the valve cover, toward the firewall, were four sticks of
dynamite, bundled with electrical tape. Two wires ran down into the
engine compartment. A wave of coldness washed through Jason's body. He
put the fingertips of one hand on the fender as an anchor.

"I think that's a good reason," the man said. "Don't you?" He put the
handgun in the waistband of the corduroys and pulled the T-shirt over
it.

"Oh my," Jason said. It was all he could think to say.

"Do you know someone who drives a white Cadillac?"

"Uh, um, a guy named Solomon."

"He was in the front seat of the Lincoln I totaled the other day. The
guy with the missing teeth." Jason said, "Yes."

The man squatted again, in front of the exposed engine compartment, and
looked at the bomb. "Lousy craftsmanship. Sloppy work. Nobody takes any
pride in anything any more. Do you know how long it took him to install
it?" "No," Jason said. "How long?"

"It took him ten minutes." The man shook his head. "He didn't even have
the sticks bundled together in advance." Jason said, "Is that a long
time?" The conversation seemed inappropriate.

"I could do it in less than one."

"Who are you?"

The man offered his hand. "Norton Platt. Nice to meet you." Jason shook
his hand and said, "Norton Platt?" He felt overloaded.

"Yes." Norton Platt stood up. "Well, I guess I'll be going." He walked
to the Suburban. "See you around." Jason said, "Well, wait!"

128 keith snyder Platt stopped and waited.

"What do I do about this?"

Platt said, "Best thing would be to find someone to disarm it."

Jason said, slowly, "Would you disarm it?"

"Well," Platt said, wandering back toward the open hood, "I guess I
could. What's it worth to you?" Jason said, "Um, I ... I don't know.
What do you usually charge?"

Platt shrugged and pursed his lips. "It varies according to the
situation." Jason tried to think and couldn't. "Often," Platt said after
a few seconds of silence, "I'll barter services for goods." Jason said,
"Oh." He looked at the bomb. "Oh! How about if you keep the dynamite?"

Platt said, "And the fuse?"

"Sure, yes, and the fuse. Everything."

Platt grinned. "Okay." He reached into the engine compartment and picked
the bomb up off the valve cover. The wires came with it, with clips at
their ends. They weren't attached to anything. Jason's brain spun. Platt
shrugged and said, "I disconnected it before you got here. It's not safe
to have this stuff lying around, waiting to go off."

He reached into the Suburban's open window and put the dynamite on its
floor. "The hardest part was getting the hood open." Jason said, "You
have to hit it over the latch."

"Yes, I figured that out."

"You've been following me around."

"Yes. More or less."

"Why?"

Platt said, "Let's go somewhere and talk. Do you drink coffee?"

show control 129

22

Oitting at a strange, welded table under a long chalkboard, Jason and
Norton Platt ate small blue soft tacos and drank coffee in Hollywood.

Jason's was a double mocha, and Platt's was a decaffeinated Kenyan blend
with sugar and no cream. The chalkboard had faces drawn on it in
different colors of chalk. Some of them were very skillfully drawn, and
took advantage of the contrast between the light chalk and darker board.

Platt said, "What do you want to know?"

Jason took a sip of his mocha and said, '"What's going on?' seems to be
a good starter. I assume this is all because you got my note."

"Yes." Platt finished a soft taco and picked up another one.

Jason said, "I'm not sure what else to ask."

"Well," Platt said. He ate half the taco and drank some coffee. "You
could start by asking me if I killed Monica."

"Did you kill Monica?"

"No."

"Okay. What do I ask you next?"

"Why I've been following you around."

"Because you got my note on MUSE and or in your mailbox and decided to
find out about me."

130 keith snyder "And why I bothered to get involved when you screwed
up, tailing that Lincoln."

"Because ... I don't know why."

"Because I liked that shovel maneuver."

"You mean ... you saw that? How long have you been following me?"

"Since I got your note."

"Where were you?"

"I rented an apartment in the building that faces your back door. Where
have your strategies been coming from?"

"Did some research on large and small forces. The Art of War. Robert,
the tall guy, thought of the shovel idea." Platt said, "Good choice of
research material. Tell me, why did you pick Sun Tzu over Clausewitz?"
Jason said, "Who's that?" Platt smiled and said, "Oh. Well good job,
anyway. What did you use to drive them toward the back?"

"Sound effects. Footsteps and a shotgun being cocked."

"A man after my own heart."

"Do you really do sound design?"

"Yes, I do. Among other things." Platt ate the rest of his taco. "Your
ideas aren't bad, but your skills need some work. Like getting stuck in
the middle lane at the church." He reached halfway toward the last taco
and raised his eyebrows at Jason, who gestured for him to go ahead.

"That was a beginner's mistake, and if you plan to continue this thing
you're doing, you can't be making beginners' mistakes. Also, remember to
always look for people who are doing the same thing you're doing. Like,
when you're tailing someone, also look out for someone tailing you."

"I would have seen you?"

"Probably not, but you get the idea. My point is, you have show control
131

to get smart pretty fast, if you're going to keep this up. I've got some
leeway for you, because you seem potentially useful, but there's only so
much I'll do."

"What kind of leeway?"

"Well, for instance, have you seen Detective Johns since she last went
out to visit you?"

"Uh, no."

"Don't you think she would have been interested in what you've been up
to, if she knew about it?"

"Uh, yes."

"Don't you think she knows about it?"

"Oh. I guess she would."

"That kind of leeway."

"Oh."

"I have to ask you: What were you trying to accomplish at the church?"

"'Harass your enemy ceaselessly.'"

"Oh. Did it work?"

"I don't know."

"Did he look harassed?"

"Well, no."

Jason drank some of his coffee, and Platt finished his.

Jason said, "Where did you get the Marquis?"

"About fifty feet from your house."

"Oh." Jason drank some more of his coffee, unsure how he felt about
that.

Platt noticed and said, "No, it belonged to the two goons who broke into
your place." Jason said, "Solomon's car?"

"Yes."

Jason thought about it and chuckled. Then he thought about it again and
chuckled again. "So you're involved in this. Why? It can't be just an
appreciation for good craftsmanship."

132 keith snyder "'Good?' I wouldn't say that yet. It's partly because
Monica was a friend, and you've gotten somewhere poking into it. That
could be useful. You've gotten somebody mad at you, which is always a
good sign."

"That's what I thought."

"Well, you were right." Platt put down the taco. "Now, let me ask you
something. Why are you involved?"

Jason said, "I really don't know. It's just something that feels
necessary." Platt narrowed his eyes thoughtfully and said, "Tell me what
was happening in your life just before all this."

"Why?"

"Because maybe it will answer my question."

Jason said, "Well, okay." He had to think about it. "Urn, I'm working
days at a water filtration plant, reading meters and patrolling
pipelines. You've seen where I live, and it doesn't look any better on
the inside."

"Yes, I've seen the inside."

"Uh, my divorce will be final in a couple of weeks ..." He shrugged.

"That's about it."

"Tell me about the divorce."

"It's a divorce."

"First girlfriend? High school sweethearts? First girl you ever slept
with?"

Jason stared. "Yes."

"Okay." Platt picked up the taco again.

Jason said, "That's it? You got something out of that?"

"Yep."

"You want to tell me what it is?"

"Nope. That might mess things up. I think you have a delicate balance
going, and I don't want to be what tips it over."

"Balance between what?"

show control 133

"The fact that you don't know is part of the balance. You'll figure it
out eventually." "Okay," Jason said irritably, and then wondered why he
was irritable. He said, "Okay," again in a better tone.

Platt said, "You'll get it." He finished his taco and stood up. "I have
to go. Check under your hood and undercarriage every morning and every
time you leave your car unattended, and have your friend with the little
Honda do the same. Better yet, you check them both yourself. And don't
use that ugly red wig any more." Jason said, "Auburn. Auburn wig." Platt
said, "It's an ugly red wig." He offered his hand and Jason shook it.
"I'll be around."

Platt left. Jason put two dollars on the table and walked out. He
checked under his hood and looked underneath the Plymouth before getting
in and driving away.

134 keith snyder 23

"W

don't know we can trust him," said Martin.

The Plymouth and the CVCC were parked next to each other on the top of a
parking structure at an indoor mall in Sherman Oaks. Jason knew the spot
because he'd lived there in the Plymouth once during one of his breakups
with Marisa before they were married. It had been an outdoor mall then,
but someone had since decided to cover it. There was a place at the
topmost part of the ramp where the lot widened, and it was impossible to
see into it from lower down, especially when the lights went out at
midnight, which was still an hour away. He wondered if anyone had ever
broken up with Monica and then lived in their car. Then we wondered why
he was wondering.

He was sitting with Martin and Robert in shirtsleeves in the lawn chairs
near the cars, eating off the blue camping plates. Nine hinged, yellow
Styrofoam containers from a Korean BBQ_ take-out place were spread out
on the pavement. The CVCC's hatchback was open and somebody was playing
a soulful trumpet on the radio. The radio was turned down very low so
the sound wouldn't attract anybody. Robert was reading his Nigerian
Times.

"No, we don't," Jason said. "But I almost do."

Robert read from his newspaper, "'Head-turning Miss. Dolly show control
135

Sesay is looking for a marriage-minded African man without children.'"He
looked up and said, "Anyone?" "Pass," Martin said.

"Jason?"

"Maybe next time."

Robert folded the paper and kneeled on it among the containers, taking
seconds.

"What's that stuff?" Martin asked doubtfully, as Robert served himself
something that looked like seaweed. "I was going to try it, but I can't
tell what it is."

"I don't know," Robert said. He tried some.

"How is it?" Martin said.

Robert said. "Mm, kind of salty."

Jason held his plate out. "Let me try some." Martin said, "How can you
eat something when you don't know what it is?" Jason said, "But we do
know what it is." He and Robert looked at each other for a beat and then
said, together, "It's food." Martin said, "Hey. A cheeseburger is food.
Duck a 1'Orange is food. This is ... I don't know ..." He held up a
forkful. "Actually, what is this?"

Jason leaned forward and said, "That's squid."

Martin said, "Squid. I see. Yes. Squid." He put the fork down. "Thank
you very much. I will now be ill." Robert said, "I'll take it." Martin
handed over his plate without looking at it. Robert took it and sat in
his lawn chair.

"If you really want to eat something unidentifiable," Jason said, "we
can go get you some Mcdonalds." "No, I'm fine," Martin said. "Let me see
that newspaper."

Robert picked it up and held it out, but his eye was caught by something
on the back page, so he took it back as Martin reached for it.

136 keith snyder "Whoa," he said.

"What," Jason and Martin said.

Robert kept looking at whatever it was.

"What," Jason said again.

Robert said, "Look at this," and handed it to Jason.

It was a slightly out-of-focus picture of the Preacher smiling and
shaking hands with a man in a business suit. The caption said: The
Reverend Billy Cryer receives the African Community Award for his work
on behalf of the School for the Blind in Lagos, Nigeria. There was no
accompanying article.

"A selfless man," Jason said. "A dedicated and devoted servant of his
people. Do you think the money really goes to the school?"

Robert thought and then shrugged. "It could go anywhere."

Jason nodded. "You're right. This doesn't do us much good at all." "Can
I see that?" Martin said. Jason gave him the newspaper. He peered
closely at the picture and then said, "Do you mind if I keep this?"
Robert said, "Go ahead."

Jason said, "You have an idea?" Martin said, "Maybe. Let me think about
it a little." He folded the paper. "Actually ..." He glanced at Robert.
Robert nodded.

"What," Jason said.

Martin put his plate down and got up from the chair. "Robert and I ran
some errands while you were out."He walked to the CVCC, put the
newspaper on the front seat, and got a white paper bag out of the back.

"What is it?"

Robert stood up so he was next to Martin.

"Stand up," Martin said.

show control 137

Jason put his plate on the ground and stood up. Robert intoned gravely,
"Jason Keltner: Whereas, you have performed courageously in the face of
evil; and, Whereas, you gave us two hundred bucks each and didn't tell
us what to do with it; and, Whereas you always buy the food, we hereby
induct you into ..."

Martin reached into the bag and pulled out something flat and round,
about four inches across, and said, "The Screamin' Pink Tigers."

Jason twisted his head around to try to see it. "What is it?"

Martin handed him one. It was an embroidered patch, round, with a navy
blue background bordered by gold braid. Gold letters around the top
perimeter said "Screamin' Pink Tigers," and smaller ones around the
bottom said "First Unarmed Division." In the middle of the patch was a
pink and black Hobbes tiger with an army helmet on, holding a white flag
tied to a stick, and looking cranky.

Jason looked at the patch in his hand and felt a grin start and get
wider. "This is great!" He examined it further. "Did you do this,
Martin?" Martin said, "Yeah. I know this place where they've got an
embroidery system that you run off a Macintosh, and the guy owed me a
favor. It just cost materials."

Jason held it up to the side of his arm. "Here?"

Martin said, "Looks good to me." He reached into the bag again and
withdrew a smaller bag. "We got needles and thread."

"Let's put them on," Jason said. He got his purple ski jacket and
Robert's black one out of the Plymouth, and Martin got his denim jacket
out of the CVCC, and then they sat down in the lawn chairs and sewed the
patches on.

Martin was done first; his stitches were small and even. Jason ended up
with loops of thread that wouldn't pull flat and puckered fabric where
the patch had shifted position in mid-application. Robert sewed his
sleeve shut.

138 keith snyder "Robert," Jason said, "do you do these things for
effect, or are they truly accidental?"

"I swear," Robert said, "it was accidental."

Martin fished a small Swiss army knife out of his pocket, flipped out
the can opener, and said, "Here, use this as a seam ripper." When
Robert's patch was redone, they all stood up and put their jackets on.

"Looks great," Robert said, twisting his arm to look at his own. "Looks
like a man's work."

"A man who doesn't know how to sew," Jason said, looking at his own.

"Where'd you learn how to sew, Martin?" Martin said, "I don't know. Just
something you learn how to do when your mother's drunk all the time, I
guess."

Robert said, "I guess so. That's a nice job of patch sewing."

Jason said, "Have you seen your mother recently?"

"I went and visited her just before I moved into Marengo Manor," Martin
said. "She said to say hi to you." "Martin," Jason said, "these are
really nice. Thank you." Robert said, "You're a good artist. I still
think you should finish Mega Mole." Jason said, "Yeah, did you just get
tired of it, or what?"

Martin made a sound that sounded like hjff, and said, "What is this, an
AA confrontation?"

There was an uneasy pause. Jason looked at Robert. Robert had a look of
utter surprise frozen on his face. Jason looked back at Martin and said,
"No, it wasn't supposed to be." "Good," Martin said. "What do you guys
care if I finish my damn comic book, anyway?" Jason said, "Uh ..." He
gestured helplessly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insult you or
anything." Still looking shocked, Robert said, "No! I never did either!
I'm sorry if I did! I think you're a very talented artist."

show control 139

Martin looked quickly between to the two of them, and then relaxed a
little and said, "I'm sorry." He looked at his hands for a minute and
then said, "I guess I just felt a little ... attacked there for a
minute."

Robert gaped at him. "By us?" "Robert," Martin said after a moment, "you
have no idea what kind of gift you have. I can't tell you how many times
I've just stopped talking as you did these ... these amazing loops and
rolls. It makes me feel insecure."

Robert said, "I always wished I could draw." Martin snorted and said,
"Drawing's nothing. Anybody can draw." Jason said, "I used to think that
anybody could do music."

They didn't say anything for a while. Then Martin said, "Robert, what if
ME Shrew doesn't die when he goes off the top of the burning warehouse?"

Robert said, "ME Shrew has to die, because how else could the insect
mutants get the power crystal from him?" Martin said, "He could be
almost fatally injured." Jason got up and said, "I'm going to get some
sleep. Wake me up when it's my watch." He opened the front door of the
Plymouth, took out his sleeping bag, stepped into it and pulled it up to
his neck, and got into the front seat. The lights went out.

He half-listened to Martin and Robert discussing Mega Mole as he fell
asleep. At one point, he thought he heard his own name, and talk of
music, but he was too sleepy to remember it for long.

Martin and Robert woke him four hours later, and he sat in a lawn chair
in the dark until it started to get light. Then he knocked on the roofs
of the two cars, and the day started.

140 keith snyder 24

JVLartin made Robert look for the Fugitive Pope leaflet from the Rose
Parade. Robert found it in the back pocket of the pants he'd worn to the
Rose Parade, which were the same ones he was wearing. Then they went to
Smokey Joe's coffee shop on Coldwater, and Martin explained his idea
while they had pancakes. When they left the restaurant, Jason checked
both cars for tampering, and they drove to Hollywood.

They rented four hours of time on a Macintosh with a scanner attached to
it, at a print service bureau that Martin knew about on Sunset. The
scanner was a flat thing with a glass top like a Xerox machine, only
instead of making a paper copy of an original, the scanner made a
digital description of the original. The digital description went into
the Macintosh, where it could be displayed on the screen and altered,
and then the altered version could be printed on paper.

Martin sat in front of the Macintosh and scanned the Nigerian Times
picture into the Macintosh. Then he said, "Give me the flyer."

Robert gave him the crumpled Fugitive Pope leaflet from the Rose Parade.

Martin examined it closely. "Robert," he said, "do you think you could
have put any more creases through this?"

show control 141

"Hey," Robert said, "it's not as though anybody knew we'd need it. Just
be grateful that I didn't throw it away." Jason said, "And, further,
that he never does laundry."

Martin flattened the leaflet, put it face-down on the scanner, and
scanned it. Then he made both scanned images appear on the screen and
said, "This should be pretty easy. The shadows are both coming from the
left. I'll just have to soften them in the newspaper photo. The hardest
thing will be erasing the creases from Robert's thing."

"Shut up, Robert," Jason said, before Robert could make a joke about how
best to erase the creases from his thing.

"What?" Robert protested.

Jason and Robert sat for two hours and watched Martin take elements from
one picture and put them into the other, resize things, crop things,
blur things, and mutter to himself a lot.

At the end of the two hours, Martin said, "What do you think?"

Jason looked at the picture of the Preacher shaking hands with Castro
and said, "Martin, you are a genius." Robert said, "That's really
great." Martin said, "I altered the Preacher a little so he wouldn't
look exactly the same as the original photo." He clicked the mouse, and
the picture zoomed in to twice its size. "I just want to do a few more
things here. The Castro part still isn't quite the same kind of grainy
as the Preacher part. And I think the clipping path needs tweaking, and
the whole thing needs despeckling." "Right," Robert said, seriously.
"Despeckle that clipping path."

Martin made a series of alterations. Jason couldn't see any difference.

After twenty minutes, Martin said, "Voila," and rolled back his chair.

"Let's print it out."

142 keith snyder The best quality printout was thirteen dollars, and
came out on shiny white paper. Jason and Robert used another thirty
minutes thinking up and typing a caption--"Reverend Billy Cryer
Finalizes Cocaine-for-Uzis Deal"--which they printed at a lower quality,
for a dollar. Then Jason spent the rest of their four hours at typing
into the Macintosh. When the time was up, he had an account of
everything that had happened to them. He bought three floppy disks from
the counterperson and copied his account onto each, and then gave one to
Martin and one to Robert.

They took the picture and the text to a twenty-four hour copy place,
pasted the text under the picture with rubber cement from the
self-service counter, and made five hundred copies with some of Solomon
and Tony's money. At a hardware store across the street, they bought
three paint rollers, a paint tray, and a lot of glue.

Then they killed the late morning and early afternoon at a bowling alley
on Ventura Boulevard. Martin won four games out of five. His high score
was 63. Everyone got bored in the middle of the fifth game, so they
awarded it to Martin because he'd had a spare in the second frame.

They returned the shoes and played video games for an hour, and ate
lunch at the Jewish delicatessen next door. Robert harangued Martin into
trying the potato pancakes, and Martin finally gave in, ordered them,
and liked them.

"There," Robert said in a middling Yiddish accent. "Now you're a Jew."

"Some bacon would go good with this," Martin said through a mouthful.

"Oy way," said Jason.

"It ain't ribs an' black-eyed peas, that's for sure," Martin said, when
he had swallowed. "I gotta take you guys for soul food sometime."

show control 143

Robert said, "Tonight? Sure! Thanks, Martin!"

Martin shrugged. "Fine by me."

They left the delicatessen at three o'clock, drove down Ventura to the
Sherman Oaks Galleria, and bought more books. Robert got a RG. Wodehouse
collection and a book by Langston Hughes called The Ways of White Folks.

Martin bought more comic books. Jason looked for "Clausewitz," but
couldn't find anything under that name, and settled for an anthology of
science fiction from the 1940s.

"More comic books?" Jason said at the counter.

"They're not comic books," Martin said. "They're graphic novels."

Outside the mall, it was getting darker, and people were turning on
their headlights. They drove both cars South on the 405 freeway to the
10 East, and then transferred to the 110 South. When they got off on
Martin Luther King Drive, the sun had set.

The Church of the Believers seemed to be empty. The front door was
barred, and no light came through its cracks.

Stopping with his engine running across the street, Jason thumbed his
walkie-talkie and said, "See anybody?"

The CVCC was stopped behind him. His speaker crackled and Robert's voice
said, "This here's the Rubber Duck, and we're about to lay the hammer
down. Over? Ten-four?"

Then it crackled again, and Martin's voice said, "I don't see anybody."
Jason said, "Let's wait a while. Something feels weird."

They sat and waited for half an hour. No one entered the church, and no
one came out. No lights went on.

"It does look empty," Jason said. "I don't know. What do you think?"
Robert's voice said, "Let's go." 144 keith snyder Jason said, "Okay,"
put the walkie-talkie down, and pulled into traffic.

The CVCC followed.

They glued one hundred flyers to the church wall, and another hundred to
most of the nearby stationary objects. Robert took another hundred
around to the back of the building and ran around the rear parking lot,
throwing them up in the air.

"What do we do with the rest?" Martin said, holding up a one-inch stack.

Jason said, "Nothing. We've been here way too long already. Let's get
out of here before somebody gets too interested."

"Gotcha." Martin turned and called, "Let's go, Robert!"

He waited for the answer.

There wasn't one.

"Let's go, Robert!" he yelled again. After a few more seconds, he rolled
his eyes and said, "Jeez, you'd think--"

Jason cut him off with a sharp hand motion. Martin looked puzzled. Jason
held up his hand in a gesture that said, Give me a moment.

"Martin," he said. He turned all the way around, looking at the lot.

Robert wasn't there.

"Yeah," Martin said tensely.

Was he sure? He looked around again. Did he have to be sure? He went to
the Plymouth's trunk, opened it, took the Macintosh case out, and held
it toward Martin without looking at him. He said, "Get in the CVCC and
go to the bumper car place on the Santa Monica pier. If I'm not there by
eleven, take the Macintosh and the floppy disk I gave you to a telephone
and do that thing I showed you how to do on the Net. Watch for a tail as
you go."

He glanced at Martin. Martin looked stunned, holding the stack of
flyers. Jason said, "Now."

Martin stared at him for maybe a second and then took show control 145

the case to the CVCC, got in, started the engine, and drove out the
driveway to the street. The drone of the engine faded.

The wind picked up. Trying to stay aware of everything around him, Jason
reached into the trunk and took out a crowbar and a four-foot section of
aluminum tubing from his keyboard stand. The dirty metal of the crowbar
was cold. He closed the trunk, went to the front of the church, and
moved left along the sidewalk to where the church front ended, at the
driveway to the rear parking lot.

At the corner, he waited and listened.

There was a very slight howl of wind between the church and the building
on the opposite side of the driveway.

There was a soft skitter and swirl of leaves on the driveway and the
parking lot, and of the flyers that Robert had strewn there.

There was traffic noise from Martin Luther King Drive.

There was faint birdsong from atop a billboard half a block away.

Jason waited and listened.

There was nothing else.

He swiveled off the curb and into the driveway, tense and bent slightly
at the knees and waist, holding the tubing down against his side and the
crowbar up at an angle.

What he could see of the rear parking lot was empty. Jason stood,
motionless, straining his hearing. There were no new sounds. He took one
step toward the parking lot, and then another, and another. With each
step, another fraction of the parking lot came into view.

At the end of the driveway, he took a final step into the parking lot.

There was nothing but leaves, flyers, and wind. Jason looked carefully
both ways, walked forward a few steps, and twisted to see the church
behind him. There was a back 146 keith snyder

door, and a window above it. Both were shut, and no light was visible
through either.

If he tried to enter the building, he'd be at a huge disadvantage; even
more than he already was by allowing Robert to be taken. He hooked the
crowbar over his belt, hefted the aluminum tubing in his right hand a
few times, and threw it as hard as he could, end-over-end, at the
window. The window was made of thin glass, and shattered. The tubing
bounced off the exterior windowsill. Taking the crowbar from his belt,
Jason moved quickly to the other side of the doorway. The tubing
clattered to the ground and rolled away from him. He stood and waited,
listening again for any change in sound, and wished the tubing would
stop rolling so he could hear better.

As the tubing came to rest in a small ridge of leaves, Jason heard
something inside the church: a movement sound, maybe a foot on a floor.

He gripped the crowbar with both hands, and then took his left hand off
so he was wielding it only with his right. Which was better? He put the
left hand back on and waited.

No more noise came from inside.

Real smart coming back, he thought.

He stood in the wind and waited.

There was a click from behind the door, and it popped open half an inch.

Adrenaline surged through Jason's body, and he raised the crowbar,
trembling and unblinking, awaiting another action.

It didn't come. The metal door wobbled very slightly in the wind. No gun
barrel pushed through the opening. An invitation.

Jason's vision swam a little, and he realized that he had been holding
his breath. He let it out slowly and controlled his breathing, despite
the urge to gasp.

show control 147

He could enter the door, or he could leave. Or he could wait and see if
someone else came out. He liked none of the choices, but that seemed to
be the game.

Or, he thought, still trembling, / could do what Robert would do, and
make up a new game.

It was hard to think with the adrenaline exciting his reflexes and
blurring his mind.

What are my available resources? What's in the trunk?

He shook his head. It seemed to help. Keyboards, keyboard stand, road
cases, camping stuff.

What else? Earthquake stuff, oil, water, duct tape, Squeegee, dirty
plates, spare tire, bumper jack, backpack, propane tank.

He thought about the propane tank. After a few seconds, he backed away
from the door and edged around the corner and into the driveway,
shuddering from the cold wind, oxygen debt, and dissipating adrenaline.

There was no window on the front wall of the church, and the metal door
looked solid. As far as Jason could tell, the people inside couldn't see
him.

He worked as quickly as he could under the open trunk lid. It was
difficult to detach the hoses that dangled from the lantern and the
stove, because they had been attached for so long that the fitting
surfaces had oxidized a little, but he did it eventually, connected them
to each other with a brass fitting, and screwed the resulting length
into the nozzle of the propane tank.

A seam along the side of the backpack tore when he forced the propane
tank into it. He took a butane cigarette lighter from the lantern box
and held it between his teeth, slung the backpack over his chest, looped
the hose around his left hand, and went back to the open door.

He flicked the tab on the cigarette lighter and put the 148 keith
snyder small flame in front of the hose, offered a short plea to whoever
might be listening--Please, please, let this not be the wrong way to do
it-- and cracked open the nozzle on the propane tank. The propane hissed
and the flame caught, and Jason flinched, waiting to be blown to pieces.

He wasn't blown to pieces. He pocketed the lighter, waited to see if he
would continue to not be blown to pieces, and then opened the door
slowly and stepped in.

A concrete staircase led up from the doorway. Jason transferred the hose
to his right hand and rested his left on the nozzle valve, stepped up
onto the first step, and then the second, and listened. There was no
noise. He continued up the stairs.

Three-quarters of the way up, something moved at the top, and a male
voice that sounded like Tony said, "Stay where you are or we will shoot
you."

Jason stopped and called, "This guy's skydiving for the first time." His
voice was shaky. He paused and tried to control it. "And he jumps out of
the plane, and gets to the place where he's supposed to pull the
ripcord. He pulls it, and nothing happens. So he pulls his backup and
nothing happens. He's getting really worried, and he sees another guy,
coming up at him from the ground. This is a little surprising, but he
doesn't have time to worry about it. As the other guy passes him, the
first guy yells, 'Hey, do you know how to work a parachute?' and the
other guy goes, 'No, do you know how to light a propane stove?'"

There was no response.

Jason stepped onto the next step and called, "This is a ten gallon
propane tank I've got on." He opened the valve slowly with his left
hand, and the hiss deepened in pitch, the flame growing to two feet. The
heat against his right hand increased, and the hose wobbled a little.

"If you shoot me, and you hit it, this whole building goes up in a big
fireball and we all die."

show control 149

Still nothing. Jason called, "What say we find out how big this flame
can get?"He opened the valve farther, and the flame grew to four feet,
the low hiss becoming a soft roar. The hose wanted to wobble more, and
Jason held it more firmly, beginning to feel pain in his right hand from
the heat. He couldn't move the hand back too far from the flame because
he'd lose control of the hose. He took another step up. The voice said,
"If we all die, your Jew Boy friend dies too, American Boy."

Jason clamped his jaw together and opened the valve farther. The flame
increased to about eight feet, reaching the top of the staircase, and
the roar increased as the hose wriggled in his grip. He had an
impression of someone moving suddenly away at the top of the stairs. He
took another step and carefully transferred the hose from his right hand
to his left, and the heat hit his left hand. He brought his right hand
to his mouth and licked the hurt part. Evaporation cooled it slightly
and brought a small amount of relief, but it was clearly damaged. He
couldn't tell how badly. He rested it on the propane valve and tried to
accept that it hurt worse than anything he could remember.

"Ask my Jew Boy friend about Entebbe," Jason called. Anger rose in him.

He forced it down. "I'll wait."

He reduced the flame to three feet and grunted as the sudden reduction
of pain made his left hand throb. He was halfway to the top. Past the
upper landing, someone whispered something, and then someone moved away,
back into the church, and there was the sound of a door opening and
closing.

The door hinge behind him creaked, and he lost his balance and jumped,
startled. The flame roared up over his head, but he kept his grip and
clutched the handrail with his hurt

150 keith snyder right hand. With the flame again under control, and
again aimed ahead of him, he turned his head, panicked.

Standing in the doorway, with his back to Jason, and the open door
resting against his right shoulder, Norton Platt said, "If you flambe
either one of us, I've wasted an evening." Cradled in the crook of his
right arm was a compact, long gun that looked like the one Jason
remembered from the videotape of Ronald Reagan being shot.

Jason couldn't think of anything to say, so he turned back and took the
rest of the stairway slowly. The top landing was empty: ten feet of
concrete that ended at a closed door with a small window in it, with
criss-crossed wire embedded in the glass. No light shone through it.

Avoiding the window, Jason turned the flame down until it was the length
of a finger, and opened the door an inch. Then he opened it wider and
stepped through.

He was in a dark corridor. A flat, dark carpet covered the floor, but it
still felt like concrete under the carpet. The corridor led to the
right. To the left was a door, ajar. On the other side of the door, a
telephone began to ring. Jason went to the door, listened at it, and
nudged it open with his foot.

It was a small, empty sound booth situated above and behind where the
congregation sat. Jason stepped in. A broad window faced forward; there
was a mixing console on a desk under it and a rack full of audio
equipment to its right. None of it was turned on. The window was dark,
and Jason could only barely see the church interior below.

The ringing telephone was on the desk, next to the mixing console. Jason
ducked so he wouldn't be framed in the window and moved awkwardly across
the room, with the backpack banging into his knees. He picked up the
receiver. It was an intercom, with a talk button on the handpiece.

show control 151

Nobody said anything for several seconds. Then there was a click, and a
fluid baritone voice said, "Hello?"in the handpiece speaker.

Jason depressed the button and said, "Mm hmm." The voice said, "One
moment."

Lights came on in the church below. Rows of wooden benches began under
the sound booth and ended in front of a carpeted stage. On the stage
were the Preacher's pulpit, a drum kit, an amplifier, three microphone
stands with microphones on them, four big thugs, the Preacher, and
Robert. The Preacher held a white telephone receiver. Two of the thugs
flanked him, and two more stood behind Robert. One of them was Tony.

Jason's chest tightened. Robert was bound in a chair with something tied
around his mouth. Jason exhaled sharply through his nose and said,
"Hell," very softly.

The Preacher spoke into the telephone, and his voice said, "I believe we
can come to an understanding."

Jason pressed the button and said, "We already have one. We understand
that this situation is not acceptable and will not continue." The
Preacher said, "Yes. I did understand the Entebbe reference." Robert
looked at the Preacher when he said

"Entebbe," and then looked up at Jason. The Preacher said, "And so, it
seems, does your friend."

"Say what you have to say," Jason said.

"May I remind you," said the Preacher, "that you are not in control of
this situation. I am. You are caught in a small glass box, suspended in
the air, eighty feet away, and even if you break the window, I sincerely
doubt that your little toy flamethrower has that kind of range."

"Say what you have to say," Jason repeated.

152 keith snyder The Preacher inclined his head graciously. "I have
something you want.

You have something I want. Let us attempt to reach an equitable
solution."

Norton Platt appeared in the doorway to the sound booth, crouching, and
said, "Those four are the only muscle here. If things get weird, do
something to distract everyone, and I'll shoot some of them." Platt
disappeared. Jason said into the telephone, "What do you want?" The
Preacher said, "I want to talk to you, face to face, like men." Jason
said, "Men don't plant car bombs and shoot at people on their porches."

The Preacher said, "I know of no one who shot at anyone on their porch.

As for the car bomb, Solomon did get somewhat overzealous. He has been
disciplined. If you leave that room, there is a hallway that leads to
several classrooms. I will meet you in one of those, Jason." Norton
Platt reappeared in the doorway and said, "I heard that. I can't cover
those classrooms."

Before Platt could disappear again, Jason said, without depressing the
talk button, "What time is it?" "Nine-thirty," Platt said.

Jason said into the handpiece, "Thanks for the offer, Billy, but you say
what you have to say now or not at all." The Preacher said, "Some things
must be discussed between leaders." Jason said, "Let him go, and we'll
talk." The Preacher said, "And remove your motivation for meeting? No.
We will meet first. This is not subject to discussion. These are the
terms. If you do not accept them ... then we shall see."

show control 153

Jason lowered the receiver and thought about it. With access to the
mixing console, it wouldn't be difficult to blast the whole area with
feedback, assuming at least one of the on stage microphones were turned
on. Chances were good that one was; leaving a mike turned on was a
common oversight. That would certainly catch everyone off-guard, and
give Norton Platt his distraction.

But then Platt would kill people.

He raised the receiver and said, "No thugs."

"No flamethrower," the Preacher countered.

"Agreed."

"Agreed."

Jason hung up the telephone and left the sound booth. In the dark
corridor, he closed the valve on the propane tank, extinguishing the
flame.

He removed the hose from the tank, coiled it, and held it in his left
hand as he walked down the corridor toward the classrooms.

154 keith snyder 25

I\t the end of the corridor, another stairway angled down toward the
church interior. There was a door facing Jason at the end, and two on
the wall to his right. He didn't see Norton Platt anywhere, and guessed
that he was keeping an eye on the four armed men on the stage.

He stopped at the end of the corridor. A door at the bottom opened,
admitting light, and the Preacher looked up at Jason and ascended the
stairway. The Preacher's eyes were at the same level as Jason's when he
was still three stairs from the top. Jason held up the coiled hose and
said, "It's disconnected."

On the landing, the Preacher swept one arm toward the open door facing
Jason and said, "After you."

Jason walked forward and entered the room, suppressing the impulse to
look behind him after he passed the Preacher. The classroom contained
twenty small chairs with attached writing desks, two whiteboards with
colored markers in their trays, a bookshelf full of Little Golden Books
and educational materials, an American flag, a wall clock, and a
teacher's desk and chair.

The Preacher entered and closed the door, and said, "Please, have a
seat." Jason half-sat and half-leaned on the edge of the teacher's desk,
the propane tank preventing him from really show control 155

sitting. The Preacher remained standing. Jason shrugged, got off the
desk, and stood up.

The Preacher chuckled, pulled the teacher's chair out from under the
desk, and sat in it. Jason leaned on the desk again.

The Preacher sat and watched Jason. Jason watched him back. The wall
clock ticked very softly.

The adrenaline surge had gone, leaving a slack, irritable exhaustion
that made the silent tactic annoying. Jason gave it another full minute
and then got off the desk and walked toward the door.

"Let us talk," the Preacher said.

Jason turned around. "Yes. Let us. Let us neither waffle nor mince." "I
want your help," the Preacher said, spreading his hands. "Only your
help."

"What help?"

"There's something that we both want."

"Peace in our time? A new windshield?"

"The person who killed Monica Gleason." Jason said, "Pardon?"

"The person who killed Monica Gleason. You and I both have business with
him. It would be worth my while to assist you in delivering him." The
Preacher leaned back in the chair and did his silent trick again.

Jason said, "Who is he?"

The Preacher said, "I will not give you any information until you agree
to cooperate, Jason." Jason thought about it. Then he said, "No deal,
Billy. Get one of your trained boulders to do it." He turned toward the
door again.

The Preacher held one hand up. "Wait. Perhaps I was too hasty." 156
keith snyder Jason said, "Perhaps your trained boulders can't, you
mean."

The Preacher said, "What I am offering is assistance in your quest.

Surely you cannot be offended by that."

"No, you're not. You're trying to get cheap labor for your own quest.

Come to the point or shut the hell up."

"You have me at a disadvantage."

"Wriggling in the vise-like grip of reason," Jason said. "Get to it.

This whole thing will be on the computer screens of a couple million
people in about forty-five minutes unless I'm out of here in half an
hour."

The Preacher tipped his head back and looked down at Jason. "Very well."

He made calming motions with his hands. "I have business with the person
you're looking for, and my associates"--he inclined his head toward the
stage--"may not be up to the task. They follow orders well, but I need
someone more resourceful." Jason said, "Then hire someone."

"That is, unfortunately, not an option at the moment."

"Why not?" The Preacher didn't answer. Jason said, "Unless you want The
Adventures of Pastor Billy to be worldwide public reading material."

"I cannot afford to." The voice was steady, but Jason thought he saw
something--pain?--in the Preacher's eyes.

"Why not?"

"Because the man we both seek has stolen all my money." It was probably
pain.

"You mean all the money you stole from your congregation?"

"Not only that," the Preacher said, apparently missing the irony, "but
additional funds as well."

"And you want me to find him so you can get your money back."

show control 157

"Yes."

"And I want to find him anyway, and I don't cost anything, so you'll
give me what you have, and set me after him."

((~\r 55

Yes.

"Call me Mr. Bloodhound."

"There is one further detail."

"That figures."

"You must deliver him before Friday."

"What's today?"

"Monday." Jason said, "Why Friday?"

"I have arrangements that conclude Friday." Jason thought about Robert
and said, "Okay. Let Robert go and give me everything you know, and I'll
bring your quarry here when I find him."

"Perhaps you would have a further incentive to find my quarry if your
friend were to remain my guest."

Jason walked a few feet farther into the room, carefully, and said,
"Pardon?"

"You will get your friend back when I get what I want."

"No Robert, no deal. No discussion."

The Preacher began, "Now understand my position, Jason-" "Your
position?" Jason said. "Your position is irrelevant. No Robert, no
deal."

"You are foolish," the Preacher said. "I can hurt him a lot."

Rage bubbled up in Jason's chest. He said nothing while he controlled
it. When it had reduced to a simmer, he said, "If you do, I will give up
music and you will be my new hobby. You're jerking me around. I'm
getting crabby." "I don't think you understand," the Preacher said.

158 keith snyder "You want your damn money back or not?" The rage had
almost burst through. He compressed it again. "Twenty more minutes and
it's a great big moot point."

The Preacher glared at him. Controlled violence surged in Jason's chest,
and he wondered vaguely and disconnectedly about the etymology of moot.

The Preacher nodded in acquiescence, stood up and smoothed his robes.

The regained advantage of altitude must have reinforced his ego, because
he looked down at Jason and said, "You will learn the advantages of
compromise as you grow older."

Jason said, "Yeah." Unexpected sadness broke the surface of the rage. He
pushed it down and tagged it for later analysis.

show control 159

26

JLhe Preacher was sitting behind the teacher's desk, and Jason had
pulled up one of the students' seats, and was sitting on the attached
writing desk. The propane tank was on the floor, still in its backpack.

"I do not know the name of the man you are looking for," the Preacher
said. "I do not have a photograph of him, and I have never met him
face-to-face, so I cannot describe him to you." He withdrew a white slip
of paper from a deep pocket somewhere within his robe. "This is his
telephone number and address. I was able to find the address from the
telephone number. He will not be at that address any more."

Jason took the slip and put it in his pocket, and said, "How did he
steal all your money?"

"He transferred it by computer to another account, the account of a gold
broker."

"So get the gold broker to transfer it back."

"The gold broker transferred it to another broker last week. That broker
transferred it to a personal bank account."

"How much?"

"One point eight million dollars. One point five million was withdrawn
from the personal account in the form of several cashier's checks. The
remaining three hundred thousand 160 keith snyder was apparently
abandoned." Jason said, "Cleaning out the account would have aroused
someone's suspicion. How do I know you're not just telling me all this
so I'll find him for you?" He paused. "How do I know he really killed
Monica?"

"I'll tell you how he did it."

"That's been in the newspapers. Tell me something I can surprise the
cops with."

"No cops."

"Cops if I say cops." The Preacher looked displeased, and said, "He had
a thing for this Gleason chick." Jason said, "What we in the clergy
refer to as 'impure thoughts.'"

The Preacher looked patronizing and said, "Do you want to hear this or
not?"

"Ten minutes and counting," Jason said. "You're the one who wants me on
the Secret Four-Day Bounty-Hunting Plan."

The Preacher said, as though Jason hadn't spoken, "He determined that
she would be at a conference--"

"The Technoarts show?"

"I do not know the name of the event. He discovered with his computer
that she had shipped one of her lasers--I understand that she used
lasers in her act--across the country for repair. I am not precisely
familiar with the exact process, but he was able to use his computer to
reroute the laser's return shipment to his own address, where he
installed a second laser." Jason said, "A second laser."

"Yes."

"Alongside the first one, in the same casing."

f(\r »

Yes. "With a beefed-up power supply, probably."

show control 161

"I really have no idea. Then he used his computer again to erase the
record of the delivery to his address, repackaged the laser in its
shipping box, put it in the lobby of another building, called the
shipping company, and reported a mistaken delivery to that address."
Jason said, "The shipping company picks up the 'mistaken delivery' and
delivers it to the Technoarts show, and there's no record of the
diverted shipment."

"Yes. I doubt that the police have unraveled it yet."

"They may have. That's a nice little plan."

"He is not stupid."

"Then what is he?"

"He is ... creative in the sense that he is able to find unusual
opportunities for himself and take advantage of them."

"That's what he did with you?"

The Preacher looked wryly philosophical. "Those who become too arrogant,
who believe themselves untouchable by lesser men, are subject to the
Lord's lessons of humility."

Jason said, "Uh huh." The Preacher said, "He handled some of the church
accounts. I unwisely allowed him to gain more control than was prudent."

"Why don't you know his name or what he looks like?"

"All our business was done through email."

"Who contacted whom?"

"He contacted me. I never had a telephone number for him until a few
days ago. He sent me a message over the Net, requesting assistance with
a problem he was having."

He leaned back in his chair, as though waiting for a prompt. Jason said,
"What problem?"

if\r 55

You. "And you sent Solomon and the other guy."

162 keith snyder "Tony. Yes."

"What we in the warfare business refer to as a 'tactical error.'"

The Preacher said, "That is all I know of him. His messages to me were
always over the Net. I never even heard his voice until he sent me the
telephone number."

"Describe the voice."

"Careless elocution, almost as though he had a speech defect." The
Preacher looked thoughtful. Then he shrugged and said, "That's all."

"Baritone?"

et^r* "

lenor.

"Fast talker or slow?"

"Slow."

"Background noises?"

"Not that I can recall."

"Did he say anything that was not related to his The' problem?" "No. It
was a very short conversation. He said 'I need your help in the matter
we have discussed' and I said 'What do you need' and he said 'I need you
to persuade someone to leave me alone' and gave me your address. That
was the extent of it."

"Were his Net messages always business-related?"

"Most of the time. The only exceptions were that he was always trying to
convince me to learn more about computers and the Net. He knows quite a
bit about both."

"What did he write about the most, regarding the Net?"

"Well ..." The Preacher narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips. "Ah. I
don't quite understand how this would work, but he claimed to have an
extensive collection of pornographic pictures from the Net."

"What about his thing for this Gleason chick?"

show control 163

"It was his belief that she was leading him on. He claimed to have had
sex with her, but I understood that it was in some form of
correspondence. I did not entirely comprehend what he was really
saying."

"Hot chats. What else did he mention, besides dirty pictures and hot
chats?"

"Just computers."

Jason stood up. "Okay. Time for Robert and me to go."

The Preacher stood. Jason picked up the backpack, and began to put it
on.

The Preacher said, "Jason, I assure you. That will not be necessary."

Jason attached the hose, opened the valve, and started the flame with
the cigarette lighter.

"After you, Pastor," he said, gesturing at the door. The Preacher's
expression was one of injured hospitality.

Robert was still in the chair on stage, the four thugs were still looking
tough, and Platt was still nowhere. The Preacher said to Jason, "I'll go
ahead and release your friend."

Jason said, "Heck, yeah," and kept walking with him. He looked at
Robert. Robert was staring straight ahead, expressionless.

At the front of the church, the Preacher mounted the stage, called Tony
aside, and whispered to him. Halfway through the whispering, Tony looked
at Jason for a few seconds, and then turned his attention back to the
Preacher. Then he nodded and said something back, straightened up, and
dismissed the three other thugs with an uncourteous hand flick. As they
left, Tony untied Robert's hands and unknotted and unwrapped the gag. It
was a bandanna. Tony dropped it in Robert's lap, gave Jason a dirty
look, and followed the three thugs out

164 keith snyder through a side door.

Jason looked at the Preacher. The Preacher bowed slightly and exited
behind Tony.

Robert was still staring straight ahead. Jason said, tentatively,
"Robert?"

Robert's eyes moved a little bit and he slowly looked toward Jason, but
didn't seem to see him.

Jason said, again, "Robert?"

Robert's gaze drifted. Uncertainty stirred in Jason. He stepped onto the
first step to the stage, and snapped, "Robert!"

Robert looked at him.

Jason said, "Are you ..." He gestured emptily.

"That," Robert said very slowly, and paused.

The low hiss of the propane flame was very loud in Robert's silence.

"Was," Robert said. Jason watched him closely.

Finally, as though pondering each word weightily, Robert said, "A very
... weird ... space."

He nodded slightly to himself, and his gaze drifted away.

Jason coaxed him outside and into the Plymouth. They left the Church and
headed North on the 110 Freeway.

show control 165

27

I ason turned onto the 10 West. Robert didn't say much in the car. After
fifteen minutes, Jason said, "Are you okay?"

Robert didn't respond. He was looking out the passenger window, with his
forehead leaning against it. Wind blew through the car. Jason caught
sight of himself in the rearview mirror. He looked tired.

He took the 10 to the Pacific Coast Highway and then went north to the
Santa Monica Pier, with the ocean on Jason's side of the car. He tried
to look at the ocean, but it was too dark, and hard to see beyond the
other lanes until he turned left across the highway and parked for three
dollars near the pier.

The pier was not crowded on a Monday night. A few couples with arms
linked wandered past the tacky shops and carnival games, and a stiff
wind gusted across the pier and parking lots. Jason and Robert went to
the bumper cars at the pier's end and collected Martin. Then they drove
both cars five minutes to a Denny's and ordered coffee, and Jason told
Martin uncomfortably and as briefly as possible about what had happened
at the church.

There was an awkward pause when he was done.

"So," Martin said coldly. "Mcgyver here makes a flamethrower out of
Coleman supplies and storms the Bastille like the Human Torch. Is that
about the size of it?"

166 keith snyder Jason said, "Yes." Martin said, "Am I missing
something, or was that probably the most moronic and irresponsible thing
he has ever done?"

«T T »

Hey--

Martin said, "Shut up, Jason. I'm talking to Robert. Robert?" Robert
said, "Huh? Oh. Well, it did work. Of course, that doesn't necessarily
discount stupidity."

Jason started to say, "Hey--" again, but before he could get it out,
Martin said, "Jason, why don't you go fight a duel or kill a hydra or
something? I'm too mad to even talk to you right now."

Jason got up, put his jacket on, and walked toward the door. Behind him,
Martin said, "You okay, buddy?" to Robert.

He went outside and looked back, and thought of the Denny's restaurant
on Burbank, after leaving Marisa at the fern bar. It seemed that he was
always standing outside places where people were.

The street he was on was called Colorado, and Jason wondered if it was
the same Colorado as the one in Pasadena. It ended at the pier. He
walked halfway up the pier and then off its side down a set of very wide
wooden steps to the beach. It was too cold to go barefoot. He sat down
on the last step and took his shoes and socks off, put the socks in the
shoes, and carried them across the beach. The sand was cold, and the
wind wrapped around his ankles.

There was enough light from the pier for Jason to discern the darker,
smooth part of the sand that marked the sloping reach of the tide. He
walked along the perimeter of the dark part, moving out of the way
whenever the flat remains of a small wave approached.

He walked that way for twenty minutes, looking at the show control 167

beach and the ocean and, to his right, the condominiums and parking lots
that filled the space between the beach and the Pacific Coast Highway.

Then, feeling a little foolish, he walked into the dark area and let the
frigid water roll over the tops of his feet. He hadn't been to the beach
in years. Only people from out of town or those who lived within walking
distance ever went there. Native Angelenos, five or ten or thirty
minutes away, went every few years.

The water was freezing, and the wind chilled Jason's feet between waves.

He hugged his arms around his chest and withdrew his hands into his
sleeves as far as he could while holding his shoes. The warmth inside
the sleeves felt like a furnace against his burned hands, so he
stretched his arms forward to move his sleeves up to his wrists. He sat
down a few feet past the dark region, put his shoes down on the sand,
and lay back on the beach with his legs out toward the water.

He noticed the trace of the sadness that he had felt earlier, and tried
to tease it into the open, but the more he wanted it to come, the more
it wouldn't. He lay and looked up at faint stars, and forgot to think
about the sadness. The wind numbed his scratched face, and the sand
soothed his hurt hands. He wiggled them into the sand, down a few inches
to where it was damp, and felt the coolness absorb their heat.

Distractedly, he thought about divorce papers. It cost one hundred and
thirty dollars to get a divorce if you didn't have children or property.

An easy divorce. What would he do with the papers when they came?

The cold tide reached the soles of his feet. A while later, it reached
the middle of his calf. He wondered how high it would go. The wet denim
would chafe later.

The first time she had cooked for him, she had made spherical
hamburgers, raw on the inside and black on the

168 keith snyder outside. On white bread. It always reminded him of a
Droodle: Tomato Sandwich Made By Amateur Tomato Sandwich Maker. The
sadness came and racked him. He heard himself sob, noted it, tried to
hold it, and the sadness receded. The icy tide reached the crook of his
knees.

Martin and Robert came looking for him some time later, and found him
shivering on a bench on the pier with his jeans sandy and soaked to
mid-thigh. They sat on the bench with him. Jason said, with his teeth
chattering, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Martin said, "Let's get you dried
off and warm," and Jason said, "Okay."

Robert drove the Plymouth. Jason turned the heater on, but its effect
was negligible against the wind that roared through the broken windows
and chilled the wet denim further. At the Manor, Jason took a pair of
pliers from the soap dish in the shower and turned the stripped shower
handle stems. He took a shower without a lot of heat or water pressure
and shut the water off with the pliers, dried, and put on a pair of gray
sweat pants and an oversized T-shirt.

Coffee was brewing in the pseudo-kitchen. In the front room, the piano
had been placed back upright. Its keys were at odd angles. A small space
heater battled the cold.

Martin came through the front door with a paper bag and made Jason sit
on the couch, took a tube of topical antibiotic and a roll of bandages
out of the bag, and bandaged Jason's right hand. Then he pushed a
blanket against the bottom of the door against drafts, took a bottle of
Irish whiskey out of the same bag, and went into the pseudo-kitchen.

Jason sat and looked at the glass and cardboard in the door.

Someone clumped down the inside stairs on the other side of the wall,
and then Robert's silhouette appeared against show control 169

the door. Robert knocked, came in, sat down on the piano bench, and
said, "Weird day."

Jason nodded.

Robert said, "Martin and I had a long talk at Denny's. He postulated
that you might think that this whole thing was your fault, and that
you'd let us down."

Jason nodded.

Robert said, "We're not your sidekicks. We're your friends. We have our
own volitions and our own motivations. We're not marionettes, and
although the case might be presented that you failed tactically or
strategically, you didn't fail Martin, and you certainly didn't fail
me."

Jason nodded.

Robert said, "I got myself caught."

Jason nodded again.

Robert said, "That nod means you disagree." Jason said, "I railroaded
you into helping me." Robert said, "You didn't railroad either of us
into anything. We talked about it and decided to help." Jason said, "I
let you go off by yourself."

Robert said, "You didn't let me do anything. You're the one who's always
saying that people choose what they do."

Martin came into the room with three coffee mugs on a black lacquer tray
that Jason had forgotten he owned. It had been a wedding gift from
Robert. The mugs were wedding gifts, too. So were all his dishes. So was
everything but the coffeemaker, and he'd bought Marisa the coffeemaker
for her birthday.

Martin put the tray down and distributed coffee. One of the mugs was
separate from the other two on the tray, and Martin took that one for
himself. Jason took his and raised it to drink, and hot alcohol vapor
came into his nose. He said, "Is this Irish coffee?"

170 keith snyder Martin said, "Yes." Jason said, "I never had Irish
coffee." He took a sip. It didn't taste as he expected.

Martin said, "So?"

Jason nodded and took another sip.

Robert said, "Do you understand that what happened today was not your
fault?" Jason said, "No." He felt annoyed and tense. "I also don't
understand why you're trying to make me feel better, when it should be
the other way around." Robert said, in a falsetto Pollyanna voice,
"Because we're your friends, you chowderhead!"

Jason said, "Chowderhead?" Martin said, "I'm sorry, Jase. I was just
worried."

Jason nodded again and looked down at his coffee, which became more
blurred as he watched it. His chest shook and he felt his jaw muscles
clench and unclench. He kept looking at the coffee. Martin said, "You
know we both love you, man. I'm sorry I got mad."

Jason looked at Robert. Robert said, "I'm sorry he got mad, too."

Jason wanted to say, "I love you guys, too," but he couldn't get it out,
and felt bad about it.

Martin said, "Maybe this isn't the time to talk about it." Robert said
to Jason, "Maybe so?"

Jason nodded and sipped his blurry coffee, and then, after a long time,
his chest stopped shaking and he put the coffee mug on the floor, and
the room faded as he fell asleep.

He slept fitfully for a few hours, but his hands and face hurt too much,
and then he started thinking about his left arm where he'd bashed it
against the rental car window frame, and it started hurting, too. He got
up and went into the pseudo show control 171

kitchen and looked through the little basket where he'd kept his
Percoset. There was only off-the-shelf Ibuprofen. He took five in a Tom
and Jerry jelly glass of lukewarm water from the bathroom tap. The clock
in the pseudo-kitchen said 4:30 A. M., so it was actually 4:15. He'd
gotten so used to Marisa's weird clock habits that to actually set the
right time would throw him off. He wondered if Monica had set her clock
ahead. Maybe it was a girl thing. He should have looked when he was in
her apartment.

He went through the bathroom and looked into the bedroom. Martin was
asleep on the futon. Jason went into the front room, called the
filtration plant, and left a message for his foreman that he'd be off on
personal leave for the rest of the week.

A little green light blinked on the answering machine on the bookcase.

Jason pressed the playback button and carried the machine as far into
the room as it would go, while it rewound. He put it on the floor and
sat next to it.

The tape reached its beginning and clunked into playback.

There were a few seconds of blank-tape hiss, and then a low click, and
then Jason's chest clutched as Marisa's voice said, "Jason, pick up the
phone." But the clutch wasn't overpowering.

"Jason, we should talk about this. Please pick up. I hope you don't do
anything stupid. Are you there? Hello? Well, I'll call you later. Please
don't do anything stupid, like go to Paul's house. Okay? Please call
me."

The next three messages were also Marisa, saying essentially the same
things over again.

The next one was also Marisa, but the tone was different. "Jason, I
don't see what you're so upset about. If I want to go to a music
festival, or whatever, I don't see how it concerns you."

172 keith snyder Jason decided not to listen to the rest of that
message. He pressed the fast-forward button, and the machine skipped to
the next message.

The rest of the incoming message tape was filled with Marisa,
alternately contrite and obdurate, but consistently impatient. Jason
listened to the first few seconds of each message, and then skipped
ahead to the next.

When the tape ended, he sat on the floor in the dark, and experienced a
curious lack of anguish.

He sat and thought, and after thinking hard about it for the better part
of an hour, it gradually came to him that although he'd have to consider
the point more extensively, it could conceivably be possible that Marisa
might not be such a prize.

And then, as he was mulling that over, something else came to him.

He got up and went to the computer.

show control 173

28

IVAorning sunlight began to shine around the edges of the blue towel
that hung on the front door, and Jason realized that he had been sitting
in front of the computer for hours. He got up and looked around for a
big piece of paper, and ended up tearing Martin's brown paper bag along
its folds and flattening it. He found a thick black marking pen in the
front room, sat on the floor, and drew a big silhouette of a bat on the
bag. It was strange drawing with his left hand, and the marker moved
oddly.

He looked for a roll of tape, didn't find one, and used three Band-Aids
from the bathroom cabinet to tape the bag on the back door, facing the
parking lot. Then he sat down again at the computer, brought his account
of events up to date, and copied it onto two floppy disks from a box on
the table.

Somebody tapped on the door. Jason got up and moved the blue towel, and
then let Robert in. Robert had a pink cardboard box, its top open to
display two rows of glistening donuts. He stepped into the room and
said, "Have a donut. Not the chocolate one."

Jason said, "I'll fight you for the chocolate one," and went into the
pseudo-kitchen to make coffee. Robert held the box with one hand and ate
the chocolate donut with the other.

174 keith snyder "I hope espresso beans work for regular coffee," Jason
said. "There's no more regular ones. They look darker. Maybe I should
have used less."

"Maybe you should have used more."

Jason wondered which was right, and then said, "Caffeine is your
friend," and dumped the contents of the grinder into the coffeemaker.

Robert took out a crumb donut and ate it while he said, "How are you
feeling?" Jason said, "Like I just took a short intermission from
banging my head against a big post office. I guess I don't recognize
when I get stressed and intense."

"Well, that's why you have friends," Robert said. "So we can have the
pleasure of recognizing it instead." "Sorry," Jason said. "I guess I've
been less than fun recently."

"You've been really tightly wound. You seem a little better today."

"Maybe I am. How many donuts are you going to eat?" Robert said,
"Eight," and extracted a maple bar from the box. Before eating it, he
held it poised before his lips and said in his thin Alistair Cooke
accent, "Donut go gently into that good night," waited a beat, and then
stuffed the whole thing into his mouth.

"Wow," Jason said, "You're literate and classy both. Marry me."

Robert said, "Mmf mmm drm nnn." Jason said, "Thanks," and took an
old-fashioned buttermilk donut from the box with his left hand.

The telephone rang, and Jason dropped the donut back in the box and went
into the front room to answer it.

"Acme Carrot Ranch," he said in a receptionist voice. "Carrot speaking."

show control 175

Norton Platt's voice said, "Is that chicken for me?" "It's a bat," Jason
said. "Gotham needs you. The donut population is mysteriously
diminishing." Platt said, "Robin, to the chicken cave!" and then hung
up.

Jason hung up and said to Robert, "Norton Platt's coming over for
donuts. He has a big gun. Leave that disgusting custard-filled thing for
him." Robert said, "Okay," and looked at the pink cruller. "You don't
usually see much pink food."

Martin shuffled blearily out of the bedroom and said, "Thanks for
keeping it down so I could sleep, you jerks."

Beaming happily, Robert extended the box and said, "Good morning, Mr.
Sunshine!"

Martin looked in the box, said, "Gross," and rummaged in the dish
cabinet for a coffee mug. There wasn't a sufficiently clean one, so he
took out a Flintstones jelly glass and poured coffee into it. Then he
took a plain cake donut out of the box and got a carton of milk out of
the cube refrigerator.

The back door shuddered open until its lower edge scraped against the
floor and wedged tight. Norton Platt, wearing a faded orange T-shirt
tucked into light blue jeans with a belt, stepped in and said, "Nice
door."

Martin sniffed the milk and poured a little into his jelly glass. It
disappeared. He looked hatefully at Jason.

Jason said, "Robert Goldstein, Martin Altamirano; Norton Platt."

Platt said, "Hello. What kind of coffee is that?"

Robert held the tip of his forefinger to his thumb and enunciated, "A
very special coffee, lovingly blended from a plentiful extravaganza of
aromatic espresso beans."

Platt looked at the espresso part of the coffeemaker and said, "Why
didn't you just make espresso?"

 176 keith snyder Jason said, "It's a poor mind that can only think of
one way to make coffee." Martin said, "He doesn't know how." He poured
more milk into his coffee until the glass was full. The coffee became
very slightly less dark.

Jason said, "So dense, not even light can escape." Martin said, "You or
the coffee?" Platt rooted through the donut box and said, "No maple
bars?" He took a bear claw.

Jason looked in the box. His buttermilk donut was gone. He took the
custard-filled one. "Let's go into the other room so we can sit down."

The answering machine was on the piano bench. Robert sat on the floor,
Martin sat on Jason's amplifier, Platt sat on the couch, and Jason sat
next to the answering machine and said, "Thank you all for coming
today." Something vaguely familiar buzzed in him, and it took a few
moments to blow the layered dust off and identify it as enthusiasm.

"I put something together when I was listening to my answering machine
messages from last week. Listen." He pressed the Play button.

Marisa's voice said, "--don't see what you're so upset about. If I want
to go to a music festival, or whatever, I don't see how it concerns
you."

He stopped playback.

Martin said, "So?" Jason said, "That festival was in Santa Barbara.
Robert, look on the Macintosh screen. What do you see?"

Robert put down his coconut donut and rose from the floor to look.

"There's a folder out called 'SB Show.'"

"Open it."

Martin got off the amplifier to watch, and Platt leaned

show control 177

around to see the screen. Robert clicked the mouse and the folder opened
on screen to reveal a list of file names.

Jason said, "Open the one called 'SB Show Details.'"

Clicking the mouse again caused text to appear on the screen.

Jason said, "Read that first paragraph."

Robert read, "'Artist and co-performers shall be present at least two
hours before scheduled curtain time. Festival will make every attempt to
provide one assistant per act to assist in setup, sound check, and
breakdown. Artist is urged to contact the assistant in advance to
discuss details. Artist agrees to forfeit one sixteenth of his or her
payment for every fifteen minutes of tardiness. Artist agrees--"

"That's fine. Remember the part about the one assistant per act. How was
Monica killed?"

Platt said, "Somebody installed a powerful ruby laser into the same case
as her show laser, and when it came time for the show laser to write on
her, the ruby laser kicked in instead and killed her."

"Did the show laser work properly until that point?"

"Vpc "

Jason shifted on the bench. "So something switched the III lasers."
Platt said, "Yes. Probably a unique MIDI event." Jason said, "Very good
guess. That is the case."

Martin said, "What's a unique MIDI event?"

Jason gestured for Platt to explain if he wanted. Platt made the same
gesture back, and Jason said, "You know how I use my Macintosh for
making music?" Martin said, "Yes." Jason said, "It probably seems like
I'm recording and playing back sounds from the computer, because there
are Record

178 keith snyder and Playback buttons depicted on the screen. But what
I'm really doing is recording actions. When I play a keyboard, messages
are sent to the computer. The messages represent actions like what note
is played, how hard it's struck, when it's released, things like that.
As each of those messages is sent to the computer, the computer notes
it, and adds it to a list of actions. Get it?"

"Got it so far," Martin said. "Keep going."

"That's what happens when I'm 'recording.' Then when I stop recording, I
can 'play back,' which consists of the computer sending all those
messages back to the keyboard, so the keyboard thinks it's being played,
and makes noise. It's called sequencing. It's kind of an evolutionary
step up from a player piano."

Martin squinted and then said, "Yeah, I got it. That's why you call it
sequencing, right? Because you're making lists of sequences of actions?"

"Right. Each of those action-messages is called a MIDI event, and each
of the message-lists is called a sequence. There are lots of kinds of
MIDI events, not just representations of actions. Some represent things
like volume, or placement in a stereo field, or vibrato, all expressed
numerically."

Platt interjected, "For instance, if your volume is set at, say, a value
of sixty-four, and you send a volume MIDI event with a value of
one-twenty to the keyboard, the keyboard will suddenly get louder."

Robert said, "So if you send a vibrato MIDI event of one twenty, the
sound being produced by the keyboard will get more vibrato-y."

Jason said, "Right. So what Mr. Fluffy did-" Robert said to Platt, "We
call the killer Mr. Fluffy." Platt said, "Right."

show control 179

Jason said, "What Mr. Fluffy did was to use a MIDI event to cause the
laser controller to switch from the show laser to the ruby laser when it
recognized that event." Platt said, "How do you know that?" Jason said,
"Same as Mr. Fluffy. I looked in the event list. Robert, close that one
and open the one called 'SB Sequence.'"

Robert clicked the mouse and the text went away. Then he clicked again
and the contents of SB Sequence came up on the screen. Platt got up off
the couch and came around for a better look.

He looked back at Jason and said, "How did you get this?"

"I down loaded the contents of Monica's hard disk way back when this all
started. I just never made the connection before that 'SB' stood for
"Santa Barbara,' so I never thought to look through it." Platt said,
"May I?" to Robert.

Robert said, "Sure," and got up. Platt put his bear claw on top of his
coffee mug and sat down and clicked the mouse a few times. "Where's the
unique event?"

Jason said, "In the track called 'Lights.' Bar number two forty, beat
one."

Platt brought the contents of the track up on the screen. At bar 240,
beat one, in the MIDI event list, it said: #9 127.

"There it is," Platt said. "Controller nine to a value of
one-twenty-seven. Controller nine has no standard meaning. What do you
think she was using it for?"

"I don't think she was using it for anything," Jason said.

Robert said, "Then what's it doing there?" Jason said, "Someone else put
it there."

"How?"

"Steal the sequence data, insert the MIDI event, and then put the
sequence back into Monica's Macintosh, replacing

180 keith snyder the original one, and she'd never know the controller
nine event was there, unless she went hunting for it."

Robert looked fascinated. "Steal it how?" Jason said, "My sequencer--and
Monica's--run on a Macintosh, but some sequencers are little boxes that
you can carry around easily. They call them 'lunchboxes.' Two things,
though: the first is that she didn't know that there was anything to
hunt for, and the second is that she didn't have time to."

"Because ..." Platt said.

"Because the tampered-with data was dumped into her computer from the
lunchbox just before curtain time."

Robert nodded, thoughtfully. "By whom?"

"By the same person who stole it and gave it to Mr. Fluffy in the first
place. Someone who had access to her equipment while it was being set
up, and had time to dump data back and forth, and edit it." Martin said,
"The assistant you told us to remember." Robert said, "Who is ..."

Jason said, "Who is Paul Reno."

show control 181

29

Robe ert's eyes widened and he said, "Paul?"

At the same time, Platt said, "Paul Reno?" Robert said, "You know him?"

Platt said, "Why do you think it was Paul Reno?" Jason said, "When
Marisa--the voice on the answering machine --mentioned the music
festival, she was referring to the Santa Barbara festival. She went with
Paul. He worked the show." "She told you this?"

"Yes." Martin said, "Even if he's a sleazoid, just because he was there
it doesn't mean he did it."

"He did it," Jason said. "I know it. Paul doesn't volunteer for
anything, and a little skullduggery like that would be just his thing."

Platt said, "Then how do you know that he didn't kill Monica? He had
access to the lasers at the same time as he had access to the sequencer
data."

"I thought of that. Three reasons. The first is, the Preacher told me
about an elaborate scheme that Mr. Fluffy used to alter the laser, and
it's not Paul's style. Paul would just walk off with it and then bring
it back. He could pull off an explanation so well that no one would even
remember that he'd 182 keith snyder been gone with it. Second, he's too
smart to show his face around a murder scene, if he's the murderer.
Third, I've known him a long time.

He probably likes to think that he could kill somebody cold-bloodedly,
but he couldn't." Platt said, "Then ..."

"I don't think he knew what he was involved in. I think he thought it
was something else. Data theft, maybe, or a bad practical joke. Music
piracy. I don't know."

Platt nodded. "That fits what I know of him. I tend to agree." Jason
said, "How do you know of him?"

"I know people who like to keep an eye on the minor leagues."

Martin said, "To watch for trouble, or to get the good draft picks?"

Platt said, "Same thing. Reno wants to be in the majors, but ..." He
smiled and shrugged.

Martin said, "Why not?"

"He's not honest with himself," Platt said, "and that can lead to
problems working with other people." Robert said, "A self-centered Spock
is such a drag to share space with." Platt said, "We prefer 'G-Man.' It
makes us feel like Robert Vaughn."

Robert said, "Us who?"

Platt smiled apologetically. Robert returned it with a tacky talk-show
smile that he tried unsuccessfully to wrestle into apology, twisting
through a variety of rubber-faced attempts. Everyone watched him fail,
and then Martin said, "Ladies and gentlemen, this moment of surrealism
brought to you by Mutual of Omaha."

Jason saw Robert latching onto the Wild Kingdom theme show control 183

and said, "Before Jim wrestles the rhino, let's get back to the
subject." Platt said, "Then Paul Reno is a possible link with the ...
with Mr. Fluffy." Jason said, "What do you know about Paul?"

It was a moment before Platt answered. "Reno does odd jobs for an
unusual clientele. He has several Net accesses that he thinks are
secret, and uses the Net the way you might use a middleman; as a way of
removing himself from the transaction. He's not believed dangerous, but
his potential has not quite been dismissed, either. Someone will
probably snap him up within a few years and let him think he's playing
first-string."

"When in reality ..." Robert said.

"He'll be, oh, fifth-string." Jason said, "Which means, what,
clandestine back-alley meetings with short, limping informants in
rumpled white linen suits?" Platt said, "Yes, that is exactly,
precisely, what it means."

"So he was probably contacted over the Net for some innocent --well, not
exactly innocent--data theft." Platt shrugged and said, "Could be. I'll
ask around if anybody's heard anything."

Jason nodded. "Ask whom?"

Platt smiled again.

Jason repeated, "Ask whom?" "Jason," Platt said, "the enigmatic smile
means 'I'm not going to tell you.' It is considered poor form in tonier
G Man circles to press the issue when presented with the enigmatic
smile." Robert said, "G-Manners." Platt snorted and said, "You guys are
too much."

I

184 keith snyder Jason said, "Mr. Platt, with due respect, I don't
particularly care where all the better feds are wintering this year. My
two friends, God knows why, have decided to follow me around and poke
into things. I have a responsibility to them to poke into said things
first and see what's there, whenever I can. I apologize if I'm out of
line, but the question stands. Ask whom?"

Platt picked up his bear claw and said, "I understand that, Jason. Now
you need to understand something, too. As valid as your question is, I'm
not going to answer it, and don't ask me again." He took a bite.

Another "Ask whom" threatened to emerge. Jason stifled it and said
instead, "I want to go to this address and look at what's there." Platt
said, "What address?"

Jason smiled enigmatically.

Platt said, "Okay, see you there."

show control 185

30

Ihey drove past the address twice before Martin spotted it. Jason parked
the Plymouth alongside a nearly wrecked Chevette in a dirt lot between
two badly painted blue apartment buildings, and they got out. Platt was
not in evidence, but Jason had no doubt that he was lurking somewhere.

Robert said, "Hey, this is almost as nice as our house!"

Martin looked at the blistered paint and said, "Nicer."

Each apartment had its own fractional address, and the one they were
looking for was 1/4. They found it up a swaying flight of stairs. Its
door was the color of dirty cream, and the remains of a doorbell had
been painted over, thickly, more than once. Jason tried the knob. It was
locked. The doorframe was rotted and flimsy. Martin said, "Try breathing
on it." Jason said, "Here goes," backed up a step, concentrated, and
kicked the knob straight on. The doorframe came apart without making
much noise, and the door opened.

Martin said, "Nice work, Danno."

Jason beat his left fist against his chest and said, "Jase strong. Jase
open door."

It was a ratty single-room apartment with an ugly rust colored carpet
and a kitchenette. A plastic window, with closed red curtains, looked
east. Under the window was a table made 186 keith snyder from two
sawhorses and an interior door with no knob; on the table was an IBM
personal computer with its case cracked open and wires ripped out.

The kitchenette had a refrigerator, a stove, a countertop and sink, a
wooden chair, a single cupboard, and a small table on hinges that folded
against the wall. The table was unfolded down over the chair. There was
nothing on the walls, and nothing in the refrigerator or its freezer
compartment but soft, built-up frost. A toaster-oven sat on the counter
next to the refrigerator. Jason opened a drawer under the toaster-oven
and found a few forks and table knives. He went into the bathroom: ugly
linoleum with sparkles in it; a torn plastic shower curtain; and some
cracked, fish-shaped blue-green nonskid stickers in the bathtub.

A sliding door next to the bathroom revealed an empty closet with a high
shelf. There was nothing else in the apartment.

Jason felt uneasy, and said lightly, "Well, this was useful."

Robert was looking thoughtful. He said, "Not so fast. We just started.

Let's start in the kitchen." Martin looked at Jason. Jason shrugged and
said, "Okay."

The kitchenette was too confined for all three, so Jason and Martin
waited in the doorway.

Robert opened the refrigerator door and poked around inside. After
thirty seconds, he said, "Refrigerator's empty but not clean, so you'd
expect to find some trace of veggies in the veggie trays, but nothing's
there. Mr. Fluffy didn't eat a balanced diet. Or if he did, he didn't
cook, though he could have done TV dinners in the toaster-oven. No open
box of baking soda that most people leave in when they clean out their
refrigerators when they move, which supports the no-ingredients theory."

show control 187

He opened the freezer compartment. "No real ice trays. Just these little
baby ones. If he'd ever had guests, the baby ones would be in the
cupboard, and there would be real ones in here. The freezer hasn't been
defrosted in a long time." He looked thoughtful and then said, "I don't
know if that means anything."

Closing the refrigerator, he opened the cupboard and said, "One plate.

No shelf paper. He didn't have a girlfriend." Martin said, "No friends
over, no girlfriend, no real food." Jason said, "Sounds like me, except
for the friends part." Robert continued, "Dust on the shelves." Jason
said, "Thank you both for ignoring the obvious straight line." "It
wasn't easy," Robert said.

Martin looked at both of them and said, "What obvious straight line?"
"So," Jason said, "Mr. Fluffy is a solitary person." He moved aside so
Robert could exit the kitchenette and enter the bathroom.

"Nothing here," Robert said, after a minute.

"Nothing here either," he said, after looking through the closet.

Martin said, "What's with the ripped-up computer?"

Jason looked more closely at the IBM. "I don't know for sure," he said,
"but it looks as though a hard disk might have been removed from it. To
keep whatever data was on it from falling into the wrong hands. Like
ours, maybe."

Norton Platt appeared in the doorway and said, "This is very
interesting. We're not the only ace private eyes here." Jason said, "Who
else?"

Platt tipped his head toward the street. "Two men in a gray Chrysler.

Well-dressed. Not government." 188 keith snyder Jason said, "Who,
then?"

"They look like organized crime to me." He shrugged. "I could be wrong,
though." Robert said, "If I were a well-dressed organized criminal, the
only relationship I'd have with a slovenly, dishonest programmer would
be an employer-employee dynamic." Martin said, "And if I was a slovenly,
dishonest programmer who suddenly disappeared, and then two organized
criminals camped outside my door, I bet I'd be gone with some of their
money." Jason said, "Point them out to me."

Platt stepped back from the doorway so Jason could see out, saying,
"Past the end of the dirt lot, half a block down, on the left. They
don't look like the Preacher's people, so I'll take a stab and say they
work for whoever he owes money to."

Jason looked for the gray Chrysler and found it, parked in front of a
tan house under an avocado tree. He left the apartment, went down the
stairs, and walked toward it.

Above and behind him, Platt's voice said, "Somehow, I knew you would."

When Jason was fifty feet from the Chrysler, its doors opened, and two
men got out. They were in their late thirties or early forties, and
interchangeable, with short, dark, conservative hair, muted slacks with
black shoes, and white shirts. They didn't look like anything from a
Bogart movie. They looked like district sales reps between customer
calls. Software, or paper goods. The one on the driver's side had high
cheekbones. "Good morning," Jason called, still walking.

"Good morning," Driver's Side said. His tone was friendly and
impersonal.

Jason stopped a few feet away and said, "We're both looking for the same
person."

Driver's Side glanced at the other man and said, "I beg your pardon?"

show control 189

Jason said, "My name is Jason Keltner. It's possible that we can help
each other. I'm in the Pasadena phone book." Driver's Side said, "I
don't exactly know what you mean."

"You're looking for the man who lives in that apartment. So am I. I've
made some progress. Feel free to call."

"Thank you for the offer," Passenger's Side said. His voice was higher
than Driver's Side's. "But I think you've made a mistake. We were just
trying to figure out how to get to the Interstate."

Jason said, "Down this street, hang a left to the Ventura Freeway, five
minutes to the Interstate."

"Thank you," Driver's Side said.

Jason said, "You're welcome." He smiled, turned around, and went back to
the apartment building.

Martin and Robert were waiting by the cars. Platt was gone again.

Martin said, "So?" "I offered our valuable assistance," Jason said. "Any
further useful clues inside?"

Robert raised one eyebrow and said, "I believe the man we are looking
for is a four-foot-tall Alsatian, albino, with one eye, a pronounced
limp, and a curious predilection for mango chutney." "Yuck," Jason said.

"What the heck is chutney?" Martin said.

"A fruit relish," Jason said. "Let's look around the outside here."

"For what?"

The Chrysler pulled into the street and drove away. Jason walked toward
the side of the building. "Smoking pistols. Secret one-way spyholes.

Mysterious and elusive women with husky contralto voices."

190 keith snyder They found no spyholes. They did find a corroded car
battery, several piles of hardened dog excrement, a broken syringe, a
trash dumpster, and a lot of rusted wire nails in the weeds along the
side of the building.

The trash dumpster was empty.

"Darn," Martin said. "No women." "Look in the dumpster again," Jason
said. He knocked on both downstairs doors, but no one seemed to be
there. All three went up the stairs again. When Jason knocked on the
upstairs door, a small white rat-dog poked its pointed face past the
thin lace curtains in the window, but no one opened the door. The
rat-dog stood on the windowsill and yapped at them. It had a pink collar
with fake diamonds on it, and brown gums, and its eyes were milky and
bulging.

"Hello, pooch," Jason said.

"Jesus Christ," Martin said. "What the hell is that?" Robert said, "Eek.
The mutants have come."

The rat-dog yipped at them and fell off the windowsill.

Robert said, "Never mind. They're not dangerous."

They left in their cars, stopped at a hot dog stand, and got chocolate
egg creams and chili onion cheese dogs in yellow paper bags. They ate
them on the way back to the Manor. No one spilled anything. Everyone was
impressed.

At the manor, Jason took five more Ibuprofen tablets, hoped they'd work
better than the last five, and went into the front room. The green light
on the answering machine was blinking. Jason hit the playback button
while Robert and Martin sat on the floor and sucked noisily at the spare
remains of their egg creams.

The tape rewound, the machine clunked, and then a man's voice said,
"This message is for Mr. Jason Keltner regarding an apartment in North
Hollywood. My name is Mr. Matthew Davies, and I would be interested in
speaking further with you. I can be reached at--"

show control 191

Jason said, "Wow, that was quick," hit the pause button, got a pencil
from the computer table, restarted playback, and wrote the telephone
number on his chili onion cheese dog bag. The number had a Los Angeles
area code. He called it.

A female voice said, "Mr. Davies' office."

Jason said, "Mr. Davies, please."

"May I ask who is calling, please?"

"Jason Keltner, returning his call."

"One moment."

Light jazz played tastefully. Jason's brain glazed over.

The light jazz stopped. "This is Matthew Davies. Thank you for returning
my call, Mr. Keltner."

"My pleasure."

"I understand you have shown an interest in an apartment in North
Hollywood."

"Yes," Jason said. "That is my understanding of the situation as well."

"If I may ask, what is your interest?"

"I'm trying to find the person who used to live there. As are you, I
think."

"What makes you think that?"

"Because you're there and he's not, and he has a history of taking
things that belong to other people. I would like to meet with whoever in
your organization is in charge of dealing with this kind of, uh ..."

He was stuck for the word.

After a few seconds, Davies said, "Contingency?" "That's it," Jason
said. "Contingency. It seems to me that it would make more sense to
combine efforts."

"Although the offer is generous," Davies said, "what makes you think
that you have anything that this organization does not have?" 192 keith
snyder "Nothing at all," Jason said. "What makes you think I don't?"
Davies said, "How is this afternoon?"

"Satisfactory. I'll take the kids to a movie some other time."

"You don't have kids. How is this afternoon?"

"Where and when?"

"Do you know Rosa's on Wilshire?"

"Vaguely. What's the address?"

Davies gave it to him. "Five o'clock."

They hung up. Jason turned around and said, "Watson, the game is afoot!"
"Sounds like Twister," Robert said.

show control 193

31

tvosa's was the kind of faux-Mexican restaurant that Jason liked. It was
not too dark, served large portions, used shredded beef instead of
ground beef, and had no roving mariachis. The salsa verde was
medium-hot. The margaritas were large and slushy, and were not available
in peach or strawberry flavors.

Matthew Davies looked like a black-and-white photograph of a Fortune 500
executive. He had dark hair with gray at the temples, slate-gray eyes,
and a confident handshake, all contained in a well-made dark gray suit.

His tie was pinstriped and understated, and a charcoal-gray overcoat lay
on the seat beside him. In their contrast to his otherwise monochromatic
appearance, the normal fleshtones of his hands and face were mildly
surprising in the amber light of the table candle.

Jason was not wearing a gray suit. He was wearing a long sleeved white
shirt and dark blue jeans with black boots. His hair was tied back with
a thin, soft black band and he had foregone his Screamin' Pink Tigers
ski jacket for a brown leather jacket that he never wore because he
never went anywhere nice enough. New white bandages on his right hand
afforded a subtle and stylish counterpoint to his shirt. The word, Jason
thought, is "flair."

194 keith snyder Davies had decaf. He took a sip and said, "What is it
you would like from this organization?"

Jason ate one of the free tortilla chips that came before the dinner.

Bond. James Bond. "Information," he said.

"What information?"

"If I knew that, I'd be out acting on it. We're both nosing after the
same rabbit. I contacted you because it seemed inefficient not to, but I
don't have a specific agenda."

Davies nodded and sipped his coffee. Jason ate more free chips and salsa
and noticed that the surface of Davies' coffee trembled slightly when he
raised and lowered the cup. Either Davies was nervous or he just had
shaky hands.

Davies put his coffee down without rattling the saucer and said, "What's
your interest in the rabbit?"

"It's personal."

"I understand that you believe he killed Monica Gleason." Jason waited.
Davies said, "I also understand that you have an arrangement with Billy
Cryer. How did he get you on his team?"

"He didn't. I don't work for him."

Davies said, "We would like to bring you on board with us."

Jason said, "Who's us?"

"The organization I represent."

"Yeah, I got that part. What organization?"

"The people for whom I work prefer to remain anonymous."

"Now there's something I've never heard before."

Davies shrugged. "It's a secretive business."

A needle of impatience stabbed Jason. What's a secretive business? He
said, "You work for SMERSH, don't you?"

A red-haired waiter brought their dinner. Davies' was arroz con polio,
and Jason's was a chicken enchilada with beans and rice on the side.

show control 195

Jason ate some of his enchilada and then said, "So, do you guys offer a
competitive retirement plan?"

"The people for whom I work have followed your progress with approval,
and would be very pleased to recruit into the organization an individual
with a sense of discretion and a respect for the affairs of others."

"But since one wasn't around ..." Jason said. When Davies didn't smile,
Jason squelched the impulse to make a rimshot sound with his mouth.

"Thanks for the offer, but this is just a hobby for me. My true passion
is the exciting and lucrative water filtration industry."

Uncertainty flickered across Davies' face and was gone in an instant,
but Jason saw and enjoyed it.

Davies leaned forward again. "The people for whom I work understand that
to acquire such an individual would require sufficient and appropriate
compensation."

Jason thoughtfully scooped up some beans with a free tortilla chip.

Bond. Savings Bond.

"This isn't about work," he said. "This is about paying me to get me out
of the way."

"Not at all," Davies protested. "Simply put, you have impressed some
people who are not easy to impress. This offer is not extended to many
people." He removed a thick off-white business envelope from his inside
coat pocket and dropped it on a clean part of the table. It went thunk,
and the amber candle flickered.

"Let me guess," Jason said. "There's more where that came from."

"Indeed there is," Davies said.

Jason picked up the envelope. It was not light. "How much is in here?"

"Ten thousand dollars."

196 keith snyder "Ten thousand."

"Yes."

"In small, unmarked bills?"

"Yes."

"Pretty soon you're talking real money."

"Pardon?" The uncertain look was back, briefly.

"Never mind." Jason dropped the envelope back on the table. "I'm
flattered and everything, but I'm just not interested in being
acquired."

"Perhaps you have an idea of a more suitable sum." "I have many ideas,"
Jason said. "None of them involve taking on yet another day job. Illegal
or otherwise."

"Then what exactly do you have in mind?"

"If the people you work for really want this guy, there are better ways
to spend ten thousand dollars than bribing me with it."

((tj* j_ "

It s not--

"Yeah, yeah, it's not a bribe."

Davies didn't seem to have anything to say.

Jason said, "I'm not looking for employment. However, I might be
intrigued by the prospect of a joint venture. Tell your people that."

Davies didn't look well. He picked up his decaf and sipped some more.

Then he said, "Please excuse me for a moment," and left the booth.

Jason finished his food and looked covetously at Davies' plate.

Davies came back and said, "It looks as though you may tell them
yourself. Shall we?" Jason said, "Now? Uh, sure."

Davies gathered his overcoat, Jason stood and ate the last tortilla
chip, and they left the restaurant.

show control 197

Bond, Jason thought. Erasable Bond.

Davies' car was a creamy white Lexus with a leather interior. The radio
station that came on when Davies turned the key was one that advertised
"continuous soft hits." Davies turned it off. Usually when someone said
"continuous soft hits" around Jason, he'd hit them gently and steadily
in the arm until they got the joke and told him to cut it out. Davies
didn't seem to be someone to appreciate that species of razor wit, so
Jason opted instead to look out the window.

The Lexus hummed subtly through the Miracle Mile district of Wilshire
Boulevard, swept with a subdued hush into Beverly Hills, arced
gracefully onto a broad, flat avenue with correct trees, and shimmered
unbumpingly into a driveway, settling to an easy stop at a large iron
gate. The Plymouth rarely shimmered. It had hummed once, though, just
before a wheel came off and Jason had to climb down a freeway embankment
to retrieve it.

The large iron gate was separated from a tall concealing hedge by two
large metal lions with calcified streaks on their faces. Davies waved
somewhere and the heavy gate halves opened silently inward. The Lexus
engine purred, and the car whispered forward onto a circular cobblestone
driveway and parked in front of a mansion from the movies, a tall and
sprawling building that somehow managed despite its expense to appear
squat and ungainly.

A cobblestone path led through a mannered jungle of broad-leafed plants
with leathery stems to a big ungainly front door flanked by two big
ungainly men, one short and dark, and the other tall and light. The tall
one wore aviator sunglasses. Both had been standing with their arms
folded, but unfolded them and looked dimly aware as the Lexus drew up.

r 198 keith snyder

There was a heliport with a bubble-bodied orange helicopter perched on
it atop a small rise to the east. Jason had the feeling that anywhere
within two hundred feet of the house, the weather stayed at 72 degrees
and balmy, by special arrangement.

An attached carport provided shelter for a red Lamborghini, a black
Bentley, and a very old, but flawlessly restored, green Karmann Ghia.

Next to the Karmann Ghia was a silver car of angles and slopes, which
Jason didn't recognize.

Jason looked at the heliport and said, "You don't work for SMERSH. You
work for Madonna."

Davies got out, so Jason did too, and noticed a video camera mounted on
one of the uprights of the carport. He looked at everything again and
found more cameras on the house and the heliport.

Davies said, "After you," and gestured toward the front door. As they
walked toward it, Davies nodded to the two men, who nodded back. The
tall one opened the door and Jason and Davies went in.

Jason had once gone to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena just after he
and Marisa had separated, during one of the times when he'd found it
necessary to keep very busy. The front room of the mansion reminded him
of it. The room was large and white, with paintings and small sculptures
arranged around its perimeter, discreetly lighted. There were no Lucite
cases around the sculptures, and Jason curled his fingers into his
palms, conscious of the possibility of knocking something over. Two red
doorways faced each other across the room. In the center of the white
tiled floor, on a square mahogany stand, was a massive black iron
sculpture of what appeared to Jason to be a cancerous turkey giblet.

Next to the huge giblet was a slender man of medium height and bad skin,
in another gray suit. As Davies and Jason stepped into the room, the
slender man came forward.

show control 199

Davies said, "Mr. Pascal."

The slender man inclined his head and said, "Matthew." Then he looked at
Jason and said, "Mr. Keltner." He had an accent that Jason couldn't
place.

Jason said, "Call me Warren." Pascal said, "That's very funny," in a
friendly voice, without laughing.

His eyes were casual and unwelcoming. Jason thought of an amiable cobra.

Pascal nodded at Davies again, and Davies bowed a little and went
outside, Jason wondered if he would sit in the car and sing continuous
soft hits.

Pascal looked at Jason appraisingly. Jason smiled pleasantly. Then,
although Pascal's face didn't change tangibly, his expression suddenly
shifted from appraisal to something else that was unblinking and
unfriendly. Jason recognized the trick, but it worked anyway, and he got
the cobra feeling again.

After an uncomfortable time, Jason said, "Can you do this?" He crossed
his eyes and then moved the left one back and forth.

"I was told that you are not serious," Pascal said.

Jason uncrossed his eyes and said, "You have no idea how many staring
contests I've been in this week." Pascal said, "We shall talk in the
study." He gestured toward one of the red doorways and then followed
Jason through a richly carpeted and paneled hallway. There were several
closed doors with solid-looking polished hardware, and then an open
archway on the right that overlooked a broad stairway and a big room
with bookshelves, couches, and a long grand piano with a silver
candelabra, and then more closed doors. At the end of the hallway,
Pascal opened a door on the left and went in, after Jason.

The study was all leather and wood. Two black leather chairs framed a
small round table in the middle of the

f 200 keith snyder room. The walls were full of books from floor to
ceiling, with the exception of a space left for a red brick fireplace
that had no fire in it. Many of the books were leather-bound, and bore
gilt lettering on their spines. Jason tipped one toward him and looked
at the title: Lehrbuch der Geshichte der Philosophic. He pulled it off
the shelf and said, "Did you read this? I love the part where Skipper
saves Muffin from the burning barn."

Pascal said, "I hope you amuse yourself, Mr. Keltner, because I find the
effort pointless." "Always," Jason said. "What kind of car is that
silver thing in your carport?"

"It is called a Vector." Pascal sat. Jason put the book back and sat in
the other chair.

Pascal said, "Do you know who I am?"

"No."

"Why is that, do you think?"

"Why don't I know who you are?"

t(\r »

Yes.

"Uh ..." Jason groped for an answer. "Because you never introduce
yourself when we bump into each other down at the malt shop?" "You do
not know who I am," Pascal said, "because you are an amateur."

"An amateur what?"

"There are plenty of things that you do not know because you are an
amateur."

"Name two."

"Number one: you do not know who I am. Number two: you do not know why
Mr. Platt is involved in your affairs."

"Because he's a friend of Monica's."

"That is not the case, and you would know it, if you were not an
amateur."

show control 201

"Ah."

"Why 'ah?'"

"Um, because it seemed to be my turn to talk, but I had nothing
substantial to say."

"Here is what I want. I want you to accept Mr. Davies' offer."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want to."

"Because?"

"Because I don't want to."

"You put yourself at a considerable disadvantage by your insistence upon
maintaining your amateur status."

"Don't say amateur. Say enthusiast."

"Semantics. You are at a disadvantage."

"Or hobbyist."

"Obfuscation. What is your answer?"

"My answer is 'How would you like to drop the subject and talk about
something else?'"

"Specifically?"

"Specifically cooperation. We have similar goals."

"You have nothing to offer me."

"Imagine my embarrassment," Jason said, standing. "I better leave before
I start to cry."

"Sit." Jason sat. "Woof," he said.

"What is your plan?"

"I'm not going to tell you."

"Because?"

"Because I don't know who you are."

"Then it is impossible for us to discuss anything." Jason considered
that. "Okay," he said. "Here's what I want. I want resources."

202 keith snyder "What kind of resources?"

"I don't know yet. But when I know, I'll want them."

"What else?"

"I want information. Again, I don't yet know what information."

"And in return for these undefined resources and information, you offer
what?"

"Same answer. I'm not about to barter away something concrete for
something this vague."

"Then what you wish is merely the opening of a potential avenue."

"Yeah, that."

Pascal opened a drawer in the small round table, extracted a white card
with a telephone number on it, and gave it to Jason. "Call this number
when you know what resources or information you wish, and what you are
willing to offer in exchange, or when you are prepared to stop being
foolish and become a professional. Is there anything left to discuss?"

"Duh, nope."

Pascal stood. Jason put the card in his pocket and got up. Pascal opened
the door, and they went back through the paneled hallway and into the
art room. Davies was in the art room, next to the cancerous giblet.

Jason went with him to the Lexus and they drove back to Rosa's. Davies
dropped him there and glided away in the Lexus.

Jason got into the Plymouth, reflected on how little it resembled the
Lexus, and remembered a Peanuts cartoon in which Charlie Brown said to
Snoopy, "How come you couldn't be a pony?" He said, "How come you
couldn't be a pony?" to the Plymouth and went back to the Manor.

show control 203

32

The blue towel on the front door was drawn to one side, casting mid-day
light onto the floor and walls. Water dripped occasionally from a wet
hole in the increasingly yellowed ceiling plaster under the second-story
bathroom. The drops made metal sounds of varying pitches and timbres
when they landed in Jason's mixing bowls.

Robert, Martin, Jason, and Platt were hunched around a lot of notepad
papers strewn over the back of Jason's carefully overturned amplifier.

The papers had handwritten notes on them.

Platt straightened and said, "Jason, you have a truly twisted mind."

Jason smiled warpedly and said, "Why, thank you." He looked back down at
the papers, and then up again at Platt and said, "So could it work?"

Platt studied the papers again. "It needs refinement."

"Right."

"And some serious resources."

K\r J)

Yes. "And some favors called in."

«D I. "

But.

"But ... it could work. If some deranged maniac really went to the
trouble of setting it all up, it could work. Maybe."

 204 keith snyder "You're too kind." Martin said, "Wanna know what I
think?" Jason said, "Oh, probably not." Martin said, "I think this is
one of the best comic book plots I've ever seen. Really. It's clever,
original, and unexpected. Perfect for a comic book."

He paused. Everyone waited for him to finish.

"However," he said, "as for real life, it's the most idiotic,
lamebrained, ridiculous idea I've ever heard in my life. And believe me,
I've heard lots of them."

"No, don't sugar-coat it," Jason said. "Tell us how you really feel."

"Okay, I will, you moron," Martin said. "Remember when you were a little
kid, and there were bigger kids called playleaders on the playground who
were supposed to keep the littler kids from walking into traffic and
eating dirt? But they never could? That's how I feel."

"Well put," Platt said.

Robert said, "Yeah, Martin. You can really be eloquent when you're
pissed off."

"Shut the hell up," Martin said, furiously. "It's risky and dangerous."

Platt said, "Yes, it is. But it could work." Jason said, "Does anybody
have a better idea?" Robert said, "I think the risky and dangerous one
makes sense."

Martin folded his arms. "It would be hard to find a worse plan. Just
think about how many things could go wrong." "It still needs
refinement," Jason said.

Nobody said anything for a while, and everyone looked at the papers
without actually reading them.

"It still needs refinement," Jason said again.

show control 205

Martin looked at him balefully. Jason said, "Nececita mas refinamente."

Martin's expression didn't change. Jason said, "Let's mull it over and
talk about it again soon. How's that sound?" Robert said, "Okay," and
Platt nodded.

"Martin?" Jason said.

"What."

"Talk again soon?"

«-p' 55

Fine.

"Okay, then why don't you and Robert go get us some lunch?" Robert got
up and said, "Lunch!" Jason said, "Do you need money?" Robert said,
"No," and he and Martin left.

"This is really twisted," Platt said, picking up a piece of paper.

Jason said, "Why are you involved in this?"

Platt put down the paper. "Didn't we already cover that?"

"Yes."

"Then ..."

"I had a meeting last night with a Mr. Pascal, who said that I only
believed that you were Monica's friend because I'm an amateur."

"I see. And what did this Mr. Pascal have to say about himself?"

"He didn't."

"I see."

"So it seems reasonable to raise the question again. Why are you
involved?"

"Because Monica was my friend, and you seem to have made progress."

"Okay."

206 keith snyder "You don't believe that."

"At this point, with the data I have to work with--or the lack
thereof--my only option seems to be to accept the assistance and keep my
eyes open for more information. I don't know enough to decide whether I
believe it."

Platt spread his hands. "That's life."

"That's what people say. Who is Mr. Pascal?"

"He's about what he seems to be."

"Very intelligent? Shrewd? Dangerous? Powerful? Sparkling sense of
humor?"

Platt smiled. "I do sometimes like how you put things. That's the guy."

"Well-connected?"

"No. People who know him are well-connected." "Oh," Jason said. "Wow,
I'm so glad I annoyed him."

"You annoyed Mr. Pascal?"

"Yes."

Platt looked at him for a long time. Then he said, "Is this a pathology
with you, or what?"

"Seems to be. I should join Irritants Anonymous. First step: accept that
you are obnoxious. So what does Mr. Pascal do?"

"International finance, buying and selling public servants,
construction, things like that. Things that are large. Jason, unless
you're really that tired of life, try not to annoy Mr. Pascal. Try very
hard. I know it'll be difficult for you, but try anyway."

"I'll bring him some Almond Roca next time I go."

Platt looked down and shook his head very slightly.

Jason said, "Anyway, what refinement do you see as necessary with this
plan?"

Platt gathered the papers. "I'll take this with me and go over them some
more, if that's okay with you."

"Fine with me. I have it all on disk."

show control 207

"I may find it necessary to contact outside people about some details. I
have some people in mind."

"I'd rather you didn't."

"I don't know everything, Jason. Almost everything, but not quite. There
will be fine points that I'm not up to speed on, and I need to be able
to call out when I see fit." Jason thought about it and said, "How many
people?"

"Three. Four. Something."

"All right. Please let me know who and what."

"Two are called Bookman and Delahugh. We do each other favors
sometimes." Platt stood. "What are you going to do in the meantime?"

"I thought I'd take a better look through the stuff I got from Monica's
hard drive."

"Okay. I'll be in touch."

Platt left, and Jason started his Macintosh and sat down in front of it.

Phone Courier had a "phone book" feature that allowed a user to store
frequently-dialed numbers for later recall, instead of having to type
the number each time. Monica had seen fit to include all her usernames
and passwords, along with her phone numbers. Jason thought about that.

With all the passwords, he could ostensibly connect to her favorite
online services disguised as her.

He got up and got a little radio from the pseudo-kitchen and tuned it to
a local blues show, and then selected an entry at random and had Phone
Courier call it.

CONNECT 2400

*** Welcome to The party Board *** Please enter your user number: 4311

208 keith snyder If you are user 4311, you are Ms. Mo from Nodopes, OK
Please enter your password: Aileen Welcome back, Ms. Mo! Who's online
now:

Line# Username City St. Age M/F Chat Status Line 1:

Line 2:

Line 3: Dr..Strangeluv 416 FU 42 MS Chatting Line 4: Big Joey 81 Happy
HA 26 MS Chatable

Line 5: Ms. Mo 4311 Nodopesok 27 FS Page Me Line 6:

Line 7: Bo'Peep 880 Baaaaa CA 38 Chatting Line 8:

Ms. Mo has no new mail.

> Big Joey 81» p4311 hi would you like to chat?

>

Jason looked at Big Joey 81 's message. The "/p" meant that Big Joey 81
had sent "Monica" a private message that could not be seen by anyone
else. "Why not?" Jason said to the screen. He typed, "/p81 Sure. How do
we do that?" and then hit ENTER on the Mac keyboard.

> p81 Sure. How do we do that?

> Big Joey 81» just type c and then choose A

> p81 Okay, hold on.

> c Welcome to the chat area.

(a, p,m, n)> a You are now available for chats.

>

show control 209

***Now entering chat mode.*** Chatter: Big Joey 81 from Happy, HA 26 MS
Chattee: Ms. Mo 4311 from Nodooes. OK 27 FS Big Joey 81 > so how are you
today

Jason typed, "I'm fine. How are you?" and hit ENTER. Ms. Mo. 4311> I'm
fine. How are you? Big Joey 81 > been worse, so are you new here?

Beats me, Jason thought. He typed his reply and hit ENTER.

Ms. Mo 4311> Not really. I just usually don't log on very often. What
about you?

Big Joey 81 > oh ive been on here for about six months.

what do you like most about this BBS?

Ms..Mo 4311> I haven't decided yet. What about you?

Big Joey 81 > I like to chat with people one on one like this.

its easier this way Ms. Mo 4311> Why is that?

Big Joey 81 > well I get shy around most people, so do you want to hot
chat?

"Hell no!" Jason said to the screen. Monica did this?

Ms..Mo 4311> Why would you ask that?

Big Joey 81 > you should try it, its fun Ms. Mo 4311> No, I don't think
so. Thanks for the offer, though.

Big Joey 81 > dont be scared, its fun, can't I make you feel good? let
me lick and suck your crotch real good, I like to be controlled r

210 keith snyder Jason screwed up his face in disgust and said, "Yuck!"
He hit control-C, the key combination on the Macintosh keyboard that
severed communication with Big Joey. Then he typed, "bye," and the BBS
disconnected. The words, "No Carrier," appeared on the Macintosh screen
to signify that Phone Courier could no longer sense contact with the
BBS.

The front door opened and Robert and Martin came in with full white
paper bags. Jason said, "Bleah!" "What," Martin said.

"Bleah!" Jason said again.

"What," Martin said.

"I just logged onto a BBS as Monica and got hit on by some slug. Bleah!"

A wide grin cracked Robert's face. "Really?" "Gross!" Martin said.

Jason said, "And he was pretty damn crude about it, too."

Still grinning, Robert said, "Do you need to go take a shower now?"

"A shower wouldn't do it," Jason said. "Somebody get me a belt sander."

Martin put his paper bag on the back of the amplifier, and Robert
followed suit. Jason said, "Sorry. What did you get?"

Robert took two wax-paper-wrapped things out of one of the bags, held
them aloft, and declared in a 1940s continental accent, "Grilled cheese
for everyone!" Then he made cheering crowd noises. The wax paper was
transparent in some places.

"And chocolate shakes," Martin said.

"Stop with all the nutrients," Jason said. "I'll have mine with grease,
please." "Ah," Robert said grandly, handing over the one in his left
hand. "That would be this one."

show control 211

After they ate, Jason said, "Okay, well, let's get Phase One over with,"
and he and Martin walked to an adult book store on Colorado Boulevard.

Robert declined to accompany them.

Inside, Jason tried not to look at any of the tackily colorful
cellophane packages hanging on the wall, but couldn't help glancing
sideways. Not that it really made much difference --he couldn't deduce
the functions of most of the flesh colored objects anyway. Most of them
had straps, but Jason couldn't figure out where the straps would go.

There were only two other customers, both of them men in business suits.

The counterman was a blonde man of about forty, with sparse hair and a
tiger tattooed on his forearm.

From the magazine rack that ran the length of the shop, Martin picked up
a previously thumbed magazine called

"Blonds 'n Blacks" and opened it.

Although the cover was garishly colored, the pictures inside were black
and white, and depicted nothing of surprise to anyone sufficiently
literate to sound out the title. Martin didn't seem uncomfortable.

"How about this?" he said to Jason.

Jason looked at it, self-consciously casual. "Too busty and hippy."
Martin said, "Okay," and flipped through the magazine. "This one?"

Jason looked. "No, nothing with, uh, props."

Martin nodded. "Right. Good point." He flipped quickly through the rest,
and then put the magazine back on the rack and took down one called,
"Sucking Sluts."

"It's got that alliteration thing going for it," Jason said.

Martin opened it and said, "This?"

"No."

"This?"

One of the businessmen passed in front of them and mur 212 keith snyder
mured, "Excuse me," as he picked up a magazine called "Double-D-Lite."
Jason said, "Uh, no, not that one either."

"This?"

It was a brown-haired woman and a carrot. "The body is pretty close."

The businessman glanced at the picture to see what they were talking
about. Martin brought the magazine up very close to his eyes and tilted
it so it was more in the light. "This isn't bad, though we should really
lose the carrot. Let's see what else we've got in here." He turned the
pages slowly, saying, "Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope." He peered closely at
another picture. "How's this?"

Jason looked at it. It was a picture of the same brown haired woman,
sans carrot. "Okay. That'll work. Does it work for you?"

Martin looked closely again, and said, "It's almost in focus." He turned
it upside-down and looked at it that way. "Yeah, I think this will
work."

They paid the counterman twenty dollars for the magazine, then Martin
went to the same print service bureau in Hollywood, where they had done
the Preacher/Castro picture.

Jason went back to the Manor and called Paul.

show control 213

33

It was afternoon and Jason was sitting inside the E-Bar, drinking coffee
and waiting for Paul. The counterperson was somewhere in back; the only
other customers were a quartet of what Jason guessed to be students from
the Art Center. They were seated at a table to Jason's left, and
appeared to be in their mid-twenties. One young woman sported
close-cropped artificially black hair, and a worn pea coat hung on the
back of her chair. The other wore her red hair long, and rolled up the
sleeves of her denim jacket. Jason couldn't figure out what it was that
was so similar about them despite their divergent fashion choices.

The red door opened and Paul entered the room, raised his eyebrows once
at Jason, and sat at the table.

"So," he said. "I thought we weren't friends anymore."

"I don't know if we are," Jason said, "but we've known each other a long
time. Maybe history is worth something."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"It's not supposed to do anything. It's just how I feel."

"It was pretty lousy what you did."

Jason said, "Maybe."

"So now what?"

"I don't know."

Paul nodded noncommittally. Jason drank some coffee.

214 keith snyder They both looked around the room and avoided each
other's eyes. The art students laughed and one of the young men hit the
other one playfully on the shoulder.

"Going back to work on Monday," Jason said.

Paul looked at him and said, "Really? Now, that's a surprise."

"Why a surprise?"

"I didn't think you'd take my advice." "Well," Jason said, "The dudes
turned out not to be that heavy-duty. The computer guy is just not very
good." He shrugged. "So."

Paul looked a little stunned. He started to say something, stopped, and
then said, "I'm here to tell you, Jason, that you're making a mistake. I
don't think you have any idea who you're dealing with."

Jason frowned in dismissal. "Sure I do. He's a hack. No balls, no style,
no power. Now he's off hiding someplace with his little computer,
probably bragging to all the virtual babes on the Net, when the truth is
that he's just a sick little toad who got a little too lucky."

"Jason, this person can make you dead."

Jason laughed. "Right."

«T )>

Jason--

"Paul," Jason said, "You wouldn't know."

"I have my ways of knowing. Believe me."

"Sure," Jason said.

"Listen-"

"He's a loser. And even if I'm wrong, why should I listen to some sorry
little tapeworm who gets off on playing Super Spy?"

Paul's expression slackened. "You really are an arrogant prick, aren't
you?"

"I'm arrogant because I finally have your number, and we both know it.

But tell you what." Jason made his face show show control 215

mock pity. "I won't tell anybody if you don't sic your scary powerful
friends on me, okay?"

"What's happened to you, Jason?"

"What's happened to me? Nothing, buddy. I just realized that the reason
you're such a worm all the time is your lack of a life.

Really--government contact for witness relocation? Please. What are we
now, Secret Agent X? Is it lots of fun, Paul?"

Paul's face showed no expression. He got up.

"Oh, don't go away mad, Paul. You haven't told me the password to the
top-secret underground missile complex yet." Paul said conversationally,
"You know, Jason, Marisa's a lot of fun."

Jason nodded.

"I especially like those little gasps. You know the ones?"

Jason pursed his lips and didn't respond.

"So did a lot of your friends," Paul said.

Paul held the look for another moment and then turned and walked away.

When he had almost reached the door, Jason said, "Paul."

Paul stopped and looked.

"You were right. We're not friends."

Paul let out a laugh that went humph, and said, "Big loss."

He turned away and left.

The counterperson came back from wherever she had been and started
combining half-empty bottles of fruit juice. Jason stared at the door
for a long time after it closed. The art students laughed some more.

216 keith snyder 34

Jin unexpected message comes from Pollux. He reads it several times, and
sweeps the computer monitor off the table. It crashes on the floor and
goes dark.

He stands and moves across the room to a television set and VCR, turns
both on, and presses Play.

The woman dances to the front of the stage, turns one ... two ... three
... four times ... and stops.

Freeze.

The satisfaction is gone.

"Fuck you!" he screams at the frozen image. "I did not get lucky!"

The woman is motionless. He feels no thrill at her stillness, and kicks
the VCR. Its cable becomes detached from the television, and video snow
fills the screen. The snow pleases him.

"Fuck you," he says again, panting. "You just watch."

show control 217

35

IVlartin came in the back door only a few minutes after Jason had
returned from the E-Bar. He was carrying a flat brown bag sealed shut
with a small round sticker. He looked at Jason's face and said, "Tough
time with Paul?"

Jason said, "Yeah."

«C "

oorry.

"Had to be done. No way to reach Mr. Fluffy without using Paul." He
shook his head. "Oh well. Let's see the printout."

Martin picked the sticker off with a fingernail, took an oversized piece
of shiny white paper out of the bag, and said, "Ta da."

Jason took it. It was the picture of the naked brown-haired woman with
Monica's face transplanted seamlessly onto it.

Jason studied it closely.

"Turn it upside down," Martin said. "That way you can look at it without
being distracted by what it is."

Jason turned it upside-down and looked for seams again, but didn't find
any.

Martin said, "I was a little worried because the show program from the
Technoarts show was printed on a textured paper, but the texture wasn't
a problem." "It's perfect," Jason said. "How do you do it, Martin?"

218 keith snyder "Black magic."

"You can't fool me," Jason said. "You're only half black."

"Maybe so," Martin said in a John Wayne voice, putting his fists on his
hips. "But it's the lower half, Pilgrum."

"You've been hanging out with Robert too much," Jason said.

"Robert's John Wayne probably sucks," Martin said.

Robert opened the front door and walked in.

"Robert," Jason said, "Martin says your John Wayne probably sucks."
Robert squinted and said, "Howdy, Pilgrim," in the Glint Eastwood
whisper.

"See?" Martin said. "He can only do Jack Palance."

Robert assumed a more sauntering posture, and the squint changed
somehow. Then he said in a flawless John Wayne, "I think you'd better
take that back, partner."

Martin looked stunned. "Wow! I didn't know you could do that!"

"Guess you never asked, Pilgrim." Then he said in a fast, fruity accent
out of a 1930s screwball comedy, "There are many things you don't know
about me, Madeline; many, many things; but this is neither the time nor
the place. A man's duty calls and he answers. They call it patriotism,
Madeline; patriotism!"

He strode purposefully to the sofa and stepped up onto it. "Because when
a man's country calls, Madeline, it is for him to neither waver nor
hesitate."

Jason started to hum the Star-Spangled Banner, and Martin caught on
after a few notes. Robert's voice gained depth and purpose. "No," he
boomed over the humming, "rather it is for him to stride forward with
bearing regal to take up the banner of freedom; to march with pride
along with his fellows; to show the world and the enemy what he is made
of! That, Madeline; that is a man!"

show control 219

Jason and Martin reached the part about the rockets' red glare. Robert
clasped his hand to his chest, looked with feeling at unseen horizons,
and projected passionately, "Because when the enemy comes from the north
with his black boots and his rifles; his tanks and his bombers; his
drooling, dribbling fangs and his red, rabid eyes; when he smashes in
the doors and windows of honest fisherfolk and yogurt makers"-- Martin
lost it and stopped humming for a moment. Without breaking his pace,
Robert shouted--"of simple shoe repair specialists and good, trustworthy
satellite television installers; that, Madeline, that is when the true
muster of a man calls him--nay, beseeches him--to take up guns and
sharp, pointy objects and fight for his country. For truth, Madeline ...
for truth and justice! For checks and cash!"

Jason and Martin applauded as they hummed the last few bars of the
Star-Spangled Banner. Robert continued to gaze nobly at Destiny.

Something went thump thump thump on the ceiling and Patrice's voice
upstairs yelled, "Shut up!" The telephone rang.

"Bravo, bravo," Jason said, walking backward toward the telephone.

"Bravissimol" Martin cried. Robert inclined his head graciously.

Jason said, "The critics agree! The feel-good movie of the year! A
modern masterpiece!"

"I couldn't put it down," Martin said.

"I laughed, I cried." Jason said, picking up the receiver. "Now get your
muddy shoes off Martin's bed. Hello?"

Platt's voice said, "Will you be home for awhile?"

"Planning on it."

"I'll be over. Clear out the front room and make some coffee."

220 keith snyder Platt hung up. Jason replaced the receiver.

Robert was twisting his shoes up one at a time to look at them. "They're
not muddy," he said.

"Then please," Martin said graciously, "don't miss my pillow." Robert
stepped heavily down from the sofa.

Jason said, "Martin, do you have the floppy disk with the naked Monica
picture on it?"

"It's in the bag."

"Is it ready to upload?"

"Not yet."

"Okay. Um, could you disconnect the Mac and set it up in the bedroom?

You can use it in there." "Sure," Martin said. "Now?"

"Yeah," Jason said. Martin shut the computer down and began to detach
its cables.

"Robert, would you help me put the furniture in the pseudo-kitchen?"

"Okay. What's up?"

"I don't know. Platt says he needs the room cleared."

There was no good place for the piano and sofa in the pseudo-kitchen, so
Jason and Robert just wedged them into the space between the dish
cabinet and the wall, blocking passage through the apartment. Jason
covered the middle of the sofa with a beach towel, so it wouldn't be
soiled by people climbing over it, and started a pot of coffee brewing.

The beeping alarm of a truck backing up in the parking lot was followed
by a knock at the back door. Jason climbed over the sofa, looked through
the orange towel at Platt, and opened the door. Behind Platt, a long
white cargo van with a black hydraulic lift was parked tail-in to the
Manor. The lift motor whined as it lowered.

Platt looked pointedly at the sofa and piano, then at the truck, then
back at the furniture, and then at Jason.

show control 221

"Where did you think I was going to put them," Jason said. "On the roof?

You didn't mention cargo. We'll move them into the parking lot so you
can get through, and then put them back when we're done loading in."

Platt said, "Okay."

There were footsteps on the outside staircase and then Patrice's voice
said, "What's this?" Jason stepped outside. Patrice was standing on the
lowest step.

Platt smiled a pleased smile, walked toward her, and said, "You must be
Patrice! Hi, I'm Norton Platt. I'm a friend of Jason's." He extended his
hand. Patrice took it and they shook hands.

"You're moving in," she said suspiciously.

"Only for a few days. We're just getting Jason's show together, and then
we'll be out of here." "What show?" Patrice said, looking at Jason.

Platt said, "You haven't told her about the show, Jason?"

Jason said, "You know me." Platt said, "You know Jason. He doesn't like
to talk about his big projects until they're done."

"What's in the truck?" Patrice said.

"Just stuff for the show."

"Are you going to be making a lot of noise?"

"No, not at all," Platt said. "We'll practice at low volume levels, and
if you do happen to hear anything, we'd love to know what you think of
it." He smiled brightly.

Her concerns apparently addressed, Patrice smiled slightly back, turned
to mount the stairs again, and said, "Just as long as you're not too
loud."

"Thank you very much," Platt said. "We'll do our best to be thoughtful
and considerate." Patrice climbed the stairs and went up to the second
story.

As soon as the door shut behind her, the doors to the 222 keith snyder
truck's cab opened and two people stepped down. The driver was a
slightly-built man in his forties with dark blond hair, small hands, and
a scar across his left cheek. The passenger was a tall, good-looking
dark-haired woman with some gray who favored her left leg a little as
she walked toward the Manor. Both were dressed casually in blue jeans,
the man with a green La Coste shirt with the collar turned up, and the
woman with a plain tan T-shirt with a pocket.

The man looked at the back of the Manor and said, "Here?" He didn't look
pleased.

"Jason," Platt said, "This is Vince Delahugh. Vince, Jason, Jason,
Vince." "Hi," Jason said. Delahugh nodded sourly.

"And Leslie Bookman. Leslie, Jason, Jason, Leslie."

"Hi," Jason said. They shook hands. She smiled. She had good crow's
feet.

"Nice to meet you," she said. "Ready for us?"

"Not quite," Jason said. "Give me a couple of minutes." He turned toward
the open door and yelled, "Robert!"

In a few seconds, Robert leaned out the back door and said, "Your
honeyed voice wafted gently?" "Dulcet tones and dulcet mind," Jason
said. "We gotta move the piano and the sofa out here so Platt can get
his stuff through the pseudo-kitchen."

They bumped things against the stairway a couple of times. Platt opened
the back of the truck. It was three-quarters full with equipment racks
that ranged from carry-on luggage-size, to four that were as big as
apartment refrigerators.

It took forty-five minutes to empty the truck into the pseudo-kitchen.

Then Leslie Bookman drove the van away somewhere and Platt began to
arrange the racks the way he wanted them in the front room, with the
four big ones side-by-side show control 223

against the wall, where the sofa had been. The racks were padded and
covered in blue canvas, with zippers around their fronts.

Jason went into his bedroom, where Martin was sitting on the floor,
intent on the Macintosh, which sat on the futon. Martin looked absorbed,
so Jason left him alone and went back into the front room. Leslie
Bookman was back, and she and Platt and Delahugh were unzipping the
racks. Robert was standing around, poised to do something as soon as
someone told him what.

"Coffee?" Jason said.

Platt said, "Is it coffee, or is it espresso impersonating coffee?"

"Espresso."

"Could somebody go get some real coffee?"

Robert looked alert and said, "I'll go. Be back soon." He reached for
the front door knob and said, "Do I have to be sneaky and go out the
back or anything?" Delahugh said, "Never let your guard down." "Yes,"
Robert said, overpatiently. He smiled falsely. "Indeed. Even so.

Does that mean go out the back?"

Delahugh looked pained and said, "Just watch it. This ain't the Girl
Scouts." Robert did his plastic smile at Jason, said, "Okay then," and
went out the front door. Jason shot a glance at the back of Platt's
head, which seemed to be ignoring everyone.

Next to Platt, Leslie Bookman turned from the rack she was unzipping,
looked over Delahugh at Jason, and made an apologetic face. Delahugh was
busy unzipping a rack and didn't I notice. Jason shook his head a little
and angled one hand in III polite dismissal, and she smiled warmly at
him. The warm smile caught him off balance. His heart thumped a little,
and he felt decidedly unsophisticated.

224 keith snyder "I'd like some espresso coffee," she said. "One sugar,
no cream."

"Coming right up." Jason went into the pseudo-kitchen without tangling
his feet together, edged around the few blue racks which hadn't yet made
it into the front room, and got her coffee. She smiled warmly again when
he gave it to her. He didn't think he blushed.

"Where's Platt?" he said.

She pointed with her chin. "Outside, getting electricity."

Delahugh snorted. "This wiring is so old, I'm surprised this place
hasn't burned down."

"It can't," Jason said. "The wood stays soggy year 'round. All it can do
is steam a little." "Great," Delahugh said. "What a dump."

Jason looked at him and didn't say anything.

"Yeah, sorry, whatever," Delahugh said.

Jason looked at him some more and then turned and went over the sofa
into the bedroom.

Martin was still sitting on the floor, his gaze fixed on the Macintosh
screen, which showed the falsified picture of Monica. Below the top
inch-and-a-half, the picture turned into a chaotic mess of lines and
dots.

Jason said, "Is it done?" Martin said, "Uh ..." and didn't look away
from the screen. Jason waited. After fifteen seconds, Martin looked
glazedly at him and said, "Huh?"

Jason said, "Is it done?"

"This is a goddamn slow computer."

"Want some coffee?" Martin said, "Yeah," and turned back to the screen.

Jason got Martin's coffee and gave it to him, complete with saucer.

Martin grunted and didn't look at the coffee.

J.

show control 225

Jason went back into the front room. Platt was running a beige cable
into the front room through a hole in the wall that had once had a TV
cable in it.

Jason stood and watched for a few seconds. "Where's the other end?"

Platt said, "One foot out from the curb and eighteen inches down."

"Can I do anything, or am I just in the way?"

"You're in the way," Platt said. "Did you talk to Mr. Pascal yet?"

"No. Is it a good time?"

"As good as any."

"Okay."

The white card with the phone number was still in the back pocket of his
dark blue jeans. He found the jeans under the futon. Martin was still
doing something with the Macintosh, but seemed somewhat better connected
with reality. Jason sat on the futon next to him and dialed the number.

Someone with a brusque voice said, "Yes." "Mr. Pascal, please," Jason
said. "Who is calling, please?"

"This is the National Brain Trust. We're calling a representative
sampling of Americans to let them know that we trust their brains."

There was a pause on the other end, and then the brusque person hung up.

Jason held the receiver and said, "He hung up," to Martin in a surprised
voice.

"No!" Martin said. "And you didn't even get to do Prince Albert in the
can." "Martin," Jason said as he pressed the redial button, "why do I do
these things?" 226 keith snyder Martin said, "Just guessing. Because
you're a moron?"

"Oh yeah. It's reassuring that I can always count on-- Hello? Mr.
Pascal, please. This is Jason Keltner." After a very short time,
Pascal's voice said, "Yes." Jason said, "I understand you have
construction interests."

show control 227

36

By early evening, Platt had all the racks set up where he wanted them,
and he and Vince Delahugh began to switch things on and run tests.
Leslie Bookman said to Platt, "I'll take a break and be back in half an
hour." Platt nodded at her, and she said to Jason, "Care to take an
evening stroll?" "Sure," Jason said.

The old-fashioned streetlights on Marengo Avenue came on as they left
the Manor, and a gusting breeze pushed dead leaves around in front of
the porch. On the sidewalk, Jason tried to be subtle about getting
around her and walking on the outside.

"I like this area," she said, as they passed a narrow lot with half a
dozen bungalows on it that had been converted to offices.

"Me too," Jason said. "I like the turn-of-the-century architecture. I
grew up in the Valley, and nothing there is older than the 'fifties or
so. That square, tacky look."

She smiled at him. He couldn't think of an appropriate facial
expression, so he looked away.

After a while, she said, "Norton tells me you're almost divorced. When
is it final?" "Um," Jason said, trying to remember the date. "It'll be
final--" he stopped walking, shocked. "Oh my gosh. Two days ago. Oh my."
228 keith snyder She said, "I guess you've been pretty busy."

"I guess so!"

"How does it feel?"

"Weird. No, not weird. Strange. Um, I don't know how it feels." He stood
still and tried to determine how he felt. "Actually, it feels pretty
much the same, only I'm divorced. Wow."

He thought about it some more, and then they started walking again. "I
wonder if the papers came. I haven't checked my mail in awhile. It's
kind of like having a birthday, isn't it? You don't feel different, but
there's a new number associated with your life."

They walked a few blocks to California Street and turned left.

"What's in your future?" she asked.

"Music."

"Nothing else?"

"No."

"That's a hard life."

"Not as hard as some."

"Harder than most."

"Could be. I'll let you know when I get there."

"What kind of music do you do?"

"Honestly ... right now, I don't do any."

"Why not?"

"I just can't. It doesn't come. I sit there and stare at the little
blinking lights and the computer screen, and nothing good happens. I
haven't really put it into words before. I know Martin and Robert are
worried about me, but I can't talk to them about it."

"Why can't you?"

"I ... don't know why not."

"They seem nice to me."

show control 229

"They are. Very nice."

They turned left again at Los Robles, and looked at the old, wide
California bungalows that shared the street with newer condominiums.

"Why can't you talk to them, then? I bet it's some male thing."

"You might be right."

"Do you have a hard time talking about your feelings?"

"Not at all. I have a hard time seeing why I should. What does it get
me? That kind of thing."

"That sounds like the same thing to me."

"It's not. I just have a hard time seeing the relevance of my feelings.

Talking about them doesn't change them or their causes."

"But it might make you feel better."

"Maybe."

"You don't think so."

"No."

"Why wouldn't it?"

"Because it never has."

She shook her head and sighed. "On a few things," she said, "I think men
got the short end of the stick."

"Yeah, I suppose. But we also get things you women don't."

"Like what?"

"I don't know if I can reveal the secret male knowledge to you."

"Oh, do."

"Okay. This is the secret male knowledge: Every man is born knowing two
important things: How to make spaghetti sauce, and that he could kill an
alligator barehanded."

«T 55

1 see. "I never said the secret male knowledge made sense."

230 keith snyder "Men are weird."

"Men are weird? Explain to me about home shopping."

"It's convenient." She narrowed her eyes and said, "Now you explain to
me about monster trucks."

"Makes us feel like we're hunting mammoths. What about going to the
bathroom in platoons?"

"Safety. How about Hustler magazine?"

"Yuck. What about romance novels?"

"Um, you got me there. What about Jean Claude Van Damme movies?"

"We enjoy a well-wrought drama. See? All you had to do was ask, and now
you know the secret male knowledge."

"I'm so glad I did."

"Next week we'll discuss how to find just the wrong person and maintain
a long-term relationship with them."

"How'd you get so cynical so young?" Surprised, he said, "I'm not
cynical."

"Yes, you are."

"No I'm not. I'm not at all cynical."

She stopped, put her hands on his shoulders, and said, "Jason, believe
me; you are cynical." It was too dark to tell, but he thought her eyes
were blue.

"I'm too much of a romantic to be cynical," he said. "Can somebody be
romantic and cynical both?" "Oh, heavens, yes," she said. "Oh, yes."

As they turned onto Del Mar and cut through the parking lot to the
Manor, a slight rain began to fall. At the back door, she said, "Well,
congratulations on your divorce. Or should it be condolences? What does
one say about a divorce?"

He got his keys out of his pocket. "Good question. I guess gesundheit is
already taken."

show control 231

She laughed, and so did he. Then she looked down at the ground, and
looked up and said, "Isn't it funny how timing is everything sometimes?"

He unlocked the door. "What do you mean?" "Oh," she said, smiling a
little, "Nothing." She looked at him for another second and then opened
the door and went in.

What timing?

Waldo the cat came halfway down the stairs from the second story, looked
quizzically at Jason, and meowed rustily. Jason leaned over and
scratched Waldo on the top of the head, and then followed Leslie Bookman
into the Manor, as Waldo trotted down the stairs and lay down in the
newly-wet grass.

232 keith snyder 37

IX-obert and Martin were sitting on top of empty cases in the front
room. All the equipment in the racks had been turned on, and little
colored indicator lights flickered on the faceplates. Four beige
telephones sat in a row atop a medium sized rack that contained three
small computer monitors. The room light was off, and the little lights
and screens reminded Jason of a time when he and Marisa had gone to
Disneyland and waited in line at the Star Tours ride.

"Ground control to Major Tom," Jason said.

Platt craned his head around from where he was squatting with Delahugh
in front of a rack and said, "Commencing countdown, engines on."

Leslie Bookman stepped around a rack and joined Platt and Delahugh.

"Isn't that some song?" Delahugh said, "It's David Bowie. Where you
been?" He gave Jason a just-us-guys headshake. Jason pretended not to
see it.

"Oh," she said. She made a face at Delahugh that he couldn't see. "I
guess I just don't know the really good music." "Yeah," Jason said. "You
should be hip and current like Delahugh. What do you listen to?"

"I like older stuff, mostly."

show control 233

Robert said, "Me too. I think my favorite song right now is 'One
Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer' from a tape Jason lent me."

"Thorogood!" Delahugh said.

"No," Robert said condescendingly. "Howlin' Wolf."

"Who?" Delahugh said. Robert smiled pityingly.

Platt straightened. "Okay, Jason," he said. "We're ready for you. Let's
have the picture." Jason said, "Martin?"

Martin held up a blue floppy disk and said, "Right here." He tossed it
to Platt, who gave it to Delahugh. Delahugh inserted it into a slot in
one of the racks and typed on a keyboard.

"Okay," said Delahugh after a minute. "It's online."

"Speaking of music," Leslie Bookman said, "Where's my boombox?"

"In the truck, I think," Platt said.

"Oh, darn."

Robert slid off the case he was sitting on, said, "I'll get mine from
upstairs," and went out the front door. A few seconds later, heavy
clomping sounds reverberated through the Manor.

Martin said, "We really need to carpet those stairs or something."

An upstairs door opened, the ceiling creaked, and the door closed,
followed immediately by a reprise of the clomping sounds. Then the front
door opened and Robert came in with a portable AM/FM/cassette/CD player
and a handful of tapes. He put the player on top of one of the rack
cases and pushed Play. Etta James began singing

"Baby, What You Want Me To Do" in midphrase.

"So now what?" Martin said.

Platt shrugged. "Dinner? What's good and delivers around here?"

F

234 keith snyder "How's wonton and guacamole sound," Jason said.

"Wonton and guacamole?" Delahugh said, looking pained. He made it a hard
g.

"Wonton," Robert enunciated slowly at Delahugh. He smiled. "Guacamole,"
he concluded, nodding lovingly. Delahugh looked at him as though he were
roadkill.

"Fine with me," Leslie Bookman said.

"Sure," Platt said.

Robert said, "Get some cruco for Vince." Delahugh said, "What's that,
what's cruco?" "Oh, yeah, get me one too," Martin said. "It's ... how
would you explain it, Robert?"

"It's really good," Robert said. "Do you like tuffte? It's a lot like
tuffte."

"Uh," Delahugh said.

"You've never had tuffte?" Robert's expression was incredulous.

"Really?" Martin said.

Jason said, "Do they serve their cruco with the poo sauce?" Martin said,
"No, you're thinking of crassits. Crassits is different from cruco."

Delahugh looked back and forth as he followed the conversation.

Jason said, "What's the difference?"

"No sauce."

"Oh. Then what do they dip the slugs in?"

"Don't worry," Martin said to Delahugh. "They're not the same as the
slugs we have here." To Jason, he said, "We could get that brown pasty
stuff instead, if he doesn't want the slugs." Robert said, "I really
liked those little bloated purple things in it."

"No fucking slugs," Delahugh said.

show control 235

Jason looked past him at Leslie Bookman, and said, "Want some slugs in
poo sauce or some little bloated purple things?"

«/-^ 53

Gracious, no.

Delahugh must have caught the amusement in her voice because he turned
around to see her expression and then looked disgusted and said, "Ha ha,
very funny."

Robert leaned in toward Delahugh, squinted at him, and grated, "Always.

Always watch your back." He pointed meaningfully. "This ain't the Girl
Scouts." Then he said in a Groucho voice, "Which is a shame, because I
could really use a box of Savannahs."

"You just take care of your own back," Delahugh said, "and let me worry
about mine, bozo." Robert looked happy and said, "'Bozo!'"

Delahugh said, "Listen, dickweed--"

Robert's joy doubled and he said, "'Dickweed!'"

Platt was looking pointedly at Jason. Jason raised his eyebrows to
acknowledge the pointed look and said, "Robert, you have a delivery menu
upstairs, don't you?"

Robert looked as though he were about to say something else, but then
said in an overhelpful tone, "Why don't I go get it."

"Thanks."

Robert left and clomped up the stairs.

"What a loser," Delahugh said.

Jason looked pointedly at Platt. Platt's lips twitched in the barest
smile, and he raised his eyebrows in acknowledgment and said, "Vince, if
you're done, I'm not sure the telecom connectors are seated completely.

I don't have dial tone on line three." Delahugh looked annoyed and said,
"There was dial tone before." He got up and reached toward one of the
four telephones. Platt picked it up first and listened to it.

236 keith snyder "Nope," he said. "Why don't you go outside and wiggle
the connector and I'll listen to the phone. Grab your jacket-- I think
it's still raining out."

They ate Chinese food in the front room, spooning servings from the
black rectangular plastic containers onto the transparent rectangular
lids. Everyone used chopsticks to eat. When they were done, and Jason
had thrown away the containers, Robert said, "How long do you think
it'll be before Mr. Fluffy will call?"

"There's no way to tell," said Platt. "He has to log on to the Net, see
the anonymous announcement that there's a new nude picture of Monica to
he had, download it, discover that he can't see the good parts of the
picture, try to fix it with a graphics program or whatever, log on to
download it again, because he figures his first one got messed up while
downloading, and then notice the modem phone number at the top of the
photo, call it, and try to get the 'uncorrupted' GIF file. It might be a
while before it happens." "If it happens at all," Jason said.

"Exactly. I think it's got a good shot, though." Robert said, "So what
do we do in the meantime?"

"Whatever you usually do."

Martin looked at Jason quizzically. "What exactly is that?"

Jason said, "I don't think we have a usual, do we?" Robert said. "Sure
we do. About this time, Martin and I walk into Old Town and talk to
girls who give us fake phone numbers, and you go to bed." "At
eight-thirty?" Leslie Bookman said.

Jason said, "When you have to get up at four-thirty in the morning to be
at a filtration plant at six o'clock, eight-thirty's about right."

show control 237

Platt said, "If you go to bed at eight-thirty, when do you play out?"

"I don't."

Leslie Bookman said, "Play out?" "Play music someplace," Platt said.

"Ah."

"It's musician talk," Jason said. "Maybe soon."

Robert went upstairs and came down with his game of Risk, and played two
games with Platt and Leslie Bookman. Platt won the first game and Leslie
Bookman won the second. Robert seemed intensely focused, and Jason
guessed that he was having a great time being trounced by people from
whom he could learn.

Delahugh sat in front of the rack with the computer in it, and listened
to something on a Walkman, and Jason and Martin read. At 11:00 PM, Platt
unrolled two olive-colored sleeping bags with ducks printed on the
inside onto the floor of the front room, and everyone but Delahugh went
to bed. Jason looked back as he left; Delahugh's headphones made soft
cymbal sounds in the room as he watched for something to happen on the
three little monitors that glowed milk-blue in the padded rack.

238 keith snyder 38

In the morning, Delahugh slipped into one of the sleeping bags and Platt
and Leslie Bookman alternated eight-hour shifts watching the monitor.

Jason, Robert, and Martin watched daytime television and listened to
music in Jason's bedroom and Robert's apartment. Robert's apartment
looked like Jason's room had looked when he was fifteen: sprawled
clothes choked the walking areas, and things sat where Robert had
dropped them. Jason and Martin tried to spend most of their time
downstairs.

Lunch was bagels from a bagel place on Colorado Boulevard. Robert walked
there to get them. No one shot at him or forced him into a black
limousine with mirrored windows.

Robert and Martin played Risk with Leslie Bookman after lunch. Jason
picked up The Art of War, tried to read it, and put it back down. He
went out the back door and whisked a thin stick back and forth in front
of Waldo the cat for half an hour, and then let Waldo kill the stick and
went back inside. Then he went back outside and tried to play with Waldo
again, but Waldo didn't want to kill any more sticks.

Delahugh came out of the front room at about two o'clock, drank a Pepsi
from the little refrigerator, and sat on the sofa with a vinyl cassette
case, listening to his Walkman and reading a bodybuilding magazine with
a huge oiled veiny

show control 239

male person grimacing on the cover next to an oiled veiny female person.

Robert won a game of Risk and went out with Leslie Bookman to rent a
video. Jason and Martin sat on the back steps and talked about Mega Mole
until they came back, and then they all went upstairs, opened the
windows in Robert's apartment, and watched Wizards and All of Me. Then
Leslie Bookman went downstairs and relieved Platt, and Robert and Martin
went to return the videos and get new ones. They came back with
Silverado and A Fish Catted Wanda and a paper bag of burrito
ingredients, made burritos in the real kitchen next door to Jason's
section of the house, and ate the burritos and watched the movies. At
11:00 PM, everybody but Delahugh went to bed; Delahugh sat up and
watched the monitor and listened to his Walkman. When Jason got up in
the morning, Delahugh was sleeping in one of the olive-colored sleeping
bags; Platt was up, watching the monitor and listening to Delahugh's
Walkman.

Leslie Bookman and Martin got coffee beans and more bagels. Jason made
coffee. Nobody said much during breakfast. Then Martin returned the
videos and got Modern Times and The General. At lunchtime, Robert and
Martin went out and came back with barbecued ribs, cole slaw, corn on
the cob, onion rings, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and Road Warrior.

Leslie Bookman said, "Oh, Mel Gibson," and went upstairs to watch with
them.

While they were all eating in Robert's apartment and watching the movie,
Robert's phone rang. Jason answered it.

"Come downstairs if you want," Platt's voice said. "No telling if it's
him, but it looks like we got contact."

240 keith snyder 39

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***WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE, AND ARE TRYING***

***TO FIX THEM AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE***

Time is billed at $0.25 per minute, $2.00 for the first minute. Charges
are billed discreetly on your credit card, and appear as

"SPT Entertainment."

Welcome to The Foto Shop. We are pleased to offer a wide selection of
adult picture files. Most of our photos are in GIF format. If you don't
have a means of viewing GIF files, you may download our GIF viewer from
the main library. Enter "LIST" for a list of library categories or enter
the number of the library you wish to browse. list

1. Beautiful Women 4. Men On Men 2. M/F Action 5. Whips and Chains

3. Gay/Bi Babes 6. Kinky Korner Enter "LIST" for a list of library
categories or enter the number of the library you wish to browse.

show control 241

> 1

BEAUTIFUL WOMEN: (s)earch by keyword (d)ownload (b)rowse (e)xit

> s SEARCH BY KEYWORD: enter the keyword you wish to search for > monica

SEARCHING ... FILE SIZE DESCRIPTION

MONICA. GIF 42,064 Monica having solo fun on bed

Keyword: "monica": 1 selection found BEAUTIFUL WOMEN: (s)earch by
keyword (d)ownload (b)rowse (e)xit d

Name of file to download: > MONICA. GIF

What transfer protocol? (x)modem (y)modem (z)modem > z Beginning
transfer of file MONICA. GIF ... File transfer complete. Elapsed time 9
minutes BEAUTIFUL WOMEN: (s)earch by keyword (d)ownload

(b)rowse (e)xit > e

Thank you for using The Foto Shop. Come back soon!

NO CARRIER

"That's it," Platt said. "Our first call. That one came from ..." He
consulted an LCD display in the rack. "Minneapolis. He gave us his name
and Mastercard number before you got here."

242 keith snyder "Nice how they stay connected for so long, so we can
trace them," Jason said. "It's very considerate."

"That's the idea behind the faster lines being down," Platt said. "It's
an excuse to keep them online longer."

"So now you check the Mastercard?" Robert said.

"Yes, I'm about to do that."

"I never asked you," Jason said. "Are you actually going to bill people
for their online time?"

Platt grinned. "Charges are billed discreetly to your credit card, and
appear as 'SPT Entertainment.'" Martin said, "SPT?"

Jason and Martin looked at each other. Robert looked thoughtfully up in
the air.

"What's SPT?" Jason said.

Robert hooted and said, "Screamin' Pink Tigers!" "Yup," Platt said. "By
the way, I want one of those shoulder patches." "I gotta make some
more," Martin said. "I only made three." Jason said, "Who gets the
money?"

"Defrayment of expenses," Platt said. "We just made six dollars off that
one call. Another, uh, two thousand calls and we break even on this."
Martin said, "Do you really have all those pictures in there?"

"Yes." He pointed to a unit in the rack. "They're all on this hard
drive. It would look awfully strange if Martin's fake Monica picture
were the only dirty picture available on the whole system." Jason said,
"Where does one acquire a hard drive of dirty pictures?" Platt said, "I
don't know. The dirty picture hard drive store?"

show control 243

Robert said, "Smut-R-Us."

"I mean, is this a standard-issue thing, or did you have to assemble
it?" Platt said, "Let's just put it this way: all kinds of things are
available to those who know where to look."

"You are indeed a font of information."

"An oblique font," Platt said. "Watch it or I'll break out the enigmatic
smile again."

"Watch it, Buster" Robert corrected.

"Oh, right," Platt said. "Sorry." Jason said, "Or Jack. Buster or Jack"
Robert said, "Jack is archaic."

"That's true," Jason said.

Platt said, "Everybody go away."

Two days later, in the early evening, he said, "Got him."

244 keith snyder 40

"He Lere," Platt said, pointing at a telephone number that showed on the
middle monitor. Everyone was crowded around the rack. Pointing to
another telephone number on the right hand monitor, he said, "And here."

"The numbers are different," Martin said.

"But the area codes are the same. Both nine-oh-nine. It's unlikely that
one person from one area code would call the X rated foto number and
also call Municipal Water's computer access number, and that the same
person wouldn't know the Municipal password. See? Connection to the
Municipal Water computer--or, more accurately, our fake Municipal Water
computer--at oh-nine-thirty-two this morning." He tapped the third
monitor. "See? This is him. He's still trying to find the password so he
can get in."

Jason looked at the third monitor. Every few seconds, an unseen hand
entered a string of numbers and letters, and the computer responded with
"Incorrect password. Please try again." Unable to look away, Jason said
very softly, "We see you."

Another string of numbers and letters appeared.

Incorrect password. Please try again.

"He bit," Jason said.

show control 245

"It was a good bet," said Platt. "How better to find out about your
daily schedule than to rifle through your personnel record?" "I know,"
Jason said. "But I'm still a little surprised that it worked.

Where's he calling from?"

"Well, nine-oh-nine is San Bernardino. Colton, Redlands, around there.

But I checked the number, and he's using a stolen cellular phone. We
can't trace his location. Same thing with the call to our little Foto
Shop scam, but from a different stolen cellular phone. That's another
reason it's probably the same guy."

Incorrect password. Please try again.

"Just keep trying," Jason said to the screen. "What if he doesn't get
the password?" Platt said, "He will. He's just playing around, so far.
He hasn't gotten serious, yet. I give him two days at the outside before
he has your route, the fake pipeline shutdown schedule, the phony patrol
truck radio frequency, and everything. You'll be going back to work
soon." "Okay," Jason said.

The unseen hand entered another string.

Incorrect password. You have exceeded the allowable number of attempts.

Please contact MIS.

Disconnecting ... NO CARRIER

"Don't worry," Platt said. "That won't stop him."

246 keith snyder 41

At was cold outside the covers. Jason hit the snooze button on his
clock-radio at 4:10, 4:19, 4:28, and 4:37. At 4:46, he turned the alarm
off and sat on the edge of the futon for ten minutes with the covers
around him, staring blankly and waiting for the disconnected, swimmy
feeling of interrupted sleep to go away. It didn't. He got up anyway,
with the covers still on, and went into the bathroom.

The only advantage of being the first person awake in the Manor was the
reduced likelihood of sudden scalding or chilling in the shower. It
wasn't a sure thing; Chuck, who lived upstairs, kept irregular hours and
ignored the shower schedule, but he was out of town. Jason fumbled the
pliers from the shower soap dish and turned the stripped and handleless
brass stems until a small stream of water trickled from the cracked
plastic showerhead. When the water pressure had built sufficiently for
the stream to arc slightly, he tossed the covers into his bedroom and
stepped in.

The water wasn't hot or plentiful enough to really warm the cold shower
stall, so he shivered through his shower and then dried off as briskly
as he could. He called the filtration plant and left a message for his
foreman, Don, that he'd be there. Then he dressed in blue jeans,
sneakers, a black T-shirt, show control 247

and his Tigers ski jacket. He took the flat, circular retracting
keychain from his jacket pocket and hooked it to the top of his jeans,
and then went into the front room where Platt and Leslie Bookman were
drinking coffee from the mugs he'd owned with Marisa.

Platt handed him a blue knapsack. "The channel's already set," he said.

He opened the knapsack to show Jason the two way radio inside. "This is
the power switch. The battery should be good for at least a week, but
there's a fully-charged extra in there, just in case. It works just like
the one in your truck."

"Break a leg," Leslie Bookman said.

Jason took the knapsack, waved goodbye, and went outside at 5:20 AM.

He breathed out in a huff through his mouth and watched the silver cloud
of his breath in the moonlight. Sorting through his keys, he walked to
the Plymouth and looked at the low, dark apartments next to the Manor. A
single window was lighted, its glass fogged with condensation. It was
half-open and framed nicely the pleasant morning movements of a naked
female upper torso.

"Good morning," Jason said softly enough so the owner of the torso
wouldn't hear. The male tenants at the Manor called her the Topless
Blow-Dryer. As far as Jason knew, the female tenants had no word for
her. Sometimes an inconsiderate calico cat sat in the window and
obstructed the view, but this morning there was no cat.

Jason got into the Plymouth, started the engine, and wiggled the
accelerator pedal to keep it from dying. He pulled a cheap
blue-and-white Mexican blanket from under the back seat and wrapped it
around him as he watched the Topless Blow-Dryer and listened to his
teeth clatter. When the automatic choke shifted and the engine rhythm
smoothed out, he backed away

In 248 keith snyder from the Manor and pulled onto Del Mar, turned on
his headlights, and headed north on the 210 Freeway, a torrent of wind
pouring in through the broken windshield. He drove with one hand so he
could use the other to hold the blanket closed, switching hands every
few minutes to allow the non driving hand to thaw.

In Sylmar twenty-five minutes later, he entered a small lot through a
wheeled gate and parked next to a chain-link fence. Past the fence,
dozens of silent pickup trucks with black plastic storage boxes
installed across their beds, a few compact pickups with smaller boxes,
and two big ten-wheeled utility trucks with specialized machinery welded
onto metal brackets, were parked on gravel. Every truck was white, with
red diagonal stripes on the tailgate or back panel, and every truck had
a whip antenna mounted somewhere, a small orange rotary light on the
roof of the cab, and an E in a diamond on the license plate.

Jason shut off the lights and engine, walked across the parking lot to a
long, flat, beige building, and went through a brown door into the auto
mechanics' bays. It was no warmer inside. Two trucks and a sedan were on
the hydraulic lifts. The sedan didn't have red stripes.

Three mechanics with half-shut eyes sat on a bench near the door,
sipping industrial coffee from Styrofoam cups and looking blearily
across the room. Jason walked around one of the lifts and down a short
corridor, and entered the pipeline crew's breakroom, which was slightly
warmer than the mechanics' bays. Seven men sat with cups of coffee
around a Formica table, in the middle of the L-shaped space that was
left after the supervisor's office took a small rectangular chunk out of
the room. The morning newspaper was scattered on the table. A broad
window would have revealed the rest of the

show control 249

filtration plant, but it was still too dark to see more than the lights
of the main building several hundred feet away, and a row of white
trucks parked head-in near the breakroom. A small, tan metal desk stood
against the window.

A tall sunburned man with blonde hair looked up and grinned.

"Jase, we missed ya!" he drawled.

Jason said, "Morning, Rick."

A small, wiry man was sitting with his back to Jason. He turned around
and said, "You have fun fishing?"

Don was his supervisor. "Skiing, Don," Jason said. "Not fishing." "Oh,
skiing," Don said.

"Then I went nude co-ed white water hot-air ballooning."

"Well, today you're patrolling. Think you can handle that?"

"I think so."

Don turned back to the men at the table. "Bob and Willy, keep greasing
and flushing up north. You can take off if you finish up early." Bob
said, "Okay." He shook Willy's shoulder and said, "Wake up, Willy."

Willy grunted. They both got up and went out. Jason unhooked a set of
truck keys from a pegboard near the door and took a new pad of Xeroxed
patrol logs from a stack on the desk.

Don said, "Rico and Ernie, head out to San Fernando and help the
District guys with the new meters." Ernie rolled his eyes and looked at
Rico. Rico said, "Don't worry. We go slow for them." Ernie sighed and
pushed away from the table and they left.

"Logan, take Eduardo with you and fix the stair railing at the North
Portal."

Jason walked with Logan and Eduardo back through the auto shop, where
the mechanics were opening the bay doors.

250 keith snyder Logan was a lanky man with sandy hair and an amiable
face. Eduardo was new to the pipeline crew. He was a compact man who
wore his black sweatshirt with the bottom rolled up to reveal the flat
belly of a blue T-shirt.

A gray-haired mechanic yelled, "Hey Jase, what the hell happened to your
car?" Jason said, "Uh ... this guy in a flatbed was transporting long
pieces of one-inch conduit and didn't have a red flag tied to the back
of the load."

"And you ran into it like a dumbshit?"

"Very much like a dumbshit, yes," Jason said. The mechanic grinned and
shook his head.

Logan said, "Hey, safety's nothing to laugh at. You're lucky you didn't
get speared through the forehead. You should sue him."

"Maybe I will," Jason said. As the door to the bay closed behind him, he
heard the mechanic say, "Hey Sammy, you gotta hear this ..." In the
parking lot, Jason said to Logan, "I miss anything?"

"Nope. Same old same old."

Logan unlocked one of the big utility trucks and he and Eduardo climbed
up and swung into the cab and closed the doors, and the noisy diesel
engine started. Jason got Platt's blue knapsack out of the Plymouth and
carried it to a little pickup truck in the compound.

Logan pulled up next to him in the utility truck, rolled down his window
and called down, "What time are you at the North Portal?"

"Twelve thirty-six," Jason yelled over the engine noise. "Plus or minus
a couple."

"Want to have lunch?"

"Nah, not today. I got to run some errands during lunch."

show control 251

Logan said, "Okay, next time."

Jason waved and Logan rolled his window up and shifted into reverse. The
utility truck's backup beeper sounded until he shifted again and pulled
out of the compound. Jason put the blue knapsack on the passenger's
seat, tossed the new patrol logs next to them and then drove the pickup
out of the compound and got on 1-5, heading north.

During the half-hour drive to Castaic Lake, the morning darkness
lightened, and Jason turned off his headlights. At the end of the off
ramp, he waited behind a big truck with half a house on it and
considered whether to get an apple fritter and coffee before or after he
took meter readings at the Foothill pumping plant where he had camped
with Robert and Martin. The half a house turned off the off ramp and
Jason followed it. He didn't turn toward the donut shop.

At the Foothill Plant, he filled two little plastic bottles with water
from a tall, thin spigot that stuck up out of the ground, capped both
bottles tightly, put them on the pickup's open utility box, and withdrew
a long thermometer from the box. Holding the thermometer under the
stream of water, he looked up to where orange light, beginning to fade,
brought the hills into relief. Sunrise over Castaic Lake was the second
of five things he looked forward to every day. The first was that the
donut shop ladies always poured a medium coffee when he walked in.

The third thing he looked forward to was a morning radio show that
played music from around the world. The show lasted from about
Chatsworth to Hollywood. The fourth thing was deciding where to eat
lunch in Hollywood and what to read while he ate it. After that, through
Burbank and Pacoima, he just looked forward to going home.

252 keith snyder It occurred to him that he might consider quitting
this job.

He withdrew the thermometer, wrote "Castaic, Jan. 20, 0640 hrs, 15 °C"

in black indelible marker on two small Tyvek slips that he bound to the
plastic bottles with rubber bands, put the bottles in an ice-filled
cooler in the pickup bed, shut off the water, closed the utility box,
and drove fifty yards to the same low building that he and Robert and
Martin had camped next to. Carrying a clipboard from the front seat, he
unlocked two glass doors and took readings from a bank of meters in a
small room.

A window on one wall overlooked the cavernous subterranean vault through
which ran the huge pipelines that carried lake water to the filtration
plant. A switch near the window operated a bank of sulphur lights on the
ceiling of the vault. Jason switched the lights on, waited for them to
get bright, and looked at the pipes. They were massive. A low vibration
ran through the meter room: machinery and moving water.

He locked the glass doors behind him as he left and drove away from the
lake and back onto the interstate. Three miles later, out of the hills,
he unhitched a two-way radio handpiece from its mounting under the
dashboard, pulled on it to untangle the spiral cord that connected it to
the radio, pressed the button, and said, "Unit Eight to Municipal
Plant." A thin voice said, "Municipal Plant. Go ahead, Jason."

Jason pulled the clipboard onto his lap and recited the meter readings
over the radio.

"Ten-four. Municipal Plant out."

"Unit Eight out."

The two-way radio was kind of fun. He'd always wanted to say,
"One-Adam-twelve, handling Code Three." The pipeline crew occasionally
transmitted rock music or phone sex recordings because it was frowned
upon by management types and the FCC.

show control 253

He reached into Platt's knapsack, switched Platt's radio on, and laid
its handpiece across his thigh with the spiral cable stretched across
the seat. A few minutes later, the radio in the backpack crackled and
Norton Platt's voice said, "Municipal Plant to Jason Keltner, Unit
Eight." Jason picked up the handset,  the button, and said, "This is
Unit Eight."

"Jason, what is your twenty, over?"

"I'm Southbound on the interstate, just South of Castaic, over?"

"Ten-four. You expect to be on schedule today, over?"

"Yes, as far as I know. Everything on schedule, over?"

"Ten-four, Unit Eight. Shutdown is on schedule, so you'll be due back at
Castaic for pipeline walk through by fourteen forty-five hours. Municipal
Plant out."

"Ten-four. Unit Eight Out."

254 keith snyder 42

JLhe day got warmer. Jason followed the patrol route west into Las
Virgenes and Calabasas and south through the Sepulveda Pass. He took
samples, ran tests, and logged the results. At the top of the Sepulveda
Pass, he unlocked a metal gate and drove up a hill to where two huge
water tanks dwarfed an adjoining building. He took water samples outside
the building and hydroelectric power readings inside, drove back down
the hill, and followed the patrol route through Hollywood and Beverly
Hills, and then over the Hollywood Hills into the foothills that defined
the southern edge of the San Fernando Valley.

In Burbank, he abandoned his patrol route and got on the 134 freeway,
took it to the Interstate, and was back at Castaic at 2:40.

Sitting in the truck next to the low building, he picked up the
handpiece from the knapsack and said, "Unit Eight to Municipal Plant."
He waited a few seconds and said, "This is Unit Eight to Municipal
Plant, over."

Norton Platt's voice said, "This is Municipal Plant. Go ahead, Unit
Eight."

Jason pressed the key. "I'm at Castaic now, over?"

show control 255

"Ten-four, Jason," Platt's voice said. "This is Frank. Proceed with
scheduled walk through, over?"

"Oh, hi, Frank," Jason said. "Ten-four. I'm entering Foothill Plant at
fifteen-hundred hours, and will enter the pipeline on schedule at
fifteen-ten hours. I'll be out of radio contact for approximately thirty
minutes."

"Ten four. Valves fifty-six and fifty-seven are full open for visual
inspection. Make sure you're out of there by sixteen hundred hours when
they close. Municipal Plant out."

"Unit Eight out."

In the front room of the Manor, Norton Platt released the microphone
button and said to Martin, "This is the part that makes me nervous."

"I really wish you wouldn't say that," Martin said.

256 keith snyder 43

"H, Lmm," Platt said suddenly. He leaned more closely toward the second
small screen.

Martin said, "What?"

"Bookman!" Platt yelled.

"What!" Martin said.

Leslie Bookman entered the front room from the pseudo-kitchen.

"What is it?"

"Our killer isn't where we thought he'd be." He wrote something on a
small notepad, tore off the sheet, and handed it to her. "Delahugh's
nearby at the site. Get him there."

Leslie Bookman snapped one of the telephones off the top of a rack and
paced as she dialed. Martin said, "What happens if somebody else finds
him?"

"Mr. Fluffy is at Castaic," Platt said softly to himself. "Why is he
there? Why didn't he tap into the controls from the junction box outside
the filtration plant, where it makes more sense? Why is he putting
himself at risk by being at the pumping plant?"

Martin said, "What happens if somebody else finds him?"

Leslie Bookman was talking calmly on the telephone. Platt frowned hard
at the second screen. Then raised his head and

show control 257

nodded. "Yes. Video. That might be it. If he wanted to watch, he'd have
to be at the pumping plant to tap into the local closed-circuit security
video." Martin said, "Answer my frigging question. What happens if
somebody else finds him?"

Platt keyed something in on the computer keyboard and watched the
monitors. He glanced momentarily at Martin.

"Things could go wrong," he said.

He watches video signal in the empty control room.

Jason Keltner is on time, to the minute. It hadn't been easy to break
into Municipal Water's Operations Department's main computer, but it
hadn't been that difficult, either. Utility companies were never as
secure as they liked to think. It had taken only a few days of poking
around to find Jason's personnel file, his truck's radio call sign, and
the radio frequency used by Municipal's field units.

And then to find the pipeline shutdown schedule and discover Jason's
walk through and inspection--that was almost a gift!

He arrived at the empty Foothill Pumping Plant earlier in the day and
entered through an open back door, found the control room, and
acquainted himself with the interior security cameras and the
computerized valve controls, and then tuned the desktop two-way radio to
the frequency he'd stolen. For the last few hours, he has listened to
the radio and sporadically giggled to himself.

The entryway security camera shows Jason, clipboard in hand, unlocking
and entering the building. He leaves the view of the entryway camera and
appears in the output of the control room camera. Reading from the bank
of meters, he makes entries with a pencil on the raised clipboard. He
raises one hand and brushes hair away from his eyes, and leaves the
control room. Picked up again by the entryway camera, Jason approaches
the door that leads down into the huge vault, unlocks it 258 keith
snyder with a key from a belt chain, and goes through the door. The
entryway video monitor shows the door swinging slowly dosed.

When the clock in the upper right corner of the valve control computer
reads 15:12, he types a chain of commands on the key hoard. In a few
seconds, two lines of text appear on the screen:

V 56 OPEN 2°

V 57 CLOSED

He watches the picture from the security camera. Jason does not return.

He giggles.

Something moves behind him, and he turns.

'"Nighty night," says Delahugh, and hits him hard on the back of the
head with something, and his vision goes white--

show control 259

44

Light shot through the crack of the opening hatch. Jason turned to face
it. His feet were wet in his shoes from the few inches of water on the
floor of the pipe.

Norton Platt's face appeared in the half-open hatch. His hand came up
and shaded his eyes.

"You in there, Jason?" he said.

"Right here," Jason said. "And glad to see you. What time is it?"

"Three-forty."

"Still a few minutes before the pipeline fills up. You got a rope or
something so I can get out of here? The valves closed early for some
reason." Jason made a hurry-up gesture with one hand. "Why don't I tell
you all about it later, after you get me out of here."

Platt looked displeased. "There's this little problem."

"Uh, can we discuss this later?" "I'm afraid not," Platt said. There was
a scuffling sound behind him.

Platt turned to look over his shoulder, and then swung the hatch door
completely open. Behind him was Delahugh, and next to Delahugh was a
messy-looking man with his hands behind his back. It took Jason a few
seconds to realize that the man was BIGVIRG from the Rust Garden

260 keith snyder show, and that his hands were behind his back because
they were tied there. BIGVIRG seemed stunned, and was drooling a little.
He was blindfolded, and a second rope was bound around his chest, under
his arms.

"As you can see," Platt said, "we do have rope. Unfortunately, it's in
use."

"Uh," Jason said.

"You should have been less accommodating when I wouldn't tell you why I
was involved. Bad move." He looked at Delahugh and motioned toward the
hatch. Delahugh pushed BIGVIRG toward the opening, but BIGVIRG whipped
his bound hands awkwardly out of Delahugh's grip and stumbled away from
Jason's line of sight.

Delahugh said, "Shit," and moved after him. Scuffling sounds came
through the open hatch, and BIGVIRG reappeared, Delahugh behind him.

Delahugh seemed to have the ropes that tied BIGVIRG's hands. He pulled
sharply on them as BIGVIRG tried to whip away again, and BIGVIRG fell
and struck his head against the rim of the hatchway and lay still,
panting. The blow rang dully in the pipe. Delahugh put his foot against
the back of BIGVIRG's neck.

Jason said, "Why are you doing this?" Platt said, "With you and Mr.
Fluffy here both gone, things tie themselves up in a nice little
package." He shrugged. "As I said, you should have been less
accommodating." He said to Delahugh, "Put him in."

BIGVIRG thrashed under Delahugh's foot and wailed.

"Christ," Delahugh said, in an annoyed voice. He reached above him and
pulled a cargo hook down from some piece of machinery Jason couldn't
see. His foot still against BIGVIRG's neck, he slipped the hook through
the rope around BIGVIRG's chest.

show control 261

He looked up and jerked his thumb into the air. The sound of an electric
winch came through the hatchway, and the hook line drew taught and began
to hoist BIGVIRG to a standing position. Delahugh pulled a forefinger
across his own neck and the winch halted. Platt crouched, grabbed the
rope that bound BIGVIRG's chest, and pulled; BIGVIRG fell through the
hatch, flailing. The hook and rope held, and the winch started again and
lowered BIGVIRG to the pipe floor. Platt reached into his back pocket
and withdrew a knife. He cut the rope and stood as Delahugh left the
hatchway and disappeared outside.

"Too bad," he said. "You only really made one fatal mistake." He put the
knife back into his pocket. "Unfortunately for you, that's all it
takes." He squinted at something outside the pipe that Jason couldn't
see and said, "His turn."

BIGVIRG moaned on the pipe floor.

Platt looked down at the moan. "You can loosen his bonds if you'd like,
Jason," he said. "I don't need him tied up down there."

Jason stepped to where BIGVIRG was and untied the knot that bound
BIGVIRG's wrists. When his hands were free, BIGVIRG pulled his blindfold
off and stared up at the open hatch. Delahugh reappeared with a second
person, a tall man with a black hood over his head and a rope tied
around it as a gag. Blonde hair stuck out under the hood.

Platt stood and loosened the gag. "You have my sincere apologies," he
said to the hooded man. "I never like to lose civilians."

"Who the hell are you people?" came a deep voice from the behind the
gag, frightened, with a pronounced drawl.

"Rick?" Jason said. "Is that you?"

"Jason? What're they gonna do? I'm just here to do stress tests. What
the hell's going on? Please, don't do this."

p 262 keith snyder I

"Platt," Jason said, "What do you want with Rick?"

"Wrong place at the wrong time," Platt said. "You didn't tell me he'd be
here."

"I don't know every goddamn thing that every goddamn supervisor decides
to do during a line shutdown," Jason yelled. Delahugh snagged a second
hook onto the tall man's bonds. He motioned to someone unseen and the
winch started up again, raising the tall man a little off the ground.

"What the hell are you doing?" the deep voice cried through the gag,
panicked. The sound of the winch changed and the man moved forward, over
the open hatchway, and began to lower.

"Platt," Jason yelled. "He doesn't have anything to do with this!"

The winch rope jiggled as its payload struggled."Hey!" the deep voice
yelled through the hood. "You assholes, what the hell's going on?" He
found the edge of the hatchway with one foot and blocked his descent
momentarily, but Delahugh knocked the foot away.

The tall man bucked and struggled. "Oh, god ..." When he reached bottom,
Platt cut the rope. He began to close the hatch, and then opened it
again and said, "Oh, I might as well introduce you to somebody." He
motioned, and the Preacher appeared in the open hatchway and said,
"Hello, Jason." He shifted his gaze to BIGVIRG and said, "And hello to
you, my good friend. How nice to see you down there."

BIGVIRG wailed.

"Platt," Jason said, "you suck."

Platt closed the hatch.

show control 263

45

There was a slight breeze and a faint whistling sound.

Jason said, "What time do you think it is?"

"Oh, god, I don't know."

"It must be at least three forty-five."

"Oh Jesus!" the deep voice wailed. "Help, please somebody!"

"Keep yelling, Rick," Jason said. "Just in case."

"Why? Why bother? The only people here are the ones who want us here,
and the other crews are all doing walkthroughs at other sites! That
longhaired bastard made me radio the plant that we were safely out of
the pipeline!"

"Christ, Rick."

"He had a gun, Jason! What the hell was I gonna do?"

"Help!" Jason yelled. "Help! Hello? Anybody?"

In a tone of hysterical disbelief, the deep voice yelled, "Jason, we're
going to drown down here!" The yell reverberated farther away,
subsequent echoes gaining resonance and ringing crazily.

"Shut up, Rick," Jason said shakily. "Sorry, but just shut up. I don't
want to hear it. I'm sorry you got involved, but I don't want to hear it
right now. There's no way to tell how far sound will carry in this
pipeline. It might reach a few miles to the next crew."

264 keith snyder "I'm sorry." There was still a hysterical edge to the
voice.

"Hello!" Jason yelled. "Is anybody there?" His voice echoed down the
dark pipeline.

"Jason, if there was another crew to hear, they'd be yelling back." The
scrape of a shoe was followed by a solid thwack, as though Rick had
kicked the pipe's interior wall with a heavy shoe. The reverberation was
deep and short. "God damn\ I don't want to drown!"

Jason felt around near where BIGVIRG had landed on the pipe floor. His
hands found a shirt collar and lifted. There was only deadweight; no
resistance. "You did this, you coward. Guess I was right about you." He
let go. "Loser."

A moan came from where the deadweight had dropped. It rose in pitch and
repeated eerily as the echoes intersected each other. Jason groped again
in the total darkness and found the rope and hook still caught in
BIGVIRG's bonds. He detached the hook and hung it over his right front
jeans pocket.

Another solid thump reverberated in the pipe, followed by a soft
scrabbling from Jason's right. "Open, damn you! Open! Help me, Jason.

Try to get hold of the edge of the valve."

Jason felt in front of him and found another pair of hands there at the
square edge of a flapper valve, a large, slightly convex disk the same
diameter as the pipe that pivoted on large pins to control the flow of
water. He ran his hands over it until he found purchase along the edge
where it gapped an inch away from the rim of the valve seat, and pulled
with all his strength. The valve didn't move.

"Goddamn!"he said in frustration.

He remembered the grappling hook.

"Rick, do you still have that hook they lowered you with?"

"Fuck! Yeah!"

Jason unhooked his and tried to force it into the groove show control
265

with his hands, grunting. Just above him, he heard the same sounds of
metal levering against metal. Every scrape and clink rang down the
length of the pipeline, each echo modulating the last, twisting into a
high-pitched scatter of sound. After what seemed like a few minutes,
Jason stopped prying and stood panting near the valve. The man next to
him followed his lead.

"Jase, forget it," the deep voice said, "we can't open it with our
fingers or with these things. We can't open it from here at all."

The moaning from BIGVIRG continued, echoing weirdly.

Jason shouted, "Well, what do you want me to do? Sit here until they
reopen the pipeline?" He flung the hook blindly away from the voices. It
clanked against prestressed concrete somewhere. The echoes bounced and
intersected and clashed and died. "Where is that asshole?" Jason walked
unsteadily toward the moaning until his shoe bumped into something soft.

"You bastard," he shouted, "you did this!"

The moaning stopped and a broken voice whined, "It's not my fault!"

Jason's reached down and his right hand touched shirt fabric. He grabbed
it. "I'm gonna kill this SOB! Gimme that damn grappling hook!"

A sob broke from the pipe floor.

The shirt shifted. Across the pipe, the deep voice drawled, "Why do I
have to die? Why?" Jason said, "Because you were here. You saw Platt and
Delahugh here, and they can't let you talk."

"But I wouldn't tell. I wouldn't!"

"Rick, it's too late."

"I wouldn't tell!"

"They can't hear you. Or if they can, they don't care." Jason found the
shirt front of the body on the pipe floor and

266 keith snyder tapped it. "Nice trap, idiot. I'm glad you got caught
in it." He found the side of the pipe with his left hand and squatted
carefully, putting his right hand down for balance in the inch deep
water. He felt a small, gentle ridge under the water where there was a
seam in the pipe. "You couldn't have trapped us in the Santa Monica
line?" he said. "We could maybe kick our way through a seam in that cast
iron, it's so old. But not this prestressed. This stuffs got concrete
and steel cords and God knows what else. They drive the tour buses
through a section of this same stuff, up top. The first bus driver that
did it didn't think his bus would fit through, but it did." He grimaced
in the darkness and shook his head. "What the hell am I talking about?"

"Goddamn tour buses."

«r 3)

borry.

"We're really dead, aren't we?"

"Yes," Jason said. "I think we really are. But at least we're taking
this piece of garbage with us."

The moan from the body on the pipe floor built into words and said,
"Fuck you." It didn't sound convincing; the voice shuddered.

"Fuck yourself," Jason said. "If you could do anything right, you
wouldn't be in here."

"I do things right," the voice said after a few seconds. "You're the
one, not me. It's your fault, not mine."

"Yeah, I forgot; you're a real man. You get real girls," Jason said.

"And you never hot chat on the Net, either. What a man."

After a pause, the voice wheedled, "I got your girlfriend Monica, what
you got to say about that?"

"What do you mean, 'got her?' Monica killed herself on stage. You had
nothing to do with it."

show control 267

«r~\* J "

Did so.

There was a rustle on the other side of the pipe. "You killed Jason's
girlfriend?"

"I got her with her tits hanging out and cut her up good!"

The sound of hard breathing came across the pipe. "Jesus Christ!" the
deep voice said shakily. "Jesus Christ!"

Wheezing, BIGVIRG said, "I killed the bitch! She had it coming!"

Jason felt his blood rise, but said nothing.

Another shifting sound from the pipe floor, and he said, cagily, "Got
the whore with her tits hanging out."

A little hot burst of red, up through his sternum. Jason said, "Listen,
shitbag. I don't care how much time we have left. If you don't want
yours shortened, you refer to her with respect."

"Got her with her tits hanging out. She was a fucking whore and
everybody knew it and I killed the bitch like she deserved."

Jason found the shirt front again. It squirmed, but he found purchase on
the fabric, felt around a little, and aimed a punch at the vicinity of a
fat stomach. The punch sank in, and drew a pneumatic grunt and then a
sob.

After a few moments, Jason said, "Is that whistling sound louder?" He
let go of the shirt front. Ragged, labored wheezing came from the pipe
floor.

A few seconds later, the deep voice drawled, "Yeah. Oh, shit. That's got
to be the air vents." Thuds reverberated in the pipe, as though Rick
were again trying to kick through the concrete. "They must be reopening
the line, and the water's forcing the air out through the vents. Help!

Somebody help, damn you! Help!" Metal scrapes and clinks came from the
direction of the valve.

"Jason, help me with this valve! We gotta try again."

268 keith snyder Jason got up awkwardly in the dark and walked with
tiny steps, hands outstretched, toward the sounds until he touched the
cool metal of the valve. He found the square edge again and pulled as
hard and as long as he could. Nothing moved. He bumped into something
soft and said, "Sorry."

"Jase, it ain't opening. Hey you! Get over here and help."

There were soft splashes and grunts from BIGVIRG, and then a hand
touched Jason's cheek. Jason jerked his head away and said, "Get a grip
on the edge and pull."

The whistling was definitely louder, and the pipe surface vibrated
gently. Jason strained to open the valve and heard the other two doing
the same. It didn't move at all.

"Goddamn remote control valves." The drawl seemed stronger. "We coulda
maybe opened the old-fashioned ones." "How much time do you think we
have?" Jason said.

The response was shaky, "Uh, let me think. Uh ... let's see, at that
rate, and, uh, it can't be any nearer than, uh, let's see ..." Jason
could hear fast, shallow breathing. "Uh, about ten minutes before the
water gets here."

Jason found the hand that had touched his cheek and held it firmly
around the wrist. He jerked it. "Hope you're happy," he said.

The wrist struggled to break free. Then the voice insisted, "It's not my
fault! You forced me! I had no choice!"

"You had plenty of choice." He jerked the wrist. "You're just wacko. You
think you've got power over women, power over money, power over
dangerous people. But really, when you really get down to it, all you've
really done is play with yourself while you look at a computer screen,
and get yourself caught in your own trap and drown in a pipeline. I
mean, what the hell are you doing here? You got away! What kind of idiot
goes and gets himself caught after he's gotten away?"

show control 269

The wrist yanked free, and something splashed loudly a few feet away.

"You don't know anything."

"I know what a big man you think you are. I also know what a fuckup you
really are."

"That's what you think! I have more money than you'll ever have! I can
do anything I want! I can go anywhere and kill anyone I want to, just
like I killed that bitch!"

"Sure you did."

"I did! I switched her lasers and rigged her computer to kill her. I did
it!"

Jason didn't say anything.

"She had it coming!" the voice screamed. "She had it coming!" The scream
bounced and careened down the pipeline in shrill dissonance.

"That still doesn't explain this money you supposedly have. Where would
you possibly get that kind of money?" "I have ways," the voice said
smugly. "It just shows how much you know.

I have more than you'll ever see in my hotel room right now." "Not
likely," Jason said, "Last I heard, salaries for chronic masturbators
were on the decline."

There was another shifting, scuffling sound, and a whir of air. It took
Jason a moment to realize that he had almost been hit in the face by a
fist, but before he could step back, another blow came and connected. It
wasn't a good punch, but it startled him, and he fell blindly back into
the blackness and landed hard on his back in the water with his wind
knocked out. The fat body fell atop him, yowling wordlessly. Gasping for
breath, Jason hit straight up with the heel of his hand and smashed into
something hard, maybe a jaw. The yowling broke momentarily, and then got
closer, and got wilder, and Jason felt teeth through his shirt, biting
his shoulder. He pulled his

270 keith snyder knee up sharply and connected with something, and
slammed his forearm against the head. There was a yelp of pain, and
Jason shoved the body off him and found his way to his feet.

"You got no money," he gasped. "You got nothing. You are nothing.

Garbage." "I told you not to call me that!"

"I heard you, Garbage. Even if they haven't found your money yet,
Garbage, they will. You can bet on it, Garbage. They're not going to
just let it go that easily with you out of the way, Garbage."

"They won't find it!"

"They will."

The whistling seemed higher in pitch, and a soft spray drifted past,
dampening Jason's skin. Across the pipeline the deep voice pleaded,
"Please. Please stop." "Rick," Jason said, breathing hard. "I gotta ask
you something. When the water gets here, will it be a big wall, or will
the pipe just fill up gradually?"

"I don't know, man. Goddamn, I hate waiting for it!" His voice rose and
he yelled, "Just get it over with!"

The deep drawl echoed and died. "Where's that accent from, Rick?" Jason
said.

"Huh?" Distracted.

"The drawl. Where's it from?"

"Uh ..." Jason could almost see him shaking his head to clear it.

"Georgia. Why?"

"I just thought I ought to know, I guess. I didn't know."

"It's from Georgia. My kids grew up here, so they don't have it. Oh,
Christ. My kids."

"I'm sorry, Rick. I'm sorry you got dragged into this."

"What the hell, Jase, right?"

"If you hadn't been here when they came for me and Garbage--"

show control 271

"I said don't call me that!"

"--you'd be back at the breakroom now, probably." A weak laugh. "Or
hiding from Don, probably." Something clanged dully a long way past the
valve, and the vibration of the pipe increased. A deep, steady roar
began, thrumming through the pipe all around them.

272 keith snyder 46

J. he slight breeze gained strength, ruffling Jason's hair, and the
whistling sound rose in pitch and volume and became more strident.

The human sounds in the immediate section of the pipe became more
difficult to discern. The sound of a body shifting across from Jason
came faintly. "Anybody got anything they want to confess? This looks
like the time for it." Jason said, "Like what, Rick?"

"Well ..." There was another shifting noise. "Well, okay, like I
shouldn't have been unfaithful to old Lois. It only happened twice and
it didn't mean nothing neither time, but it was wrong and I still
shouldn't of done it. Both times was with two different girls, so it
wasn't like a real affair, you know?"

Jason didn't know what to say.

"But I was a pretty good father, I think. / think I was, anyway."

Jason said, "I bet you were."

The roar didn't increase in volume, but the wind grew in strength. Jason
said, "Feel the wind picking up?"

"The water must be passing the last of the upstream air vents, so
there's nowhere for the air to go but here."

show control 273

Jason said, "Maybe the air pressure here will rise enough that we pass
out before we drown."

"If we could only get that other valve open, the totally closed one, it
might wash us into the forebay, but they're not opening that one until
tomorrow."

"Maybe they'll change the schedule."

The deep voice said, "No way." Jason said, "Let's try to reach the
overhead hatch." The deep voice said, "Hell, let's try it. Get on my
shoulders."

Jason reached forward and found the coarse cloth of a work shirt."Kneel
down a little." The cloth moved down. Jason found shoulders and a head,
got behind them, and settled himself onto the shoulders. "Okay," he
said. "You can stand up."

The giddy sensation of motion in the blackness threw his balance off and
he almost fell off.

The deep voice below him said, "You okay?" Disoriented, he said, "Yeah,
just hurry up. Here goes nothing."

Jason felt the body below him struggling for balance. It seemed to sway,
but he wasn't sure whether that was just his lack of orientation.

"Can you reach it?"

From the pipe floor came, "Oh God, the water's deeper!"

Jason reached up, tense and wobbling. His thighs tightened as he tried
to stay balanced in the increasing wind. He stretched his hands up as
far as he could, but felt nothing. He detached the hook from his pocket
and arced it blindly overhead at arm's length, hitting nothing.

"I can't reach it."

Another sickening motion, and a splashing sound.

"Okay, Jase, get off me."

274 keith snyder Holding the shoulder he was on, Jason felt with one
foot for the floor, found it, and got off the shoulder. His socks soaked
through at the ankle with cold water that quickly filled his shoes.
"It's deeper."

"It'll be deeper yet."

There were sniffles and a sob from the pipe floor. "I don't want to
die!"

"You're the only one here who deserves to," Jason said.

"Please! Somebody help me!"

"Like somebody helped Monica?"

"She was a teasing slut!"

"There's a crime," Jason said. "What did you do with your new money? I
bet you couldn't even think of anything to do with it."

"I still have it!" Screaming, the voice said, "I'll give it to you, just
let me out!" "No chance," Jason said. "They'll just find it without you.
Probably already have. You are a loser."

"She forced me! She forced me to! She got what she had coming!"

"What did she have coming?"

"She knew too much!"

"About what?"

"Everything! About everything!"

"Like what?" "I told her everything!" "Like what, I asked you!" The deep
voice said, "Let it go, Jase; it doesn't matter now."

"You're right," Jason said. "This idiot doesn't know anything. He's just
looking for excuses before he dies."

"I know a lot."

show control 275

"Like what, you pathetic little shit?"

"What about you, you loser? You and your little whore wife?" Jason said,
"What do you know about her?"

Smugly. "I know a lot."

The swirling water rose quickly to Jason's lower calves, and the wind
and the whistling noise disappeared abruptly, and then resumed in the
opposite direction. The low roar stayed constant.

"It's past the last air vent," Jason said.

"I know all about you, Jason Keltner." "That makes one of us," Jason
said. "So, tell me what you know about me, smart man."

"I know you can't even keep your best friend from fucking your wife."

After a moment, Jason said, "That's hardly classified information."

"I have power over you, 'Ja. se.'"

"You have your hand in your pants, little boy."

"I have power."

"You have delusions."

"I have more money than you've seen in your whole life!"

"Enjoy it for the next few minutes," Jason said.

"It's mine!"

"Right. Just like you killed Monica because she knew too much."

"She forced me! She made me tell her. She led me on. I had to do it. She
made me do it. I had to kill her. She got what she had coming!"

Jason's ears popped, and the water rose faster, to his knees. A low
singsong came from across the pipe, and Jason realized that it was a
prayer. He tried to think of one, but didn't know any.

276 keith snyder "They won't find it!" The voice was hysterical. The
water rose to Jason's mid-thigh and the current pulled him off balance.
He fell and breathed water.

"Where'd you hide it?" Jason asked.

Gasping in hysteria, the voice said, "They ... won't ... find it! I
slipped it under the carpeting where the maids ... where no one never
... no one will ever find it!" "Under the carpeting!" Jason shouted
incredulously. "It's already gone, you idiot! Maids? What was it, a
motel room? You incredible loser!" The water rose to his chest and
lifted him from the pipe floor. He tread water. "Game over, my petite
little kumquat; you fucking lose!"

The voice shrilled, "No! It's--" and was cut sharply off by the sound of
inhaled water. Jason heard a frenzied splashing. After a gasp: "It'll
still be there!"

"Help!" screamed the other voice.

"Hang on, Rick," Jason said. Floating, he couldn't gauge the rise of the
water in the darkness until his head bumped gently against the upper
curve of the concrete pipe. He could hear the others sputtering and
thrashing as the overhead pipe surface pressed closer. He found the
entry hatchway and banged on it and clawed at its sealed edges, and felt
the other two sets of hands scrabbling beside his. The hatch mechanism
was on the other side, outside.

The airspace got smaller. Jason was forced to turn his head sideways to
breathe, and as he took in a lungful of the last of the air, the cold
water rose past his eye and then past his nose and his other eye, and
filled his inner ear.

The airspace disappeared.

Jason fought panic. The low roar became duller as water displaced the
air in his ears. The screaming stopped. It was almost quiet.

show control 277

47

jl\. series of grinding creaks reverberated in the pipe. Jason aimed in
the direction he thought was up and kicked his legs. He thought he felt
air, and kicked twice more, and his head broke the surface of the water.

He opened his eyes; there was dim light in the pipe.

Another head broke the surface several feet from him, but despite the
slight lifting of darkness, he couldn't make out the features. The head
wailed softly between violently shuddering breaths.

"Mr. Fluffy, I presume," Jason gasped.

There was a splash and loud breathing at the far end of the pipe, near
the closed valve, and a deep, unsteady voice drawled, "Jason?"

"I'm okay. How are you?"

The drawl intensified to a burlesque. "I'm jes' okeydokey, y'all! Can
we'uns stop this goldurn drownin' now?" "Hoo doggies," Jason said.

A last creak sounded and the entry hatch opened. Light streamed in,
blinding Jason. He squinted against it and then closed his eyes.

"You're alive," Norton Platt said. "What a surprise."

"Turncoat," Jason said. "Lousy longhair commie pinko mercenary running
dog." 278 keith snyder "It's a living," Platt said. "Your pupils are
dilated. Give it a little bit."

The sounds of hyperventilation came from where Jason had seen the first
head break the surface. Still breathless, Jason said, "Get Mr. Fluffy
out first."

Platt lowered something and there were a lot of splashes and then the
hyperventilating sounds rose through the hatchway. Jason opened his eyes
just enough to see without much discomfort and looked at Robert's
serious face bobbing in the water next to him under wet bottle-blonde
hair. A chain ladder hung down from the hatchway, and a faint buzz
droned outside the hatch.

"Nice going, Rick," he said.

"Thanks," Robert said. He sounded insincere, as he always sounded to
Jason after a performance.

The chain ladder was pulled up.

"Hey," Jason yelled weakly, "Let the ladder down." His voice didn't
echo.

The ladder didn't come back down. "Hey," he called again, treading
water. "Any time, you guys." He opened his eyes a little more. Through
the open hatch, he could make out a spare latticework of bare
two-by-fours and four-by-fours in front of a blue sky.

The slender figure that appeared in the hatchway was not Norton Platt.

"Bravo," Pascal said. "Bravissimo. Thank you for your efforts on my
behalf."

Jason glanced at Robert.

"What do you mean," Robert said wearily.

"Goodbye, " Pascal said. He disappeared from the hatchway.

"Hey!" Jason yelled. "Hey, what's going on?"

When no answer came, he yelled again, "Somebody want to lower the
ladder?"

show control 279

"In a minute, Jason," Platt's voice called. "We're a little busy being
detained at gunpoint right now."

"Was that Pascal?" Robert said to Jason.

"Yes."

"I think he's taking Mr. Fluffy away," Robert said a minute later.

"That's how it sounds."

Car doors opened and closed somewhere not too far away, and the engine
started. Platt appeared in the hatchway as the sound of tires on dirt
faded. "Watch out," he said, and pushed the chain ladder through the
hatchway. It splashed into the water. Robert climbed out first, and
Jason followed him up onto a rough plywood deck. The droning buzz he'd
heard inside the pipe came from a large red gasoline generator that sat
stolidly on the dirt a hundred feet from the deck. On the other side of
the generator was an unfinished house with studs and no walls. Beyond
that was a row of similarly skeletal houses. The white cargo truck was
parked nearby on the dirt, next to Martin's CVCC and a large red tanker
truck.

A flimsy-looking plywood shack had been erected at one corner of the
deck, and a thick orange cable from the generator had been run over the
dirt into it. A rudimentary door hung crookedly on hinges.

"He took him away?" Jason said.

Platt said, "Yes," and handed each of them a very large Care Bears beach
towel. Platt had a walkie-talkie on his belt.

Jason looked down as he toweled himself. The hatchway was visible
through a square hole in the rough deck. Two dozen cables of different
weights and colors ran in an orderly fashion from inside the shack at
the corner of the deck into the square hole, and then splayed out in
different directions.

"How'd it go?" Jason asked.

"Fine, once we got him in there with you. We had a little complication
when he took control of the valves from onsite

280 keith snyder instead of where we thought he'd be, but Vince got
there pretty fast, knocked him out, and brought him here."

"And you decided to go ahead and dump him in the fake pipe instead of
just taking him into custody, even though he'd changed the plan by being
in the wrong place?"

"It was a judgment call. We had him, but I still wanted to know where
he'd hidden the money. And though the confession isn't admissible in
court, it's still good to have. And anyway," Platt grinned, "style
counts. Why waste a great setup?"

Jason looked around for the Preacher. "Where's Reverend Billy?"

"He left with Mr. Pascal."

"It was nice of Pascal to let us borrow him." Jason finished toweling
himself. "So you got it all?"

"Audio and video, which Mr. Pascal took at gunpoint. He's got a dupe. We
still have the originals."

"Doesn't sound like a fair trade to me. We get to use his construction
site and Reverend Billy, but he takes Mr. Fluffy and the tapes?"

The door to the enclosure swung open and Martin came out with a green
canvas bag.

"Everybody okay?" Robert said, "Yes." "I'm fine," Jason said. "How are
you?"

Martin beat one open hand rhythmically over his heart. "Man, I thought I
was gonna have a heart attack a couple of times. It's good to see you
guys in person."

"Yup," Jason said.

"Here's some dry clothes," Martin said, handing the bag to Jason.

Platt's walkie-talkie crackled and said in Leslie Bookman's voice, "All
done, Norton. It looks good."

Platt detached the walkie-talkie from his belt and said, show control
281

"Okay, thanks," into it. He put it back on his belt and said, "Bookman's
been out at the entrance to this housing tract. Pascal and Fluffy have
been detained there by Detective Emily Johns, who incidentally sends her
regards. Mr. Pascal will be out by suppertime, if you eat late. Mr.
Fluffy will be transferred to the proper Federal types, who have been
looking for him for a long time." "Emily," Jason said.

Delahugh's head poked out of the little enclosure and he said, "Got it,
Norton. Motel-Six in Redlands." Platt smiled. "Good," he said. "Now
we're done." To Jason, he said, "The money's been found. Now Mr. Pascal
probably won't feel he has to kill you."

"It's Happy Day in Castaic," Jason said.

"Get changed," Platt said. "We have to load out."

It took three hours to pack up the sound and video equipment that was in
the deck enclosure. Most of it went into blue padded racks that looked
like the ones Platt had set up in the front room of the Manor. Then a
crew of four women arrived with a flatbed truck and a crane. They pumped
the water back into the red tanker truck from which it had originally
come, and then hoisted the pipe with the crane. The pipe was twenty feet
long, and dirt fell from it as it lifted. Platt detached a speaker array
while the massive pipe hovered, twisting gently, over the ground. He
loaded the speakers into his cargo van, and then detached a dozen
contact microphones from the exterior of the pipe and stored them
carefully in individual cases.

The crew secured the pipe to the flatbed and left. Delahugh and Leslie
Bookman followed them out in the red tanker truck. Jason made a point of
thanking them before they went, and Leslie Bookman smiled
disconcertingly at him again.

"The whistling sound worked great," Jason said, as he 282 keith snyder

helped Platt load the last of the racks into the back of the white
truck. The rack contained digital signal processing equipment that had
created the echo effects inside the pipe. "I couldn't hear any equipment
hiss at all."

"I heard some in the monitor mix," Platt said, "but it was masked well
enough down in the pipe. Will you be fired for abandoning your route
when they find your truck at the Foothill plant?"

"Nah. You have to murder a supervisor or steal a computer to get fired
from Municipal. But I'm quitting anyway. That job's not right for me."

"That's what I thought," said Platt. "I'm glad to hear you're quitting.

Line up something else first, though." He pulled the cargo door down.

"Good advice. I probably won't follow it."

Platt locked the cargo door with a padlock that hung from the hasp.

"Need a ride?"

"Going toward Pasadena?"

«r* J

Sure.

«p 35

Sure.

In the cab of the white truck, headed South on 1-5, Platt said, "Well,
it worked. How do you feel?"

Jason said, "Monica's still dead."

"That's all?"

"I feel like that should be all."

"Is it?"

"No."

"What else?"

"A little incomplete." Jason tried unsuccessfully not to grin. "And
maybe a little great." A few minutes later, he said, "I have to ask
again."

show control 283

"Why I'm involved?"

"Yes."

"People have been looking for your Mr. Fluffy for a long time, for a lot
of reasons."

"And that's the only reason you're involved?"

Platt pursed his lips. A mile later, he said, "Remember when you asked
why I knew of Paul Reno?"

"Yeah." "Remember what I said?"

"Something about keeping an eye out for new talent," Jason said.

Platt looked at him pointedly. "I found some," he said. "You did a good
job. I may call you some time if something comes up that I could use you
for."

Jason couldn't think of anything to say for a few minutes. Then he said,
"So Monica wasn't your friend?"

"No."

"And you left that message in her MUSE mailbox just as what? Bait?"

"Yes."

"And I bit."

"Yes." Jason said, "I guess I don't mind that. So, what are you? FBI?"

Platt smiled enigmatically.

"Oh, come on," Jason said. "Give it a rest."

Platt chuckled and said, "Okay. No, I'm not FBI. I ... freelance."

Jason said, "Oh."

"We should do a post-game wrap-up soon."

"Not yet, though," Jason said. He looked back at the road. "There's
still something I need to finish."

284 keith snyder 48

It was Open Mike Night at the E-Bar, and Jason was sitting outside in
the cool evening, at the table farthest from the stage, wondering how
much farther he could move the table, when Paul came around the corner
in his leather jacket and sat down.

"You must like this place a lot," Paul said.

"Thanks for coming."

Paul wasn't having it. "Is this an apology?"

"Not exactly."

"Then what?"

"I'm sure you've heard this and that lately."

"Yeah? And?"

"Let me get to it at my own speed."

Paul looked casually around the alley. "It's your dime."

"Things seem to have sorted themselves out. The Preacher's still
preaching, so I assume he and Pascal worked something out. Probably the
Preacher helping out at the fake pipeline earned some brownie points. I
got my killer, and Norton Platt says he won't be seeing daylight for a
long time. Turns out Fluffy's done a lot of lousy things to a lot of
people."

"Is there a point to this?"

"Nobody still knows what Mr. Fluffy's real name is."

show control 285

"So what? I'm not that interested in stuff I already know. What do you
want?"

"So now I'm back to usual. Well, almost usual. My car still thinks it's
a convertible, and I'm unemployed, and I hurt all over, and my piano's
broken, but I'm basically back to normal."

Paul looked bored.

Jason said, "Except that there's one thing that never really got tied
up."

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"I still don't know who shot at Robert and me on the porch."

"Really."

"Yeah. Strangest thing. Nobody seems to want to take credit for it."

"Does this conversation go somewhere?"

"Oh, maybe not. It's just that it doesn't quite fit with everything
else. I mean, first of all, it happened before my rear window got
smashed, so it doesn't fit nicely in a logical crescendo, if you see
what I mean. And then there's the fact that the shooter used a rifle."

"Why's that strange?"

"Say you want to shoot somebody from the street, and they're on a porch
twenty, thirty feet away. What do you use?"

"Maybe a rifle. What's wrong with that?"

"A mediocre shooter would use a shotgun."

"Maybe he was a good shooter."

"A good shooter wouldn't have missed. Two big dumb stationary targets,
thirty feet max, with a rifle, in plain sight."

"So?"

"So why would someone pick a weapon perfect for shooting accurately,
drive up in front of the house, and miss? It's almost as though they
weren't trying to hit us." 286 keith snyder

"Shooting at you and trying not to hit you."

"I know." Jason raised his hands. "I know. It sounds dumb. Bear with me
here." He put his hands on the table. "It's almost as though somebody
wanted to scare me away from danger."

"Who would do that?"

"Good question. Any ideas what the answer might be?"

** "N T "

Nope.

Jason looked at him for a while. Paul gazed calmly back.

"Okay," Jason said, finally. "I figured it was dumb." "Yeah," Paul said.
"It sounds dumb to me, too. Anything else?"

"No."

"I mean, as long as we're not friends, we don't really have any reason
to hang after we're done talking."

"You're right." A little while later, Paul said, "This band sucks."
"They sure do," Jason said.

(continued from front flap)

Efdmonton I

PUBLIC LIBRA!

QCT27200QJ

HETl/Hrv TV 4A/V

I SERVloe POINT \

and sets out to find the killer.

With the help of his friends -- Robert Goldstein, an actor, and Martin
Altamirano, an artist -- and a mysterious online stranger, Jason follows
the advice of The Art of U/ar, an ancient treatise on strategy, and
harasses the enemy ceaselessly, only to find that it may not have been
such a great idea ... Keith Snyder is a composer and author. He Hues in
Southern California

Jacket design tiy Uioollg Hammoth Jacket! lustration by Jason flrthur
Photograph of the author by Patrick Kniselg

Write Way Publishing 3806 S. Fraser Aurora, CO 80014 PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

[continued from front flap)

EPMCNTON!

PUBLIC Libraj OCT2720QO|

f?£TC<««V TO A. M SERV'loe POINT \

V_

and sets out to find the killer.

With the help of his friends -- Robert Goldstein, an actor, and Martin
Altamirano, an artist -- and a mysterious online stranger, Jason follows
the advice of The Art of War, an ancient treatise on strategy, and
harasses the enemy ceaselessly, only to find that it may not have been
such a great idea ... Keith Snydei is a composer and author. He liues in
Southern California

Jacket design by Illoolly Mammoth Jacket illustration by Jason flrthur
Photograph of the author by Patrick Knisely

Write Way Publishing 3806 S. Fraser Aurora, CO 80014 PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.