"I'm not supposed to be involved like this," said Edelstein when Willie returned to the car. "What's in the package."
"It's supposed to be money and a note."
"I'll read the note to you," said Edelstein.
"I can read," said Willie. And he could. Edelstein watched the lips move as Willie the Bomb formed words. Edelstein tried to get a peek at the letters pasted on the paper, but Willie defensively shielded the note.
"Count the money," said Willie, tossing the package to Edelstein and slipping the note into his pocket.
"Fifty thousand," said Edelstein.
"A lot of money," said Willie. "Give it to me."
"It's half of what you owe me," said Edelstein.
I'll give you everything at the music show. There'll be some money there for us."
"And then perhaps I might sort of leave cause you don't really need me, right, Willie. I'd only get in the way."
"Right," said Willie glumly. "You want to see something really great in the way of bombs?"
"What is it?" asked Edelstein suspiciously.
As they passed a country store, Willie suggested Edelstein get a jar of Prosco homemade pickles and, as he suspected, Edelstein couldn't open the bottle. They drove on through Pittsfield with Willie refusing to stop for lunch and Edelstein eyeing the pickles sitting there unopened between them.
"I could blow the top off that jar," boasted Willie, as they sped down Route 8 to North Adams.
"Really?"
"Bet your ass I could. I could blow it clean off without even a crack in the glass."
"Do it now, Willie. I'm starved."
Willie pulled over to the gravel shoulder of the road, reached into the back seat of the car and from under a magazine removed the bomb made of playing cards. Into its side he pressed a penlike device and where it protruded he very carefully wrapped a straightened paper clip into a coil.
"Get out of the car," said Willie and when Edelstein had stretched himself outside the car, Willie handed him the jar of pickles. "Hold this in your left hand."
Edelstein took it in both hands.
"Left hand," said Willie, and Edelstein took the jar in his left hand.
Willie thought a moment, then said, "Put the pickles on the rock over there."
When Edelstein had and returned to the car, Willie gave him the bomb.
"Now do this just right," he said. "Put the part with the paperclip on top of the jar, then walk back. Don't wait. It will start when I start the car."
"Brilliant. How does that work?"
"Just do it," said Willie, and Edelstein scampered back to the rock, his shoes spitting gravel behind him.
He gingerly dropped the bomb on the jar and ran back to the car.
"Okay. Start it, genius. I'm hungry."
"You didn't put the clip against the top of the jar."
"How could you see?"
"I know. Watch. I'll start the car and nothing will happen," and Willie turned the ignition and sure enough the jar of pickles and the bomb were there.
"Well, I'll be. You're a genius."
Edelstein went back to the jar of pickles, picked up the bomb, and even though it wouldn't balance that way, pressed the paperclip against the metal top of the jar.
And within an instant his stomach was filled with pieces of pickles and glass shards and the metal jar cap. So was what was left of his face.
The glass shards spit, cracking into the side of the car and even making a nick in the windows. They shouldn't have.
'Trigging Prosco pickles," said Willie the Bomb Bombella. "They're subcontracting out their jars again to those cheapie manufacturers."
And he drove off along the road toward the rock concert, where he hoped to be able to cash in on the million dollar open contract himself. The $50,000 in his pocket had been for a side job. As the note had said: "Kill Edelstein. He talks too much."
CHAPTER FOUR
Vickie Stoner was alive and rapping on the side of Route 8 just outside Pittsfield when she could have sworn she heard an explosion down the road.
"It's the revolution," wheezed one of the boys, a lanky blond with shoulder-length hair wrapped tight around his forehead with an Indian band that somehow combined the signs of the Mohawk and Arapaho, an accomplishment that eluded history but not Dibble manufacturing of Boise, Idaho.
"Not now. Maggot's at North Adams," said Vickie. "I'm going to ball Maggot."
"Maggot's bitchen," said another young girl, her legs straddling a knapsack. They had been waiting in the Berkshires' morning sun for hours, as processions of bicycles, painted Volkswagen buses, and straight cars passed them by. Some of the girls suggested they were passed up because the boys didn't paint the signs with the right karma. The boys said it was because the girls didn't get up on the side of the road and do some work.
"Like what?" asked Vickie.
"Show a boob or something," said one of the boys.
"You show a boob," one of the girls said defensively.
"I don't have one."
"Then show what you've got."
"I'd get busted, man."
"Well, I'm not getting up there like some piece of meat."
So in the early afternoon, they waited for transportation just twelve miles short of the end of their journey-the rock festival known as the North Adams Experience. The town may have claimed it as its own. The promoters may have claimed the profits. But the experience belonged to those who would be part of it. You didn't attend it like some movie, sitting in a seat and letting the screen lay all sorts of stuff on you. You were part of it and it was part of you and you made it what it was with the Dead Meat Lice and the Hamilton Locomotives and the Purloined Letters.
It wouldn't begin at eight o'clock that night like the ads said. It had already begun. Coming to it was part of it. The wheels were part of it. Sitting on the side of the road waiting for a ride was part of it. The pills and pouches and the little envelopes were part of it. You were part of it. It was your thing and no one else could tell you what it was, man, especially if they tried.
Vickie Stoner refused to discuss whether the loud noise was the beginning of the revolution, a world war or a car backfiring. She had had enough of that crap, man. Up to here and beyond.
The whole thing was a bummer, all the problems with her father and now all the mess of the past few days.
It had started simply too. A simple, reasonable, nonnegotiable demand. All she had wanted was Maggot. She had had Nells Borson of the Cockamamies, all of the Hindenburgh Seven and what she needed, really needed, all she needed, was Maggot.
But when she told her father, he had locked her in their Palm Beach home. That coffin with lawns. That slammer with butlers. So she split and was brought back. She split again and was brought back again.
All right, daddy wanted to negotiate. She'd negotiate. She got these papers and ripped off some of the tapes her daddy made of all his telephone conversations and she had said:
"You wanna deal? Let's deal. What will yon give me for the papers and tapes on the grain deal? What am I bid? I'm bid. I'm bid. I'm bid. Do I hear laying off me? Do I hear laying off me? What do I hear? I'm bid. I'm bid."
"Go to your room, Victoria," was the bid, so Vickie Stoner pretended to go upstairs and then she split. With the tapes and papers, which she took to the U.S. Attorney's office in Miami. And what a trip it was. All of Daddy's friends, all of them, with lawyers, nervous breakdowns and sudden excursions around the world, saying how could anyone do anything like that. That was a high all right, but then the straights started laying it on her and this guy Blake was all right, but he was a downer.
And then Denver and that crap on the balcony and in the room and the bad vibes, man. So she just split again and here she was on the side of Route 8, waiting for the last few miles of the North Adams Experience. And down the road, maybe that crap was starting again.