He knocked on the front door of 211. And stood waiting with his plastic and shot nightstick gripped at ready, terribly and completely all at once not caring shit about his job. “We’ve seen Mufi,” he said, half to himself. “Now let’s see what Mrs. Gomen is like. You think she’ll be any better? Let’s hope so. I can’t take much more of that tonight.”
“Anything would be better,” one of the pols beside him said somberly. They all nodded and shuffled about, preparing themselves for slow footsteps beyond the door.
13
In the living room of Ruth Rae’s lavish, lovely, newly built apartment in the Fireflash District of Las Vegas, Jason Taverner said, “I’m reasonably sure I can count on forty-eight hours on the outside and twenty-four on the inside. So I feel fairly certain that I don’t have to get out of here immediately.” And if our revolutionary new principle is correct, he thought, then this assumption will modify the situation to my advantage. I will be safe.
THE THEORY CHANGES—
“I’m glad,” Ruth said wanly, “that you’re able to remain here with me in a civilized way so we can rap a little longer. You want anything more to drink? Scotch and Coke, maybe?”
THE THEORY CHANGES THE REALITY IT DESCRIBES.
“No,” he said, and prowled about the living room, listening … to what he did not know. Perhaps the absence of sounds. No TV sets muttering, no thump of feet against the floor above their heads. Not even a pornochord somewhere, blasting out from a quad. “Are the walls fairly thick in these apartments?” he asked Ruth sharply.
“I never hear anything.”
“Does anything seem strange to you? Out of the ordinary?”
“No.” Ruth shook her head.
“You damn dumb floogle,” he said savagely. She gaped at him in injured perplexity. “I know,” he grated, “that they have me. Now. Here. In this room.”
The doorbell bonged.
“Let’s ignore it,” Ruth said rapidly, stammering and afraid. “I just want to sit and rap with you, about the mellow things in life you’ve seen and what you want to achieve that you haven’t achieved already…” Her voice died into silence as he went to the door. “It’s probably the man from upstairs. He borrows things. Weird things. Like two fifths of an onion.”
Jason opened the door. Three pols in gray uniforms filled the doorway, with weapon tubes and nightsticks aimed at him. “Mr. Taverner?” the pol with the stripes said.
“Yes.”
“You are being taken into protective custody for your own protection and welfare, effective immediately, so please come with us and do not turn back or in any way remove yourself physically from contact with us. Your possessions if any will be picked up for you later and transferred to wherever you will be at the time.”
“Okay,” he said, and felt very little.
Behind him, Ruth Rae emitted a muffled shriek.
“You also, miss,” the pol with the stripes said, motioning toward her with his nightstick.
“Can I get my coat?” she asked timidly.
“Come on.” The pol stepped briskly past Jason, grabbed Ruth Rae by the arm, and dragged her out the apartment door onto the walkway.
“Do what he says,” Jason said harshly to her.
Ruth Rae sniveled, “They’re going to put me in a forced-labor camp.”
“No,” Jason said. “They’ll probably kill you.”
“You’re really a nice guy,” one of the pols—without stripes—commented as he and his companions herded Jason and Ruth Rae down the wrought-iron staircase to the ground floor. Parked in one of the slots was a police van, with several pols standing idly around it, weapons held loosely. They looked inert and bored.
“Show me your ID,” the pol with stripes said to Jason; he extended his hand, waiting.
“I’ve got a seven-day police pass,” Jason said. His hands shaking, he fished it out, gave it to the pol officer.
Scrutinizing the pass the officer said, “You admit freely of your own volition that you are Jason Taverner?”
“Yes,” he said.
Two of the pols expertly searched him for arms. He complied silently, still feeling very little. Only a half-assed hopeless wish that he had done what he knew he should have done: moved on. Left Vegas. Headed anywhere.
“Mr. Taverner,” the pol officer said, “the Los Angeles Police Bureau has asked us to take you into protective custody for your own protection and welfare and to transport you safely and with due care to the Police Academy in downtown L.A., which we will now do. Do you have any complaints as to the manner in which you have been treated?”
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
“Enter the rear section of the quibble van,” the officer said, pointing at the open doors.
Jason did so.
Ruth Rae, stuffed in beside him, whimpered to herself in the darkness as the doors slammed shut and locked. He put his arm around her, kissed her on the forehead. “What did you do?” she whimpered raspingly in her bourbon voice, “that they’re going to kill us for?”
A pol, getting into the rear of the van with them from the front cab, said, “We aren’t going to snuff you, miss. We’re transporting you both back to L.A. That’s all. Calm down.”
“I don’t like Los Angeles,” Ruth Rae whimpered. “I haven’t been there in years. I hate L.A.” She peered wildly around.
“So do I,” the pol said as he locked the rear compartment off from the cab and dropped the key through a slot to the pols outside. “But we must learn to live with it: it’s there.”
“They’re probably going all through my apartment,” Ruth Rae whimpered. “Picking through everything, breaking everything.”
“Absolutely,” Jason said tonelessly. His head ached, now, and he felt nauseated. And tired. “Who are we going to be taken to?” he asked the pol. “To Inspector McNulty?”
“Most likely no,” the pol said conversationally as the quibble-van rose noisily into the sky. “The drinkers of intoxicating liquor have made you the subject of their songs and those sitting in the gate are concerning themselves about you, and according to them Police General Felix Buckman wants to interrogate you.” He explained, “That was from Psalm Sixty-nine. I sit here by you as a Witness to Jehovah Reborn, who is in this very hour creating new heavens and a new earth, and the former things will not be called to mind, neither will they come up into the heart. Isaiah 65:13, 17.”
“A police general?” Jason said, numbed.
“So they say,” the obliging young Jesus-freak pol answered. “I don’t know what you folks did, but you sure did it right.”
Ruth Rae sobbed to herself in the darkness.
“All flesh is like grass,” the Jesus-freak pol intoned. “Like low-grade roachweed most likely. Unto us a child is born, unto us a hit is given. The crooked shall be made straight and the straight loaded.”
“Do you have a joint?” Jason asked him.
“No, I’ve run out.” The Jesus-freak pol rapped on the forward metal wall. “Hey, Ralf, can you lay a joint on this brother?”
“Here.” A crushed pack of Goldies appeared by way of a gray-sleeved hand and arm.
“Thanks,” Jason said as he lit up. “You want one?” he asked Ruth Rae.
“I want Bob,” she whimpered. “I want my husband.”
Silently, Jason sat hunched over, smoking and meditating. “Don’t give up,” the Jesus-freak pol crammed in beside him said, in the darkness.
“Why not?” Jason said.
“The forced-labor camps aren’t that bad. In Basic Orientation they took us through one; there’re showers, and beds with mattresses, and recreation such as volleyball, and arts and hobbies; you know—crafts, like making candles. By hand. And your family can send you packages and once a month they or your friends can visit you.” He added, “And you get to worship at the church of your choice.”