My own door had not been touched. I went inside and turned on the radio. It was cold in the room. There was an airline bag near the door, accidentally left behind by Watney's manservant. The phone rang. It was Azarian in Los Angeles, saying his people were very anxious to bid. I hung up. On the radio several men were conversing in an unfamiliar language. I looked in the trunk for an extra blanket. The package containing the mountain tapes was gone. I had to work my way up and down several mental steps before I arrived at this conclusion. I knew at once that something was missing from the trunk. I realized it was the brown package. I thought the package contained the drug. Then I remembered Hanes had the package with the drug. The second package contained the tapes. The second package was gone. I stood in a corner of the room, near the window, crossing and uncrossing my arms, finally wedging my hands in my armpits for warmth. I knew I'd never be able to reproduce the complex emotional content of those tapes, or remember a single lyric.
After a while I went over to the door, picked up Watney's airline bag and unzippered it. Inside were several hundred bubble gum cards. Watney's picture was on each one of them. A funny enough sight. But not what I needed at the moment.
There was no extra blanket. I put Opel's coat over my shoulders, placed the one available blanket over the coat and then settled into a chair and waited for the first line of light to appear across the window, bringing sleep with no dreams.
18
I picked up the telephone and listened to the dial tone, music of a dead universe. The sound fascinated me. Ever since the phone had been put back in working order, I had fallen into the habit of lifting the receiver from time to time and simply listening. Source of pleasure and fear never before explored. It was always the same, silence endowed with acoustical properties.
I dialed the numbers of Globke's office, his home, his car. Nobody knew where he was. His wife spoke to me about the stillness at the center of a thing in motion. In the background, as she talked, I heard my own voice, revolving at thirty-three and a third, second cut on side one of third album.
A man wearing a gendarme's cape appeared at the door. He was small and pallid, almost lost in the cape and long boots, and in his eyes was a frenzy he seemed to be trying to pass off as alertness. He gestured toward the bathroom.
"What's in there?"
"Everything that's not in here."
"My name isn't important. Menefee. It happens to be Menefee but that's not important. What's important is the person I'm clearing for. I'm here to clear. I'm here to make the area secure before you and the person in question conduct your undisclosed business. We have procedures we've developed over a long period of time. Can I use your phone?"
As he dialed he stood between me and the telephone. Talking to the person at the other end he buried his head in the cape. Merely listening he turned slightly and glanced my way every few seconds, as if verifying a description.
"Change of plan," he said. "We don't go there. He comes here."
"Who comes here?" I said.
"Dr. Pepper."
"He's going to be disappointed."
"Don't tell me anything,'' Menefee said. "I'm only here to clear. I make things secure. I work with details, not sum totals. I don't want to be made a party to any information that has sum totals involved in it. This job is tough enough. Handling details for a man like Dr. Pepper is like the ultimate in nerve-rackingness. We run up and down the country, in and out of hotels, motels, airplanes, taxi-cabs. Seeing people, fleeing people. Making deals, turning wheels. Dr. Pepper is a master of many things. People think he restricts his genius to dope and matters related to dope. Dope-related matters. Not so. The man shows his genius in an unspecified number of ways, each and every day, north and south, in lake country or mountain terrain, talking to the makers and shakers or just ambling along a country road laying a gentle rap on some backpacker who's into penance and mortification. But the man's a stickler for detail and this makes my work tough as can be. Soon's we get something all set up he contacts me in some devious way and changes eight details out of a possible eleven. You could say the man's hyper-secretive. You could use adjectives like eerie and uncanny and you'd be right on the mark. He's got disguises, he's got surprises. He doesn't trust a soul, least of all me. He's all the time devising tests to determine my loyalty. The man's a master of regional accents, a master of total recall, a master of surreptitious-ness. Every time I meet some stranger somewhere I automatically assume it's Dr. Pepper in disguise probing at my loyalty. But the man's an aw-thentic genius. I'm grateful to him. I had two years of crisis sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara, California. Ruined my head just about. Dr. Pepper took me out of the world of terminology and numbers and classifications and provided access to new kinds of awareness. Centrifugalism and overloads. Brain-patching. Electrode play areas."
He stopped talking abruptly and I became aware of a jackhammer beating into the street about half a block to the west. I sat at the small table near the sink. Menefee remained by the door, his body yielding to an occasional mild twitch, his face reflecting a mental concentration so intense I thought his eyeballs might suddenly click backward in their sockets in order to peer into the depths of his mind, leaving curdled sludge and pink drippings for my own eyes to gaze upon. Slowly he moved across the door, opened it an inch and looked into the hall. Then he billowed back toward the middle of the room, followed by the man himself, Dr. Pepper, a figure of ordinary size, wearing ordinary and somewhat out-of-date clothing, all in all no less common than a clam on a paper plate. Menefee made clearing motions with his hands and after the door was locked, the shade drawn and the introductions made, we crowded around the table, Pepper and I seated on identical straight-backed chairs and facing each other, Menefee between us in the low-slung canvas chair, leaning forward, his face at table level.
"The product isn't here," I said.
"I've been apprised of that," Dr. Pepper said. "This courier they hired is off somewhere trying to deal on his own. Predictable. At the very least semi-predictable. This Happy Valley bunch is not what you'd call a heads-up collection of people. They've got initiative to spare but they lack keenness. First they tell me to expect two people with the product. Then there's an unforeseeable delay. In my lexicon there's only one kind of delay. Strategic delay. But I let it pass without comment although I'm satisfied in my own mind, see, that this bunch lacks the necessary keenness. You hone yourself. I've honed myself over the years. I've dealt with the quickest minds and the quickest intellects. That's how I've acquired my own quickness. I've dealt with people who know which deck is the marked deck. I call these people the makers and shakers. You hone yourself. You cut away the glut. So then what do they tell me? They tell me the messenger is now bargaining agent with full bargaining powers. I replace the phone with a smile. A smile creases my face. Lack of judgment, I conclude. Lack of experience. In other words Happy Valley is not to be trusted. Their leadership is not to be trusted. Their hirelings and minions are not to be trusted. Other agencies of the underground are to be viewed with a jaundiced eye in the light of past performance. U.S. Guv is to be viewed with two such eyes in light of the fact that they're the victims of this rip-off. I have one word for U.S. Guv. Booshit. That word is booshit. What is U.S. Guv? It's a bunch of rich men playing golf. It's big business, big army and big government all visiting each other in company planes for the sole purpose of playing golf and talking money. So who does that leave in positions of trust? Friend, it leaves you and me."