The outside cops were risking windburn for a look at the Tripsmobile’s underside. Their hats went flying in our portable gale, and well-brought-up, clean-cut, healthy, patriotic little kids caught them and brought them proudly back to be blown away again.
And the Irish cop inside had a larger-than-life-size expectant look that turned my central nervous system to silly putty. I became unhappily aware of a strong scent of pot smoke in the air.
“Doomed,” I consoled myself. “Twice doomed. Gary the goddamm Frog is holding, and Laszlo and the lobsters are already waiting by the reservoir. So we’re busted and we’re dead. Groovy. Nothing else can possibly go wrong.” I was being grateful for small comforts.
“Ah, Officer,” Mike politely hinted, “could you tell me what we’ve done, please?”
“Done what?”
“I mean, why did you stop us? What’ve we done wrong?”
I could’ve mentioned a thing or two, but I left it up to The Man.
“Got ’is license there?” The Man asked The Men on the steps. One of them, the youngish spade, shook his head bewilderedly and passed The Man a bulging handful of paper.
“What’s all this crap?”
“Them’s his license, Sergeant.”
“All of ’em?”
“Yes, sir. Every one.”
“Hmmm.” The sergeant didn’t like it, but he accepted the wad of papers and started memorizing them. After each license, he granted Mike a glower of appalling sincerity.
“State of Hawaii operator’s license.”
“That’s right, Officer. I used to live…”
“Delaware chauffeur’s license?”
“You see, I had this job and…”
“Arizona private pilot’s license, expired.”
“That was when I…”
“Two New Hampshire motorcycle licenses?”
“I thought I lost…”
“What the hell is this?”
“Oh, that’s my Russian driver’s license. I was…”
“Russian, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hmmm.”
It struck me that Michael was cooking our goose with driver’s licenses. The Man, frowning bitterly, seemed to agree.
“U.S. Army driver’s license, Indiana learner’s permit, Wisconsin helicopter pilot’s license… You move around a lot, don’t you boy.”
“Yes, sir, but I…”
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What’s this? A New York ground-effect vehicle operator’s license? Mother of God! And what in the name of God is a Ground-Effect Vehicle?”
“This is. Look…” Mike got up and led The Man outside for a short lecture on the ground effect. The remaining cops obviously expected me to make a break for it, but they were ready. I was something less than comfortable.
By now the rest of our brave little band was well aware of the men in blue. Gary the unspeakable Frog was gratifyingly pale, and the others were talking in half-whispers and avoiding rapid movements. The outside cops were clearing the crowd away, but the traffic didn’t appear to be moving yet.
I noticed all this through a thick gray smog of quick, inevitable doom.
But Mike’s lecture didn’t really last forever, and when they came back in The Man was saying, “I still think I oughtta run the lot of yez in,” which might be called encouraging, perhaps.
His argument for running the lot of us in was that our attendant hurricane was a clear and present traffic hazard. Michael, far more confident since his lecture, conceded this possibility, but pointed out that the bus was a duly licensed ground effect vehicle, and claimed that the wind, being integral to the vehicle, was obviously implicit in the license and sanctioned by the issuance thereof. Michael has his moments.
The shaken Man’s next argument was that he oughtta run us all in because we were funny-looking and suspicious characters. Mike countered by claiming that we were a professional rock-n-roll band in full stage dress, en route to a gig, and that he was our manager (proving this by yet another weird document from his wallet). He was ready to go on, but:
“All right! All right!” The Man gave in. “All right! So get the hell outta here!” He shoved clear signs of discontent.
“Right away, Sergeant,” burbled Michael. “Thank you, Sergeant.”
“Yeah. An’ just make sure you keep your nose clean ’round here, you understand?”
Mike agreed to everything. The Man very gradually split, trailing admonitions in his wake. At last Mike closed the door. Traffic started moving. So did we.
“Oh wow!” said I to Michael, “what a copper-bottomed drag!”
He grunted mild agreement.
“I thought for sure we’d had it that time. Wow!”
“The trouble with you, Chester, is that you’re afraid of cops. You don’t seem to understand: they’re on your side. You lack faith, that’s your problem. Like, what made you think that tired old sergeant was going to arrest us?”
“Well, for one thing, Gary the Frog’s holding. Copiously. And some of it’s been smoked — in plain sight of everyone in Times Square, mind you — and the whole bus reeks of burning marijuana. Why didn’t he bust us? All he had to do was inhale.”
“Like I said, Chester, you just lack faith. Here we have an old Irish cop in New York City. So there are two things you can count on his having: varicose veins and sinus trouble. Especially sinus trouble. He probably hasn’t smelled a thing since 1933.”
Mike’s right. I don’t have faith.
And there we were, moving fast up West Side Highway. The sun was sinking, time was growing short, but we were on our way at last. Maybe there was hope.
23
AFTER EXHAUSTIVELY not settling the problems of battle plan and weapons — “Just have faith,” was M. T. Bear’s refrain — we reached the reservoir with less than fifteen minutes to spare — not to spare, rather: we still had to find out where the enemy was lurking.
It was twilight — blue shadows, red and name-it sky, little wisps of fog hovering gold above the water and tabby-gray under the trees — as pastoral a scene as you could ask. I suppose it was beautiful — it usually is — but I knew a bit too much to enjoy it properly.
“Hold on,” Michael shouted. “Here we go!”
The bus angled steeply up the bank, bumped and tottered over the top, hurtled down the other side, then glided smooth and easy as you please across the water on beds of raging foam.
All the chicks and Gary the unmentionable Frog screamed shrilly as we plunged over the bank. Patrick Gerstein hollered, “Yippee!” on the way down, and all of us said, “Oh wow!” when we floated out over the water.
“Now how do we find them?” I inquired respectfully. Mike was now officially in charge.
“Don’t have to,” highly pleased. “I know exactly where they are.”
He piloted us mainly north, threading neatly through a cluster of inconsequential islands, while his look of smug self-confidence all but glowed.
“Back when I was in high school,” he explained with somewhat indecent delight, “I had this plot to dose the reservoir with LSD.” He almost never called it acid. “Never did get around to doing it, though. Got involved with some chick instead.” Pause. “Hell! I’ve forgotten her name. How about that? She was my first girl, too, if you don’t count my cousin Sheila — and you wouldn’t if you knew her, believe me. And now I can’t even remember her name. Let’s see…”
He was quite capable of carrying on like that all night if no one stopped him, so I stopped him. “What about your acid plot?”
“Oh yeah, that. Well, the first thing I did, of course, was scout the reservoir for a base to work from. I needed a place that was convenient to the road but well hidden — a wooded ravine or gully, say — with enough room for whatever equipment I might need, plus easy access to the water, like a sheltered beach or inlet. Found it, too. There’s just one place hereabouts that’s suitable for this kind of action, and we’re headed straight toward it now.”