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Fred shot the tape ahead at high-speed wind. The meter at last read a two-hour passage.
  pay up your goddamn back rent or goddamn get to work on the cephscope, Arctor was saying
hotly to Barris.
 I ve already ordered resistors which 
Again Fred sent the tape forward. Two more hours passed.
Now Holo Monitor Five showed Arctor in his bedroom, in bed, a clock FM radio on to KNX,
playing folk rock dimly. Monitor Two in the living room showed Barris alone, again reading about
mushrooms. Neither man did much for a long period. Once, Arctor stirred and reached out to increase
the radio s volume as a song, evidently one he liked, came on. In the living room Barris read on and
on, hardly moving. Arctor again at last lay back in bed unmoving.
The phone rang. Barris reached out and lifted it to his ear.  Hello?
On the phone tap the caller, a male, said,  Mr. Arctor?
 Yes, this is, Barris said.
I ll be fucked for a nanny goat, Fred said to himself. He reached to turn up the phone-tap volume
level.
 Mr. Arctor, the unidentified caller said in a slow, low voice,  I m sorry to bother you so late,
but that check of yours that did not clear 
 Oh yes, Barris said.  I ve been intending to call you about that. The situation is this, sir. I have
had a severe bout of intestinal flu, with loss of body heat, pyloric spasms, cramps . . . I just can t get it
all together right now to make that little twenty-dollar check good, and frankly I don t intend to make
it good.
 What? the man said, not startled but hoarsely. Ominously.
 Yes, sir, Barris said, nodding.  You heard me correctly, sir.
 Mr. Arctor, the caller said,  that check has been returned by the bank twice now, and these flu
symptoms that you describe 
 I think somebody slipped me something bad, Barris said, with a stark grin on his face.
 I think, the man said,  that you re one of those  He groped for the word.
 Think what you want, Barris said, still grinning.
 Mr. Arctor, the man said, breathing audibly into the phone,  I am going to the D.A. s office
with that check, and while I m on the phone I have a couple of things to tell you about what I feel
about 
 Turn on, tune out, and good-by, Barris said, and hung up.
The phone-tap unit had automatically recorded the digits of the caller s own phone, picking them
up electronically from an inaudible signal generated as soon as the circuit was in place. Fred read off
the number now visible on a meter, then shut off the tape-transport for all his holo-scanners, lifted his
own police phone, and called in for a print-out on the number.
 Englesohn Locksmith, 1343 Harbor in Anaheim, the police info operator informed him.  Lover
boy.
 Locksmith, Fred said.  Okay. He had that written down and now hung up. A locksmith . . .
twenty dollars, a round sum: that suggested a job outside the shop probably driving out and making a
duplicate key. When the  owner s key had gotten lost.
Theory. Barris had posed as Arctor, phoned Englesohn Locksmith to have a  duplicate key made
illicitly, for either the house or the car or even both. Telling Englesohn he d lost his whole key
ring . . . but then the locksmith, doing a security check, had sprung on Barris a request for a check as
I.D. Barris had gone back in the house and ripped off an unfilled-out checkbook of Arctor s and
written a check out on it to the locksmith. The check hadn t cleared. But why not? Arctor kept a high
balance in his account; a check that small would clear. But if it cleared Arctor would come across it in
his statement and recognize it as not his, as Jim Barris s. So Barris had rooted about in Arctor s
closets and located probably at some previous time an old checkbook from a now abandoned
account and used that. The account being closed, the check hadn t cleared. Now Barris was in hot
water.
But why didn t Barris just go in and pay off the check in cash? This way the creditor was already
mad and phoning, and eventually would take it to the D.A. Arctor would find out. A skyful of shit
would land on Barris. But the way Barris had talked on the phone to the already outraged creditor . . .
he had slyly goaded him into even further hostility, out of which the locksmith might do anything.
And worse Barris s description of his  flu was a description of coming off heroin, and anybody
would know who knew anything. And Barris had signed off the phone call with a flat-out insinuation
that he was a heavy doper and so what about it? Signed all this off as Bob Arctor.
The locksmith at this point knew he had a junkie debtor who d written him a rubber check and
didn t care shit and had no intention of making good. And the junkie had this attitude because
obviously he was so wired and spaced and mind-blown on his dope it didn t matter to him. And this
was an insult to America. Deliberate and nasty.
In fact, Barris s sign-off was a direct quote of Tim Leary s original funky ultimatum to the
establishment and all the straights. And this was Orange County. Full of Birchers and Minutemen.
With guns. Looking for just this kind of uppity sass from bearded dopers.
Barris had set Bob Arctor up for a fire-bombing. A bust on the bad check at the least, a fire-
bombing or other massive retaliatory strike at worst, without Arctor having any notion what was
coming down.
Why? Fred wondered. He noted on his scratch pad the ident code on this tape sequence, plus the
phone-tap code as well. What was Barris getting Arctor back for? What the hell had Arctor been up
to? Arctor must have burned him pretty bad, Fred thought, for this. This is sheer malice. Little, vile,
and evil.
This Barris guy, he thought, is a motherfucker. He s going to get somebody killed.
One of the scramble suits in the safe apartment with him roused him from his introspection.  Do
you actually know these guys? The suit gestured at the now blank holomonitors Fred had before him.
 You in there among them on cover assignment?
 Yep, Fred said.
 It wouldn t be a bad idea to warn them in some way about this mushroom toxicity he s exposing
them to, that clown with the green shades who s peddling. Can you pass it on to them without faulting
your cover?
The other near scramble suit called from his swivel chair,  Any time one of them gets violently
nauseous that s sometimes a tip-off on mushroom poisoning.
 Resembling strychnine? Fred said. A cold insight grappled with his head then, a rerun of the
Kimberly Hawkins dog-shit day and his illness in his car after what
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