A Scanner Darkly

“Let me talk to him.”

Pause. Then the old lady again. “Well, I have this address, Mr. Arctor.” She read off his home address.

“That’s where your brother was called out to? To make the key?”

“Wait a moment. Carl? Do you remember where you went in the truck to make the key for Mr. Arctor?”

Distant man’s rumble: “On Katella.”

“Not his home?”

“On Katella!”

“Somewhere on Katella, Mr. Arctor. In Anaheim. No, wait—Carl says it was in Santa Ana, on Main. Does that—”

“Thanks,” he said and hung up. Santa Ana. Main. That’s where the fucking dope party was, and I must have turned in thirty names and as many license plates that night; that was not your standard party. A big shipment had arrived from Mexico; the buyers were splitting and, as usual with buyers, sampling as they split. Half of them now probably have been busted by buy agents sent out … Wow, he thought: I still remember—or never will correctly remember—that night.

But that still doesn’t excuse Barris from impersonating Arctor with malice aforethought on that phone call coming in. Except that, by the evidence, Barris had made it up on the spot—improvised. Shit, maybe Barris was wired the other night and did what a lot of dudes do when they’re wired: just sort of groove with what’s happening. Arctor wrote the check for a certainty; Barris just happened to pick up the phone. Thought, in his charred head, that it was a cool gag. Being irresponsible only, nothing more.

And, he reflected as he dialed Yellow Cab again, Arctor has not been very responsible in making good on that check over this prolonged period. Whose fault is that? Getting it out once more, he examined the date on the check. A month and a half. Jesus, talk about irresponsibility! Arctor could wind up inside looking out, for that; it’s God’s mercy that nutty Carl didn’t go to the D.A. already. Probably his sweet old sister restrained him.

Arctor, he decided, better get his ass in gear; he’s done a few dingey things himself I didn’t know about until now. Barris isn’t the only one or perhaps even the primary one. For one thing, there is still to be explained the cause of Barris’s intense, concerted malice toward Arctor; a man doesn’t set out over a long period of time to burn somebody for no reason. And Barris isn’t trying to burn anybody else, not, say, Luckman or Charles Freck or Donna Hawthorne; he helped get Jerry Fabin to the federal clinic more than anyone else, and he’s kind to all the animals in the house.

One time Arctor had been going to send one of the dogs—what the hell was the little black one’s name, Popo or something?—to the pound to be destroyed, she couldn’t be trained, and Barris had spent hours, in fact days, with Popo, gently training her and talking with her until she calmed down and could be trained and so didn’t have to go be snuffed. If Barris had general malice toward all, he wouldn’t do numbers, good numbers, like that.

“Yellow Cab,” the phone said.

He gave the address of the Shell station.

And if Carl the locksmith had pegged Arctor as a heavy doper, he pondered as he lounged around moodily waiting for the cab, it isn’t Barris’s fault; when Carl must’ve pulled up in his truck at 5 A.M. to make a key for Arctor’s Olds, Arctor probably was walking on Jell-O sidewalks and up walls and batting off fisheyes and every other kind of good dope-trip thing. Carl drew his conclusions then. As Carl ground the new key, Arctor probably floated around upside down or bounced about on his head, talking sideways. No wonder Carl had not been amused.

In fact, he speculated, maybe Barris is trying to cover up for Arctor’s increasing fuckups. Arctor is no longer keeping his vehicle in safe condition, as he once did, he’s been hanging paper, not deliberately but because his goddamn brain is slushed from dope. But, if anything, that’s worse. Barris is doing what he can; that’s a possibility. Only, his brain, too, is slushed. All their brains are …

Dem Wumme gleich’ ich, der den Staub durchwühlt,
Den, wie er sich im Staube nährend lebt,
Des Wandrers Tmitt vernichtet and begrabt.

… slushed and mutually interacting in a slushed way. It’s the slushed leading the slushed. And right into doom.

Maybe, he conjectured, Arctor cut the wires and bent the wires and created all the shorts in his cephscope. In the middle of the night. But for what reason?

That would be a difficult one: why? But with slushed brains anything was possible, any variety of twisted—like the wires themselves—motives. He’d seen it, during his undercover law-enforcement work, many, many, times. This tragedy was not new to him; this would be, in their computer files, just one more case. This was the phase ahead of the journey to the federal clinic, as with Jerry Fabin.