And I had done it to myself. It had been my idea, my scheme, to lure the girl back to my house at night on a phony pretext, in order to go to bed with her. I had put my ass in the bed and my neck in the noose, all in the same move. Wonderful. Now what was I supposed to do? They really had me. I cooperated or I went to the Orange County Jail. And people died—were clubbed to death—at the Orange County Jail; it happened all the time. Especially political prisoners.
I’ll be writing confessions the rest of my life, I said to myself. And articles on my friends. If they asked me to do a whole book on Nicholas I’d have to comply. Vivian Kaplan has me. I think I was set up, I thought suddenly. She got me to do this; that’s why they send attractive young girls around, underage girls that don’t look underage. Girls with dope and long legs and a welcoming innocent smile, who are glad to drive over to your house late at night, alone. Girls whose phone numbers are typed on the front of the goddamn informer kit, big as life. A veritable come-on.
“Now, about the God business,” Vivian said, in a practical tone of voice. The hash had worn off; she was no longer mellow. “You can’t use it, Phil; we’re not interested in Nicholas Brady talking to God. What we’d like to know about are the Communist Party ties he still has left over from his old activist days at Berkeley. My superior feels that Brady got his job at Progressive Records so that he could very carefully slip aspiring new left-wing artists into the public eye. It’s a common technique they use; meanwhile, of course, Brady remains personally inactive. But he must have links with the people who instruct him, even if it’s just by mail. You’re in a position to read his mail, aren’t you? That’s how the Party maintains control: by mail from New York, where the KGB operates. That connects the operator here with Moscow and the international planning network. We want to know which artists he’s signed are crypto-Communists and who he gets his orders from; those are the twin prongs of—”
“Nicholas is just trying to make a buck,” I said wearily. “So his kid can go to the dentist.”
“He doesn’t meet with anyone from New York? What about phone calls?”
“Tap his phone,” I said, “for all I care.”
“If you could get possession of his phone statement,” Vivian continued, “and see if he’s called New York; that would—”
“Vivian,” I said, “I’m not going to do it.”
“Not going to do what?”
“Spy on Nicholas. Or anyone else. You can fuck yourself. Take your kit back. I’ve had it.”
After a pause Vivian said, “We have quite a bit on you, Phil. A lot of people know a lot about you.”
“So what,” I said, resigned and bitter at it all, ready to throw in the sponge, come what might. There was just so much they could do to me, just so much and no more.
Vivian said, “I’ve read the file on you.”
“So?”
“So a case could be made against you that would stand up in court.”
“You’re wrong about that,” I said, but it was I who was bluffing, not her. And we both knew it; I could see the sense of certitude on her face.
“Do you want us to go after you instead of Nicholas?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“It could be arranged. Really, we could get both of you together; your lives are intertwined. If one of you falls, the other falls automatically.”
“Is that what your superior at FAP GHQ told you?” I said.
“We discussed it. A number of us.”
“Then do your damnedest,” I said. “I already know about the dope you’ve been hiding around here; I found it and destroyed it. I was tipped off.”
“You couldn’t have found it all,” Vivian said.
“Is there an infinite amount?”
“No, but the person hiding it—” She broke off.
“If he can hide it,” I said wearily, “I can find it. And if I can find it, that’s the end of it. Like the lid of grass you brought. A FAPer smoking grass—it doesn’t compute. You and your goddamn hash pipe—Christ, as soon as you brought out the grass I knew you were setting me up.”
Vivian said, “Phil, you were set up a long time ago. What I did tonight is very little. Going to bed with me—”
“Let me take a look at your California driver’s license.” Suddenly something occurred to me. Maybe she wasn’t underage after all. I hurried past her, out of the bedroom and down the hall in the direction of the living room; Vivian scuttled right behind me, trying to overtake me. It was no use; I wedged myself in the hallway and beat her to the living room and her purse.
“Get out of my purse!” she shrieked.
I grabbed up her purse, sprinted with it into the bathroom, locked the bathroom door after me. In an instant I had shaken the contents out onto the bathroom rug. The driver’s license gave her age as nineteen. She was not underage.
That too had been a police trap, and an empty one. So much for that. But it showed me how close I was to the edge, how little separated me from a fall to oblivion.
I unlocked the bathroom door. Vivian was nowhere to be seen. Listening, straining, I heard her voice far off; she was on the phone in the bedroom.
When I entered the bedroom she hung up and stood facing me defiantly. “May I have
