Metzger's Dog

5 Kepler read aloud, “‘UFO REPORTED IN DESERT. Two residents of the community of Cottonwood Pass, California, have reported finding what they believe to be the site where a flying saucer made a crash landing. David Greeley, sixty-two, and his wife Emma, sixty, came upon a shallow crater with bits of burned metal wreckage in Fried Liver Wash, a remote area east of the San Bernardino Mountains, last Tuesday while on a rock-hunting expedition. In an interview Mr. Greeley predicted that an analysis of the wreckage would reveal that it was made of a metal not known on Earth. He further stated that a second spacecraft must have landed nearby to rescue survivors and salvage the critical components of the wrecked saucer, including its precious power source. “If only we’d been there on Saturday,” said Mr. Greeley, “we might have solved America’s energy problems forever. But it wasn’t meant to be.” Officers of the California Highway Patrol dispatched from Palm Springs to the site reported that it was the wreckage of an old pickup truck which had apparently been set afire by vandals.’”

“Vandals?” said Immelmann. “I guess so.” He stared out the car window.

“Where are we going, Chinese?” said Kepler. “You’re getting to be a pain in the ass, always driving us around to—” he read from the newspaper, “‘a remote area east of the San Bernardino Mountains’ or some damn place like it was a scavenger hunt.”

“Nothing remote today,” said Chinese Gordon. “Just over to East L.A. to see a guy.”

“Who?” said Immelmann quietly. “What kind of guy?”

“Well,” said Chinese Gordon, staring ahead as he turned off the freeway, “not a very nice guy, I guess, but a guy who can help us. His name is Jorge Grijalvas.”

“Whore-hay?” shouted Kepler. “Did you say whore-hay?”

“Approximately,” said Chinese Gordon.

Immelmann said slowly, “Chinese, this disturbs me. We already have the three of us, and no doubt you’ll tell Margaret. Each person we add is costing me an hour of sleep every night. This better be the last one, because this makes five.”

Chinese Gordon chuckled. “This is my greatest stroke of genius. Jorge Grijalvas isn’t in on our project at all. He’s going to be our ally. Jorge Grijalvas, for your information, is one of the biggest bastards in East L.A. He is a sort of underboss of the Mexican Mafia.”

“Shit,” said Kepler. “I hate that. There’s the Mexican Mafia, the Israeli Mafia, the Irish Mafia, the black Mafia. Why the hell can’t people call it something else? Leave the word ‘Mafia’ to the Italians. I can hardly stand to read the paper anymore. And what the hell do we need this guy for?”

“We don’t,” said Chinese Gordon. “At the moment we have no use for him at all. The man is a walking case of urban blight—no redeeming social value.”

Immelmann studied Chinese Gordon. “Go on.” They drove down a block of crumbling, empty buildings.

“I’m providing, as they say, for a Better Tomorrow. This guy can do a number of things for us, based on his rather slimy enterprises. One, he can launder huge amounts of money if we need it, because he is a dealer in brown heroin, the scourge of the poorest of the poor. Two, he can make us disappear whenever we want, if the price is right.”

“That’s just what I was thinking,” said Kepler. “Will you look at this neighborhood? I wouldn’t walk a Doberman here—afraid somebody’d throw it to the ground and eat it.” A dark blue 1961 Chevrolet with an impossibly shiny metal-flake finish and chrome-spoke hubcaps pulled up beside them. It was built so low to the pavement that it threw sparks as it accelerated at the corner.

Kepler eyed a group of a dozen young men wearing bandannas on their foreheads who were lounging in front of a hardware store, then pulled his pant leg up to reveal the knurled handgrip of the .357 Magnum stuck in his boot. Immelmann smiled.

Chinese Gordon continued. “You see, there’s also the fact of history. You know there are already more people of Mexican descent in Los Angeles than there are Anglos? In five years most of southern California will be Spanish. By getting in touch now with Jorge Grijalvas we’re making the smartest move you can imagine, getting into a growth stock on the ground floor. The world is one big commodities exchange and we’re taking a plunge on Chicano futures.”

HIS HAND HELD OUT IN FRONT OF HIM, the Director stood up and bounced across the room to meet Porterfield. But the Director’s eyes were on the thick, flowered carpet at his feet. There had been speculation in the Company that Director William Blount used the flowers on his carpet as actors use marks on a stage to block out their movements. If that were true, thought Porterfield, this was a notable occasion. The Director advanced a dozen giant camellias to hold out his moist, pudgy hand before scuttling back behind his desk.

There was no greeting, only “Good. You’re here,” as though Blount were speaking to his feet.

“What’s the problem?” asked Porterfield.

The Director’s face took on a kind of dignity and repose when he was safely seated. “Probably nothing,” said Blount. “It’s a simple security problem if it’s handled tactfully and intelligently. We’ve been going over some of the standing items in Morrison’s inventory and discovered a certain lack of—discretion? imagination? I suppose that’s accurate.” The Director nodded to signify his agreement with himself.

Porterfield said, “The Donahue grants.”

“Yes,” said Blount. “Those projects should never have been carried on the books of the National Research Foundation to begin with. Have you read them yet?”

“No, sir,” said Porterfield.

“This man Donahue has a complicated mentality. He seems to have started out as a young man studying mass psychological reactions as historical phenomena. As his work became more theoretical it also became more speculative.”

“What sort of mass psychological reactions?” asked Porterfield.

“Social alienation of particular subgroups, in some of his milder research. In other instances it’s economic panics, political upheavals, mass hysteria—fear of earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, and so on. He attracted attention when he started working out systems for quantifying the forces at work in these phenomena. Once he had a way of working out equations for a particular area, he seems to have turned to the empiricist’s test, comparing his assessments with later events.”

Porterfield nodded. “He started predicting.”

“Precisely,” said the Director, his face still inclined toward the blotter on his desk, his eyes lifting in their sockets to fix on Porterfield. “He also learned to refine his equations when the quotients didn’t come to fruition in facts. Porterfield,” said the Director, “this man actually has a grid, a kind of flow chart that he calls ‘The Terror Index.’ He’s on record as receiving NRF grant money to perfect it by developing a blueprint for the destruction of Mexico.”

Porterfield smiled. “It’s easy enough to fix. The first step is to get him off the National Research Foundation’s books, and Morrison’s already done that. Welby told me on the telephone you had someone rewriting the reports, so that’s covered too. We can be sure there’s no future connection between him and the government. If you’d like, we can stop him from doing his research at all.”

The Director drummed his fingers on the desk without taking his eyes off Porterfield. “For heaven’s sake, Porterfield. So heavy handed. I don’t want to destroy the man.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want to protect the Company.”

“Is that all?”

“I want to protect the Company,” repeated the Director.

Porterfield stood up. “And Donahue knows how to make the bogeyman come out in the daytime. He’s part of the Company. Has anything been done?”

“I’m sending a man now. He should be in Los Angeles tomorrow to begin the security survey.”