Interface

You will be hearing again from me soon, I am sure.

Sincerely, Floyd Wayne Vishniak.

42

Mel Meyer drove into Miami, Oklahoma, in his black Mercedes 500 SL at 4:30 on a hot mid-July afternoon. The sky was a sickening, yellowing white. He stopped at the Texaco station to fill up with gas and check his oil. He checked his oil religiously -though the car used none to speak of- because thirty years ago the Cozzanos had made fun of him for not knowing how.

He also needed to ask for directions. As he opened the window to talk to the attendant, the 103-degree heat poured in on him like boiling water. He ordered ultrapremium from the Texaco pump and popped the hood for the oil check. "How far to Cacher," he asked the grease-streaked, acne-ridden kid smearing his windshield with an equally appetizing-looking rag.

The kid had never seen anything like Mel Meyer - dapper, intense, clad in a perfect black silk suit - nor had he seen many 500 SLs. "Why d'ya wa

Mel did not like the kid, did not like Miami, Oklahoma, and would have given anything to avoid being there. But this was the closest thing to a lead he had come across in four months of investigating the Network. He could have hired a private investi­gator in Tulsa or Little Rock and had him drive out to the place and look around. But he knew that, whatever this Network might be, it was good at hiding itself. A private investigator, who made his living watching unsubtle people commit marital infidelities in cheap motels, could not be trusted to pick up the nearly invisible spoor of the Network. In the end Mel would have to come out and look around himself. He might as well get it over with.

"Why do you think people in Cacher are crazy?" Mel asked, thinking to himself that he had no right to ask that question, sitting in a black silk suit in a black car in July in Oklahoma.

He had found precious little in absolute terms as he chased down lead after lead: the institutional roots of the Radhakrishnan Institute; the fascinating pattern of stock trades surrounding the takeover of Ogle Data Research and Green Biophysical Systems in March; the interlocking directorates of Gale Aerospace, MacIntyre Engineering, Pacific Netware, and the Coover Fund; and the even more shadowy group of very private investment funds that held majority shares in them.

He had even placed intercepts on the lines and numbers of various people, hiring monitors placed in vans near microwave relay towers. Nothing had come up. He had gone through financial reports, he had gone to friends in the FBI, he had tried everything, but he could not find the Network. He had hired private detectives, he had hired investigative accountants. He had spent a whole month pulling strings and working various co

The one lead that he had was the GODS envelope that Mary Catherine had pulled from the Cozzanos' burn bag on the night of July fourth. Mary Catherine was the one to blame for his being here.

The envelope did not bear anything as obvious as a return address. It had code numbers instead. GODS was a well-run com­pany, highly centralized, and was not interested in helping Mel decipher those codes. He had provided some financial aid to a financially troubled GODS delivery man in Chicago and eventually gotten the information that the envelope appeared to have been routed through the Joplin Regional Airport in extreme southwest Missouri, near where that state came together with Kansas and Oklahoma.

Mel had spent four days living at a Super 8 Motel on Airport

Drive outside of Joplin. He claimed to be a businessman from Saint Louis, working on a big project of some kind. He spent several hundred dollars express-mailing empty packages to an address in Saint Louis, and quickly became a familiar sight to the three people who worked at the Joplin GODS depot.

One of them had informed Mel that he was now their biggest customer. Mel pursued this line of conversation doggedly and got the man to say that they had another fellow across the border in Oklahoma who mailed almost as much as Mel did. Finally, yester­day afternoon, Mel had gotten them to specify a town: Cacher, Oklahoma.

He snapped back to the steamy reality of Miami. The gas station kid was peering at him. "You okay, mister?"

"Yeah. How's the oil?"

"Fine." Then, continuing to pursue his endemic insanity theory, he said, "It's the lead."

"Lead?"

"Yeah. Even though the lead mines are shut down, Cacher is soaked through with lead pollution, and like we learned in school, that will make you crazy."

Mel muttered genially, as if this information were fascinating, and handed over his credit card. The kid took it into the battered old station and swiped it through the electronic slot. Their building didn't look like much but they had the latest point-of-purchase electronics.

"You got something else, buddy?" asked the kid with a satisfied leer on his face, waggling the card in the air. "You've got to pay your bills from time to time, you know... just kiddin'."

Mel was too surprised to be embarrassed. He compulsively paid every bill within twenty-four hours of receipt, especially the national ones. You didn't let bills get overdue. Unlike the people who ran Washington, Mel understood that an overdue bill was a club that other people could wave over your head.

"It's a mistake," he said, "but why don't you try this one." He handed the kid another credit card. Once again, it was rejected.

"Shit buddy, don't you every pay your bills? What about cash?"

Mel looked in his wallet. It contained several hundred-dollar bills, a ten, and a five. The bill was $16.34.

"Can you break a hundred? Mel asked, already feeling he knew the answer.

The kid yukked it up for a little bit. "I can't remember the last time I saw a C-note. We never got more than a few bucks in change."

Down the street, set anachronistically into the sandstone facade of an old bank, was an ATM machine with a familiar logo. Mel took off his jacket, ambled slowly down the street, trying not to get hotter than he was, and stuck his bank card into the slot.

The video screen said PLEASE WAIT.

An alarm bell began ringing on the side of the bank.

A siren began to sound from the direction of the police station in downtown Miami, two blocks away.

Mel lurched back down the street, got to the car, and turned on the ignition.

"Hold it right there, hot shot," said the kid. Mel looked over and was astounded to see a twelve-gauge pump shotgun cradled in the kid's hands. "You might as well wait for Harold to come."

The Miami P.D. patrol car, an aging Caprice, swung around the corner. Mel knew that he could easily outrun it. But it wouldn't be a good idea. Instead he shut off the ignition, and, as a good faith gesture, took the keys out of the ignition and tossed them up on the dashboard, in plain sight. He rolled the window back down and put both hands on the steering wheel.

A lean, small, pox-faced cop emerged reluctantly from the Caprice, winced from the heat, and walked over toward Mel, moving with exaggerated slowness.

"Harold, I presume." Mel said, when he got close enough.

"What we got here li'l buddy?" Harold said to the kid.

"Looks like it's credit card fraud to me," said the kid.

"Come on out of there, fellow," said Harold, shooting a mean, judgmental look at Mel. "Don't make a bad thing worse for you."