Warren Murphy: Acid Rock

"But some torsos must weigh less, especially women's," Edelstein said.

"The brake does it. The brake drives the body into the seat, so you're guaranteed your blast at the first stop."

"Brilliant," said Edelstein. "But then why did you use the ignition last May."

"I didn't do the job last May," said Bombella.

"Funny," said Edelstein. "That's what you told me then too."

"Now for a car I don't like to use no material like metal shards, nails, or a hand grenade kind of thing. I like a clean explosion. Especially in the summer, when the windows are up for air conditioning. The whole car acts like a casing."

"Brilliant," said Edelstein.

"The air pressure created is amazing. It'd take off someone even without breaking 'em up. Just by the concussion."

"Brilliant," said Edelstein.

"I could make a bomb out of a pack of cards," said Bombella. "You see that tree there? I could take it off exactly where you want it and land it where you want it. You could put a home plate anywheres near that tree and I'd get you a strike."

"Can you throw a curve?" asked Edelstein, jesting.

"Nah. I can't do that yet," said Willie, after thinking a moment. "But if it was a wet day with some heavy air and if we had a good wind, maybe eighteen to twenty-three miles an hour, and it was kind of a good-shaped tree like a young maple, and you let me put the plate where I wanted, I might be able to get a strike on a curve."

"You're beautiful, Willie."

They drove leisurely, and a day and a half later neared Pittsfield, Mass., the general area of the rock festival where Vickie Stoner was to show up.

"Is this the right way?" Edelstein said.

"A little detour I was told about when I made that phone call," Bombella said. Outside Pittsfield, Willie stopped the Continental near a large sign that read Whitewood Cottages. He went to a mailbox and took out a package that looked like a rolled magazine. The computer printed name on it said "Edelstein."

"I'm not supposed to be involved like this," said Edelstein when Willie returned to the car. "What's in the package."

"It's supposed to be money and a note."

"I'll read the note to you," said Edelstein.

"I can read," said Willie. And he could. Edelstein watched the lips move as Willie the Bomb formed words. Edelstein tried to get a peek at the letters pasted on the paper, but Willie defensively shielded the note.

"Count the money," said Willie, tossing the package to Edelstein and slipping the note into his pocket.

"Fifty thousand," said Edelstein.

"A lot of money," said Willie. "Give it to me."

"It's half of what you owe me," said Edelstein.

'I'll give you everything at the music show. There'll be some money there for us."

"And then perhaps I might sort of leave cause you don't really need me, right, Willie. I'd only get in the way."

"Right," said Willie glumly. "You want to see something really great in the way of bombs?"

"What is it?" asked Edelstein suspiciously.

As they passed a country store, Willie suggested Edelstein get a jar of Prosco homemade pickles and, as he suspected, Edelstein couldn't open the bottle. They drove on through Pittsfield with Willie refusing to stop for lunch and Edelstein eyeing the pickles sitting there unopened between them.

"I could blow the top off that jar," boasted Willie, as they sped down Route 8 to North Adams.

"Really?"

"Bet your ass I could. I could blow it clean off without even a crack in the glass."

"Do it now, Willie. I'm starved."

Willie pulled over to the gravel shoulder of the road, reached into the back seat of the car and from under a magazine removed the bomb made of playing cards. Into its side he pressed a penlike device and where it protruded he very carefully wrapped a straightened paper clip into a coil.

"Get out of the car," said Willie and when Edelstein had stretched himself outside the car, Willie handed him the jar of pickles. "Hold this in your left hand."

Edelstein took it in both hands.

"Left hand," said Willie, and Edelstein took the jar in his left hand.

Willie thought a moment, then said, "Put the pickles on the rock over there."

When Edelstein had and returned to the car, Willie gave him the bomb.

"Now do this just right," he said. "Put the part with the paperclip on top of the jar, then walk back. Don't wait. It will start when I start the car."

"Brilliant. How does that work?"

"Just do it," said Willie, and Edelstein scampered back to the rock, his shoes spitting gravel behind him.

He gingerly dropped the bomb on the jar and ran back to the car.

"Okay. Start it, genius. I'm hungry."

"You didn't put the clip against the top of the jar."

"How could you see?"

"I know. Watch. I'll start the car and nothing will happen," and Willie turned the ignition and sure enough the jar of pickles and the bomb were there.

"Well, I'll be. You're a genius."

Edelstein went back to the jar of pickles, picked up the bomb, and even though it wouldn't balance that way, pressed the paperclip against the metal top of the jar.

And within an instant his stomach was filled with pieces of pickles and glass shards and the metal jar cap. So was what was left of his face.

The glass shards spit, cracking into the side of the car and even making a nick in the windows. They shouldn't have.

'Trigging Prosco pickles," said Willie the Bomb Bombella. "They're subcontracting out their jars again to those cheapie manufacturers."

And he drove off along the road toward the rock concert, where he hoped to be able to cash in on the million dollar open contract himself. The $50,000 in his pocket had been for a side job. As the note had said: "Kill Edelstein. He talks too much."

CHAPTER FOUR

Vickie Stoner was alive and rapping on the side of Route 8 just outside Pittsfield when she could have sworn she heard an explosion down the road.

"It's the revolution," wheezed one of the boys, a lanky blond with shoulder-length hair wrapped tight around his forehead with an Indian band that somehow combined the signs of the Mohawk and Arapaho, an accomplishment that eluded history but not Dibble manufacturing of Boise, Idaho.

"Not now. Maggot's at North Adams," said Vickie. "I'm going to ball Maggot."

"Maggot's bitchen," said another young girl, her legs straddling a knapsack. They had been waiting in the Berkshires' morning sun for hours, as processions of bicycles, painted Volkswagen buses, and straight cars passed them by. Some of the girls suggested they were passed up because the boys didn't paint the signs with the right karma. The boys said it was because the girls didn't get up on the side of the road and do some work.

"Like what?" asked Vickie.

"Show a boob or something," said one of the boys.

"You show a boob," one of the girls said defensively.

"I don't have one."

"Then show what you've got."

"I'd get busted, man."

"Well, I'm not getting up there like some piece of meat."

So in the early afternoon, they waited for transportation just twelve miles short of the end of their journey-the rock festival known as the North Adams Experience. The town may have claimed it as its own. The promoters may have claimed the profits. But the experience belonged to those who would be part of it. You didn't attend it like some movie, sitting in a seat and letting the screen lay all sorts of stuff on you. You were part of it and it was part of you and you made it what it was with the Dead Meat Lice and the Hamilton Locomotives and the Purloined Letters.

It wouldn't begin at eight o'clock that night like the ads said. It had already begun. Coming to it was part of it. The wheels were part of it. Sitting on the side of the road waiting for a ride was part of it. The pills and pouches and the little envelopes were part of it. You were part of it. It was your thing and no one else could tell you what it was, man, especially if they tried.