Robert Stone - Dog Soldiers

Ascending on the escalator, Converse watched the door he had come in. To his horror, a dark-bearded man came quickly in from Grant and looked, rather angrily, among the crowd. Converse had almost cleared the second floor landing before the man looked upward toward him. He looked away from the man before their eyes met. The second floor was as crowded as the one below. Converse dashed round the posts to rise another story. The third floor was as high as he dared go; above it would be un populated wastes of furniture and carpeting in which he might be brought to bay. Stepping from the escalator he loped across the record department to find the other set of escalators. In the record department they were playing the “Age of Aquarius.”

On the other escalator, he decided to ride all the way down. He was back on the street-level floor in seconds, making for the O’Farrell Street exit in prodigies of self-control. There would be another one outside, he realized, circling in the tan car.

The car was not in sight as Converse dodged through the Powell Street traffic. Rounding the corner of O’Farrell, he permitted himself a near run and he kept going until he reached a side door of the Mason Hotel. He crossed the lobby and walked upstairs to the mezzanine where he found a bar with a view of the doors. The bar was furnished in bamboo and its walls and hangings were designed to suggest the Orient. Converse ordered a Scotch and water, leaning forward in order to keep the length of the lobby in his scan. Sporting in the regency plush below were men with name cards, on their lapels and a large number of blond children with crew cuts and bow ties. There were no bearded men.

He drank deeply of his weak drink; fatigue was under cutting the alcohol in his blood and he felt no closer to intoxication than tachycardia.

His choice of Macy’s as a place in which to flee had not been an instant improvisation; he had been pursued through Macy’s before and had escaped there. It had been Christmas time — the store had been more crowded and seasonably decorated. His pursuer at the time was a middle-aged man with a harelip whom Converse had rashly interrupted in the act of stroking ladies’ privates on the Geary Street bus. The man had slunk off to the rear without a word, but he had followed Converse from the bus at Union Square. Cursing his own fatuous interference, Con verse had dodged through the noontime crowds, but the hare-lipped man had been dogged and agile. At each intersection, Converse had cringed in anticipation of the bullet, the blade, the hatchet. At last he had darted into Macy’s and escaped along a route very like the one just employed.

How peculiar and stupid everything was, he thought. In the short length of time during which he could force himself to reflect on the matter, he felt certain that it was preferable to be chased through Macy’s as a scourge to the poor and a poisoner of children than as a hapless, cowardly concerned citizen. It was more chic, probably even in God’s eyes. He ordered another drink.

If he had been just a bit less timid in Vietnam, he thought, he might be honorably dead—like those heroes who went everywhere on motorbikes and died of their own young energy and joie de vivre. Now it would be necessary to face death here— where things were funnier — and death would be as peculiar and stupid as everything else.

He paid for the drinks and went down to the Mason lobby. Returning to the side door, he stood just inside it for a while and then stepped out to the sidewalk. No beard, no tan car.

When he had crossed Mission, he turned in his tracks and looked around him, but he could see no trace of pursuit. He went all the way to Howard and followed it to Seventh and by the time he turned back toward Mission again, he was as concerned with the likelihood of being mugged as with whoever was following him. He was reasonably satisfied that he had, for the moment, broken free.

Elmer’s office was above two stories of shirt factory on the corner of Seventh and Mission. Converse had a key to the elevator.

There was a bell beside the door that led to the offices from the darkened foul hallway. When he rang it, Frances called to him from inside.

“Yeah?”

“Converse.”

“He heard the sliding of a police lock and Frances stood before him in the office’s fluorescent light, squinting with concern.

“Johnny! Jesus Christ, chum.” She had grown a bit soft under the eyes but her poitrine endured, firm as ever.

Pacific Publications was as he had left it. Over Mike Woo’s desk was a photograph of Mao Tse Tung, a written inscription across the buttoned pocket of the Chairman’s tunic:

“To Mike Woo

A real neat Marxist Leninist

and a helluva nice guy

Always a Pal

Chairman Mao”

Converse had written it on the picture the day before he left for Vietnam.

R. Douglas Dalton, the colorless odorless alcoholic, sat late at his desk, typing the week’s last story. He was pale and natty as ever. When he saw Converse he stood up slowly.

“Great Scott,” he said, “young John fresh from the steaming war-torn.” His lips parted over a Draculan smile. “Hip hip,” he cried softly, “hurrah. Hip hip…”

“Douglas,” Frances said, “…please.” She watched Converse with hyperthyroid curiosity. “Your father-in-law would like very much to see you.”

“Same here,” Converse said.

Elmer Bender worked in a large gray room. Its only furnishings, besides the desk, were a leatherette armchair, an old-fashioned coatrack and an electric percolator. Across the surface of the desk were spread pictures of dead people which would be used to illustrate the stories in Nightbeat . Dead people could be portrayed as anything — killer hermits, spanking judges, teen-aged nymphomaniacs — they had no recourse to law. Only in Utah could lawsuits be filed on behalf of the deceased, so it was vital that the dead people come from everywhere else.

Elmer sat primly behind the rows of photographs, his hands folded beside a dummy of the current front page. The headline was a ten-inch blue banner — MAD DENTIST YANKS GIRL’S TONGUE.

“Sit down, dear boy,” Elmer said. “Are you confused?”

Converse collapsed into the armchair.

“Yes, I am,” he said. “There’s weird shit all over our walls.”

“I don’t know about your walls. Marge is hiding somewhere. Janey is in Canada.”

“In Canada? What the fuck is she doing in Canada?”

“She’s with Phyllis and Jay. We got her out of California and off with them.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because her parents are criminals. What the hell are you dealing in heroin for? Have you lost your mind?”

Converse closed his eyes. He saw the steaming shower room again.

“I’ll take it,” he said, “that we’ve been caught.”

Elmer nodded briskly. “Who was following me?”

“I’m not sure. Did you lose them?”

“Yes. In Macy’s.”

“What I don’t understand is why they don’t just arrest you.”

“Then they’re after me. Right now.”

“After you? Dear boy — they got you. Do you know where Marge is?”

Converse shook his head. “Maybe with the guy who brought it over.”

“Maybe dead,” Elmer stood up. “This time I’m resigned. She’s my baby but I can’t help her anymore. She’s a big girl — I’m an old man.” He stared at Converse, the ceiling lights glinting in his wire-framed glasses. “Who do you think you are? Some big hustler? Was it her idea?”

“Both of ours.”

“I can understand Margie, she’s disturbed. In you I’m disappointed.”

“It was a crazy idea,” Converse said. “You hear stories over there. They say everybody does it. Being there fucks up your perspective.”