Zodiac by Neal Stephenson Page B

much to say, so I checked him out. We were talking appendectomy from long ago and a fairly recent laparotomy. Exploratory surgery, maybe. His tubes seemed okay; probably a nonsmoker. I gave him fifteen years; if he’d worked at the plant, five years.
    â€œDidn’t know I had a name around here,” I said.
    He grinned, shook his head, and converged on me, chortling silently. He was laughing, but swallowing it. A born conspirator. “Oh, those guys hate you. They hate your guts up there!” He allowed himself an audible laugh. “Where you guys have your headquarters?”
    Exactly the kind of information I hate to give out. “Somewhere out there,” I said, “on a boat.”
    â€œUh huh. What do you do when someone wants to get ahold of you?”
    â€œGot a cellular phone in our car.”
    â€œOh yeah. For the media. That’s smart. You give ’em all your number then.”
    â€œYeah, you know, on the press releases.”
    â€œHey! You got one of those? I’m kind of a news junkie, you know, get the
Times
and the
Post
every morning; got a satellite dish behind the house and I’m always following it, got a shortwave. …”
    I had a few press releases folded up in my pocket, always carried them with me, so I handed one to the guy and also gave him a GEE button that he thought was hilarious.
    â€œWhere’s a good hardware store?” I said. A trivial question for him to answer, but priceless for me.
    â€œWhat kind of stuff you looking for?” he asked, highly interested. He had to establish that I deserved to have this information. Blue Kills probably had a dozen mediocre ones, but every town has one really good hardware store. Usually it takes about six years to find it.
    â€œNot piddley-shit stuff. I need some really out-of-the-way stuff… .”
    He cut me off; I’d showed that I had some taste in hardware, that I had some self-respect. He gave me directions.
    Then, what the hell, he gave me a ride to the damn place. Dropped me off in the parking lot. Drove me in his Cadillac Seville with the Masonic calipers welded to the trunk lid. This guy was a goddamn former executive. With an obvious grudge.
    â€œYou know Red?” I said on the way over.
    Dave Hagenauer (according to the junk mail on his dashboard) laughed and thwacked his maroon naugahyde steering wheel. “Red Grooten? I sure as hell do. How the hell do you know Red?”
    â€œOld fishing buddies?” I asked, ignoring the question.
    â€œOh, hunting, fishing, you name it. We been going out for a long time. Course the most we do now is a little fishing, you know, plunking off a boat.”
    â€œNot in the North Branch I hope.”
    He whistled silently and glinted his eyes at me, Aqua-Velva blue. “Oh, no. I’ve known about that place for a long time. Shit no.”
    By that time we were at the store. “Stay out of trouble!” he said, and he was still laughing when I slammed the door.
    Most of my colleagues go on backpacking trips when they have to do some thinking. I go to a good hardware store and head for the oiliest, dustiest corners. I strike up conversations with the oldest people who work there, we talk about machine vs. carriage bolts and whether to use a compression or a flare fitting. If they’re really good, they don’t hassle me. They let me wander around and think. Young hardware clerks have a lot of hubris. They think they can help you find anythingand they ask a lot of stupid questions in the process. Old hardware clerks have learned the hard way that nothing in a hardware store ever gets bought for its nominal purpose. You buy something that was designed to do one thing, and you use it for another.
    So in the first couple of minutes I had to blow off two zesty young clerks. It’s easy for me now, I just mumble about something very technical, using terms they don’t understand. Pretending to know what I mean, they