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every time— “oh, but here ’ s Canoga Park coming up in a few exits, let me just show you something for a minute. ”
    Off the exit ramp, Bigfoot hooked a U-turn without signaling, went back under the freeway and began to climb up into the hills, presently pulling in at a secluded spot that had Shot While Trying to Escape written all over it. Doc began to get nervous, but what Bigfoot had on his mind, it seemed, was job recruitment.
    “ Nobody can predict a year or two hence, but right now Nixon has the combination to the safe and he ’ s throwing fistfuls of greenbacks at anything that even looks like local law enforcement. Federal funding beyond the highest number you can think of, which for most hippies is not much further than the number of ounces in a kilo. ”
    “ Thirty-five ... point ... something, everybody knows that— Wait. You, you mean like, Mod Squad, Bigfoot? rat on everybody I ever met, how far back do we go and you still don ’ t know me any better ’ n at? ”
    “ You ’ d be surprised how many in your own hippie freak community have found our Special Employee disbursements useful. Toward the end of the month in particular. ”
    Doc took a close look at Bigfoot. Jive-ass sideburns, stupid mustache, haircut from a barber college out somewhere on a desolate boulevard far from any current definition of hipness. Right out of the background of some Adam-12 episode, a show which Bigfoot had in fact moonlighted on once or twice. In theory Doc knew that if, for some reason he couldn ’ t imagine right away, he wanted to see any other Bigfoot, off camera, off duty—even married with kids for all Doc knew, he ’ d have to look in through and past all that depressing detail. “ You married, Bigfoot? ”
    “ Sorry, you ’ re not my type. ” He held up his left hand to display a wedding ring. “ Know what this is, or don ’ t they exist on Planet Hippie. ”
    “ A-and, you have like, kids? ”
    “ I hope this isn ’ t some kind of veiled hippie threat. ”
    “ Only that. .. wow, Bigfoot! isn ’ t it strange, here we both are with this mysterious power to ruin each other ’ s day, and we don ’ t even know anything about each other? ”
    “ Really profound, Sportello. Aimless doper ’ s driveling to be sure, and yet, why, you have just defined the very essence of law enforcement! Well done! I always knew you had potential. So! how about it? ”
    “ Nothing personal, but yours is the last wallet I ’ d ever want money out of. ”
    “ Hey! wake up, it only looks like Happy and Dopey and them skip ping around the Magic Kingdom here, what it really is is what we call. .. ‘ Reality ’ ? ”
    Well, Doc didn ’ t have the beard, but he was wearing some tire-tread huaraches from south of the border that could pass for biblical, and he began to wonder now how many other innocent brothers and sisters the satanic Detective Bjornsen might ’ ve led to this high place, his own scenic overlook here, and swept his arm out across the light-stunned city, and offered them everything in it that money could buy. “ Don ’ t tell me you can ’ t use it. I am aware of the Freak Brothers ’ dictum that dope will get you through times of no money better than vice versa, and we could certainly offer compensation in a more, how to put it, inhalable form. ”
    “ You mean ... ”
    “ Sportello. Try to drag your consciousness out of that old-time hard-boiled dick era, this is the Glass House wave of the future we ’ re in now. All those downtown evidence rooms got filled up ages ago, now about once every month Property Section has to rent more ware house space out in deep unincorporated county, bricks and bricks of shit stacked to the roof and spilling out in the parking lot, Acapulco Gold! Panama Red! Michoacan Icepack! numberless kilos of righteous weed, name your figure, just for trivial information we already have anyway. And what you don ’ t smoke—improbable as that seems—you could always sell.