Chapter 9
In the morning they didn't have to worry about their parents wondering what they were up to because Ma and Pa had apparently gotten stewed the night before-they were still in bed at ten-thirty that morning.
Jerry flipped open the magazine on electronic projects and showed Morry the diagram. "Now here, see, is what they call a unijunction transistor. You solder it to these resistors and capacitors, then you connect those two wires to the speaker of one of our two-bit walkie talkies." He held up one of the plastic boxes labeled "Talk-Mite". "Remember when we bought these a couple years ago for seven bucks from that discount mail-order house? Okay, so they were lousy. Sound all garbled and scratchy. That's mostly because they use the speaker for a mike instead of having a separate microphone. Now, I wire the send button shut so one unit only sends. I remove the speaker and solder in the oscillator."
Morry frowned. "What's an oscillator?"
"That thing with the unijunction transistor in it. It gives off a high whistle. Right? No garbling problem. Then I wire in the PNP and NPN transistors in this diagram." He flipped the pages of the magazine until he came to the proper diagram.
Morry shook his head in confusion. "What do you mean?
"They use these to find downed aircraft, stuff like that. A transmitter gives off the beep, beep, then when you turn the copper circle from side to side you can tell which direction the sound is coming from."
"Jesus!" Morry's gray eyes lighted like neon. Then he frowned. "Wait a minute, though, those crummy walkie-talkies only have a quarter-mile range. They'll see us anyway if we're only that far back."
"I thought of that too. But see, with a rig like this, you're only supposed to use this short telescoping aerial." He pulled the aerial all the way out. If you make the aerial a lot longer the range increases like crazy. So we just use the aerial on Pa's car. We'll pull it all the way out. It must be three times the length of this one. The thing ought to have a good mile of range."
Morry clapped his forehead with his right hand. "It's too good to be true. Anyway, let's hook it up and try it before they wake up. Christ, if this works-"
Jerry winked. He picked up the soldering iron and began to desolder the components from the junked computer boards. Morry made the copper ring for the receiver from the baling wire Jerry gave him. It only took half an hour to assemble the pieces into the transmitter. Jerry fished in his dresser drawer for batteries. He said, "I hope these are okay. If they aren't we'll just have to go to the drugstore and get some."
They tried it out in their room. Morry put the receiver under a pillow to muffle any sound that might come out. Jerry pressed the send button. The receiver issued a staccato of beeps.
"Whee," Morry whispered. He switched off the receiver.
Jerry said, "I'll go down and tape this under the dash of Pa's car and hook it up to the aerial. You stay here. If the batteries are as good as they seem, they ought to last for seven or eight hours."
Morry sat breathlessly in the room. When Jerry returned they stepped into the closet and shut the door. Morry turned on the switch, and a loud beeping came from the speaker. He rotated the unit from side to side, and the beeping grew loud and soft. "It works!" he nearly shouted.
Jerry grabbed the unit from him and shut it off. He opened the closet door and hid the ensemble in a dresser drawer. "Now we've really got something," he said over his shoulder. "If the batteries hold out. We'll just have to hope they do."
Morry's gray eyes danced with excitement. "Hey, I dig that stuff. What else is in that blasted magazine of yours?"
Jerry winked. "The Wizard of Oz, old buddy. We could make all kinds of stuff, stuff like you wouldn't believe."
Morry sat down, blinking. "I can hardly wait till tonight."
"You'll have to hold the thing outside the car window. Otherwise the body of the car will cut off the signal. When you see a car coming from the opposite direction, pull it in."
Morry nodded. "This is going to be a blast. But you know, they're probably just going over to somebody's house to play Euchre."
Jerry shook his head. "I don't think so. I tell you, they're up to something. If you ask me, a lot of people in this town are up to something, and we don't know what."
Morry breathed on his fingernails and polished them on his T-shirt. "Well now, guess who's going to find out? Me, you, and the Wizard of Oz."
Ma and Pa climbed into their old Plymouth shortly after six. The boys watched from their bedroom window as the car backed out of the garage.
"The aerial's still up," Morry whispered. "Go get the box."
Morry leaped for the dresser and produced the receiver with the copper ring wired to the end of the antenna. He extended the antenna and switched the unit on.
They grinned at each other. Morry twisted the radio from side to side. "They went thataway, partner," he whooped.
They clambered downstairs and got into their car. Morry kept the radio hidden until they were well down the block, then he stuck it out the window. "Left," he snapped.
Jerry wheeled his car left at the next corner.
"Keep going," Morry said. At the end of the block he said, "Stop." He twisted the radio around. "Go right."
Jerry did. "They must be heading for the highway that goes over to Cedar Falls. What the hell would they be going there for?"
"Roger, wilco, over and out," Morry whooped. "The highway it is. Zeroing in on beam for kill. Bombs away. Bombbay doors open, captain."
"Come off it. You still got 'em?"
"Loud and clear, captain. They are beeping their asses off."
Jerry's lungs convulsed with laughter. He wheeled onto the highway.
"Pretty loud," said Morry. "Hold back a little. They can't be too far ahead." He pulled in the radio. "That guy who just passed us saw the radio. He was looking at it."
"Who cares? He doesn't know what it is."
Fifteen miles later they were in Cedar Falls, and Morry was reluctant to stick the unit out the window because there was a regular traffic jam.
Jerry said, "What the hell is all this? I didn't know there were that many cars in the whole fucking county." Then he saw the line of people. He pulled his car over to the curb. "Try it now."
Morry glanced around furtively, held the radio out the window and yelped. "We must be right on top of them. What if they see our car?"
Jerry slowly grinned. "Don't worry. I know where they are."
"Where?"
"In that movie theater. Look at that line, will you? Now look at the marquee."
Morry squeezed down on the seat to look out Jerry's side window. The marquee said, DEEP THROATED. TRIPLE X RATED. ADULTS ONLY. SENSATIONAL! FILM CRITICS AWARD. SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF ORAL EROTICA. NOTHING LEFT TO THE IMAGINATION.
"Jeeeeesus," Morry moaned. "They're in there?"
"They're in there," Jerry confirmed. "Old stuffed shirt and big mouth themselves. Taking in a fuck film. Well now, well now."
"They must have come early to get a good seat. The sign says it starts at seven-thirty."
"I'd call that pretty hairy, wouldn't you?"
"Captain, I'd say we scored a direct hit. To think of all the shit they used to give us about sex. Sex is dirty, sex isn't nice, sex will make your balls and pecker drop off after they've turned purple. I wouldn't mind seeing that flick myself, but we don't have the loot."
"With our luck we'd bump into them, anyway. Let's go." He managed to squeeze the car through traffic and go around the block. He headed back toward Green River.
Morry flicked the radio on and held it out the window for a moment to listen to the fading beeping. "What the hell do we owe them, Jerr? They must be doing plenty besides that. I'll bet they've been swapping right along."
Jerry grinned. "You might not even be my brother."
"Yeah, I never thought of that. And Pa might not be Pa to either of us."
"I'll buy that. I always did wonder about that. When he gets monkeyed out in a suit he looks like a plumber going to church."
"What'll we do now?"
"We'll go home and call the girls. If their old lady answers, I'll hang up."
"We were having such a fuck last night, we didn't make a new deal to meet one of them. Maybe if we just waited out in the woods at back and blinked a flashlight?"
"You're thinking, always thinking," said Jerry. "Let's give 'em a call first and see how things are going. Who knows, maybe their parents are at that film back there?"
They burst into a chorus of laughter.
Jerry said, "Let's go hit the pin bah machine for some loot, then when it's dark, sneak up to the mill qn foot. We could stash the car somewhere off the main road. That way nobody would find our car up there if they have patrols."
"I'm game. I wouldn't mind going back to Cedar Falls in an hour or so either. That film ought to run about an hour. I'd give a left tit to know where Ma and Pa go after the film."
"Okay," Jerry nodded, "we'll do both. You can drop me off at Gilles Road after we hit McDinty's. You take the car back to Cedar Falls and stash it a block or two away. Stake out across the street in a doorway or something. We'll kill two birds with one stone."
"Okay, but watch your step up there, Jerr. One of these days Teeger's going to blast somebody with that cannon of his."
"Or wind up with the thing stuck in his throat."