In The Belly Of The Beast...

Billy:  C'mon in.  Take a load off.  Hungry?

Beth:  How can you think about food?  

Billy must have heard this before.  He appeared unperturbed.

Billy:  Wanna beer?

Beth:  I couldn't.

Ed:  Not a good idea, dude.

Billy:  Well, hell!  Can't let Deputy Dawg put you off your feed forever.
Tell you what...I'll go get that Chinese shit you like so much.  Whadda you
want, Deb?

Ed:  Chinese shit sounds good, Billy.

Billy turned to haul ass out the door, but slowed momentarily when Beth
spoke the name of a restaurant.  Judging by the look on the Unruly One's
face, he had not intended to go to this particular place for the Chinese
shit, but he finally left with a minimum of uproar.

Ed:  The Floating Lotus?

Beth:  Clean across town.  We have a little time to prowl, though if I
know Hot Rod Lincoln, he'll be back in ten minutes flat.

Ed:  Then where do we start?  D'you suppose Sam had us tailed here?

Beth:  If he did, it didn't work.  Billy could find a tail at midnight in
a mule's butt, no pun intended.  This plac is only about fifteen minutes 
from that hotel.

Ed:  But it took us more than half an hour...with his foot in it all the
way.

Beth:  And you had your eyes welded shut or you'd have seen his fancy
driving.  Diversionary tactics.  We're safe from Sam, if not from Billy.
Let's go.

Ed:  Hold on a minute, where's he dump his dirty clothes?  I've been
telling the old troglodyte I'd wash his t-shirts...

Beth smirked.  With her help I got a load going in the utility room off
the kitchen - another one of my theories shot.  Then we went to the basement door.  We examined the wiring, which surely did run straight to a tiny hole
drilled into the ceiling plaster.  Then we headed for the attic door.

Beth:  There's got to be some kind of control box up here...

Ed:  I might melt before we find it.

Beth:  The only thing that concerns me is that Ryan might have built in 
some collapsible circuits or something that'll let Billy know its been
tampered with.

Ed:  Maybe, maybe not.  Who's gonna break in here?

Beth:  True.  And anybody without an invitation isn't gonna be worried 
about tripping any alarms...

Ed:  Jackpot!

We stared at a small matte-black box with a green light burning steadily
on it.  A wire depended from it, disappearing into the pink fibreglas
insulation blanket and, presumably, through the hole in the ceiling down to
the door frame.

Beth:  Looks like it's armed.

Ed:  Bully for it.  Wonder how we disarm it.

Beth:  I'd guess you'd do that with the key.

I haven't been called a fool for nothing.

Ed:  It's in the bottom of my purse...come on, before the big bugger gets 
back!

With trembling fingers, we fitted the key into the lock.

Ed:  What if it doesn't work?

Beth:  I know him.  He probably has another key to use someplace.  He's 
just mad because somebody put one over on him.  He wants the advantage
for himself, all the time.  Billy lives in a world of extremes, you know.

Ed:  I'd guess he's the most extreme thing in it. 

Beth:  You ready?  We can't be sure how much longer Captain Fantastic'll
be gone.

Ed:  Let's do it, then, though I confess I'd feel a lot safer about this
if we had the Brown Dirt Cowboy with us.

Beth led the way down, though not after a shoving match reminiscent of
Laurel and Hardy.

Beth:  Now, tell me again, how'd he look?

Ed:  I told you what he wore and how he smelled, but it was more than that.
Compared to those two anal-retentive lunatics, Tommy was so relaxed he
almost seemed boneless.  He didn't seem to have a care in the world, the
absolute master of everything he saw.  Looking at him was soothing.

Beth:  I wish I'd been there.

Ed:  You were awfully close.  If I'd known Sam was going to pull that one
out of his hat beforehand, I never would have called.  I wish you'd been 
there, too.  I wouldn't have felt like such an idiot.

We entered the basement...

Beth:  Holy...

Ed:  ...Shit!

Billy's basement was set up like a cut-rate version of the Combat
Information Center on board a modern battleship.  Monitors around the
room displayed various radar pictures, including weather, satellite
positioning and all sorts of other blips and co-ordinates.  Mini-towers
clustered under the monitor groupings, keyboards were lined up for use,
and all of it seemed to be connected to a steadily humming black box in
the center of the room.  One PC in particular appeared to serve as the
comlink - a printer beside it periodically spat out a length of tractor
paper.

Ed:  A regular server, hoo-wee.  There's your hum.

Beth:  Now there's just the oily smell.

Sniffing, we followed the odor around a thin plywood partition.

Ed:  I love the scent of cosmoline in the morning.

Beth:  There's enough firepower here to start a war...sheesh.  We'd
better clear out.

We hurried back into the main control room.  Then, for some reason,
we just...stopped.

Ed:  I have this horrible urge to leave a parting gift.

Beth:  Like what?

Ed:  Dunno.  Nothing serious, I'm not ready to die just yet...how about...
oh, I don't know, hook the server into the net and put the whole mess on
the Fabio page or something...

Beth:  Better yet...on the US Marshals webpage.

Ed:  At least make Sam his screensaver.  How long will that take.

Beth:  Leave this one to me.  You go on upstairs, keep watch.  Stomp on
the floor if you see him coming or something.

That sounded like a good idea.  I hurried upstairs to take up a post
beside the living room window.  First I made a pitstop in the utility
room, to dump his t-shirts in the dryer.  I watched tensely for almost a
half hour, but Billy was either waiting for food or whooping it up leading 
Sam and his kids on a wild goose chase.  I suspected the latter.  Beth
emerged from the basement, carefully locked the door.  She disappeared
into the back of the house, returning without the key.

Beth:  Done.  We're safe...for a while.

Ed:   Where'd you put the key?

Beth:  Right back in his jacket.  It'll drive him nuts when he finally
finds it again.

Ed:  And what'd you do to his computers?

Beth wandered into the kitchen, returning with two cold Heinekens.
A beer sounded like just the thing now.  Maybe it would help to settle my
nerves.

Beth:  Now that's something I might live to regret but, hey - live fast,
die young and leave a good looking corpse.

Ed:  But what'd you do?

Beth:  Brought the server down...wasn't hard, he's got some sort of sexy 
IBM...used the comlink to dial into the net and brought the server back up.
I had to fool around with it a little to get what I wanted, but I finally
got them all networked.  The monitors show a big picture of Sam, and if
Billy tries control/alt/delete all he;ll get is 'my, my, my, my, my, what
a mess.'

Ed:  Oh, Lord.  He'll have to get the little hacker dude.

Beth:  If he wants his toys in one piece, he will.  Billy's motto seems to
be 'if at first you don't succeed, blow the mother up.'

Ed:  D'you s'pose he might call you for help?  Hang on, there's the dryer.

Beth:  Oh, he'll call, all right.  But it won't be for help.  And I don't
plan to answer the phone.

Ed:  How long will we have?

Beth:  He won't go downstairs while we're here, so as long as we stay we're
safe.  But the minute we leave we've got to move.

Ed:  Hell, it's late.  Even Billy has to go to bed.

Beth:  Don't bet on it.  I swear to God the man is half-bat, he's up until
all hours.  Once he sees that...all we can do is hide until he can laugh
at us.  We won't be able to keep out of his way forever, but it'll be a
good idea to try.

I sat back, one of Billy's shirts on my lap.  I could feel myself 
grinning with the adrenaline rush that went with Billy.  Every time I
did something like this, I seemed to hear that old Molly Hatchet song,
'Flirtin' With Disaster' going in my head as background music.

Ed:  Guess I'll need to go throw myself back in the Dawg house.  He's got
my cellphone, and it's the only way I'll be safe.  Where will you go?

Beth:  Not home - and not to friends and family here.  That's the first
place he'll look.  I've got some vacation time.  maybe I'll go to San
Antonio for a couple of days.

I began folding shirts busily, and Beth flicked on the television.
We had both heard the Suburban charging up the street and we wanted to 
look innocently occupied when the lord of the manor rolled in.  Billy
entered, carrying Chimese take-out cartons on top of a pizza box.

Billy:  Here, pipsqueak, fried bugs or whatever the hell it is.  Got you
the celery mush, Deb.  What's on the tube?

Beth:  The English Patient.

Billy:  Like hell - gimme that flicker.  There!

Ed:  Monday Nitro?

Beth:  Live action cartoons.  I can't stand it.

Billy:  It's a bunch of shit, but this Goldberg wuss tears me up.  I see
you weren't kiddin' me about my t-shirts.  How 'bout some skivvies and
socks while you're at it?

Ed:  Somebody's got to make sure you look presentable but I have no
intention of messing with your damn old grungy shorts.  You wouldn't
happen to have any plates, would you?

Billy:  Hell, no.  I just stand over the sink and dump it down my neck.
Emily Post over there wants plates, she brings 'em.

Beth:  I usually leave them here.  I keep hoping at least a veneer of
western civilization will rub off on him.  They should be in the kitchen
someplace.

Ed:  Don't get up, Billy, I'll find them.

Billy:  Didn't plan to.  Get me a beer while you're out there.

Ed:  Oh, be happy to.  Would you like me to pour it on you or throw it
at you?

Level stare, level voice, about a notch down.

Billy:  Bring me a beer and shut up.

Beth:  Shaken, not stirred.

Billy:  Careful, pipsqueak.

Around midnight, after I had finished pairing Billy's clean socks and
putting his clean briefs in the drawer in his room, Beth and I left.
She had called a cab on the sly, while I was playing dumb about where Billy
wanted his underwear put.  The cab was waiting for us down the block.
We ran for it.


END OF PART 3