In Holywood, map in hand, I’m being Frank with you Gelt searches out the homes of stars. Ringing bells. Knocking wood. He doesn’t have a hint, starts with an h, Holywood…hasn’t an inkling tip, not a twinkle of a notion of what he’s up against in trying to track Ben down, get Him home wherever that was, back to His intended safe without sound; doesn’t have any idea save that he has to do it, that the duty’s his and his alone, we’re counting on you Frank, get a clue (sold by the friend of a friend who’d fleeced him the golden map without key — doors unanswered; it’s a mezuzah, bulvan’s what they’re saying now, not a clapper!): the price on the oversized Israelien head more than Gelt would’ve earned in an eternity in the service of his nation, whichever it is, if it still exists in any form recognizable to the past’s pledged allegiance — and so to become his only country, this work, and his only governance, too, underworlded, with every liberty, without any law; soon less a nation than a borderless sheol, this labor he’s been condemned to by fifty fires wrangled by prison stripes…to smoke Him out of our hole. At Mittelwest’s what they’re calling it these days the trail’d gone like the weather, burrladen cold, chattering, showing nothing and telling even less: indications syndicate the possibility of Polonia, Chicago, Illinois, the magnetism of a third pole; the wild of the call, the beguiling sirens of the Canadian line — or maybe Kentucky, perhaps Tenessee, the O-hi-o, I don’t know.
Gelt’s made every mistake in the book thrown at Him, if the book is long and its font is small and its covers are to be found beyond the pale, bound only by oceans — without index or other direction, only following instinct, the offhand and onfoot, he’s hauled himself north or so to dwell unnoticed up in Mormondom a spell, old stomping grounds of Heber’s kin and kind, Gelt only guessing Ben’d think to hide it out there, a last preserve of faith against the relentless incursion of the Affiliate; Mormondom’s borders almost totally closed, and if you want to do it legally the paperwork’d take moons no one has, not to mention extravagant expense. And so Mormondom’s just the place for Ben if He could enter, it’s decided: how despite, Gelt should venture, gets the clearance of requisite backing, slips through a border checkpoint unnoticed, on a fake ID and an unmodulated, undifferentiatedly clumsy cowboy drawl on loan from a friend who’d worked with him for a year in Virginia ten floors underground in a room whose door was once stenciled humorously or not who could tell
