IV 15 259-261

[Joseph Tracy]

Fritz calls to tell Doc Shasta landed 2 days ago at LAX

Fritz Drybeam-  Interesting name- Given the context, one thinks of  
the noir film director Fritz Lang. Drybeam made me  think of a beam  
of light.  Film noir is all about harsh angular  lighting. FD is  
using the Arpanet to look into hidden things but how useful his  
searches are is not clear, and on 258 he tells Doc that the FBI is  
watching back and asking him why he is so interested in Shasta.

The line that jumps for me on this page is "Glenn Charlock is still  
dead, but hey, who cares about the criminal element , right?"

He keeps complaining till Fritz says it's Doc's problem now.   Fritz  
has been spending too much time with the Arpanet and needs to get  
back to chasing down skips and deadbeats. There is a constant tension  
between working to address real crimes of violence and serving the  
quasi legal machinery and interests of the powers that be.

Fritz doesn't want to look into Puck; seems to know this is dangerous  
territory.

Clearly, my reading  in the chapter summary of of the incident with  
the gold copper traces and Noguchi was wrong. I missed the joke with  
'calling in the lab' and Doc was referring to an historic incident  
where Noguchi was suspended for a month.  No p-listers seem to have  
noticed or cared.

The recurrent theme of Zombies shows up when Doc watches a Zombie  
Movie but falls asleep before the part at the end that confuses him.  
Zombies seem to be IV's Thanatoids, a rather darker take on the  
living dead. Still we get the idea that Doc thinks about Zombies as   
karmically real and doesn't want to be one. This movie is about 2  
brother's rivalry over a woman , ending when one( manipulated buy a  
voodoo priest) stabs the others wife and he and she end up dead,  
floating in the surf. Maybe P is forecasting how Doc is manipulated  
by Bigfoot into a violent confrontation with AP and PB.