Maybe that was the news-a new thrash metal band.

He discarded that idea. More than likely, the bad music meant that someone had been inside his house and had changed his radio station.

That made Hartley nervous.

He approached the house with trepidation.

Slowly, slowly.

Come on, Biggy. Give 'im the old sneer.

What would d.i.c.k Tracy do in such a situation?

On tiptoes, he arrived at his front door. With great precision while crouching on the sidelines, Hartley deftly inserted the key into the lock.

Quietly, he turned the key.

With force, he pushed the door open while remaining in his hunkered-down position.

Immediately, the stillness broke into the rat-a-tat cadence of machine-gun volley as bullets came flying through the open doorway. Hartley held his hands over his ears, his head bent down to his chest. Like some friggin' cornered cat. He prayed, waiting for the din to die down. It was loud-not as loud as the thrash metal music ringing in his ears-but loud enough to interfere with the buzz.

Then there was silence.

Hartley waited. He heard soft, m.u.f.fled footsteps. Within moments, a man wearing all black, including a black hood over his face, came out of his door. Either Mr. Black was a hired a.s.sa.s.sin or the Ku Klux Klan had changed fashion consultants.

Hartley sprang, grabbing the man's legs, and bit him hard in the thigh. The man went down with a thud, landing on his head. The rest, as they say, was history.

And guess who got the scoop.

Once the TV cameras had been set up, Hartley conducted the interviews in his office. With a wheel of microphones surrounding him, Hartley told his story. "I felt that something was off. I knew something was off."

"How did you know, Hartley?" someone shouted. "How did you know?"

Hartley downed a mouthful of nuts. "I just knew. Just like I know all the breaking action. That's me. Mr. Johnny-on-the-Spot. Radar Robert Roadrunner. The Scoop. I hear all the action in my brain."

More questions as Hartley gobbled more nuts.

"No, I can't explain. It's just like this buzz-ah, s.h.i.t!"

"What?" asked a group of anxious reporters. "What is it? A bomb? A disaster? A ma.s.s murder? Another political s.e.x scandal?"

Hartley replied, "I just bit down on a sh.e.l.l. I'm going to sue those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!"

The networks bleeped out the cusswords. MTV left them in.

Sitting in the dentist's chair, his mouth numbed and filled with cotton, Hartley breathed in lungful after lungful of laughing gas.

Friggin' nutsh.e.l.ls.

It had started out slowly as a dull ache. Within a week, his right jaw had swollen to twice its size until the pain had become unbearable. Without recourse to quell the agony, he finally summoned up the nerve to see the dentist.

"Cracked down the middle," the oral surgeon reported. "The tooth can't be saved. It'll have to come out."

Hartley figured the toothache was penance for all his bragging about his good luck. Well, if this was the worst-although it was pretty bad-he could live with it.

If it didn't happen again.

The gas took the edge off the anxiety, but Hartley's heart still raced when the surgeon entered the operatory.

"How're we doing?" the doctor asked.

Hartley thought, I'm sure you're doing well, but I'm doing s.h.i.tty. Unfortunately, he was too crocked out to say anything.

"Open up," the surgeon said. "It'll only take a minute."

Hartley managed to open his mouth.

With practiced skill, the dentist placed the forceps around the crown of the back molar. He gripped the handles, then paused. "What's that?" he asked.

"Ahhhhh," Hartley responded.

"I hear something." Another beat. "Do you hear something?"

"Ahhhhhh" was Hartley's answer. But he did hear something. The buzz in his brain. The voices, as always. But how could the dentist hear it?

"Ahhhhhhhhh," Hartley responded, trying to talk louder.

"Can't understand a word you're saying." With care, the surgeon rotated the forceps. Up and down, up and down, back and forth, back and forth, until he could feel the ligaments holding the tooth to the gum breaking. "Ah, well."

Hartley heard the cracking of tooth matter along with the voice. Again he tried to talk, but the gas . . .

"There it is again," the surgeon said. "Like someone's playing a radio inside your head."

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh," Hartley tried to scream.

"Now, calm down," the surgeon insisted as he turned up the nitrous portion of the nitrous oxide. "You were doing okay. Just hang in there. It's almost over."

Hartley felt his voice box weaken . . . just couldn't move. But he could d.a.m.n well hear.

The surgeon chuckled. "You know, you read about funny things in the dental journals . . . about radio transmissions that come through dental fillings. I never believed the stories. But maybe that's what I'm hearing. Has that ever happened to you?"

Hartley couldn't talk.

"There!" the surgeon said triumphantly. He held a b.l.o.o.d.y tooth aloft. "Got it." Slowly, he turned down the nitrous. "Done. Hartley, I've got you breathing more oxygen now. You should come around in about a minute or two. I'll just let you relax."

The door closed. Again Hartley said nothing. Worse than that, he heard nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

No buzz, no voices, no sound.

All of it gone, gone, gone!

d.a.m.n those nutsh.e.l.ls. He should have sued the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

But what was the point now?

Gone!

No more Mr. Johnny-on-the-Spot.

No more Radar Robert Roadrunner.

No more the Scoop.

No more parties and special invitations.

No more press conferences.

No more office with a door.

Gone, gone, gone.

So what was left for him? Just a life as an ordinary reporter. As these thoughts came into his brain, Hartley became increasingly depressed. As soon as he was physically able, he reached over to the gas tanks, lowered the oxygen tap to almost nil, and turned the nitrous k.n.o.b on full blast.

Good old nitrous.

He always wanted to die laughing.

MR. BARTON'S

HEAD CASE.

"Mr. Barton's Head Case" appears here

for the very first time in English. It was

originally written for a German

anthology of short stories that revolved

around the biblical theme "Thou Shall

Not Murder." I chose the little-known

story of Balaam and Balak, and it

evolved into a modern-day fable with

all the gravitas of the sixties series

My Mother the Car, featuring Jerry Van