Fred's assignment
When Fred is assigned to surveil Arctor's house, Hank says that Fred MUST be one of Arctor's friends or Arctor himself. Why?
shareThere are a very limited number of people who spend time at the house with regularity (enough to give the police the information they've been receiving in the past), which limits the possibilities to Arctor himself, Barris, Luckman, Donna, or Freck. Fred has to be one of those five people.
Fred (and the audience) is led to believe that this is basically a case of the police's left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, which may very well be the case on other undercover operations. Obviously, Hank knows exactly who Fred is in this instance, but is laying down a false flag to help keep Fred in the dark about what his "real" mission is.
Al: "What do people do for fun in this town?"
Max: "They eat the dinner."
I got most of that before. The part I don't understand is why Fred must be one of those people. How/why is Fred linked to the house? Did Fred tip off the police to something going on at the house?
shareIt's never really said, and is left to the viewer/reader's imagination.
For what it's worth, though, it's plausible that the info would have come from Fred himself, in that he would give updates to Hank about his movements and the circles he travels in. After all, Hank quizzes him about the activities of the group in their first scene together. This makes sense, given Fred is slowly working his way up the dealer chain: he's buying from Donna with hopes of exceeding her capacities and having her refer him to her supplier. So the cops would know Donna is a dealer, and want to know about her circle of friends, which ties her in to Arctor et al.
(Yes, it's a grey area where Donna, secretly a cop, gets her D from to sell to Arctor; probably taken from the police evidence bin, but this is never delved into.)
The tip that something is going on in the house actually came from Barris, as part of his scheme to set up Arctor. In all likelihood, the chain of events was thus: Barris makes an anonymous call which some random cop checks up on. Sure enough, Arctor is only working part time and has more money than he should. (The book explains this: he can only work part time at his "real" job--retreading tires--because of all the undercover work he does, and the extra money is his police salary.) So, the cops would ask themselves "do we have anyone in contact with Arctor?" and Fred's name would come up, the case would be referred to Hank and Fred would be put on it.
Al: "What do people do for fun in this town?"
Max: "They eat the dinner."