Los Angeles

by Philip Wylie

  She had entered a room and closed a door. Some other room. This was, then, a projection, a movie—live, or taped? He watched, propping his head up with more pillows.

  The image sharpened, its colors became genuine. Bessie had stepped away from the door in that other room, wherever it was (or had been). She wore an evening dress, blue to match her eyes, bright earrings, diamonds, maybe, and bracelets. Now she turned a little and said, “Unzip me, darling!” said it unevenly, hushily, excitedly. Nobody appeared and she reached over her bare shoulder to unzip herself, took off the dress.

  “Now my bra,” she half whispered.

  She removed it.

  “Panties?”

  It was a strip act, then. Or a movie of one. Or a scene on some sort of closed-circuit TV, the viewing-tube fiat, and so set in the wall he hadn’t noticed it. There were many ways to get the effect: after all, he was in the business.

  Bessie was soon nude. And soon in bed, lying on a blue, silken spread.

  “Touch me,” she whispered.

  And touched herself.

  “That mole is between the two nice places, isn’t it, dear?” She took her hint.

  And she began to pant lightly. It didn’t have to be happening now, Glenn thought, eyes fixed on the scene; but it seemed to be. He shut his eyes hard. Rufe! This was Rufe’s gift, Glenn’s slice of the general hospitality.

  “Now roll me over.”

  She did that. Her auto-erotic behavior became intensified, varied. “Does it turn you off?”

  It did not She rolled onto her back again.

  “Now, down there, Glenn, my love!”

  Glenn, my love!

  He was ready to call, push all the buttons, find a way to join this passionate but solitary revel.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” she moaned. “More, Glenn, faster! That’s wonderful! Oh—darling!”

  She had aroused herself to a point where she might soon be beyond need of him. She then held still, looked straight into the camera and called, huskily, hungrily, pantingly, “The door. At the left of the picture. In the corner. It’s invisible, but you just push, Glenn. I’m on the other side. Please, darling.”

  Why didn’t he go?

  It was like watching torture you could end with a word. But he kept watching.

  “Please, Glenn. Hurry! Take me. Let me take you. All of you. Of it. Oh, my love—if you don’t hurry—!”

  If I don’t, Glenn thought in some corner of his inflamed brain, then what?

  “I’ll have to take you, take it, take your loveness—somehow!”

  He sat still …

  In a little while the screen went dark; he heard a giggle. “You missed out, darling!” And then a hushy panting. Then a click and nothing.

  Glenn dropped back on the bed, weak, dazed, self-belittling, anguished, and raging with desire that had to be postponed.

  Unless he pushed a button.

  Could he demand Bessie, that way?

  Some other girl, girls, of course.

  Did he want that?

  No.

  Then—why?

  The very enormity of the question began to occupy him and, soon, to reduce his desire. Why?

  She had wanted him.

  That, he knew.

  She had accepted a symbol. And, that way, shown him what he had suddenly and unexpectedly perceived at lunch, about himself, about males, and mammals. A lesson, then? An insight she’d keenly understood—and implemented—since he’d sat like a stone, just staring? Irony?

  He wrestled with the enigma. Why had he refused?

  And in time, answers of a sort came up, in his mind, like slot-machine symbols. Bells and lemons and oranges and bars.

  It was too much. And too contrived. Too specific. Too—mechanical. As if people could be manipulated like puppets. By Rufe Cooper. For generous hospitality—and some deep, weird power-sense he derived, that way.

  You can, Glenn thought, “give” a man a girl.

  Friends had done it for him and vice versa.

  Girls can give themselves, and do, and ought to.

  You can buy them—and treat them as goods, then—if you wished, though Glenn could not: they remained women and sentient, with dignity and personality and their desires had to be met in the encounter or Glenn would abandon the attempt.

  Here?

  Her desire had been, heaven knew, gratified. For a while. Two hours.

  What of his own?

  It began to grow light. He had been thinking like a furnace long past three o’clock.

  He found the end of the thought:

  I can’t let myself add to Coop’s sense of power. Not this way.

  I shall leave, tomorrow, finding out, first, where I can reach Bessie.

  Then, perhaps, some day, I’ll see Bessie.

  Perhaps.

  And … some day. Maybe.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE BLACK MIRACLE

  Glenn attended the morning meeting. He told himself that it was necessary for a clearer understanding of the intentions these men had, or would formulate. Actually, he knew, that excuse was partly alibi for—what? Cowardice? His departure, premature, might be made awkward. It might even seem suspicious. And if the company at Boiling Wells knew Glenn would report their schemes to the President—! What?

  There were many “what’s.” Some of the twenty-five Establishment members were very ruthless. A traitor (and Glenn would be that, to them) deserved any fate. There’d be an accident, Glenn thought, before he had any. chance to forward his information. Car smash. A shooting by unidentified hoods. Any of a thousand things that would leave no Glenn Howard. That risk, he could skip: he’d taken such chances before now. But in order to get away soon and neatly, without arousing any suspicion in order to prepare his report for the White House, for one pair of eyes, only, Glenn needed some reason that he didn’t have.

  His prearranged exit pattern (Coop’s words) was simple and everybody in the group had such a plan. Meanwhile, someone knew a number, where “the boss” could be reached, since the chances were high that, over any three- to four-day period, an emergency or a problem could come up that would require the head of—this steel company, that chemical complex, this auto maker, that newspaper chain owner.

  When, at noon, the recess was called, Glenn followed Rufus Cooper to the minilinks, a pitch-and-putt golf course that permitted a few drives and some wood shots from tees and fairway spots all partly enclosed and air-cooled.

  Overtaking Cooper, Glenn said, “I’m leaving shortly, Rufe. Wanted to say thanks and good-bye.”

  Flat and short and, Glenn expected, sure to cause an argument if not suspicion. When the other man halted and turned abruptly, Glenn realized he wasn’t even able to dissemble as he had hoped. He could feel the tenseness of his face-muscles and almost see the will-to-move he forbade his eyes as it gave his purpose away in too taut a stare. Worse, Cooper said nothing for a moment but used it to examine Glenn’s face carefully, as if it were a map he needed to read and remember for survival.

  After that he said, slowly smiling and yet doing that ruefully, “I guess I overdid the host effort for you, Glenn. I’m sorry.”

  So Cooper thought it was Bessie who was the cause of this departure! And Glenn realized his poor effort at dissembling, his strain to appear positive, sure, honorable and—least of all—a sort of double agent making an attempt at getting over some guarded border—that look, which he could feel as false, led the brilliant Rufus Cooper to an instant and totally wrong conclusion.

  Glenn recovered fast and seized the opportunity. He made his voice a little uncomfortable, regretful, bashful, for a man. “I guess, Rufe, I can’t make the grade of these Western World Playboys.” Then he hurriedly added, to nail down his excuse, the false one—or, perhaps, to state something else that was true, “Not the lady’s fault. Just—the overwhelmed”—he waved at the ranch in general—“overwhelming effect of your—pad.”

  Cooper was truly apologetic. “The—lady—was very sad, this
morning. Red-eyed and tears. She really has had a special passion for you, for some time.”

  “And she’s enchanting. I’d thought of asking her, or you, before leaving, if I might call her, later, one day—”

  Cooper grinned at his foresight. “She hoped that. Said if she didn’t see you again, to give you her number in Palo Alto. Unlisted. Sure you can’t stick around? Do one rather splendid young woman a lot of good. And we need your advice—not that you haven’t chipped in this morning …”

  Politely, Glenn declined.

  He was leaving, not as a member of this group who jumped the gun, in, maybe, a suspicious manner, but as a clumsy Lothario. Great!

  An hour later, his luggage in his car, Glenn stopped at a filling station that also advertised “EATS.” His “Return” pattern had been neatly designed and he was sure that there were twenty-five other men with different but equally inconspicuous arrangements for getting to—wherever, without leaving a sign of where they’d been. One of Cooper’s limousines drove him through The Devil’s Bowling Alley and past Satan’s Sandpile to a spot near Route 127 below Tecopa. The road wasn’t on any map nor where the sand heaps that looked to have been unchanged for eons. Within these was a cave and in it, cars. One was Glenn’s, a rebuilt Toronado—which, so far as any others knew, Glenn had driven there, himself, or driven near there.

  His silent chauffeur checked the Toronado, transferred Glenn’s luggage, walked him through the other, circuitous exit and left, raising no dust, which meant Cooper’s private and hidden track had been treated with some silicon product, Glenn thought, not the usual revealing asphalt. He reached 127 shortly and began his rapid but near-professional surge toward Los Angeles. Traffic was moderate, both ways, and Interstate 15 would get him into the city in a couple of hours.

  Before he reached it, however, and after a sketchy hamburger and coffee, he realized two facts:

  He was very tired.

  He also had work to do: work to prepare the information he would forward to the President, personally, at the earliest. And the whole adventure just ended seemed tangles, blurred, confused, with extraneous matters making it worse, the one main example being Bessie.

  The sky was cloudless. The desert shimmered, heat waves trembling like invisible ribs and the sun glaring down on the wasteland and the thin highway as if it meant to melt the cars, trucks and the mountains, too. His air-conditioner fought back, set at maximum, and Glenn was comfortable enough except for the fact that he had to look out at the road, the sticky asphalt, the two lanes of traffic—his, the oncoming—and that gaze meant he could not evade seeing the land beyond, the sweltering, many-hued, grotesque and so, as people said, “tormented” region south of Death Valley.

  When he was sure no tail had attached itself, he put in a call on his radiophone. He used his private office number, direct, to his secretary. Poor name for her, he often thought, since Lenore was a person he regarded as a silent partner, almost, and a lass with unbelievable skills.

  “Yes, Chief?” He couldn’t make her quit calling him Chief, or Boss, or even, “Milord,” sometimes.

  “I’m two hours out, or maybe a bit more. Inform my—you know.” A passing truck made conversation impossible and Glenn, still driving fast and now with one hand, saw a rest area, or what seemed one, just ahead. He slowed. “I want to make a few notes, Lenore, for my own use. I’ll pull off, I think, to get out of the diesel-drone and the rusty mufflers. So I can tape record the stuff, while it’s fresh. Maybe, four or so, when I come in?”

  “Nothing else? Nothing special?”

  “Only that. But it’s important, for—me. Unless there’s something at your end?”

  She chuckled and made the joke: “Your kingdom runs better with you absent. I have it all. See you around four and drive carefully, if you can bring yourself to it.”

  That was it.

  He slowed for the presumed rest area and found it shaded by sturdy roofs with room for about fifty cars, a place with drinking fountains, rest rooms, picnic tables and a rock garden of cacti, mainly. Four dusty cars were parked there, which gave him ample space to stop in the shade, with several slanted spaces between his car and the others. Two families were having lunch, courtesy of California’s Road Department, one car contained a sleeping fat man, another, two youngsters who were necking—to be courteous, Glenn thought, they at least seemed to be one of each sex though, he knew, a closer look might reveal two males, alleged, or girls. Odd times!

  He got out and walked into the furnace heat for a drink of quite cool water. He stretched. Then he went back to the silver-gray Toronado (with modifications) and started his tape recorder. Curiously, the act seemed to waken him and shuck off fatigue so that he could marshall the main items from which he could, later, boil down what he would tell the President.

  His radiophone call could have been monitored.

  If so, nothing would be learned.

  Nobody, going over his talk with Lenore, would realize that it had been arranged earlier and for special ends. Two of them.

  Lenore would now have signaled his hunting friends in the Sierras, by radio, and, in still another opaque dialogue, let them know that their co-hunter, Glenn Howard, had now given up the chase and was homing on L.A. Those two hunters had one guide. Glenn had never been near them, of course, but they were friends, good friends, reliable. If a pal needed a cover for a few days, they’d furnish it. Glenn would have done as much, had done as much, for one of the pair. The guide was as trustworthy. All three, if asked, would give very convincing accounts of the shoot and of the bigger game territory investigated by them, with Glenn. Till just a while ago.

  Usually these ploys were to enable a friend to enjoy an uninterrupted period with a lady, not his wife, though, perhaps, a wife. Nobody in this small brotherhood ever asked why, however. Those engaged in such generous alibi-arranging needed only to move in areas where it would never be noted that they were three, or four, and claimed to be one more. And they had but one more need: to learn the time when their invisible companion would surface. The means for that, they left to him. He could be in some mountain lodge, with his beauty; he could be across the border in Mexico; he could be on a business trip in another city and there, keeping out of sight, or even, disguised. He could be, and one friend had been, only a few miles from his Pasadena home, alone, in a quiet motel, sleeping and reading and having a highball or two—out of it, for simple respite.

  Lenore’s second mission would be to set up a way and the means by which, later that day, or at night, or next day, her “Chief” could communicate with the President. That, or, if the White House said so, Lenore would arrange Glenn’s flight to New York—and he could manage the trip to Washington.

  Grinning over such thoughts, Glenn set the tape recorder spinning and pinned the mike where it couldn’t be seen by stray people. He had that much respect for Cooper’s acumen.

  His words flowed.

  The twenty-five industrialists were named. The nine scientists. The admiral. The general. Glenn went on:

  “The first aim was to find out what science considered the gravest dangers to our environment. The experts did a shockingly good job. The others tried to refute them. When they failed, the nine were virtually thrown out. The meeting turned to ways and means of evading, halting, diverting, and otherwise sabotaging the whole environmental recovery effort.

  “This morning’s discussion developed many schemes. More will doubtless be developed later. But I feel those already considered will make it plain that this group intends enough harm to indicate whatever action the President sees fit to take. Some of the programs suggested:

  “A fund for efforts to be made by them. This was agreed on and a hundred million was subscribed. Including a half mil by me. For obvious reasons.

  “Five top corporate enthusiasts for conservation and backers of antipollution were discussed. Plans to change their public attitude were drawn up. Cancel orders. Get colleagues to do same. Drive down stocks. Etc. The usual
‘asset-destroying’ corporate means for kills.

  “Lists of other industrial and commercial peers were drawn—and their motives for reducing environmental ‘panic’ were noted. These names were divided among present group on the basis of intimate and personal friendship, business connections, power over, etc. Each man would undertake to spread the policies developed at Boiling Wells to the others, by pressure, where nothing else served. This list of associates includes pretty much all of the top 100 corporations in USA and half the next 400 at least.

  “You, Mr. President, are not to know of this secret cabal. You are merely expected to realize slowly that your current antipollution bills, proposals and plans are meeting ever-heavier opposition by business and industry. You are to see funds that support you, your party, people in congress on the clean-environment-wagon, and others like them, governors, etc., are slowly drying up. That is, all politicians will in time realize that they are financially sunk if they run on any such platform.

  “There was a shocking discussion of bribing scientists. This seems more possible than I’d have believed. A lot of big men in the sciences are going to become rich, and soon, for denying all claims of dangers of pollution, pointing out absence of supportive data, calling their associates, ‘hysterics,’ ‘wild men,’ ‘panic-prone,’ etc.

  “An idea of mine was considered. It was obvious from the day-long testimony of the nine scientists that no one has a clear or even any idea of the actual and overall ecological perils. Until a vast study on a worldwide basis is made, we will not even be able to know the proper priorities for a true, that is, logical and informed effort to save ourselves.

  “This study must become a national and immediate goal, of course. It will be very expensive and hard to sell congress—perhaps demanding ten years and a trillion over the period. (My papers and stations will start plugging for that needed effort.) I mentioned it to Rufe Cooper and he was enthusiastic. Why?

  “He presented it this A.M. as a marvelous stall! For a while the others kicked it around. Finally, they tossed it out on the grounds that, though it would stun congress, etc., it might ultimately, begin to work because it was scientifically sensible, logical and sound!