The short one said, “Mr. Webb? You are Mr. Webb, I assume?” He had dark plastered-down hair with motorcycle sideburns to contrast his chalky complexion. A hick trying to look hip.
“I’m Webb. What do you want?”
The big ox nudged his partner’s shoulder and smirked. The smaller man, who seemed to think himself intelligent, smiled sneeringly at Nolan.
“Care to let me in on the joke?”
“You are the joke, Mr. Webb,” the short one said, then he and ox shared a round of laughter.
Nolan remained calm. This was a situation he could handle, but he was pissed with himself for allowing it to happen. Amateurs, damn it, he’d let amateurs catch up with him. And the maddening thing was he too had acted like an amateur, by coming unarmed for his impromptu late-night swim.
“Allow me to make an introduction,” the side-burned spokesman said. “I’m Dinneck. And my partner here is Tulip.”
“A rose by any other name,” Nolan said.
“Is he making fun of me, Dinneck?”
“Tulip, keep quiet, okay?”
“Okay.”
Dinneck smiled again, the smile of a guy who sells watches on a corner. He said, “Mr. Webb, we don’t want any trouble from you. All we want is answers.”
Nolan said, “Who sent you? George Franco?”
Dinneck nodded to Tulip, who removed his coat. Tulip’s chest was massive and his short-sleeved white shirt was banded by a leather strap which supported a shoulder holster cradling a .45. Tulip folded his muscular arms like a guard protecting a Sultan’s harem. There was an innocent smile planted on his bud of a mouth.
Dinneck said, “From now on, Mr. Webb, I’ll ask the questions.”
“Well ask, then,” Nolan snapped, leaning against the wall, still a good fifteen feet away from them. Voices echoed in here. “I don’t like standing here dripping wet.”
“Yeah,” Dinneck grinned. “You might catch your death.”
Tulip said, “Might catch his death,” and laughed to himself for a moment.
“Why don’t you just walk over here, Mr. Webb . . . slowly . . . and stand next to Tulip and me.”
Nolan shrugged and joined them, picked up his towel and began to dry off.
“Now, Mr. Webb, would you call it common for a journalist from Philadelphia to travel in the company of a thirty-eight caliber revolver?”
“You missed one, Dinneck. I carry two.”
“You also carry ammunition, don’t you? Does a reporter commonly hide a box of ammunition in the false bottom of his shaving kit?”
“You’re a sharp kid, Dinneck. Why does a sharp kid like you dress in the dark?”
Tulip said, “I think he’s a smart-ass.”
Dinneck nodded. “I think you’re right.” Dinneck backhanded Nolan and Nolan instinctively leveled Dinneck with a right cross to the mouth.
Dinneck pushed himself up off the slippery tile floor and touched his bloodied lips. His face turned a glowing red. He motioned to Tulip, who drew the .45.
Nolan said, “That’s a noisy gun, friend.”
Dinneck said, “What the hell’s a little noise between friends? Our car is just down the steps. We can pump a slug into you and be gone so fast your body’ll still be warm by the time we’re snug in bed.”
Nolan’s mouth formed his tight smile. “Together?”
Tulip slapped the .45 against the side of Nolan’s head. Nolan moved fast enough to lessen the blow, but fell back against the wall just the same, his head spinning. He wiped blood from his ear and thought bad thoughts.
Dinneck said, “We heard you were a newspaper reporter, Mr. Webb, is that right?”
“It’s a magazine, and go fuck yourself.”
Tulip started back toward Nolan with the .45 in hand and Nolan sent a fist flying into Tulip’s gentle mouth. Tulip yiped and clubbed Nolan with the .45 again and kicked him in the back as he went down. From the floor Nolan could see Tulip spitting out a tooth. Just then Dinneck kicked Nolan in the kidney and pain won him.
He opened his eyes a few seconds later and saw Dinneck standing above him, contemplating kicking him again. Nolan grabbed Dinneck by the right heel and heaved him, hard enough, he hoped, to land Dinneck on his tail bone, snap it and kill him. But Tulip was there to brace Dinneck’s fall, and train the .45 on Nolan’s head.
Nolan reached for his towel and, sitting in a puddle of pool water and his own blood, cleaned off his face while Dinneck spat questions.
“What were you nosing around the Big Seven for? What did Hal Davis tell you?”
Nolan said, “Ask Davis.”
Dinneck said, “He cut out. Last he was seen was talking to you. We checked his apartment and all his things were gone. His car, too. Didn’t even leave a forwarding address at the Globe. Why did you visit George Franco?”
“You want the truth?”
“Yeah, try the truth for a change.”
“I’m doing a story on the Chelsey hippie scene. For my magazine. I heard rumors that Franco was a racket boss peddling LSD to the college crowd.”
Dinneck and Tulip glanced at each other as if they almost believed Nolan’s story.
Dinneck said, “I can just about buy you as a reporter, Webb . . . just about, but not quite. I picture you more as a man running. That’s the way you travel, anyway. Or hunting, maybe. Which are you, Webb? Hunter or hunted?”
“Maybe I’m neither,” Nolan said. Or maybe both.
“Two .38’s. Half a dozen boxes of cartridges. Unmarked clothing, not a laundry mark or a label or anything. Rented car. No address beyond Earl Webb, Philadelphia, on the motel register. Not any one thing to identify you as a living human being.”
“So what?”
“So . . . so I begin to think you’re a dangerous man, Mr. Webb. And I don’t think your presence in Chelsey benefits my employers.”
Nolan said, “What do I get? Sunrise to get out of town?”
“You’re a man with a sense of humor, Mr. Webb. Maybe you’ll like this, just for laughs . . .”
Nolan rose up, his muscles tensed, his back arched like a cat’s.
“Tulip, toss me the .45 and we’ll give Mr. Webb here a swimming lesson.”
As the ox was handing the gun to Dinneck, Nolan snapped his towel in Dinneck’s face like a whip. It made a loud crack as it bit flesh. Dinneck clutched his face and screamed, “My eyes! My God, my eyes!”
The .45 skittered across the tile floor. Nolan leaped for it, grabbed it. He whirled and saw Tulip coming like a truck. He waited till the ox was a foot away, then smacked the barrel of the .45 across Tulip’s left temple. Tulip cried out softly and pitched backward, stumbling into the pool; he hit the water hard but got lucky and didn’t crack his head on the cement. Water geysered upon the big man’s impact. He wound up in the shallow section, the top half of him hanging over the side of the pool, semi-conscious, his petal-like mouth sucking for air.
Dinneck was on the floor, screaming, fingers clawing his face.
Nolan slapped him. “Shut the fuck up, before the whole motel’s in here.”
Dinneck quieted, still a blind man, his eyes squeezed together and his face slick with tears.
“Who sent you, Dinneck?”
“I’ll . . . I’ll never tell you . . . you lousy cocksucker!”
Nolan seized Dinneck by the scruff of the neck and dragged him over to the pool. Nolan knelt him down and said, “Now I’m going to ask you some questions.”
Dinneck kept swearing at Nolan and Nolan pushed Dinneck’s head under water for sixty seconds. Dinneck came up gasping for air.
“Who sent you, Dinneck? George?”
“You son-of-a-bitch, Webb, goddamn you . . .”
Nolan put him back under for another minute. When he brought Dinneck back up he had quit talking, but his breath was heavy and his unconsciousness only a ruse.
“Did George Franco send you?”
Dinneck kept his eyes closed, tried to act unconscious.
“The next ti
me I put you under,” Nolan said, “you won’t be coming back up.”
No response.
Nolan shrugged and pushed Dinneck toward the water. Dinneck screamed, “No!” and Nolan hesitated before dunking him again, holding him an inch above the water.
“Who, Dinneck?”
“Not George, he doesn’t know anything about this . . . George claims he never saw you!”
“You still haven’t said who, Dinneck.”
“Elliot, his name is Elliot! He’s the one in charge . . . George doesn’t have any power.”
Nolan released Dinneck and the man fell in a heap at the pool’s edge.
Nolan grabbed up his towel, slung it around his shoulders and headed for the door. His cigarettes were in a small puddle in the corner so he let them lay.
“You . . . you gonna leave us? Just like that?”
Nolan turned toward the voice. Tulip, coming out of his stupor, was standing in the pool, looking puzzled and wet.
“I’m not going to kiss you good night.”
Tulip, dripping wet, looking ridiculous, pouted.
“And get out of those clothes, Tulip. You’ll catch your death.”
Tulip crawled out of the pool. He was hefting his friend Dinneck over his shoulder as Nolan left.
Back in the room, door locked, Nolan laid a loaded .38 on the nightstand by his bed, then washed up and treated his head wounds. Next time he wanted to relax, he thought bitterly, he’d take a hot shower. Hell with swimming.
He was asleep when his head hit the pillow.
4
SHE WORE a black beret, had dark blonde hair and was smoking a cigar. She was looking into the sun, squinting, so it was hard to tell if her features were hard or soft. Her body was bony, though she had breasts, and she was leaning against a ’30’s vintage Ford, holding a revolver on her hip. The woman was staring at Nolan from a grainy, black-and-white poster that was a yard high and two feet wide.
The poster was tacked onto a crumbling plaster wall in a room in what had once been a fraternity house. No one Nolan spoke with in the house seemed to know what fraternity it had been—just that about four years before the frat had been thrown off campus for holding one wild party too many—and since had been claimed by assorted Chelsey U males on the hippie kick. The fraternity symbols over the door were Greek to Nolan.
The room in which Nolan stood staring back at the stern female face was inhabited by a Jesus Christ in sunglasses and blue jeans. Underneath a beard that looked like a Fuller Brush gotten out of hand, the thin young man sported love beads and no shirt. Outside of the beard and shoulder-length locks his body was hairless as a grape.
“Doesn’t she just blow your mind?”
Nolan said, “Not really.”
“Bonnie Parker,” the young man said with awe. He wiped his nose with his forearm. “Now there was a real before-her-time freak.”
“Freak?”
“Right, man. Before her time. She and that Clyde really blew out their minds, didn’t they?”
“They blew minds out, all right.”
“Don’t believe what the press says about them, man! They were alienated from the Establishment, persecuted by society, victims of police brutality.”
“Oh.” Nolan glanced at the poster next to Bonnie Parker’s which was a psychedelic rendering in blue and green; as nearly as he could make out, it said, “Love and Peace Are All.”
“Some of the other freaks got pictures of the movie Bonnie up on the walls. Not me. I insist on the genuine article.”
“Swell,” Nolan said. He lit a cigarette and said, “Got a name?”
“Me?”
“You.”
Jesus thought for a moment, scratched his beard. “I’m called Zig-Zag.”
“Good,” Nolan said. “You’re the one I was looking for.”
Nolan strolled around the room, glanced at other posters hanging on the deteriorating green plaster walls. Dr. Timothy Leary. Fu Manchu For Mayor. The Mothers of Invention. Kill a Commie For Christ.
There were some paperback books in one corner, several ashtrays scattered around, a few blankets by the window. Alongside one wall a radiator spat underneath Dr. Leary’s picture. The air was singed with incense.
“Irene Tisor,” Nolan said. He looked out the window and watched the Chelsey River reflect the sun.
“What?”
“Irene Tisor. Did you know her?”
The mass of hair nodded yes.
“What happened to her?”
“Bad trip.”
“Bad trip?”
“A down trip, straight down.”
“Fell?”
“I wasn’t there, man. Nobody was there but her . . . and she must’ve not been all there herself.”
“What’s the word?”
“Huh?”
“What do people say about it?”
“Nothin’ . . . just that Irene thought she could fly. Guess she couldn’t. Bummer.”
“Was she a friend of yours?”
“So-so.”
“How’d you know her?”
“She hung around the Third Eye. We talked.”
The Third Eye was a nightclub frequented by Chelsey’s would-be hippie element. The local underground newspaper was also called the Third Eye and the club was its editorial headquarters. Zig-Zag was the sixth person Nolan had spoken to that morning, and all had mentioned Irene as a regular at the Third Eye.
“What’d she like to talk about?”
“Life.”
“Life.”
“That’s right, man. Philosophy one-oh-one.”
“What’d she think of it?”
“Of what?”
“Life. What’d she think of it?”
Zig-Zag flashed a yellow grin. “Groovy.”
Right.
“Was Irene Tisor one of you?”
Zig-Zag flashed the grin again. “I give, man. What am I?”
“Whatever the hell you call it. Hippie.”
“I’m not a hippie, that’s a label hung on my generation by a biased press!”
“Flower child, love generation, freak, whatever. Was she one of you?”
“Well, in spirit, man . . . but in spirit only. There’s a lot of us, we live kind of foot to mouth, know what I mean? We don’t want for much, but hell, we don’t want much.”
“Irene lived pretty good?”
“Better than that. She had an apartment, I hear, with that straight Trask chick.”
“But she was thick with your crowd?”
“She sympathized. She heard the music, all right, she just couldn’t take her clothes off and dance.”
“She heard enough to dance off a building.” Nolan walked over to Dr. Leary’s picture. Down the hall somebody was playing a Joan Baez record, and though Nolan didn’t recognize the voice and was no judge of music, he knew what he didn’t like. Nolan ground out his cigarette in Leary’s bleary left eye.
“Hey, man, what the fuck you doin’, there!” Zig-Zag got up and started toward Nolan, flexing what muscle there was on his skeletal frame.
Nolan’s mouth became a humorless line. “You’re the love generation, remember?”
Zig-Zag brushed the ashes off Leary’s face and said, “What is it buggin’ you, man? You come in here all straight and polite, then you get nasty. What’s buggin’ you?”
“Irene Tisor is dead. I want to know why.”
Zig-Zag shrugged. “Anybody can pull a bad trip, man.”
“Wasn’t she a ‘straight,’ like me?”
“She wasn’t all that straight, man. But I admit I never heard of her taking a trip before this. She got a little high once in a while, blew some pot, all right, but that’s all I ever saw her take on, besides a guy or two.”
“Did she take you on, Zig-Zag?”
“Naw, we just shot the shit. But there’s a guy in the band at the Third Eye she saw pretty regular.”
“What’s his name?”
“Broome. Talks with an English accent,
but it’s phony.”
“Broome. Thanks.”
Nolan turned to leave, then stopped and said, “Pot cost much around here? LSD and the rest, it sock you much?”
“Cost of living’s high, man. Somebody’s making the bread in this town.”
“How about you, Zig-Zag? Your old man, what kind of business is he in?”
“My old man? He’s a banker.”
“I see. Where?”
“Little town north of Chicago.”
“You get this month’s check okay?”
“Huh? Oh. All right, so he sends me a little bread to help out. Big deal.”
Nolan nodded to Bonnie Parker’s picture. “You’re lucky Bonnie and Clyde were before their time, Zig-Zag.”
“Huh?”
“They were in the banking business, too.” Nolan turned and left the room, went down the stairs and out the ex-frat.
5
IT WAS ALMOST NOON now and Nolan, sitting behind the wheel of the Lincoln, looked back on a morning of interviews in Chelsey’s quote hippie colony unquote. It had gotten him nothing more than a few scraps of information and a bad taste in his mouth.
He glanced over Sid Tisor’s notebook of information on daughter Irene. He had gone through the six male names in the notes—Zig-Zag and five others like him, and now all that remained were the two female names, Lyn Parks and Vicki Trask. There were probably dozens of Irene’s friends her father hadn’t known about—all Tisor had was a handful of names culled from Irene’s occasional letters.
Lyn Parks lived at the Chelsey Arms Hotel. Nolan parked a block away and walked toward it, passing several clusters of long haired men and women wearing the latest thing in wilted flowers, plastic love beads and Goodwill Store fashions. The block was run-down but distinctly not tenement—secondhand stores, burger joints, head shops—though in Chelsey, Nolan had a hunch this would be as close to a slum as he would get.
The Chelsey Arms Hotel had seen a better day. Its theater-style marquee bore faded red lettering that didn’t spell anything, and there was a worn carpet leading to double doors which said CAH proudly but faintly. Once in the lobby Nolan saw that the Arms was somewhat ramshackle but hardly in danger of being condemned; he’d stayed in worse. A desk clerk, in a rumpled gray suit, seemed to be trying to decide whether Nolan was a cop, or a salesman looking for female companionship.
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