the Delta Star (1983)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  Either that, or as cops tend to believe, it's all a freaking accident. It came to pass because The Bad Czech took a pee on a tree.

  It never occurred to him that there was no downstairs rest room, and he walked through a basement door and found himself roaming down a long corridor into another, and finally found a door which led him outside at dusk. The need had come on him fifteen minutes earlier, but with all the confusing talk he had waited. Now he was bursting.

  Once outside, he roamed near the tennis courts and didn't see anything like a rest room. He had to go and he was cranky. He started back and was startled to learn that he had already drunk himself into double vision. He was getting mad at the world. He looked around and saw an olive tree waiting in the dusk.

  When he got to the tree, he unzipped his fly and began urinating. Suddenly a bellowing Spanish-accented voice in the shadows said: "Ees magnificent to find a human being in thees Meeckey Mouse place who has the huevos to pee on a tree!"

  The Bad Czech quickly finished, zipped up the fly on his doubleknits and saw a man step forward. The man was of medium height, middle-aged, and resembled Benito Mussolini. His feathery hair looked like the topknot on a cockatoo.

  "Ya scared me!" The Bad Czech said.

  "I was just trying to get away from the Meeckey Mouse estupidos at the open house," the man said. He reeked of wine from having consumed nearly half a gallon at the cheese and wine table which was a bustling center of activity in the garden.

  The man wore a suit about as shapeless and cheap as Mario Villalobos', and he wore a yellow bow tie with flowers on it. His frayed shirt was stained by red wine and he was nearly as bombed as The Bad Czech. When he got close, The Bad Czech could see that the cockatoo hair was the color of red pepper.

  "Peeing on the tree to show contempt!" the man said. "I admire that!"

  "Naw, I jist hadda take a leak," The Bad Czech said. "I got lost. I gotta find my way back to the downstairs bar."

  "I refuse to go een that Meeckey Mouse bar!" the man announced, and his topknot bounced and danced.

  "I thought it was a nice joint," The Bad Czech said. "Course I drink at a better place."

  "I am Ignacio Mendoza," the man announced. "Call me Nacho. What do they call you?"

  "Everyone calls me Czech cause my folks came from Czechoslovakia."

  "I came from Peru, but nobody calls me Perry," Ignacio Mendoza said. "What are you doing at thees Meeckey Mouse place?"

  "I was jist takin a leak," The Bad Czech explained. "I was . .."

  "No, no, no!" Ignacio Mendoza bellowed. "I mean thees Meeckey Mouse social setting. I am a professor. I have no choice. There are bourgeois requirements in my life."

  "Well, see, I'm jist at this here open house to look around. To get my feet wet. To see if I wanna become a ... donor. See, I own a string a restaurants in L. A. and I been thinkin about donatin some money."

  "I see!" Ignacio Mendoza said. Then he put his arm around the oxlike shoulder of The Bad Czech and said, "There ees some great research to be done here and I shall be your guide. You have just found a friend!"

  "Thanks, Nacho," The Bad Czech said. "First, can you take me back to the bar, cause I'm lost. And second, can you buy me a drink or two cause I ain't a member here and I can't buy my own, even though I'm a rich guy and own about six or seven restaurants."

  "Eet shall be my pleasure, Czech!" Ignacio Mendoza said.

  Mario Villalobos thought he was really blitzed when he saw the pair coming through the downstairs door. The Bad Czech in his yellow sportcoat and Ignacio Mendoza with his red-pepper cockatoo topknot made Mario Villalobos put his drink down.

  "Een the old days a man did not have to pee on a tree," Ignacio Mendoza explained to his new friend. "The Hayman Lounge, before it was a bar, used to be the world's greatest men's room. There were more than a dozen peeing places. A plethora of pissoirs. Very tall pissoirs."

  "I like tall ones," The Bad Czech said, happy because his new friend bought him a drink.

  "Eet was wonderful," Ignacio Mendoza said. "Can you imagine resting on the john and considering that Albert Einstein himself took a dump een the same place een nineteen thirty-two! Come, let us go to a table and perhaps I can persuade you that money would be well spent here."

  Mario Villalobos was by now looking at his watch, realizing that open house was in full swing and that he had to get his cops upstairs. Except that Lupe Luna had her hand in his and they were leaning across the table looking into each other's eyes.

  "I see your busboy got teamed up with Ignacio Mendoza," she said.

  "Who's that?" Mario Villalobos asked.

  "Chemistry professor," she said. "Wild man even when sober, and now he looks drunk. He was eighty-sixed from this bar for jerking out the plug when a hundred people were trying to watch the Sugar Ray Leonard-Thomas Hearns fight on pay TV."

  "Couldn't they plug it back in?"

  "He jerked it out of the TV, not the socket. He said that prizefighting was bourgeois and primitive and had no place in an academy of science. He's also been kicked out of most of the bars in Pasadena."

  Mario Villalobos saw that he was perhaps the right age and he wondered if The Bad Czech was onto something. "Does he always wear that silly bird wig?" the detective asked.

  "That's his hair," Lupe Luna answered.

  As The Bad Czech and the Peruvian professor passed the horny K-9 cop, Hans was trying to engage the bartender in conversation while she was trying to stay at the other end of the bar, having picked up the scent of dog on Hans' leisure suit.

  The Bad Czech whispered to Ignacio Mendoza, "That's one a my waiters, Nacho. I brung him here for a big night out. Got to take care a your employees."

  "That ees wise," Ignacio Mendoza nodded. Then to the bartender, "Give my friend a double and one for his waiter."

  "His waiter?" Hans said. "Did you hear that? I'd like to break his eyebrows is what I'd like to do, the big phony! I'd like to make him a canceled Czech!"

  "I'd like to have him on our team," a big baby-faced kid said. "We need somebody that size at defensive end."

  "What kind a football schedule would a place like this have?" Hans asked, knowing he'd better soon get something to eat. He loosened his pastel necktie and took deep breaths to make his head less fuzzy.

  "Well, we tried to play Tijuana Tech but their team didn't show up. I think Lopez-Portillo was on a tour and needed the rental bus. But we played Tehachapi."

  "The prison?"

  "Yeah, the refs were all inmates so of course they were crooks. One of them got beat up when he called a penalty against the other crooks. So he called all the rest of the penalties against us."

  "Rampart used to have a good football team," Hans said. "The Czech played for them. Morale's low everywhere now. Everybody's dumpin on us co .. ." Hans stopped running his mouth when he saw the big kid looking at him in puzzlement. "Uh ... Rampart's the name of our restaurant. Ever eat there? Right next to Lawry's? Rampart House of Ribs?"

  "Waiters have a football squad?"

  "Yeah, and busboys," Hans said. "I gotta get some coffee. I'm too drunk to touch my nose."

  "I'm not too drunk to touch his nose," the braless graduate student said to the bartender, clenching her fist.

  "Haven't seen you around lately, Nacho," one of the new arrivals at the bar said to Ignacio Mendoza. He was about six feet tall and fiftyish. He had a receding hairline and blond-gray hair. The voice was close to being right.

  "I don't frequent thees Meeckey Mouse place very often," he said to the man. "The last time was nearly a year ago on Bastille Day. Somebody actually started complaining because I sang the Marseillaise." And then Ignacio Mendoza relived the moment by humming a few bars: "Da da da Dum da Dum da Dum da da ..."

  He was interrupted by the graduate student with the Frisbee who was getting smashed. "Casablanca/" the kid said. "Paul Henreid!"

  "No, estupidoF Ignacio Mendoza thundered. "Casablanca was .. And breaking into lyrics he sang: "You must remember t
hees. A kees is steell a kees, a sigh ees just a sigh!"

  "Same movie, but Paul Henreid sang the other one," the kid with the Frisbee insisted.

  "Come, Czech!" Ignacio Mendoza roared. "We are getting out of thees Meeckey Mouse place! Call your waiter!"

  Mario Villalobos caught up with them as they were climbing the steps, very unsteadily. The Bad Czech and Ignacio Mendoza were arm in arm. Hans struggled along behind them. His pastel necktie hung like a noose from his skinny neck.

  "Where're you going?" Mario Villalobos shouted from the bottom of the landing.

  "We're goin to the open house," The Bad Czech said, winking about as subtly as a left jab to the mouth. "We're gonna meet the faculty with my friend Nacho here."

  "Take a good look around, understand?"

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah," Hans mumbled.

  "Meet me at the wine and cheese table in an hour," Mario Villalobos ordered.

  "Who ees that person?" Ignacio Mendoza asked The Bad Czech.

  "He's one a my headwaiters," The Bad Czech said. "They're all alike. Bossy types. I humor him cause ya can't find good help these days, Nacho."

  When they got outside the Athenaeum, Hans began throwing his arms up in the air and taking deep breaths. They started across the campus past the student dorms where so many famous Caltech pranks were perpetrated by very creative young minds, toward the amphitheater where Mario Villalobos had conjured up his lie that would fly. When they arrived at Mead Laboratory, Hans was tired and cranky.

  There were hundreds of people there for open house, in small and large groups, roaming through four buildings that housed chemistry laboratories.

  First, Ignacio Mendoza took them to one of the teaching laboratories, a glass-walled instrument room full of visitors. The tourists stood in several groups listening to various students and faculty members demonstrating chromatographs, melting-point apparatus and other equipment. The shapes and structure of tubing connected with some of the devices delighted The Bad Czech.

  "All them tubes goin up and down and around! Like the old Rube Goldberg cartoons. I like stuff like that. It's pretty."

  "I can see you are a man of sensitivity," Ignacio Mendoza said.

  "I'm feeling better," Hans said, "but I'm getting hungry. I'm going back where the wine and cheese is. I'll catch ya later."

  "There ees nothing but Meeckey Mouse women there," Ignacio Mendoza warned.

  "So what's wrong with big ears and a few whiskers?" the K-9 cop leered. "Ya stay till midnight, they all look good."

  "Go on, but keep your eyes open," The Bad Czech said.

  "Eyes open for what?" Ignacio Mendoza asked, when Hans was gone.

  "He falls asleep all the time," The Bad Czech said. "Can't take him anywheres."

  Next, the Peruvian chemist took The Bad Czech to Noyes Laboratory, where they joined a queue of people watching laser spectroscopy in a small room.

  "Thees shall be an attempt to understand the nature of the interaction between light and matter," Ignacio Mendoza said to The Bad Czech, who got really excited watching the ultra-short pulse-lasers used to excite molecules in different phases.

  "These things could make great weapons for cops and people like that!" The Bad Czech said. "Burn the freaking eyes outa some a these pukes. You know, we had ... I mean, I read about a couple a Cuban boat people down in Los Angeles shot at some cops last month while they was robbin a market. When they get to trial they claim they're just poor hungry refugees tryin to steal food for their families. Sure. The food is kept in the safe} That's where the cops found them. Lasers like this, you could shoot right through a wall and burn the bastards up. Outa sight!"

  The Bad Czech was next led by Ignacio Mendoza toward the solar photochemistry demonstration. Ignacio Mendoza said, "I myself am exploring the chemical processes occurring on a variety of catalytic surfaces."

  "Can you do pretty experiments like they did with the lasers?"

  "Maybe you will like the next demonstration," Ignacio Mendoza said. "Eet's very pretty."

  "No lasers?"

  "No, but they are trying to effect a practical and efficient production of hydrogen and other fuel from water. You understand, eef eet could be done by producing a high yield, the Pacific Ocean would be a gas station!"

  "Primo!" The Bad Czech said.

  "The Middle East could return to being a place to raise goats and date palms. Not worth fighting for. I hope you agree that we have had enough bourgeois wars?"

  "I had enough, Nacho. I was in Nam. My partner Cecil Higgins was in Korea. He had enough too."

  "You are not the sole owner of your restaurants?"

  "Well, my partner owns about three of em. What's goin on in this room?" he asked, to change the subject as they joined a throng of people.

  "Thees shall be Doctor Harry Gray's group," Ignacio Mendoza said. "The research group deals weeth the synthesis of compounds containing rhodium and platinum and tungsten and so forth, which have the ability to capture sunlight and use the energy to produce fuels."

  "Oh, that's pretty!" The Bad Czech cried, as he watched the chemist instructing one of the tourists on how to jiggle a test tube in a demonstration of chemiluminescence.

  Two molecules were reacting to generate a new molecule which was so excited that it dumped off light. It had a beautiful luminescence which reminded The Bad Czech of a heightened version of the neon glow on the face of The Gooned-out Vice Cop.

  Then The Bad Czech noticed that Professor Harry Gray was tall and had very dark hair and dark-rimmed glasses. He looked younger than the man outside Dagmar Duffy's apartment house, but then, the light was not good in this room. If he was wearing a false moustache ...

  "Is that guy a regular around here?" he whispered to Ignacio Mendoza.

  "He ees the chairman of chemistry," Ignacio Mendoza said.

  "A high-powered guy?"

  "Yes."

  "He ever been known to do anything . . . violent?"

  Ignacio Mendoza looked quizzically at The Bad Czech and said, "You have a great eenterest een violence, my friend."

  "Can I meet him later and hear him talk? I mean, talk to him?"

  "At the wine and cheese reception. I weel be pleased to make you acquainted. Shall we go on to the next exhibit?"

  And while Ignacio Mendoza and The Bad Czech moseyed across the campus in what turned out to be a balmy California night, Mario Villalobos decided wisely that he had had much more than enough to drink, and so had Lupe Luna. The two of them were in the lighted garden sampling cheese and strawberries when Mario Villalobos saw Hans staggering with a glass of white wine toward the reception area, where a quartet of students was playing chamber music. There were two violins, a viola and a cellist who looked like he was wearing a fright wig.

  Hans sat down hardly noticing the music, very occupied in trying to suck a piece of strawberry out of his molar. Then he noticed a middle-aged man in a pinstripe suit holding a glass of champagne.

  He stood perhaps twenty feet from the patio near a camellia bush, quietly humming the Bach melody while the students played. The man's hair was not black but gray. He was rather tall, well built, and was perhaps fifty-five years old. The pinstripe in his suit was subtle, but a man who liked pinstripe might also wear chalk stripes like the man in front of Dagmar Duffy's. Hans pulled himself together, stood up and strolled toward the camellias.

  "Like the music?" the K-9 cop asked, sipping at his wine, trying to act sober.

  The man nodded.

  "I like classical music," the K-9 cop said, not knowing Dvorak from the Doobie Brothers. "Like, uh, Beethoven's my favorite."

  "Some people might say that Beethoven wasn't a classicist," the man said, moving away and strolling toward the wine and cheese table.

  The voice! Maybe, Hans thought. Maybe! Hans started to feel a little more sober. He pushed the knot on his necktie closer to his skinny neck and tried to tuck his shirt in. There might be some police work to do after all.

  By the time The Bad Czech and Ig
nacio Mendoza reached the basement of Crellin Laboratory, the monster cop was running out of steam. He had pumped the Peruvian professor with about as much subtlety as he was capable of mustering, and had seen about six members of the faculty who were possibles but no one he was very certain about. He was also getting tired of visiting the various demonstrations, even if some of them were pretty. He was disappointed that he hadn't found anything else that offered promise that in the future, cops were going to have better weapons with which to preserve order and keep the peace-by blasting lots of puke bags into teeny bits.

  "You might find the next one to your liking, Czech," Ignacio Mendoza said. "NMR spectroscopy ees one of the best ways to analyze chemical compounds."

  "Yeah, sounds like fun," The Bad Czech said.

  "Under a very high magnetic field all the protons een a molecule can be looked at. You understand that the nuclei een molecules have tiny magnetic moments? The spectrometer can be used to monitor structural changes een a molecule. Eet's like stepping out to the street and being able to see whether a stoplight ees red or green. Thees ees the most sensitive spectrometer een the world. There ees a very very powerful magnetic field, so leave your watch outside the room. Me, I don't wear one."

  "Okay, Nacho," The Bad Czech said, taking off his watch and giving it to a student who was on duty.

  They followed a group of seven visitors into the small room.

  "Any chemist who needs to determine the structure of a molecule weel use the spectrometer," Ignacio Mendoza said. "The powerful magnetic field could damage your watch. There are stories of janitors trying to clean up around a spectrometer and their vacuum gets pulled right eento the magnet and topples eet."

  It was a shiny metal cylinder about the size of The Bad Czech's apartment-size refrigerator. He was disappointed with the magnet because he thought it would look different. It weighed less than a ton, depending upon whether or not it was filled with helium, and squatted in the middle of a small basement laboratory. It was tied off at the top and affixed to the ceiling because of California earthquakes.

  "I was hopin it was shaped like a big horseshoe magnet," The Bad Czech said. "I thought we could play with it. You know, like make a hairpin fly across the room?"