Mario Villalobos concluded that he could not be better than himself. He could not imitate the excited state of an electron gone mad. Not with his slaughtered senses. The future and past were one. He showered, shaved, dressed in casual clothes and went to The House of Misery to get drunk.
They were all there, in that it was Saturday night. Even Rumpled Ronald was back, getting lots of attention and sympathy for his broken ribs and, of course, loving it. The Bad Czech and Hans had already informed them of the Caltech experience, and Mario Villalobos was spared explanations of why he looked worse than Gerry Cooney after Larry Holmes beat him up for thirteen rounds.
Ludwig was sitting beside Hans at their end of the bar, looking cranky because he wanted to sleep, and the hyper hot dogs, Stanley and Leech, were playing a game of nine-ball on his bed.
A groupie with a face like tapioca pudding was draped around Hans, who wasn't looking too happy since he'd gotten nothing from the hotshot chemist at Caltech but advice to shellac it.
Jane Wayne was tugging on the eyebrows of The Bad Czech, who was reading the Los Angeles Times and howling from time to time, which would set off Ludwig into louder howling and make everyone get cranky and start yelling at each other to shut up.
Dilford and Dolly were sitting together and commenting on one of the town crier's editorials. Cecil Higgins was staring into the bottom of his glass, and Leery was setting them up for all he was worth, playing a sonata on the cash register while he sucked his teeth and leered happily.
Mario Villalobos just nodded when Leery said, "Whatcha having, Mario, a very dry vodka martini?"
The detective hadn't taken his first sip when the door opened and through the smoke and gloom floated a young man with shoulder-length hair and a delicate face. He took his place before the broken spider web of mirror and signaled for bar whiskey.
Before everyone got a chance to quiet down and get unaccountably edgy in the presence of The Gooned-out Vice Cop, the hyper hot dogs, Stanley and Leech, finished their nine-ball game and came swaggering into the bar for more beer.
"Look who's here!" Stanley said to Leech. "Hey, Bartholomew!"
The Gooned-out Vice Cop was moving his face from side to side, making the ghastly neon illuminate various shards of mirror in his Cubist self-portrait. He didn't seem to hear.
"Hey, Bartholomew!" Leech yelled, and both hyper hot dogs charged down to the end of the bar and clapped The Gooned-out Vice Cop on the shoulder.
"Haven't seen you since the academy!" Stanley cried.
"How's it hanging?" Leech cried.
"Just kicking back lately," The Gooncd-out Vice Cop said, turning and smiling placidly at the hyper hot dogs.
"Man, that was all-time what I read about you in the paper last January! All-time!" Leech said.
"You did the right thing on that one!" Stanley said, winking at The Gooned-out Vice Cop.
And of course all the cops in the barroom knew that "the right thing" in police jargon means that one has blown some pukebag into eternity.
"Musta scared the shit outa ya, that scuzzball leaping out with a knife when you're creeping through a backyard on a little gambling raid."
"So what if he was sixteen? He tried to do a little East Hollywood surgery on ya, didn't he? Bet he was surprised when he was looking outa two more eyes on each side of his nose. How many rounds did ya fire? Any misses?"
The Gooned-out Vice Cop continued to smile serenely and did not reply, but there was seldom need to reply to hyper hot dogs like Stanley and Leech.
"You guys hear about his shooting?" Leech asked, giving no one a chance to answer. "Big deal on TV when the little puke's Cuban mama says how her little boy was out playing with his pigeons in the yard and gets killed by a trigger-happy vice cop. Sure. With a goddamn knife in her baby's hand and PCP in his pocket."
"Did they find any angel dust in the autopsy, Bartholomew?" Stanley asked.
"Bartholomew made a good Cuban outa him before he had a chance to get dusted out," Leech answered.
"Garbage. All garbage," Stanley said.
The Gooned-out Vice Cop continued to smile until the hyper hot dogs got tired asking and answering their questions. He shook his head when they tried to buy him a drink, and they returned to their nine-ball game.
Except that Ludwig had established his idea of eminent domain and was lying on the pool table with his head on the rail, slobbering all over the felt by the corner pocket.
"Hey! Get that fucking dog off the table!" Stanley said to Hans, who was moving on his groupie, worrying about doing it without shellac, and feeling generally grumpy from listening to the two hot dogs babble.
" You get him off," Hans said.
"Get the fuck off that table, asshole!" Leech said to Ludwig, and banged on the table with his cue stick.
This time Ludwig did not come up with a roar. He barely raised his head. But despite stories about animals avoiding eye contact, this animal looked directly into the eyes of the young hot dog. Ludwig's goatlike eyes were amber yellow and the whites were red-webbed from the smoke in the saloon and the beer he'd consumed. It did not become a roar, nor was it interrupted by breathing. It was a primordial growl, from the neighborhood of the La Brea tar pits where saber-toothed tigers lay interred. And except for Leery, Hans and The Gooned-out Vice Cop, every human being in that bar reached slowly toward a gun.
Leech never broke eye contact when he put his cue stick against the wall, very carefully. He didn't break eye contact when he ever so slowly backed out of the pool table area into the main barroom. He didn't even break eye contact when he paid Leery and said, "Come on, Stanley. If they're gonna permit animals in this place, we'll just drink somewhere else."
"Don't be hasty, boys!" Leery yelled anxiously as the hyper hot dogs scooted toward the door. "Come back! You can drink down at the other end of the bar!" Then he turned to the K-9 cop and said, "Goddamnit, Hans, Ludwig's gonna ruin my business yet! Get that freaking dog off the pool table!"
But Hans, who was half bagged, just giggled and drank his beer and whispered something lewd into his groupie's ear.
Then for the first time, The Gooned-out Vice Cop uttered an unsolicited comment. He said, "Here's a syllogism: people are nothing more than garbage. I'm a person. What am I, finally?"
The Gooned-out Vice Cop looked around the bar and no one could answer for a moment.
The Bad Czech spoke first. He said to The Gooned-out Vice Cop: "Them two bigmouthed hot dogs gimme a pain in the ass. Maybe you'd like to get acquainted with us here?"
The Gooned-out Vice Cop said, "What if once you got real scared. You ever do a job every day and suddenly one day you get scared? For no reason?"
"I can understand that," Mario Villalobos said to The Gooned-out Vice Cop.
"Did you ever see a kid get shot in the face?" The Gooned-out Vice Cop asked.
Cecil Higgins said, "A sixteen-year-old jumps out in the dark with a knife? I mean nobody can blame ..."
"What if he didn't have a knife?" The Gooned-out Vice Cop asked. "What if someone panicked? What if someone then planted some dust and a throwaway knife to cover it? Have you ever been absolutely positive your heart was going to bang a hole in itself and bleed all over the inside of your belly? Have you ever been that scared?"
But it was too late for anyone to formulate answers. The Gooned-out Vice Cop took one last look at his image in the broken glitter of glass. At his mirror image in black shadow and ghastly neon green. Then he was off the stool moving on a vice cop's cat feet toward the door.
He turned for an instant and smiled serenely at them, with eyes like bullet holes.
"Hey! He didn't pay for his drink!" Leery said. "Hey!"
"I'll pay for his freaking drink!" The Bad Czech said, and that made Leery quiet down and go back to leering happily at the amount he'd taken in so far.
Then the cops began talking about The Gooned-out Vice Cop.
"I was sorta scared of him before," Dilford confessed.
"I sorta th
ought he looked like me sometimes," Hans confessed.
"I had eyes like that when we found the paws in the petunias," Jane Wayne confessed.
"I thought he might not be real," The Bad Czech confessed.
"I thought he might be a devil," Rumpled Ronald confessed.
"If he was a devil, he wouldn't be here," Cecil Higgins said into the bottom of his glass. "This place ain't got enough class to be hell. Purgatory, maybe."
"Well, he's not so spooky anymore," Mario Villalobos said, feeling an overwhelming desire to survive. "Next time he comes in, somebody should buy him a drink and talk to him."
And with that, Mario Villalobos picked up his bar change and got off the stool. Everyone was utterly dumbfounded. Mario Villalobos hadn't even touched his drink!
"You ain't leaving, Mario?" Leery cried.
"Catch you later," Mario Villalobos said.
"It's the shank of the night!" Leery cried.
"Was it something I said?" Dilford wondered, remembering The Madonna of the Wogs. "I seem to alienate people."
"Have to see someone," Mario Villalobos explained.
As he was going out the door he could hear Leery screaming, "It's your fault, Hans! You and that goddamn dog! He scares off all my customers!"
***
Later that evening Lupe Luna opened the door and gasped in shock when she saw the detective's battered and swollen face.
"Don't make me explain it," he said. "Just a little police problem."
"Maybe you should go into some other line of work," Lupe Luna said, admitting the detective into a feminine and cozy three-bedroom house in South Pasadena.
"I can't. I don't know anything else and I don't know any better."
"When you called it was like you were reading my thoughts," she said. "When my daughter went to spend the weekend with her dad, I started thinking about calling you."
"Got a record player?" Mario Villalobos asked.
"Sure. Why?"
Mario Villalobos opened the paper bag he was carrying. In it was a bouquet of white carnations, a bottle of good California Zinfandel, and a record album he'd brought from home.
"Moldy oldies," he said, putting the record on the turntable.
Lupe Luna picked up the album and said, "Oh, Mario! 'Stardust'? Is this what you listen to?"
"I just came from a bunch of confessors," he said. "I may as well confess too. That's what I listen to. I'm from another time and I'm going to hell in a hurry. I love your new sporty haircut. You're a knockout, kid."
"You look like you've been knocked out enough lately," she said, as the Hoagy Carmichael classic melted out of the dual speakers.
"Wanna dance?" Mario Villalobos asked.
"Oh, Mario," she said, shaking her head incredulously.
But she moved into his arms and put her head on his chest and they danced in the living room of the little house. She said, "You're the most peculiar guy I've met in quite a while."
"If only I could find some stardust. Just once. Maybe I could go for it," he said.
"For what?" she asked.
"If only I could be like an electron gone mad. Just for a moment."
"What are you talking about?"
"I don't know," he said. "Maybe the excited state of delta to delta-star."
They were barely moving, only swaying when she kissed him, slant-eyed, heavy-lashed, smoldering, her glistening overbite white in the glow from the lamp.
"Come on," she said, taking his hand and leading him through a hallway to her bedroom.
"I didn't come here for this, believe it or not," he said, feeling a sudden drumming in his blood. "I only wanted to dance to 'Stardust.' "
"I don't care why you came here," she said, pulling his jacket off his shoulders. "Since meeting you I've been in my own excited state." Then she said, "Get in that bed, Mexican."
Chapter FIFTEEN
THE DELTA STAR
The detective didn't get back to his apartment until 4:00 a. M. Lupe Luna couldn't persuade him to stay the night. He didn't know why he had to spend the rest of the dark hours alone, but he had to. A feeling was coming over him. It thrilled and frightened him. He was light-headed, unsure of whether he might faint, vomit or have a coronary.
Something was generating a kind of energy. His neurons were being bombarded with sensations. He lay in the dark, neither awake nor asleep. He watched sparkling images on his eyelids: Lupe Luna. Black matted lashes. Nipples like berries in buttercup. Then in whiter light like pale cherries in alabaster.
He opened his eyes to watch the black sky through his bedroom window. A dark star showed faintly through the smog. He closed his eyes for seconds or days. When he opened them the star had flared to life! It was spinning in the blackness like an electron gone mad. The star as huge as the sun powered upward in stellar fire. An instant of cosmic excitement!
Then, rising silence. Silver starlight and rain. Cumulus as white as lace. Moonset.
At 5:30 a. M. in a river of sweat he came up out of bed like Ludwig off the pool table. If he could have managed the Rottweiler's roar, he might have. At 5:35 a. M. Ignacio Mendoza was cursing into his telephone in Spanish.
Mario Villalobos, his eyes bulging and pulsating, said, "Please, Professor, try to understand that I wouldn't wake you if it wasn't urgent! Now let me repeat the question: Who's the Soviet chemist most likely to be a candidate for the Nobel Prize?"
"Estupido/" Ignacio Mendoza thundered, causing the detective to hold the phone a foot from his ear. "I told you that the best work ees done een America! With some een West Germany and Britain! Not Russia! You wake me for a Meeckey Mouse cop question?"
"Please don't hang up, Professor!" Mario Villalobos pleaded. "I think I've been into the excited state of delta to delta-star."
Ignacio Mendoza quieted down and after a few seconds said, "Anatoly Rozlov. He works een Dubna, the Soviet version of Los Alamos. He would be the only possibility, but eet ees so remote that ..."
"In what area has he done the most notable work?" Mario Villalobos asked.
"Organometallic diradical chemistry, to be sure," the Peruvian answered. "Specifically, een studying diradical species as catalytic intermediates. The importance ees een the development of cheap synthetic fuels."
"Okay, now give me the name of the Caltech scientist who has done the most notable work in exactly the same area of diradical chemistry. I'm referring to a man who's made similar discoveries, if not identical discoveries."
"Noah Fisher," Ignacio Mendoza said immediately.
"Is he a candidate for the prize?"
"You don't understand, Sergeant!" the chemist cried in exasperation. "Chemistry ees not the kind of science where a piece of work has instantly recognizable and far-reaching implications! We don't make fundamental discoveries as een physics or biology. Eet's the body of a man's work, a package of science. I believe that the work of Noah Fisher needs at least five more years to ..."
"But his achievements pretty well mirror the best work of Anatoly Rozlov?"
"They have done a lot of separate but identical work."
"Thanks, Dr. Mendoza," Mario Villalobos said. "I'll stay in touch."
The detective's hands were shaking when he whipped the eggs into the orange juice. He almost gagged it back up when it splashed into his empty fluttering stomach, but he concentrated on holding it down.
He showered, shaved, and dressed just as he would for duty, except that he wore his best suit and a new necktie. He dropped the keys trying to unlock the door to his BMW and had to pause for a moment to get his nerves quieted. He drove straight to the Hollywood Freeway and fairly raced around the ramp to the Pasadena Freeway north.
It was 8:00 a. M. before the detective was able to locate the home of Noah Fisher in northwest Pasadena. It was a very nice house on a very nice street lined with flowering trees which shed white and purple blossoms from curb to curb. The woman who answered the door was about the detective's age.
Mario Villalobos decided not to identify
himself. He said, "May I speak to Dr. Fisher?"
"He's not here. I'm Mrs. Fisher. Can I help you?"
"I'm a friend of Lester Beemer's," the detective said. "And I was told that he left some property of mine with Dr. Fisher."
"Lester Beemer? I don't think I know him," she said.
"He passed away," Mario Villalobos said. "Lester? Did your husband know a man named Lester?"
"Lester?" she said. "Is that the Lester he played golf with at Altadena Country Club?"
"Might've been," Mario Villalobos said. "A few months ago?"
"He called for golf dates. He died}"
"Yes, and as a matter of fact he left a pair of golf shoes in your husband's car. They belong to me."
"Oh, I'm sorry. It must be an oversight. I wonder if Noah knows the man died?"
"I think he knows," Mario Villalobos said. "Is he in his laboratory this morning?"
"He's at the track," she said. "He likes to lift weights and jog at the Caltech track."
Mario Villalobos sat anxiously in the second row of bleachers on the south side of the quarter-mile dirt track. The San Gabriels loomed to the north and were still snow-capped despite the heat in the valley. He would have taken his suit coat off were it not for the gun and handcuffs. He watched four sweating men making labored trips around the track. One appeared to be eighty years old and shuffled on legs veiny and bowed. But still he shuffled, and did not stop until he'd covered a mile.
There were three other men lifting free weights to the north of the track near the university swimming pool, but they were young men. Two women suddenly appeared from the direction of the basketball courts and started to jog slowly around the track. They turned to wave to a man some distance behind. They encouraged him to hurry. He feigned exhaustion and pretended to stagger with his tongue hanging out, and the women laughed and waited.
He was about six feet tall and in excellent condition. He wore a gray sweat shirt cut off at his bruising shoulders and was very bald with only a black fringe around-the ears. His legs were hairless and well developed, with the large calves of a tennis player. He didn't notice Mario Villalobos in the bleachers on his first pass around the track.
the Delta Star (1983) Page 27