The (Original) Adventures of Ford Fairlane

by Rex Weiner

  I’d told the voice on the phone I didn’t bodyguard. I hadn’t given up a good job as head bouncer at Hurrah’s in New York City to go through all you have to go through to get a private detective’s license (#096422) just to be somebody’s babysitter. Besides, my time in LA was all booked up with pool lounging, beer drinking, and other heavy stuff. Call me tourist, okay?

  The voice on the phone wouldn’t compute that input. “I’m her manager,” he huffed, “and I’ve invested a lot in Wanda. I’m sending her to London on her first European tour and I don’t want anybody to mess her up, especially that loser boyfriend of hers. He sweeps the studio for the Eagles. She’s going to be a star.”

  “So’s the maid at the Magic Motel,” said I, winking at old Clara who was dragging the laundry off the floor of my room.

  “But, you’ve got a responsibility,” he said. “You’re the only private eye in the rock business.” He then sketched a very big dollar sign for the nursemaid job. I asked him to double it. He did. I suddenly decided to become responsible.

  The drive across LA was a piece of cake. By the time we hit Sunset, she had the FM dialed to Rodney’s show on KROQ. She was snapping her fingers to D-Day’s rendition of “Too Young to Date.” When I parked the car in the garage of the Chateau Marmont she wouldn’t let me switch off the ignition until the song was over.

  On the way up to her room, I eyeballed every nook and crevice for hidden thugs. No such luck. The night clerk at the front desk gave us the once over. He was reading The Shining. Around the corner was room fifteen. Wanda’s manger chose it, he said because it was safely within sight of the front desk.

  I turned the key in the lock, thinking of the six-pack waiting for me back at the Magic Motel. The door sprang open and my job was just about over. It was a pretty big suite for such a little girl. Wanda went to open a window. Before going home to that six-pack, I decided to sniff out the rooms. Kitchen, fully equipped. Bathroom, stocked with thick towels on the rack. Two walk-in closets. Living room with TV console. Two more closets. Another bathroom. And a big bedroom with somebody I didn’t see behind the door who cracked me on the skull with a piece of hardwood that rolled down all my curtains.

  Was it that jack-in-the-box I use for a brain, or did I really hear Wanda laughing? Or was she screaming?

  Chapter 2

  The Funny Joke

  Hot against my cheek, the bedroom carpet rippled wall-to-wall, stirred by sunlight poking through the curtains. My eyes adjusted. I tried to sit up. There was a bass drum beating four-four time between my ears. It was going to be hours before Godzilla took his paw off the foot pedal. I decided to get a few questions answered in the meantime.

  No, the desk clerk hadn’t seen anything all night. Yes, my Rent-a-Wreck was still parked downstairs. No, Wanda’s manager wasn’t in, said the secretary: he was “taking a meeting.” Yes, Schwab’s drugstore down the street had a big bottle of aspirin for sale.

  The bump on my head was still there after breakfast. That was bad. Worse was the fact that I’d bungled an easy job. Maybe Los Angeles was turning my brain into mush. Maybe it was the air, or lack of air, or something. But that was no excuse. There was only one thing to do—get Wanda back.

  My first theory was simple. I called it the “boyfriend hypothesis.” Wanda’s manger had warned me about him. I figured the boyfriend didn’t want to see Wanda go off on tour to London so he booked her on his own private tour. Find the boyfriend, I figured, and I’d find Wanda. I headed over to the manager’s office to tell him my brilliant theory.

  The address was on La Cienega. It was one of those two-story, beige-on-beige buildings designed sort of like cottage cheese on cantaloupe so as not to excite the ulcers of the high-strung bastards nine-to-fiving inside. I tucked the car in the back lot. A stairway led upstairs. On the way in, I was nearly bowled over by a couple of guys in a big hurry. I wouldn’t have marked them but for two standouts. Both had heads shaved as close as tennis balls. One stomped my foot with a steel-tipped construction boot. A purring Trans Am swallowed them up and took off without so much as a ’scuse me.

  The door said Mitch Mitchell Talent Inc. It was open. The reception area was standard management décor, a chorus of album covers and a duet of gold records. The receptionist’s desk was empty. It was lunchtime. She was probably out spooning a low-cal snack. The silence seemed to be settling like thick dust. It made my nose itch. I took a peek around.

  Mitch Mitchell’s office was flooded with light. A large, airy place, it featured a plush sofa and leather chairs that said business was real good. In the middle was a slab of polished mirror that could have been the Jolly Green Giant’s coke mirror. That was Mitch Mitchell’s desk. Behind it was a high-backed swivel chair with built-in headphones straight out of Star Wars. That was Mitch Mitchell’s chair. Underneath the desk was a pair of Gucci loafers with gold buckles. Those were Mitch Mitchell’s shoes. Attached to the shoes was Mitch Mitchell. He didn’t seem to be in any mood to hear the boyfriend hypothesis or any other theory. The front of his Armani suit was messed up by three fresh bullet holes. Mitch Mitchell was dead.

  Somewhere, a bored cop on desk duty got an adrenalin surge from an anonymous tip about a stiff on La Cienega. That was me calling from a pay phone on La Brea, after wiping all my prints from Mitchell’s office. Only those two skinheads had seen me going in there. But I’d seen them going out. I wondered about the skinheads. I wondered about Mitch Mitchell. I had to find out more. I called the only man who would know—radio personality, lead singer of Puke, and punk-about-town, Vin Vomsky.

  “Meet me at the Starwood,” Vin said. “Ten thirty. I’ll be up front.”

  Lunch at Duke’s. Pinball at Barney’s Beanery. A steak dinner at Port’s. Booze and nine-ball at the Raincheck. By then it was 10:30 p.m. When you’ve got time to kill, LA is a willing accomplice.

  Ron the ticket taker waved me in the door at the Starwood. I elbowed through the packed crowd. Vomsky was right where he said he’d be, standing at the front. His stocky figure was braced against the crush, fist clenched around a bottle of Bud.

  “You’re gonna catch a good show tonight,” he said. “Darby Crash. He’s great.”

  I asked him about Mitchell.

  “Mitch Mitchell? His specialty is taking punk bands that are good and rough, smoothing the edges, rounding off the riffs, and turning them into mainstream pop bands that suck. He’s responsible for every Knack and Cars clone in the city. He discovered the formula for turning gold into shit and he’s making a fucking fortune.”

  “Does he have any enemies?”

  “Does the Pope pogo? Mitch Mitchell is the Shah of new wave.” In more ways than one, I thought.

  “Who hates him most?”

  “South Bay beach punks are pissed off at Mitchell ’cause he ruined half their best bands. Long-haired rockers of The Eagles variety hate him ’cause he’s muscling them out of the picture. And just about every coke dealer in town.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Hoover nose don’t pay his bills.”

  The crowd erupted in angry little knots. Darby Crash strode across the stage and picked his mike off the stand. His Mohawk bristled like a porcupine’s quills. Dead animal skins and feathers dangled from his leather shirt and pants. Indian war paint streaked the shaved parts of his skull and pasty face. The band kicked off and Darby’s vocals boxed my ears. The crowd splintered in crab-dancing, arm-flailing pogoers.

  Bodies ricocheted across the room. Vomsky and I retreated to the upstairs balcony.

  In the middle of Darby’s set, two plainclothes cops walked in the door. You could tell they were cops because they were the only ones wearing wide ties. They scanned the joint, knowing what they were looking for. The next thing I knew, Lieutenant Keeler of the LAPD Homicide Squad was introducing himself and Lieutenant Chow at our table. He had to yell in my ear over Darby’s music.

 
“I’ll tell you a funny joke,” said Keeler. “A guy was found dead in his office. He had three bullets in him. But he told us who the killer was anyway. Guess how?”

  I said I didn’t give a shit.

  “You will. You see, the dead guy wrote a name and phone number on his note pad just as he was dying. The name was Ford Fairlane. Isn’t that funny?”

  “This guy’s got a warped sense of humor,” said Vin.

  “Shut up,” growled Chow.

  “Anyway,” smiled Keeler, “the punch line is we’re taking you in on suspicion of murder. Let’s go, Ford”

  Going downstairs, I was wedged between the two cops. Vin disappeared. Just as we hit the dance floor, Darby Crash unleashed a brilliant rendition of “Beyond Help.” The crowd contracted massive epilepsy. Suddenly, the two cops and I were stuck in the mosh pit in the midst of pushing, shoving, writhing bodies. The cops were scared. They grabbed my arms and tried to move in the direction of the door.

  A body came hurtling through space. It smacked into Keeler, bounced off and slammed into Chow, sending them both to the floor. It was Vomsky. About twenty pogo maniacs piled on top, still wriggling to the music. From the bottom of the pile, Vin poked his head out and yelled above the noise.

  “Run, man, run!”

  Chapter 3

  The Connection

  The cops would infest the neighborhood any minute. I had my motor humming.

  But the corner of Sweetzer and Santa Monica was choked with cars. It was Saturday night and everybody in LA had a place to go. Even if it was no place.

  I wheeled my heap across the sidewalk. A garbage can went flying off the curb. Drivers jammed on their brakes. Traffic parted like the Red Sea. I charged across the street, burning rubber, bending fenders, and doing Earl Scheib a couple of favors. Horns blew, but nobody tried to stop me as I sped away, heading south.

  One street looked just like the other. In five minutes, I was in a maze of two-story plaster villas that made one block the carbon copy of the other. I was lost. I had to find Wanda’s boyfriend somehow, but my only plan at the moment was to put distance between me and the sirens gathering around the Starwood. Then somebody had a different idea.

  “Turn left at the corner and then drive straight ahead. Don’t look back or you’re dead,” said a voice from the back seat. Cold iron pressed against back of my skull. I never argue with cold iron.

  “Stop here.”

  We halted in a shadowed spot underneath a wild jasmine bush. The smell was life or death.

  “Where is she?”

  “Who?”

  The cold iron pressed harder. “Don’t play games. I know you’ve got Wanda. Man, I oughta just blow your damn head off right here.”

  Taking a chance, I checked the rearview mirror. A face framed with long blond hair that stared back at me. He was holding a gun. The boyfriend. The one who did session work for The Eagles.

  “I thought you had Wanda,” I said.

  “You think I’m not playing with all my strings, don’t you?” he said, his voice soggy with ’ludes. “You think I don’t know what’s going down. That fat loudmouth Mitchell. Well, I’m going to shut him up for good.”

  “Somebody beat you to it, pal.”

  The gun quivered. “What do you mean, man?”

  Boyfriend was for real. I figured if I had to tell him that Mitchell was croaked, then he couldn’t have had anything to do with it. Add the quaalude factor, and it summed up to four letters: wimp.

  “Like, don’t mess with my head,” he was saying. “I just want you to tell me where Wanda is.” His voice was sobby. “I just want my Wanda back. I love the bitch. I’m gonna marry her. But Mitchell hired you to keep me away from her, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling the gun shaking in his hand as he tried to keep it pointed at my head. “But now Mitchell’s dead and the cops think I did it. I was trying to find you because I thought you did it.”

  “Wait a minute, man. Like, I’m all confused.”

  That was good because I swung around, clamped my elbow over his gun, shoved my hand edgewise into his Adam’s apple, and stunned the sucker flat out across the back seat. I picked his heater up off the floor and drew my own.

  “Wow, man. Like, you didn’t have to hit so hard.”

  A blue-black bruise was spreading across his neck.

  “Time’s not on our side,” I said. “Now, if you don’t have Wanda and I don’t have Wanda, where is she?”

  “We gotta find her, man. I love the bitch.”

  I suggested we start looking around in the places where Wanda usually hung out. Maybe somebody would know something. The boyfriend agreed.

  “Sorry about the gun, man. But I’m ultra-mad at Wanda for disappearing like this. My name’s Strat. Strat Kaster.”

  Strat Kaster hopped in the front seat and we took off. First stop: the Whisky. On the way, Strat popped a couple of dexies and turned from ’lude head into motormouth.

  “…and so I’m not into new wave or punk so much. I’m more into Jackson Browne, The Eagles, Nicolette Larson, that kind of thing. I played backup on Linda Ronstadt’s new album. But I promised Wanda I was going to get a punk haircut just for her.”

  We parked the car on the Strip. The usual sharks and piranhas were prowling the sidewalks hungry for action. Pat at the door of the Whisky waved me and Strat inside.

  On stage, the twenty-two-year-old rockabilly genius Colin Winski was working up a sweat. He churned through “Burning Desire.” The young girls grabbed for his legs. He sank to his knees and barked like a dog. With a baby face like that a guy could get away with anything.

  A looker with Jayne Mansfield hair in a tight black dress with see-through top and high heels stood off to the side. It was my old friend Happy Daye. She’s the Rona Barrett of the LA club scene.

  “’Lo, Ford,” she said. “New York get too cold for you?”

  “Yeah, and now LA’s too hot. Know Wanda of Wanda and the Whips?”

  “She was here about a half hour ago.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “Try Madame Wong’s West. She likes Billy Falcon’s group and they’re playing tonight. But, Ford…”

  “What?’

  “Be careful. The word’s out. You’re playing with fire.”

  “I don’t burn easily,” I said, and she smiled.

  Strat kept jabbering as we walked out the door. “Wanda’s my girl, man. I play better than them, man. I mean, I’m going to wise her up when I see her. She’s in bad company, man. Bad company.”

  In front of Tower Records, a black Dodge Charger came down the hill cruising west. If I’d been paying more attention, I would have seen the long, black nose of an AK-47 poking through the rear window. As it was, I had just enough time to yell “Get down!” and roll into the gutter while the lead coughed against the sidewalk. My left arm turned numb. A searing pain crossed my chest. There were exactly twenty-seven stars in the LA sky that night.

  Chapter 4

  Like Falling Off A Cliff

  You okay?” I heard somebody ask.

  The pain was sharp. Not bullet sharp, but something else. I lifted myself off the dirty asphalt. A fractured Heineken bottle lay in the gutter, jagged side up, covered with the same blood that stained my shirtfront. I’d survived a machine-gunning, but was nearly snuffed by a litterbug.

  Strat grabbed my arm. “C’mon,” he said, as sirens began to howl a few blocks away. “We’ve got to beat feet.”

  Happy Daye’s tip that Wanda was at Madame Wong’s West turned out to be late. I checked every inch of the place, a former prime-rib palace turned punk. The Twisters were playing. The crowd was doing a sort of Simon Says dance, wiggling arms and tilting their bodies in imitation of the band.

  “Didn’t Happy say that Billy Falcon was playing here tonight, and that Wanda was her
e to see him?” I asked Strat.

  Strat pointed to a poster on the wall. “She gave us a bum tip. Falcon played here last week.”

  Why would Happy Daye lead me wrong on Wanda?

  At the Club 88 on West Pico, we ran into more static. The Benders from Tulsa were doing their best to revive the Merseybeat. A couple of girls in vinyl miniskirts from Fred Segal were doing the jerk on the dance floor. Joel at the door was friendly until the name Wanda was mentioned. Then his face turned to slate.

  At the other end of town, John Hiatt was finishing up his set at Madame Wong’s Chinatown spot. The waitresses were jiving to “Pink Bedroom.” The encore was “634-5789,” delivered red-hot. Near the hand-carved teak bar—a remnant of a long-forgotten world’s fair—a demure, middle-aged woman stood whispering to a young boy.

  “That’s Madame Wong,” said Strat. “What she wants, she gets.”

  In a moment, the boy was at my side.

  “Madame Wong wants to speak with famous detective, Ford Fairlane.”

  “Better go,” said Strat. “I’ll wait here.”

  In the dim light of her office, Madame Wong looked like anything but a dragon lady. Her soft face and tiny figure could have graced the cover of a travel brochure. But when she spoke, that singsong voice had an edge of iron.

  “You are looking for something,” said Madame Wong, pouring two cups of tea from a lacquered tray and offering me one. “And why have you come to my club?”

  She smiled. Though I could tell she knew all the answers, I told her anyway. Her smile revealed nothing. She offered me a bowl of fortune cookies.

  “I wish I could be of service,” she said. “But unfortunately—please go on, help yourself.”

  I took a cookie from the bowl, not wanting to be rude.

  “I too am fond of Wanda. One of my favorite bands,” she said. “But you are looking in the wrong place.”

  “What is the right place?”

  She shrugged. I opened my fortune cookie and glanced at the paper inside. It read: Try Hollywood and gave an address on North Cahuenga. I looked up at Madame Wong and her smile still gave nothing away. We talked music for a few minutes, then I thanked her and excused myself.