Inherent Vice

by Thomas Pynchon

  “Um . . . have to look in the log. . . .”

  “Listen, Bjornsen’s in charge of the case, that’s all, he’ll be interviewing hundreds of you people—”

  “Us people. Come in my fuck’n window again, ’s basically what you’re sayin.”

  “According to police reports, you have tended to barricade your door on previous occasions.”

  “You pulled my jacket and looked me up? Penny, you really do care!” with a glance meant to be appreciative, but which all these mirrors in here, as Doc checked out his image, were somehow presenting as just another red-eyed doper’s stare.

  “I’m going after a sandwich. Can I bring you something? Ham, lamb, or beef.”

  “Maybe just Vegetable of the Day?”

  Doc watched her getting in line. What kind of DDA game was she running on him now? He wished he could believe her more, but the business was unforgiving, and life in psychedelic-sixties L.A. offered more cautionary arguments than you could wave a joint at against too much trust, and the seventies were looking no more promising.

  Penny knew more about this case than she was telling Doc. He’d seen enough of that shifty way legals had of holding back information—lawyers taught it to each other, attended weekend seminars out in motels in La Puente just to work on greasiness skills—and there was no reason, sad to say, that Penny should be any exception.

  She got back to the table with the Vegetable of the Day, steamed Brussels sprouts, heaped on a plate. Doc waded in.

  “Yum, man! see that Tabasco a minute—hey, have you talked yet to anybody over at the coroner’s? Maybe your friend Lagonda’s seen Glen’s autopsy?”

  Penny shrugged. “Lagonda describes the matter as ‘very sensitive’ there. The body’s already been cremated, and she won’t say any more than that.” She watched Doc eat for a while. “Well! And how’s everything at the beach?” with a low-sincerity smile he knew enough by now to beware. “‘Groovy’? ‘psychedelic’? surf bunnies all as attentive as ever? Oh and how are those two stews I caught you with that time?”

  “I told you, man, it was that Jacuzzi, the pumps were on too high, those bikinis just kind of mysteriously came undone, it wasn’t nothin deliberate—”

  As it seemed she never missed a chance to do lately, Penny was referring to Doc’s off-and-on partners in mischief, the notorious stewardii Lourdes and Motella, who occupied a palatial bachelorette pad in Gordita, down on Beachfront Drive, with a sauna and a pool, and a bar in the middle of the pool, and usually an endless supply of high-quality weed, as the ladies were known to smuggle in forbidden merchandise, having by now, it was said, enormous fortunes stashed in offshore bank accounts. Yet after nightfall most any layover here, it seemed that they ended up cruising the bleak arterials of dismal L.A. backwaters, seeking out of some helpless fatality the company of lowlifes of opportunity.

  “Maybe you’ll be seeing them sometime soon?” Penny avoiding eye contact.

  “Lourdes and Motella,” he inquired as gently as he could, “they’re, uh, Chicks of Interest to your shop?”

  “Not so much them as some company they’ve been keeping lately. If in the course of bikini-related activities you should happen to hear them mention by name either or both of a pair of young gentlemen known as Cookie and Joaquin, could you try to make a note of it on something waterproof and let me know?”

  “Hey, if you’re thinkin of dating outside the legal profession, I can sure fix you up. If you’re really desperate, there’s always me.”

  She’d been looking at her watch. “Hectic week ahead for me, Doc, so unless any of this heats up dramatically, I hope you understand.”

  As romantically as he could, Doc sang her a few quiet falsetto bars of “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”

  She had learned the technique of pointing her face one way and her eyes another, in this case sideways at Doc, with her lids half shut, and a smile she knew would have its effect. “Walk me back to the office?”

  OUTSIDE THE HALL of justice, as if remembering something, “Do you mind if I just drop something off next door at the Federal Courthouse? It won’t take a minute.”

  They weren’t two steps into the lobby before being joined, or did he mean surrounded, by a couple of feds in cheap suits who could have used a little more time in the sun.

  “These are my next-door neighbors, Special Agent Flatweed, Special Agent Borderline— Doc Sportello.”

  “Gotta say I’ve always admired you guys, eight P.M. every Sunday night, wow, I never miss an episode!”

  “The ladies’ room is down this way, right?” said Penny. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  Doc watched her out of sight. He knew her gait when she had to piss, and this wasn’t it. She wouldn’t be back anytime soon. He had about a second and a half to get spiritually prepared before Agent Flatweed said, “Come on, Larry, let’s find us a cup of joe.” They politely but firmly steered him into an elevator, and for a minute he wondered when he’d get to smoke a joint again.

  Upstairs, they waved Doc into a cubicle with framed pictures of Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover. The coffee, in sumptuous black cups with gold FBI insignia, didn’t taste like it accounted for too much of their entertainment budget.

  From what Doc could make out, both federals seemed newly arrived in town, maybe even straight from our nation’s capital. By now he had seen a few of these back-East envoys, who landed in California expecting to have to deal with rebellious and exotic natives and either maintained a force field of contempt till the tour of duty was up, or else with blinding speed found themselves barefoot and stoned, putting their stick in their woody and following the surf off wherever it might roll. There seemed no middle range of choices. It was hard for Doc not to imagine these two as surf Nazis doomed to repeat a film loop of some violent but entertaining beach-movie wipeout.

  Agent Borderline had taken out a folder and begun to look through it.

  “Hey, what’s ’at you got there—” Doc angling his head amiably, Ronald Reagan style, to peer at it. “A federal file? on me? Wow, man! The big time!” Agent Borderline closed the folder abruptly and slid it into a pile of others on a credenza, but not before Doc saw a blurred telephoto shot of himself out in a parking lot, probably Tommy’s, sitting on the hood of his car holding a gigantic cheezburger and peering into it quizzically, actually poking through the layers of pickles, oversize tomato slices, lettuce, chili, onions, cheese, and so forth, not to mention the ground-beef part of it which was almost an afterthought—an obvious giveaway to those who knew about Krishna the fry cook’s practice of including somewhere in this, for fifty cents extra, a joint wrapped in waxed paper. Actually, the tradition had begun in Compton years ago and found its way to Tommy’s at least by the summer of ’68, when Doc, in the famished aftermath of a demonstration against NBC’s plans to cancel Star Trek, had joined a convoy of irate fans in pointed rubber ears and Starfleet uniforms to plunge (it seemed) down Beverly Boulevard into deep L.A., around a dogleg and on into a patch of town tucked in between the Hollywood and Harbor Freeways, which is where he first beheld, at the corner of Beverly and Coronado, the burger navel of the universe. . . .

  “What’s that? I was lost in thought.”

  “You were drooling on the desk. And you weren’t supposed to see that file.”

  “Only wondering if you had any copies, I always like to carry some pictures around in case people want autographs?”

  “These days as you may know,” Agent Flatweed said, “most of the energy in this office is going into investigating Black Nationalist Hate Groups. And it’s come to our attention that you had a visit yourself not long ago from a known black prison militant calling himself Tariq Khalil. We naturally became curious.”

  “It’s the chronology, really,” Agent Borderline pretended to explain. “Khalil visits your place of business, next day a known prison acquaintance of h
is is slain, Michael Wolfmann disappears, and you get arrested on suspicion.”

  “And cut loose again, don’t forget that part. Have you guys talked to Bigfoot Bjornsen about this? he has the whole file on the case, way more information than I ever will, and you’d really like talking to him, he’s real intelligent and shit.”

  “Lieutenant Bjornsen’s impatience with the federal level is widely remarked on,” Agent Borderline looking up from speed-reading another folder, “and his cooperation if any is likely to be limited. You on the other hand may know things he doesn’t. For example, what about these two employees of Kahuna Airlines, Miss Motella Haywood and Miss Lourdes Rodriguez?”

  Whom Penny had also just been asking about. What a strange and weird coincidence. “Well, what’ve these young ladies got to do with your Black Nationalist COINTELPRO, not I hope just ’cause they both happen to be of non-Anglo origins or nothin . . .”

  “Ordinarily,” said Agent Flatweed, “we’re the ones who ask the questions.”

  “Sure thing, fellas, except aren’t we’re all in the same business?”

  “And there’s no need to be insulting.”

  “Why don’t you just share with us what Mr. Khalil had to say the other day when he visited you,” suggested Agent Borderline.

  “Oh. Because he’s a client, so that’s privileged conversation, is why not. Sorry.”

  “If it has bearing on the Wolfmann case, we might have to disagree.”

  “Groovy, but what I can’t figure is, is if your shop is really so focused on the Black Panthers and all that let’s-you-and-him-fight with Ron Karenga’s folks and so forth, what’s with this FBI interest in Mickey Wolfmann? Somebody’s been playing Monopoly with federal housing money? no, couldn’t be that, ’cause this is L.A., there’s no such thing here. What else, then, I wonder?”

  “We can’t comment,” Agent Flatweed smug and, Doc hoped, lulled by his deliberately clueless cross-inquiry.

  “Oh, wait, I know—after twenty-four hours it’s officially a kidnap case, state lines or whatever, so you guys must be figuring it for a Panther operation—say they put the snatch on Mickey to make some political point, and get a shot at some nice ransom money too while they’re at it.”

  At which the two federals, as if unable not to, had a quick nervous look at each other, suggesting they’d at least thought about this for a cover story.

  “Well bummer and so forth, wish I could help, but that Khalil guy didn’t even leave me a phone number, you know how irresponsible they can get.” Doc stood, put out his cigarette in the rest of his FBI coffee. “Tell Penny how groovy it was of her to set up this little get-together, oh, and hey—can I be frank for a minute?”

  “Of course,” said Agents Flatweed and Borderline.

  Snapping his fingers, Doc sang himself out the door with four bars of “Fly Me to the Moon,” more or less on pitch, and added, “I know that the Director has a thing about spade penises, and I sure hope you find Mickey before any of that cell-block stuff starts happening.”

  “He’s not cooperating,” Agent Borderline muttered.

  “Keep in touch, Larry,” called Agent Flatweed. “Remember, as a COINTELPRO informant you could be making up to three hundred dollars a month.”

  “Sure. Say hi to Lew Erskine and the gang.”

  All the way down in the elevator, though, it was Penny that Doc was worrying about. If the best bargaining chip she had these days was to shop him to the federales, she had to be in some deep shit with somebody. But how deep, and who with? The only connection he saw right offhand was that both federal and county heat shared a common interest in the stewardii Lourdes and Motella, and their friends Cookie and Joaquin. Yep, he had best go look into that as soon as possible, not least because the girls were just back from Hawaii and probably had some heavy-duty dope in the house.

  MEANTIME, PEOPLE WERE seeing Mickey all over the place. In the meat section at Ralph’s in Culver City, shoplifting filet mignons in party-size lots. Out at Santa Anita, in earnest discussion with a person named either Shorty or Speedy. In some accounts, both. In a bar in Los Mochis, watching an old episode of The Invaders dubbed into Spanish, and writing urgent memos to himself. In airport VIP lounges from Heathrow to Honolulu, drinking heedless combinations of grape and grain not seen since the days of Prohibition. At antiwar rallies in the Bay Area, begging a variety of armed authorities to mow him down and end his troubles. Out at Joshua Tree, doing peyote. Ascending into the sky haloed in an all-but-unwatchable radiance toward spacecraft not of earthly origin. So forth. Doc started a file on all these reports, and hoped he wouldn’t forget where he was stashing it.

  Coming out of work later in the day, he happened to notice in the parking lot this tall lanky blonde plus an equally familiar Oriental cutie. Yes! it was those two young ladies from that Chick Planet massage parlor! “Hey! Jade! Bambi!” The girls, casting paranoid glances back over attractive bare shoulders, ran and jumped into a species of Harley Earl Impala, screeched out of the lot, and smoked away down West Imperial. Trying not to take this personally, Doc went back inside looking for Petunia, who, shaking her head reproachfully, handed him a flyer for the Chick Planet Massage Pussy-Eater’s Special.

  “Oh. Well I can explain this—”

  “Dark and lonely work,” muttered Petunia, “but somebody has to do it, something like that? Oh, Doc.”

  On the back of the flyer, written with an applicator in hot pink toenail polish, it said, “Heard they cut you loose. Need to see you about something. I’m working weeknights at Club Asiatique in San Pedro. Love and Peace, Jade. P.S.—Beware of the Golden Fang!!!”

  Well, actually Doc wouldn’t’ve minded a brief word or two with that Jade, either, seeing ’s how, being the last person he’d spoken with back at Chick Planet before he’d slipped, as Jim Morrison might put it, “into unconsciousness,” she could have had a role in setting his unwary ass up for whoever had snatched Mickey Wolfmann and shot down Glen Charlock.

  So, knowing them to be longtime Club Asiatique regulars, he headed directly for the beachfront mansion of Lourdes and Motella, who it turned out this evening were headed down to that very waterfront dive to meet their current hearthrobs, FBI Persons of Interest Cookie and Joaquin, offering Doc a chance to find out why the federales should be so interested, while at the same time wrecking any hopes he might’ve entertained for some drug-enhanced three-way among just him and the girls—now, as Fats Domino always sez, “never to be,” which was how it usually worked out anyway with these two.

  “Okay if I tag along?”

  Motella gave him a skeptical O-O. “Those huaraches are marginal, the bell-bottoms will do, but the top needs some work. Here, have a look,” leading him to a closet full of gear, from whose dimness Doc grabbed the first Hawaiian shirt he could see, parrots in psychedelic color schemes, some visible only under black light, that would have gotten them second looks even from parrot communities already noted for their extravagance of feather shades, plus hibiscus blossoms that merely snorting them would send you off onto nasal acid trips, and tubular green, phosphorescent surf. A very yellow crescent moon. Hula girls with big tits.

  “You can also wear these,” handing him a string of love beads from the Kahuna Airlines Duty-Free Head Shop, which opened whenever the airplane entered international airspace, “but I’ll want ’em back.”

  “Aahhh!” Lourdes meantime in the bathroom, screaming with her nose to the mirror. “‘Photo courtesy of NASA!’”

  “It’s this light in here,” Doc hastened to point out. “You look fine, you guys, fine, really.”

  They did, and soon, togged out in matching dresses from the Dynasty Salon at the Hong Kong Hilton, the girls, one on each of Doc’s arms, proceeded down to the alley, where, locked in a garage with a single dusty window, through the bleared old glass there glowed this dream of a supernaturally cherry vintag
e Auburn, maroon in color with some walnut trim, and bearing the license plate LNM WOW.

  Driving down the San Diego and Harbor Freeways, the high-spirited stewardii filled Doc in on a list of Cookie and Joaquin virtues he would ordinarily have zoned out in the middle of, but since the FBI’s curiosity about the boys had provoked his own, he felt obliged to listen. It was also a distraction from what seemed to Doc the unnecessarily suicidal way Lourdes was piloting the Auburn.

  On the radio was a golden oldie by the Boards, in which rock critics had noticed a certain Beach Boys influence—

  Thought I musta been hallu-cinating,

  Waiting at the light she called to me, “Let’s go!”

  How am I supposed to refuse an 18-

  Year-old cutie in a GTO?

  We took off north, from the light at Topanga,

  Tires smokin in a long hot scream,

  Under the hood of my Ford Mustang, a

  427 cammer runnin just like a dream—

  [Bridge]

  Grille to grille, by the time we hit

  Leo Carrillo [Horn section fill],

  And it still, wasn’t over by Point Mugu—

  Just a Ford Mustang and a sweet GTee-O,

  In motion by the ocean,

  Doin what the motorheads do.

  Shoulda filled-up when I got-off, the San Diego, it’s

  Been pinned on empty for the last ten miles,

  Next thing I know she’s wavin hasta lu-ego, flashin

  One of those big California smiles—

  (Doc tried to listen to the instrumental break, and though the horn section put some nice mariachi harmonies onto “Leo Carrillo,” the tenor player didn’t seem to be Coy Harlingen, just another specialist in one- or two-note solos.)

  Bummed out on the shoulder, couldn’t feel bluer,

  Here comes that familiar Ram Air blast,

  What’s that on the front seat, right next to her,