“But . . .”
“Why are you so interested in this?”
“Carryings-on of the rich and powerful. Better than reading the Enquirer.”
“Plus you don’t get to fuck no newspaper, do you, my li’l Anglo hijo de puta. . . .”
“Fuckfuck,” suggested Doc amiably, “otra vez, ¿sí?”
So he was a little late getting back to the office, and for days he would be making up explanations for all the visible hickeys and claw marks and so on. As Luz prepared to zoom away in the Super Sport, Doc said, “One thing. What do you think really happened to Mickey?”
She grew unflirtatious, almost somber. Her beauty deepening somehow. “I just hope he’s alive, man. He wasn’t that bad of a person.”
LOOKING FORWARD TO a peaceful morning at the office, Doc had just lit up when the antique intercom started in with its guttural buzz. He moved a couple of Bakelite switches and heard somebody who might be Petunia downstairs yelling his name. This usually meant there was a visitor, most likely a chick, given the breathless interest Petunia maintained in Doc’s social life. “Thanks, ’Tune—” Doc screamed back cordially, “send her right on up, and did I mention incidentally your outfit this morning is especially striking, that daffodil shade picks up the color of your eyes,” knowing little if any of this would get through without heavy distortion.
On the off chance his unknown visitor might take a dim view of marijuana use, Doc ran around with a can of supermarket-brand air freshener, filling the office with a horrible thick mist of synthetic floral notes. The door opened and in stepped this, have mercy, this incredible looker, even with the reduced visibility and all. Red hair, leather jacket, tiny little skirt, cigarette stuck to a lower lip that looked more desirable the closer she got.
“Cootie food!” Doc screamed involuntarily, having been told once that this was French for “Love at first sight!”
“Remains to be seen,” she said, “but what is this smell in here, it’s fuckin nauseating.”
He looked at the label on the aerosol can. “‘Wildflower Whimsy’?”
“A gas-station toilet in Death Valley would be ashamed to smell like this. Meantime, I’m Clancy Charlock.” She put her arm out full length and they shook hands.
“Glen Charlock’s . . .” Doc began, about the same time she said, “sister.” “Well. I’m sorry about your brother.”
“Glen was a shit, and bound to have his series canceled sometime. That don’t keep me from wanting to know who his killer is.”
“You talk to the police?”
“More like they talked to me. Some smart-ass named Bjornsen. Can’t say it was too encouraging. Would you mind not staring at my tits like that?”
“Who— Oh. Must’ve been trying to . . . read your T-shirt?”
“It’s like a picture? of Frank Zappa?”
“So it is. . . . You say now . . . Lieutenant Bjornsen referred you to me?”
“He sounded a lot more concerned with Mickey Wolfmann’s disappearance than Glen’s murder, which given LAPD’s priorities is no big surprise. But I guess he’s a fan of yours.” She had been looking around the office, and her tone was doubtful. “Excuse me, is that a half-smoked joint in your ashtray there?”
“Ah! frightfully unsociable of me, please, here’s a new one, all ready to light, see?”
If he was expecting a romantic smoke sequence along the lines of Now, Voyager (1942), this was not to be—before he could raise a sophisticated eyebrow, Clancy had seized the joint, clanked open a Zippo and fired it up, and by the time Doc got it back it was less than half its original length. “Interesting shit,” she remarked when she finally got around to exhaling. Then they had a prolonged, and for Doc erectile, moment of eye contact.
Be professional, now, he advised himself. “The theory downtown is that your brother tried to prevent whoever it was from putting the snatch on Wolfmann and got shot for doing his job.”
“Way too sentimental.” She had slid into the green and fuchsia lunchroom booth and had her elbows on the table. “If there was a snatch in the works, Glen was more likely to be in on it. Being paid for looking bad is fine, but any real trouble and Glen’s reflex was always to just split.”
“Then maybe he saw something he shouldn’t have.”
She nodded to herself for a while. Finally, “Well . . . yep, that’s how Boris has it figured, too.”
“Who?”
“Another member of Mickey’s muscle patrol. They’ve all dropped out of sight, but last night Boris called me late. We have some history. To look at him, he’s nobody you’d want to get agitated, but I can tell you, right now he’s scared shitless.”
“What of?”
“He wouldn’t say.”
“Think he’d talk to me?”
“Worth a try.”
“There’s the phone.”
“Hey, a Princess phone, man, I used to have one of these. I mean, mine was pink, but poison green is nice too. Were you planning to marry that joint or just keep hangin onto it?”
The phone had a long cord, and Clancy took it as far away from Doc as she could. Doc went in the toilet and became absorbed in something by Louis L’Amour he’d forgotten was in there, and next thing he knew, Clancy was hammering on the door. “Boris says it’s got to be in person.”
THAT NIGHT DOC met Clancy after she got off work tending bar in Inglewood, and they drove out to a bikers’ roadhouse somewhere off the Harbor Freeway called Knucklehead Jack’s. As they came in the door, the jukebox was playing the Del Shannon perennial “Runaway,” which Doc took to be a hopeful sign. The low oxygen level inside was more than made up for by smoke of various national origins.
Boris Spivey had the dimensions, if possibly not the self-restraint, of an NFL lineman. The pool cue in his hand looked about the size a baton does in Zubin Mehta’s. “Clancy says they popped you for Glen.”
“They had to cut me loose. Wrong place at the wrong time, was all. Found unconscious at the scene, so forth. I still don’t know what happened.”
“Me neither, I was out in Pico Rivera, visiting my fiancée, Dawnette. You play pool? How do you feel about massé shots?”
“The usual love-hate.”
“I’ll break.”
The pool table was host for a while to squirming ball trajectories, its playing surface repeatedly threatened by steeply driven cue angles, till Mrs. Pixley the owner finally made her way over to Doc and Boris, bearing a grim smile and a sawed-off shotgun, and a hush fell on the place.
“See that sign over the bar, fellas? You can’t read it, I’ll be happy to.”
“Oh come on, we ain’t hurtin nothin.”
“I don’t care, you and your li’l playmate are gonna have to leave the premises now. Ain’t so much the cost of replacing the felt, I just personally fuckin hate massé shots.”
Doc looked around for Clancy and saw her over in a booth, deep in conversation with two motorcyclists of a sort mothers tend not to approve of.
“She can take care of herself okay,” Boris said, “she’s always been into two at a time, and this looks like her lucky night. Come on, my truck’s out in the lot.”
His head now unavoidably teeming with lewd images, Doc followed Boris outside to a ’46 Dodge Power Wagon with a mottled paint job of olive drab and primer-coat gray. They climbed in, and Boris sat checking the lot out for a while. “You think we convinced ’em back there? I figure a guy can’t ever be too paranoid.”
“How heavy is this, that we’re talking about?” Doc lighting them a couple of Kools.
“Tell me, compadre, just between us—you ever kill anybody?”
“Self-defense, all the time. On purpose, hey, who can remember. How about yourself?”
“You packing right now?”
“Were we expecting compa
ny?”
“After a certain amount of time on the Special Needs Yard,” explained Boris, “you gain the impression that there is always somebody looking to ice your ass.”
Doc nodded. “Thing about these hippie getups,” lifting one bell-bottom cuff to reveal a little short-barreled Model 27, “is you can almost fit a Heckler & Koch under here if you want.”
“You’re a dangerous hombre I can see that, too dangerous for me so I guess I better just spill the whole thing.” Doc got ready to jump out and run, but Boris only continued, “Truth is, Glen got done in cold blood. He wasn’t supposed to be there when they came for Mickey. The fix was in, Puck Beaverton had the duty that day, plan was to let them in the door and then disappear, but Puck got cold feet at the last minute and changed shifts with Glen, except he didn’t tell Glen what was gonna happen, he just split.”
“This Puck guy—you know where he went?”
“Probably Vegas. Puck thinks there’s people there who’ll look after him.”
“Sure would’ve liked a word with him. Whole thing’s kind of puzzling. Let’s say for example that Mickey was in trouble.”
“Trouble ain’t the word. This was the deepest shit he could get in. All because of this idea that came to him. All the money he ever made—he was working on a way to just give it back.”
Doc exhaled more than whistled through his teeth. “Can I still get my name on the list?”
“You think I’m bullshitting, that’s okay, we all thought Mickey was too.”
“Yeah but why would he—?”
“Don’t ask me. Wouldn’t be the first rich guy on a guilt trip lately. He was doing a lot of acid, some peyote, maybe it just got to a point. You must have seen that happen.”
“Once or twice, but it’s more like calling in sick for a couple days, breakin up with your old lady, nothing on that scale.”
“What Mickey said was, ‘I wish I could undo what I did, I know I can’t, but I bet I can make the money start to flow a different direction.’”
“He told you that?”
“Heard him say it, him and his chick Shasta had a few of those intimate discussions, I wasn’t trying to listen in or nothin, just happened to be there, price of being invisible. Shasta, she thought Mickey was crazy wanting to give all his money away. For some reason it scared her. He started in needling, like all she was worried about was losing her meal ticket. Which really was crazy, because she was in love with him, man. If she was scared for anybody, it was for him. I don’t know if Mickey ever believed it, but every jailbird that’s been in, even for a night, can tell the difference between the hustles you put on somebody you want to fuck and that other thing. That longing. All you had to do was look in her face.”
They sat smoking. “Shasta and I lived together for a short while,” Doc thought he should mention, “and I can’t say I ever knew how she felt about me. How deep it went.”
“Man,” Boris glancing quickly down in the direction of Doc’s ankle rig, “I hope this ain’t a bummer for you to be hearin this.”
“Boris, I only look like a evil motherfucker, secretly I’m as sentimental as any ex–old man. Please, forget the Smith, just tell me—who else do you think was worried about Mickey’s big giveaway? Business partners? The wife?”
“Sloane? He wasn’t telling her shit, ‘not till it’s over and done and lawyer-proof,’ ’s what he kept saying. Also said if she ever found out too soon, the California bar association would declare a day of thanksgiving for all the new business.”
“But he’d have to bring in lawyers himself at some point, nobody just hands out millions, he would’ve needed some technical help.”
“All’s I know is, is there was suddenly a army of guys in suits around Mickey’s place—only kind I can ID on sight is Mormons and FBI, if there’s a difference, and I’m still not too sure what these were.”
“You think they could’ve been some of Sloane’s people? Like she found out anyway? Or began to pick up funny vibes? And how about her boyfriend, that Riggs guy?”
“Yeah, Shasta thought Sloane and him were cooking up something together. She was nervous already, but then she started to get really freaked. Mickey was renting a place for her up in Hancock Park, sometimes when I was off shift I’d drop by—nothin romantic, understand—just you could tell how much safer she felt with somebody around. Every day there was something new, cars cruising the house, phone calls that nobody on the other end would say anything, people tailing her whenever she went out in the Eldorado.”
“She happen to get any license numbers?”
“Figured you’d ask.” Boris took out his wallet and found a folded wheatstraw cigarette paper, and handed it to Doc. “Hope you got a way to run these without the cops knowing.”
“Guy I used to work for has this computer. Why don’t you want to go through the LAPD? Seems like they’d be looking to get whoever it is, too.”
“What are you a doctor of, tripping? University of what planet again?”
“Almost sounds like maybe you think . . . LAPD’s in on this?”
“No fuckin maybe, and Mickey was getting warned enough, too. Cop friend of his kept showing up at the house all the time.”
“Let me guess—blond, Swedish, talks weird sometimes, answers to the name Bigfoot?”
“That’s him. I think it was Sloane he kept coming around for, you really want to know.”
“But he warned Mickey to . . . what? stay away from Chick Planet Massage? Don’t trust your bodyguards?”
“Whatever—Mickey ignored all the advice, he liked it out there at Channel View, and especially that massage joint. Last place any of us expected a raid on. One minute you’re gettin a nice blow job, the next it’s like fuckin Vietnam, assault teams everyplace you look, scuba units climbin out of the Jacuzzi, chicks runnin around screaming. . . .”
“Wow. Almost sounds like you were there on the scene and not out in Pico Rivera.”
“Okay, okay, I did drop by for a second, just to pick up some of that purple shit Dawnette likes, that you pour it in the bathtub, it makes bubbles?”
“Bubble bath.”
“That’s it. And just walked right in in the middle of everything, but wait, you—you said you were there, too, all that time, unconscious or whatever, so how come I didn’t see you?”
“Maybe I was really out in Pico Rivera.”
“Long as you weren’t messin with my fiancée.” They sat regarding each other quizzically.
“Dawnette,” Doc said.
The characteristic long-stroke reverb of a Harley road machine approached. It was one of Clancy’s dates for the evening, with Clancy riding behind him. “Everythin okay?” she called, though not exactly with keen interest.
Boris cranked down his window and leaned out. “This guy is freaking me out here, Clance, where do you find such heavy-duty hombres at?”
“Call you soon, Doc,” Clancy sort of drawled.
Doc, remembering the old Roy Rogers song, came back with four bars of “Happy Trails to You” as Clancy and her new friend Aubrey thundered on out of the lot, Aubrey waving a gauntleted hand, to be followed shortly by his coadjutor Thorndyke on an Electra Glide shovelhead.
TEN
BACK AT THE BEACH, DOC COLLAPSED ON HIS COUCH AND drifted toward sleep, but scarcely had he penetrated the surface tension and sunk into REM than the phone began a god-awful clanging. Last year a crazed teenage doper of Doc’s acquaintance had stolen a fire bell from his high school as part of a vandalism spree, and next morning the youth, overcome with remorse and having no idea what to do with the bell, came to Doc and offered it for sale. Downstairs Eddie, who had put in some time with the phone company and was handy with a soldering iron, had hooked the bell up to Doc’s phone. It had seemed like a groovy idea at the time, but very seldom after that.
“Problem is, is they also know me. What’s up?”
“It’s Bambi. She’s been gone now two days and nights, and I’m getting worried.”
“So you’re up rockin and rollin on the Strip.”
“Spotted Dick’s playing here tonight, so if she’s anywhere it’ll be here.”
“Okay, stick around, I’ll be up soon ’s I can.”
East of Sepulveda the moon was out, and Doc made pretty good time. He peeled off the freeway at La Cienega, took the Stocker shortcut over to La Brea. Programming on the radio, appropriate to the hour, included one of the few known attempts at black surf music, “Soul Gidget,” by Meatball Flag—
Who’s that strollin down the street,
Hi-heel flip-flops on her feet,
Always got a great big smile,
Never gets popped by Juv-o-nile—
Who is it? [Minor-seventh guitar fill]
Soul Gidget!
Who never worries about her karma?
Who be that signifyin on your mama?
Out there lookin so bad and big,
Like Sandra Dee in some Afro wig—
Who is it?
Soul Gidget!
Surf’s up, Soul Gidget’s there,
Got that patchouli all in her hair,
Down in Hermosa she’s runnin wild,
Back in South Central she just a child—
Uh who is it?
Soul Gidget!
So forth. Followed by a Wild Man Fischer marathon from which Doc was delivered at last by the appearance on La Brea of the lights of Pink’s. He stopped in briefly for several chili dogs to go and continued on uphill, eating as he drove, found a parking space, and walked the rest of the way up to Sunset. In front of FFO was a small crowd of music lovers, handing joints back and forth, arguing with the bouncer at the door, dancing to the massively amplified bass lines coming from inside. It was the Furies, known in those days for three basses and no lead guitar, and opening tonight for Spotted Dick. Now and then during lulls, somebody was sure to go running in the door to scream, “Play ‘White Rabbit’!” before being tossed back out into the street.
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