DOC GOT BACK to the beach just at early evening, coming up the back slope of the dunes and over, to a hazy view of bay and headlands, a pure sunset of the colors steel takes on as it heats to glowing, lights of airliners, some blinking and some steady, ascending silently from the airport in short clear curves before setting out to traverse the sky, sometimes finding brief conjunction with an early star, then moving on. . . . He decided to stop in at the office, and as he was letting himself in, the phone started ringing, quietly, as if to itself.
“Where’ve you been?” said Fritz.
“No place I’d recommend.”
“What is it, you sound terrible.”
“This thing’s turnin sour, Fritz. I think I found out where they took Mickey. He might not be there any longer, or even alive, but either way he could be pretty fucked up by now.”
“Better I don’t know too much, but how about the po-lice, you’re sure they can’t help?”
Doc found a tobacco cigarette and lit up. “Never thought I’d hear that from you.”
“Just slipped out.”
“I wish . . .” holy shit did he feel tired, “just once I could trust them. But it’s like the force of gravity, they never pull in any but the one direction.”
“Always admired your principles, Doc, specially now, ’cause I ran those plate numbers you gave me, and it turns out that some of them belong to members of the L.A. ‘police reserves.’ Seems a lot of those guys joined up during the Watts clambake so they could play run-nigger-run and have it all be legal. Since then they’ve been like a little private militia the LAPD uses whenever they don’t want to look bad in the papers. You got a pencil, you can copy these down, just don’t tell me what happens.”
“Owe you, Fritz.”
“Not at all, any excuse to feel like I’m surfin the wave of the future here, just got this new hire in, name of Sparky, has to call his mom if he’s gonna be late for supper, only guess what—we’re his trainees! he gets on this ARPAnet trip, and I swear it’s like acid, a whole ’nother strange world—time, space, all that shit.”
“So when they gonna make it illegal, Fritz?”
“What. Why would they do that?”
“Remember how they outlawed acid soon as they found out it was a channel to somethin they didn’t want us to see? Why should information be any different?”
“I better get Sparky to hurry up, then. Today he tells me he thinks he knows a way to get into the CII computer up in Sacramento without them knowing. So pretty soon whatever the State Bureau has, we’ll have, too, you can think of us as CII South.”
Just then they heard the line current drop. Somebody was tapping in. “Well, he’s a dang good retriever,” Fritz went on unperturbed, “if it’s there, ol’ Sparky’ll find it, he loves ’at shit.”
“Remind me to pick him up some of those Liv-a-Snaps,” Doc said.
Back at his place, Doc found Denis with an unlit joint hanging off his lip, sitting by the alley freaking out. “Denis?”
“Fuckin Boards, man.”
“What happened?”
“They trashed my place.”
Doc almost said, “How can you tell?” but saw how upset he was. “Important thing ’s, are you okay?”
“I wasn’t there, but if I was, they would’ve trashed me too.”
“The Boards—the whole band, Denis, the rhythm guitar, the bass player, they all broke in, and, and then what?”
“They were looking for those pictures I took, man, I know it. My stash was all over the floor, they cleaned out the fridge, put everything in the Ostracizer and made smoothies and didn’t even leave any for anybody else.”
“‘Anybody else,’ that’s you, Denis. Why should they leave you any?”
Denis thought about this, and Doc watched him start to calm down. “Come on in the house and we’ll relight that thing in your mouth there.”
“Because,” Denis answered Doc’s question a bit later, “they are supposed to be freaks, a freak surfadelic band, that’s their public image, and freaks don’t rip off other freaks, and most of all if they take your food, freaks share it. Didn’t you see that movie? There’s this actual ‘Code of the Freaks’—”
“I think,” Doc said, “that was like 1932, some traveling circus story, different kind of freaks. . . .”
“Whatever—those Boards didt’n behave no better than fuckin straights do.”
“You sure this was the Boards, Denis, I mean, were there any, like, witnesses?”
“Witnesses!” Denis laughed tragically. “If there were, they’d be runnin around all askin for autographs and shit.”
“Look, I’ve got the negatives and the proof sheet, and Bigfoot’s got that print with Coy in it, so whoever it was if they didn’t find anything at your place, chances are they won’t be back.”
“All my Chinese food,” Denis shaking his head. Once a month he ordered thirty meals from South Bay Cantonese out on Sepulveda and kept them in the freezer to thaw out one by one for meals over the next month.
“Why would they—”
“Even the General Tso’s Broccoli left over from last night. I was savin that, man. . . .”
NEXT MORNING DOC threaded in to work among the usual B12 habitués, noted an interesting bruise on Petunia’s leg, and hauled on upstairs to start checking the list of cop auxiliaries he’d got from Fritz, a chore he was not looking forward to. He had run into these would-be heavies now and then, displaying an attitude typical of the overarmed, sporting paramilitary berets and camo fatigues and other Vietnam gear from surplus stores on Hawthorne Boulevard, and decorated with badges and ribbons, some even authentic though not strictly speaking earned. He could not recall one of them who’d ever looked at him kindly or even neutrally. These were neighborhood scolds licensed to carry weapons, and heaven help any male civilian with hair that ran much past Marine regulation length.
All these people had day jobs, of course. Doc called up pretending to be different kinds of salesman, or the DMV in Sacramento with a harmless question, or sometimes just an old buddy who’d drifted out of touch, and found the wives—all these guys were family men—in the mood to talk. And talk. A side effect of marriage, as Fritz had imparted to Doc when he was but newly out of the chute. “These broads are all itchin to talk, because nobody in their home life wants to hear anything they have to say. Sit still for two seconds and they’ll be yakkin your ear off.”
“They don’t have sisters or other wives to talk to?” Doc wondered.
“Sure, but generally that’s nothin we can use.”
Doc waited till evening after everybody had had supper, settling, himself, for a quick Taco Bell burrito, a day’s worth of nutrition and still a bargain at sixty-nine cents. He had on another shorthair wig, a side-parted chestnut number picked up at a sale on Hollywood Boulevard, and a thrift-store suit that looked like a Three Stooges reject. When the traffic had tapered off some, he headed down to an address in the Rossmoor-Cypress area, just over the county line.
He’d just gotten on the freeway when he heard the radio DJ saying, “Going out from Bambi, to all the Spotted Dickheads in KQAS Kick-Ass Radio Land—here’s the lads with their latest single—‘Long Trip Out.’”
And after a Farfisa intro from Smedley full of transatlantic Floyd Cramer licks, here came Asymmetric Bob singing,
He’s been out there sold-ierin for a
Fascist state, so don’t ex-
Pect too much fun on the
Very first date, he’ll be
Missin the life, he’ll be
Missin the food, he’ll be
Goin around in this pe-culi-ar mood, wond’rin
How did he get back here in the World
With the freaked-out hippies and the
Dopesmokin girls, and it’s a
Long trip out, from t
he Ia Drang Valley,
[Smedley singing along in harmony,
Somerset with a bottleneck guitar fill]
It’s a sad bad ride, when you’re far away
From the good ol’ boys you left behind in-country,
Where the only thing you want is
Just another day . . .
Well it may sound to you like a custom exhaust,
But that ain’t what he’s hearin and he’s
Flashin back, lost in the
Middle of a night full of fire and fear, and he
Don’t even know who
He’s hangin with here, and that
Joint you been smokin that you thought would help
It’s just makin things worse, you’re even
Foolin yourself, ’cause it’s a
Long trip out, from the Mekong Delta . . .
It’s a last lost chance, when you need a friend,
And you’re flyin on out of
Cam Ranh Bay at midnight,
And you won’t know how, to
Get back home again.
Plastic trikes in the yards, people out watering the flowers and working on their cars, kids in the driveways shooting hoops, the high-frequency squeal of a TV sweep circuit through a screen door as Doc came up the path of the address he was looking for, to be followed by the more worldly sound, as he reached the front steps, of The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour. According to Fritz, the sweep frequency was 15,750 cycles per second, and the instant Doc turned thirty, which would be any minute now, he would no longer be able to hear it. So this routine of American house approach had begun to hold for him a particular sadness.
Arthur Tweedle was a civilian machinist who worked a regular day shift at the naval weapons station. On weekends, and sometimes weeknights, too, he put on a sort of fatigue uniform from D’Jack Frost, the Manson family’s favorite surplus store in Santa Monica, and went off to meetings of Vigilant California, along with his neighbor Prescott, another countersubversive hobbyist also on the list Fritz had run for Doc. Art wore pale horn-rims beneath a high untroubled forehead, and there was little to object to in the face he put on for company, except maybe for a slightly paralyzed look, as if it was a gear he didn’t quite know how to shift out of.
Doc was posing as a rep for Hairy Rope Home Security of Tarzana, which did not, he hoped, exist. Aunt Reet had told him once long ago about the California homeowner’s belief that if you run a hairy rope all around your property line, no snakes will ever cross it. “Our system works on a similar principle,” Doc now explained to the Tweedles, Art and Cindi, “we set up a network of electric eyes hooked to speakers all along your property line. Anybody breaking the beam will trigger a pattern of subsonic pulses—some will produce vomiting, some diarrhea, any of it’s enough to send any intruder back where he came from with a hefty dry-cleaning bill to deal with. Of course you and your family can disable the system remotely whenever you need to get on or off your property or mow the lawn or whatever.”
“Sounds kind of complicated,” said Art, “and besides, we’ve already got a system right here with a proven track record, and you’re looking at him.”
“But say you had to go out of town—”
“Cindi,” squeezing his wife’s ass as she came back in with longneck beer bottles on a tray, “is a better shot than me, and we’ll be breaking the kids in on the .22s before you know it.”
“Time passes by so quickly,” Cindi said.
“Sounds like you’re covered pretty good, but no harm I hope in dropping by like this, you’re on a list of local homeowners with a history of concern for property defense . . . your service with the police reserves, for example. . . .”
“We’re not technically L.A. residents, but I’m on what they call standby, car’s all dialed and ready to roll, I can get anyplace they need me in under an hour,” said Art.
“Every time we talk with the LAPD, there’s somebody’s sure to mention you guys and say how they wish there were more of you. Only so many patrol cars and men in uniform, and it’s a dark ugly situation out there. They need all the help we can give them.”
Which didn’t turn the tap on full force right away, but little by little with the Tweedles encouraging each other, as The Beverly Hillbillies rolled along toward Green Acres and the longnecks kept arriving, Art began to bring out his collection of home defense equipment, which ran from dainty little ladies’ pearl-handled .22s through .357 Magnums to Vietnam-surplus grenade launchers. “And that’s just single-shot,” said Art. “The full-auto inventory’s back in the shop.” He led Doc through the back door out into the prime-time evening and across the deep lot through sounds from neighbors through windowscreens, TVs, and after-supper clearing up and kids bickering, to an outbuilding in the shape of a midget barn holding a variety of assault rifles and light machine guns, and Art’s pride and joy, the terminally illegal Gleichschaltung Model 33 Automatic Bazooka, which required a two-person team, one to aim the 75-mm launch tube itself and the other to drive the modified electric golf cart carrying the magazine, which held up to a hundred rounds.
“Won’t be any darkies sneaking onto this watermelon patch anytime soon,” declared Art.
“Quite a contraption,” Doc said. “Where would a guy get hold of something like this?”
“Oh, dealers,” Art demurely. “Swap meets, sensitivity-group sessions.”
“How about on the job? Would the Department allow you to pack one?”
“Maybe we’ll find out one day soon. Sure would’ve made a difference in Watts.”
“Hasn’t been much of that type of action lately. How are they keeping you fellas busy?”
“Weekend maneuvers, urban counterguerrilla training. Sometimes they’ll want an individual tended to but can’t commit the manpower. Not very exciting—stakeouts, maybe a rock through a window with a warning note. But it’s cash on the spot, enough to keep the Pizza Man happy anyhow.”
As they were leaving Art’s workshop, Doc happened to spot a Nordic-themed ski mask hanging on a door hook. It looked strangely like the ones in the footage Farley Branch had taken of the assault on Chick Planet Massage.
Doc’s nose started itching furiously. “Hey, I got one like that for Christmas,” just dropping a random nightcrawler off the end of the pier, “well, except mine had these stuffed antlers on top, and sort of a big, red, you know, like Rudolph-type thing on the nose, battery operated, so forth . . .”
“This one here’s standard issue,” Art couldn’t help swaggering a little, “part of the uniform, for when we’re out on maneuvers.”
“Was that you guys a couple weeks back, out at that wingding where Mickey Wolfmann disappeared?”
“Sure was, we ended up chasing a gang of bikers all over Channel View Estates, meanest looking bunch you ever saw, but push come to shove, no more trouble than Negroes, really.”
“Yeah I keep seeing commercials for the place, with that detective fellow, what’s his name . . .”
“Bjornsen—sure, old Bigfoot.”
“Think I even coordinated with him once or twice, downtown, on some trespass cases.”
“One of America’s true badasses,” said Art Tweedle.
“No kidding? Struck me as more of a college professor than a field cop.”
“Exactly. That’s his cover, like Clark Kent, mild mannered. But you ought to see him out on the job. Whew! Move over, Pete Malloy. Back off, Steve McGarrett.”
“That dangerous, huh? Guess next time we’re in touch, I’ll have to watch my step.”
WHICH WOULD BE almost immediately. After somehow driving under the influence back to the beach by way of surface streets, Doc went in the kitchen and was reaching for the coffee can when the phone kicked into strident alarm.
“Idiots Unlimited, First to Go, Last to Know
, and how in our pathetically fucked-up way can we improve your life tonight?”
“I’m in an evil mood myself,” Bigfoot informed him, “so I hope you’re not expecting warmth, empathy, nothing like that?”
Clark Kent’s ass. Having spent the trip home trying to stay in the correct lane and not fall asleep at the wheel, Doc hadn’t got around yet to considering what, according to Art Tweedle, was now a far more sinister Bigfoot Bjornsen than he’d imagined. He also understood vaguely that right now might not be the best time to bring any of this up. Maintain, he advised himself, maintain. . . .
“Howdy, Bigfoot.”
“I apologize if I’ve interrupted some exceptionally demanding hippie task, like trying to remember where the glue is on the Zig-Zag paper, but it seems we have yet another problem, not unconnected with this fatality of yours for introducing disaster into every life you touch, however glancingly.”
“Uh-oh.” Doc lit a Kool and started looking around for his stash.
“I am all too aware of the memory lapses you people must constantly struggle with, but would you happen to recall one Rudy Blatnoyd, D.D.S.?”
“One, sure—why, are there more?”
“Keen-witted as ever. Would you rather talk this over in person? We can easily dispatch a chauffeur.”
“Sorry . . . you say Dr. Blatnoyd. . . .”
“Has perpetrated his last root canal, I’m afraid. We found him next to a trampoline in Bel Air scarcely an hour ago with a fatal neck injury, perhaps even suffered while bouncing in the pitch darkness on that classic resource of backyard fun, who knows? But certain details do appear inconsistent. He was wearing a suit, necktie, and loafers, seldom considered appropriate for trampoline activities. We began to entertain the possibility of foul play, though so far we have no witnesses, no motives, no suspects. Apart from you, of course.”
“Not me.”
“Odd, because only the other night Dr. Blatnoyd was observed riding in a vehicle full of dope-crazed hippie freaks including yourself, which got stopped by officers in Beverly Hills on suspicion of being a POFOCAC or Potential Focus of Cult Activity.”
Inherent Vice Page 21