Suddenly Riggs’s head assumed a new angle, and he appeared to be staring through the zome wall at some point in the distant sky. After a few seconds came the sound of unmuffled jet-fighter engines, approaching from that direction. Riggs raised the muzzle of his piece a few inches and it looked for a second like he was about to start shooting. The roar overhead grew to an almost intolerable level and then faded.
“They send them over from Nellis every half hour,” Riggs said. “At first I thought it was just some routine flight path, but turns out it’s all deliberate, authorized buzzing. All day, all night. Someday they’ll get Mickey to approve a rocket strike, and Arrepentimiento will be history—except it won’t even be that, because they’ll destroy all the records, too.”
“Why would Mickey bomb this place? It’s his dream.”
“Was. You saw what it looked like out there. He’s pulled the money out, stiffed all his contractors, everybody’s walked but me.”
“When did this happen?”
“Around the time he disappeared. Suddenly no more acid-head philanthropist. They did something to him.”
“Who?”
“Whoever. And now he’s back with Sloane, yes the happy couple together again, honeymoon suite at Caesar’s, big heart-shaped water bed, got his hand on her ass in public all the time, like, ‘This is mine folks, don’t even think about it,’ and Sloane going along with the whole bought-and-sold routine, not even eye contact with other men, especially not ones she’s been, what’s the word, seeing?”
“I thought Mickey was cool with all that,” Doc almost said, but was pretty sure he didn’t.
“He’s a born-again family man anymore, whatever they did to his brain, they also reprogrammed his dick, and now of course she won’t give me the time of day. I’m just sitting out here with a rifle across my knees, like the ghost of a crazy prospector at some old silver mine, waiting for the righteous husband to pick his moment. Dead already but don’t know it. You heard he made a deal with the Justice Department.”
“Some rumors, maybe?”
“Listen to what he did. Is this an example to the young, or what? Mickey buys this tiny parcel on the Strip, too small to develop even as a parking lot, but right next to a major casino, and announces plans for a ‘mini-casino,’ like those little convenience stores you see next to gas stations? fast in and out, one slot machine, one roulette wheel, one blackjack table. The Italian Business Men next door think of all the downscale traffic this will bring in right under the noses of their refined clientele, and they go crazy, threatening, screaming, flying their mothers in first class to stand and glare at Mickey in silent reproach. Sometimes not so silent. Finally the casino gives in, Mickey gets his asking price, some insane multiple of what he paid, which will now go to finance the renovation and expansion of the Kismet Casino and Lounge, where he’s become an active partner.”
“So he’s another Vegas heavy now, watch yer ass Howard Hughes and so forth, well, thanks for the update, Riggs.”
Another sortie of fighters came over.
When they could hear again, Tito spoke for the first time. “Can we give you a ride someplace?”
“The thing about zomes is,” Riggs with a desperate grin, “is they can act as doorways to other dimensions. The F-105s, the coyotes, the scorpions and snakes, the desert heat, none of that bothers me. I can leave whenever I want.” He motioned with his head. “All I have to do is step through that door over there, and I’m safe.”
“Can I look?” said Doc.
“Better not. It’s not for everybody, and if it’s not for you, it can be dangerous.”
They left him watching Let’s Make a Deal on a little portable black-and-white TV set, whose picture each time the fighters came over got scrambled into sharp fragments it seemed would never reassemble, but in the silences between sorties they returned, as if through some form of mercy peculiar to zomes.
TITO AND DOC drove till they saw a motel with a sign reading, WELCOME TOOBFREEX! BEST CABLE IN TOWN! and they decided to check in. Time-zone issues too complicated for either of them to understand had leveraged the amount of programming available here, network and independent, to some staggering scale, and creative-minded cable managers were not slow to exploit the strange hiccup in space-time. . . . Everybody was here to watch something. Soap enthusiasts, old-movie buffs, nostalgia lovers had driven here hundreds, even thousands, of miles to bathe in these cathode rays, as water connoisseurs in Grandmother’s day had once visited certain spas. Hour after hour, they wallowed and gazed, as the sun wheeled in the hazy sky and splashing echoed off the tiles of the indoor pool and housekeeping carts went squeaking to and fro.
The remote-control units were bolted to the ends of the beds, and cycling through all the choices seemed to take longer than whatever you wanted to see was likely to stay on, but somehow about the time Doc’s thumb muscles went into spasm, he happened onto a John Garfield Marathon that had been in progress for, he gathered, weeks now. And there about to begin was another John Garfield movie that James Wong Howe had also been DP on, He Ran All the Way (1951), not one of Doc’s favorites, to tell the truth—it was John Garfield’s last picture before the antisubversives finally did him in, and it had the smell of blacklist all over it—Dalton Trumbo wrote the script, but there was another name on the credits. John Garfield played a criminal on the run who picks up Shelley Winters at a public pool and proceeds to make life disagreeable for her family, obliging them at gunpoint, for example, to eat a gross-looking prop turkey (“Ya gonna eat dis toikey!”), and for his miserably misspent life he ends up, literally, dead in the gutter, though of course beautifully lit. Doc had been hoping to drift to sleep in the middle of it, but the last scene found him up and staring, sweat freezing in the air-conditioning. It was somehow like seeing John Garfield die for real, with the whole respectable middle class standing there in the street smugly watching him do it.
Tito snored away on the other bed. Out there, all around them to the last fringes of occupancy, were Toobfreex at play in the video universe, the tropic isle, the Long Branch Saloon, the Starship Enterprise, Hawaiian crime fantasies, cute kids in make-believe living rooms with invisible audiences to laugh at everything they did, baseball highlights, Vietnam footage, helicopter gunships and firefights, and midnight jokes, and talking celebrities, and a slave girl in a bottle, and Arnold the pig, and here was Doc, on the natch, caught in a low-level bummer he couldn’t find a way out of, about how the Psychedelic Sixties, this little parenthesis of light, might close after all, and all be lost, taken back into darkness . . . how a certain hand might reach terribly out of darkness and reclaim the time, easy as taking a joint from a doper and stubbing it out for good.
Doc didn’t fall asleep till close to dawn and didn’t really wake up till they were going over the Cajon Pass, and it felt like he’d just been dreaming about climbing a more-than-geographical ridgeline, up out of some worked-out and picked-over territory, and descending into new terrain along some great definitive slope it would be more trouble than he might be up to to turn and climb back over again.
FIFTEEN
AROUND NIGHTFALL TITO LET DOC OFF ON DUNECREST, AND IT was like landing on some other planet. He walked into the Pipeline to find a couple hundred people he didn’t know but who were acting like longtime regulars. Worse, nobody he did know was there at all. No Ensenada Slim or Flaco the Bad, no St. Flip or Downstairs Eddie. Doc looked into Wavos and Epic Lunch, and the Screaming Ultraviolet Brain, and Man of La Muncha, where the menudo got your nose running just looking at it, and each time it was the same story. Nobody he recognized. He thought briefly about going to his apartment but started worrying that he wouldn’t recognize it either or, worse, it wouldn’t know him—wouldn’t be there, key wouldn’t fit or something. Then it occurred to him that maybe Tito had actually dropped him in some other beach town, Manhattan or Hermosa or Redondo, and that the
bars, eateries, and so forth he’d been walking into were ones that happened to be similarly located in this other town—same view of the ocean or corner of the street, for example—so he grasped his head carefully in both hands and, mentally advising himself to focus in and pay attention, waited for the next nonthreatening pedestrian to come by.
“Excuse me, sir, I seem to be a little disoriented? could you please tell me if this is by any chance Gordita Beach?” as sanely as he could manage, and instead of running off in panic after the nearest law enforcement, this party said, “Wow, Doc, it’s me, you okay? you look like you’re freaking out,” and after a while Doc dug how this was Denis, or somebody impersonating Denis, which, in the circumstances, he’d settle for.
“Where is everybody, man?”
“Some college break or something. A lot of junior hell-raisers in town. I’m sticking close to the tube till it’s over.”
Denis had some dry-ice-enhanced Mexican product, and they went down on the beach to smoke it. They watched the flashing wing lights of a single-engine plane, looking fragile and somehow already lost, taking off into the darkening glow over the water.
“How was Vegas, man?”
“Won a bucketful of nickels off a slot machine.”
“Far out. Listen. Guess who’s back.”
The way Denis was looking at him, it couldn’t be anybody else. Doc torched up a Kool but lit the wrong end and didn’t notice for a while. “What’s she up to?”
“Could you put that thing out, that’s some evil-smelling shit.”
“Or to rephrase it—who’s she with?”
“Nobody, far as I know. She’s staying at Flip’s place over that surf shop in El Porto? The Saint split for Maui.”
“How’s her spirits?”
“Why ask me?”
“I mean, is she paranoid. Does the heat know she’s back? Last I heard, there’s all these high-priority APBs out on her, what happened to that?”
“She don’t seem too worried.”
“Well, that’s weird.” Had she made some kind of a deal too?
“We could walk up there if you want,” said Denis.
For any number of reasons, Doc thought not. Denis went drifting off to watch Lawrence Welk. “What?” Doc couldn’t help commenting.
“Something about Norma Zimmer,” Denis called over his shoulder, “I’m still figuring out what, exactly.”
The key worked, the place hadn’t been robbed or rifled, the plants were still alive. Doc watered everything, put coffee on to percolate, and called Fritz.
“Your girlfriend’s back,” Fritz announced, and fell silent.
After a while, growing irritated, Doc said, “Yeah and her front ain’t too bad either. So what?”
“According to the ARPAnet, Shasta Fay Hepworth showed up day before yesterday at LAX. Plus which, the FBI, who can somehow monitor me now when I’m jacked in, keeps coming around asking what my interest in her is. You mind telling me what the hell’s going on?”
Doc recapped the trip to Vegas, or what he remembered, interrupting himself ten minutes in to point out, “Of course if they can tap your computer lines, the phone here ought to be duck soup for them.”
“Oops,” agreed Fritz. “But continue.”
“Yeah well Mickey seems to be in one piece, the feds have got him on ice. Glen Charlock is still dead, but hey, who cares about the criminal element, right?”
He complained for a minute and a half more till Fritz said, “Well, it’s your problem now. This ARPAnet trip is eating up my time, which is better spent chasing after all them hardened skips and deadbeats, so I think I’m gonna take a break. If there’s anything else, maybe you better ask now, ’cause it’s about to be back to the world of flesh and blood for old F.D.”
“Let’s see,” Doc said, “there’s Puck Beaverton. . . .”
“Recall doing a little business with a party of that name way back when. What about him?”
“I don’t know,” Doc said. “Something.”
“Some weird acid vibe.”
“You got it.”
“Some strange inexpressible imbalance in the laws of karma.”
“Knew you’d understand.”
“Doc . . .”
“Don’t say it. That kid Sparky still working for you?”
“Come on around, I’ll introduce you. Also got some of this new shit, they call it ‘Thai stick’? Kind of gummy but once you get it lit . . .”
No sooner had Doc hung up than the phone rang again, and it was Bigfoot, who started right in. “So! The elusive Miss Hepworth it seems has rejoined your little community of drug-ravaged misfits.”
“Wow, no shit? News to me.”
“Oh, that’s right—you’ve been temporarily off the planet again. Phone calls, in-person visits, nothing has seemed to work. You know how anxious we get.”
“Little R&R. Wish I had your work ethic.”
“No you don’t. Any developments on the Coy Harlingen matter?”
“Chasin down one bum lead after another, ’s all.”
“Any of them include young . . . what was his name again, Beaverton, I believe?”
Fuck off, Bigfoot. “Traced Puck as far as West Hollywood, but nobody’s seen him since Mickey did his board fade.”
“As for Dr. Blatnoyd and his unfortunate sports injury, we did mention your interesting puncture-wound theory to Dr. Noguchi’s people—inquired about testing for copper-gold dental alloys and so on, and one of them smiled strangely and said, ‘Mind if we call in the lab on this one?’ ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘Wonderful. Oh, Dwayne!’ and in bounded this vicious Labrador retriever with, I must say, such an unhelpful attitude that we all became rather discouraged.”
“Gee and they’re supposed to be such great kids’ dogs—”
“We have one in this house, actually.”
“Only thought it’d be a helpful tip to a fellow professional—just tryin save you some trouble down the line, ’s all. . . .”
“How’s that?”
“When your own hearing comes up.”
“My . . . Sportello, are you suggesting—”
Doc allowed himself one evil grin a week, and tonight was the night. “All’s I’m saying is, is if it happened to Thomas Noguchi, the most brilliant medical examiner in the USA, well, who among you protect-and-servers is safe? One county supervisor with a bug up his ass is all it takes.”
Total silence.
“Bigfoot?”
“I had been enjoying a quiet family evening with Mrs. Bjornsen and the children, and the dog, watching Lawrence Welk, and now see what you’ve done.”
Doc heard an extension being picked up. A woman’s voice with a steep front edge to it and very short decay time said, “Is everything all right, Kitkat?”
“What’s this,” Doc said.
“This is Mrs. Chastity Bjornsen, and if that is one more sociopathic ‘special employee’ of my husband, I’ll thank you to stop harassing him on his day off, as he has quite enough to do all week trying to keep dopers and lowlifes like yourself off the streets.”
“There there, my lit-tle boysenberry. Sportello’s only been indulging in his idea of humor.”
“Doc Sportello? The Doc Sportello? So! at last! Mr. Moral Turpitude himself! Have you any idea of the therapist bills around here for which you are directly responsible?”
“Now, Snookums, the Department picks up most of that—”
“After a deductible that would choke a horse, and meanwhile, Christian, I quite fail to understand your spineless response to this wretched hippie freak with his unending provocations—”
Doc discovered he was out of cigarettes. He put the receiver on the kitchen table and went looking for his carton of Kools, which after a lengthy search turn
ed up in the icebox, next to the remains of a pizza he’d forgotten about, not all of whose ingredients, though colorful, he could identify any longer. Feeling despite this a little hungry, he decided to make a peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich, located a cold can of Burgie, and started into the other room to flip on the television when he noticed strange noises coming from the phone, whose receiver, actually, seemed to be off the hook. . . .
“Oh.” He went to put the instrument to his ear, though the Bjornsens, now in full screaming confrontation, had actually been audible across the kitchen, reviewing some recent personal history, with footnotes, unfamiliar to Doc but still embarrassing, and after a minute or two of calculating how likely were his chances of getting in even another word, he replaced the receiver in its cradle as gently as if he were about to sing it a lullaby and went in to watch the last couple minutes of Adam-12.
The Saturday horror movie tonight was Val Lewton’s I Walked with a Zombie (1943), hosted by subcultural superstar Larry Vincent, aka “Seymour,” who liked to address his population of faithful viewers as “fringees” and also hosted the annual Halloween show at the Wiltern Theatre, which Doc tried never to miss. He had seen this zombie picture a couple of hundred times and still got confused by the ending, so he spent the news hour rolling joints to help him through, especially with the calypso singing, but somehow despite his best efforts fell asleep in the middle, as so often before.
NEXT MORNING—OCEAN SMELL, fresh coffee, a cool edge—Doc was in Wavos, going through the Sunday Times to see if there was anything new about the Wolfmann case, which there wasn’t—though of course with twenty or thirty different sections you never knew what might be hiding among the real-estate ads—and was about to dig in to a specialty of the house known as Shoot the Pier, basically avocados, sprouts, jalapeños, pickled artichoke hearts, Monterey jack cheese, and Green Goddess dressing on a sourdough loaf that had first been sliced lengthwise, spread with garlic butter, and toasted, seventy-nine cents and a bargain at half the price, when who should stroll in, who else, but Shasta Fay. She was wearing, near as Doc could tell, unless she owned a drawerful of them now, the same old Country Joe & the Fish T-shirt as in the olden days, same sandals and bikini bottom. Strangely, his appetite did not produce a hall pass and ask to be excused, but on the other hand, what was this? was he having an acid flashback, was he about to run into James “Moondoggie” Darren in The Time Tunnel or something? Last Doc knew, his ex–old lady here had been at least a person of interest to countless levels of law enforcement, yet here she was now, same getup, same carefree attitude, as if she still hadn’t even met Mickey Wolfmann, as if some stereo needle had been lifted and set back down on some other sentimental oldie on the compilation LP of history.
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