by Mel Gilden
'What's that?' I said.
'It's a rabbit, doc,' Bill said.
'What's it doing here?' The question took on new meaning when another rabbit joined it, this one having brown spots. The two rabbits took slow, ungainly hops across the kitchen toward us. One of them stopped and left a deposit on the kitchen floor. What it left behind looked like boxed breakfast food, but it smelled the way the house now smelled.
In the living room, rabbits in assorted colours were everywhere. Great shoals of them covered the floor. A line of them was sitting on the back of the couch, and another was on the mantle of the fireplace. A couple were even in the fireplace. Every one was twitching its nose. A few of them were gnawing on a sandwich that had been on the floor since before I'd returned from T'toom. Another one was working on some flowers that Hanger and Flopsie (or was it Mopsie?) had been nurturing on the window sill.
The surfers were sitting on the couch, watching Captain Hook with various levels of interest. As the Captain sang the little song with enthusiasm, he threw a scarf over his palm, and a moment later, a long, slender shape grew under it. He pulled the scarf away. The big surprise was that under the scarf was not a rabbit but a flower on a long stem. With a theatrical flourish, he handed the flower to either Flopsie or Mopsie. Whoever it was giggled and took it.
As Captain Hook started another trick, Whipper Will said, 'What's happening, dude?'
'Shouldn't that be "what's up, doc?"' Bill said, and yocked as if that were funny.
A smile passed over Whipper Will's face like the shadow of clouds over water.
I said, 'Los Angeles must have giant hats wash up on the beach all the time. This one brings out one squad car with a couple of clowns who'd make out parking tickets in crayon, one half-bright scientist with a trunk full of stuff out of a horror movie that told him nothing a guy with two eyes and a brain didn't already know, and a gang of tough bots from the pot hole brigade.'
Captain Hook lowered the sheet of newspaper that he'd begun to tear, and listened to me. But his hands kept moving as if they were all grown up and had lives of their own. While we talked, he walked dreamily around the room and the hands kept dipping into things—his pockets, the flower pot on the window sill, paper bags, coffee cups, shoes—and every time one of them came up, it was full of rabbit. It was some trick, really, but it got old fast.
Will took a rabbit away from Captain Hook and found a place for it on top of the television. He said, 'The big hat is just too weird for words—straight out of the Twilight Zone, dig? Nobody wants to look like a lop if this is just a publicity stunt or something—they could get really dogged. So the big kahunas downtown are just hanging loose and cruising. They'd probably get more cranked about it if hats did wash up on the beach every day.'
Captain Hook snapped his fingers and said brightly, 'You know what I really need? I really need a tuxedo. And some doves and rope, and a set of linking rings, and a deck of cards, and a little carrot guillotine.' He held up his hands to show how big—not very. 'I have to make a list.' He walked toward the kitchen.
Bingo said. 'Now I know he's really drilled. Captain Hook never made a list of anything in his life.' The other surfers agreed.
'Come on,' I said, and pulled Whipper Will out to the kitchen. Bill followed us and hopped up onto a chair next to where Captain Hook was sitting at the table licking the tip of a pencil. He'd put out a bunch of carrots, and the three rabbits on the table were making loud crunching sounds as they consumed them. Bill began to pet the rabbits, giving them each a turn.
Out the window, I could see the workbots had set up a barrier of yellow sawhorses to keep back the crowd. The machinery hadn't had any noticeable effect on the hat, but progress had been made. The tweedy guy had taken off his coat.
I slid into a chair on the side of the Captain and said, 'How you feeling, dude?'
He got very haughty all of a sudden and said, 'I ain't no dude. I am the Great Hookini.'
Will and I glanced at each other. Will shrugged and did not look hopeful. I said, 'How do you feel, Hookini?'
'With my hands, of course.'
The bottom dropped out of any optimism I might have been feeling. If I was going to get old jokes instead of straight answers, things were even worse than Bingo suspected. Even worse than I suspected, and what I suspected was plenty bad enough.
Then Captain Hook—the Great Hookini—laughed and clapped his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Pretty good, huh?'
Will and I smiled at him like idiots. Bill actually laughed.
Going by what had happened to Captain Hook, that force wall was not just a barrier, it was a sophisticated weapon. It not only put your enemies on ice, it also demoralized them by making them look silly. Darn clever. People that clever didn't just wash up here in Malibu by accident. I didn't, and I'm not half that clever.
'I feel great,' said the captain, 'Really fine.' Suddenly he didn't sound sure. He looked at his half-finished list.
'You'd rather do magic than surf?' I said.
'Sure. Who wouldn't?'
'Cowabunga,' Whipper Will commented. He looked at me accusingly and said, 'What do you know about all this?'
'Just what's out there on the sand.'
'Fer sher. No top hats in Bay City.'
Will was in a tough spot. One of his people was hurting bad, and from his point of view, another one of his people wasn't helping very much. I said, 'Look, Will. Think what you want to about my coming from Bay City, but believe this: If I could help the Captain, I would.'
Will looked at the table and made patterns with his finger. 'I know. Sorry.'
I went on, 'But just because I don't know, doesn't mean I can't find out, I'm a detective, remember.'
Will looked me square in the face and said, 'I was wondering when we'd get around to that.' He smiled as if what he said was funny.
'I cracked the Heavenly Daise case. Got that motorcycle gang off the beach too.'
'Hang easy, dude. Don't get dissed. I was just waiting for you to offer.'
'Consider it done.'
'Then consider yourself hired.'
We shook hands, a thing that still didn't make any sense to me, but seemed to inspire a lot of confidence in Earth-people.
'I like being a magician,' said Captain Hook. 'I really do.'
Whipper Will nodded and said. 'While you're out detecting, I'll try a little of the home remedy—genuinely gnarly amounts of yoyogurt.' He leaned back, opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bowl full of creamy light brown stuff. 'Oat bran flavour.' He set the oat bran flavour yoyogurt and a spoon down next to Captain Hook's list. 'Try some of this.' Will said.
'What is it?' said Captain Hook.
'It's yoyogurt. It'll make you feel bitchen.'
'Bitchen? I already feel good.'
'Bitchen is better.'
What Whipper Will was telling the captain might even have been true. Yoyogurt was Will's own special yogurt made only in Malibu by hard-working bacteria like none other anywhere. The couple of times I'd tried it, the world got tied up in pretty rainbows that made everything fine. I liked the feeling for a while, but soon my brain got homesick for some thoughts.
As Captain Hook took his first spoon of yoyogurt, I gestured to Bill and he toddled after me into the living room. 'Well?' Bingo said.
'I'm on the case,' I said.
'Case?' Thumper said.
'You know. Trouble is his business.' Bill yocked then, which kind of undercut the dignified effect I was trying to achieve.
Chapter 5
Phantom Phone Calls At
The Malibu Bar And No-Grill
TROUBLE is his business,' Mustard mumbled from his place on the floor. 'Business is his trouble. He's troubled by all this magic business.'
'From the mouths of surfers,' I said, and walked out the door with Bill in my wake.
Pacific Coast Highway
had come back to life with the appearance of the sun. People in beach clothes walked up and down, some of them follo
wed at a respectful distance by robots carrying surfboards. Across the busy street, a line of shops sold anything a person at loose ends might need. Fried chicken, T-shirts, sun screen, all the necessities. Everything but a clue. Any idea I had about where to start looking for a cure for what ailed Captain Hook was so vaporous it passed like the body odour of a ghost of an idea and didn't leave even the ghost of a calling card.
Bill and I walked for a while, taking the air, enjoying both the hustle and the bustle. The smell of hot grease coiled around my nose and I was suddenly hungry. We didn't have hot grease on T'toom, and I didn't have any natural resistance to this kind of thing, I stopped at a counter that had 'Arturo's World of Burgers' spray-painted on the wall over it and had one with everything. Bill wanted one too, but I didn't see any point in spending the money. I turned away from 'Arturo's World of Burgers' and almost ran into a ratty looking guy with mud-coloured hair down in his eyes. 'Spare change?' he said.
'No such thing,' I said, and was going to give him a quarter and keep moving when an idea hit me with almost physical force. 'Let's talk,' I said and grabbed his thin arm with the hand that wasn't holding the loaded burger.
'No kinky sex,' the guy said.
'Suits me,' I said, which seemed to confuse him. I shoved the burger into his hands, and he looked at it with disbelief.
'No kinky sex. No drugs.'
'Will you stop that and sit down?' I sat down on the brick wall dividing the walkway from the sand. Bill sat on one side of me, and this ratty guy sat on the other.
I don't know if there was a clean spot on him anywhere. He'd been walking on his cuffs for a long time, which was better than nothing, I guess, because his great knobby feet weren't wearing any shoes.
He inhaled the burger and licked his fingers. I guessed he was ready to listen now and said, 'You sleep on the beach?'
'I told you. No kink—'
'You wouldn't believe how uninterested I am in kinky sex. You sleep on the beach?'
'Sometimes,' the guy said, looking at me from the tip of his eye. He was mighty cagey. Yes, sir.
'You know about the big top hat?'
'I seen it,' he said hurriedly, 'but I didn't have nothing to do with it.'
'Did you see it get washed up?'
He thought for a moment, and then said, 'It didn't get washed up. It landed.'
'Ah,' I said. Bill said it too.
'You see anybody get out of it?'
A little more confident now, the guy said, 'How about a drink? All this talking's making me kinda dry.'
'Drink?'
'I know a little place.'
'Brewski,' Bill said.
'Of course. I'll bet you know a place. OK,' I said.
He loped off, kind of hitching himself forward with each step. Bill and I caught up with him, and the three of us walked along the walkway gathering stares, throwing the little ones back.
There were a lot more burger joints on the strand, but 1 didn't stop at any of them. Pizza also no longer interested me. I also didn't stop to buy a T-shirt, a pair of sun glasses or something being sold by a guy in a grey business suit who was attracting a lot of attention from a rowdy element, He watched coolly while two enormous women wearing very little but their personalities—a mistake, trust me—gyrated slowly to rhythmic music that blared from a pair of small speakers. Was he selling music? Grey suits? Kinky sex? I never did find out, but business was brisk.
When the music had faded in the background and 1 could hear myself think again, I said, 'What's your name?'
The guy looked at me fearfully. 'What's it to you?' he said, and glanced at a hot blonde who was posing for an old guy who made his living drawing portraits in chalk. The blonde's overmuscled escort watched, seeming as proud as if he were doing the work himself.
I said, 'Just taking an interest in the guy who ate my burger and who soon will be drinking my brewski.'
'Brewski?'
'Forget it. What's your name?'
He still thought about the question, and I could see thinking wasn't easy for him. He said, 'My friends call me Dweeb.'
'You have friends?' Bill said.
'Mouthy robot, ain't it?' Dweeb said.
'We're sending him to obedience school. Where's this bar? I have a lot of bums to interview today.'
'You shouldn't oughta call me a bum. It hurts my self esteem. Besides, you're not even a real guy.'
'You know about toxic waste?'
'Sure. The bay's full of it.'
'I had problems with it myself.'
'Gee, I'm sorry.' He really looked sorry.
'That's OK. Where's that bar?'
Dweeb gave me a two-finger salute and loped faster. He looked back once to make sure Bill and I were coming. We were.
I guess they knew him at the Malibu Bar and No-Grill, because when the bartender saw him, he ordered Dweeb to get out in a voice used to giving orders.
For a moment, Dweeb stood just inside the greasy black curtain that protected the bar from the outside world, and let his eyes adjust. He whined, 'No, wait, Charlie. My friend here has money.' He walked across the dim room to the bar, knocking into only three or four tables as he went.
If it hadn't been for the despondent residual smell of cigarettes that had been smoked before Gino and Darlene made their first movie, you could almost have swallowed the thick odour of ancient brewski that filled the place. It was a free drink, but my nose didn't enjoy it.
On the wall opposite the bar was a painting of a woman surfing. She wasn't wearing any clothes, but a lot of convenient foam and spray. It wasn't a very good painting, but then, I didn't suppose it had to be. Under it was the legend, SURF NAKED. Signs stood on the moulding that ran around the room halfway up the wall. One said, ABSOLUTELY NO SPITTING. Other signs suggested we not fight or bother the other customers or ask for credit. There were a lot of signs suggesting we not ask for credit. Charlie must have gotten a terrific crowd at the Malibu Bar and No-Grill.
Charlie stood behind the bar with his hands flat on it, not very happy to be watching us enter his establishment. He was a big guy with a previously broken face. His black butterfly of a bowtie was a little askew, and looked lonely and small and sorry it had landed on the white expanse of his massive chest. 'Just don't bother my customers,' Charlie said in a voice a little kid might use to protect his pet frog.
The Malibu Bar and No-Grill didn't have many customers at the moment, and all of them sat at the bar. An old geezer not much more prosperous than Dweeb studied us with the mild eyes of a herd animal and attempted a smile. A fat guy didn't turn around. In his white suit, he looked like a giant marshmallow. Farther along the bar, where it was too murky to see who owned them, hands moved glasses of beer.
Game for anything, Bill hopped up onto a stool. I stood on the brass rail and said, 'Beer, please.'
The old geezer and the fat man in the white suit were watching. The fat man in the white suit was not really a man at all, but a Surfing Samurai Robot. He had a chiselled artificial face that was all planes and angles. In that light—no better than the quality of the clientele—it seemed to be silver. Across his forehead, just about where his white hat crossed it, was one of those samurai head bands. He had a glass in front of him, but I had no idea what he might have been drinking from it.
Charlie glared at me as if I'd asked for credit. 'You got any ID?'
'ID?' I said.
He shook his head, 'Identification.' His hands never moved.
'Surely that isn't necessary,' the fat man said in a low, gruff voice, full of sin and badly kept secrets.
'Surely you can butt the hell out,' said Charlie without even looking at him.
I took my temporary driver's licence from my wallet and laid it down on the sticky bar. Charlie looked at it without picking it up. 'This thing don't have your picture on it. It could be anybody's.'
'Look,' I said, 'if I promise not to drink any of it, will you give Dweeb here a drink?' I took the licence back and set down a dollar bill. It
must have been enough, because Charlie actually moved. He took the dollar and replaced it with an open bottle of beer and a glass. Dweeb reached for it hungrily and began to carry it away.
'You'll drink it here with these nice folks,' I said. I wanted everybody to hear our conversation. You never knew when somebody might have something to contribute.
Dweeb moved his fingers nervously, then put the beer and the glass down again. With a shaking hand, he poured the beer, not getting much of it on the bar. Charlie moved slowly to mop it up and slide a paper coaster under the glass. It said, SURF NAKED, and had a picture of the woman on the wall.
While I let Dweeb take a long sip of his brewski, a young man emerged from the gloom at the end of the bar, walking toward me splay-footed as if he expected me to hand him a diploma. He managed to look thin and soft at the same time, and his skin was the unhealthy colour of mushrooms. Hair as gloomy as the shadows he'd emerged from hung in strings to his shoulders. The clothes he wore were neither clean nor new, but very neat, as if he'd ironed his shirt and pants without washing them first. The brown tie that hung around his neck like a flat wrinkled worm—the colour hiding who knew how many terrible stains?—was tacked to his shirt with a tiny pearl sitting on a golden tripod. The tie pin was the only bright spot on him.
'Excuse me, sir?' he said, piping like the upper registers of an organ.
'Sure,' I said.
He shuffled his feet for a moment, and then went on. 'I was just admiring your necklace.'
'Oh?' I'd forgotten I was wearing it. I resisted touching it now.
Dweeb put down his beer and said, 'Nix. These guys are all over the place. Everywhere you go, one of these Medium Rare freaks wants to buy your spine necklace.'
'Why is that?' I said to the freak.
The freak didn't say anything, but pulled a folded sheet of pink paper from a pocket. I unfolded it. It was some kind of flyer advertising spiritual advice. At the top it said, HAPPY DAY! MEDIUM RARE LOVES YOU!
'Does this mean anything?' I said.
'I let Medium Rare into my life. She asks so little from each of us, yet gives so much.'