by Mel Gilden
'How much does she give for this necklace?'
'A free reading when you come to her retreat in Changehorses.'
'Reading?'
'Your fortune.'
Bill laughed.
I said, 'I know what my fortune is. Trouble is my business. No sale.'
Charlie growled, 'Get out of here before I throw you out.' He took the flyer from my hand, ostentatiously balled it up, and dropped it behind the bar.
'Medium Rare loves you,' the freak said and scrammed.
The door curtain fell back into place and I looked at Dweeb, 'You were saying?' I said.
'Huh?' When Dweeb put down the glass, there was foam on his upper lip.
'About the passengers who were on the hat. The hat on the beach. You remember the hat on the beach?'
The geezer apparently couldn't follow the ins and outs of our conversation because he hummed a little tune over and over to himself as he stared at the dusty bottles behind the bar and sipped his beer with a small lapping sound. Charlie was rinsing out his grey rag. The fat robot was watching me as if I were a puzzle box he was trying to figure out. Down at the dark end of the bar, beer glasses rose and fell, making cozy thumping sounds as each touched the bar in its turn.
'I remember. I was just gathering my thoughts.'
I had something clever to say, but it didn't seem to be worth the trouble. I just waited. We all did. The only sound in the place was the slow whish-whish of the big fans turning in the ceiling.
'Thoughts all in place?' I said.
'Yeah.' Dweeb looked worried. He'd always look worried, even if he was just talking about the weather. He said, 'The two that got off the hat were kind of Oriental types. Slanty eyes, big, wide faces, you know.'
'I know.' I'd seen a Charlie Chan movie once. It didn't make me an expert, but it would have to do. 'Did you see them get off the hat?'
'I didn't see them getting off, exactly, but near enough. They walked right by it as if they saw giant hats on the beach every day. Is that natural?'
'I guess not. What else?'
'One of 'em was a good-looking babe with long blonde hair. The other was a guy with short hair like a brush.'
For some reason, our conversation seemed to be making Charlie the Bartender nervous. His fingers drummed the bar, which for him was almost a screaming fit.
The fat robot said, 'Excuse me, but I couldn't help overhearing. I've never encountered a blonde Oriental.' A guy like that would say excuse me when he slid the knife between your ribs.
Dweeb shook his head and said, 'Yeah. That's funny, isn't it?'
'I seen one. Real recent, too.' I looked around in surprise. The geezer who I thought was asleep had spoken. His voice had been used hard all its life. It was just tin cans kicked down a gutter, but it was more intelligent than I would have expected. Charlie was wiping down the bar as if he wanted to buff a hole through it.
'Yep,' the geezer said, still looking at the dusty bottles. 'I was down at the Sparkle Room relieving a powerful thirst when these two came in.'
'How were they dressed?' I said.
'Casual. Like a couple of tourists back from the islands.'
'That's them,' Dweeb said.
Charlie burned him with a look.
'Anyway, they come into the Sparkle Room, the woman in particular getting a lot of attention. They asked the bartender bot for the phone number of a taxi service. They talked pretty.' He smiled, savouring it. He savoured it long enough that I thought maybe he'd fallen asleep. Charlie was leaning down at the curve in the bar, drumming his fingers again, watching us as if we were cockroaches.
The geezer shook himself and said, 'Well, that bot mixes a hell of a drink, but he don't talk much. He just pointed at the books hanging by the phones back near the Johns. We all kind of watched these two when we weren't watching nothing else. I saw them look up a number, but I never seen them use a phone. Nobody around me saw them use a phone. When it was all over, I checked.'
'OK,' I said. 'Nobody saw them use the phone. Make something out of it.'
'OK, buster. You asked for it. A few seconds after these two don't use the phone, a big black guy with a moustache you could hang birdcages from and wearing a Big Orange Taxi Service cap comes in looking a little confused, wanted to know if anybody had called for a cab.'
He waited for applause. He didn't get it, but he had everybody's attention. He finished, 'So these two Oriental types walk out with the cabbie just as casual.' He shook his head.
'You expect us to believe that?' Charlie said from his station at the turn in the bar.
'God's truth,' the geezer said, making an X over his heart with a finger.
'You guys give me a pain. First that Rare freak, and now you guys with your blonde gooks and your giant hats and your phantom phone calls.' He didn't seem to move, but a second later, he smacked something down on the bar.
Everybody but me jumped. I had only the vaguest idea what the thing was, but no one else seemed to be in doubt. The customers at his end of the bar sort of began to drift away. Charlie gripped the thing as it lay on the bar, smooth and deadly—a weapon of some kind but too long even for Charlie to carry in a pocket. Charlie glared at me, almost smiling. Then the smile was gone and he was looking at Dweeb hard enough to push him over. 'You get out of here. And take your friends with you.'
'I'm a customer,' Dweeb said, showing more crust than I would have suspected he had.
Charlie hooked his thumb over his shoulder at a sign that said, WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE. He slid a dollar across the bar and shouted, 'Get out.' Dweeb grabbed the dollar and ran. Charlie gave another dollar to the geezer. The geezer mumbled. 'There are other bars in this town. Guy knows when he's not wanted.' He climbed from his stool and followed Dweeb out.
'Yeah,' I said. 'This is a classier establishment already, now they're gone. I can feel it. I'll recommend this place to my friends.' I grabbed Bill around the neck and walked out dangling him. When we got outside, I put him down and he kind of straightened his beak. The geezer was gone, along with Dweeb and my dollar. That was OK, I'd gotten my money's worth.
Bill and I walked back the way we'd come. Quietly, I said, 'What was that thing?'
'What thing?'
'The thing on the bar everybody seemed so afraid of.'
'Sawed-off shotgun.'
'Sawed off from what?'
'Haw!' said Bill, giving me another sample from his menagerie of laughs.
'Haw,' I said. I suddenly felt dirty, just having been inside the Malibu Bar and No-Grill. I probably wouldn't have liked the place any better when it had been Surf Naked. 'Let's get out of here,' I said, and walked faster.
The sun was sliding slowly toward the far edge of the Pacific, turning the few clouds a pink I'd never seen on a T-shirt. The crowds on the walkway were thinning as the air grew cool. I couldn't get the geezer's story out of my head. Somehow it fit with Captain Hook's problem and with the top hat itself. Those two Orientals were worth a closer look, if only because of that. But there was more to the story, Orientals, blonde or not, don't just climb out of hats unless they have a reason. It might all just be innocent good fun, but I doubted it.
On a hunch, I stopped to look in the window of a place selling little animals made out of seashells glued together. Not far away, a big robot in a white suit was looking in a window, too.
I said, 'Somebody's following us. Any ideas?'
'Better scheming through electronics,' Bill said, and laughed as he waddled off.
Chapter 6
Progress Happens
I STOPPED once or twice to see if maybe the robot in the white suit had given up. But no, he was determined to make more work for us, and that's what he did. Bill strolled off the walkway and into a parking lot the size of a small country, full of gleam and dazzle. It had been jammed earlier in the day, cars even parked in the lanes between rows, but now it was merely full, and growing emptier by the moment.
I followed Bill to the middle of
the lot, where we looked as natural as a moustache on a chorus girl. An aisle away, the fat bot pretended to unlock a car door. He took a lot of trouble with the door, but it wouldn't open for him in a million years, not with that house key he was using. Every once in a while he glanced at us and began with the door again.
'Are we going to wait for the real owner of that car to show up?' I said.
'That's entertainment,' Bill said. A flat, circular antenna rose from the top of his beak. As it clicked into place, a lot of excitement began all around us at once.
On every car I could see, and I could see plenty, head-lights came on and glowed, making no more distance against the late afternoon sunlight than candle flames. They stayed on while windscreen wipers started squeaking across dry glass like old men rubbing their eyes. But what really attracted everybody's attention were the radios and the horns. Frantic DJs tossed the time, weather and stereo ads into the hard, cloudless sky. Over that, rock and roll fought with the tinkle of piano sonatas. And over it all, repeated in car after car, blared the mating call of the irate motorist. All together it was too loud to be merely noise, more like somebody rooting out my ears with a stick.
The fat bot looked in my direction as if I'd called his name. He frowned, a strange effect on that mechanical face, then made a move as if he wanted to walk toward me. But we were washed apart by crowds of people pouring off the beach, each of them pawing at their cars as if they were life preservers.
I grabbed Bill around the neck so as not to lose him in the crush and forced my way back to the walkway, bucking the crowd that was gathering to point, watch and laugh.
I put Bill down and we walked away quickly, stopping only a few times to check for the bot in the white suit. Either all of a sudden he'd gotten a lot better at tailing, or Bill's trick had worked.
'Pretty good, huh?' Bill said every time I checked. The fifth or sixth time this happened, I said, 'Good enough, but it gets a little old in reruns.'
He blinked at me and said brightly, 'Right, Boss.'
By the time we got back to Whipper Will's house, the sidewalks were nearly empty. The bot would have had to be invisible or I'd seen him. I didn't see him.
We let a couple of rabbits out the front door when Bill and I came in, but that didn't matter. The floor was covered with them. What wasn't rabbits was rabbit pellets. And what wasn't rabbit pellets was long-stemmed flowers. Captain Hook—the Great Hookini—had been busy while we were out.
The captain was all by himself—not counting the rabbits—glumly sitting on the couch in the living room with a big steel ring in each hand. The TV was not on, which was about as normal as the Captain making lists. He tapped the rings, and suddenly they were hooked together. He spun the one that was hanging, and it made a noise like a softly ringing bell. Then, in a bored voice, he said, 'Abracadabra,' and pulled the rings apart. He looked at the rings as if he'd never seen them before, and tapped them together again.
I said, 'What's happening, Holmes?'
The Captain studied the hanging ring as he spun it again. Without looking at me, he said, 'People got no appreciation for magic. It's a beautiful art form.'
'You've been performing all afternoon?' I said.
'I'm a magician,' he said as if he wished he weren't.
'Where's everybody else?'
'Gone to a movie.' He shrugged. 'No accounting for taste.'
Bill had picked up a rabbit and was stroking it. I said, 'Anything in your bubble memory about the Big Orange Cab Company?'
'It has connections with organized crime.'
'What is that, criminals with their own filing cabinets?'
Bill didn't laugh, so what I'd said must not have even remotely been a joke. Gamely, I went on, 'I was thinking more of their phone number.'
Bill gave me the number. I said, 'Don't get rabbit fur in your machinery,' and walked into the kitchen. Out the window over the sink, the top hat sat on the sand, surrounded by yellow sawhorses as if they were trying to get autographs. A convention of seagulls was being held on its top. The sun squatted on the horizon, lowering itself into the cold Pacific with all the care of an old woman entering a swimming pool. Still looking at the top hat, I dialled my number.
'Big Orange Cab Company. Will you hold?'
Before I could say anything she was gone and I was listening to music that had no more character than a slice of white bread. It was polite music wearing polished shoes, mouse grey gloves and a small, self-satisfied smile.
Before my brain had a chance to sit down to tea with that music the girl came back, sounding a little harried, and said, 'Big Orange Cab Company. May I help you?'
'My name is Zoot Marlowe. I'm a private detective and I'm looking for one of your drivers.'
'Why?'
'He picked up a couple last night. They might know something about a little problem my client is having.'
'We don't give out that kind of information.' She knew I wasn't a customer, and the tone of her voice let me know she knew.
'He's a big black guy with moustache. Know him?'
'We have a lot of black drivers, and some of them have moustaches.'
I said, 'You know, you're cute when you're rude,' and hung up. If it had been earlier in the day and I'd been thinking straight, I'd have been able to predict that conversation, down to the punctuation and my snappy retorts. Back in the living room, Captain Hook's hands were still linking and unlinking rings. The Captain himself didn't seem to be much involved. Bill was watching the rings closely while he petted the rabbit. I said, 'I'm going out. Don't let anything happen.'
'Nothing happens. Right, Boss.'
I had thought it would be months at least before I'd need my short Johns again, but I got into them now. They were still a little damp and difficult to manage, but I got them on and walked out to the beach. There was a deep trench around the hat and some signs telling people to stay away from it. Whether the police were afraid of somebody hurting the hat, or of the hat hurting someone, I didn't know. I hoped no one else had been turned into a magician. Malibu couldn't take any more rabbits, not without cracking off into the Pacific.
I plunged into the water and swam for my sneeve.
The water was cold, of course. And salty. And just for the record, it was wet too. When I got inside my sneeve, I felt disconnected from it, as if it were somebody else's apartment that I'd only seen pictures of. I dug around in the emergency gear, found what I wanted, and then stood in front of the screw, looking the place over, making sure I hadn't forgotten anything. I'd left a copy of The Maltese Falcon on the pilot's seat. Sam Spade stared at me from the cover. When he winked, I knew I'd been avoiding the swim back too long, and went out into the water through the screw.
I changed out of the short Johns and back into my brown suit just before the gang got home, eager to tell me about the monster picture they'd just seen. They were nice to Captain Hook, but nice the way they'd be to someone with a terrible disease. It's not really the guy's fault, but you still don't want to go near him.
'Enough magic is too much,' Mustard said, and sat down on the floor to roll dry grass into a line of his smoking umbrellas. One by one, he dropped them in a plastic bag as if they were shotgun shells, and then put them into a pocket. Everybody else milled around. I think some of them changed clothes, but the difference was not apparent.
'Wanta go dancing, dude?' Whipper Will said.
'Not if you want to see progress on this case. Big day tomorrow.'
'Progress?' Thumper said, sounding surprised.
'It happens,' I said and shrugged.
Soon after, they all bubbled from the house. Some of them were carrying rabbits. 'Everybody likes rabbits,' Hanger said. She was carrying a black one like a baby.
'Better you than me.'
'Huh?'
They left me alone with Bill and Captain Hook. It was so quiet, I could hear the surf banging its head against the shore. Bill was no problem. He hooked himself into the Rotwang 5000 and played with himself. I
sat down in the living room with Farewell, My Lovely, but didn't get far with it because Captain Hook was full of, 'Pick a card, any card.' Eventually I took refuge in Will and Bingo's bedroom.
For a while, I was afraid that Captain Hook would follow me. Time drifted by and he didn't. Maybe he taught one of the rabbits how to pick a card. I was tempted to check, but I wasn't stupid enough to actually do it.
Chapter 7
Bay City Manners
WHIPPER Will and the others came in late, still laughing and singing. When I cracked my eyes, I saw them doing little dance steps at each other. I waited them out and soon it got quiet again.
When I woke up the next morning, they were still asleep. Whipper Will and Bingo were snorting romantically into each other's ears, and they didn't seem to be bothered by my getting dressed, eating, and sneaking out with Bill.
Sunshine had returned to Malibu and the Southland. Pacific Coast Highway
was crowded, but I didn't mind. The streets were dry, the Belvedere had a full tank of gas, and I had a temporary driver's licence. I drove along the coast, the water looking like wrinkled cellophane beyond the white sand.
It was a little early yet for the snowcone and sand pail crowd, but a lot of supposed grown-ups were out there, getting tanned before the rush. A small black Toyota truck, with its cab raised so high the driver probably had a pilot's licence, was in such a hurry that it kept forcing narrow escapes on other cars and attracting curses and horn blasts. Despite all the extra work it did, the truck got stopped one car ahead of me at the big light at Sunset Boulevard. That was the kind of joke traffic played on drivers, but a lot of them never got it until they really got it, knotting themselves around a light pole or, worse yet, taking somebody else with them. That was another joke traffic played on drivers.
I had fewer fancy wheels to worry about as I rolled through Santa Monica and into Culver City. It hadn't changed much since I'd been there last, and it wouldn't, not as long as landlords could rent store-fronts without having to repaint them.