Los Angeles Stories

by Ry Cooder

  “I suggest you bring us two more cheeseburgers. I don’t know where you got this, son, but it is very intriguing and very unusual. See, Merle, it’s a kind of a planetary drive, like the old Model T used to have. Constant gearing, so’s you don’t shift it. Controlled from the handlebars. That, and the open driveshaft instead of a chain. Very nice, very neat. Where’d you say you got this?”

  “Well, I got it off television.”

  “Son, there is nobody on the TV with a mind anywhere near this good, but nobody.”

  “It wasn’t local TV.” Mike felt he couldn’t begin to explain.

  “I tell you what, I will fabricate this in my shop back in Downey. If you bring me the frame and motor, we’ll hook it up there. Give me six weeks, I got to build a new triple­-neck for Buddy Emmons.” The two men finished their lunch and got up to leave.

  “Mike, that was the flat ­out best cheeseburger I ever ate in a lifetime of cheeseburgers,” Merle said. “It was round, firm, and fully packed.”

  “Come and look at what we got in the trailer,” Paul said. Outside was a pick­up with two motorcycles tied down on a flatbed. Every feature was molded into sculptural shapes that curved and flowed and joined. The big bikes were buffed and polished, and the metal had a rich luster, unlike steel or chrome.

  “That’s all cast aircraft aluminum, built from scratch,” Paul said. “Got ’em up to a hundred and fifty yesterday, didn’t we, Merle?”

  “I never noticed,” Merle said. He pointed to the sign in the front window. “It says, ‘Welcome Space Brothers.’ You expectin’ ’em anytime soon?”

  “Maybe,” Mike replied.

  “Sure hope they like Recorded Country Music, because my sales are startin’ to slide pretty bad. The hip-­swivellers are gonna put me out of business.”

  Paul started to drive away and then paused. “Only thing might be the weight for a feller your size. That Ford 60 will be heavy and hard to handle. Think about a four-­banger. There’s ways a four can be just as rockin’ and fun as an eight, with half the size and twice the cruising range. Just a thought.” The truck pulled out in a cloud of dust.

  Sheree watched Mike bring the donut trays out. “Andrena Palacios is a nice girl, Mike. I saw you and her talking the other day. You could ask her out, and we could double date. We could go to Brakke’s. I always get the Spencer steak, it’s just my size.”

  Mike kept working with the trays. “So who’s your date?” he asked.

  “I was thinking of asking my golf teacher from the Antelope Valley Country Club. Vic is a little bit older than I am, but he’s taking a personal interest in me. He says I have a natural ability and I could be competitive if I lose weight. He’s helping me with my diet and my nutrition.”

  “How’d you get interested in playing golf?”

  “From croquet, when I was little.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s like golf for kids, that’s how you get them started.” Sheree stared at the rows and rows of fresh donuts in the trays, each one as perfect and beautiful as the next: the plain, the chocolate, the crumble, the fried, the glazed, the jelly ­filled, and the new lemon curd Mike had invented. She tried one. “This is fantastic, Mike, this is a winner,” she exclaimed with her mouth full. “You are the man.”

  “I don’t know if Andrena is ready for Brakke’s, I don’t think they like Mexicans in there. That might be rushing things. I’m in no hurry, she ain’t going anywhere. Guess I’m not going anywhere either.”

  Mike was closing up at the donut shop when he heard the car — a flathead with the cutout open. He stood in the parking lot and watched the Ford rag­top come around the corner by the shopping center. In the moonlight, the car was a dirty purple with the right front fender in gray primer. Where’s Johnny? Mike wondered. Then he remembered Gerri said she winged one of the killers from space. Mike waved. Terry Poncey didn’t wave back. The car kept going up Sierra Highway. Hollywood Spinners, the hubcaps of the doomed.

  Smile

  1950

  GET THIS AND get it straight: Crime is a sucker’s road, and those who travel it usually wind up in the gutter or the morgue . . . or the dentist’s chair.

  I’m Sonny Kloer. I’m a dental technician and a steel guitar player. I live in Los Angeles. You don’t know me, but I got a story to tell you. What’s that you say? Nothing ever happens in Los Angeles? Sit down, take a load off, try some pork ­fried rice. It happened like this.

  When the phone rang, I knew the voice: “Hey Shonny, ish Ray.” Old Ray Randucci, the King of C­6th. Ray Randy, as he is, or was, known in the profession. I hadn’t heard from him in quite a while, but I don’t get a lot of calls anymore.

  “Ray, old buddy,” I said, my standard greeting. “Where you at?”

  “In town,” he said, the standard musician’s answer. “Nobody won’t hire me no more. Ish my teethsh. Can you do shomething to help me?”

  I still had my old job at the Walgreen Dental Lab, so I’d be the guy to call. Plus, we were musically acquainted since all these years, even though I was never in Ray’s league.

  “Well, Ray, I don’t know,” I said. “I’m the only technician at the lab, and I’m all backed up.” Not exactly true. “Got any money?”

  “No. But I’ll trade shoo for the work, Shonny.”

  “What you got to trade?” I already knew the answer, but this I had to hear to believe.

  “I shtill got the Bigshby. You ushed to like it, now you can have it.”

  The Bigsby triple-­neck — the holy grail of steel guitars. The one thing every player wants but a prize only a few could ever have. For an ordinary guy like me, it’s unheard of.

  “Okay, Ray. I’ll take care of you on the QT. The Belfont Building, Seventh and Main. Take the elevator, third floor, in the back. Nine o’clock.”

  I worked nights, so I never saw the boss, Puss Walgreen. “Any moonlighting, I touch half,” Puss told me when I started at the lab ten years ago. But a Bigsby — it’s like King Solomon and the baby — you can’t cut it. Paul Bigsby would have made a great dental technician if he had gone in that direction. You should see how the little parts fit together just perfectly, all hand­ cast from aircraft alloy. And the sound! I used to play a Fender Stringmaster, which was nice, but I traded it for an automobile that I needed to get to work. I can’t go chasing streetcars. The Stringmaster is an Oldsmobile to the Bigsby Cadillac. Naturally, we can’t all be Cadillacs. I do the best I can with what I got, bum legs and all.

  They pulled me out of Leyte in ’45 and did what they could. The army doctors said something about progressive nerve damage. I walk with a cane, but it’s getting harder now. The G.I. Bill offered a course in dental technology, and it seemed like a good choice for me since you sit down. Dentistry really took off in Los Angeles after the war, what with the new materials they’d perfected in the airplane factories. No sense kidding myself, there was little future for me as a steel player, and the instruments and the amplifiers are so damn heavy that a guy with bum legs had better keep it as a pastime and get a steady job. But I like to stay in touch with the music and the players out there, and that’s how I knew Ray Randy.

  Ray came through the office door at nine sharp. “I’m shcared,” he said. I had a blank prepared out of casting alba stone. It’s a mold of fine­-grained cement, shaped in a curve, like teeth in the mouth. The patient bites down and waits for it to set up. But not too long, because it gets hard suddenly and there ain’t no way out! Ain’t a doggone thing in the world you can do. Ray was nervous, but he did fine. It took about ten minutes.

  “Here’s what we do, Ray,” I explained. “I build each tooth as an implant, and an implant man installs them one by one. Then there’s another way. I go ahead and remove the teeth you got left and build you up a whole set and install them as a unit. A bridge, we call it. The implant man is a good extractor. He gets paid in cash, but I’ll handle it on my end.”

  “What shoo need him for?”

  “I’m just a
technician, but Houseley is a real doctor. He’ll do the extractions, then I make the set, then he comes back for the fitting. We’ll get the job done right, ’cause I want that Bigsby!”

  “Will it hurt?” Ray asked.

  “You won’t feel a thing. If we try and save the teeth you got, then we have to go in all over again when they fall out, and I believe they will.”

  “Jush do the whole dang shebang,” Ray said.

  “I’ll get a message to Houseley,” I said.

  There was a heavy fog in Chavez Ravine. I parked off the road, just below the old Barlow Sanitarium, according to Houseley’s instruc­tions. It’s a pretty remote spot: hills and trees and dirt roads — and a few rough shacks where Mexicans live, if you call it living. I didn’t see one other car going in or out. I smoked a cigarette and listened to the radio and waited. The fog settled all around my Oldsmobile, a pre­war job with one of the first automatic transmissions. It was a crap transmis­sion, but I didn’t have to clutch it.

  I first met Houseley around the time I started at the Walgreen Dental Lab. Puss Walgreen brought him in for specialty jobs that he offered customers at half what a regular dentist would charge. Puss even undercut Dr. Beauchamp, the friendly credit dentist, whom he hated. Houseley seemed to make the patients uncomfortable, but he was good, his work was real artistic so they kept quiet. We had a routine. He’d give me an address over the phone and I’d go pick him up. He was never in the same place twice, and he only worked at night.

  The door opened and Houseley slid over like a shadow. He smelled of damp earth and wet eucalyptus trees.

  “Cigarettes! Can’t stand the stink of ’em!” he said. “Whiskey?”

  I passed him the bottle. I drove down through the Ravine and turned right on Broadway. Houseley was getting old. His face was creased, his hair was white, and his eyes were stuck way down deep in the folds of his drooping eyelids. His clothes were dirty, and he needed a shave.

  “Been doing a little consulting at the Barlow,” he said, “they’re interested in my work on schizophrenia.”

  “This is just an extraction for a friend of mine, nothing fancy,” I said.

  “Won’t work for Puss Walgreen! Can’t trust the man, he threat­ened me.”

  “Threatened you with what?”

  “He had me do a scrape, some years back. Seems the girl died. Beauchamp found out about it.”

  “Beauchamp, the credit dentist?”

  “Walgreen and Beauchamp were partners. Beauchamp forced him out and took over the operation. He’s a rich man now, and Walgreen’s got a piddling little lab on Main Street. When the girl died, Walgreen blamed me, said Beauchamp put me up to it.”

  “Did he?”

  “I don’t make mistakes. Last I knew, the girl was fine. Nice girl, a vocalist. Sang that hillybilly stuff you like. Can’t stand it, sounds like cats fucking.”

  “How come I don’t know about all this?” I said. Houseley held the bottle in both hands and drank, spilling whiskey down his shirt.

  “My advice? Mind your business.” Old Houseley was right that time.

  I gave Ray enough sodium pentothal to put him out for two hours, and Houseley yanked his few remaining choppers. I had him leave the incisors: two on the bottom and two over top. You need ’em to anchor the bridge. “I’ll call you when it’s ready,” I told him.

  “Don’t be too long,” Houseley said. “This man’s got gum disease, needs a gingivectomy. Can’t guarantee the long­ term otherwise, won’t be held responsible.” I gave Houseley some money and he drifted out.

  I played the radio and waited for Ray to come out of the gas. It looked like the best solution was to utilize individual teeth I had on hand. You might be surprised how often that happens. Somebody needs dental work but then they don’t show up, or they can’t pay for it. I had drawers full of teeth, in all shapes and sizes; men, women, and kids. It would save time, and I didn’t want Puss Walgreen poking around asking questions.

  Ray panicked when he woke up and saw himself in the mirror. He looked like a wino from San Julian Street. I gave him an old, store-­bought set, the kind they made twenty years ago.“Walking-­around teeth, just temporary.” I told him, “Bring the Bigsby when you come back.”

  “Gahnammeh, Shonny! Ish worsh! Ah luh lah hell!” I told him not to worry.

  The real work is in the structure of the bridge. If your structure isn’t strong then your bridge is going to flex and shift around and come loose when you talk or eat or what have you. I used the impression I’d taken of Ray’s gums for my mold. I set up the plastic material around the wire frame in the usual way, and put it in the icebox to harden. I closed the lab and used my elevator key to get down to the street, since the elevator operator quit at ten at night.

  On the way home, I stopped off at Sammy’s Hot Spot, a store­front joint in an old Chinese business block on Ord Street. It’s the only place around there that stayed open that late. I sat at the bar, and Sammy came right over.

  “Har­yew, Sonny­Boy! Poke­fly­lice?” Sammy said. My usual.

  “Skip the flies and the lice, Sammy­Boy.” My usual line. Sammy featured this clear rice wine with a kick like moonshine, which is what it was.

  “Houseley come by, he payed cash!” Sammy said, like it was an event.

  “We’re working together,” I said. Sammy brought my rice bowl over and set me up with chopsticks and hot sauce. Four Chinese girls were sitting at the corner table laughing and drinking. They were all excited about the dance hall where they’d been and the swing band they saw and the musicians they liked. I knew the place, the Zenda Ballroom, on Seventh and Figueroa. Tetsu Bessho and his Nisei Serenaders played there every Monday night. Jimmy Araki, the sax player, he was sharp. Joe Sakai was cute. The girls spoke English with a lot of hip slang like musicians use, and as far as I could tell they were no different from any other American girls, except they were Chinese. One of the girls kept playing the same mournful Mexican tune on the jukebox and dancing around by herself. I watched her in the mirror behind the bar. She had on a jade green sweater over a tight black skirt, white socks, and Chinese-­red shoes. She was a good dancer. She held her head sideways with her shoulders up around her chin and her hands out in front like a French nightclub singer. Where did she pick that up, I wondered. “Hit me again, Sammy.” I said. He poured me a tall one. It burned like mad. “Crazy hooch, Sammy,” I said.

  “Yah, crazy. Top come off! Chinese girl like sad song. She break up wit boyfriend, say adios muchacho. ”

  “The boyfriend was Mexican?”

  “Yah, pachuco boy. No good fo’ Chinese girl. Bad boy got funny hand.” Sammy held up his left hand and spread the fingers out. “Got too many, make six! Bad sign, bad boy.”

  “A pachuco with six fingers? I better keep it in mind. Hasta mañana, Sammy­Boy.” I paid and left. Chinatown was dead quiet. The girls left Sammy’s and walked north on Broadway. They made a lot of noise in the foggy, empty street, laughing and singing the jukebox tune in high, screechy voices. If I get my hands on that Bigsby steel, maybe I could get a job at the Zenda, I thought. Tetsu Bessho never thought of hiring a steel player. That would be something new. I could make connections. I hadn’t worked in a long time, so it would be like starting all over again, but it was worth a try. Got to be more to life than cut­-rate teeth and pork­ fried rice. I almost didn’t notice the old Ford panel truck pulling out of the alley behind Sammy’s. It drove off in the direction the girls had gone. Just a night man like me, on his way home.

  Old Woody Dick­pants, the elevator man, was dozing on his bench when I got to work the next evening. “Hiya, Woody,” I said. “Third floor.”

  “Gosh, I guess I know your floor, Mr. Kloer. Been knowing it good for ten years, haven’t I?”

  “I might surprise you one of these days and quit,” I said.

  “Ain’t nothing ever going to surprise me again,” Woody said.

  “How long you been on the job here, Woody?” I asked.


  “I been right here since back when they had a lobby man with castanets. This was a nice building, they used to sweep up.”

  A woman came in from the street and tap­-tapped across the bare marble lobby like she was late. “Wait there, boy!” she called. We waited. She was a nice-­looking woman, about thirty, in a fur coat and high heels. Blond hair, done up. No hat. “Four,” she said. She faced the front looking up, like most people do. Woody closed the cage door and pulled the lever, and we started. He watched the woman’s back. He got the sad look, and then his pants bulged out in front about a foot. Poor old Woody, it happened every time a woman rode in the elevator. He didn’t do it on purpose; it was a kind of medical condition.

  Woody called three, and I got out. What’s a juicy up­town blond doing in the Belfont at this time of night? I wondered.

  I took Ray’s bridge from the icebox and set it down on my bench. It looked very good. Ray was going to be a new man. Whatever happened next was not my problem. He could get another steel guitar. I had a feeling the Bigsby was going to change things for me. I might be moving up. I picked up the phone and dialed. Sammy answered.

  “Ha’ Spa’.”

  “Sammy, it’s Sonny. If Houseley comes in, tell him to get a cab over here. I’m ready for him.”

  I left a similar message with Ray’s landlady. I smoked a cigarette; I had a drink from the bottle and played the radio. It was Thursday night and that meant swing music live from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. I counted five saxophones, minimum. I bet a blond like that blond in the elevator knows all those sax players by their first names, I thought. Bet she could get real chummy at the Roosevelt. I heard knocking. I was expecting Ray Randy, but it was Woody Dick­pants.

  “Help me, Mr. Kloer.” Woody was vibrating like a tuning fork.

  “Come on in, have a seat,” I said. “Drink?”

  “Oh, thanks, you’re a pal. I need a drink bad. Something terrible happened.”

  “Elevator stuck again?”

  “It ain’t funny Mr. Kloer, don’t laugh. She laughed at me, that’s what started it.”