"Nope. He's in court with a platoon of lawyers from Marina del Rey. Randell and Kochner pulled a little game of hide the financial salami with us. Gustavo found out, and he's sinking some fingerholds into about a quarter of a million bucks that should be ours."
"When you want to claw something out of the hole, you send in a badger. Those suckers haven't got a chance. But like I said, I saw the papers. How'd I miss that one?"
"Ha, ha-are you serious? You'll never see this case covered in any paper." Burt let it hang until Lucas caught on.
Lucas banged his temple with the heel of his hand. "Right. I got it now. They got deep hooks in newspaper advertising. Right."
"You can bet the Times is gonna look for something else to cover, rather posthaste." He picked out a cold nacho chip from the appetizer basket and nibbled, more out of frustration than culinary interest. His hands needed something to do beside hoist his pilsener glass. He'd tried tracing patterns on its foggy surface, but that was unfulfilling. "You want anything else?"
"A Coke, maybe. All that beer makes me thirsty -it's the alcohol, dehydrating away."
"Caffeine will do the same thing."
"Don't chide me or I'll tell you you're too old to play my dad."
Burt beamed crookedly. "Me, I think I'll have a straight shot and blast it down with another brew. You?" Lucas shook his head. The thought of swallowing a shot of Black Jack (which was what Burt would demand, he knew) was chased by the unexpected thought of vomit. "No hard booze for me. I'm such a sicko that liquor unleashes my bete noire. One whiff of booze turns me into an instant werewolf."
"Smartass. Knock that shit off." Pause. "Beta what?"
"Bete noire. The 'black beast' that croucheth behind the revolving hotel door, or some such biblical hoohah. Kind of like a rampant force of id. Your basic, uh, primitive hostility, as opposed to your rational, civilized mind. Well… mine, anyway."
Burt repeated "Smartass" in a low, sardonic growl. "Just the same. You sure you're any different?"
"Just being an asshole, at your expense. You react so readily; it's hard to resist. At least you've stopped apologizing. But, Burton my lad, I can read your deceitful eyes. I tell you again not to worry. Your reaction to me is cautious. It is natural. I've got several centuries of cliches to buck against, and yes, it's made me a little sullen."
"Cliche busting is our business."
"I am the guy who's just gotten out of what you normal folks call the 'fruit bin,' after all…"
"You mean the nut hatch," amended Burt, deadpan. "Now you're apologizing."
After Lucas got his fizzy Coke inside himself and Burt chased his shot, Lucas said with mock astonishment, "What? We're not staying for coffee?"
"Urp. No way. I'm sloshing as it is. And the coffee here would take the paint off a tank. They make one pot at ten A.M. and keep it at the boiling point all day." He looked around at the nearly empty interior of the restaurant, as if seeking someone to blame.
"I'm supposed to break the news to you," said Lucas.
Burt's eyebrows went up. "What news?"
"That you will not see me bright and early tomorrow morning, on the job. I'm not dashing back to my desk to get gung ho with the new dawn. My first official act is going to be taking time off."
"A characteristic Los Angeles affliction." Burt's words indicated mild surprise, but no objections. "Where, when? You have ETA and coordinates?"
"Remember my cabin?"
Burt furrowed his brow. "Cabin…" Then his eyes lit. "I didn't think you were serious about buying that cabin. Geez, Lucas-that's going back a ways."
"Oh, I bought it all right, and the plot of land under it. I was serious about investing some money because the IRS was serious about taking it away if I didn't."
Burt inspected his empty shot glass. "I don't even remember where…" His voice trailed away. Losing this memory clearly upset him. Or maybe his emotions had been exaggerated by the drinks.
"It's up around Point Pitt, below San Francisco. It's backed up into a mountainside, and there's a half-hour stroll down to a natural rock jetty. It's very pleasant; isolated and nice. Very private." His gaze defocused as he imagined the setting.
"You sure it's still there? That it wasn't razed or turned into an unofficial hog farm by squatters?" Burt placed his American Express Gold Card on the check tray.
"I'll know when I get there. The rangers visit periodically and are supposed to report violations. The property is posted. If anything was awry, they would've phoned Randy the Accountant and I'd've heard by now."
"How is the financial sorcerer? Seen him yet?" Burt knew of Lucas' habit of christening his fellows in odd ways. Randy Carpenter was Randy the Accountant. He made a complete set when added to Simon the Broker, Ace the Legal Chickenhawk (Rolff A. Nikol, Lucas's attorney), and Stephen Zallinger, the Duke of Liability.
"I'm happy to report that my stock portfolio juggled well, and there's interest as icing. I've got a formidable nut now. Besides, Burt, you know I wouldn't take time off unless I could afford it three times over. And there's only me to support." An eyeblink-quick memory of Cory's outrageous alimony dashed painlessly past. He did not stop to reminisce about money spent on Kristen.
"My man. The compleat capitalist. Uh-" Burt seemed hesitant, as though dancing around an unsavory topic, trying to figure out a direct attack line. "Urn… so where is it, exactly, I mean. Your cabin. In case I have to get in touch." He petered out, lamely.
"Nearest phones are north, in Half Moon Bay. Don't worry, Burt, I'll be in touch." He tipped a wedge of melting ice from his glass into his mouth and sucked coolness from it.
Now Burt looked positively uncomfortable. "Well. Uh… I guess you don't want to go back to the office, then, or…" He held up his hands helplessly. "Or-"
"Au contraire. I need to blow the decay off everything in my corner. Say a few more hellos. Run an inspection on my desk. I'd le to borrow some of the equipment, too. One of the portable videotape rigs, if you don't mind."
It was a tiny favor. "We got a whole closet full. You want VHS or Beta? We traded some of the bulkier stuff for self-contained porta-packs no bigger than a phone book. With cameras-everything's built in."
"Don't need the camera. Just playback."
"No prob. Say-are you meeting, uh, Sara at this secluded mountain eyrie of yours? That why you don't want to tell me where it is?"
"Now, don't pry. You're not my mommy." Lucas shook his head. "Sara I'll deal with once I reengage with the real urban world. This is just for me." He laughed. "What do you think I'm up to, you old fart? I'm going to get bagged and watch pornies."
"Very funny," Burt snorted. "Watch that 'old fart' crap or you'll get fed your teeth. Listen, Lucas, if you-"
"I know, don't tell me," he cut in. "If there's anything you can do, doo-dah, doo-dah, and so on and etcetera and so forth. You've already done plenty, my pal. And you've got my sincere thanks for everything you've done, now and during my absence. Hey, you want blood? Or worse, a percentage?"
"Lucas, you know the thanks are as unnecessary as the apologies." To Burt, loyalty was fundamental, automade. He did not know just how rare he was. "You need a car?"
"That's taken care of. I've been shopping. Simon the Broker told me it was okay. But I am glad you saved me the social discomfiture of climbing out the restroom window to avoid picking up the tab."
"They have iron bars for people like that." Recalling his entrance at the Kroeger Building, he added, "You crafty son of a bitch."
"Probably. Cheers." Lucas drank down slushy ice water.
They sauntered out in good spirits. Burt felt his duty had been done and was out of touchy questions. Several times, though, Lucas had caught him peeking, regarding him as if he might be an imposter hiding behind Lucas Ellington's name, a fake or clever surrogate. The sensation was mildly irritating, but not wholly unjustified, given the circumstances.
He would just have to prove to everyone how sane he really was.
But that woul
d be after he got back from the mountains, the beach, the quiet.
3
TO THE WEST, THE PACIFIC Ocean shone a weighty, industrial steel color-massy, substantial, permanent. The road ahead of Lucas unwound in smooth gray curves, following the close topography dictated by the sea.
Again Lucas thought of the crate. It was buried, like a casket holding ghosts from the past sealed within. Whatever the condition of his cabin, the crate would be intact, protected by the embrace of the soil.
Around him, the vehicle, a dense mechanical buffalo some Detroit genius had decided to call a Bronco, all indestructible chassis and knobby tires and flagrantly shitty gas mileage, thrummed to the tune of a steady eighty-five miles per hour, northbound, a solitary locomotive of bronze-finished power highballing up the Pacific Coast Highway with no competition. The last real traffic Lucas had noticed was a flock of roller-skate-sized Nipponese deathtraps, trickling down toward Malibu. The sunspray on the calm ocean was magnificent, hot on the back of his neck. He cracked the pilot's window, and the sharp salt tang flared his nostrils and trued up his sinuses. The showroom smell of the brand-new Bronco blew out in a rush of sea air.
The vinyl slipcover on the portable video gear reflected a white gash of sunlight in the rearview. It had taken audiocassette recorders a decade to hit a state-of-the-art stride; home video technology had taken about half that time. Things were accelerating geometrically. Who would have thought that painters and writers and rock stars would one day be writing the damned things off as business tax deductions? A reference tool for the creative. Lucas thought it was a nice sentiment, but probably hogwash in most cases; most purchasers probably had a motive no more complex than the desire to suck up movies nine hours per day. Then came home computers. The brilliance of the home computer boom was that people bought them without any real knowledge of what they were going to do with them. Cable TV had wired the country together in a little less than a decade. And now everyone was so terrified of venturing out into the city streets that it made perfect survival sense to hole up in front of the glowing altar screen, processing words rather than writing them, communicating via modem, switching to twenty-four-hour sports and religion channels when the all-day, all-night movies paled, handing off from those to moronic video games. Firms like Kroeger Concepts had abetted the manufacturers of each of these new toys and would soon be responsible for insuring there was an endless flow of "product" to keep the video zombies in sopor and out of mischief on a long-term basis. A lifetime basis. True video acolytes could be talked into anything. Their attention spans could be molded, their lives programmed via advertising. MTV had managed the mind-numbing feat of convincing viewers to watch programming that was all commercials.
Lucas wondered whether he was a neophobe, bitching into his beer at Progress. On the other hand, any hive mind that could be gulled into believing there was no difference between seeing a film in a movie theater, in seventy-millimeter Super-Panavision with six-track Dolby sound, rolling off a $10,000 projection system and through a $12,000 audio system, and seeing the same film on a crappy beam-screen blowup with half the picture cropped away for TV aspect ratio, and calling both of these experiences "seeing movies"… why, such a mind could be conned into buying anything.
And what of the people who could not afford all this glittery, hypnotic hardware and software? Not that welfare families had ever lacked for television sets. Burt had come up with an intriguing answer for that, sometime between lunch and the bow-in back at Kroeger.
***
"Most people, I think, believe if they stay flush during a given business year, then nobody really gives a good goddamn what the unemployment stats are or aren't," Burt had said. "Not if they're working. And honest. So, what of the unemployed? Who the hell are they? A lot of nerds who believed that college would hand them a career. Ex-housewives, seeking life beyond marriage. Ditch-digger types. Peter principle dummies who were shocked when somebody wised up and laid them off. Career industrial workers who find it beyond their capacity to believe that there is no longer a need for what they've been doing for forty years straight. A vast workpool has been driven to welfare, unemployment, loss of dignity. Now, consider this in light of the current administration."
Uh-oh, Lucas thought. Burt rarely refused an opportunity to pontificate on matters political. Time to grit the teeth.
"It's so big, so obvious, that no one sees it. A huge number of the unemployed are unskilled, urban minorities and poor white trash. They're on TV every time some politicians or celebrities do a fund-raiser, like that Hands Across America thing. 'Give us jobs, not food,' they say. And what happens when they get frustrated enough at not having jobs?"
Lucas took the bait. There was no other way out. He was not normally a political person. "They liberate a few K-Marts, break bank windows, open fire hydrants, and kill a cop or two."
"And the government is sitting back with folded hands, waiting for that day, waiting for the riots to commence. Because when they do, the Guard can be rolled in with plenty of justification. In one fell swoop, our urban centers can be put under martial law. That freezes the country. Without the connection between the cities and the manufacturing locuses, we're pretty goddamn helpless, aren't we? Then we'll just have to wait for our orders."
During his tour, Lucas had spent several days in Qui Nhon, watching the aluminum capsules full of dead Americans come and go. Waiting for orders. It was not pleasant. The orders were too long in coming.
"I almost said that was pretty farfetched, Burt. But then I stopped and thought about it. Nuts. But not so nuts."
"You're dealing here with major-league lunatics. Guys for whom wars are fiscal solutions, manufactured to pull us out of equally manufactured economic 'depressions.' They're locked into the 1940s and can't escape. They hew to this good-guy-versus-bad-guy mentality, and if they point their fingers at their chosen bad guys long enough, with enough propaganda, they'll find they've got a whole country full of unemployed, largely illiterate cannon fodder-people who are just pissed and frustrated and emasculated enough to go for a violent cure-all."
"I never pegged you as a sociologist."
"I dropped out of college, remember? By the time the idiots in business administration had their degrees, I had a business."
"And you were hurting." Burt's dedication had ultimately reversed that snag, however. "Maybe violence is the only solution-sometimes. Not TV violence; not a baseball bat in the face as a responsible editorial reply, not a contest of firepower and escalation. I mean violence as a final, horrible last resort. When no avenue yields satisfaction. When the drones and robots and nine-to-five mannequins lurch through one more day of colorless life by fucking you over."
"Aha-go bomb the phone company. Bomb the phone company of your choice, that is." Burt laughed. "But who's to judge? Who decides?"
"You do, when you know it in your heart. Can you buy something as nebulous as that?"
"Depends. Maybe Rambo knew in his heart that he was right. If so, we're all in deep shit. You're a romantic, Lucas. That's not a slur; Jefferson, Franklin, Adams-those guys were all romantics. Idealists. So what the hell are you, a romantic, doing in the publicity business?"
They paused, then recited the joke's answer in chorus: "Making a living, boy!" Commercial irony at its finest.
"Those masonite doors on my office closet?" said Burt. "I always get masonite, so I can continue punching in the doors without breaking my hand when I get angry. I get angry a lot these days. I rarely try to check it anymore. It's a steam valve."
"It's therapeutic," said Lucas.
"Fucking-A. Vent thy anger, O mad one."
"The shrinks have reversed themselves on that one, too. Now they say venting your anger does no good. That while you do express it by, say, punching your door, you never actually rid yourself of it. Which was what punching the door was supposed to have achieved in the first place. The anger stays with you, always. Kind of like herpes. Once you've got it, you've got it."
"Are you telling me that you aren't cured?" Were they not friends, Burt would not have pushed it this far. "Do you hold that kind of anger inside? About Kristen, I mean."
"Sure, I'm still angry. Useless death should anger any sane man. Cory took a ride on a big red roller coaster and fell off. She knew what she was doing, and did it to 'get' me. And it worked. Case closed. Kristen's death was… insane. Five hundred police there, and they were totally impotent. In an evening's entertainment, thirteen people get trampled to death. Thousands are bruised, lacerated, bloodied, their bones broken. The band is called Whip Hand. Yet nobody anticipates the break point between stage violence-which is sanitized, like TV fight scenes-and the real thing. What's the difference between a disaster like that and the riot mentality you predict, Burt? No, I haven't lost that anger. You never lose it. You deaden it, anesthetize it. We have to take refuge in knowing we're right. In your heart, like I said."
"The ancient Christians felt the same way," said Burt. "A lot of folks with fish on their chests got eaten by lions. But even they got pissed off enough to lash out, the way Billy Budd did. Pow. The end."
Pow.
***
Lucas reached into the cooler on the Bronco's suicide seat and cracked open a can of cold Pepsi. He nestled the can in his crotch as he drove. He was thinking of Buddy Holly.
Holly had gotten chastised by the descendants of those Christians Burt had cited, for playing the devil's music, inciting young people to lewdness. Then came Elvis the Pelvis. God, how Presley had hated that epithet! They framed him from the waist down on The Ed Sullivan Show, so that the children of America would not be possessed by sexual demons. Black performers were a hideous racial threat to the same minds. Janis Joplin unveiled a lesbian bent… bye-bye, Janis. The music of the Doors had been on Lucas's stereo throughout Kristen's infancy. Then Jim Morrison shouted "Ain't anybody out there gonna love my ass" in Miami one preternaturally black night, and they busted him for dropping trou. Then Alice Cooper (AKA Vincenti Somebody-or-other in real life) cavorted with his snakes, hissed his lyrics about fucking the dead, was hung and decapitated onstage. This was after Black Sabbath had every pulpit pounder in the country up in arms. Ten years after Alice, good old Ozzy Osbourne took the rap for chomping the head off a dove. Gene Simmons of Kiss spit forth blood and fire. The sonic assault of punk juggernauted in and offended everyone. Explosions, raw butcher-shop entrails, skanking and slam dancing, and anything that could get a rise out of an increasingly jaded audience were dutifully noted by the watchers with unblinking lizard eyes. The kids didn't see the threat. All they saw were new invocations, new congregations, good clean fun, the music, with trappings that were an E-ticket attraction, a slide ride fraught with lots of disposable badness and terror. But Holly and Presley, Joplin and Morrison, and Keith Moon and John Bonham and Bon Scott and Sid Vicious were dead, dead for real. The audiences did not seem to understand that part. Kristen was dead. For real. To them it had all been part of the stage show. Another cheap thrill, another special effect. To read the hideously bland articles in the newspapers was to go oh, wow… and feel nothing.
The Kill Riff Page 4