He called the LAPD and hung on for fifteen minutes.
No luck. He then called the Beverly Hills Police Depart-
ment and got the same result. He had no more luck
with the Mount Sinai Hospital on Beverly Boulevard,
which was within walking distance. He put drops in his
eyes and snuffed up nose drops. He wet a handkerchief
to place over his nose and put his goggles on top of his
head. He stuck a pencil flashlight in one pocket and a
switch-blade knife in another. Then he left the apartment
building and walked down San Vicente to Beverly Boul-
evard.
In the half hour that he had been home, the situation
had changed. The cars that had been bumper-to-bumper
curb-to-curb were gone. They were within earshot; he
could hear the horns blaring off somewhere around
Beverly Boulevard and La Cienega, but there was not
a car in sight.
Then he came across one. It was lying on its side. He
looked down into the windows, dreading what he might
see. It was empty. He could not understand how the
vehicle had been overturned, because no one could
have gone fast enough in the jam to hit anything and be
overturned. Besides, he would have heard the crash.
Somebody—somebodies—had rocked it back and forth
and then pushed it over. Why? He would never know.
The signal lights at the intersection were out. He
could see well enough across the street to make out the
thin dark shape of the pole. When he got to the foot of
the light pole on his corner, he saw broken plastic, which
would have been green, red, and yellow under more
lightened circumstances, scattered about.
He stood for a while on the curb and peered into the
sickly gray. If a car were to speed down the street with-
out lights, it could be on him before he could get across
the street. Nobody but a damned fool would go fast or
without lights, but there were many damned fools driv-
ing the streets of Los Angeles.
The wailing of a siren became stronger, a flashing red
light became visible, and an ambulance whizzed by. He
looked up and down the street and dashed across, hoping
that the light and noise would have made even the
damnedest of fools cautious and that anybody following
the ambulance would be blowing his horn. He got across
with only a slight burning of the lungs. The smog was
slowly rusting off their lining. His eyes ran as if they were
infected.
The sound of bedlam came to him before the hospital
building loomed out of the mists. He was stopped by a
white-haired man in the uniform of a security guard.
Perhaps the old man had worked at an aircraft plant or
at a bank as a guard and had been deputized by the
police to serve at the hospital. He flashed his light into
Childe's face and asked him if he could help him. The
smog was not dark enough to make the light brilliant,
but it did annoy Childe.
He said, "Take that damned light away! I'm here to
offer my services in whatever capacity I'm needed,"
He opened his wallet and showed his I.D.
The guard said, "You better go in the front way. The
emergency room entrance is jammed, and they're all too
busy to talk to you."
"Who do I see?" Childe said.
The guard hurriedly gave the supervisor's name and
directions for getting to his office. Childe entered the
lobby and saw at once that his help might be needed, but
he was going to have to force it on the hospital. The
lobby was jammed and asprawl with people who had
been shunted out of the emergency room after more or
less complete treatment, relatives of the wounded, people
inquiring after lost or injured friends or relatives, and a
number who, like Childe, had come to offer their services.
The hall outside the supervisor's office was crowded too
thickly for him to ram his way through even if he had
felt like doing so. He asked a man on the fringes how
long he had been trying to get into the office.
"An hour and ten minutes, Mister," the man said
disgustedly.
Childe turned to walk away. He would return to his
apartment and do whatever he could to pass the time.
Then he would return after a reasonable amount of time
(if there were such a thing in this situation), with the
hope that some order would have been established. He
stopped. There, standing near the front door of the hospi-
tal, his head wrapped in a white cloth, was Hamlet
Jeremiah.
The cloth could have been a turban, because the last
time Childe had seen Jeremiah he was sporting a turban
with a spangled hexagram. But the cloth was a band-
age with a three-pointed scarlet badge, almost a triskelion.
The Mephistophelean moustaches and beard were gone,
and he was wearing a grease-smeared T-shirt with the
motto: NOLI ME TANGERE SIN AMOR. His pants
were white duck, and brown sandals were on his feet.
"Herald Childe!" he called, smiling, and then his face
twisted momentarily as if the smile had hurt.
Childe held out his hand.
Jeremiah said, "You touch me with love?"
"I'm very fond of you, Ham," Childe said, "although I
can't really say why. Do we have to go through that at
this time?"
"Any time and all time," Jeremiah said. "Especially
this time."
"OK. It's love then," and Childe shook his hand. "What
in hell happened? What're you doing down here? Listen,
did you know I tried to phone you a little while ago and
I was thinking about driving up to see you. Then ..."
Jeremiah held up his hand and laughed and said, "One
thing at a time! I'm out of my Sunset pad because my
wives insisted we get out of town. I told them we ought to
wait a day or so until the roads were cleared. By then,
the smog'd be gone, anyway, or on its way out. But
they wouldn't listen. They cried and carried on something
awful, unreeled my entrails and tromped on them. One
good thing about tears', they wash out the smog, keep
the acids from eating up your corneas. But they're also
acid on the nerves, so I said, finally, OK, I love you both,
so we'll take off. But if we get screwed up or anything
bad happens, don't blame me. Stick it up your own lovely
asses. So they smiled and wiped away the tears and
packed up and we took off down Doheny. Sheila had a
little hand-operated prayer wheel spinning and Lupe
was getting three roaches out so we could enjoy what
would otherwise be a real drag, or so we at least could
enjoy a facsimile of joy. We came to Melrose, and the
light changed to red, so I stopped, being a law-abiding
citizen when the law is for the benefit of all and well-
founded. Besides, I didn't want to get run into. But the
son of Adam behind me got mad; he thought I ought to
run the light. His soul was really ruffled, Herald, he was in
a cold-sweat panic
. He honked his horn and when I
didn't jump like a dog through a hoop and go through
the fight, he jumped out of his car and opened my door
—dumb bastard, I, didn't have it locked—and he jerked
me out and whirled me around and shoved my head
against the handle. It cut my head open and knocked me
half-silly. Naturally, I didn't resist; I really believe this
turn-the-other-cheek dictum.
"I was half in the next lane, and the other cars weren't
going to stop, so Sheila jumped out and shoved the man in
the path of one and pulled me into the car. That Sheila
has a temper, you got to forgive her. The man was hit;
he bounced off one car and into ours. So Sheila drove the
car then while Lupe was trying to heave the man out. He
was lying on the back seat with his legs dragging on the
street. I stopped her and told Sheila to take us to the
hospital.
"So she did, though reluctantly, I mean reluctant to
take the man, too, and we got here, and my head finally
got bandaged, and Sheila and Lupe are helping the nurses
up on the second floor. I'll help as soon as I get to feeling
better."
"What happened to the man?" Childe said.
"He's on a mattress on the floor of the second level.
He's unconscious, breathing a few bubbles of blood, poor
unhappy soul, but Sheila's taking care of him, too. She
feels bad about shoving him; she's got a hasty temper
but underneath it all she truly loves."
"I was going to offer to help," Childe said, "but I
can't see standing around for hours. Besides ..."
Jeremiah asked him what the besides meant. Childe told
him about Colben and the film. Jeremiah was shocked.
He said that he had heard a little about it over the radio.
He had not received a paper for two days, so he had no
chance to read anything about it. So Childe wanted some-
body with a big library on vampires and on other things
that boomp in the unlit halls of the mind?
Well, he knew just the man. And he lived not more
than six blocks away, just south of Wilshire. If anybody
would have the research material, it would be Woolston
Heepish.
"Isn't he likely to be trying to get out of town?"
"Woolie? By Dracula's moustache, no! Nothing, except
maybe an atomic attack threat, would get him to desert
his collection. Don't worry; he'll be home. There is one
problem. He doesn't like unexpected visitors, you got to
phone him ahead of time and ask if you can come, even
his best friends—except maybe for D. Nimming Rodder
—are no exceptions. Everybody phones and asks permis-
sion, and if he isn't expecting you, he usually won't an-
swer the doorbell. But he knows my voice; I'll holler
through the door at him."
"Rodder? Where have … ? Oh, yes! The book and
TV writer! Vampires, werewolves, a lovely young girl
trapped in a hideous old mansion high on a hill, that sort
of thing. He produced and wrote the Shadow Land
series, right?"
"Please, Herald, don't say anything at all about him
if you can't say something good. Woolie worships D.
Nimming Rodder. He won't hit you if you say anything
disparaging about him, but you sure as Shiva won't get
any cooperation and you'll find yourself frozen out."
Childe shifted from one foot to another and coughed.
The cough was only partly from the burning air. It indi-
cated that he was having a struggle with his conscience.
He wanted to stay here and help—part of him did—but
the other part, the more powerful, wanted to get out and
away and on the trail. Actually, he couldn't be much
use here, not for some time, anyway. And he had a feel-
ing, only a feeling but one which had ended in something
objectively profitable in the past, that something down
there in the dark deeps was nibbling at his hook.
He put his hand on Jeremiah's bony shoulder and said,
"I'll try to phone him, but if …"
"No use, Herald. He has an answering service, and it's
not likely that'll be working now."
"Give me a note of introduction, so I can get my foot
in the door."
Jeremiah smiled and said, "I'll do better than that.
I'll walk with you to Woolie's. I'm just in the way here,
and I'd like to get away from the sight of so much
suffering."
"I don't know," Childe said. "You could have a con-
cussion. Maybe you ..."
Jeremiah shrugged and said, "I'm going with you. Just
a minute while I find the women and tell them where
I'm going."
Childe, waiting for him, and having nothing to do but
watch and listen, understood why Jeremiah wanted to get
away. The blood and the groans and weeping were bad
enough, but the many chopping coughs and loud, long
pumping-up-snot-or-blood coughs irritated, perhaps even
angered him, although the anger was rammed far down.
He did not know why coughs set him on edge so much,
but he knew that Sybil's nicotine cough and burbling
lungs, occurring at any time of day or night and especially
distressing when he was eating or making love, had
caused their split as much as anything. Or had made him
believe so.
Jeremiah seemed to skate through the crowd. He took
Childe's hand and led him out the front door. It was three
minutes after 12:00. The sun was a distorted yellow-
greenish lobe. A man about a hundred feet east of them
was a wavering shadowy figure. There seemed to be thick
and thin bands of smog sliding past each other and thus
darkening and lightening, squeezing and elongating ob-
jects and people. This must have been an illusion or some
other phenomenon, because the smog was not moving.
There was not a rumor of a breeze. The heat seemed to
filter down through the green-grayishness, to slide down
the filaments of smog like acrobats with fevers and sprawl
outwards and wrap themselves around people.
Childe's armpits and back and face were wet but the
perspiration only cooled him a little. His crotch and his
feet were also sweating, and he wished that he could wear
swimming trunks or a towel. It was better outside than in
the hospital, however. The stench of sweaty frightened peo-
ple had been powerful, but the noise and the sight of the
misery and pain had made it less offensive. Now he was
aware that Jeremiah, who was, despite being a "hippie," a
lover of baths, a true "water brother" as he liked to say,
stank. The odor was a peculiar combination of pipe to-
bacco, marijuana, a pungent heavy unidentifiable some-
thing suggestive of spermatic fluid, incense, a soupçon of
rosewater on cunt, frightened sweat, extrusion of excited
shit, and, perhaps, inhaled smog being sweat out.
Jeremiah looked at Childe, coughed, smiled, and said,
"You smell like something washed up out of the Pacific
deeps and two weeks dead yourself, if you'll forgive my
saying so."
Childe, although startled, did not comment. Jeremiah
had given too many evidences of telepathy or mind-
reading. However, there were other explanations which
Childe did not really believe. Childe's expression could
have told Jeremiah what he was thinking, although Childe
would have said that his face was unreadable.
He walked along with Jeremiah. They seemed to be in a
tunnel that grew out of the pavement before them and fell
flat onto the pavement behind them. Childe felt unaccount-
ably happy for a moment despite the sinus ache, throat and
eye burn, insidious crisping of lungs, and stabbing in his
testicles. He had not really wanted to be a good servant in
the hospital; he wanted to sniff out the tracks of crimi-
nals.
6
"You see, Ham," Childe said, "the vampire motif in the
film could mean nothing—as a clue—but I feel that it's
very important and, in fact, the only thing I can follow up.
But the chances ..."
His voice died. He and Jeremiah stood on the curb of
the north side of Burton Way and waited. The cars were
like elephants in the grayness, gray elephants with trunks to
tails, huge eyes glowing in the gloom. The lanes here were
one-way for westward traffic, but all traffic was moving
eastward.
There was only one thing to do if they wished to cross
today. Childe stepped out into the traffic. The cars were
going so slowly that it was easy to climb up on the hood of
the nearest and jump over onto the next hood and onto
a third and then a fourth and onto the grass of the divider.
Startled and outraged drivers and passengers cursed and
howled at them, but Jeremiah only laughed and Childe
jeered at them. They crossed the divider and jumped from
hood to hood again until they got to the other side. They
walked down Willaman, and every house was unlit. At
Wilshire and Willaman, the street lights were operating,
but the drivers were paying no attention to them. All were
going eastward on both sides of Wilshire.
The traffic was a little faster here but not too fast. Childe
and Jeremiah got over, although Jeremiah slipped once
and fell on top of a hood.
"Middle of this block," Jeremiah said.
The houses and apartments were middle middle-class.
Image of the Beast / Blown Page 6