“Our Lady the Queen of the Angels.”
“No shit?” The driver looked at Younger in the rearview mirror. “That’s pretty, Queen of Angels. Ain’t no angels left around here.” He clucked his tongue and looked out the side window. All around the cab Chinese people hurried home from work before stores with bright lettered signs:
HUNG LEE IMPORTERS
KWON LUNG SUPERMARKET
HOT DUCKS DRUGS
“No angels left here, chief, only Chinks.”
Younger twisted uneasily in his seat. “Just keep your eyes on the road, would you?”
“This whole Chinatown area nearly burned down five years ago, in thirty-eight. Too bad it didn’t all go. I’m not partial to Asiatics. My wife is right. Japs, Chinks, all those yellows are in this war together. It may not look it right now, but you’ll notice your colored peoples will always stick together against whites in the end. You ever notice that?”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that about Hitler.”
“What do you mean?” The driver looked into the rearview mirror.
“Forget it. Can’t you make this old tub go any faster?”
“I’m doing forty now in downtown traffic! This isn’t exactly a new Packard I’m driving!”
In the distance Younger noticed broad skirts of palm trees silhouetted in the haze of sunset behind low buildings along the broad boulevard. Above the tall palms sparkling white bungalows with red-tiled roofs climbed jaggedly up hillsides like a primitive Mexican village hurriedly sketched against the backdrop of a cosmopolitan city. The full height of the palms came into view as the cab sped by Echo Park. Behind a small white boathouse the smooth expanse of lake was ringed by more palms. Flocks of pigeons, the underwhite of their wings flashing in last light, circled calm water toward the far shore where Younger once rowed Kathleen. He thought of Kathleen’s face, obscured beneath the broad brim of the straw hat, sunlight etching her body outlined sharply against the long thin dress, the brilliance of her red lips, and the breathlessness of her breathing. The thought of Kathleen’s bright lips was dazzled from Younger’s mind by the abrupt reality of a golden dome, rising atop an enormous oblong building that unfolded against the sky like a concrete tulip. The gold of the dome flared blood red in the sunset.
“My wife says that temple was built in 1922 by Aimee Semple McPherson, the preacher woman. My wife says Aimee built it as a monument to herself so she would never be forgotten in this town, even after she walked into the tide and drowned herself out in Santa Monica.”
The cab driver’s sudden pronouncement jerked Younger to attention, but not to admire the incongruity of the temple they passed by. He was struck by the stark immediacy of a forty-foot-high black-and-white billboard perched opposite the temple on the roof of a mattress factory: DIALGOD. The billboard faced off against the gold dome of Aimee Semple McPherson’s Angelus Temple in what appeared to be a holy duel of monolithic design against monolithic statement. Younger settled back into his seat nervously, the gun rubbing irritatingly against the skin of his stomach; the cab driver kept a suspicious gaze on him through the mirror.
“Watch out for that truck!”
The cab driver wheeled sharply back into his own lane just as Younger screamed at him, then gunned the engine and shot down the narrowing boulevard, walled in on both sides by one squared-off block of apartment buildings after another, marching endlessly, their five-story height only occasionally broken by a single-story grocery store offering a sudden relief of darkening sky behind it, like a perfect row of teeth with one tooth knocked cleanly out.
“Put it over here, driver!”
The driver pulled over in the middle of a block of stores, scraping along the high curb to a stop before a busy drugstore; above its swinging glass doors an elaborate neon scroll announced: SCHWAB’S PHARMACY.
“What do you want to stop here for? You got a headache or something? Need an aspirin?”
Younger swung open the door. “Everybody who comes to Hollywood to be discovered as a movie star always ends up at Schwab’s; they know everything about the town. Who better to ask?” Younger jumped out and pushed his way through the swinging doors into the crowded store. Cash registers clacked and rang like a bank of overworked typewriters. A long row of people had their backs to Younger, thumbing through racks of glossy magazines flashing the perfect faces of movie stars on their covers. A soda jerk raced up and down behind the counter, scooping ice cream and racking tin containers of milk shakes into buzzing mixers. Teenage girls in preposterously padded brassieres shouted orders at the soda jerk as they spun recklessly on high stools. Younger demanded the attention of the salesclerk at the first bank of cash registers. He pushed in front of a sailor with an armload of magazines. “Can you tell me where Holly-woodland is?” he shouted at the woman clerk in pink-and-white uniform dress.
The clerk’s hands stopped playing over the register keys, the glare of her eyes appraising Younger coldly like he was far less important than the scoops of ice cream the girls at the counter were gleefully digging spoons into. “You’ll have to wait your turn.”
“Look, lady.” Younger pressed closer to her. “I haven’t all day. I have a cab waiting outside!” He pointed urgently through the glass doors at the black-and-white checkered cab idling alongside the curb.
The clerk grabbed the magazines out of the sailor’s hands and slammed them on the counter before her, almost on top of Younger’s fingers. “I don’t care if Clark Gable is your cab driver.” She started punching the register keys. “You’ll just have to wait!” She winked at the pimply faced young sailor in recognition like he had just popped up newborn between her legs. ‘Wo one cuts in front of a United States serviceman.”
Younger looked up at the clock above the shelves of toothpaste. It was ten minutes to seven. He turned and shouted straight into the backs of men before the magazine racks. “Does anyone know where Holly woodland is?” None of the men turned around, as if used to people coming in and rudely shouting while they singlemindedly thumbed through page after page of pulp, hoping to catch a glimpse of Betty Grable’s shapely legs swelling out of a wet bathing suit, or the broad blond smile of Lana Turner, her bigger-than-life breasts stretching beneath a sweater exactly like the giggling girls at the counter wore. “This is an emergency! Hollywoodland!”
“Hollywoodland? Brother, did you say Hollywoodland?” Down at the end of the magazine racks a man spoke without turning. From the back he appeared to be wearing a white linen suit. As he faced Younger he displayed in full the linen of his outfit, but it wasn’t a suit; it was a closely fitted white robe worn casually as a bird wears feathers. The flow of the man’s gray beard and long hair was tailored neatly around the glow of his healthy face, creased in an open smile wrinkled from decades of exposure to bright sunshine. “Hollywoodland. Yes, I know it exceedingly well, brother.”
Younger took the man by the arm, surprised to feel the muscles beneath the crisp linen still lean and taut in one so old. “Come outside and tell my driver how to get there.” Younger pulled him through the swinging doors. “He says he knows!”
“Indeed I know, all right.” The man raked slender fingers thoughtfully through his beard. “But it’s been eons since any inhabitants around here have spoken of it. I thought one and all had forgotten. But you can’t kill grand schemes and dreams. No, brother, you just can’t devalue them; they’ll always come back to haunt you like an albatross.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt.” Younger pressed the man’s arm harder. “But we’re in somewhat of a hurry to get to this Hollywoodland. I’d like to sit around here for eons and listen to you reminisce about it, but just tell the driver where it is.”
“Brother, I don’t have to tell him, I can show you.” The man smiled. “You can see it right up there, from the corner.”
“Let’s go.” Younger grabbed the man’s arm again and pulled him along the crowded sidewalk.
“You used to have to go by the old Krotona Palace to get to Holly woodlan
d, in the old days.” The man spoke quickly in a strong voice, determined that his history of the past could help Younger to reach his destination more easily. “Of course, brother, they’ve torn down the palace now, ripped out the gardens and fountains. Made the entire place into another one of those cancerous apartment complexes. The Krotona was like a classical apparition from India magically transmigrated to the once lovely hills of Hollywood. I heard the master, Krishnamurti, there for the first time, in the early twenties I think. What a boy! So beautiful. So godlike. So honest and direct. The true Star of the East. He was brought to America by that Theosophical woman. What was her name? Yes! Besant, Annie Besant. Very rich she was. Rich and dogmatic, a spiritual didact.”
“Here we are at the corner.” Younger nearly pulled the man into the intersection of honking cars. “Now, where is it?”
“There.” The old man swung his arm up like Moses pointing to the burning bush. “Mack Sennett, you know, the Jewish comedic genius who invented the Keystone Kops, it’s his old real estate development. It was supposed to be the new Beverly Hills. But old Mack was hoodwinked by the duplicity of Hollywood city fathers. The august city fathers wouldn’t allow Mack to suck off their main water line.”
Younger followed the direction of the old man’s arm, the tips of his fingers waving toward the Hollywood Hills in the absolute last light of day. “Where? What are you talking about? There’s five square miles of houses and apartments up there.”
The old man raised his arm higher. “Way up, almost to the top, below the flashing red light of the RKO radio tower. Don’t you see it, brother? Way up on top of Mount Lee.”
Younger saw it. A huge sign rolling through clumps of sage and spikes of yucca near the mountaintop. Nine wooden letters, each high as four men atop one another’s shoulders, each letter painted white, sprawled improbably across the natural shoulder of the mountain. The letters seemed a tenuous but monstrous joke that could blow down in any retributary wind. But there they stood, naked as the last advertisement for a feeble civilization, dwarfing the simple beauty of the natural terrain, idiotic and splendid, washed in the ethereal glow of the dying sun sinking blood red into the ocean to the west:
HOLLYWOOD
Younger was familiar with the letters. From the top of Mount Lee they dominated the city of Hollywood below. “You sure that’s it?”
“Most certainly, brother.” The old man dropped his arm and sighed. “At one time in history it spelled out in full HOLLYWOODLAND. Now it is just decomposing and falling apart, like everything else temporal and carnal glamorized around here. The last four letters have fallen down, but you can still see them if you get up close. The whole business is ready to topple over any day, surrendering to time and the elements, nature claiming her own. That’s all that’s left standing of an expensive dream, HOLLYWOODLAND.” Cars were honking furiously around the old man. He shook his long gray hair sadly as Younger ran down the dark sidewalk and jumped into the waiting cab without looking back.
“Turn right at the next block and head up into the hills!” Younger shouted over the whining of the cab engine as it lurched into the bright lights of evening traffic, squealing around the corner and racing toward Hollywood Boulevard, then slamming to a dead stop before a blockade of police cars. “This is crazy.” Younger pushed his gun deep beneath his belt as police ran from all directions, surrounding the cab.
The cab driver furiously cranked up his window to shut out the unexpected and seal himself protected into the castle of his cab. He looked into the rearview mirror and snarled at Younger, his face sweating anxiously. “What are you? An escaped convict? My wife told me not to work that Mexican area downtown. She warned me something like this would happen if I cruised fares in the Barrio. I should of stayed out at Wilshire Center like she said.”
“I don’t know what’s going on! I swear it!” Younger slid down in his seat as one of the policemen banged the butt of a billyclub on the glass of the driver’s window.
“Roll the window down in there!”
The driver obeyed the command cautiously. He lowered the window slowly. “Yes, sir, officer. Whatever you say. Would you like to see my driver’s license?” The driver held his hand nervously on the window crank; if the blue-uniformed man tried to jump into the cab, the driver was ready to roll the window back up and catch him in it.
“No, no need for that.” The officer smiled, tipping the thick vinyl visor of his cap. “No need for your license. You’ll just have to back up and go around. Detour.”
“What’s the trouble, officer?” Younger leaned on the back of the front seat, his body almost doubled over so the gun was impossible to see.
The officer pointed his club up Hollywood Boulevard, toward brilliant mile-long beams shooting into the air from cannon-sized klieg lights. “Barbara Carr. They’re premiering one of her movies here tonight. It’s her first picture since she was involved in those Zoot-suit murders last summer. We’ve got the boulevard blocked for ten blocks. George Raft is going to be here and everything; the fans are going wild. Sorry, you’ll have to turn around and go back the way you came.”
“Sure thing.” The driver saluted the officer like he’d just received instructions to drive a tank over a mine field. He jammed the cab into reverse and backed his way slowly around the line of cars stalled behind him.
Younger leaned farther over the front seat as the cab backed up, catching a glimpse up the boulevard of two neon signs hanging from the soaring sweep of a green-tiled pagoda roof over a surging crowd on the sidewalk: GRAUMAN’S CHINESE. The neon signs impressed their colorful glare on empty pavement in the middle of the boulevard reserved for a long line of limousines inching slowly between cheers and flashing camera bulbs. One of the women, her blond hair cascading as she stepped from a limousine and waved a sequin-gloved hand to jubilant fans, looked like Barbara Carr. He dropped two bills on the seat next to the driver. “Here’s another ten bucks. I’ll tell you exactly how to go, just get out of here fast as you can.”
“That’s fine with me, champ.” The driver jerked the cab back into the flow of traffic on Sunset. “The faster the better. I’ve had some real pills want me to take them to Hollywood, but you and your little fairyland place you want me to take you to, you’re the biggest pill yet.”
At the end of steep short streets running blindly into one another, then looping back through darkness and spiraling along the unrailed edge of sheer cliffs, dropping like a series of unending soundless waterfalls down to the swift running currents of electric lights sparkling up from distant Hollywood, Younger had the driver let him out. He followed the road until it dead-ended, the pavement giving way to hard gravel. His crunching steps echoed around him off the barren hillsides. He slipped the gun from under his belt, holding it before him like a flashlight with a dead battery. In the darkness the gravel road narrowed, a path of soft dirt starting beneath his shoes. He never took his eyes from the guiding light high on the distant ridge, incessant red blinking at the needle point of the steel-strutted RKO radio tower. He followed the red light faithfully, even when the trail narrowed, running off through thick dry clumps of ragweed in a hundred paths no wider than a rabbit. The soft dirt gave way entirely underneath him and he slipped. It felt like he was on the edge of a cliff, hanging only by the luck of the grass tufts clenched in his hands as he tried to keep his grasping fingers away from the gun’s trigger. The lights of Hollywood twinkling below seemed to beckon him; the powerful beams of klieg lights fingered furtively from the faraway city, as if searching him out. Sprawled on the mountainside in darkness, dangling like a man from a thirty-story-high window, he felt like a fool. He pulled himself steadily up, regaining his footing on the steep incline. The howl of a coyote came, startling, like the cry of an abandoned or beaten child. The cry of the coyote carried away from the cliff, far beyond the bright lights of Hollywood and the glimmering ocean of Los Angeles lights, all the way west to Santa Monica and the infinity of a real ocean beyond. Younger held his breat
h, turning an ear up to the mountaintop, trying to hear the coyote walking. He heard nothing until the cry came again, louder, anguished, a snaking lament carried way out over the city lights and crushed by the far-off metallic rumbling of traffic. “Cruz.” The name came out in an involuntary hoarse whisper, as if in answer to the coyote. “Cruz?” There was no answer. Younger felt his way farther, slowly, deliberately, inching toward the sign looming large and barely distinguishable, propped up from the sheer mountainside on soaring poles crisscrossed and strutted behind each letter, spelling out in the darkness
HOLLYWOOD
“Cruz?” Younger waited for an answer. Cruz could be hiding behind any one of the twenty-foot-high letters, the shape of his body not penetrating from dark shadows of the supporting poles. Younger sat wearily on the earth gone cold in the night air. Above his head the radio tower light rhythmically sprinkled the slightest glimmer of red across the enormous letters soaring out before him. He was afraid to go any farther. Anyone could be lurking in the shadows of the letters. He controlled the single access to the sign. He would wait for the light of morning, wait until the letters were exposed and he was certain no one was hiding there, or until someone came up the trail. He heard the anguished cry of the coyote and aimed the gun in its direction, holding off the unseen, the unknown. Even in his dreams, after he went to sleep at the foot of the giant sign and the coyote had long since ceased its solemn lament, and the rising sun stunned the vastness of the distant Pacific Ocean holding back the sprawl of highways clawing concretely out from the heart of Los Angeles, even then he did not know what he expected to find up there.
26
The island of Catalina came up out of the sea rearing and blowing like a humpback whale on the blue horizon. A strong Santa Ana wind whipped the sea into a frenzy of spray around the sudden heights of the island’s barren cliffs. Beneath the bright flutter and rip of a hundred maritime flags strung from the S.S. Catalina’s three steel masts people crowded along the edges of the sleek white ship’s four passenger decks. They cheered the sight of the island like castaways abandoned to a cruel sea who hadn’t sighted land for days, rather than only several hours since leaving San Pedro. Younger didn’t care about the island. He was intrigued by the red of Kathleen’s hair whipping and snarling in the wind as she leaned precariously out from the perch of the upper deck’s railings. Kathleen was so thin and vulnerable, he feared she might blow away in the strong warm gusts swirling about the ship as it eased into the open sweep of Avalon harbor, or she might suddenly be swooped into the air by circling clouds of seagulls dipping and diving over the big white steamer like it was a giant iron-fin marlin to be feasted upon by the most tenacious and fortunate. Younger stood behind Kathleen, closing his arms around her on both sides and locking his hands over hers on the railing. If a sudden wind was to spirit her away, it would have to take them both.
Zoot-Suit Murders Page 14
