by Mel Gilden
The two-lane road was nearly empty, but the traffic got heavier as we approached PCH, which was as crowded as a bag of marbles.
‘Room for one more?’ I said.
‘Impossible traffic is a California tradition,’ Whipper Will said.
I managed to get between a semitrailer and a small car without a top. The small car was driven by a guy wearing a suit and sunglasses. The guy, thinking that somehow I could go faster, maybe right over the top of the semi, honked at me. I thought of the water pistol in the glove compartment.
Eventually, the guy in the little car swung around me and actually got about a half a car-length ahead of me before I made a very snappy left turn into the garage at the surfers’ house. I turned off the engine and sat there breathing hard.
Whipper Will said, ‘Not bad.’
I nodded and said, ‘I heard something once about needing a licence to operate one of these things. All those people out there have licences?’
‘Probably not,’ Whipper Will said. ‘You don’t need a licence to drive — just to get caught.’
I nodded and said, ‘You’re talking to the invisible man.’
Chapter 6
Tough Patter
IT was a wild night. After all the disappointments of the day, after the cartoon shows and the brewskis, my friends went a little crazy. They played loud music and they danced with wide, sinuous motions. They passed around the funny cigarettes and ate strawberry yoyogurt. The television was on too, but with the sound turned down. It showed tense conversations and car chases and shootouts and happy couples taking the right medicine, all in mysterious silence. No one in the room paid any of this the least attention. The television was just a nickering light source, throwing unsubstantial shadows through the cloud of odd smoke at the wall, where they moved with the dancers and, to my surprise, stuck just like regular shadows.
But the party was a little too hysterical, as if my friends were trying to forget the surf-bot corpses out in the garage, as if they were proving they could have a good time despite everything.
Mostly, I sat in a corner of the room watching these unfamiliar tribal dances of natives from another planet. I swayed a little with the music. After all, I’d had a yoyogurt or two myself, and I’d been breathing that funny cloud for hours with that big devil of a nose of mine, I was strolling around inside myself, but so far the neighbourhood was familiar. I was not lost yet.
Giggling, Flopsie and Mopsie came over to my corner and one of them sat on either side of me. I wondered if they were considered good-looking. I supposed they were. None of the surfer guys had any trouble dancing very close to them and taking liberties with their bodies. The girls began to cuddle with me. It was all very playful, like a couple of kids playing ticklebee with their favourite uncle. I considered telling them to stop. There was a lot to consider. Meanwhile, nobody told Flopsie and Mopsie to stop.
It was fun, and I kind of lost track of the time, and the next thing I knew, Flopsie and Mopsie were sitting back on their heels giggling and pointing at the place between my legs. I looked down and saw that my trousers were around my ankles. I wanted to say something to them, something cute and biting, just like Marlowe, but my brain seemed to be sitting inside somebody else’s body. I meant to say, ‘What’s so funny?’ but I only grunted.
Flopsie or Mopsie called her friends over. Only Bingo was still dancing. Whipper Will was eyeball to eyeball with the television — watching the coloured dots jump. The rest of the folks were gone. In pairs, I supposed. Bingo came over to take a look at me. ‘Cowabunga’ she exhaled. ‘Is that how they hang in Bay City?’
‘Hang what?’ I said. Somebody said, using my mouth. I felt myself falling sideways but was asleep before I hit the floor.
I knew I had been asleep because the next morning I woke up. I was in the same corner I’d been the night before. I was the only person in the room, though the remains of last night’s party still littered the floor. I don’t know moved in the night, but every muscle in my body ached, I sat there for a while twitching lethargically and enjoying it. wondering what I would do that day. I remembered with a shock: Today I was a detective, and I had a case.
The kitchen was full of the kind of sunlight they talk about in travel brochures. Through the big window, I could see my friends throwing a sneeve around on the beach. Whipper Will had told me that the sneeve was called a Frisbee, and that it was made of plastic. A lot of things on Earth were made of plastic. I guess humans couldn’t smell the flat, dank odour it gave off.
I had some toast with jam and a couple of cups of coffee. It is our loss that we have no coffee on T’toom. If we could import coffee along with that Malibu sunlight, I could pay Dad back for the secondhand sneeve in which I’d flown to Earth a lot quicker than either of us had thought.
While I ate, I leafed through the telephone book looking for companies that made surf-bots and surf-bot parts. If I could talk to the people who made the stuff, find out why they were not stocking the stores, it might bring me one step closer to whoever was behind the buy-up and the sledge-hammer job. It might. No promises. Never any promises.
The first name on the list was the Acme Robot Company at an address in Culver City. I consulted the Thomas Bros. map book Whipper Will had left out for me and found that the address wasn’t too far away, Not for a guy who’d already come all the way from T’toom.
I wrote a note for Whipper Will telling him where I was going and left it on the refrigerator behind a magnet in the shape of a surfboard.
The Belvedere was where I’d left it the previous afternoon, but not quite so shiny as it had been before I drove it. I opened the garage door and got behind the wheel and started the engine like some working-class hero going to work. And then I noticed the white envelope on the dash. It had my name on it. Inside was one hundred bucks in cash and a note from Whipper Will telling me not to spend it all in one place. Was it bad luck on Earth to spend all your money in one place, or just a bad idea? I folded the money into my trouser pocket.
Using the red light on PCH as a barricade, I backed into the street and drove to Culver City.
Traffic was light, and I sailed up PCH, not caring to take the chances that Whipper Will took when he drove. It was a heady experience driving by myself, and I got to feeling as if the world were no more than that mottled blue ball I had seen from space, and I had it in my trench coat pocket.
I drove up the incline at Colorado Boulevard
and into Santa Monica. From there, it was not far to Culver City, if you’re the type who thinks in terms of miles. In terms of class. Culver City could have been at the other end of the universe. As I drove east on Washington Boulevard
, the buildings became shabbier, the white stucco not quite so gleaming. Even the brilliant sunlight couldn’t help.
The Acme Robot Company was a small square building next to a big fenced-in yard. A not very enthusiastic box hedge ran along the wall on either side of the brown door.
I parked out in front — parallel parking is a bitch, not bitchen, just a bitch — and went to look through the chain-link fence at the setup. There was a big truck nosing a warehouse, and a van parked next to it, like a mother and her young. On their sides, both had ACME ROBOT COMPANY and a cartoon of a robot who had a funnel for a hat. A thin black dog who had been sleeping in the shade of the truck ran at me barking and snarling as if it didn’t know which to do first. It stopped a few feet away from me and just stared. Then it sat down and scratched itself.
I walked to the big brown door, opened it, and went into a room that was so dark after the bright day that for a moment I couldn’t see a thing. The place smelled of must and cardboard and old machinery — not an unpleasant smell but also not one that would give a customer confidence.
I stood by the door waiting for my eyes to adjust when a voice said, ‘Can I help you with something, maybe?’ It was the voice of an old man, cautious but not unkind. It was the type of voice you’d want to tell you stories before you went
to sleep at night.
I was in a stockroom. The floor had been swept lately, but it would never be young again and it would need more than sweeping to get up the cracks and cigarette burns. Cardboard cartons were piled on top of a long table that was pushed against one wall. More cartons were stacked below it and to either side of it. There were a lot of cartons that maybe had surf-bot parts in them. The serial numbers on their sides didn’t tell me anything.
I took a step forward and saw that on the far side of the long table was a thin man sitting in a big leather chair whose colour somehow matched the gloom around it. The thin man had straight black hair combed precisely back from his wide forehead. He wore a grey sweater that buttoned up the front and a pair of glasses in thick black frames. His trousers had pleats. His shoes, which at the moment I could see the bottoms of, had been worked hard. For all I knew, they were as old as the floor. He was rubbing his eyes up under his glasses as if I had awakened him.
‘I’d like to talk to somebody about surf-bots,’ I said.
‘You can talk to me,’ He stood, and I saw that he was a little taller than Thumper, which meant that I came up to the middle button on his sweater. He walked into an office across from the long table and sat down behind one of the two desks. Both desks carried enough papers to show that real work was done on them, but on the desk the thin man sat behind was an old mechanical adding machine as well. ‘Now,’ he said, while he not quite stared at my nose. He was probably jealous. Before he saw me, he thought he had the biggest nose around.
I said, ‘I’m looking for surf-bot parts.’
‘I wish you luck,’ the man said, as if I would need it.
‘Why is that?’
‘Nobody in town has surf-bot parts. I know. I talk to people.’ He made a small gesture with one hand, vaguely indicating all the people he talked to.
I said, ‘Down at the beach, people are crying for surf-bot parts. A smart guy could make a lot of money.’
‘Gold is not all that glitters,’ he said. ‘What exactly is your interest in surf-bot parts? You don’t look like a surfer.’ He peered at me over his glasses. ‘As a matter of fact, you don’t look like anybody I ever saw before.’
‘Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,’ I said. I sat down in a wooden armchair in front of the desk. ‘I’m a private detective working for a client.’
He nodded and said, ‘Trouble is your business.’
‘So far,’ I said. ‘And I haven’t even started yet.’
‘I recognized that crack about trouble. It was the name of a book of short stories by Raymond Chandler. I said, ‘Me and Philip Marlowe.’
He nodded again, only this time he smiled too. He was a very talented guy. ‘I like Chandler. His people don’t shoot each other unless they mean it.’
‘And he knows how to squeeze a hyperbole till it screams.’
‘You got the patter down, anyway. What can I do for you?’
I said, ‘Not much happening at the Acme Robot Company.’
‘Not much happening at any robot company.’ He looked out the window for a while. Outside, traffic passed. An air compressor under the window began to chug. The gentle monotonous sound seemed to make a decision for him. He said, ‘SSR came around and bought up everything. Their representative said he’d be back to buy anything else we made.’
‘SSR?’
‘You’re really not a surfer, are you? SSR stands for Surfing Samurai Robots. They are the biggest manufacturer of surf-bots in the world. They make everything from a fancy model that just about surfs itself down to their cheap-o borax model, which you wind up with a big key.’
‘Key?’
‘Just a joke.’ He shrugged. Jokes didn’t concern him much.
‘Why would an outfit like SSR buy your stock?’
‘I couldn’t tell you. But they paid retail. They really wanted that stuff.’
I brandished a finger at him and said, ‘If I were in your place, I’d be turning out surf-bot parts night and day.’
‘Don’t point that finger at me, young fellow,’ he said as he wagged his own finger in my direction. ‘Greed never pays.’ The old man shrugged. ‘Besides, I’m not getting any younger. I got everything I need. Why push my luck making SSR angry?’
‘Robot parts are just kind of a hobby with you.’
He nodded sagely.
I thought for a moment and said, ‘Either SSR is building an awful lot of robots, or they want to prevent everybody else from building robots.’ — ‘Could be both,’
‘Could be,’ I agreed. ‘Up in Malibu, there’s a whole garage full of wrecked surf-bots. Without parts, they’ll stay wrecked.’
‘Talk to SSR, I got plenty of nothing.’ He repeated, ‘Plenty of nothing,’ as if he liked the sound of the words.
I stood and looked towards the door. ‘Thanks, Mr -?’
‘Mr Harold Chesnik, owner and operator of the Acme Robot Company.’
‘Thanks, Mr Chesnik. You’ve been a big help.’
He looked out the window. Nothing had changed on the street. He said, ‘I’m not very busy. You are from someplace besides Los Angeles, I can tell.’
‘Bay City.’
‘Have it your way, Mr —?’
‘Marlowe,’ I said. ‘Zoot Marlowe.’ I looked him straight in the eye as I said it. He looked right back at me. His face did not even change expression. At last he said, ‘Well, Zoot, business, as you’ve noticed, is a little slow. I like you. I got time. I could maybe give you the Raymond Chandler tour of the city.’
Time was running through my personal hourglass pretty quick. I had work to do. SSR was calling to me, The Surf-O-Rama was coming right up. So I said, ‘If you can dish it out, I can take it.’
‘You got the patter down,’ Mr Chesnik said again. He chuckled as he shook his head. ‘You’re a real tough guy.’
Chapter 7
The Tour
MR CHESNIK invited me out into the fenced-in yard. We walked through a garage to a door on the other side. The garage was crowded not only with ancient machine parts and tools but with heavy grease and the rancid spirits of heavy grease past.
Out in the shopworn sunshine, the dog barked as it gamboled over to us, tongue lolling. Evidently, anybody who was OK with the boss was OK with the dog. It stopped suddenly, a little farther away than I could spit, and backed away from me. It watched me closely but did not growl.
‘Shame, Benny,’ Mr Chesnik said. ‘Zoot here is a friend of mine.’
Benny sat down and scratched himself vigorously behind one ear with a hind foot. Evidently, that’s how he took care of a lot of problems. I’d try it myself if I thought it would do any good.
Mr Chesnik’s old Oldsmobile was parked on the far side of the Acme truck, where it couldn’t be seen from the street. It was about the same vintage as my Chevy, but it had more buttons on the dash. ‘Genuine leather upholstery,’ he told me with some pride. The car’s engine made about as much noise as a bumblebee.
He took me to Hollywood by way of Beverly Hills. This was the long way around in anybody’s map book, but I didn’t doubt that it was the scenic route,
Washington Boulevard
was a wide street with two-storey buildings on either side of it and parking down the middle. Most buildings dripped with enough filigree to outfit a Gothic cathedral or two. Mr Chesnik told me that nobody builds them like that anymore. ‘They build ‘em like cheese boxes now. It’s a style. Maybe someday they’ll build them with knick-knacks on the outside again.’ He really missed those knick-knacks.
We went north on La Cienega to Wilshire. A BMW cut us off as we passed under the Santa Monica Freeway. Mr Chesnik braked sharply, almost sending us both through the windscreen. He yelled some guttural words at the black car as it scuttled away. The words were not English, at least no English I had ever heard. He accelerated quickly to the next street and skidded to a stop at the red light.
‘Mashuganah,’he said as his fingers flexed on the steering wheel.
&nbs
p; ‘If that means an accident looking for a place to happen, then you’re right.’
‘I’m right,’ He breathed deeply, trying to relax. "Mashuganah" means crazy.’
‘It’s not English, is it?’
‘Yiddish.’
‘What’s that?’
Mr Chesnik took a long look at me. You could have tap-danced on the cool strand that stretched between our eyes. He snapped it off when the light turned to green and, at the same moment, somebody behind us honked. The Oldsmobile began to move, but it wasn’t Mr Chesnik’s jolly mood moving it. His mouth was firm. He said, ‘Bay City must be farther away than I thought.’
‘Probably,’ I said. ‘Far enough away that I sometimes need a little slack.’
‘Slack, I got plenty. But everybody runs out. Even me.
After a while, I said, ‘Tell me about Yiddish,’
He spoke while we drifted past a lot of places selling car stereos and cellular phones. He told me about coming to the United States from a place called Latvia when he was just a kid and making good because he worked eighteen hours a day. ‘We spoke Yiddish at home because that’s what Mom and Pop spoke. That was a long time ago, but I still see some of the old crowd. And you never forget the language you spoke as a kid.’
I nodded, knowing he was right, I said, ‘Maybe Bay City isn’t as far from here as either of us thinks.’
‘Could be,’ Mr Chesnik said, but gently.
He turned left onto Wilshire Boulevard
. Watching a good driver make a left turn was as satisfying as watching a trapeze artist work without a net.
As we rolled past the glass cheese boxes that so offended Mr Chesnik, he began to talk about Chandler. Every time Mr Chesnik said the name, I felt a twinge of excitement. I had found the main nerve — detective central.
Evidently, Chandler had been quite a drinker, and, to hear Mr Chesnik tell it, he drank something stronger than brewski. Though Chandler worked for the movies, not many people liked his more-literary-than-thou attitude. But Chandler was a fast boy with a quip. Chandler was, and he told his associates, ‘Actually, I am just literary enough. If I were any worse a writer, you would not have invited me. If I were any better a writer, I would not have come.’ That quip and a quarter will buy you a newspaper.
