Surfing Samurai Robots

by Mel Gilden

  Puffy almost whispered. She said, ‘Get lost, scum.’ It was the same voice that had greeted Sylvia and me earlier, but it now had hair, claws, and teeth.

  Tankhauser saw me and shook his head. ‘You got a nerve, Puffy,’ he said sorrowfully. ‘Inviting geeks but not inviting leading members of the beach community such as us.’

  ‘Hah,’ Puffy said. The word was a sharp shaft up the kazoo.

  In that subtle endearing way he had, Tankhauser hauled off and hit her with the back of his gloved hand. Everyone in the crowd sucked in his breath. Behind me, somebody began to cry softly. When Puffy took her hands down from her face, they were covered with blood. The silver studs of Tankhauser’s glove had opened broad red streaks across her cheek.

  My water pistol was in the car. I could not fight Gotterdammerung by myself. I probably couldn’t do it even with Puffy’s help. It would take a hero to fight six barbarians. I wasn’t that much of a hero. I don’t think even Philip Marlowe was that much of a hero. I said, ‘Let them in. Puffy. A party isn’t worth dying for.’ ‘A smart guy,’ said Wortan, the big guy with all the hair. ‘Shut up,’ Tankhauser said. He pushed past Puffy as if she were a swinging door. Wortan followed, and then the others in their pecking order. The party guests made a path for them, but Gotterdammerung elbowed people out of their way anyhow, just for fun, Tankhauser turned suddenly and said, ‘Dollkyrie. Make sure nobody leaves.’

  Dollkyrie giggled without intelligence and unwound the chain from where it crossed between her breasts. She swung it casually, and it dragged on the ground as she walked back to the door. Many of the guests were fascinated with the movement of her hips. Dollkyrie was a tall, slim woman wearing jeans, black boots that reached to her knees, and a jerkin of small metal plates. The wings on her helmet looked ridiculous, but nobody laughed.

  We moved away from her, and I said to Puffy, ‘You can fumigate after they leave.’

  She nodded grimly. Blood flowed freely down her face and made growing blots on her dress. She made no move to stop it. I think she liked it. It gave her something to remember them by.

  Somebody said, ‘Call the police.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘They’ll be here in an hour or two.’

  Further back in the house we heard a shriek, and then harsh laughter. Something made of glass shattered.

  ‘Pigs,’ Puffy said softly, but with great feeling. She followed after Gotterdammerung.

  For a while, they tried on coats. Puffy and I stood in the bedroom doorway watching them. I don’t know if I had the illusion I could protect Puffy, or if wild animals fascinated me. Maybe both. Sylvia was suddenly there between us, watching with the grim expression that had suddenly become fashionable at Putty’s party.

  ‘Do something,’ Sylvia whispered.

  ‘Maybe I should leap a tall building in a single bound.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Puffy. ‘That should impress the hell out of them.’ She patted my shoulder, leaving a rusty brown smudge on my lime-green coat.

  Gotterdammerung-less Dollkyrie paid no more attention to us than a television picture would. Each of them picked up coat after coat, tried it on, then threw it on the floor. They weren’t gentle.

  Tankhauser and Sickfred ended up wearing bomber jackets that had torn up the back and had sleeves that were right halfway down their forearms. Wortan was wearing a fur number that was probably a coat owned by some slim local faun. He tied the sleeves around his neck and wore it like a stunted cape. Goonhilda plucked a delicate purple scarf from a pocket and tied it around her head, where sweat caused it to change colour. Thor-head never did find anything he liked. In his frustration, he used his big knife to slash wantonly as many coats as he could get his hands on.

  Pleased as paper dolls with their new finery, they took all the cups of yoyogurt from the bathtub, and more of them from the refrigerator. They piled the cups around them like mediaeval towers and demanded music. Music started. While it played, they sprawled across furniture, alternately using their fingers sloppily to eat the yoyogurt and to conduct the music. ‘Two girls for every boy!’ Tankhauser and Wortan growled in voices that belonged in Heavenly Daise’s menagerie. Harmony from hell.

  My brain tumbled through idea after idea. If only, most of them began. I could just, a lot of them started. I wore ruts running them by over and over again. I was brave enough to take on all six of them, but not smart enough to come up with a plan that would prevent my getting killed. The plans all required a man who was six feet tall and built like Godzilla. That, or possession of a howitzer. Not one of my plans was of any more use than an upholstered dish-pan.

  There was a commotion at the front door, and at first I thought the police had arrived. Before I had taken three steps to find out, something came into the short hallway outside the room where the debauch was going on. I was not in the mood to laugh, but what I saw made me laugh.

  It was a more or less human-shaped rubber bag full of lumpy fur. A face mask was pushed high on to its sloping forehead. It had not stopped to remove its rubber fins, so it flopped awkwardly down the hall, pistol in one hand, spear gun in the other. There was another way to describe what it was. It was a gorilla in a wet suit.

  As difficult as it was to tell one gorilla from another, I was willing to bet my trench coat that I had last seen this very gorilla at the Nurture/Nature Bookstore.

  The gorilla lifted the pistol and pointed it at me. My hands went up. The gorilla called out, ‘Hey, Spike! Look at this!’ A minute later two more gorillas shuffled into the hallway, one of them pushing Dollkyrie before him. Her lips moved nervously from side to side beneath angry eyes. She snapped at the nearest gorilla and took a bite from his wet suit, then chewed with satisfaction on the shred of rubber.

  Spike said, ‘We’re gonna take care of you good, mister. We were twenty minutes signing autographs in that bookshop. My hand still hurts.’

  The three gorillas backed me and Dollkyrie into the music room. The music had stopped, and nobody moved to start it again. Gotterdammerung, fermenting in yoyogurt, seemed to lie across the furniture without bones. Trails of yoyogurt led down their chins and beards. I could have taken them now, but it was too late. Now there were the gorillas to deal with.

  When Spike saw them, he said, ‘You guys got no class.’

  Tankhauser rose a little from the floor and said, ‘Who ain’t got no class?’ He really wanted to know.

  ‘You ain’t got no class. Get out.’

  Tankhauser thought about that. It was a long, difficult way from one end of the thought to the other. Then he swore and stood up with all the grace of a drunken camel. He pulled Goonhilda to her feet. They and the others Tumbled from the room. A moment later, I heard Motorcycle engines. A moment after that, I heard nothing but Puffy’s guests taking this opportunity to get together whatever was left of their stuff and make hurried escapes.

  I said, ‘You guys are good. I wish I’d thought of telling those goons to get out.’

  ‘It don’t work for everybody,’ Tiger said and laughed. It was the wild, untutored laugh of an idiot. Spike told him to shut up, and he did.

  ‘We’re still looking for Heavenly Daise,’ Spike said. ‘It’s the national pastime. Bigger than baseball.’ ‘You’re a funny guy. You know what else is funny? That every place we look for her, you’re right there too.’ ‘Funny,’ Tiger said.

  ‘We all agree. It’s funny.’

  Sylvia came into the room and said, ‘There you are, Zoot - ’ She and the gorillas saw each other at the same moment. The guns wavered, and I jumped for Spike, hoping to knock him against the other two. I knocked Spike’s pistol aside as he fired it. Sylvia shrieked and clutched her arm, where a red flower began to bloom. She wilted to the floor.

  ‘Sylvia!’ I cried. I had Spike by his gun wrist and one shoulder. I had him the way a flea has a dog. ‘Sylvia?’ Duke said.

  ‘Shut up,’ Spike said. He stood there for a moment, his gun wavering. He shrugged me off and backed away, his pistol steady aga
in, but pointed in my direction. They all pointed their pistols in my direction until they were gone. I found a pile of cocktail napkins decorated with surfers and made Sylvia hold them against the wound. She held them mechanically, without thought, but she held them.

  I ran to the front door and looked outside at the placid water. The diving bell bobbed to the surface, making the water rock between it and the edge of the pool. The gorillas were gone. There was nothing to suggest they’d ever been there but a woman inside the house who had an angry hole in her arm.

  When I got back to Sylvia, Puffy was on the floor tipping a glass of water into her. Puffy told me where an emergency room was and threw a heavy blue knitted shawl around Sylvia’s bare shoulders. Together, Puffy and I helped her to the diving bell. The captain of the bell looked as if he’d had a long night. Bags under his eyes that had been wallet-size were now steamer trunks. He didn’t make any jokes.

  The air above ground was cold, and it revived Sylvia enough for her to pull the shawl tighter around herself and to make a pretence of helping us get her into the car. The parking attendants stayed back at their lighted shack, watching us. Puffy was yelling at them as I drove away.

  There wasn’t much traffic on Pacific Coast Highway

  that time of night. Driving was the pleasure it always should have been but so rarely was — if my first day of driving in Los Angeles was any indication. I rolled along with an unconscious woman sprawled across my back seat, dripping blood on to Puffy’s expensive shawl and from there on to the very ordinary upholstery. The big black animal of the Pacific Ocean played in the dark to my left and told me nothing.

  It didn’t tell me if the gorillas had shot Sylvia by mistake or because they were after Sylvia as well as Heavenly. It didn’t tell me if the mistake the gorillas might have made was in thinking that Sylvia was Heavenly or in shooting Sylvia merely because she had surprised them by walking into the room.

  It didn’t tell me what strange power — yes, that was the correct melodramatic phrase — what strange power the gorillas had over Gotterdammerung. I didn’t believe for a moment that Gotterdammerung was impressed by the pistols the gorillas carried. Maybe Gotterdammerung worked for the gorillas. That would tie things together nicely. My problem was that I didn’t yet have enough string to make a good strong knot.

  Chapter 17

  No Particular Gorillas

  A GANGLY black youth sat at the end of the waiting room. His arm was in a fresh cast, and he stared at the jolly posters of snow-capped mountains on the wall opposite him without interest or comprehension. It was very late. He’d probably had a busy evening. The room between him and the wall with the poster on it was probably crowded with ghosts.

  The emergency room was filled with harsh white light and a chemical smell as harsh as the light, a smell that institutions meant to convey cleanliness but succeeded only in reminding you of other stark, dreary public places. The room was empty but for the black kid and his invisible ghosts, and rows of not very stylish orange chairs whose cushions were cracking on the sides.

  I rang a night buzzer, and a young, serious nurse bustled out from between double doors painted the same orange as the chairs. She saw Sylvia, and before I’d had a chance to say anything, she took Sylvia back with her to wherever she’d come from. A few minutes later, another nurse, this one much older, came out and asked me to fill out some forms. She was polite in a way that suggested she didn’t have to be polite.

  I was sitting there with the pencil and clipboard, wondering what Sylvia’s mother’s maiden name was, when two hard characters entered. It was a cold night, and they each wore a trench coat but no hat. Nobody in California wears a hat except to ballgames. A uniformed policeman stood in the doorway, casual as a cat at a mousehole.

  The taller of the two hard characters had a horse face and enough bushy hair to stuff a pillow. The other one had chubby cheeks and a small, neat moustache. He peered at me through glasses with gold wire frames. They both looked like policemen. The taller one ran his hand through his hair, changing nothing whatsoever, and said, ‘You Zoot Marlowe?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Puffy Tootsweet was right. That is a bitchen costume.’ He enjoyed my nose for a moment before he went on, ‘I’m Sergeant Faraday. This is Officer Davey.’ Each of them flashed a star at me.

  ‘Glad to meet you. Do either of you know what a maiden name is?’

  Sergeant Faraday pulled back as if I’d tried to slap him, then shared a glance with his partner. He said, ‘Is this some kind of a rib?’

  I had offended him. Philip Marlowe was always offending policemen, and here I was doing the same thing. I said, ‘Rib? No. But skip it. What can I do for you?’

  Officer Davey took that as a cue. He pulled a notebook from a pocket and poised a pen over it. During our conversation, he made notes.

  ‘We answered a call to Puffy Tootsweet’s place. When we got there, she said you were present at the shooting.’

  ‘Yes. It was done by a gorilla. One of a matched set of three.’

  The two men took a long look at me while deciding whether to laugh.

  I said, ‘If you don’t believe me, ask Puffy.’

  ‘Ms. Tootsweet wasn’t in the room when it happened.’

  ‘No. But she knows the gorillas were there. If you wait a while, the victim will come out here and tell you about it herself.’

  Sergeant Faraday raked his hair again and said, ‘It’s OK with us if the shooting was done by an elephant wearing waders.’ He looked at Officer Davey and growled, ‘We only get the strange ones, don’t we?’

  Officer Davey studied me and nodded. He wrote something down, though what it might be I didn’t know.

  Sergeant Faraday said, ‘Tell us what happened, Mr Marlowe.’ He planted his hands in his pockets.

  I told him what had happened from the moment Gotterdammerung arrived. Neither Faraday nor Davey said anything while I spoke. Their faces were as immobile as rocks. Davey took quick notes. When I finished, Faraday said, ‘Have you seen these gorillas before?’

  ‘Hard to say. All gorillas look alike to me.’

  ‘Ever see any gorillas like these before?’

  ‘Once at the Surfing Samurai Robots building. Again in a car in West Los Angeles. Again in the Great West Arcade.’

  ‘What did they want then?’

  ‘Heavenly Daise.’

  Faraday and Davey read all about that in each other’s faces. Faraday said, ‘Do you know any reason they might want to murder Sylvia Woods?’

  ‘Oh, it’s murder now, is it?’

  ‘Attempted murder.’

  .’None. I don’t even know why they’re looking for Heavenly Daise. Though they seem awfully persistent.’

  The young nurse came back through the orange double doors guiding Sylvia by one arm. Sylvia’s other arm was heavily bandaged and hung in a sling. The blue shawl had been thrown across the whole production and tied in front so it wouldn’t fall off. Sylvia’s face was slack and white, and she walked as if lead weights were sewn into her party clothes. She tried to smile when she saw me. It was a thin smile, and shook like a cheap violinist’s vibrato, but it held. She said, ‘It looks a lot worse than it is. Just a flesh wound.’

  I stood with the uniformed policeman while Faraday and Davey sat Sylvia down in a far corner of the room and asked her questions, probably the same questions they’d asked me, if more politely. The black youth turned his head to look at them, but he had problems of his own. He turned his head back and looked across the room at the invisible ghosts again.

  The uniformed policeman nodded at me once, slowly, just so that I knew he knew I was there. After that, I looked past him through the square chickenwire window at the fog rolling in across the car park like bad dreams. The red neon emergency sign seemed filled with blood.

  Faraday and Davey left Sylvia and came to the door. Faraday thanked me for my cooperation and asked me to come down to the Malibu police station the next day to make a formal statem
ent. I said I would. The uniformed policeman already had the door open and Davey was already outside when Faraday turned back to me and said, You have any ideas about where those gorillas might be now?’

  ‘Not one. But you might ask Samson Andelilah, the head of security at SSR. He didn’t seem to mind that the gorillas had been snooping around his building.’

  Faraday ran his hand through the underbrush again as he said thanks. I watched the three men get into an unmarked car and drive away. Its headlights momentarily made the fog look as solid as a wall of marble.

  Sylvia helped me fill out the forms. Between questions, she stared across the room, which was now as filled with ghosts for her as it was for the black kid. We came to the end of it, and the nurse was satisfied, and I got Sylvia out to the car. She grabbed the knot of the shawl with her free hand to pull it tighter, then leaned her good arm against the door.

  It was late. The air was heavy with lateness, and gave each movement, each word, a theatrical flair. Sylvia and I were the only ones still awake and moving around. Somewhere out there was an audience watching us. Or maybe the day had just been long and complex and I was so tired that nothing seemed real. I started the engine, turned on the heat, and drove Sylvia home.

  Even at this hour, with cars no more frequent than good ideas, it took almost an hour to drive back to Hollywood.

  For a while, I just drove and Sylvia just sat, wincing now and again when the gentle rocking of the Chevrolet Belvedere made her arm hurt. I turned up the long hill at Colorado Boulevard

  and slowed to a stop at the light at the top.

  I said, ‘How do you feel.’

  ‘With my hands, dummy.’ I looked across at her. She was smiling wistfully.

  ‘OK’ I said, chalking up a point for her. I pushed the car into Santa Monica. We were nearly alone on the street. Bums and street people were standing on the sidewalk in goups, talking or walking around like zombies, or bedding down for the night in doorways through which more respectable people would walk the next morning. As I turned down Lincoln towards the freeway, I said, ‘Tell me about the gorillas.’