by Mel Gilden
‘No. I’m a private detective working on a case,’
‘Just like on the late-late show.’
‘Yeah. I’ve been hired by my client to find his daughter. She subscribes to your magazine. I thought she might have sent you a change of address so that she could still get it.’
She said, ‘I’m sorry. We don’t give out that kind of information to just anybody.’ Already her blue pencil was poised over her copy. When I didn’t say anything she ran a tongue over her lower lip and did not look happy. She said, ‘We have access to the database, of course, over the phone lines from Sub-Tech in Glendale. But they won’t give it to you either. Our subscription list is a valuable commodity.’
‘Gack,’ Bill said, trying to speak. I squeezed a little tighter, then loosened up immediately. I was adjusting Bill in my own way, but I didn’t want to hurt him.
‘Valuable,’ I said. ‘You mean I could buy it?’
‘For about a thousand dollars. Maybe. Slink would have to decide.’
‘Slink Silverman, the editor,’ I said, quoting from the issue of Brown Genes I’d seen.
‘That’s right.’
‘Suppose somebody not very nice offered you a lot of money for that list?’
She scowled, barely creasing her face, and said, ‘We’re very careful about who we sell the list to.’ The blue pencil was tapping the paper now in a counterpoint to the typing coming from the back of the room. If I’d been in the mood, I would have danced.
‘Thanks for the information,’ I said. ‘I’ll talk to my client.’ She nodded at me and bent her head over the copy again. I said, ‘Just one more thing.’
She looked up, surprised I hadn’t vanished instantly in a puff of smoke. ‘Yes?’
‘What about surf-bots?’
The fearful look I’d seen when I’d mentioned the police came back. She sat very stiffly now, the buttons of her tits tight against the material of her T-shirt. The typing had stopped, and Frankie was looking in our direction. ‘Surf-bots?’ she said.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Like in the pictures on your walls.’
‘Mister,’ she said as if she were repeating a formula she had carefully memorized, ‘there isn’t anybody around here who knows anything about surf-bots.’
‘What about you, Frankie?’
‘Nada,’ he said but did not continue his typing.
For a moment, we were a room full of people pretending that surf-bots had never existed. I said, ‘I guess the disappearance of surf-bots all over town is too much like news for this rag.’ They were still watching as I carried Bill out the door.
I let Bill down on the sidewalk, and he moved his head as if his neck were stiff. He said, ‘What a babe!’ and I grunted. He smacked his lips a few times as we walked slowly back to my car and got in.
The car was a box full of heat, and we rolled down the windows to let some of it out. Just to hear myself talk, I said, ‘I could ask Mr Daise for a thousand bucks to buy the subscription list, but that doesn’t seem very elegant.’
‘No problem,’ Bill said.
I looked across the seat at him. His feet didn’t dangle over the floor only because they didn’t reach the edge of the seat. He was looking at me, his eyes bright. Or that could have been reflected sunlight. He said, ‘You don’t need a thousand bucks. You just need me. Your friendly native guide.’
Chapter 19
What Goes Around Comes Around
BILL gave me directions, but he wouldn’t tell me where we were going. ‘Trust me,’ he kept on saying.
I said, ‘I understand that in Hollywood, "trust me" means "get lost".’
‘Trust me,’ he said again and laughed his gravel-guts laugh.
A few blocks from the magazine office he told me to park in front of a big square cement building, which may once have been some colour other than the colour of ancient cement. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence protecting nothing but the building and some industrious crabgrass that had not been troubled lately. The fence had never done much of a job, judging by the gang graffiti sprayed all over the front of the building. Chiselled high over the door was the motto ‘What Goes Around Comes Around’. I could tell it was fancy work because the U’s were pointed at the bottom.
‘Well?’ I said.
‘Maybe you’ve heard that Los Angeles used to have a rapid transit system.’
‘I understand certain interests would rather sell cars.’
‘That’s what they say. They also say that these same interests know how to make cars that run on farts and tyres tougher than a postman’s corns.’
‘Can I just get the good-parts version of the story?’ I said.
‘OK,’ Bill said. ‘Without the local colour, it comes down to this. A few years ago some civic-minded types decided Los Angeles needed a subway system. They built some stations and some track, none of which actually went anywhere. The civic-minded types made their money and went home.’
‘This is one of the stations. So?’ ‘So. Empty track isn’t the only thing we have down there. Come on.’ He got out of the car and walked towards he fence. Being the curious type, I got out of the car and followed him. He cast up and back along the fence like a dog looking for a scent. A moment later, he crawled under the fence where some juvenile delinquent had bellied it up and walked towards the building.
Traffic drifted by in another universe, apparently not paying any attention to us or to what we did. Best not to notice. Somebody else’s business. Don’t get involved. A moment later, I was walking across the crab grass after Bill.
Then Bill was gone. I wanted to call out his name, but come reserve of caution stopped me. It did not stop me from walking through the same weed patch where Bill had gone. But slowly. Snails passed me. At last I came to a pair of double doors. They were thick and made of some heavy metal that was decomposing in green flakes. Some artist had taken a great deal of time with those doors, sculpting into them a fancy filigree of trains, boats, planes, cars. Maybe the spiders appreciated it. Bill stuck his head out from around one of the doors, which had looked closed but was open a little. He said, ‘You coming, or what?’ and disappeared. I went around the corner of the door after him.
Bill and I were standing in a dim dank place lit only by the weak efforts of the sun — too wise to try harder — that came in through high brown-tinted windows in long dust-filled shafts. The walls were covered with tile that at one time may have been a sunny yellow. The tile may have once covered the walls and not had great patches missing, showing heavy wire mesh behind It. It may once have not been dripping with long brown stains that looked like continents better left undiscovered. Somewhere, water was still dripping — drop by slow, tedious drop.
Electric sconces in the shape of animals lined the walls like gargoyles. The floor was covered with old hamburger wrappers and soft drink cups and beer cans and glass bottles of various sizes and shapes, from the improbably expensive to the conspicuously tawdry, and the remains of campfires and camps and of human metabolism.
Overlaying the smell of civilization’s castoffs was the smell of dirty water that had stood too long — a thick damp mucky smell that would grow mushrooms under your arms if you stayed in it long enough.
‘I guess it was either this or Disneyland, eh Bill?’ ‘Do you want that subscription list, or don’t you?’ He walked across the tile floor, making marks in the thin gruel of dust and rancid water that covered it. I picked my way after him, avoiding the worst of the refuse.
Soon, we were beyond the area where the weak brown light could reach, and Bill’s eyes glowed like headlights. I looked where he looked because that’s where the light was. We walked down wide stairs to one of the boarding levels.
There were still ads for cigarettes and coffee on the walls, prettied up with moustaches and sex organs and the same old suggestions.
I pulled my trench coat tighter around myself against the cold. It was not the civilized cold of the SSR lobby, but a cold of despair and slug-like unclean
things you might find under a rock in a graveyard. A cold to make you wake up screaming if you remembered it in your dreams some ad night.
‘Down here,’ Bill said, and he jumped off the platform on to a narrow walkway next to the track. We walked along, Bill’s headlights picking out the rails as they curved into the distance. Between the rails was a thin snake of water. Every sound we made was magnified until it sounded as if we were walking through hell with an army of goblins.
I whispered, ‘Are you sure you know where you’re going?’
‘Bubble memory,’ Bill whispered back.
‘Sure. Standard equipment.’
‘How else?’
‘But why? SSR can’t think the average customer would be crawling around under the city.’
‘You’d be amazed how much room there is in here,’ he tapped the side of his head. ‘I know things you’d never think of asking me. But somebody else might. We go down here.’ Bill climbed down a metal ladder. The crossbars sang with each step he took.
We climbed down a long shaft and came out in a square corridor hung with pipes, conduits, and cables. It was much like the corridor under the SSR building, but dirtier. I could feel the weight of the city over my head. I followed Bill and stopped suddenly.
‘What’s that?’ I said.
Not far enough away I could hear scratching noises.
‘They won’t bother us. They don’t like the light. Just a little farther.’
I wondered who ‘they’ were while I counted a hundred steps to where Bill stopped before a metal cabinet like hundreds of others we’d passed. Thick cables ran into and out of it. Stencilled on it were the words Beach Cities Telephone and a serial number. While I read the words, I heard more scratching sounds, closer now. I said, ‘Do what you have to do.’
‘Right.’ Bill had me open the metal cabinet. It wasn’t locked. Why should it be? Inside was a computer keyboard and a small screen. A small iris opened in Bill’s round body, and a cable snaked out. Its end fit pretty well into a female plug next to the screen.
Bill tapped on the keyboard, and columns of letters and numbers rolled across the screen. Bill studied them, tapped some more. Soon, the screen cleared but for the word Working. A few seconds later came the words Database Copied. Bill tapped some more, and the screen went blank as a blind eye. The cable reeled back into his body.
‘Got it?’ I said.
‘Got it.’ He turned, ready to lead us back to the surface, when his headlights fell on the dry, scaly body of a fat white alligator that was blocking the corridor the way we’d come. It opened its mouth and hissed at us. I would have hissed back, but I had forgotten how.
Chapter 20
Hello, Marlowe, Hello
I THOUGHT it didn’t like the light,’ I said.
‘Take another look,’ Bill said. ‘It doesn’t have any eyes.’
‘What’s back that way?’ I pointed in the direction we had been going. The alligator must have sensed the movement because it hissed again and moved its head. Or the moving and hissing could have been coincidental. I had my hopes.
‘More corridor,’ Bill said.
‘That’s good enough for me.’
We shuffled backward. The alligator clambered forward after us. It didn’t move very fast, but it kept up.
‘What does this guy normally eat?’ I said.
‘You’d be amazed what people flush down their toilets.’
‘You’d be amazed what wouldn’t amaze me. Can we move a little faster? That dragon’s breath is taking the crease out of my trousers.’
‘Not unless you carry me.’
I carried him.
All I could hear now was the sound of my own running footsteps and of my own breathing. All I could see was in the cone of light thrown by Bill’s eyes. All I thought about was that beast behind us. They were enough. I was a busy guy. After I’d run around the equator a few times, we came to a metal ladder like the one we’d climbed down before. I looked back and saw the alligator a few yards away and closing. Something behind us hissed. I turned quickly and saw another albino alligator coming from the direction we’d been going. Without asking permission, I tucked Bill under one arm and climbed the metal ladder. It sang about foundries and fear and other F words.
I stood at the top of the shaft breathing hard. Air moving in and out of my lungs could not cover the wild thrashing sound coming from below as the alligators fought. There was an occasional clang as one of them knocked against the ladder. Suddenly the fight was over. Something below hissed. Whether in pain or in triumph, I could not tell. Maybe the two alligators just decided to shake hands and go about their business. Maybe, but I doubted it.
‘You can put me down now,’ Bill said. I put him down.
Bill led us back to the surface. We came out in a different subway station. This one had pale blue tile, and the garbage was in different places, but it was different only in details. This station was run down, full of plenty of nothing and smelled bad, just like the other one. The front door was locked, but not very, and we pushed our way out, breaking the old lock as we did it. I almost kissed the crabgrass when we got out into the bright sunlight.
On the long walk back to the car, Bill said, ‘You took a big chance climbing that ladder without asking me. It could have led anywhere.’
‘Up was all I wanted.’ I shook my head and said, ‘Why would anybody pay Brown Genes big bucks for their subscription list?’
‘Let me guess,’ said Bill. ‘Because Brown Genes asks for it?’ ‘Sure. But how many people can want their list?’ ‘Not many. That sweetie at the magazine could have saved us a lot of trouble if she’d thought of that.’ I smiled, imagining I looked bold and romantic.
‘Trouble,’ I said, ‘is my business.’
The drive up the coast to Malibu was long and hot. Traffic seemed to explode from the street, more of it all the time. Before we got back to the house, I had taken off my trench coat and hat and loosened my tie. Even Bill looked frazzled.
Sylvia’s car was gone. Somebody must have come to drive it home.
The big news was that there was no news. Whipper Will and the rest were lying on towels in the small red brick backyard between the house and the public walkway. They had towels over their eyes against the bright sky. Beyond the public walkway lay the sand, a great unmade bed. Here and there, a group sat clustered on a blanket, looking out to sea.
I leaned out the back door and said, ‘What’s the haps, paps?’
Without moving anything but his mouth, Captain Hook said, ‘Workin’ on my tan, man. What about you?’
‘More clues,’ I said. ‘Not many answers.’
‘Surf-O-Rama’s in a couple days, dude.’
‘Yeah.’ I went back into the house and used the phone in the kitchen to call the Daise mansion. Davenport answered the phone.
‘How’s Ms Woods?’ I said.
‘Mending nicely, sir.’
‘That’s good. Can I speak to her?’
‘Not possible, sir. She’s gone out.’
‘Out? In her condition?’
‘She is not a prisoner here, sir.’
‘No.’ I thought for a moment. I must have thought longer than Davenport was programmed to wait because he said, ‘Is there anything else, sir?’
‘Ms Woods’s car is no longer here.’
‘One of the security guards and I picked it up this morning, sir.’
‘Good enough.’ We each said good-bye and hung up. I stood there with my hand on the receiver long enough for Bill to ask me if there was something wrong.
‘Yeah. This whole thing stinks. And for a guy with a nose like mine, that can be a problem.’
‘What else is new?’
‘Let’s find out.’ I took Bill back to Whipper Will’s bedroom where we stepped around the pile of clothes until we came to where the computer sat on a table.
‘Does that look familiar to your bubble memory?’ I said.
‘Sure. It’s a Rotwang 5000. A sweet l
ittle machine.’
‘Let’s see if that subscription list is worth the money we didn’t pay for it.’
Bill nodded and hopped on to the chair in front of the machine. The cable snaked out of his body as it had before. Bill had me reach around behind the machine and plug the cable in. I switched on the Rotwang 5000. Bill stiffened for a moment and then relaxed.
As he had in the tunnels below Huntington Beach, Bill played with the keys on the keyboard. He answered questions, made numbers come and go on the screen. It all meant as much to me as the pattern of sun sparkles on a choppy sea. I sat on the edge of the bed to wait, wishing I had a pipe or a cigarette so that I could peer through the smoke as it rose in curls to the ceiling. The smell in Samson Andelilah’s office came back to me, and I rubbed my nose. What did Philip Marlowe see in smoking?
The computer made a noise like a bird, and names and addresses rolled across the screen much too quickly to be read, even if somebody were good at it.
Bill spoke to me over his shoulder. ‘What exactly are we looking for? I say exactly because this machine doesn’t deal too well with maybes.’
‘Can you make it look for a particular word?’
‘Sure.’
‘Make it look for Daise.’ I spelled the name for him.
Bill did some more fancy typing. The machine made small noises to itself, as if someone were shuffling paper clips inside it. A moment later, a screenful of subscribers came up with the small lighted bar flashing under the first letter of the line in the middle of the page. The line said: DAISE, HEAVENLY 14265 LOMA ALTA VISTA DEL ORO MALIBU CA.
I took a sheet of paper and a pencil from my pocket and wrote down the address.
‘That’s it. Thanks.’
‘You want to save this list for something? Maybe we could sell it.’ More nuts and bolts died as he laughed.
‘You sell it. I’m going visiting.’ I stood up, threw my imaginary cigarette to the floor, and stepped on it.
Bill typed and the screen went blank. ‘Gone forever,’ he said. ‘If you want another copy, you go down into that terrible place alone.’
