SMOKING MIRROR BLUES_The Return of Tezcatlipoca

by Ernest Hogan

  Lila jumped up from the bed and nervously hopped around. "What's keeping that pizza? I'm starving!"

  "It's Dead Daze," said Zen. "Things are crazy."

  "Did you tell them that we were Olvidadoids, and have total credit?" said Lila.

  "Of course," said Chucho, "I even told them that we knew Smokey."

  "Did it do any good?" asked Zen.

  "The gal said, 'sumato!'" said Chucho.

  They all laughed.

  *

  I am confirming that Xochitl reached a conapt on Hollywood Boulevard and some Olvidadoids would not let her in. She was then attacked by a large black woman. The two of them went off together, on an electric scooter. The black woman drove, while Xochitl rode and actually put her arms around the black woman. They are obviously lovers. This could be a sodomite conspiracy. There is no way to tell if Xochitl passed the god-simulating program to either the gangsters or the black woman. Some agents should be dispatched to watch the conapt and Olvidadoids. I am following Xochitl and the black woman. May God have mercy on all their souls.

  *

  Ralph felt he was being watched as he reached Beto's address. The streets were now crowded and noisy. It was far too much visual information for Ralph to take in. He could feel eyes locking onto him, but when he looked to see . . . there were too many people. Maybe he was just being paranoid.

  *

  A white male with a pale tan, balding brown hair, in his thirties, wearing Shanghai walking shoes, out-of-style, loose fitting jeans, a Sunstone calendar T-shirt, and Israeli sunglasses has approached the Hollywood conapt. May God have mercy on his soul.

  *

  "A lot of this activity is centered around a conapt quite near to us," said Tan Tien, as she went over the data.

  "Yes," said Zobop, who was following the new stuff that was coming in through a display near his left eye as he maneuvered through the crowds. "They ordered a pizza. There have been some calls from nearby in the street. Someone is watching who goes near. And people have been trying to get in. Maybe I should go check things out."

  "You're reading my mind again," said Tan Tien.

  *

  A pizza-delivery man was leaving the conapt as Ralph approached the door. He was walking at full speed, leading with his empty insulation case, and nearly knocked Ralph over.

  "Damn gangsters," he muttered. "Never tip."

  The door slammed shut just as Ralph was about to walk through it.

  Gangsters? he thought. Did he say gangsters? Yeah, it figures that good ol' Beto would have gang connections. He always went on and on about how he thought gangsters were idiots, but then he kept claiming to know everything about every barrio on the North American continent. He did once show off to me by telling me what that South Phoenix graffiti meant. This is probably it. He missed – like they said in the old days, the wrong homeboy, and got killed. Now the guys inside will insist on my giving the right answer to their gang sign, whatever I do will be wrong, and I'll end up splattered all over the Hollywood pavement.

  He decided to turn around and run. Go back to LAX, use his Worldkom expense account to buy a ticket to Brasilia, then run out into the jungle and keep running until he was either eaten by pirañha or had found El Dorado.

  No. That wasn't a good idea. Worldkom would track him down no matter where he ran. And besides, his wife would never forgive him, and his daughter would grow up blaming all her problems on his not being there . . .

  Before he could decide what to do or not to do, his hand was knocking on the door.

  When it opened, he screamed, "Don't shoot!"

  "What?" asked Chucho, who was holding a limp slice of Hawaiian-style pizza made with pepperoni instead of ham.

  "Who are you?" asked Lila, sucking in a string of mozzarella as she struck a sentinel-like pose.

  "Whaddya wan?" said Zen with his mouth full.

  Ralph swallowed hard and stared. His hand shook – he didn't know if he should put them like in some action movie. These kids were all dressed and madeup in black and blue – which must have been their gang's colors.

  Lila licked her lips and pulled out a black and blue Bic disposable, making a spectacle of flicking off the safety.

  Without any words – or stopping to wipe the pizza-grease off their hands, Zen and Chucho flicked their Bics at Ralph.

  A lone, cold bead of sweat ran from his receding hairline to his upper lip where it spread out and leaked its way to his dry tongue. It tasted awful. At the moment, Ralph didn't care.

  Lila took a few steps closer to Ralph, keeping the Bic aimed right between his quivering grey eyes. "These premises are under official Olvidadoid control, sir," she said, "Do you have any official corporate or gang business that requires you to be here?"

  Ralph took a deep breath, then said, "I'm looking for Beto Orozco. He's supposed to live here."

  Chucho cracked a malicious, toothy smile. "Never heard of him."

  "Me neither," said Zen, with a street-predator frown.

  "As far as we know," said Lila, looking at Ralph down the plastic barrel of her Bic, "this conapt is Los Olvidadoid property. We have never heard of any Beto Orozco. Since you have no official business here, you are trespassing, and we are authorized to use deadly force against you. One . . ."

  "Two," said Zen, who then glanced at Chucho.

  Before Chucho could say "three," Ralph was running through the costumed crowd for Hollywood and Vine.

  I'm going to die in El Lay, he thought, My mother always told me, "Stay the hell away from Los Angeles – that place will eat you alive!"

  *

  A pizza was delivered to the Hollywood conapt. The pale, balding man has left the conapt, running. Something is going on there. This needs to be investigated. And may God have mercy on their souls.

  *

  It embarrassed Caldonia, but Lesbos West was just a short walk away, and she had unofficial sister credit there; so what if the regulars thought she was suffering a horrid lapse in taste by bringing in some dirty-haired Mexican cross-dresser in a rumpled, ugly suit? Sure enough, the homely dykes whose fat, lumpy asses seemed to be permanently grafted to the barstools up front, groaned, shook their heads, and stuck their fingers down their throats.

  "For the Goddess's sake, Caldonia, " said this one three-hundred pound half-Greek bitch, "I hope she's at least a good lay!"

  "Better than you ever were," Caldonia said.

  The bitch's eyebrows formed an inverted "V" over her sad, brown eyes, and she grumbled into her Bacardi 151 and Coke.

  Xochitl didn't notice the altercation. Neither did she notice the mural of women of all races in all kinds of embraces or the way the butch, naked, spray-on faux rust-coated metal beams contrasted with the frilly, pink, foo-foo furnishing. The smell of edible substances being cooked and served up hot had her mouth and eyes watering.

  Caldonia guided her to a booth in the back without touching her – which caused a few of the patrons who were expressing their disgust at Xochitl to start checking her out.

  Even the crew-cutted waitress gave Xochitl the eye. Xochitl didn't notice, she was watching an elderly couple eating a delicious-smelling soup across the way. She was almost drooling.

  "Well," said the waitress, ignoring Caldonia, while doing elevator eyes all over Xochitl, "What'll it be, girls?"

  "Stoli and water for me," said Caldonia.

  "Solo agua – I mean, just water, plain," said Xochitl.

  The waitress wrote it down as if Xochitl had ordered an seven-course meal. "Very good, sweetie. Would you like anything else – something to eat, an appetizer, our octopus sushi is world-famous!"

  Caldonia sneered.

  "Oh yes," said Xochitl. "I am a very hungry. Could I have the soup those ladies have?"

  "Ah, yes!" The waitress winked. "That's the house specialty – tiger penis soup!"

  It took Xochitl a while to do the translation into Spanish in her head. She looked shocked.

  The waitress put a pudgy hand on Xochitl's
arm. "Oh, don't worry hon! It's all legal. They come from cloned tigers from a farm near Oxnard."

  "It smells good," Xochitl said.

  "It's wonderful!" The waitress's hand briefly touched one of Xochitl's breasts through the layers of her father's old suit.

  Xochitl cracked a wicked smile. "I will try it then."

  "I knew you were a good girl," said the waitress.

  "She certainly is friendly," Xochitl said to Caldonia.

  "It's a friendly place," said Caldonia. "Now, tell me, how do you know this xau-xau Beto guy?"

  "It is a long story," said Xochitl, "and my English is not too good."

  "I got time," said Caldonia.

  *

  Xochitl and the black woman have gone into a notorious hang- out for female advocates of unnatural sex! This is worse than we thought! If they get their hands on the god-simulating program, then the Satanic minions will surely triumph! May God have mercy on their souls.

  *

  Tan Tien to Zobop:

  "There has been a surge of the Tezcatlipoca phenomenon at the conapt. Be ready for action."

  Zobop moved his high-voltage Katkov stun-ring up to his sunglasses where she could see it. "You know I'm always ready for action, baby."

  "See that?" Tan Tien said as Ralph ran out of the conapt.

  "Yeah," said Zobop.

  "I think you should talk to him," she said.

  "All right."

  *

  Lila, Zen, and Chucho all laughed as Ralph ran away. There was nothing like putting the fear of Los Olvidadoids into a citizen to make you feel invincible.

  "I wonder who this Beto Orozco is?" asked Zen.

  "Yeah," said Lila. "Both the white guy and the Mexican gal asked for him. I think."

  "Who the chingow cares?" said Chucho. "Think he'll wet his pants?" He put away his greasy Bic and picked up his greasy slice of pizza. It was still hot and dripping.

  "Could be," said Zen. His mouth was already full.

  "What a xau-xau looser," said Lila. "Did you see those clothes?"

  "Did you see that haircut?" said Zen.

  Chucho laughed with his mouth full, choked a little, coughed, then laughed some more.

  "Technically," Lila said after swallowing a dainty, lady-like bite of pizza. "This was a security breach."

  "And I think we handled it well," said Chucho, beaming with pride.

  "Yeah," Lila wiped her mouth, and went on, "I wonder if we should report to Smokey about it?"

  "I dunno," said Chucho as he grabbed another slice of pizza.

  "Maybe we should," said Zen.

  The machines in the room all rattled, buzzed and clicked. Then a familiar voice said, "There's no need to report. I already know."

  It was Smokey. His face was on the monitor. Not a real-time video feed, but a three-dimensionally digitized portrait. "I saw it all." The images movements were choppy, just short of lip synchronization.

  Chucho dropped his fresh slice of pizza. It landed cheese, pepperoni and pineapple side-down. "How," he said, "the fuck did you do this?"

  "I told you," said Smokey, "I'm a god."

  "Chingow," said Zen. "I almost believe it."

  "I believe it," said Lila with a dreamy look in her dark, Asian eyes.

  "This is just too xau-xau weird," said Chucho.

  Smokey laughed, then smiled like a god.

  *

  Ralph ran like a beheaded Santeria chicken through the hazy afternoon Hollywood streets. Running in straight lines was out of the question: These streets were clogged with colorful Dead Daze apparitions that, instead of flowing like good, Legba-fearing traffic, was milling around and coagulating into almost impenetrable clumps like blood in a corpse after the heart had been cut out and fed to some ravenous recombozoid god. As usual, El Lay was chaos city, fractals decaying into entropy.

  He briefly collided with a dazzling under-five-foot-tall-bleached blonde – the kind that driveby rapists love to grab – who was wearing a glittering mermaid dress. They twirled around as if doing some out-of-control, off-balance dance to a hybrid of several of the styles of music that were intermingling in the smog around them. She smiled, giggled, and gave him a flirtatious wink as they careened on their separate ways.

  Ralph tripped over the enormous feet of an albino afro basketball player in full rhinestone cowboy regalia, then bounced off the belly of a beast with two backs and caused a group of children – or dwarves, it was difficult to tell – dressed as tiny astronauts to scatter as his knees hit the hotter-than-body temperature asphalt, giving his kneecaps and leg bones a severe jarring, and shredding skin. As the pain tore through his nervous system, he sat down, curled into a ball, and watched the blood seep out of his throbbing knees, from the cuffs of his shorts to his socks.

  Several beings dressed as vampires spotted him and licked their red, red lips.

  Oh no, Ralph thought, I'm going to be sucked dry by the vampires of Hollywood . . . wasn't that an ancient Bela Lugosi movie? Or was it a song?

  He caught sight of a woman in a police uniform. His heart raced. "Officer!" he cried. "Help me! I'm hurt!"

  The woman frowned and said, "This is just a costume, you idiot!"

  Yes, Ralph thought, of course. This is Hollywood on Dead Daze. There wouldn't be any police on the streets – just National Guard troops, but where the hell are they now that I need them?

  It was then that Ralph noticed a large afro man in a turban, trenchcoat and high-tech sunglasses heading toward him. The black man had an intent look on his face that made Ralph's white skin crawl.

  *

  Suddenly, Chucho's face was split by an ear-to-ear grin, revealing his bad teeth. His eyes flashed with inspiration – a rare sight that made Lila and Zen nervous.

  "Hey Smokey," Chucho said.

  "Yes," Smokey replied, not at all bothered by the sudden break in the silence.

  "Could you make this system get us something to watch?" Chucho held up his wrist where his phone was still getting the Violence Channel.

  "Easy," Smokey said, and was instantly replaced by Tex Chu kicking the face of a three-hundred pound Samoan thug – it was a scene from the classic Death Island Express.

  Then, for a flash, Smokey's digitized face was back, smiling.

  "Don't let anything happen to this conapt, or this system, okay?" he said.

  "Yeah," "Yup," "You betcha," said Chucho, Zen, and Lila.

  Tex Chu in a closeup martial arts scream filled the screen.

  *

  The turbaned afro squatted down in front of Ralph.

  "Excuse me, sir," the afro said. "Do you need help?"

  "Yes," said Ralph, holding his knees, "look – I'm bleeding!"

  "Yes, you are," the afro looked at the bloody knees. No emotions showed through the high-tech sunglasses. "Did you just come from the conapt of Beto Orozco?"

  "Yes." Ralph looked the afro over. "Are you a cop?"

  The afro cracked a big, gleaming, white-toothed smile. "A cop? In Hollywood? During Dead Daze? Are you from out of town?"

  "I flew in from Phoenix this morning," Ralph said.

  The afro gave that smile that longtime Angelinos give people who admit to living in what they perceive to be far-flung backwaters like San Francisco or Phoenix. "I guess you are not used to the low profile that law enforcement has kept around here since corporations have adopted gangs and integrated them into society."

  "If you're not a cop," said Ralph, thinking Crazy El Lay idea and getting tired of being treated like an ignorant rube, "what are you?"

  The big afro laughed, smiled big and bright, then extended a huge, ebony hand. "I am Zobop Delvaux, Ti-Yong/Hoodoo Investigator, at your service."

  With some hesitation, Ralph put his pale hand into Zobop's. The gigantic dark-brown fingers made Ralph's hand look like a child's. "Uh," he said, surprised at Zobop's gentle grip, "I'm Ralph Norton, virturealist game designer."

  Zobop helped Ralph get up. "So, Ralph, what brings you to Hollywood during Dea
d Daze to scrape open your knees on these crowded streets?"

  Ralph groaned. "It's a long story . . ."

  Zobop's phone buzzed. Tan Tien appeared on his wrist and said, "Bring Mr. Norton to our offices. I think we have a great deal to discuss with him."

  *

  Tezcatlipoca was delighted to catch that. He knew that he was being tracked through the mediasphere, and he had determined that the source of the tracking was someplace near Beto's conapt; but now he knew who.

  Zobop Delvaux. Ti-Yong/Hoodoo Investigations. A human name and an organization name. This made it easy to find listings for the home of Zobop Delvaux and the offices of Ti-Yong/Hoodoo Investigations. They were the same place. Good. The business and conapt were shared by a Madam Tan Tien – that according to public files on Vietnamese languages was not really a name, but a term meaning "modern." There was a lot of information technology at that location, and it was watching Tezcatlipoca.

  And now Tezcatlipoca was watching it.

  *

  "Oh dear," Tan Tien said and relayed to Zobop. "A power surge. Something is happening. Something is watching us."

  *

  The pale, balding man just ran through the streets, and he now encountered a large black man wearing a turban. Could this be the work of evil black racists as well as sodomites? This is horrible! Something must be done. I am following the two male subjects. May God have mercy on their souls.

  *

  Deep inside the mediasphere, Tezcatlipoca smiled an intense, lipless smile.

  *

  "Do you have any idea what it is?" asked Zobop.

  Tan Tien looked grim. "I have an idea. And I hope I'm wrong."

  *

  Tezcatlipoca filled the mediasphere with fleshless laughter. Then something else laughed.

  *

  Smokey's phone tickled his wrist again. He did a quick eyescan without moving his head to see if anybody was looking. He was in a limousine, with Lobo Baker, Los Tricksters and some groupies, cruising down the fabled San Bernardino freeway to the abandoned warehouse where the group practiced. No one was looking at him – good. He peeked.

  On the screen was: IT'S GETTING PRETTY LATE, SMOKEY, DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR BODY IS? – YOUR BUDDY, BETO.

  Smokey was shocked. He stared at his phone for a few beats too long.