Pat shook his head. “And with the risks he’s taken . . . A lesson to us all. Some real ungrateful fuckers in that business, huh?” He had this Art Fleming look on his face, like Doc was now supposed to guess which business, exactly.
Doc in turn made with the blank hippie stare that could mean anything, and which if held long enough was sure to unnerve any quadrilateral in uniform, till Pat shifted his eyes away, mumbling, “Ah. Yeah I get you. Groovy. ’Course,” he added after some reflection, “he’s got all them residuals.”
Doc by now had very little idea what they might be talking about. “I try to stay awake for those reruns,” he hazarded, “but somehow I always crash before Bigfoot’s are on.”
“Well, Mr. News At Ten’s got himself another case of the century now, since Mickey Wolfmann’s gorilla got wasted. . . . Let the others have Benedict Canyon and Sharon Tate and them, for the right chief investigator this one could be a bottomless source of cash.”
“You mean . . .”
“It’s bound to be a Movie for TV, ain’t it, whatever happens. Bigfoot can end up with script and production credits, even play himself, the asshole, but ups, eleventh-commandment issues, ignore that I said that.”
“Not to mention if he gets Mickey back, he’s a big public hero.”
“Yeah, if. But what if he’s too close to this? Some point it begins to fuck with your judgment, like doctors ain’t supposed to operate on family members?”
“Mickey and him are that tight, huh?”
“Ace buddies, according to legend. Hey. You think Bigfoot’s Jewish, too?”
“Swedish, I thought.”
“Could be both,” Pat dimly defensive. “There can be Swedish Jews.”
“I know there’s Swedish Fish.” Basically only trying to be helpful.
FOUR
ON CERTAIN DAYS, DRIVING INTO SANTA MONICA WAS LIKE having hallucinations without going to all the trouble of acquiring and then taking a particular drug, although some days, for sure, any drug was preferable to driving into Santa Monica.
Today, after a deceptively sunny and uneventful spin up through the Hughes Company property—a kind of smorgasbord of potential U.S. combat zones, terrain specimens ranging from mountains and deserts to swamp and jungle and so forth, all there, according to local paranoia, for fine-tuning battle radar systems on—past Westchester and the Marina and into Venice, Doc reached the Santa Monica city line, where the latest mental exercise began. Suddenly he was on some planet where the wind can blow two directions at once, bringing in fog from the ocean and sand from the desert at the same time, obliging the unwary driver to shift down the minute he entered this alien atmosphere, with daylight dimmed, visibility reduced to half a block, and all colors, including those of traffic signals, shifted radically elsewhere in the spectrum.
Doc went automotively groping in this weirdness east on Olympic, trying not to flinch at what came popping up out of the gloom in the way of city buses and pedestrians in altered states of consciousness. Faces came sharpening into an intensity usually seen only at area racetracks, their trailing edges prolonged, some of them, in quite drastic hues, and often taking some time to clear the frame of the windshield. The car radio didn’t help much, being able to pick up only KQAS, playing an old Droolin’ Floyd Womack single Doc had always had conflicted feelings about, on the one hand trying not to take it personally just because he’d chased down a debtor or two, but then again finding himself going back over wrongs and regrets—
Th’ repossess man comes
Bouncin through that
Win-dow! just
Layin’ his hooks on ev’rything he can—
There goes my 19-inch!
My ride’s up on some winch!
Good-bye and cheeri-o
To my ol’ stere-o!
Wohh,
The repossess man, he
Never will be
Hap-py,
Till he’s got ev’rything I need that
Gets me through. . . .
’Cause it’s all just out on loan,
Never really your own,
Look out!
That repossess man, he’s comin’ after you!
Just out of Ondas Nudosas Community College, Doc, known back then as Larry, Sportello had found himself falling behind in his car payments. The agency that came after him, Gotcha! Searches and Settlements, decided to hire him on as a skip-tracer trainee and let him work the debt off that way. By the time he felt comfortable enough to ask why, he was in too deep.
“This is fun,” he remarked once after about a week on the job, as he and Fritz Drybeam were parked up in Reseda someplace on what was proving to be an all-night stakeout.
Fritz, in the business twenty years and seen it all, nodded. “Yep and wait till you start with the Inconvenience Premiums.”
This being Milton the bookkeeper’s term. Fritz, as graphically as possible, went on to describe some of the forms of motivation that clients, typically those who loaned at high interest, often asked the agency to provide.
“I’m supposed to kick somebody’s ass? How believable is that?”
“You’ll be authorized to carry a weapon.”
“I never fired a gun in my life.”
“Well . . .” Reaching under the seat.
“What—kind of a ‘weapon’ is that?”
“It’s a hypodermic outfit.”
“I knew that, but what am I supposed to load it with?”
“Truth serum. Same kind the CIA uses. Just stab ’em anyplace that’s easy to reach, and before you know it they’re jabbering like speed freaks, won’t stop, telling you all about assets they never even knew they had.”
Larry decided to stash the outfit in a sinister-looking red faux-crocodile shaving kit he’d found at a yard sale up in Studio City. It wasn’t long before he noticed how many of the delinquents he and Fritz visited seemed unable to keep their eyes off of it. He understood that if he was lucky, he might not have to so much as unzip it. It never quite became a tool of his trade, but did develop into a useful prop, in time earning him the nickname “Doc.”
Today Doc found Fritz banging around under the hood of a Dodge Super Bee preparing to go out on a collection run. “Hey there Doc, you look like shit.”
“Wish I could say the same for you, bright eyes. Keepin all ’em carburetors straight?”
“Wholesome thoughts and don’t smoke nothing ’s been grown in a combat zone, that’s my secret and it could even work for you, that’s if you had any self-control.”
“Uh-huh, well my good luck today that your brain’s all dialed in, because I need to find somebody in a hurry—my ex–ol’ lady Shasta Fay.”
“I think you mean Mickey Wolfmann’s girlfriend. This is Dr. Reality’s office calling, you’re way overdue for your checkup?”
“Fritz, Fritz, how have I offended you?”
“Every cop in the LAPD and the Sheriff’s is out looking for both of them. Who do you think will find them first?”
“Judging by the Manson case, I say any random idiot off the street.”
“Well come on in and check this out,” motioning Doc into the office. Milton the bookkeeper, wearing a flowered Nehru jacket, several strings of cowrie shells around his neck, and vivid yellow shooting glasses, glanced up with a wide smile out of a haze of patchouli scent and waved slowly as they headed for the back room.
“He looks happy.”
“Business has been picking up, and it’s all because of—” He flung open a door. “Tell me how many random idiots you know got anythin like this.”
“Wow, Fritz.” It was like being inside a science-fictional Christmas tree. Little red and green lights were going on and off everywhere. There were computer cabinets, consoles with lit-up video screens, and
alphanumeric keyboards, and cables running all over the floor among unswept drifts of little bug-size rectangles punched out of IBM cards, and a couple of Gestetner copy machines in the corner, and towering over the scene all along the walls a number of Ampex tape reels busily twitching back and forth.
“ARPAnet,” Fritz announced.
“Ah, no I’d better not, I’ve got to drive and stuff, maybe just give me one for later—”
“It’s a network of computers, Doc, all connected together by phone lines. UCLA, Isla Vista, Stanford. Say there’s a file they have up there and you don’t, they’ll send it right along at fifty thousand characters per second.”
“Wait, ARPA, that’s the same outfit has their own sign up on the freeway at the Rosecrans exit?”
“Some connection with TRW, nobody over there is too forthcoming, like Ramo isn’t telling Woolridge?”
“But . . . you’re saying somebody hooked up to this thing might know where Shasta is?”
“Can’t know till we look. All over the country, in fact the world, there’s new computers gettin plugged in every day. Right now it’s still experimental, but hell, it’s government money, and those fuckers don’t care what they spend, and we’ve had some useful surprises already.”
“Does it know where I can score?”
FIVE
SHASTA HAD MENTIONED A POSSIBLE LAUGHING-ACADEMY ANGLE to Mickey Wolfmann’s matrimonial drama, and Doc thought it might be interesting to see how society-page superstar Mrs. Sloane Wolfmann would react when somebody brought up this topic. If Mickey was currently being held against his will in some private nuthouse, then Doc’s immediate chore would be to try and find out which one. He called the number Shasta had given him, and the little woman herself picked up.
“I know it’s awkward to be talking business right now, Mrs. Wolfmann, but unfortunately time is a factor here.”
“This wouldn’t be another creditor inquiry, would it, there’ve been an astonishing number already. I’m referring them to our attorney, do you have his number?” Some kind of English smoker’s voice, it seemed to Doc, at the low end of the register and unspecifiably decadent.
“Actually, it’s our firm who owe your husband some money. As we’re talking in the mid–six figures, we felt we should bring it to your attention.” He waited half a subvocalized bar of “The Great Pretender.” “Mrs. Wolfmann?”
“I may have a few minutes free around noon,” she said. “Whom did you say you represented?”
“Modern Institute for Cognitive Repatterning and Overhaul,” Doc said. “MICRO for short, we’re a private clinic out near Hacienda Heights, specializing in the repair of stressed personalities.”
“Ordinarily I review all of Michael’s larger disbursements, and I must confess, Mr.—is it Sportello?—that I am unfamiliar with any dealings he may have had with you.”
Doc’s nose had begun to run, a sure sign that he was onto something here. “Perhaps, given the sum in question, it might be easier after all to work through your attorney. . . .”
It took her a tenth of a second to calculate how much of a shark-bite out of the surfboard that might involve. “Not at all, Mr. Sportello. Perhaps it’s only your voice . . . but you may consider me officially intrigued.”
In a former en suite broom closet at the office, Doc had assembled a collection of disguises. He decided today on a double-breasted velour suit from Zeidler & Zeidler, and found a short-hair wig that almost matched the suit. He considered a glue-on mustache but figured simpler would be better—switched his sandals for standard-issue loafers and put on a tie narrower and less colorful than currently fashionable, hoping Mrs. Wolfmann would read this as pathetically unhip. Looking in the mirror, he almost recognized himself. Groovy. He considered lighting a joint but resisted the impulse.
At the print shop down the street, his friend Jake, used to rush orders, ran him off a couple-three business cards with the legend MICRO—RECONFIGURING SOUTHLAND BRAINS SINCE 1966. LARRY SPORTELLO, LICENSED ASSOCIATE, which was true enough, long as you meant a California driver’s license.
On the Coast Highway about halfway to the Wolfmann residence, the Bonzo Dog Band cover of “Bang Bang” came on from KRLA in Pasadena, and Doc cranked up the Vibrasonic. As he moved up into the hills, the reception began to fade, so he drove slower, but eventually lost the signal. Before long he found himself on a sunny street somewhere in the Santa Monica Mountains, parked near a house with high stucco walls, over which flowers of some exotic creeper poured in a flame-colored cascade. Doc thought he spotted somebody looking down at him from one of the openings of a Mission-style loggia running the length of the top floor. Heat of some kind, a sniper no doubt, though federal or local, who knew?
A presentable young Chicana in jeans and an old SC sweatshirt answered the door and checked him out with dramatically made-up eyes. “She’s hanging by the pool with all the police and them. Come on upstairs.”
It was a reverse floor plan, with bedrooms on the entrance level and then upstairs the kitchen, maybe more than one, and various entertainment areas. The house should have been full of law enforcement. Instead the boys from Protect and Serve had set up a command post at the pool cabana, somewhere out in back. Like getting in some last-minute free catering before their federal overlords showed up. Sounds of distant splashing, rock ’n’ roll radio, eating between meals. Some kidnapping.
As if auditioning for widowhood, Sloane Wolfmann strolled in from poolside wearing black spike-heeled sandals, a headband with a sheer black veil, and a black bikini of negligible size made of the same material as the veil. She wasn’t exactly an English rose, maybe more like an English daffodil, very pale, blond, reedy, probably bruised easily, overdid her eye makeup like everybody else. Miniskirts were invented for young women like her.
In the time it took her to lead him through a dim sunken interior full of taupe carpeting, suede upholstery, and teak, which seemed to extend indefinitely in the direction of Pasadena, Doc learned that she had a degree from the London School of Economics, had recently begun studying tantric yoga, and had met Mickey Wolfmann originally in Las Vegas. She waved at a picture on the wall, which looked like a blowup of an eight-by-ten glossy from the lobby area of some nightclub. “Why, goodness,” said Doc, “it’s you, isn’t it?”
Sloane made with the half-frown, half-smirk Doc had noticed among minor- and ex-showbiz people trying to be modest. “My lurid youth. I was one of those notorious Vegas showgirls, working at one of the casinos. Up onstage in those days, with the lights, the eyelashes, all the makeup, we did look fairly much alike, but Michael, something of a connoisseur in these matters as I was later to learn, said that he picked me out the minute I walked on, and after that I was really the only one he could see. Romantic isn’t it, yes, certainly unexpected—next thing either of us knew, we were down at the Little Church of the West, and I had this on my finger,” flashing a gigantic marquise-cut diamond up in the double digits someplace with respect to carats.
She had told the story hundreds of times, but that was all right. “Handsome stone,” Doc said.
Like an actress hitting her mark, she had come to a pause beneath a looming portrait of Mickey Wolfmann, shown with a distant stare, as if scanning the L.A. Basin to its farthest horizons for buildable lots. She whirled to face Doc and smiled sociably. “Here we are, then.”
Doc noticed a sort of fake chiseled stone frieze above the portrait, which read, ONCE YOU GET THAT FIRST STAKE DRIVEN, NOBODY CAN STOP YOU.—ROBERT MOSES.
“A great American, and Michael’s inspiration,” said Sloane. “That’s always been his motto.”
“I thought Dr. Van Helsing said that.”
She’d found and stopped exactly inside a flattering convergence of lights that made her look like some contract star of the grand studio era, about to let loose with an emotional speech at some less expensive acto
r. Doc tried not to glance around too obviously to see where the light was coming from, but she noticed the flicker off his eyeballs.
“Do you like the lighting? Jimmy Wong Howe did it for us years ago.”
“The D.P. on Body and Soul wasn’t he? Not to mention They Made Me a Criminal, Dust Be My Destiny, Saturday’s Children—”
“Those,” quizzically, “are all . . . John Garfield movies.”
“Well . . . yes?”
“Jimmy did film other actors.”
“I’m sure he did . . . oh, and Out of the Fog, too, where John Garfield is this evil gangster—”
“Actually, what I find memorable about that picture is the way Jimmy lit Ida Lupino, which, now I think of it, had a lot to do with selling me on this house. Jimmy was certainly fond enough of specular highlights, all that prize-fighter sweat and chrome and jewelry and sequins and so forth . . . but his work also had such a spiritual quality—you look at Ida Lupino in her closeups—those eyes!—and instead of hard-edged lamp reflections there’s this glow, this purity, almost as if it’s coming from inside—. . . . Excuse me, is that what I think it is?”
“Darn! It’s that Ida Lupino, every time her name comes up, so does this. Please don’t take it personally.”
“How curious. I can’t recall ever feeling that way about John Garfield . . . but as I have a meditation appointment at one, we might find time for drinks, if we guzzle them down fast enough, and perhaps you can even tell me what you’re doing here. Luz!”
The young lady who’d let him in appeared from the artfully sculpted shadows. “Señora?”
“The midday refrescos now, if you wouldn’t mind, Luz. I do hope, Mr. Sportello, that margaritas will be satisfactory—though given your film preferences, perhaps some sort of beer and whiskey arrangement would be more appropriate?”
“Thank you, Mrs. Wolfmann, tequila’s just fine—and what a welcome relief not to be offered any ‘pot’! I’ll never understand what these hippies see in the stuff! Do you mind if I smoke a normal cigarette, by the way?”
Inherent Vice Page 6
