SEVEN
DOC CALLED SAUNCHO NEXT MORNING AND ASKED IF HE’D EVER heard of a boat called the Golden Fang.
Sauncho grew strangely evasive. “Before I forget—was that a diamond ring on Ginger last episode?”
“You sure you didn’t, like—”
“Hey, I was on the natch, I just couldn’t get a good look. And how about all those googoo eyes at the Skipper? I didn’t even know they were dating.”
“Must’ve missed that,” said Doc.
“I mean I always figured she’d end up with Gilligan, somehow.”
“Nah, nah—Thurston Howell III.”
“Come on. He’d never divorce Lovey.”
There was a pulse of embarrassed silence as both men realized that this could all be construed as code for Shasta Fay and Mickey Wolfmann and, incredibly, even Doc himself. “The reason I was asking about this boat,” Doc said finally, “is, is that—”
“Okay, how about,” Sauncho a little abrupt, “you know the yacht harbor in San Pedro? There’s a local fish place called the Belaying Pin, meet me there for lunch. I’ll tell you what I can.”
From the smell that hit him when he walked in, Doc wouldn’t have ranked the Belaying Pin as one of your more health-conscious seafood joints. The clientele, however, were not as easy to read. “It isn’t new money exactly,” Sauncho suggested, “more like new debt. Everything they own, including their sailboats, they’ve bought on credit cards from institutions in places like South Dakota that you send away for by filling out the back of a match cover.” They threaded their way among plasticratic yachtsfolk seated at tables made from Varathaned hatch-covers to a booth by a window in back looking out on the water. “The Pin’s where I like to take very special clients, and I also figured you’d want to see the view.”
Doc looked out the window. “Is that what I think it is?”
Sauncho had a pair of ancient WWII field glasses on a strap around his neck. He took them off and handed them to Doc. “Meet the schooner Golden Fang, out of Charlotte Amalie.”
“Where’s that?”
“Virgin Islands.”
“Bermuda Triangle?”
“Close enough.”
“Sizable vessel.”
Doc regarded the elegantly swept yet somehow—what would you call it, inhuman lines of the Golden Fang, everything about her gleaming a little too purposefully, more antennas and radomes than any boat could possibly use, not a flag of national origin in sight, weather decks of teak or maybe mahogany, not likely intended for relaxing out on with no fishing line or can of beer.
“She has a tendency to show up unannounced in the middle of the night,” Sauncho said, “no running lights, no radio traffic.” Local sophisticates, assuming her visits to be drug-related, might lurk hopefully for a day or two but would soon drift away, muttering about “intimidation.” By whom was never quite made clear. The harbormaster went around in a state of nerves, as if coerced into waiving all the fees applying to transients, and every time the office radio kicked in, he was seen to jump violently.
“So who’s the mob kingpin that owns this?” Doc saw no harm in asking.
“Actually, we’ve considered hiring you to find out.”
“Me?”
“Off and on.”
“Thought you guys’s all dialed in on this, Saunch.”
For years Sauncho had kept a watchful eye on the yachting community of Southern California as they came and went, at first feeling the unavoidable class hatred such vessels, for all their beauty under sail, inspire in those of average income, but evolving after a while into fantasies about going in with somebody, maybe even Doc, on a boat, some little Snipe or Lido-class day-sailer at least.
As it turned out, his firm, Hardy, Gridley & Chatfield, had been keenly, almost desperately, curious about the Golden Fang for a while now. Her insurance history was an exercise in mystification, sending bewildered clerks and even partners clear back to nineteenth-century commentators like Thomas Arnould and Theophilus Parsons, usually screaming. Tentacles of sin and desire and that strange world-bound karma which is of the essence in maritime law crept through all areas of Pacific sailing culture, and ordinarily it would have taken no more than a fraction of the firm’s weekly entertainment budget, deployed at a carefully selected handful of local marina bars, to find out anything they wanted to know from nightly chatter, yarns of Tahiti, Moorea, Bora-Bora, dropped names of rogue mates and legendary vessels, and what had happened aboard, or might have, and who still haunts the cabin spaces, and what old karma lies unavenged, waiting its moment.
“I’m Chlorinda, what’ll it be,” a waitress in a combination Nehru jacket and Hawaiian-print shirt, just long enough to qualify as a minidress, and with a set of vibes that didn’t help sharpen anybody’s appetite.
“Ordinarily I’d go for the Admiral’s Luau,” Sauncho more diffident than Doc expected, “but today I guess I’ll just have the house anchovy loaf to start and, um, the devil-ray filet, can I get that deep-fried in beer batter?”
“Your stomach isn’t it. How about you, l’il buddy?”
“Mmm!” Doc scanning the menu, “All this good eatin’!” while Sauncho kicked him under the table.
“If my husband dared to eat any of this shit, I’d throw him out on his ass and drop all his Iron Butterfly albums out the window after him.”
“Trick question,” Doc said hastily. “The, uh, jellyfish teriyaki croquettes I guess? and the Eel Trovatore?”
“And to drink, gentlemen. You’ll want to be good and fucked up by the time this arrives. I’d recommend Tequila Zombies, they work pretty quick.” She stalked away scowling.
Sauncho had been gazing out at the schooner. “See, the problem with this vessel is trying to find out anything. People back off, change the subject, even, I don’t know, get creepy, head for the toilet never to reappear.” Again Doc thought he saw in Sauncho’s expression a strange element of desire. “Her name isn’t really the Golden Fang.”
No, her original name was Preserved, after her miraculous escape in 1917 from a tremendous nitroglycerin explosion in Halifax Harbor which blew away most everything else in it, shipping and souls. Preserved was a Canadian fishing schooner, which later during the 1920s and ’30s also picked up a reputation as a racer, competing regularly with others in her class, including, at least twice, the legendary Bluenose. Shortly after World War II, as fishing schooners were giving way to diesel-powered craft, she was bought by Burke Stodger, a movie star of the period who not long after got blacklisted for his politics and was forced to take his boat and split the country.
“Which is where the Bermuda Triangle comes in,” recounted Sauncho. “Somewhere between San Pedro and Papeete, the ship disappears, at first everybody assumes she’s been sunk by the Seventh Fleet, acting on direct orders from the U.S. government. Naturally, the Republicans in power deny all involvement, the paranoia keeps growing, till one day a couple years later, boat and owner suddenly reappear—Preserved in the opposite ocean, off Cuba, and Burke Stodger on the front page of weekly Variety, in an article reporting his return to pictures in a big-budget major-studio project called Commie Confidential. The schooner meantime, instantly, as if by occult forces, relocated to the other side of the planet, has been refitted stem to stern, including the removal of any traces of soul, into what you see out there. The owners are listed as a consortium in the Bahamas, and she’s been renamed the Golden Fang. That’s all we’ve got so far. I know why I’m so interested, but how come you are?”
“Story I heard the other night. Maybe some kind of a smuggling angle?”
“That would be one way of putting it.” The ordinarily lighthearted attorney seemed a little bummed today. “Another way of putting it is, is better she should have got blown to bits in Halifax fifty years ago than be in the situation she’s in now.”
“As attorney to client, this story you heard—it didn’t happen to include Mickey Wolfmann?”
“Not so far, why?”
“According to scuttlebutt, shortly before his disappearance everybody’s favorite developer was observed going on board the Golden Fang. Took a little excursion out into the ocean and back again. Like what the Skipper might call ‘a three-hour tour.’”
“And wait, I’ll bet he was also accompanied by his lovely companion—”
“Thought you were done with that sad bullshit, here, let me order you a boilermaker or something to go with that Zombie, you can start the whole sordid thing over again.”
“Just asking. . . . So everybody got back okay, nobody pushed over the side, nothing like that?”
“Well strangely enough, my source in the federal courthouse claims he did see something go over the side. Maybe not a person, it looked to him more like weighted containers, maybe what we call lagan, which is stuff you sink deliberately so you can come back and get it later.”
“They, what, put out a buoy or something to mark the spot?”
“Nowadays it’s all electronic, Doc, you get your latitude and longitude fix from loran coordinates, and then when you want to zero in closer, you run a sonar scan.”
“Sounds like you’re plannin to go out and have a look.”
“More like a civilian on a ride-along. People at the courthouse who know I’m . . .” He tried to think of the word.
“Interested.”
“Putting it kindly. Long as you don’t call it obsessed.”
If it was a chick, maybe, Doc thought, hoping his lips weren’t moving.
AS USUAL THESE DAYS, Fritz was back in the computer room, staring at data. He had that ask-me-if-I-give-a-shit look Doc had noted before in newcomers to the groovy world of addictive behavior.
“Word is that your girlfriend has split the country, sorry to be the one to hand you the news.”
Doc was surprised at the intensity of the rectogenital throb that ran through him. “Where’d she go?”
“Not known. She was aboard what the federals call a vessel of interest, to them and maybe you too.”
“Uh-oh.” Doc looked at the printout and saw the name Golden Fang. “And you got this from some computer that’s hooked up to your network?”
“This in particular comes from the Hoover Library at Stanford—somebody’s collection of countersubversive files. Here, I printed it all down.” Doc went out in the front office and drew a cup of coffee from the urn, whereupon Milton the bookkeeper, who had been acting difficult lately, got right into a hassle with Fritz about whether Doc’s coffee should be charged to travel and entertainment or to company overhead. Gladys the secretary turned up the office stereo, which happened to be playing Blue Cheer, either to drown out the argument or suggest gently that everybody pipe down. Fritz and Milton then began screaming at Gladys, who screamed back. Doc lit a joint and began to read the file, which had been put together by a private intelligence operation known as the American Security Council, working out of Chicago, according to Fritz, since around ’55.
There was a brief history of the schooner Preserved, of keen interest to the countersubversive community for her high-seas capability. At the time of her reappearance in the Caribbean, for example, she was on some spy mission against Fidel Castro, who by that point was active up in the mountains of Cuba. Later, under the name of Golden Fang, she was to prove of use to anti-Communist projects in Guatemala, West Africa, Indonesia, and other places whose names were blanked out. She often took on as cargo abducted local “troublemakers,” who were never seen again. The phrase “deep interrogation” kept coming up. She ran CIA heroin from the Golden Triangle. She monitored radio traffic off unfriendly coastlines and forwarded it to agencies in Washington, D.C. She brought weapons in to anti-Communist guerrillas, including those at the ill-fated Bay of Pigs. The chronology here ran all the way up to the present, including Mickey Wolfmann’s unexplained day trip just before he vanished, as well as the schooner’s departure last week from San Pedro with known Wolfmann companion Shasta Fay Hepworth on board.
That Mickey, known to be a generous Reagan contributor, might be active in some anti-Communist crusade came as no big surprise. But how deeply was Shasta involved? Who had arranged for her passage out of the country aboard the Golden Fang? Was it Mickey? was it somebody else paying her off for her services in putting the snatch on Mickey? What could she have gotten into so heavy-duty that the only way out was to help set up the man she was supposed to be in love with? Bummer, man. Bumm. Er.
Assuming she even wanted out. Maybe she really wanted to remain in whatever it was, and Mickey stood in the way of that, or maybe Shasta was seeing Sloane’s boyfriend Riggs on the side, and maybe Sloane found out and was trying to get revenge by setting Shasta up for Mickey’s murder, or maybe Mickey was jealous of Riggs and tried to have him iced only the plan misfired and whoever had contracted to do the deed showed up and by accident killed Mickey, or maybe it was on purpose because the so-far-unknown hitperson really wanted to run off with Sloane. . . .
“Gahhh!”
“Good shit, ain’t it,” Fritz handing back a smoldering roach in a roach clip, all that was left of what they’d been smoking.
“Define ‘good,’” Doc muttered. “I am, like, overthinking myself into brainfreeze, here.”
Fritz chuckled at length. “Yeah, PIs should really stay away from drugs, all ’em alternate universes just make the job that much more complicated.”
“But what about Sherlock Holmes, he did coke all the time, man, it helped him solve cases.”
“Yeah but he . . . was not real?”
“What. Sherlock Holmes was—”
“He’s a made-up character in a bunch of stories, Doc.”
“Wh— Naw. No, he’s real. He lives at this real address in London. Well, maybe not anymore, it was years ago, he has to be dead by now.”
“Come on, let’s go over to Zucky’s, I don’t know about you, but I’ve suddenly got this, what Cheech and Chong might call matzo-ball jones?”
Entering the legendary Santa Monica delicatessen, they came under the red-eyed scrutiny of a crowd of freaks of all ages who seemed to be expecting somebody else. After a while Magda showed up with the usual Zuckyburger and fries, and rolled beef on rye, and potato salad and Dr. Brown’s Cel-Rays plus another bowl of pickles and sauerkraut, and looking more than ordinarily imposed upon. “Joint sure is jumpin,” Doc observed.
She rolled her eyes up and down the establishment. “Marcus Welby, M.D. freaks. You ever notice how the Zucky’s sign shows up for half a second in the opening credits? Blink and you’ll miss it, but it’s more than enough for these people, who come in asking if that’s, like, Dr. Steve Kiley’s motorcycle parked out in front, and where’s the hospital, and who also,” her voice rising as she left the table, “get confused when they can’t find Cheetos or Twinkies on the goldurn menu!”
“At least it ain’t Mod Squad-ers,” Doc grumbled.
“What,” Fritz innocently. “My favorite show.”
“Pro-cop fuckin mind control’s more like it. Inform on your friends, kids, get a lollipop from the Captain.”
“Listen, I came up in Temecula, which is Krazy Kat Kountry, where you always root for Ignatz and not Offisa Pupp.”
They got into face-stuffing activities for a while, forgetting if they’d ordered anything else, bringing Magda back over, then forgetting what they wanted her for. “’Cause PIs are doomed, man,” Doc continuing his earlier thought, “you could’ve seen it coming for years, in the movies, on the tube. Once there was all these great old PIs—Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, the shamus of shamuses Johnny Staccato, always smarter and more professional than the cops, always en
d up solvin the crime while the cops are followin wrong leads and gettin in the way.”
“Coming in at the end to put the cuffs on.”
“Yeah, but nowadays it’s all you see anymore is cops, the tube is saturated with fuckin cop shows, just being regular guys, only tryin to do their job, folks, no more threat to nobody’s freedom than some dad in a sitcom. Right. Get the viewer population so cop-happy they’re beggin to be run in. Good-bye Johnny Staccato, welcome and while you’re at it please kick my door down, Steve McGarrett. Meantime out here in the real world most of us private flatfoots can’t even make the rent.”
“So why do you stay in the business? Why not get a houseboat up in the Sacramento Delta—smoke, drink, fish, fuck, you know, what old guys do.”
“Don’t forget piss and moan.”
SUNRISE WAS ON the way, the bars were just closed or closing, out in front of Wavos everybody was either at the tables along the sidewalk, sleeping with their heads on Health Waffles or in bowls of vegetarian chili, or being sick in the street, causing small-motorcycle traffic to skid in the vomit and so forth. It was late winter in Gordita, though for sure not the usual weather. You heard people muttering to the effect that last summer the beach didn’t have summer till August, and now there probably wouldn’t be any winter till spring. Santa Anas had been blowing all the smog out of downtown L.A., funneling between the Hollywood and Puente Hills on westward through Gordita Beach and out to sea, and this had been going on for what seemed like weeks now. Offshore winds had been too strong to be doing the surf much good, but surfers found themselves getting up early anyway to watch the dawn weirdness, which seemed like a visible counterpart to the feeling in everybody’s skin of desert winds and heat and relentlessness, with the exhaust from millions of motor vehicles mixing with microfine Mojave sand to refract the light toward the bloody end of the spectrum, everything dim, lurid and biblical, sailor-take-warning skies. The state liquor stamps over the tops of tequila bottles in the stores were coming unstuck, is how dry the air was. Liquor-store owners could be filling those bottles with anything anymore. Jets were taking off the wrong way from the airport, the engine sounds were not passing across the sky where they should have, so everybody’s dreams got disarranged, when people could get to sleep at all. In the little apartment complexes the wind entered narrowing to whistle through the stairwells and ramps and catwalks, and the leaves of the palm trees outside rattled together with a liquid sound, so that from inside, in the darkened rooms, in louvered light, it sounded like a rainstorm, the wind raging in the concrete geometry, the palms beating together like the rush of a tropical downpour, enough to get you to open the door and look outside, and of course there’d only be the same hot cloudless depth of day, no rain in sight.
Inherent Vice Page 10
