Inherent Vice (24 page)

“
Our pleasure,
”
Denis assured her.

At some point after they were back on the Coast Highway and heading for the freeway, Doc glanced in the rearview mirror and no longer saw the headlights of the sinister woodie behind him. Like a once-troublesome pair of zits on the face of the night, they had faded away. What he couldn
’
t also help noti
cing in the mirror now was that
Denis and Jade were striking up a friendship.
“
And what
’
s, like, your
name?
”
Denis was saying.

“
Ashley,
”
said Jade.

“
Not Jade,
”
Doc said.

“
My working name. In the Fairfax High yearbook, I
’
m just one of,
like, a thousand Ashleys?
”

“
And the Chick Planet salon ...
”

“
Never considered that a career. Too fuckin wholesome. Smiling all
the time, pretending
it’s
about Vibrations
’
or
‘
self-awareness
’
or anything
but,
”
sliding upward into an old-movie society-lady screech,
“
hoddible
fucking!
”

“
Southern California,
”
Denis chimed in.
“
No sympathy for weird-
ness, man, none of them darker type activities.
”

“
Yeah really like where
’
s
that
a
t
,”
Jade, or Ashley, sympathized.

“
And people wonder why Charlie Manson
’
s the way he is.
”

“
Do you eat pussy, by the way?
”

They entered the transition tunnel to the eastbound Santa Monica
Freeway, where the radio, which had been playing the Byrds
’
“
Eight
Miles High,
”
lost the signal. Doc kept singing it to himself, and when
they emerged and the sound came back, he was no more than half a bar
off.
“
Denis, don
’
t forget to leave me the camera, okay?
”
An eloquent
silence.
“
Denis?
”

“
He
’
s busy,
”
Jade murmured. Remaining so all the way to the Har
bor Freeway, to the Hollywood Freeway and up over the Cahuenga
Pass to Jade
’
s exit, in the course of which, in a very relaxed, occasionally
drowsy voice, pausing every once in a while to send Denis down a word
of encouragement, she filled Doc in on her early history of experiment
ing with shoplifting and grand theft auto. She had met up with Bambi in
Dormitory 8000 at Sybil Brand Institute, where Bambi, observing Jade
one evening furiously masturbating, offered to do her pussy for a pack of
smokes. Menthol, if possible.

“
Shr thing,
”
Jade by this point was desperate enough to chirp back.
Next time, lights-out arriving not a moment too soon, Bambi had
brought the price down to half a pack, then, on her knees, much more
thoughtful now, she found herself offering to pay Jade.
“
I guess,
”
Jade
said,
“
we could call it one token cigarette, though I
’
m not real comfort
able even with— ohh, Bambi... ?
”
By the time they got out of Sybil
Brand, they were sharing smokes out of a common stash, and what bookkeeping there was no longer included nicotine. They took a place
together in North Hollywood, where they could do what they wanted
all day long and all night too, which is the way things usually ran. It was
possible to live cheap in those days, and it helped that the landlady had also been inside, and honored sisterly obligations that a more uptight
individual might not even have recognized. Soon they had a regular
dealer who made house calls, and a cat named An
ä
is, and were known
up and down the Tujunga Wash as a couple of righteous chicks you could
trust in just about any situation. Bambi imagining that she was there
to look out for her friend, Jade closer to the edge of misadventure than
she knew.

Meantime, on one of these voyages of self-discovery so common at
that time, in the most intensely light-bearing complexities of some now
half-forgotten acid trip, Ashley/Jade saw something about herself nobody
else till then had seen. Of
it’s
essence somehow, as Doc had already some
how guessed, was cunnilingus. The era, she couldn
’
t help noticing, was
conveniently providing not only eager girls but also sweetly passive longhaired boys everyplace she looked, eager to devote to her pussy the oral
attention it had always deserved.

“
Which reminds me, how you doing down there, Denis?
”

“
Huh? Oh. Well, to begin with ...
”

“
Never mind. Just be advised, boys,
”
she said,
“
you
’
ll want to watch
your step, cause what I am is, is like a small-diameter pearl of the Ori
ent rolling around on the floor of late capitalism—lowlifes of all income levels may step on me now and then but if they do it
’
ll be them who slip
and fall and on a good day break their ass, while the ol
’
pearl herself just
goes a-rollin on.
”

spike
’
s friend farley
had a darkroom, and when the proof sheets were ready, Doc went by to have a look. Most of the contact prints were blank frames, from Denis leaving the lens cap on, or drastically angled room fragments when he had accidentally tripped the shutter, as well as an embarrassing number of low-angle shots of microskirted groupies, and miscellaneous drug-related lapses into sleep or silliness. The only shot Coy seemed to be in was a
Last Supper-type
grouping around a long table in the kitchen, with everybody in heated discussion over a number of pizzas. Coy was saturated in a funny vibrant blur that didn
’
t match any other part of the space, and watching the camera a little too intently, with an expression forever about to unfold into a smile.

“
This one here,
”
Doc said.
“
Could you make me an enlargement?
”

“
Sure,
”
said Farley.
“
Eight-by-ten glossy okay?
”

Reluctant, maybe even a little desperate, Doc figured he had to go visit Bigfoot now. On principle he tried to spend as little time around the Glass House as possible. It creeped him out, the way it just sat there looking so plastic and harmless among the old-time good intentions of all that downtown architecture, no more sinister than a chain motel by
the freeway, and yet behind
it’s
neutral drapes and far away down
it’s
fluo
rescent corridors it was swarming with all this strange alternate cop history and cop politics—cop dynasties, cop heroes and evildoers, saintly
cops and psycho cops, cops too stupid to live and cops too smart for their
own good—insulated by secret loyalties and codes of silence from the world they
’
d all been given to control, or, as they liked to put it, protect and serve. Bigfoot
’
s native element, the air he breathed. The big time he
’
d been so crazy to get away from the beach and be promoted into. At the desk in the lobby at Parker Center, owing no doubt to what he
’
d been smoking since he hit the freeway, Doc let loose with a long and even to him not always coherent rap about how he usually didn
’
t spend
much time hanging out with elements of the criminal-justice system?
mostly getting his information from the
L.A. Times
?
but how about that
Leslie van Houten, huh—so cute yet so lethal, and what was the
real
angle
on this Manson trial, cause in a strange way wasn
’
t it something
like this postseason the Lakers were having, and did he happen to catch
that game with Phoenix—

The sergeant nodded.
“
That
’
s 318.
”

Upstairs, Bigfoot, strangely jumpy today, seemed about to apolo
gize for not having an office, even a cubicle, of his own, though in
fact nobody else at Homicide had one either—everybody milled around
in a single oversize room with two long tables and chain-smoked and
drank coffee out of paper cups and hollered into phones and sent out
for tacos and burgers and fried chicken and so forth, and half of what
they threw at the wastebaskets missed, so there was an interesting tex
ture to the floor, which Doc thought might once have included some
vinyl tiling.

“
Given the semi-public surroundings, I hope this will not be another of these unabridged paranoid hippie monologues I seem increasingly
obliged to sit through.
”

Quickly as he could, Doc recapped what he knew about Coy
Harlingen—the allegedly fatal OD, the mysterious addition to Hope
’
s
bank account, Coy pretending to be an agitator at the Nixon rally. He
left out the part about talking to Coy in person.

“
Another case of apparent resurrection,
”
Bigfoot shrugged,
“
not, at
first glance, a matter for Homicide.
”

“
So
...
who around here would handle resurrections, man?
”

“
Bunco Squad, usually.
”

“
Does that mean LAPD officially believes that every return from the
dead is some kind of a con?
”

“
Not always. Could be a mistaken or false ID type of problem.
”

“
But not—
”

“
You
’
re dead, you
’
re dead. Are we talking philosophy?
”

Doc lit up a Kool, reached in his fringe bag and found Denis
’
s photo
of Coy Harlingen.

“
What is this? Another rock and roll band? My kids wouldn
’
t even
have this on their wall.
”

“
That one there is the stiff in question.
”

“
And
...
just remind me, why do I give a shit, again?
”

“
He worked for the Department as a snitch, not to mention for some patriotic badasses known as Vigilant California, who might
or might not have been in on the raid at Channel View Estates—you
remember that place, all
’em
cute li
’
l kids jumpin in the pools and soon?

“
All right.
”
Bigfoot had another look at the picture.
“
You know what?
I
’
ll go check into this personally.
”

“
But, Bigfoot, that isn
’
t like you,
”
Doc needled,
“
it
’
s a cold case,
where
’
s there any glory in clearin one of them?
”

“
Sometimes it
’
s about doing the right thing,
”
replied Bigfoot, flutter
ing his eyelashes disingenuously.

He motioned Doc down a back corridor and into a utility room.
“
Just
want to look in the freezer a minute.
”
It was a corpse-size professional pathologist
’
s model from some years back, a hand-me-down from the coroner
’
s office, and Doc, expecting to see homicide-related body parts,
was surprised instead to find several hundred frozen chocolate-covered
bananas inside.

“
Don
’
t imagine for a minute I
’
m feeling nostalgic about the beach,
”
Bigfoot was quick to protest.
“
It
’
s an addiction, I used to deny that but my therapist says I
’
ve made amazing progress. Please, dig in, feel free.
I
’
m told I have to share. We have this system of pneumatic message tubes
here, routed all through the building, and I
’
ve been using it to send these
babies everywhere it
’
ll do some good.
”

“
Thanks.
”
Doc reached out a frozen banana.
“
Gee, Bigfoot, there
certainly are a lot of these in here. Don
’
t tell me the Department
’
s pick
ing up the tab.
”

“
Actually,
”
Bigfoot for the moment unable to look Doc in the eye,
“
we get them free.
”

“
When cops say free
..
. Why do I get the feeling you
’
re about to lay some moral dilemma on me here?
”

“
Maybe you could give me the hippie point of view, Sportello, it
’
s been keeping me up nights.
”

Bigfoot had been driving around once a week to Kozmik Banana, a frozen-banana shop near the Gordita Beach pier, creeping in by way of the alley in back. It was a classic shakedown. Kevin the owner, instead
of throwing away the banana peels, was cashing in on a hippie belief of the moment by converting them to a smoking product he called Yellow
Haze. Specially trained crews of speed freaks, kept out of sight nearby in a deserted resort hotel about to be demolished, worked three shifts
carefully scraping off the insides of the banana peels and obtaining, after oven-drying and pulverizing it, a powdery black substance they wrapped
in plastic bags to sell to the deluded and desperate. Some who smoked
it reported psychedelic journeys to other places and times. Others came
down with horrible nose, throat, and lung symptoms that lasted for weeks.
The belief in psychedelic bananas went on, however, gleefully promoted
by underground papers which ran learned articles comparing diagrams
of banana molecules to those of LSD and including alleged excerpts from
Indonesian professional journals about native cults of the banana and so
forth, and Kevin was raking in thousands. Bigfoot saw no reason why law
enforcement shouldn
’
t be cut in for a share of the proceeds.

“
What kind of extortion do you call that?
”
Doc wanted to know.
“
Ain
’
t like it
’
s a real drug, it doesn
’
t get you loaded, and anyway it
’
s legal,
Bigfoot.
”

“
Exactly my point. If it
’
s legal, then so is taking my cut. Especially,
see, if it
’
s in the form of frozen bananas instead of money.
”

“
But,
”
Doc said,
“
no, wait—not logical, Captain
...
something I can
’
t.
..
quite
...
”

He was still trying to figure it out by the time he got back to the beach. He found Spike sitting on the alleyway steps.

“
Somethin you might want to look at, Doc. Farley just got it back
from the lab.
”

They went over to Farley
’
s place. He had it threaded on a 16-mm
projector, all set to screen.

A sunny vista in Ektachrome Com
mercial of half-built ranchburg
ers and contractor hardpan is suddenly aswarm with men in matching
camo fatigues bought in lots from some local surplus store, also wearing ski masks machine-knit in reindeer and cone-bearing tree motifs.
They are packing some weird and heavy shit, among which Spike points
out Ml6s and AK-47s, both original as well as knockoffs from differ
ent lands, Heckler & Koch machine guns in both belt- and drum-fed
designs, Uzis, and repeating shotguns.

The raiding party splash across the flood-control channel, secure the
street bridges and footbridges, and set up a perimeter around the tem
porary miniplaza whose flagship tenant is Chick Planet Massage. Doc
noticed his car parked out in front, but the motorcycles that were there
when he arrived had vanished.

The camera tilts up and there, fleeing deeper into the tract or only
riding around in circles, are Mickey
’
s badass brigade on Harleys,
Kawasaki Mach Ills, and, as Spike points out, a Triumph Bonneville
T120, with no clear idea of what their mission is anymore. It was weird to
Doc watching now, weird beyond easy imagining, that somewhere inside
the place, invisible, he was lying unconscious, that with an X-Ray Specs
attachment of some kind he could be looking at himself inert, next door to
dead, and that viewing this film of an assault that was just about to begin
might qualify as what Sortilege liked to call an out-of-body experience.

Suddenly on-screen all hell broke loose. Even though there was no
sound track, Doc could hear it. Sort of. The frame started bouncing
around as if Farley was trying to get to cover. The old Bell & Howell
he was using shot a hundred feet of film at a time, and then the reel
had to be changed, so the coverage was a little jumpy. There were also three built-in turret lenses, long, normal, and wide-angle, that could be
rotated as needed in front of the gate, often during the shot.

The footage, almost too clearly, showed Glen Charlock getting shot down by one of the masked gunmen. There it was, the money shot— Glen unarmed, moving in some kind of prison-yard crouch trying to
look bad when all that really came through was the fear that owned him,
and how much he didn
’
t want to die. The light wasn
’
t protecting him,
not the way it will sometimes protect the actors in a movie, the way mov
iegoers have gotten used to. This wasn
’
t studio light, only the indiscrimi
nate L.A. sun, but somehow it was singling out Glen, setting him apart as the one who would not be spared. The shooter was used to handling small arms in the dutiful way of a rifle-range commando—no bravado, no shouting or abuse or firing from the crotch—he took his time, you
could see him paying attention to his breath as he sighted Glen, led him,
took him down with silent three-shot bursts, though several more than were needed.