Inherent Vice (3 page)

“
Buy you a beer, Slim?
”

“
Was that Shasta
’
s car I saw down on the Drive? That big old ragtop?
”

“
She stuck her head in for a couple minutes,
”
Doc said.
“
Kind of weird seeing her again. Always figured when I did, it
’
d be on the tube, not in person.
”

“
Really. Sometimes I think I see her at the edge of the screen? but it
’
s
always some look-alike. And never as easy on the eyes, of course.
”

Sad but true, as Dion always sez. At Playa Vista High, Shasta made Class Beauty in the yearbook four years running, always got to be the
ingénue
in school plays, fantasized like everybody else about getting into the movies, and soon as she could manage it was off up the freeway looking for some low-rent living space in Hollywood. Doc, aside from being just about the only doper she knew who didn
’
t use heroin, which freed up a lot of time for both of them, had never
figured out what else she might’
ve seen in him. Not that they were even together
that long. Soon enough she was answering casting calls and getting some
theater work, onstage and off, and Doc was into his own apprenticeship as a skip tracer, and each, gradually locating a different karmic thermal above the megalopolis, had watched the other glide away into a different fate.

Denis came back with his pizza.
“
I forget what I asked for on it.
”
This
happened at the Pipeline every Tuesday or Cheap Pizza Nite, when any
size pizza, with anything on it, cost a flat $1.35. Denis now sat watching
this one intently, like it was about to do something.

“
That
’
s a papaya chunk,
”
Slim guessed,
“
and these ... are these pork rinds?
”

“
And boysenberry yogurt on pizza, Denis? Frankly, eeeww.
”
It was Sortilege, who used to work in Doc
’
s office before her boyfriend Spike came back from Vietnam and she decided love was more important than a day job, or that
’
s how Doc thought he remembered her explaining it. Her gifts were elsewhere, in any case. She was in touch with invisible forces and could diagnose and solve all manner of problems, emotional and physical, which she did mostly for free but in some cases accepted weed or acid in lieu of cash. She had never been wrong that Doc knew about. At the moment she was examinin
g his hair, and as usual he had
a spasm of defensive panic. Finally, with an energetic nod,
“
Better do something about that.
”

“
Again?
”

“
Can
’
t say it often enough—change your hair, change your life.
”

“
What do you recommend?
”

“
Up to you. Follow your intuition. Would you mind, Denis, actually,
if I just took this piece of tofu?
”

“
That
’
s a marshmallow,
”
Denis said.

back at his place again
,
Doc rolled a number, put on a late movie, found an old T-shirt, and sat tearing it up into short strips about a half inch wide till he had a pile of maybe a hundred of these, then went in the shower for a while and with his hair still wet took narrow lengths of it and rolled each one around a strip of T-shirt, tying it in place with an
overhand knot, repeating this southern-plantation style all over his head,
and then after maybe half an hour with the hair dryer, during which he may or may not have fallen asleep, untying the knots again and brushing it all out upside down into what seemed to him a fairly presentable foot-and-a-half-diameter white-guy Afro. Inserting his head carefully into a liquor-store carton to preserve the shape, Doc lay down on the couch and this time really did fall asleep, and toward dawn he dreamed about Shasta. It wasn
’
t that they were fucking, exactly, but it was something like that. They had both flown from their other lives, the way you tend to fly in early-morning dreams, to rendezvous at a strange motel
which seemed to be also a hair salon. She kept insisting she
“
loved
”
some
guy whose name she never mentioned, though when Doc finally woke up, he figured she must
’
ve been talking about Mickey Wolfmann.

No point sleeping anymore. He stumbled up the hill to Wavos and had breakfast with the hard-core surfers who were always there. Flaco the Bad came over.
“
Hey man, that cop was around looking for you again. What
’
s that on your head?
”

“
Cop? When was this?
”

“
Last night. He was at your place, but you were out. Detective from downtown Homicide in a really dinged-up El Camino, the one with the 396?
”

“
That was Bigfoot Bjornsen. Why didn
’
t he just kick my door down like he usually does?
”

“
He might
’ve
been thinking about it but said something like
‘
Tomorrow is another day
⁵
.
..
which would be today, right?
”

“
Not if I can help it.
”

doc
’
s office was
located near the airport, off East Imperial. He shared
the place with a Dr. Buddy Tubeside, whose practice consisted largely of
injecting people with
“
vitamin B
₁₂
,
”
a euphemism for the physician
’s
own
blend of amphetamines. Today, early as it was, Doc still had to edge his
way past a line of
“
B
₁₂
”
-deficient customers which already stretched back
to the parking lot, beachtown housewives of a certain melancholy index,
actors with casting calls to show up at, deeply tanned geezers looking
ahead to an active day of schmoozing in the sun, steward
ii
just in off some
high-stress red-eye, even a few legit cases of pernicious anemia or vegetar
ian pregnancy, all shuffling along half asleep, chain-smoking, talking to themselves, sliding one by one into the lobby of the little cinder-block building through a turnstile, next to which, holding a clipboard and
checking them in, stood Petunia Leeway, a stunner in a starched cap and
micro-length medical outfit, not so much an actual nurse uniform as a
lascivious commentary on one
, which Dr. Tubeside claimed to’
ve bought
a truckload of from Frederick
’
s of Hollywood, in a variety of fashion pas
tels, today
’s
being aqua, at close to wholesale.

“
Morning, Doc.
”
Petunia managed to put a lounge-singer lilt onto it,
the vocal equivalent of batting mink eyelashes at him.
“
Love your
‘
fro.
”

“
Howdy, Petunia. Still married to what
’
s-his-name?
”

“
Oh, Doc
...
”

On first signing the lease, the two tenants, like bunkmates at summer
camp, had tossed a coin for who
’
d get the upstairs suite, and Doc had lost or, as he liked to think of it, won. The sign on his door read LSD
Investigations,
LSD, as he explained when people asked, which was
not often, standing for
“
Location, Surveillance, Detection.
”
Beneath this was a rendering of a giant bloodshot eyeball in the psychedelic favorites
green and magenta, the detailing of whose literally thousands of frenzied
capillaries had been subcontracted out to a commune of speed freaks who had long since migrated up to Sonoma. Potential clients had been known to spend hours gazing at the ocular mazework, often forgetting what they
’
d come here for.

A visitor was here already, in fact, waiting for Doc. What made him
unusual was, was he was a black guy. To be sure, black folks were occasionally spotted west of the Harbor Freeway, but to see one this far out of
the usual range, practically by the ocean, was pretty rare. Last time any
body could remember a black motorist in Gordita Beach, for example, anxious calls for backup went out on all the police bands, a small task
force of cop vehicles assembled, and roadblocks were set up all along
Pacific Coast Highway. An old Gordita reflex, dating back to shortly after the Second World War, when a black family had actually tried to move into town and the citizens, with helpful advice from the Ku Klux Klan, had burned the place to the ground and then, as if some ancient curse had come into effect, refused to allow another house ever to be
built on the site. The lot stood empty until the town finally confiscated it and turned it into a park, where the youth of Gordita Beach, by the laws
of karmic adjustment, were soon gathering at night to drink, dope, and fuck, depressing their parents, though not property values particularly.

“
Say,
”
Doc greeted his visitor,
“
what it is, my brother.
”

“
Never mind that shit,
”
replied the black guy, introducing himself as Tariq Khalil and staring for a while, under different circumstances offensively, at Doc
’
s Afro.

“
Well. Come on in.
”

In Doc
’
s office were a pair of hi
gh-backed banquettes covered in
padded fuchsia plastic, facing each other across a Formica table in a pleasant tropical green. This was in fact a modular coffee-shop booth, which Doc had scavenged from a renovation in Hawthorne. He waved Tariq into one of the seats and sat down across from him. It was cozy. The tabletop between them was littered with phone books, pencils, three-by-five index cards boxed and loose, road maps, cigarette ashes, a transistor radio, roach clips, coffee cups, and an Olivetti Lettera 22, into which Doc, mumbling,
“
Just start a ticket on this,
”
inserted a sheet of paper which appeared to have been used repeatedly for some strange compulsive origami.

Tariq watched skeptically.
“
Secretary
’
s off today?
”

“
Something like that. But I
’
ll take some notes here, and it
’
ll all get typed up later.
”

“
Okay, so there
’
s this guy I was in the joint with. White guy. Aryan Bro, as a matter of fact. We did some business, now we
’
re both out, he
still owes me. I mean, it
’
s a lot of money. I can
’
t give you details, I swore
a oath I wouldn
’
t tell.
”

“
How about just his name?
”

“
Glen Charlock.
”

Sometimes the way somebody says a name, you get a vibration. Tariq
was talking like a man whose heart had been broken.
“
You know where he
’
s staying now?
”

“
Only who he works for. He
’
s a bodyguard for a builder named Wolfmann.
”

Doc had a moment of faintheadedness, drug-induced no doubt. He came out of it on paranoia alert, not enough, he hoped, for Tariq to notice. He pretended to study the ticket he was making out.
“
If you don
’
t mind my asking, Mr. Khalil, how did you hear about this agency?
”

“
Sledge Poteet.
”

“
Wow. Blast from the past.
”

“
Said you helped him out of a situation back in
‘
67.
”

“
First time I ever got shot at. You guys know each other from the place?
”

“
They were teachin us both how to cook. Sledge still has about maybe
a year more in there.
”

“
I remember him when he couldn
’
t boil water.
”

“
Should see him now, he can boil tap water, Arrowhead Springs water,
club soda, Perrier, you name it. He the Boilerman.
”

“
So if you don
’
t mind an obvious question—you know where Glen
Charlock works now, why not just go over there and look him up directly,
why hire some go-between?
”

“
Because this Wolfmann is surrounded day and night with some
Aryan Brotherhood army, and outside of Glen I have never enjoyed cor
dial relations with those Nazi-ass motherfuckers.
”

“
Oh—so send some white guy in to get
his
head hammered.
”

“
More or less. I would of p
’
ferred somebody a little more convincing.
”

“
What I lack in
al
-titude,
”
Doc
explained for the million or so
-
th
time in his career,
“
I make up for in
at
-titude.
”

“
Okay ... that
’
s possible ... I seen that on the yard now and then.
”

“
When you were inside—were you in a gang?
”

“
Black Guerrilla Family.
”

“
George Jackson
’
s outfit. And you say you did business with who now,
the Aryan Brotherhood?
”

“
We found we shared many of the same opinions about the U.S. government.
”

“
Mmm, that racial harmony, I can dig it.
”

Tariq was looking at Doc with a peculiar intensity, and his eyes had grown yellow and pointed.

“
There
’
s something else,
”
Doc guessed.

“
My old street gang. Artesia Crips. When I got out of Chino I went looking for some of them and found it ain
’
t just them gone, but the turf itself.
”

“
Far out. What do you mean, gone?
”

“
Not there. Grindit up into li
’
l pieces. Seagulls all pickin at it. Figure I
must be trippin, drive around for a while, come back, everything
’
s still
gone.
”

“
Uh-huh.
”
Doc typed,
Not hallucinating.

“
Nobody and nothing. Ghost town. Except for this big sign,
‘
Coming Soon on This Site,
’
houses for peckerwood prices, shopping mall,
some shit. Guess who the builder on it.
”

“
Wolfmann again.
”

“
That
’
s it.
”

On the wall Doc had a map of the region.
“
Show me.
”
The area
Tariq pointed to looked to be a fairly straight shot from here eastward
down Artesia Boulevard, and Doc realized after a minute and a half
of mapreading that it had to be the site of Channel View Estates. He
pretended to run an ethnicity scan on Tariq.
“
You
’
re, like, what again,
Japanese?
”

“
Uh, how long you been doing this?
”

“
Looks closer to Gardena than Compton,
‘
s all I
’
m saying.
”

“
WW Two,
”
said Tariq.
“
Before the war, a lot of South Central was
still a Japanese neighborhood. Those people got sent to camps, we come
on in to be the next Japs.
”

“
And now it
’
s your turn to get moved along.
”

“
More white man
’
s revenge. Freeway up by the airport wasn
’
t
enough.
”

“
Revenge for
...
?
”

“
Watts.
”

“
The riots.
”

“
Some of us say
‘
insurrection.
’
The Man, he just waits for his
moment.
”

Long, sad history of L.A. land use, as Aunt Reet never tired of point
ing out. Mexican families bounced out of Chavez Ravine to build
Dodger Stadium, American Indians swept out of Bunker Hill for the
Music Center, Tariq
’
s neighborhood bulldozed aside for Channel View
Estates.

“
If I can get ahold of your prison buddy, will he honor his debt to you?
”

“
I can
’
t tell you what it is.
”

“
No need.
”

“
Oh and the other thing is I
can’t
give you nothin in front.
”

“
Groovy with that.
”

“
Sledge was right, you are one crazy white motherfucker.
”

“
How can you tell?
”

“
I counted.
”