The Big Bamboo (31 page)

Officials inspected passports and immigration forms. In the background: armed military, German shepherds and a quarantine zone for potted plants that people still insisted on bringing into the country for some reason. Ten lines and ten long, flat tables covered with unpredictable suitcase contents revealing the infinite variety of life. A separate area off to the side for random body searches. Also: language problems, crying children and a fast-talking guy in a red silk shirt explaining the case of Kahlúa he’d failed to declare from Cabo San Lucas.

More passengers poured off the umbilical arm from a Boeing 747. A chorus of gasps. Everyone stared just a little too long at that skull-face tattoo, then quickly looked anywhere else. The Tat was pulled out of line for the full, high-risk search, just like every other time.

They tore through everything, felt luggage linings for secret compartments, patted him down, used wands, brought over the dogs, even unscrewed his stick deodorant to see if something was stashed below.

Whistle clean. They handed The Tat his documents and tried to smile.

The Tat didn’t make the return effort. He exited the international air side and merged with a rushing river of foot traffic in the main terminal. A beeping cart came by with someone in a leg cast. He passed a gate pumping more passengers into the airport from a Birmingham flight connecting in Atlanta. An enormous man with pecs bulging out of a Roll Tide jacket came down the ramp. He checked an overhead sign and made a right turn for baggage claim.

Serge stared out a window of the Encounter Restaurant, watching an airbus with a sunburst foreign insignia thrust up at a sharp takeoff angle.

Ally was mobbed for autographs.

Coleman stumbled over to the window. “I’ve never come to an airport before when I wasn’t flying.”

“Most people don’t,” said Serge. “That’s why I do it all the time. Absorb the energy. Lives in motion. Sometimes I come just to ride the monorails, the last great free entertainment value in America before they started asking for boarding passes.”

Coleman looked down. Tiny people caught taxis, checked in curbside and smoked rapidly. “I think I’ve seen this building before. Like in a movie.”

“One of L.A.’s most recognizable landmarks,” said Serge. “Dozens of films set in this city have used it as background shots to bookmark the location.”

Coleman pointed back at the dining room. “It’s the weirdest restaurant I’ve ever seen, like the inside of some crazy spaceship.”

“That’s what it’s supposed to look like,” said Serge. “It’s the Encounter Restaurant, as in alien encounter. Market research showed enough people wanted to simulate the experience of being abducted by extraterrestrials, getting beamed up to a flying saucer and having to pay a lot for dinner.”

Dallas Reels worked his way across the room, slipping tiny envelopes into hands. “Hey, Serge, new party. You in?”

“Sure. Be with you in a minute.” Serge stared out the window again. A man in a Roll Tide jacket got into a Hertz courtesy bus. “Look at all those people down there. Each with their own hopes, dreams, heartaches.” He watched a man with a full facial tattoo climb in the back of a cab. “Sometimes I wonder what they’re all up to.”

A black stretch limo sat in the driveway of an expansive vacation retreat. A rented Taurus pulled up behind it. The driver didn’t get out.

Inside the house:

“It’s Ally Street!”

“It’s the guys from TV!”

Another mob scene. The buzz swept the party. Coleman ended up on the back porch, surrounded by men in white robes.

“Love your work!…”

One of the men pumped a keg and handed Coleman a plastic cup of draft. “Have you ever given any serious thought to joining a fraternal organization?”

Serge and Ally were trapped in the kitchen. More autographs. A young man in a leather jacket shook Serge’s hand. “You’re my hero. You say everything that’s on everyone’s mind.” He handed Serge a cassette. “Could you review my movie on your next show? Shot it with a friend’s video camera. About a misunderstood genius trapped in the body of a loser…”

A robed man held the keg spigot over Coleman’s cup. “…And if you like sports, we have a strong intramural program. Remember the solar temple cult up in Frisco? We beat them silly every year in flag football. Except last year they forfeited because of that cyanide business. Their note said Earth was about to take a meteor the size of Utah, but they really just didn’t want to face us in the semifinals…”

More autographs. A young man in a trench coat piled on the praise. “I love you guys!”

“Thanks,” said Serge, signing a napkin.

“Here’s my business card. I have a wine and cheese showing next week. I’m a performance artist.”

Serge handed the napkin back. “Performance artist?”

“I wanted to be a regular artist but didn’t have any talent. The National Endowment doesn’t understand.”

“What’s your medium?” asked Serge.

“Postmodern naturalism. I go to the landfill and collect everyday items that represent the entropy of civilization. Then I put them in my ass and take pictures.”

Serge wormed his way through the packed living room and onto the porch. “Coleman?…” He went back inside and stuck his head in the den. “Ally, you seen Coleman?”

Ally looked up from the broken arm she was autographing. “Hasn’t been in here.”

“Where’d that idiot go?…Coleman!…” Serge walked down a hall, checking bedroom doors. Nothing but drugs and sex. He opened the last one. “Coleman!”

“Hi, Serge,” said Coleman, wearing a long white robe. “Meet my new friends.”

He was encircled by men in similar robes, holding candles.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Joining their club,” said Coleman. “This is my initiation. Real nice guys…” They handed Coleman another beer and gave him a light for the joint in his mouth. “See what I mean? I’ve found a home.”

Serge glanced at a table against the wall: stainless steel tray with surgical instruments. “Coleman! They’re going to castrate you!”

“No, we’re not,” said one of the robed men.

“What are those tools?”

“There was a bris last night.”

Serge grabbed Coleman and dashed from the room. The robed men watched the door close. “Damn.”

They collected Ally from the kitchen and rushed out the front door. Dallas was waiting in the driveway. “There you are.” He pointed at his beeper. “We have to hurry.”

“Could you just take us back to our car?” asked Serge.

“No problem.”

The limo headed inland a half hour and pulled up behind a rented Chrysler parked just down the street from the Frolic Room.

“Thanks for the lift.”

“Sure you don’t want to go with us?” said Dallas.

“Been a long day.” Serge climbed out of the stretch and reached in his pocket for keys. Something up the street caught his eye. “Uh-oh.” He leaned back in one of the limo’s windows. “Decided to go to that party after all. We’ll follow in our car.”

“Cool.”

They jumped in the convertible. Coleman turned on the radio. “What made you change your mind?”

“Can’t go back to our hotel with that car following us.”

“Which one?”

“
Don’t look!
…The Taurus. It’s just like with the Crown Vic.”

“How long has he been there?”

“Since the cult house. Maybe the airport.”

The Chrysler shadowed the limo, and the Taurus shadowed the Chrysler. They headed up the canyon, vehicles down-shifting, climbing higher and higher into the hills. Mansions rising straight up from the road. Serge followed Dallas’s taillights another mile and parked behind the limo. He got out and turned around. Three houses back, a Taurus turned off its lights.

“I knew it.”

Inside the house, the usual. “It’s Ally!” “It’s the TV guys!”

Except it was later in the evening, everyone deeper in the bag. The excitement took on its own life. Yelling, shoving fans yearning to touch them, feet stepped on. A uniformed man with a serving tray reached over several heads to hand Serge a stuffed mushroom and a stack of pages. “Caterer finds sixteenth-century recipe that just might take down the pope!”

There was a stir at the front entrance. People reflexively cleared a path when the giant in a crimson jacket ducked his head and came through the door. Serge noticed the ripple in the crowd. He traced it back to the meaty, sun-burned head sticking up above the rest, advancing toward him.

Coleman lost his beer in the jostling. “Where’d all these people come from?”

“I can’t move,” said Ally, fighting for elbow room to autograph stuff.

“To the balcony!” said Serge.

They wiggled their way outside, but it was only worse. Then they couldn’t wiggle back. Instead, the mass of fans and autograph collectors followed and forced them farther out onto the balcony, until they were trapped against the metal railing over a sheer drop.

“What are we going to do?” asked Coleman.

“I’m getting crushed again,” said Ally.

Serge didn’t hear them. He was looking back in the house, focused on that one large head bobbing above a whole living room of heads, working its way toward the balcony. Serge turned around: that great sparkling view of Los Angeles again. He looked down over the railing. Not an option.

There was a creaking sound. Ally latched on to the railing. “What the hell was that?”

A sizable lurch. People screamed and grabbed each other as they lost balance. But they didn’t go back inside. If anything, they pressed closer to the railing in hysteria. More creaking and another lurch, another round of shrieks. Serge looked at the home next door, a good two feet higher than it had been a minute ago.

“Everyone, back in the house!” yelled Serge. “We have to get off the balcony!”

They were screaming too loud.

“Coleman! Ally! We have to get inside!”

“I can’t move!”

“Neither can I!”

Another lurch. Then a gunshot.

The yelling stopped.

Serge raised his pistol in the air again and squeezed off two more rounds.

The yelling started again, but at least they were moving back inside. And how. It quickly became a panicked stampede into the living room. Glass shattering, coffee tables collapsing, doors ripped off hinges. Strong as he was, the giant in the crimson jacket couldn’t fight the tide. His eyes momentarily met Serge’s on the other side of the room. Distilled rage. Then Serge was off again, hugging close to a wall, skirting the crowd and leading his friends to a side exit in the split-level garage. The man watched helplessly, cursing and beating on the people carrying him backward out the front door.

Pandemonium in the street. The Fullback broke free of the mob and sprinted up the road toward a Chrysler Sebring parked at the curb. But the three passengers were already inside. Serge turned the ignition.

The Fullback was at max stride, ready to dive onto the trunk. Serge hit the gas. The giant took a desperate swipe at the back of the car with his right hand, coming up with a fistful of air. The convertible sped away.

The giant spun on the balls of his feet, running back to his own Taurus. He threw it in gear and took off after the Sebring…
Ker-thump, ker-thump, ker-thump.
A stiletto knife through the sidewall of a flat tire on the driver’s side.

Serge checked the empty rearview and eased off the pedal. He reached the end of the street and gently tapped the brakes for an expertly controlled slide through the hairpin turn. He accelerated in the other direction on a switchback, the only way to traverse the steepest sections of the Hollywood Hills.

Suddenly, a high-rpm roar overwhelmed the convertible.

“What can that—?”

A jet-black ninja motorcycle shot between Serge and the guardrail with no room to spare.

The cyclist spun out with a smoking back tire and stopped in the middle of the road, facing the Chrysler.

Serge slammed the brakes. The gang stared in disbelief as the cyclist dismounted: black cowboy boots, long black overcoat and black helmet with tinted visor. The helmet came off.

“Holy Jesus!” said Ally. “Look at his face!”

Serge grabbed the top of the windshield and stood up. “What were you thinking?”

The Tat answered by throwing open his overcoat, revealing an array of menacing weapons from local pawnshops. Daggers, throwing stars, pistols. He whipped out nunchucks and twirled them around his head with invisible speed. The demonstration went on for some time. Finally, he stopped and flicked a pair of switches on the sticks, clicking open razor points at each end. The twirling started again.

Serge looked up at the starry sky and sighed.

The Tat eventually stowed the sticks. He crossed his arms over his chest and drew a pair of .44 revolvers. He tossed the guns back and forth between his hands. He started twirling them.

Serge tapped his watch. “Get to the point!”

The Tat turned with his back to the car, pointed the pistols over his shoulders and fired. Mirrors on both sides of the convertible snapped off with sparks. The Tat faced them again and took three dramatic steps toward Serge, raising the revolvers. “Now you die…”

The sound of thunder. The Tat looked up.

A twenty-room house slid down the mountainside and crashed into the street.

“Oooooo.” Coleman winced. “You can only see his feet sticking out.”

“But no ruby slippers.”

The road was completely blocked. So Serge made a five-point turn in the narrow cliffside street and started back the other way.

“What was that guy’s problem?” said Ally.

“It’s L.A.,” said Serge. “Everyone craves attention.”

To the left of his periphery, a dark figure in a crimson jacket bounded down the hillside with incredible speed and agility. By the time Serge noticed, the phantom had reached the edge of the road just ahead of the convertible, still running full clip.

A jarring thud. He landed on the Chrysler’s hood, face and arms against the windshield.

Coleman pointed. “Who’s
this
guy?”

“Kaiser Sosee.” Serge turned on the windshield wipers.