Inherent Vice (20 page)

doc was home
watching division semifinals between the 76ers and Milwaukee, mainly for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, whom Doc had admired since he was Lew Alcindor, when right in the middle of a fast break he became aware of a voice down in the street calling his name. For a min
ute he flashed that it was Aunt Reet, secretly resolved to sell his place out
from under him, showing it at this inappropriate hour to some flatland
couple especially selected for their pain-in-the-ass qualities. By the time
he got to the window to have a look, he dug how he
’
d been fooled by a similarity of voices, and it was actually his mother Elmina in the street,
somehow in deep discussion with Downstairs Eddie. She looked up, saw
Doc, and started waving cheerfully.

“
Larry! Larry!
”
Behind her was a double-parked 1969 Oldsmobile, and Doc could dimly make out his father Leo leaning out the window,
an inexpensive cigar clamped in his teeth pulsing bright to dim and back
again. Doc was now imagining himself at the rail of a long-ago ocean liner sailing out of San Pedro, ideally for Hawaii but Santa Monica would do, and he waved back.
“
Ma! Dad! Come on up!
”
He went running around opening windows and cranking up the electric fan, though
the odor of marijuana smoke, having long found
it’s
way into the rug, the couch, the velvet painting, was years too late to even worry about.

“
Where do I park this?
”
Leo hollered up.

Good question. The kindest thing anybody
’
d ever called the parking in Gordita Beach was nonlinear. The regulations changed unpredictably
from one block, often one space, to the next, having been devised secretly
by fiendish anarchists to infuriate drivers into one day forming a mob and attacking the offices of town government.
“
Be right down,
”
said Doc.

“
Will you look at that hair,
”
Elmina greeted him.

“
Soon as I can get to a mirror, Ma,
”
by which time she was in his arms, not all that put out at being hugged and kissed in public by a
longhaired hippie freak.
“
Hi, Dad.
”
Doc slid into the front seat.
“
There
’
s probably something down on Beachfront Drive, just hope we don
’
t have
to go halfway to Redondo to find it.
”

Meantime, Downstairs Eddie was going,
“
Wow, so this is your folks,
far out,
”
and so forth.

“
You boys go park,
”
said Elmina,
“
I
’
ll just hang out with Larry
’
s neighbor here.
”

“
Door
’
s open upstairs,
”
Doc quickly reviewing what he knew of Eddie
’
s rap sheet, including the hearsay,
“
just don
’
t get in any kitchens with this guy, you should be all right.
”

“
That was back in
‘
67,
”
Eddie protested.
“
All those charges got dropped.
”

“
My,
”
said Elmina.

Of course no more than five minutes later, having lucked into a spot just down the hill good at least till midnight, Doc and Leo returned to find Eddie and Elmina in the kitchen, and Eddie just about to open the last box of brownie mix.

“
Ah-ah-ah,
”
Doc wagging his finger.

There were beers and half a bag of Cheetos, and Surfside Slick
’
s deli up the hill was open till midnight for whatever they
’
d be running out of.

Elmina wasted no time in bringing up the subject of Shasta Fay, whom she
’
d met once and taken to right away.
“
I always hoped
...
Oh, you know
...
”

“
Leave the kid be,
”
muttered Leo.

Doc was aware of Downstairs Eddie, who
’
d once upon a time had to listen to it all through his ceiling, throwing him a look.

“
She had her career,
”
Elmina continued.
“
It
’
s hard, but sometimes you
have to let a girl go where her dreams are calling her. There did use to
be Hepworths over by Manteca, you know, and a couple of them moved
down here during the war to work in the defense plants. She could be related.
”

“
If I see her, I
’
ll ask,
”
Doc said.

There were footfalls up the back steps and Scott Oof came in by way of the kitchen.
“
Hi Uncle Leo, Aunt Elmina, Mom said you
’
d be driving down.
”

“
We missed you at supper,
”
Elmina said.

“
Had to go see about a gig. You
’
ll be here for a while, right?
”

Leo and Elmina were staying up on Sepulveda at the Skyhook Lodge,
which did a lot of airport business and was populated day and night with
the insomniac, the stranded and deserted, not to mention an occasional certified zombie.
“
Wandering all up and down the halls,
”
said Elmina,
“
men in business suits, women in evening gowns, people in their under
wear or sometimes nothing at all, toddlers staggering around looking for
their parents, drunks, drug addicts, police, ambulance technicians, so many room-service carts they get into traffic jams, who needs to get in
the car and go anyplace, the whole city of Los Angeles is right there five
minutes from the airport.
”

“
How
’
s the television?
”
Downstairs Eddie wanted to know.

“
The film libraries on some of these channels,
”
Elmina said,
“
I swear.
There was one on last night, I couldn
’
t sleep. After I saw it, I was afraid to sleep. Have you seen
Black Narcissus,
1947?
”

Eddie, who was enrolled in the graduate film program at SC, let out a scream of recognition. He
’
d been working on his doctoral dissertation,
“
Deadpan to Demonic—Subtextual Uses of Eyeliner in the Cinema,
”
and had just in fact arrived at the moment in
Black Narcissus
where
Kathleen Byron, as a demented nun, shows up in civilian gear, including
eye makeup good for a year
’
s worth of nightmares.

“
Well, I hope you
’
ll be including some men,
”
Elmina said.
“
All those
German silents, Conrad Veidt in
Caligari,
Klein-Rogge in
Metropolis
—
”

“
—complicated of course by the demands of orthochromatic film stock—
”

Oboy. Doc went out to search through the kitchen, having dimly recalled an unopened case of beer that might be there. Soon Leo put his head in.

“
I know it has to be someplace,
”
Doc puzzled out loud.

“
Maybe you can tell me if this is normal,
”
Leo said.
“
We got a weird
phone call at the motel last night, somebody on the other end starts scream
ing, at first I figure it
’
s Chinese, I
can’t
understand a word. Finally I can just
make out,
^£
We know where you are. Watch your ass.
’
And they hang up.
”

Doc was having those rectal throbs.
“
What name are you guys checked in under?
”

“
Our usual one.
”
But Leo was blushing.

“
Dad, it could be important.
”

“
Okay, but try to understand, it
’
s this habit your mother and I have sort of fallen into, of staying at different motels up and down old 99 on
weekends, under fake names? We pretend we
’
re married to other people
and having an illicit rendezvous. And I won
’
t try to kid you, it
’
s a lot of
fun. Like those hippies say, whatever turns you on, right?
”

“
So the front desk doesn
’
t really have you down as any kind of Sportello.
”

Leo gave him one of those hesitant smiles that fathers use to deflect the disapproval of sons.
“
I like to use Frank Chambers. You know, from
The Postman Always Rings Twice
⁷
.
Your mother uses Cora Smith if any
body asks, but for Chrissake don
’
t tell her I told you that.
”

“
So it was a wrong number.
”
Doc saw the case of beer, out in front of his face all this time. He put some cans in the freezer, hoping he
’
d remember he
’
d done this and that nothing would explode like it usually did.
“
Well Dad, I
’
m really shocked at you two.
”
He embraced Leo and held it for almost long enough to be embarrassing.

“
What
’
s this?
”
Leo said.
“
You
’
re laughing at us.
”

“
No. No
...
I
’
m laughing cause I like to use that same name.
”

“
Huh. You must get that from me.
”

Later, though, around three
a.m.,
four, one of those desolate hours,
Doc had forgotten his feelings of relief and only remembered how scared
he
’
d been. Why had he automatically assumed there was something out there that could find his parents so easily and put them in danger? Mostly in these cases, the answer was,
“
You
’
re being paranoid.
”
But in
the business, paranoia was a tool of the trade, it pointed you in direc
tions you might not have seen to go. There were messages from beyond,
if not madness, at least a shitload of unkind motivation. And where did that mean this Chinese voice in the middle of the night—whenever that might be at the Skyhook Lodge—was telling him to look?

next morning,
waiting for the coffee to percolate, Doc happened to glance out the window and saw Sauncho Smilax down in his classic beach-town ride, a maroon 289 Mustang with a black vinyl interior and
a low, slow throb to
it’s
exhaust, trying not to block up the alley.
“
Saunch!
come on up, have some coffee.
”

Sauncho took the stairs two at a time and stood panting in the door
way, holding a briefcase.
“
Didn
’
t know if you were up.
”

“
Me neither. What
’
s happening?
”

Sauncho had been out all day and night with a posse of
federales
aboard
a garishly overequipped vessel belonging to the Justice Department, visit
ing a site previously identified as the spot where the
Golden Fang was
sup
posed to have left some kind of lagan. Divers went down to have a look
and, as the light shifted over the ocean, presently were bringing up one connex after another full of shrink-wrapped bundles of U.S. currency, maybe the same ones Cookie and Joaquin, on behalf of Blondie-san,
might still be out after. Except that upon opening the containers, imagine
how surprised everybody was to find that, instead of the usual dignitaries,
Washington, Lincoln, Franklin and whoever, all of these bills, no matter which denomination, seemed to have
Nixon
’
s
face on them. For an
instant a federal joint task force paused to wonder if they might not after all, the whole boatload of them, be jointly hallucinating. Nixon was star
ing wildly at something just out of sight past the edge of the cartouche,
almost cringing out of
it’s
way, his eyes strangely unfocused, as if he had
himself been abusing some novel Asian psychedelic.

According to intelligence contacts of Sauncho s, it had been common CIA practice for a while to put Nixon
’
s face on phony North Vietnamese
bills, as part of a scheme to destabilize the enemy currency by airdrop
ping millions of these fakes during routine bombing raids over the north.
But Nixonizing U.S. currency this way was not as easily explained, nor
sometimes even appreciated.