Inherent Vice (5 page)

“
I should hope so,
”
Bigfoot sniffed.
“
Come on, let
’
s go inside and see
if there’
s a cubicle open.
”

Doc
’
s history with Bigfoot, beginning with minor drug episodes,
stop-and-frisks up and down Sepulveda, and repeated front-door repairs,
had escalated a couple of years ago with the Lunchwater case, one more
of the squalid matrimonials that were occupying Doc
’
s time back then.
The husband, a tax accountant who thought he
’
d score some quality
surveillance on the cheap, had hired Doc to keep an eye on his wife. After a couple days of stakeouts at the boyfriend
’
s house Doc decided
to go up on the roof and have a closer look through a skylight at the
bedroom below, where the activities proved to be so routine—hanky
maybe, not much panky—that he decided to light a joint to pass the
time, taking one from his pocket, in the dark, more soporific than he
had intended. Before long he had fallen asleep and half rolled, half slid
down the shallow pitch of the red-tile roof, coming to rest with his head in the gutter, where he then managed to sleep through the events which
followed, including hubby
’
s arrival, considerable screaming, and gunfire
loud enough to get the neighbors to call the police. Bigfoot, who hap
pened to be out in a prowl car nearby, showed up to find the husband
and the b.f. slain and the wife attractively tousled and sobbing, and gaz
ing at the .22 in her hand as if it was the first time she
’
d seen one. Doc,
up on the roof, was still snoring away.

Fast-forward to Compton, the present day.
“
What concerns us,
”
Big
foot was trying to explain,
“
is this, what we in Homicide like to call,
pattern
’
? Here
’
s the second time we know of that you
’
ve been discovered sleeping at the scene of a major crime and unable—dare I suggest
‘
unwilling
’
?—to furnish us any details.
”

“
Lot of leaves and twigs and shit in my hair,
”
Doc seemed to recall. Bigfoot nodded encouragingly.
“
And. .. there was a fire truck with a ladder? which is how I must
’
ve got down off the roof?
”
They looked at
each other for a while.

“
I was thinking more like earlier today,
”
Bigfoot with a touch of impa
tience.
“
Channel View Estates, Chick Planet Massage, sort of thing.
”

“
Oh. Well, I was unconscious, man.
”

“
Yes. Yes but before that, when you and Glen Charlock had your fatal
encounter
...
when would you say that was, exactly, in the sequence of
events?
”

“
I told you, the first time I ever saw him, is he was dead.
”

“
His associates, then. How many of them were you already acquainted
with?
”

“
Not normally guys I
’
d hang with, totally wrong drug profile, too
many reds, too much speed.
”

“
Potheads, you
’
re so exclusive. Would you say you
took offense
at
Glen
’
s preference for barbiturates and amphetamines?
”

“
Yeah, I was planning to report him to the Dope Fiend Standards
and Ethics Committee.
”

“
Yes, now your ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay Hepworth is a known inti
mate of Glen
’
s employer, Mickey Wolfmann. Do you think Glen and Shasta were ... you know ...
”
He made a loose fist and slid the middle
finger of his other hand back and forth in it for what seemed to Doc way
too long.
“
How did that make you feel, here you are still carrying the
torch, and there she is in the company of all those Nazi lowlifes?
”

“
Do that some more Bigfoot, I think I
’
m gettin a hardon.
”

“
Tough little wop monkey, as my man Fatso Judson always sez.
”

“
Case you forgot, Lieutenant, you and me are almost in the same
business, except I don
’
t get that free pass to shoot people all the time and
so forth. But if it was me over there in your seat, I guess I
’
d be acting
the same way, maybe start in next with remarks about my mother. Or I
guess
your
mother, because you
’
d be me.... Have I got that right?
”

It wasn
’
t till the middle of rush hour that they let Doc call his law
yer, Sauncho Smilax. Actually Sauncho worked for a maritime law firm over at the Marina called Hardy, Gridley, and Chatfield, and his resume
fell a little short in the criminal area. He and Doc had met by accident
one night at the Food Giant up on Sepulveda. Sauncho, then a novice
doper who
’
d just learned about removing seeds and stems, was about to buy a flour sifter when he flashed that the people at the checkout
would
all know what he wanted the sifter for
and call the police. He went into a
kind of paranoid freeze, which was when Doc, having an attack of midnight chocolate deficiency, came zooming out of a snack-food aisle and crashed his cart into Sauncho
’
s.

With the collision, legal reflexes reawakened.
“
Hey, would it be okay
if I put this sifter in with your stuff there, like, for a cover?
”

“
Sure,
”
Doc said,
“
but if
you’re
gonna be paranoid, how about all this
chocolate, man
...
?
”

“
Oh. Then
...
maybe we
’
d better put in a few more, you know, like, innocent-looking items..
..
”

By the time they got to the checkout, they had somehow acquired an extra hundred dollars
’
worth of goods, including half a dozen obligatory boxes of cake mix, a gallon of guacamole and several giant sacks of tortilla chips, a case of store-brand boysenberry soda, most of what was in the Sara Lee frozen-dessert case, lightbulbs and laundry detergent for straight-world cred, and, after what seemed like hours in the International Section, a variety of shrink-wrapped Japanese pickles that looked cool. At some point in this, Sauncho mentioned that he was a lawyer.

“
Far out. People are always telling me I need a criminal lawyer,
’
which, nothing personal, understand, but—
”

“
Actually I
’
m a marine lawyer.
”

Doc thought about this.
“
You
’
re
...
a Marine who practices law? No,
wait—you
’
re a lawyer who only represents Marines
...
”

In the course of getting this all straight, Doc also learned that Saun
cho was just out of law school at SC and, like many ex-collegians unable
to let go of the old fraternity life, living at the beach—not far from Doc, as a matter of fact.

“
Maybe you better give me your card,
”
Doc said.
“
Can
’
t ever tell. Boat hassles, oil spills, something.
”

Sauncho never officially went on retainer, but after a few late-night panic calls from Doc he did begin to
reveal an unexpected talent for
dealing with bail bondsmen and deskfolk at cop stations around the
Southland, and one day they both realized that he
’
d become, what they
call de facto, Doc
’
s lawyer.

Sauncho now answered the phone in some agitation.

“
Doc! Have you got the tube on?
”

“
All
’s
I get here
’
s a three-minute call, Saunch, they
’
ve got me in
Compton, and it
’
s Bigfoot again.
”

“
Yeah well, I
’
m watching cartoons here, okay? and this Donald Duck
one is really been freaking me out?
”
Sauncho didn
’
t have that many
people in his life to talk to and had always had Doc figured for an easy
mark.

“
You have a pen, Saunch? Here
’
s the processing number, prepare to
copy—
”
Doc started reading him the number, real slowly.

“
It
’
s like Donald and Goofy, right, and they
’
re out in a life raft, adrift
at sea? for what looks like weeks? and what you start noticing after a
while, in Donald
’
s close-ups, is that he has this
whisker stubble*
like,
growing out of his beak? You get the significance of that?
”

“
If I find a minute to think about it, Saunch, but meantime here
comes Bigfoot and he
’
s got that look, so if you could repeat the number
back, OK, and—
”

“
We
’
ve always had this image of Donald Duck, we assume it
’
s how
he looks all the time in his normal life, but in fact he
’
s always had to go
in
every day
and
shave his beak.
The way I figure, it has to be Daisy. You
know, which means, what other grooming demands is that chick laying
on him, right?
”

Bigfoot stood there whistling some country-western tune through his
teeth till Doc, not feeling real hopeful, got off the phone.

“
Now then, where were we,
”
Bigfoot pretending to look through some
notes.
“
While suspect—that
’
s you—is having his alleged midday nap, so necessary to the hippie lifestyle, some sort of incident occurs in the vicinity of Channel View Estates. Firearms are discharged. When the
dust settles, we find one Glen Charlock deceased. More compellingly
for LAPD, the man Charlock was supposed to be guarding, Michael Z. Wolfmann, has vanished, giving local law enforcement less than twenty-four hours before the feds call it a kidnapping and come in to fuck everything up. Perhaps, Sportello, you could help to forestall this by providing the names of the other members of your cult? That would
be ever so helpful to us here in Homicide, as well as the chance of a break
for you when that ol
’
trial date rolls around?
”

“
Cult.
”

“
The
L.A. Times
has referred to me more than once as a Renaissance detective,
”
said Bigfoot modestly,
“
which means that I am many things—but one thing I am not is stupid, and purely out of noblesse oblige I now extend this assumption to cover you as well. No
one, in fact, would
ever
have been stupid enough to try this alone. Which
therefore suggests some kind of a Mansonoid conspiracy, wouldn
’
t you agree?