Inherent Vice (54 page)

Adrian understood from the jump, Puck explained, that what people were buying, when they paid interest, w
as time. So anybody that failed
to come up with the vigorish, the only fair way to deal with that was to take their own personal time away from them again, a currency much more precious, up to and including the time they had left to live. Severe injury was more than just pain, it was taking away their time. Time they thought they had all to themselves would have to be spent now on stays in hospitals, visits to doctors, physical therapy, everything taking longer because they couldn’t move around so good. So it wasn’t as if Adrian hadn’t been working up to homicide for hire all his career.

One day out on his rounds, Adrian dropped in on a client from the LAPD Vice Squad who, just bullshitting, happened to mention a certain pornographer and pimp at the fringes of the movie business, with inter
ests in nudie bars, modeling agencies, and “specialty publishing,” whom the Department seemed uncommonly eager to be done with. As it turned
out, he had also kept lengthy and detailed files on a sex ring based in Sacramento, and was threatening now to blow the whistle unless he got paid a sum he was too small-time to understand was out of the question, though even the minor allegations in his story, proven or not, would be enough to bring down the administration of Governor Reagan.

“The Governor has some great momentum right now, the future of
America belongs to him, somebody can be doing American history a big
favor here, Adrian.”

Though there were by now any number of souls already on Adrian’s ticket, many Louisville Slugger-related, in fact, something in him did a silent and fateful double take. It may have helped that he had always voted Republican.

“Well, simply as a good American,” said Adrian, “I’d like to volunteer
my services, and my only condition is that I shouldn’t do any jail time.”

“How would you feel about being charged but then going free on a plea bargain before it got to trial?”

“Great, but why even bring me into it, why not just leave it an unsolved crime?”

“Federal money. The amount we get depends on our yearly clearance
rate. There’s a formula. The more cas
es we clear, the better we make
out.” Adrian must have looked uncomfortable, because the cop added,
“We can guarantee—zero consequences for you, legal or otherwise.”

Though he didn’t care much for the arrest and arraignment process, and especially not the legal fees, Adrian supposed that was the price he had to pay for the cold keen-edged thrill that overtook him the closer it got to the actual moment. There was something sexy about it. Like, a seduction.

He arranged for his target to be kidnapped and brought to a vacant warehouse in the City of Commerce and hired a couple of professionals who specialized in gay S&M. “Nothing too heavy,” Adrian said, “just work him into a mood. Then you fellas can split.”

They looked at Adrian, then at the client, then at each other, shrugged,
and on the principle of No Telling What People Will Go For, set to work. When they had been paid off and gone, Adrian had his turn.

“You corrupt the innocent,” he addressed his victim, who by now,
covered with bruises and welts, had grown unappeasably erect, “plus you
keep millions of freaks and losers addicted to their stupid-ass appetites
for bleach-blond pussy and oversize cock, you ruin their family life, you
get
’em
to piss so much of their money away they end up coming to me—me, for shit
’s
sake—just to cover the rent. And then you have the
fuckin nerve to go after a man like Ronald Reagan? To even put yourself
in the same league as him? Big mistake, pal. Fact, there ain’t enough left
of your life to make a bigger one. So start praying, asshole, for truly I say
unto you, your hour is at hand.”

Adrian had spent the previous weekend out visiting different subur
ban shopping plazas, going in home-improvement stores and assembling
the kit of tools he now set to work with. The victim’s penis, needless to say, came in for extra attention.

When the job was over, Adrian took the mutilated corpse and drove it to a freeway under construction miles away and dropped it inside the forms for a concrete support column about to be poured. A liberally compensated cement-mixer operator known to friends of Adrians then helped encase the remains in what w
ould become a vertical tomb, an
invisible statue of someone the authorities wished not to commemorate but to wipe from the Earth. Even today, Adrian could still not drive the freeway system without wondering how many of the columns he saw might have stiffs inside them. “Brings new meaning,” he remarked jovially, “to the expression pillar of the community.’”

Besides making sure he was seen with the victim at a West Hollywood bar earlier in the evening, Adrian had set himself up with a shit-load of circumstantial evidence. His two assistants from the warehouse were encouraged to come forward as witnesses, and Adrian left blood and fingerprints around the warehouse for the cops to find and, being who they were, to contaminate as much of it as they could. Though the cement-mixer operator had unaccountably disappeared, a number of hardware clerks were able to identify Adrian as having purchased items later found at the warehouse, with blood on them assumed to be the victims. However, no body meant no case. Adrian signed a statement acceptable to the federal nickel-and-dimers, and walked.

Simple as that. It felt like his life had turned a corner. As he was about
to discover, there seemed no end to the list of wrongdoers the Depart
ment would happily see out of the way, and secret Rolodexes filled with
the names of private contractors eager for the business, for whom the price, given federal policies of bountiful aid to local law enforcement, was, more often than not, right.

In the months and eventually years that followed, Adrian found himself specializing in politicals—black and Chicano activists, antiwar
protesters, campus bombers, and assorted other pinko fucks, it was eventually all the same to Adrian. The weapon of choice was usually from his
collection of baseball bats, though he could now and then be persuaded
to use a firearm which had mysteriously vanished from some other crime
scene remote in time and space. He became a regular around Parker Center, where they didn’t always know his name but never questioned
his presence. It was like finding a life in the military. After years of blind
alleys and false starts, Adrian had discovered his calling and reclaimed his identity.

Imagine his surprise, however, when one day his silent benefactors
the LAPD came to him with a request to hit one of their own. What was
going on? They knew he was the political guy.

“Doing a cop, I don’t know. Doesn’t have quite that, what do you call it, magic. Unless there’s something I’m missing
...
”

“On the job,” his contact explained, “there’s a code. There has to be trust. Everything depends on it, it’s nonnegotiable.”

“And this detective
...
”

“Let’s say he’s in violation.”

“A federal snitch, something like that?”

“Better we don’t get into details.”

As a matter of fact, Adrian recognized the name of this detective, Vincent Indelicato, who had borrowed from APF now and then—not a problem client, always came up with payments plus the vig on time. Adrian also happened to know that Puck Beaverton hated Indelicato from way back and was in fact currently out on bail pending sentence for some penny-ante infraction that Indelicato had just busted him on. Something about a pot seed.

Adrian had tried to work himself up into the same lethal indignation he’d felt toward pinkos and pornographers, but somehow his heart just wasn’t in it. Finally he summoned Puck.

“Look, I’ve been trying to fix this chickenshit arrest for you, Puck, but they’re just being so hard-ass about it.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. P.,” replied Puck. “One of those cases of wrong cop
at the wrong time. Vincent Indelicato is the one member of the Department that I flat-out fuckin hate, and he feels the same about me, so he ain’t about to let nothing go.”

“This have anything to do with Einar?”

“This fuckin cop, every chance he gets
...
pullin him over, bringin him in for nothing.
..
Pure hatred of homos. And Einar, like he’s so innocent, man, he’s like a little kid, he can’t see how evil it is, how systematic. Son of a bitch Indelicato really needs to be lined up and shot.

Too bad I couldn’t
’ve
got popped for
...
I don’t know, something real? maybe that would get me some respect inside?”

“Now that you mention it.
..
” Adrian explained about his history as
a contract employee, his get-out-of-jail-free card, “And what I don’t have
this time is any true desire. I mean, this Indelicato, he’s a customer, he’s a shit, but he’s nothin to me. I could do him, but so what? Where’s the
passion, see what I’m saying? Whereas somebody who really truly hates
his ass—”

“So you mean ... I’d get to do it—”

“But they arrest me. And if you do go in on this other little two-bit charge, word gets around on the jailhouse grapevine it was really you that iced the same copper who put you in there, and your yard credibility gets a big speed injection.”

So it came about—Adrian solicited the act, Puck performed it, in a perfect justice system both would have gone down for murder one, but there is no overestimating the lengths to which a force with such deep insecurities as the LAPD will go to act them out. “To top it off,” Puck concluded, “that fuckin seed thing got dealt before it ever came to trial, so I never even had to go inside. Somethin, huh?”

“Leaving a question open,” Doc said. “Since we’re only chatting here
and all. Who was it that hired Adrian?”

“Who gives a shit? Cop on cop, just a waste of time to ask.”

“No, no, it’s fascinating as Mr. Spock would say, tell me more.”

But they’d both heard the sound of a car pulling in to the garage, and doors slamming. Soon Adrian, muffled but recognizable, was calling, “Puckie
...
I’m home
...
”

Puck was on his feet, and Doc saw from the look on his face, too late as
usual, how totally, dangerously insane Sunshine Boy here had always been.
“Special treat for you today, Doc, we just got in a shipment of pure number
four, not a white guy’s finger laid on it between the Golden Triangle and
your own throbbin vein, and there’s worse ways to be removed forever from
a major-pain-in-the-ass list. Just let me step out here and get you some.”

He noticed Doc’s glance down toward his ankle and the empty holster
rig and smirked, and Doc thought he saw the swastika on Puck’s head twinkling too. “Yep, got it right here,” patting his inside jacket pocket.
“You’ll have it back soon, though I can’t say you’ll be in much condition
to use it. Don’t go away now.” The door closed behind him, and a dead bolt slammed into place.

There is a fairly straightforward way to get out of handcuffs, which Doc had learned as soon as he began having regular run-ins with the
LAPD. A metal clip snapped off a ballpoint pen would have worked, but
they’d taken his pen away when they took the Smith. Doc always made a point, however, of carrying in different pants pockets, loose and he hoped unnoticeable, two or three plastic shims he’d cut long ago from an expired Bullocks charge card that Shasta had left behind. The idea was to slide the plastic strip into one cuff to disengage the locking pawl
and also cover the ratchet teeth so the pawl couldn’t reengage.

It took a lot of squirming and muscle strain and semi-headstands to
get even one of the shims to fall out of his pocket, but finally Doc worked
himself out of the cuffs, creaked up off the bed, and had a look around. There wasn’t much to see. The door was designed not to open from the inside, and there was nothing to force it with. He pulled the folding chair under the overhead light fixture, stood on it, and unscrewed the bulb. Everything went very dark. By the time he managed to get back down off the chair, he was in the middle of some kind of flashback, possibly from that elephant dope they’d given him. He saw old familiar images, like spirit guides sent to help him out, Dagwood and Mr. Dith
ers, Bugs and Yosemite Sam, Popeye and Bluto, rotating violently inside
intensely saturated green and magenta clouds of dust, and he understood
for a second and a half that he belonged to a single and ancient martial tradition in which resisting authority, subduing hired guns, defending your old lady’s honor all amounted to the same thing.

He heard movement outside the door, but no conversation. An even chance that Puck was alone. Doc held one of the cuffs and let the other
swing free and waited. By the time Puck got the door open far enough to
register the darkness inside, before he could say “Uh-oh,” Doc was on his
ass, slamming him in the head back and forth with the loose handcuff, smashing his foot into Puck’s knee to bring him down, and then going down after him, giving in to a fury Doc understood would provide the
balance he needed to coast through this, grabbing Puck’s head and con
tinuing to beat it almost silently against the marble doorsill till every
thing was too slippery with blood.